Page 52 - WTP Vol.VII #2

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I’m usually one of the commuters surrounding his truck as we wait for the bus. I tell the group that I came home late the other night after a storm and, as I raked snow off the passenger side of the car, I was startled by motion in the back seat of the vehicle next to me, where someone slept. Warner says a lot of people sleep in cars here and that homeless men and women camp on the hill that abuts the parking lot, sometimes wandering around and lifting untended bags from those going to the airport.
thirty-foot-long flag flies day and night at Exit 6,
dred eyes are necessary to monitor the goings-on here.
marking the truck stop housing Burger King, Subway, Dunkin’ Donuts, Mobil Mart, and unheated restrooms whose doors do not completely close. School children on class trips dance around those waiting for the buses to New York, Providence, Bos- ton, or Foxwoods. A huge display of color brochures for whale watches and museum tours stands near a five-foot glass case housing a claw that dangles above a bin of stuffed animals. Its sign says Play Till You Win, which assumes infinite funds and timelessness. One night two boys of no more than twelve, stocky kids with shaved heads, played till they lost. One grabbed the machine, toppled it to the floor, and the other raised a metal chair high in the air, bringing it down and shattering the glass. During this assault, a voice half-heartedly yelled, “Hey!”
One of the men says, “Live and let live.” He’s a musi- cian who dresses as John Philip Souza and tours with a marching band. He has suffered burns to his cheeks and neck from a childhood fire. We stand in the wind, and the colder we get the redder we get, but as his scar tissue becomes more pronounced, his face turns whiter and whiter.
As they grabbed the toys, one boy said, “I thought it would be harder to break.”
“‘Live and let live’ is very close to ‘Die and let die,’” Warner says. ~
“Hey!” ~
I know each bus driver from my years of commuting. Michael drives so cautiously you might as well take the bus that arrives a half hour later because his bus and the next will pull into South Station simultane- ously. Kelly is a hypochondriac and his voice booms through the microphone asking the forty-seven pas- sengers for aspirin or cough drops. Once he described his chapped lips so vividly a woman rushed to his aid and then we heard her say, “No! No! Keep it!” Kelly looked particularly grim one morning as he took my ticket. I asked if he was okay. He whispered, “The inspector of the bus is on the bus.”
In bad weather, I park in the commuter lot here and take the bus. Passengers wait in a kiosk of glass and steel, open at both ends. During rain and snow, every- one huddles in the middle.
Warner Rose, a retired police chief, sells tickets in his truck from two a.m. to nine a.m., accompanied by his pet, Max, a tiny burrowing owl who walks back and forth on the dashboard. Like me, Warner always tunes his radio to the Cape’s classical station so that Mo- zart, Brahms and Bach pervade the air around him.
A truly strong man, he wears a thin jacket or short- sleeve shirt in all seasons, only occasionally running his engine for warmth. I immediately recognized him as Hermes, god of travelers. He says his endurance evolved from years of directing traffic and other on- the-job outside activities.
All drivers, no matter their age or size, have the same dead-on gaze, an entrenched focus you see on horses pulling carriages around Central Park, incapable of a quick glance.
I once said to him, “See those guys jumping a car’s battery?”
We are all strangers and yet we are intimates. Three classes are represented among the passengers: the upper crust, elderly riders on their way to medical ap- pointments; the poor, some holding full black plastic trash bags; the middle class, like me, who discuss the weather and the time. We are the only class that talks. The rich and the poor are silent.
He looked over at the raised hoods. “Supposedly,” he said, adding, “a few hours ago two undertakers shifted a corpse from the back seat of one car to another.” His mythological proportions also remind me of the Argus and, like Argus, Warner has a hundred eyes, and a hun-
On the days I arrive after Warner has left, I buy tickets
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John SKoyLeS