The NIGHT SHIFT
BY RUTH COOLIDGE
Some drivers will tell you that the night shift drives you mad. My pal Murray has this wild yarn he likes to drag out for new folks who come to trivia night at Donovan’s Pub. It was a regular night shift, he says. Reported for his eight-hour as usual, picked up a couple sleepy nurses round 1:00am at the Cortland junction, nobody on the bus but him and them and an older fella towards the back. Well, at 1:11, Murray says, and he’s always real particular about that time, the fella yells up to turn the racket down, he can’t hardly hear himself think over this screeching. What screeching, mister, Murray asks, and the old guy goes off saying how he can’t get no peace anymore, always with the screaming in his ears. Well, Murray, he says he looks at those two tired nurses to see if they’re hearing this and they just sit there staring out their windows. Murray figures the old guy is just crazy so he hollers back at him to pipe down and that does it. Near 2:00 he makes the stop at McKnight and Elm and the nurses pick up their things to get off. So Murray checks in his rearview, he says, to check on the old fella, but he’s gone. Say, Murray says to the second nurse as she’s gettin off, Where’s that fella was yellin and hearin things? She looks at him all puzzled and sleepy and says, I believe he got off a few stops ago, but Murray knows he ain’t seen that guy get off. So he goes back and looks but the seats are all empty and Murray feels this real cold feeling in his belly because that old fella sure never walked off that bus. And when Murray tells this story at the pub his eyes get real serious and he says he figures that old guy died and vanished on that bus, carried off by his ghosts. It was his ghosts haunting, him, see, and that’s why he heard all that screaming.
Well, that’s Murray’s story anyway. Most folks will drink up this stuff easy as they gulp a cold Budweiser. Some drivers will too. Oh, they talk about the interior lights flickering, seeing things, hearing voices. Me, I like the night shift. Mostly it’s just quiet, and you get to sort of settle into yourself. With hardly another soul around, you can feel a kind of clearness, like the face you put on during the day relaxes and your real one gets to breathe.
My Wednesday run is always near to dead. Empty, that is, especially after the midnight stop at the Subway on Queeny. Tonight is no different, 2:32 and nobody on but this glum-looking kid in the second row. He’s got on a hoodie with the hood up, some university name I can’t make out on the front. Couple hours he’s been sitting there, forehead to the window staring out, headphone cord hanging from his ears. They’ve been doing the rounds cleaning the windows this month, and the reflection of his face is pretty clear in the black-looking glass. I have the interior lights on low and it gives the kid’s face this shadowy sinking look.
I make the stop at Cleveland and Manchester, the corner with the little 24-hour convenience store that sells Russion liquor, cat food, and porn mags. I ease my foot on the brake and the bus heaves in that soft smooth way these new models have. Couple years ago I was still driving the old Crusader II and it felt like rolling out on the asphalt in a shopping cart when you’re a kid.
I shift the bus into park and palm the big plastic knob on the release mechanism and swing it out. The door glides open with a pretty little hiss and the night air creeps in. With the door open I can hear the little hum that’s the engine idling. I stretch my back against the seat and wiggle my toes a little bit. Driving can really start to kill your back unless you’re careful--that’s what happened to my pal Jim a few years back until he started going to his wife’s yoga classes. When I have the split shifts on Tuesdays and Thursdays I walk for the whole break while I eat my sandwich. On Wednesdays, I stretch at the stops. It feels real good, stretching my back with the fresh air coming in. The night all quiet.
It’s cool out tonight, but nice. The air tickles my arms a bit. The e in the neon open sign in the store window flickers like usual and the fluorescents make a yellow box on the sidewalk. I almost want to run in for a bag of peanut M&Ms but my wife Cherry has me weight-watching. Can’t say it matters much to me but I’m a man who sticks to things.
I steal a look at the kid. I figured this’d be his stop since there’s nothing after this but stop 18 down by the river. But he sits there still, staring at the window with that look on his face like one tap on the shoulder’d set him off. None of my business where people are going. Never is. All the same, his look has me wondering, so I ask.
“Hey, kid. Where ya headed?” He rolls his eyes up so we’re staring right at each other in my rearview. Like one of those zombies from the Walking Dead. Cherry and I only watched one season but you don’t forget that dead hanging look on their faces.
“Anywhere,” he says. He may look like a zombie, but that’s the voice of a little kid with scraped up knees. I feel a little warm twitch in my chest for him.
“Well, last one’s stop 18 down by the river. Sure you don’t wanna get off here?” He stares at me with those lost eyes and turns his head back into the window.
None of my business. I swing the arm back and the door seals shut. I shift into drive and ease my foot on the gas and the bus pulls away from the curb nice and smooth.
Nothing wrong with stop 18 except there’s nothing down there anymore. Used to be a little club with big windows looking out on the river but those windows are all boarded up now. If it were me I’d take it off the route, especially the night route. But, department of transportation sets the routes. You ask me, they don’t know a thing. They don’t drive.
I’m coming up on the stop and I sneak a look in my rearview to see if this kid’s getting off. Only I can’t see his face anymore. Just the top of his head covered by his hood. He’s leaning with his forehead against the seat in front of him. Something about it I don’t like, gives me that fluttery feeling in my belly. All the same I look back at the road and bring the bus to a smooth stop. Nothing on this street, the old club a block over. I put my hand on the big knob but I don’t open the door just yet. The kid’s not moving, still with his head mashed into that scratchy confetti-pattern upholstery in front of him.
You don’t shut the engine off when you park the bus. Even if it’s a longer stop or you gotta get off for something. Just for loading and unloading, you keep the engine idling to save time and that’s why sometimes a driver has to call for people to hurry up. I try to let folks take their time, but I’ll admit I sometimes get impatient. When I got a schedule to keep, I like to move right along. Everybody’s got somewhere to be.
I don’t really think about it, but with the door still closed I shut the engine off. These new models run pretty quiet, especially from the interior, but all the same there’s the little hum of the idling that stops. And then it’s all quiet. Except, I think, maybe I’m imagining it but it sounds like breathing that’s kinda funny. Choked, kinda, and fast.
Real slow, because my arm hair is all up, I turn round in my seat. I’ll be damned, it makes my back hurt a little. I still can just see the top of his head so I lean forward a little and crane my neck round. All the while my heart is thumping heavy and I don’t know why I didn’t just make the stop and turn back. I lean real slow till I can see him there in the second row across the aisle. And I stop. My heart pumping every beat hard through my ears.
He took out his headphones but his hood is still up. And jammed under his chin there is the barrel of a little black hand gun. He’s real quiet, just that choked fast breathing, and I watch tears down his cheek like rain down the windshield, drops falling on the shiny black gun. I feel like every thump in my chest will break my ribs.
“Hey, kid,” I say like I’m talking to a riled dog. I don’t know why I say it. It seems like something I just have to say, like you always say ‘how bout this rain’ even though everybody can see that it’s raining.
“Don’t come near me, man,” he says and his voice sounds like he’s got a four day cold. All thick and scratchy. Still like he’s a kid come home with his knees all scraped up. I don’t know but it feels like I can’t move now and go away from him but I sure as hell ain’t coming closer. I feel like there’s a golf ball down my throat. I don’t know much but I know these things go sideways real fast.
The kid breathes out a long one through his mouth, real shaky. He closes his eyes and his whole face scrunches up, tears still squeezing out. My eyes are just on that gun.
“It’s my fault. It’s my fault,” he says real quiet, and I want to ask what but I don’t dare case it sets him off. Still, we can’t stay like this all night, him hunched over there and me leaned over here scared to move.
“What is, kid?” I say it but I think at first he doesn’t hear me because he stays quiet. And then when he does talk it’s like he’s not even talking to me.
“Lukas is dead. And it’s my fault.” He’s got his eyes open now, talking more steady and he jams that gun further into the soft part at the top of his throat. I feel my mouth go real dry. I’m not trained to handle these things but I do know the DOT rules like the back of my hand and he must be a smart enough kid if he goes to that university on his jacket.
“Listen, you can’t fire that thing on this bus,” I say with a lot more charge than I feel. He stares at his feet in those dirty white sneakers. The bus floor has this black sandy glimmer to it and I think maybe he’s caught up looking at that. I think he doesn’t know I’m here.
“I didn’t give it to him but I told him where to get it.” And he slides his eyes over to me so I realize he does know. “You know Adderall’s a prescription drug? You can get it from a pharmacy, it’s not even illegal.” Hell if I know a thing about drugs except Advil. I look at his red teary eyes staring at me, the freckles across his nose. And I say the only thing I can think that might help.
“Son, firearms are not allowed on this bus.”
“I know,” he says turning his eyes back to his sneakers and gulping around that shiny black barrel. “But I’m not getting off yet.”
And I’ll be damned if I don’t turn right back around my seat and start the engine. My hands shaking the whole time, my stomach fluttery and my palms all sweaty. But I’ll be damned If I don’t pull away from stop 18 and turn around to run the route again. Because it’s not my job to get that gun out of his hand and anyway I’ve no idea how. Not my place to force him off the bus before his stop. Sometimes I get impatient, but mostly I like to let folks take their time. So I keep driving because it’s a nice night and my shift’s not up. And I check in my rearview every half minute to check on the kid. All the while with this cold feeling in my belly. Because I’m starting to think maybe the night shift does drive you crazy. I’m thinking I might look back once and he’ll be gone.