elizabethlevett

         There is a bus stop on Haight Street at Laguna. In the past thirty years I must have stood there about a thousand times. Some days the sun on this particular corner is very strong and hot, the traffic is thick, and the bus sometimes takes forever to come. It was hot like that one Sunday afternoon. Hot enough ripen the trembling green plums on my backyard tree to a healthy blush all in one day. I was waiting for the Number 6 Parnassus to take me home from my friend’s house. The read-out in the bus stop shelter said that the Number 6 would be along in three minutes. “Good deal,” I said to myself.

         I stepped off the curb and into the street just far enough to watch the silver and red metal hulk make its slow progress up the hill from Market Street. People walked along the sidewalk in two’s and three’s. Behind me I could hear them as they came evidently upon a neighborhood guy who was giving them what sounded like a slightly crazy hard time. “Oh boy,” I said to myself.

         Did you ever stand on what seemed to be a well-packed section of beach when suddenly a wave came up and you could feel the sand slipping out from under your feet? That’s what it was like just then. I didn’t want to look back. I didn’t want to give away my fear. “Please don’t let the crazy guy talk to me. Please don’t let the crazy guy talk to me. Please don’t let the crazy guy talk to me,” I said to myself. But I knew that somewhere in that three-minute space between my stupid vulnerability and some imagined security, whatever was going to happen had to.

         The sun made my face feel very hot all at once and the crazy-voiced man started to pass just behind the bus stop. He didn’t see me at first. “Maybe he’ll keep walking,” I said to myself. But, just like that, he turned around and started to walk toward me.

         He wore filthy clothes and mismatched old shoes. He held a can of malt liquor and his hair was in about a thousand little twists adorned with about a thousand little, colored beads. He stopped, looked at me, and sighed. Did the gesture demonstrate an attempt at intimidation, or simply resignation to the day? I couldn’t tell. “Tell me the answer before I ask the question.” His voice was loud and scratchy in a way I liked, in a way that felt familiar. His voice was honest. I looked back at him, trying hard to keep my face as clear and open as the whole blue sky, trying to suspend my stupidity, my judgment. I could almost hear a Morricone soundtrack.

         “What’s the question?” I asked him.

         He sighed again in apparent frustration. “Do you possibly have an extra two cents so I can get something to eat at McDonald’s?”

         I laughed right out loud. (Then I felt like a jerk.) “You know you can’t get anything at McDonald’s for two cents.” I reached in my wallet, shit, no bills. I pulled out all the change I had – two quarters plus something. McDonald’s doesn’t have their dollar menu anymore but I figured he’d at be at least fifty cents closer to a Big Mac than he was before, or maybe closer to a forty ouncer. I figure that’s not my business. 

         The beaded man took the money and made a funny face at me. “It worked!” he said, “Sometimes it works. Most times it doesn’t though.”

         I shrugged. “No sense of humor these days, huh?”

         “Uh uh, no manners.” He stepped a little closer and looked at me very seriously. His face crinkled into a smile. He pursed his lips into a comical, stage kiss. “We’re good, you and me. I just have no manners.”

         The bus pulled up. “Okay,” I said, “have a good day!” It sounded so lame. The man went on up the street and I got on the bus. 

         The city can be a hostile place for a man with filthy clothes and mismatched shoes, and about a thousand little beads in his hair. His only currency is the knowledge that middle-aged white ladies at the bus stop are scared of him. He didn’t come to this time and place to make me feel better about my part in these things. He needs whatever he needs. I need to learn what to do with my ignorance and my fear.

         In three minutes we both got to taste the rich plums that hang between months of cold contemplation that lie behind and ahead of us. So I sped off on a mental tricycle toward my own satisfaction with what three minutes had and had not become, grateful for having been able to exchange something uncompromised and true.