bus driver appreciation day

by Craig Demi

Before the game, we had to do this photo-op thing. I say before the game as if the game ended up being what anybody would actually remember about that afternoon. But, for me, at the outset it was the basketball. As for the photo-op, it wasn’t that bad. For starts it meant we got to save on parking, so to speak.

We arrived to the arena on two school buses. A photographer and somebody making a video stood at the side of the road with their cameras ready. A couple of others congregated behind them. Staff from the team, I guess. Just milling around. I felt a little foolish peering through the tiny-finger smudged windows to see camera lenses focusing back at me as we pulled up. Sitting where the students usually sit had put me in a bit of a funk.

I’d shaved on a Sunday, which I never did. And, I’d worn my nice pebbled-leather jacket even though there was a good chance of weather. I’d chosen to do these things even while maintaining, admittedly for only my own benefit, a pretense of aloofness about the whole “appreciation” thing. We were just being singled out. And for what? Doing our crumby jobs? I don’t know if that kind of attention is automatically a good thing.

The picture taking didn’t last long. How could it? We were bus drivers, not supermodels. Afterwards, as we walked through the entrance bay into a restricted area of the arena, I was surprised at how quickly we were able to get a little glimpse of the court through a tunnel that led to the baseline. The home team’s dance squad congregated there. I caught a fleeting peek at one of the dancers as she stripped off her sweatpants to reveal the skintight costume beneath. Despite the thousands of people who were about to see her in that outfit, it seemed like an intimate moment. Maybe not for her. She probably didn’t even notice I’d seen. I still felt embarrassed.

A couple people in our group chattered a lot as we rounded the hall’s long curve. I nodded to anything said in my direction. Couldn’t really hear much over the arena’s constant activity. Admittedly, I do also to get a little swept up in my thoughts in moments like that. Like my observations are the narration of one of the spy novels I read during stopovers when I drive for sporting or performing events. Haul the marching band out to some rinky-dink parade, then get paid to sit there and read? Always sounded good to me. Some drivers just smoke cigarettes and nap. How it is. In any case, we were all there to be appreciated.

We rounded another bend just in time to witness a little girl writhing on the bare cement floor of a cavernous staging area. Paramedics franticly tried to gain control of her limbs. A woman, presumably the little girl’s mother, crouched down nearby searching her pocketbook and the pockets of her cardigan, which was white like her pants. And socks and shoes. And under the sweater she had on a white turtle neck. Where the fabric cinched into the flesh of her jowls, I’m sure I saw a spot of blood. Maybe it was ketchup. If I’d looked closer, maybe I would’ve seen a corresponding red smudge on the corner of her mouth. However, it was hard for my attention not to be drawn to the little girl.

She didn’t look older than eight. However, the fact that the paramedics struggled to control her even though she was flat on her back suggested she might be older, or at least incredibly strong for her size. She wore a long-sleeved white dress that, if it hadn’t ridden up past her knees during her thrashing, probably would have reached to her ankles.

In the last few years, I’d seen a few girls on my bus wearing dresses like that. It struck me at first, having grown up in Pennsylvania, as reminiscent of Amish attire. The Amish don’t typically wear all white though. Still, it had the constricting religious look is the point. There might be a few girls in white on my route every year over the past couple years. Maybe three, at most, at a time. And only girls. To the extent that I payed close attention to the kids behind me, keep my eyes on the road, I’d noticed that these girls kept exclusively to themselves. Of course, that might not have been entirely their choice. I might have wondered if they were more of the homeschool type. But they kept getting on the bus.

Seeing this girl in the throws of some sort of episode, I wondered back over the recent years, if she’d ever been a student on one of my routes. Her face was so contorted in apparent agony it made it hard to say for sure. I turned around to get one last look as we were being ushered away but my view was blocked by the dark uniforms of the paramedics.

For the first little while after we’d taken our seats, most of the chatter was still about what we’d just witnessed. But it wasn’t long before all sorts of harrowing stories of kids in various forms of destress began floating throughout our section as different drivers recounted their scariest incidents. Lucky for me, skidding out of control on a bridge with a trombonist hanging out the back door or being battered by a crash of escaped rhinoceros at a zoo field trip or any stuff like that have been rare occurrences. So I didn’t feel like I had much to contribute. But, as the recountings turned to the purely misbehaved, we all had stories.

Really though, it all just kind of washed together. The first time a little boy tries to light a classmate on fire, a bus driver might not be able to believe their eyes. But by the third time, a degree of cynicism will have already crept in. It really only takes one instigator, those really crafty ones who you can see it in their eye the first time they climb aboard. One like that, and you’re guaranteed to have chaos on your hands. Either until they’re off your route, which could take years, or their parents medicate them. The skill of the bus driver is maintaining attention on the road ahead no matter the level of insanity unfolding behind. Just get them where they’re supposed to go. It’s rarely a good story when a bus driver is the center of attention.

The first quarter went by fast. Both teams were pretty hot from the floor. Our seats for the game weren’t bad, but I’d had better. I’ve never been a fan of Detroit, or the visitors, New York, but I’ve been to see Philly plenty of times over the years when they’ve been to town. My dad used to take me to games at the old arena back home. Now, that place had atmosphere. My first bus driving job was a middle school route in Paoli. It was always a question if the bus would even start in the morning back in those days. I went to see a game on my own early on after I landed that job. Ninth row, near center. Turned out to be the last before coming out to Detroit. Money just kept getting tighter and tighter. Then my mortgage exploded, and my marriage.

During a timeout at some point they made a special announcement about us bus drivers being there, and had some VIPs on center court. Bus driver VIPs. Go figure. Outside of our section, I doubt many spectators were even conscious of it. And, for those who made it out of the arena, it’s not likely a detail about the basketball game they remembered.

The first sense of commotion encroaching the court began during another timeout early in the second quarter. They had rolled out a t-shirt cannon, and the pep-squad was bouncing around throwing more t-shirts by hand into the crowd. Despite the loud music and general excitement elicited by the prospect of a free t-shirt, there began to be a shift in a portion of the crowd’s general focus. Something was going in the corridor behind one of the corners of the court. Security personnel began moving about in a hurried, uncoordinated manner. Some were running into the tunnel that led away from the court. A few members of the pep-squad seemed to have picked up on it, but perhaps felt duty-bound to supply t-shirts to the crowd. Others braced themselves for action, a real fight or flight flare to the nostrils. Even from my seat, I picked up on that in an instant.

Then the players returned to the court and the pep-squad cleared out, some prancing toward the tunnel where the security personnel had been seemingly called to respond. Just as the referee handed the ball to a New York player to make the inbound pass to resume play, I heard the screams. The player heard them too, I think. He held the ball as if confused about what to do with it. His teammates and the Detroit players scrambled around alternately trying to get open for the pass, or defending against their opponent being open.

Someone from security ran out of the tunnel to edge of the court where he stopped. He seemed to be in shock, either at what he had just witnessed or at the fact that the game was still going on after what he’d just witnessed. I couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.

When you’re a professional basketball player holding the ball to make an inbound pass, you’re probably used to most eye’s in an arena on you. Even if you’re a second year guard getting your first meaningful starts. I don’t think he ever saw the thing, but I’m certain he became suddenly aware that we were going to see what it was about to do to him.

It did not move in a natural seeming way. Almost jumped like a video glitch or electricity arcing between wires or a computer simulation of a tweaker’s nervous system. But the color of oxygen-depleted blood. It was pretty fantastical stuff. The thing’s presence immediately called into question the distinctions between real and unreal, and living and dead, and stuff like that. In a moment it closed on the player to decidedly horrible effect. It appeared to tear parts of the player’s body from reality. Yet, along with the vanishing of limbs and organs, other parts of the player’s body multiplied. That’s a general impression, I didn’t stop to take notes. And, apparently the camera operators took to the notion of fleeing at about the same time as I did. Because, on my way to the exit, I caught a glimpse of the Jumbotron and the young guard still in focus on its screen. His form had been reduced to a bloody knot of mangled toes, some the size of what had been his head. Or a basketball for that matter.

Not everyone ran upon witnessing this. Some turned to violence. Upon each other, fighting to escape, and themselves, thinking they couldn’t I guess. Some cowered or prayed.

When a group of us who’d made a run for it emerged from the building, most people took a bee-line approach to getting as far away as possible. However, I caught sight of our buses parked nearby and broke for them. One of the real old-timers who’d actually driven one of the buses that brought us to the arena was standing outside, halfway through a cigarette with a confused look on his face. I didn’t recognize the guy, figured he was probably semi-retired by the looks of him. I was about to tell him we needed to get the hell out there when his expression went wide. He dropped his smoke and fell to a knee while clutching at his arm.

Bad time for a heart attack. I’m not sure what triggered it, but from the corner of my eye I saw people being garroted by tendrils of what appeared to be electric blood and dragged, raving, back into the arena. Turned out to be a demon using human flesh to manifest itself as a giant. That could have done it. I didn’t ask. Instead gathered him up as best as I could and hauled his ass onto the bus. As I did, some skinny hipster type darted in front of me and immediately went for the ignition. The keys were on a ring on the belt of the guy I was helping. I pulled the incapacitated driver up the stairs, grabbed the dude from behind the wheel, stuck the keys in the ignition, and announced that I was the damned bus driver.

The hipster blinked. His mouth moved. At first that was the extent of his ability to communicate. Whether he pondered turning on his heel or turning to violence, he didn’t get a chance. More people had found there way to the bus. Pushing past him, some dragged wounded, one of whom was the dancer I’d seen earlier when entering the arena. Her thigh had been gouged and she looked in a very bad way. She was laid down on one of the seats. I didn’t see her again. The hipster remained at the front of the bus, right by my side. Maybe he still harbored thoughts of grabbing the wheel. I held the transmission in neutral and revved the engine. The sound it made told me that old timer kept this rig tuned real nice.

The bus had filled quickly. On the first day of school every year, there are normally a few kids that start crying when they get in their seats for the first time. It’s mostly the silent, or at least inwardly despondent, kind of tears. Maybe a forlorn look out the window as we pull away from their street corner. The people who’d climbed aboard from the arena were hysterical. Had I not found myself in the driver seat of the bus, a familiar place and a familiar purpose, so to speak, I can’t say I’d have been in a much different stat of mind.

When the first emergency vehicles careened around the corner in front of us, my instincts told me to get out ahead of them. The first thing people in uniform want to do is start directing traffic. I banged the lever to close the door and dropped straight into second, foot flat on the throttle. I could feel the weight of the overloaded seats. I worked up through the gears, swerving around people who were still fleeing the arena. One guy’s clothes were on fire. He waved his arms for the line of firetrucks coming in the opposite direction to stop. The hipster, who’d remained standing beside my seat, gripping whatever he could to keep his balance, shouted directions to me.

Ignoring him, and not touching the breaks, I yanked the wheel hard to the right. The bus bucked when the tires went over the curb. Renewed shrieks of terror went through the passengers as most of them surely thought the bus was about to roll on its side. We may have gotten close, but I kept her moving. We fishtailed through a small grassy area at the end of the block, cleaving through a row of boxwoods.

The sound of an explosion came from the arena behind us. A glance in the mirror revealed what looked like smoke pouring from the structure, though I’d seen enough in the minutes since the demon had appeared to know that the smoke might actually be something else entirely.

The bus pitched heavily when it dropped over the curb back onto the road on the other side of the street corner. I fought hard against the wheel and pulled us around, rocking but never breaking momentum. To my surprise, the road ahead showed no impediment save for a stop light. We blasted through without slowing. We were clear.

The hipster gathered himself, looked at me, taking in my leather jacket and what I’m aware is a natural sternness to my expression, and said, “Badass, man.”

I said nothing in response, but felt genuinely appreciated.

We bumped into each other again a few days later, the hipster and I. It was at strip mall walk-in clinic that had become something of a refugee center. In Toledo. I’m not sure if we were technically refugees. We were only in Ohio. And there really wasn’t much refuge. The hipster and I rolled together for a little over two weeks. Escaping the arena together had been enough for us to form some kind of bond. Unlikely, but it happened.

Then he vanished one afternoon. Maybe a minion of the demon got hold of him, or one of the cultists. Congregations had formed, some to worship the horror, others to pray for salvation. Both kinds were capable of irrational violence. I guess there’s just as good a chance he crossed a random guy with a gun. There was certainly a lot of that, even after the demon showed up.

Photo of Craig Demi

BIO: Craig Demi a writer currently living in Providence. He has been published in Lighthouse Weekly, White Wall Review, Rock Salt Journal, and American Fiction 17 published by New Rivers Press, among other places.He has also received the honor of being named for a Fellowship Award in fiction by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. In addition to short fiction, Craig is at work on a novel set in the forests and steel and coal towns of my native Pennsylvania. Craig’s website is cademifiction.com.