The bus had a different driver that morning. She was a small, dark, lively woman with a halo of blond hair and a smile that couldn’t extinguish. In a natty uniform of green vest, white shirt and green pants, she looked like a perpetually cheerful daffodil, so of course I hated her.
Hate was too strong a word. I hated the lumpy, scummy mass of humanity. Individuals deserved, for the most part, only indifference and mild contempt. There was a kind of surcharge of contempt for certain people, an additional distaste across a spectrum from bureaucrats to the relentlessly cheerful and optimistic, to drug dealers and drug takers, to child abusers. Our driver, it was soon apparent, was on the upper end of cheerful. But the mood I was in, this being a normal day, maybe I could spare a half a glass of hate. I’m a charitable sort, in my own way.
I took my customary seat near the front of the bus – sooner off of it and away from the twice-daily gaggle of people – and I could hear her happy greeting of each passenger as they came on board. Many of them responded to her, the saps – only a few didn’t answer, but that didn’t dim her smile.
“What adventure are we heading for today, people?” she asked as the doors his closed and the bus lurched forward.
“Work,” one man responded.
“Hell,” a woman said.
A man near the back shouted, “They’re the same place.”
The driver laughed. “Work and hell are what we make of them, right?”
“She’s never met my ex-wife,” the man next to me muttered. I smiled at him, and nodded.
“Even a demon can manage to be happy, and their work is hell, literally. Heck, I drive twelve hours a day to get to where I started, and I’m happy. So smile, smile.”
“Maybe we get a discount for tickets if we smile,” I told my neighbor, and we laughed and he was soon asleep. I hate people who can fall asleep on buses, especially if they snore, which I was thankful that this fellow did not do. And he had had the good sense not to prolong our conversation. I made a mental note that he would be all right to sit next to, if I had no choice.
The scenery along the road was Autumn’s way of pretending there was beauty in the world. It was brief, but it meant the dull green lushness of the past several months would soon be gone. Winter was an honest bitter season, and fewer people were out and about, which was better.
Fifteen minutes into the trip, the traffic slowed, and crept along, and stopped. What caused the jam, I didn’t know.
“How long will we be delayed, driver?” a woman asked.
“Not more than an hour or two,” I whispered. My neighbor slept on, and I smiled.
“Not long at all,” the driver announced, “if we take a detour I know about.”
“Detour,” a man said. “I have an appointment.”
Several passengers broke into a chant: “De-tour. De-tour. De-tour.”
“Detour it is then,” the driver said, and laughed. “This exit here, coming up.”
I looked across the aisle and saw Karen, a young woman who was not as morose as I was, but who at least tried. I caught her eye and tilted my head toward the front of the bus, and she shrugged, and mouthed, “We’ll be even later with the detour.”
I nodded.
A few of them cheered as the bus veered onto the exit ramp, and the driver laughed and said, “So the adventure begins.”
“Wonderful,” I mouthed to Karen, and made a face. She shrugged again.
I leaned back. That was enough communication for one trip. I had a day at work ahead, and more people to deal with than any soul deserved.
The driver put on music over the speakers, and I waited for somebody to complain, but nobody did. It was, of course, sprightly, all pipes and strings and drums and tambourines, like a medieval march to a festival. It was the kind of music people would do some kind of jig to, if they were stupid enough to dance.
I had never been on this road before, and had no desire to be on it now, but it would get me to where I was going. As we rolled up and down gentle hills, with fewer and fewer buildings to be seen along the way, I noticed that the foliage was less and less varied in color, and more and more the lush green of summer, or even spring. Perhaps a change in the altitude had led to this, or something in the atmosphere or the soil, but it relaxed me, for some reason. For others on the bus, the effect was different.
Laughter became gradually more frequent, and louder. Conversations grew into a constant burble of noise beneath the music, which slowly, song by song, increased in tempo and volume.
The man next to me had awakened, and seemed horribly intent on communicating with me. He kept smiling, and tilting his head, as if he expected me to initiate the conversation. I yawned, rudely refusing to cover my mouth, and closed my eyes, and for good measure, turned my head away.
Karen was chatting in an animated fashion with the young man sitting next to her. He positively radiated joy, and she turned to me and waved her hand in a restrained manner, and I felt I had no choice but to wave back, also restrained. I suppose I had always known she would prove a traitor to misery, but there seemed to be some kind of social fever on the bus, a virus of content, and I supposed that she had no real choice. It swept all of us along, and the bus had increased its speed, too, and even I seemed to be yielding a bit to the pernicious effect of this journey.
The bus driver laughed, and I realized that she had done so more and more frequently, and more loudly, as the trip had gone on, and I was determined to go up and speak to her, order her to explain, or ask her to turn the music down – some people now were almost dancing in their seats, bouncing up and down like children – but I was peculiarly afraid of what she might say. I have no idea why I felt that way, but I could not rise.
People behind me cheered, and I turned and a couple, middle-aged and pudgy, had actually gotten up and started to dance in the aisle. Someone started clapping in rhythm to the music, and the driver shouted, “Yes,” and other joined in the clapping, and one and then two other couples got up and started dancing. The bus was rushing along now, bouncing on the road as if it wanted to dance itself, and the green trees were a blur alongside us, and the driver started repeating, “Yes,” and “Yes,” and passengers joined in happily, and I rose, only it was in my mind: I remained in my seat, immobile. Karen and her young man got up and started to dance, and I turned away before they could ask me to join them.
The man next to me was crying openly, his cheeks soaked with tears, but it was joy overwhelming him, and he turned to me and mouthed, “Yes. Yes.”
I closed my eyes, but the music remained, shrieking and impossibly fast, and the voice of the driver rose above it.
“Dance. Yes, dance.”
We came to the top of a high hill, and raced on down the road toward the deep broad river, the pilings of an ancient bridge that had long since washed away jutting out a bit from the shore into the white-ridged waves, and there was no slowing down, no sign of fear or terror, just music and dancing and laughter. Karen and her young man had returned to their seats, and she was on his lap, facing him, kissing him. His hands, behind her, slid under her shirt and up, and I couldn’t help it.
I laughed.