I’m riding the bus home tonight, racking my brain for particulars. He had a helmet, I’m thinking. It’s just after 1am, and I’m sitting forward on the last bus to my house. Today was the Torchlight Parade, and a detail from the night of madness is nagging at me. Finally I decide to go up and talk to the driver– to distract myself, to get another opinion, anything. Nice guy, this fellow. Younger, late thirties, with a family; he just got back from traveling to Yellowstone. I see him every Saturday night.
“How was your day today?”
“Oh, hey. It was surprisingly easy,” he responds, despite the intensity of the crowds. He describes some technicalities of timing and direction that led to his shift being an unexpected cakewalk. I chat briefly about the general quality of my own day– incredibly hectic but incredibly enjoyable– before getting down to brass tacks.
“Hey, so something happened on my last trip that I’m confused about.”
“Okay, yeah.” He leans in, curious.
“So I was doing the 7, southbound, and halfway through the route a guy gets on with a bike. A Latino-looking guy, maybe Hispanic.”
“Okay.”
“When I get to the end, he forgets his bike, because nobody’s on the bus, and the bike is still there. So on my way back into town, I look for him, thinking he’ll be out there waiting to get his bike back.”
“Yeah.”
“But there’s another 7 right behind me, and we start skip-stopping. Nobody gets on my bus asking about the bike, so I start to think he must be on the 7 behind me. Musta been on one of the stops I skipped. But my 7 only goes to Fifth and Jackson. The 7 behind me goes all the way through downtown and out to the U District.”
“Uh huh okay,”
“So I’m thinking about this bike, and this guy, and at Fifth and Jackson I tell everyone, this is our last stop but there’s another 7 coming five minutes behind me, and he’ll go all the way through downtown. I tell them this, and I tell them, I’m actually going to wait for this next 7 with you guys because I want to talk to the driver about something. And I mention, I want to talk to him something about this bicycle, find out who’s bike this is. And as soon as I say that, a guy on my bus says, that’s my bike!”
“Ooohhh!”
“And I say, what? And he says, yeah, that’s my bike, right there, and I’m like, I really think this bike belongs to someone else. This skinny Hispanic guy from earlier, I remember him. But this guy, this heavyset black guy who looks completely different, he’s saying this is my bike!”
“Oh no!”
“Yeah. And he’s saying, I would swear on my sister’s grave, and he starts telling me all this stuff about the bike that turns out to be true, it has no front brakes, the back brakes are bad–”
“No way!”
“-And the thing is, he’s wearing a helmet! He even has a bike lock in his pocket. He takes it out and shows it to me. And I’m thinking, am I crazy? Am I completely crazy? He’s going to the next 7, and I tell him, I think the guy who owns this bike, that guy is going to be on that 7, but he’s like, doesn’t matter, this is my bike, I can’t believe you thought this belonged to some Spanish guy.”
“Did you tell him the bike had been on your bus for an earlier trip already?”
“Yeah, he said he fell asleep, and he was glad to get the bike back, but he didn’t say anything about it when he got on! I don’t get it. I was a hundred percent sure it was the Latino guy until he started talking. I looked at him for a long time and finally I said okay, ’cause what can I do, and we shook hands. I mean, he had a helmet, so he must be, why else would anyone wear a helmet, and he totally walked over to the 7 bus stop for the next 7 to downtown.”
“And the other guy was probably gonna be on it!”
“Definitely, if that was his bicycle!”
“I would have loved to been on that bus!”
“Exactly, either they would be fighting or… I wish I could get on that thing right now just to find out. I’ve been sitting here the past fifteen minutes, trying to figure it out in my head. I think I’m going crazy. All I know is I’m never telling anyone there’s a missing bike ever again!”
“Well, a something similar involving a bike happened to me recently.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I was driving the 71, by Virginia, also very late at night, and there’s only a few people on the bus. There’s a bike on the bus. A guy gets off and I’m positive it’s the guy who put the bike on. But he starts walking the other way, outside toward the back of the bus. I honk the horn a little but he keeps going. And I see him cross the street behind the bus. So I lean out the window and yell, dude! You forgot your bike! You know? And he can’t really hear me so he starts walking closer, and I tell him again, your bike, don’t forget your bike. And he says oh, that’s not my bike. And he leaves. Then I turn to the inside of the bus and say to everyone, who is the owner of this bike? Does this bike belong to any of you guys? And they all said no! It was none of theirs either! Nobody took the bike!”
Welcome to the Twilight Zone, was all we could come up with. That or we’re both nuts. As he spoke a shooting star streaked across the clear night sky. Now that had to be real– both of us saw it! We marveled at its brilliance. Oh, the things that happen in the middle of the night!
Nathan Vass is an artist, filmmaker, photographer, and author by day, and a Metro bus driver by night, where his community-building work has been showcased on TED, NPR, The Seattle Times, KING 5 and landed him a spot on Seattle Magazine’s 2018 list of the 35 Most Influential People in Seattle. He has shown in over forty photography shows is also the director of nine films, six of which have shown at festivals, and one of which premiered at Henry Art Gallery. His book, The Lines That Make Us, is a Seattle bestseller and 2019 WA State Book Awards finalist.