Blue Line Blues

A Story by BrttnyWllms

A trip on public transportation with more than one destination for the protagonist.

I walked in as the doors separated like hesitant thighs. The warty faced preacher man stood at the head of the train screaming that he had a message from God to an inattentive crowd with eyes that rose every few seconds begging him to just shut the f**k up. He was competing with rap lyrics asking some b***h who does she love. He was competing with two elderly Hispanic women who were looking over a receipt from Superior Grocers. From the looks of it, it appeared that they were overcharged and frustrated that they couldn't go back to handle the dispute. He was competing with gum smacking, and a young woman who looked as if she had just been released from a mental institution. She kept plucking at her hair like a nervous duck and whispering "hold me, please? Just hold me." He was competing with an infant whose mother didn't really know anything about her child, but I could tell he just wanted to be held because he was tired. The mother stood with her skinny arm wrapped around the steel pole moving the stroller back and forth, a lame attempt to soothe the miserable baby. He was competing with the hustlers who would walk up and down the aisles hands full of goods and not so goods: hot Cheetos, sodas, cold water, portable chargers for cell phones, t shirts, lanyards, poems, and their life stories. He was competing with panhandlers and loiters. He was competing with people's' heads nodding with their ears plugged listening to whatever music got them through the day, that included me. He was competing and it just didn't seem like he was going to win.
I found a seat next to a security guard who was either just getting off or on their way to work, either way they weren't happy. I shuffled through my song choices, not really sure what type of mood I was in. I just wanted to escape the train if I could. But for some reason, I kept the volume low enough so I could hear what the preacher man would say once he finally decided to go on his rampage.
Even though no one was paying attention to him, well at least not with their eyes, he stood there, confident. Jerking to the left and the right now competing with the movement of the train. It zipped through the streets of Long Beach. Stopping abruptly and feeding itself with more people. People from all demographics, the train had no preference. The train forced gang bangers of opposing gangs to tolerate each other just until they reached their destination. The train forced germaphobes to sit next to bums who hopped on without paying the fair. The train forced the introverts to crawl out of their shell and protect themselves from the loud and frantic. The train was a melting pot for crossing of cultures and people.
The preacher man finally got the hang of the train and was able to balance himself, his core was strong because he stood completely still without the aid of the railing. From five rows back I could see that the whites of his eyes were brown, almost the same brown as his skin. He was a light skinned black man, with grey hair on his head and face. His beard wasn't full; it grew in splotches: hair here and there. Nappy and thick. His bottom lip hung real low, almost touching his chin. He stood there unmoved trying to move this shaky train of people. He coughed and announced that his name was Preacher Shane Hardy.
"This here word that I'm goin’ give you is for all the dead souls amongst this here train,” he announced at the top of his vocal chords. The steel underneath our feet rattled and hissed as the train picked up speed.

“Aw man shut up. Ain’t nobody f****n’ dead. You the only motherfucka on the train that ain’t gonna make it past today wit’cha old a*s,” some teenage boy with Los Angeles tatted under his right eye bellowed out. The rest of his entourage laughed so hard you’d think they were getting paid. A few of the older passengers stared back at him and rolled their eyes with disgust. I shook my head and kept looking forward. I didn’t want to look behind me. I wanted to get to my destination. Nothing worse that Yes the lord wants to save some of y'all the other half want the lord to save y'all, COME! COME! Come on over to God."

He screamed and screeched, spit escaping through the cracks and missing teeth. the whites of his eyes were the color of the sky when the sun is awakening. He wore something that resembled a suit, one that had been handed down and out of style for the past decade. His arm sat up close to his chest in a sling. I wondered if he had hurt himself from fighting off the demons he was trying to save everyone else from.
"I just love yall and want yall to get it right. Can you come on with me?"
I sat down not wanting his speech to creep into my head where I was only focused on two things, the new job opportunity that seemed to be becoming a reality and my girlfriend who I was meeting up for lunch. I just wanted to get to her. His words slid in between my earphones. Donnell Jones' "Where I Wanna Be" and the sermon somehow intertwined. This hybrid message made me feel unsure of my destination and position in life. Where did I want to be? Where was I going?
I looked out the window and there were empty basketball courts and wired fences. The fences seemed to be keeping people hostage instead of keeping people out. There was A Line of buildings all resembling one another with big bold numbers on the sides. A few groups of people scattered about sharing a great love but an even greater dislike for one another which their body language and scrunched brows illustrated. Being cramped together in a project ghetto gave off a feeling of despair. The train moved on passing up recycling centers with huge containers marked no good and good. Wood palates, cop cars from the 90s with missing engines and doors and sirens. Trash by the pounds lay amongst the dirt and tracks that guided locomotives carrying goods to and from California.
He began to weep. I never felt comfortable crying, unless I was in the shower. I would pretend that the tears were just the gallons of water falling onto my face. Drowning me and all of my problems. I used to think crying was a sign of weakness. Like a log lying in a creek, rotted in the middle with a precise cut through the middle of its oak wood flesh. But this man, this man cried in front of 30 or so people, people who would never care about him or themselves as much as he did. He cried in front of people who would never hold him because of the caked up dirt under his nails and surrounding the collar of his neck and the funk of his breath and the suffocation of his body odor. This man balled in front of us, people so close but so far away.
We approached Slauson station, and a woman came in sweating profusely. It was about 82 degrees today, but I was dry. She sat down in an area with 3 empty seats, and she took up about 2 and a half of them. She didn't sit down quietly or gently, it's as if she stood close enough to the seat, so close that she trusted herself to fall down, all 300 plus pounds of her. She sat down so hard and fast, dust that had accumulated sprang out of the half of a seat that was left.
The doors closed slowly locking us all in and continuing our journey to Los Angeles.
She wore a lavender sweater that was too small, so she would never be able to button it. Her black shirt underneath was scrunched and tucked under one of the many folds of extra body fat that sat on top of her skeleton. The navy blue slacks she work rose about 5 inches from her ankles, and outlined what was supposed to be her knees. Her ankles looked swollen and the bone had disappeared again under the fat. She held her phone in her small fat right hand, her anxious sweaty thumb typed away angrily. With her other hand she used a small ivory cloth to wipe the beads of sweat that would roll down the sun burned pink skin of her forehead, not going further than her eyebrow.
The preacher man walked down and passed the woman. She immediately frowned and scrunched her nose. Belching out, " what the fuxk is that smell?"
The preacher man stopped and said, "it's me."
The woman responds laughing that the preacher man owned up to his funk.
"Wow," she said " you ought to be ashamed of yourself. A man crying, smelling like hot a*s, and your broke. It's a shame really."

She took the black blouse and pulled it over her nose and returned to wiping and texting.
The preacher man responded, " you see people. You see." He started stuttering in between the words he wanted to get out of his system. His tears holding on to the nappy hair above his lip. Sniffing now because his sinuses were full. I wish I had a napkin. I wanted to give him a fcking napkin.
"People the devil ain't always in the shape of a serpent," he was finally able to get it out. The fat woman rolled her eyes and wiped the back of her nape. The sweat slithered down the side of face. The train screeched to the next stop, and the train operator announced over a muggy speaker that she was sorry but that the train would have to stay at the station for additional 10 minutes due to a malfunction on a train in front of us.
All of the passengers, like a tired choir, sent out exasperated melodious sighs in unison, illuminating their great disdain for the delay. The preacher man was blessed because it appeared to be his stop anyway.
He had a f*****g destination. He knew where he was going. Him. The f*****g preacher man. The missing teeth and meals and a home. HE had a got damn desalination.