UNWALLED UNIVERSITY

SMALL CHANGE

UNWALLED UNIVERSITY
DEPT: Creative Writing: Honolulu Mid 80s: EvG
Small Change

Honolulu is not very experienced at being a “Metropolis” as yet.  She numbers her people in the hundreds of thousands rather than the millions.  Although it has been the islands capital for a century, Honolulu flows about the valleys between the sea and the mountains in true tropical lassitude.  Like water seeking its own level, the city splashes against the hills but does not engulf them.  All the urban area is concentrated in the narrow belt between hills and sea.  Within this matrix, even four-lane, one-way highways can become the scene of frantic congestion in the rush hours of the working day.

Between seven and nine a.m. , and four to six p.m. of a weekday, all metropolitan arteries are clogged with mechanical cholesterol.  Honolulu has three levels to its traffic hierarchy.  The visitor is driven (in air-conditioned comfort) through the confusion, ogling the exotic mixtures of architecture and wondering what Mondoo soup is.  The local driver creeps bit by patient bit toward his chosen freeway “on” ramp, probably praying for a cool shower and a “sundowner” at journey’s end.  At the bottom of the social scale in this river of transport, with overloaded arms and ailing arches, is the pedestrian.  Between four and six in the afternoon, it seems as though all half million islanders are trying to cram into the five hundred buses of the local line.  At such a time it is not unusual to see faces get sullen… even in Alohaland… and small wonder the bus drivers who spend all day battling through the exhaust fumes have tempers that are so short as to termed crew-cut!

Usually on such a day, Medeiras took the worst conditions as a challenge.  With skill and precision (and a daring that was hair-raising to his passengers), he maneuvered his juggernaut through the tightest spots.  Guiding a gleaming coach as though he were guiding a golden charger,  he took corners with finesse, snorted to stops, or roared down open stretches to finish off his runs precisely on time.  No other driver of the six hundred in the city could boast of as many perfectly timed runs as Carloz J. Medeiras.  Until today.  This time the run was the usual thing, out to the Makaha countryside beyond Pearl Harbor and then back into the heart of the city.  But the bus! Auwe!  The beautiful new, air-conditioned coach of which Medeiras was the usual master had been given to a stripling half his age and nearly half his size.   Medeiraz had drawn a bus so decrepit that even the high school kids had given up to find a spot in which to scrawl another four-letter word.  This insult he broodingly laid to the account of a certain dispatcher whose girlfriend, Delorez, had taken a noticeable interest in Medeirazs’ brawny Portages-Hawaiian self.

Throughout the morning rush the driver’s pride had taken a beating, as bus after bus had pulled out in front of him, leaving him leathered-lunged in their belching exhausts.  He endured this stoically, biding his time while he studied the other man’s style of driving.  By mid-afternoon a hope had arisen in Carloz J. that he might be able to turn the tables and come in a head of his unsuspecting rival driving the bus of Medeiras’ heart.  The youngster had neither his skill nor his hard-won knowledge of the traffic tides that ebbed and flowed according to a predictable pattern.  If he could be close enough to the other bus on the last run into the city when they hit the “late” rush between five and six, Carloz might be able to jockey in ahead of him.  Then, how he would enjoy pointing out to a certain unmentionable son of an un amiable family tree that any driver who could not handle the best bus of the line so as to keep ahead of the worst rust-bucket in the fleet was not (in his opinion) worthy of the name!  But things were not working out as he planned.  The long under populated stretches where a man of his talent could make up some time (if the gods were only fair) had been a torment that would have tried the faith of St. Kona-from-the-whale.

First there was Mrs. Estoy whom you couldn’t pass by because she called in and complained on an average of twice a week.  Climbing up with a creaking of fragile joints, back bent permanently from burdens too heavy, she thrust her head forward like a tortoise grinding uphill.  She had just hooked her skinny claws around the top rail and Carloz was preparing to “give it the gas” when he saw, three steps behind her, the ancient Agapito!  In contrast to the bent Mrs. Estoy, the elderly Filipino gentleman seemed to have rusted in an upright position.  He was a straight (and nearly as slow) as a telephone pole.  If he possessed joints, he gave no sign of using them.  This anomaly, coupled with his failing eyesight, slowed an already leisurely disposition to a pace that sent the driver’s overworked blood pressure to dangerous heights.  Seeing his magenta complexion, Mrs. Estoy was moved to remark that his grandfather had “gone make” from apoplexy because he “never no stay easy either”… an observation that did nothing to soothe the driver’s nerves.  In this interval, Mr. Agapito had taken three more calmly calculated steps.  He was always neatly dressed (by his granddaughter) in a suit that seems to grow bigger as Mr. A, got smaller.  This, added to his stiffness, lent him the starchy look of a clothing store manikin.  “And someone will cart him off to put in Woolworth’s window if I don’t pick the old duffer up,” the driver thought unkindly.

How Mr. A got up the step without bending a knee was a mystery, but he made it, just in time to glance up into the face of the driver, which had a look on it that stopped the poor fellow in his tracks.  The old gent was so shaken by that frightful glower that he took another few moment to regain his wits… by which time Medeiras had very nearly lost hold of his … and pay his fare.  To make up the lost time, as soon as Mr. Agapito’s change dropped into the box, he gunned the old rust-bucket like a Ferrari in the Grand Prix, zooming from zero to fifty in ten seconds, hurtling along like a horizontal kamikaze, stopping only when necessary with a jerk that threw sitting passengers out of their seats and any standing ones into them.  Since this is more or less the normal driving habit of eighty percent of Honolulu’s bus drivers, no one commented.  They merely saved their energy for hanging on.

At Leeward College he stopped to allow a gaggle of sullen-faced students aboard.  Some got halfway onto the bus then held that position until others half a block away came up.  Among the crowd was one with something under a jacket that wriggled suspiciously, and an older man with a cloth covered basket that probably contained a fighting cock.  If he put them off, it would take more precious minutes while he investigated and they argued, so he turned a blind eye.  He made up for his leniency as he barreled on down to Pearl City, by roaring at the youngster who had turned on the radio, “NO MUSIC IN THE BUS!”

In Pearl City a gleam of gold was to be seen in the distance.  The stretch just after was mercifully limited to one stop where an old looking young mother got aboard with a frothing infant, followed by a gaily flowered red and orange tent, decorated with string bags and parcels, and containing a vaguely female form of the Hawaiian persuasion.  Like a barrage balloon, she floated down the aisle until she reached the rear of the bus, leaving only minor casualties in her wake.  There she leaned so menacingly over a skinny stripling with ingrown chin feathers that he and two others slid out of the way to allow her parking space.  She docked gustily and without a word of thanks.  Medeiras paid no heed to these incidental dramas.  The stop at Pearl Harbor was looming up ahead and so was the bus he was trying to catch… running late as expected!

This was the last chance to pull ahead of the other bus before the congestion of the late afternoon rush trapped both buses into position as surely constant as though they were on rails.  Then, in whatever order they assumed in the next five minutes, it would be bumper to bumper through the downtown traffic and into the station on Alapai Street.  Tourists visiting the World War II memorial would fill the coach ahead and it would not have to stop again for anything.  Medeiras pulled up right behind the golden coach.. and saw he had been too eager!  Some of the crowd waiting were military and, quick to spot a less crowded bus, they piled into the trailing unit, leaving the first bus to pull out while the second was still loading!  Six fresh-faced young sailors in vaguely unfamiliar uniforms piled aboard with duffels.  At least Medeiras could truthfully say he was fully loaded.  He had just begun to hope again and had almost lost his glower when (mere yards behind his goal) he realized that he had not heard the necessary clinking accompaniment to the taking on of passengers.  Looking with one eye in the mirror above his window, he met the magnificently freckled face of a lad whose nickname could only be Ginger.

“Might I inquire what the toll is for six, sir?” said the scrubbed and polished apparition from a foreign shore.
“Fifty cents each” Medeiras said clearly (momentarily forgetting his bus driver’s oath never to speak intelligibly to a passenger).

The ginger-haired man and his buddies, having consulted among themselves, spoke again, in concert, to the driver.  When it became clear to the overwrought contestant in the rapid-transit rat-race that there were neither quarters, nickels, nor dimes in the entire group, he swerved so suddenly (to avoid running over a squad car) that the tightly packed customers leaned to the starboard as one man like a well trained cadre of sailors on the heeling boat.  In the return to an even keel, the large lady in the rear echelon nearly cashiered two freshmen.  The focus of attention, however, never wavered from the drama being enacted at the wheel.  When it further developed that the young foreigners had nothing but British money, Medeiras so far forgot himself as to come to a full halt in the middle of the traffic stream.  By this time the far from insensitive young men were aware of having committed some social blunder (“fair serious” by the look of the “conductor”) and were timidly putting in suggestions as occurred to them.  One offered to figure the “rate of exchange”, another explained they had been to see Ginger’s Grandfer  at Pearl Harbor and had been on courtesy passes, another offered to pay at the end of the line if they were let off at a bank or exchange… but these dwindled into fearful silence at the positively thunderous look within which they were received.  In a tone of voice that made all  too clear his doubts that any of them had a legal parent, Medeiras gritted out, “If you visited your ol’ man , why he no put wise to da money problem?”

The red-headed youth was flushing with embarrassment now from neck, face, and even ears in that very ruddy way that red heads have.  The sting of the driver’s tone was not lost on him.  His companion was made o coarser clay, however, and blurted “Because ‘es guardin’ your bloody ‘arbor from the bottom of the Harizona, ans ‘as been these thirty odd years, chum!”

Ginger, now as pale as he had been ruddy, said ugently. “Paddy!  For heaven’s sake, moni watch your temper, we are GUESTS here!”

Into the awkward silence that followed, the fruity voice of the Hawaiian lady fell, rich and homey.  “No need be upset, Honey; ain’ no big ting!  Here we pass the calabash!  No shame!”

She passed a few coin along. As they went from hand to hand, they were added to.  Anickel here, a dime there, even a bunch of pennies were added until by the time the collection reached the sailors and Carloz was paid his due, they found themselves handing some back along with some of their own.  Now, whether this small re-enactment of the loaves and fishes was because of the sudden realization of what Pearl Harbor had really meant, (thousands of fresh-faced young men like these in that watery grave with the neat modern marker above it) or whether the word “guests” had reminded some that this was, after all, the “Aloha State”, it is beyond the chronicles to say.  At any rate when the change was being handed about the crowded bus, there was another change taking place as well.

To atone for his rudeness, Paddy brought out some old style British pennies (huge by U.S. standards) and handed them to the group’s rescuers as payment and for souvenirs.  People talked freely, laughed a bit and relaxed.  Two sailors set their duffel bags together to make a seat for the tired looking woman with the baby.  The college kids suddenly became college “men” and offered to let the girls sit on their laps, causing a great deal of giggling and jostling.  A shapely miss lost her look of boredom (and turned out to be pretty when she smiled) and offered to guide the sailors to a bank with an exchange in it.  When a young black boy offered a penny-whistle flute for a “picture of the queen” the “Limeys” sat down on the rest of the duffel bags and, to the wide-eyed wonder of the drooling infant, made up a band with the flute and two harmonicas.  Just as the engine grumbled back to life, the band broke into a spirited rendition of “The British Patrol”!  Medeiras, left with a peculiarly undecided look on his face, was just filling his lungs to yell “no music on da bus” when a siren came wailing the blues from the center lane.  All traffic pulled aside or froze in place, clearing a lane into the heart of the traffic jam.  Medeiras gave a lusty yell (momentarily paralyzing the driver next to him) and swung neatly behind the squad car, gaining six full blocks before he turned off.  He pulled into the bus lane two cars ahead of the pride of the fleet!

With one eye on his unfortunate rival mired in the traffic to the rear, and one on the road, Medeiras added a mellow baritone to the musical mélange. Since he didn’t know the words (if words there be) to the “British Patrol”, he sang El Rancho Grande “…in Hawaiian.  The old rust-bucket headed gamely into the traffic with practiced good will of an old chorus girl, accompanied by the schizoid song fest.  The last that could be heard of her above the growl of the traffic were the high thin notes of the ancient Agapito singing the only song he knew in English… with here and there a word of Ilicano.

“We’ll be cumin ‘round de mounting when we comes… we’ll be cumin round de mounting when we comes… weel be cumin round de mounting… cuming round de mounting… cuming… when we cumms…

Tags: Short Novel

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