My PUBLISHED Work

Sometimes, you write a story. And you submit the story to litmags. Or. You don’t.

Perhaps you realize that what you have is a protracted anecdote, and trad publishing is not necessarily this bit of literary indulgence may be best given away.

To that end, EXTRA! is my space where I will share my works that may be inside jokes with myself. And, maybe, I realize that it is not the stuff one ought expect others to pay for to read (lol).

This story is based on an encounter with someone at the #27 bus stop in San Francisco. No baby chicks were harmed in the writing of this story.

Hope that you enjoy what I’ve written. If you don’t cotton to it, welp. At least it was free.

DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

Hazel was the type of person who naturally woke up in the morning sighing. She found consolation in waking up in the pitch black. Sunlight seemed like an affront, and the day just seemed to start easier without things glaring about. There was nothing restful about sleep for her. Nighttime was spent chewing on the day’s events––no matter how mundane––like cud. Dreaming, she believed, was for sorority girls wearing snug T-shirts and thongs, lost in a slumber filled with shopping, mani-pedis, or the cute quarterback in their Psych class. They were not regurgitating the disappointment and anxiety of being denied badly needed overtime that week. Or having been slighted by a homeless man for the umpteenth time at the bus stop.

She bathed before going to sleep and awoke daily at a quarter past two in the morning to be able to clock in during the week at four. She never bothered with an alarm clock and was one of those people unable to sleep in––even on weekends. Fear of subsequently wanting to sleep a few minutes more during the week laid that to rest, and she regarded the snooze button as the devil. Her tireless morning routine was an exercise in precision, and not one to be dallied with. In the bathroom, she’d brush her teeth and wash her face in the dim glow of the nightlight above the toilet. Her long, gray-dappled, mouse-brown hair was always be pulled back; she could twist it low at the nape into a fat bun in her sleep. She wouldn’t flick on any overhead lights until she reached the kitchen and was dressed and ready to percolate some coffee. Each day, breakfast was two slices of white bread spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar. During the week, she headed for the bus––the 21A––at exactly 3:05 a.m. without fanfare or even much contemplation.

But today she had a tiny spark to her as she bustled out of the house. Today was the day that she was going to show that self-proclaimed Completely Blind Man at the bus stop who was who, and how it was gonna be. The local weatherman had predicted a sunshiny afternoon––perfect for a smackdown. She smiled to herself as she quietly locked the door behind her.

***

From punch-in to punch-out, she inspected cans of potted meat as they rolled by en route to labeling, looking for cans with dents or other irregularities. Hazel found calm in the drone of the machines, the slight vibration of the floor, and the timeless incandescent light of the meat packing plant. It was an ant farm. One in which the ants might wear dangly earrings tucked under their hairnets, or hide jazzy nail art in work gloves until they could be put on display for the other ants during their breaks. The majority of the plant workers had been there for decades; many––including Hazel––were progeny of a long line of ant farm lifers. The meat packing plant had stood where it was near the riverbank since the company was founded in 1891. Waking up at quarter past two for work was not unique to Hazel. Nor was standing on an icy sidewalk, swaddled against the winter’s pin-sharp cold, waiting for a bus scheduled to arrive at three-something in the predawn darkness. She did have the luck of living on the crosstown bus line that went right past the plant, saving her a transfer and a longer commute. She was the quintessential meat-packing ant, albeit one of only a few who might be called spinsters; unmarried because, as her mother would say, she was hard to tickle. The real difference in Hazel today was in her outlook. One full of newfound moxie. One spurred on by too many derisive encounters with a man who claimed to be blind––completely blind––at the bus stop. Enough was enough, and today was going to be recompense for the routine public slights and humiliations endured on the corner of 35th Street and Lyndale Avenue. If not for the perceived need to save face in front of the handful of coworkers also waiting for the afternoon bus home, there would be no need to show that she was not some hobo’s punch line. No need to rehearse (again) her coup de grace proving that he was a rude fraud. No need for first-day-of-school butterflies.

***

The shift-change bell sounded, and Hazel handed off her duties to the next ant, Sue Ann––another member of the potted meat nobility. Most days she would simply change into her snow boots and be on her way. Today, she’d brought a tote bag of carefully folded Sunday clothes––a gray flannel A-line skirt with winter white ribbed stockings and black stacked-heel pumps––and changed into them in the wide end stall in the women’s restroom. No mockable pewter work jumpsuit today, or––as the Completely Blind Man put it––librarian hair. She would not be asked whether she was Laverne or Shirley. Or a nun. The Completely Blind Man hated nuns. His mother was a nun. A nun and a whore, he’d often proclaimed. He hated nuns and whores. He’d asked once too often if she was a whore nun. She changed quickly enough to not just make it to the bus stop on time but make it with time to face her nemesis.

Hoping to score a seat on the bus, the workers would gather at the stop early, waiting in the chill in order to jockey for a place in line as soon as the bus was a block away. Wanda and Grace were seated as usual on the bus shelter bench, gossip slipping between them. Margie and Jim huddled a few yards away by a snow heap near the curb smoking. Hazel took her spot at the front of the bus shelter, facing oncoming traffic, her back against an ad for some trendy vodka. She’d watch for the bus to crest the slight hill in the distance, then mark its slow progress by the clock on the hulking stone newspaper building kitty-corner from the stop. And, also like clockwork––when the bus was about a half-mile down the road––she’d spot the Completely Blind Man crossing the street. Hazel’s heart hammered like a piston. She’d forgotten to take her librarian bun down. The bus was still seven full minutes away, since it would catch every light––as it did every day––before finally reaching her stop. She had seven minutes for vindication.

“Here comes your boyfriend,” teased Wanda, having also spotted the Completely Blind Man. Hazel wanted to guffaw and not let on her mounting tenseness, but the set of her jaw was too tight. She turned her pursed lips up into what she hoped was a smirk.

He was layered in tatters against the cold, wearing Ray Bans and a red-and-black plaid hunter’s cap––earflaps hanging down. A twine-wrapped shoebox with air holes punched in the lid was tucked under his arm. He tapped his walking stick widely from side to side in front of him as he crossed the street, presciently lifting it in advance of his step up onto the snow-packed curb.

“Can I bum a smoke?” he asked Jim, who gave him his daily reply that he was smoking his last one.

“What about you?” he asked Margie, who quipped that she’d bummed hers from Jim.

“I don’t smoke anyway,” the Completely Blind Man responded. “I just wanted to see if you were Christian enough to help a man in need.”

Jim and Margie exchanged sardonic looks as the Completely Blind Man cursed them briefly before moving toward the bus shelter. Hazel’s heart was doing piano scales. It was showtime. She must stay calm. She must stay on her carefully prepared script, she thought. When she got home, she would tell her mother during a commercial break in Jeopardy about how she finally got the best of that heckling nuisance at the bus stop.

He was whistling as he made his way to Hazel, tapping a disinterested Wanda on the foot with his walking stick as he did so.

“Excuse me. Pardon me,” he said as he reached Hazel. She stood unflinchingly at the corner of the shelter, as erectly as a guard at Buckingham Palace. “Excuse me. Pardon me. You’re standing in my spot,” the Completely Blind Man said again.

Hazel inhaled deeply and took a moment to respond. All of her rehearsal wouldn’t be for naught. “This is a public bus stop,” she said as nonchalantly as possible.

“There’s no such thing as your spot.”

“That spot is reserved for the disabled. State law.”

“No. It’s not.”

“It’s state law, and I could have you fined if you don’t move. I’m disabled. I’m blind––completely blind. So move.”

“It’s not state law.” Hazel was aflutter inside but fought to maintain her cool. “Not only is it not state law, you’re not completely blind.”

“I can have you arrested. I can have you fined and arrested for harassing a veteran. You can’t threaten a veteran––it’s against the law. They blinded me in the war. Now I’m blind, completely blind. You’re a traitor for threatening a veteran. I could have you thrown in jail for threatening a blind veteran, somebody who fought for this country. Somebody who fought for you and your rights.”

“You’re not completely blind, and you’re probably not a veteran.” She felt a smugness, sticking to script.

“Well, I’m sorry I ain’t a spiffy little Jehovah’s Witness like you. Doesn’t mean I didn’t have the honor of serving in the war. While I served in ’Nam, you were probably playing with Barbie dolls. I was fighting in ’Nam, and you were running around at recess!”

In a slightly tremulous voice she said, “If you’re completely blind, how do you know how I look?” Her so-very-well-contemplated choice of attire had now forced her off script.

“You don’t have to be blind to know you’re a Commie. A Jehovah’s Witness Commie who won’t honor a veteran who went to war to protect you. Now move.”

“I’m not moving.”

“You’re a whore. Just like my mother. A filthy stinking Commie whore.”

“I thought your mother was a nun.” She was back on script.

“She was,” shot back the Completely Blind Man. “She was a Commie whore nun who never gave a damn about anybody, just like you––what time is it?”

Hazel was thrown off. The time? “It’s a quarter past,” she said, glancing at the newspaper building’s clock. She thought she’d catch him by not saying a quarter past what.

“Isn’t it time for you to go back to selling bibles, and get out of my way?”

He’d turned her response against her. She was completely unnerved now, her script completely out the window. “I don’t sell bibles,” she said. “And I don’t go around telling people that I’m completely blind when I’m not.”

“Well, you’re dressed like you’re completely––”

“Hey, Willie!” called a one-legged man in a wheelchair, who was slowly rolling himself up the sidewalk toward them.

“Herman?” asked the Completely Blind Man. “Is that you?”

Hazel struggled mightily to find a comeback. The bus was only two blocks away. She would not be foiled today. Not again.

“Herman, this lady won’t move out of the handicap spot!” said the Completely Blind Man.

“Aw man, that’s screwed up,” said Herman. “Where you been, man? I been looking all over for you.”

“I been trying to talk some sense into this heathen.” He turned his attention back to Hazel. “Do you at least have a quarter? I need a quarter for chick feed.” He tapped on the lid of the shoebox. “I’m gonna grow her into a chicken so I can have me some eggs.”

“No. I don’t have a quarter,” Hazel said with as much disdain as she could muster. The bus was approaching, and everyone was lining up, bus passes in hand. “And, I don’t give to beggars––blind or not,” she added.

“That’s okay. One day you’ll be completely blind, and you’ll see––there won’t be nobody there to help you.”

The bus pulled up to the stop, and the Completely Blind Man turned away from Hazel, who, galled and speechless, was now last in line to board. She was defeated. Comeuppance would not be hers today. He tapped his cane on the sidewalk and headed back toward the corner.

“Don’t mess with Texas!” he shouted as the bus doors closed behind a bristling Hazel. With all of the seats taken, she grabbed one of the straps hanging near the back of the bus and watched as the Completely Blind Man tapped his way back across Lyndale Avenue.

Halfway through the intersection, he folded his walking stick and tucked it under his free arm. Without so much as a sideways glance, he flipped off the departing bus and skipped—against the light—to the other side of the street…