I have wanted for some time to describe the strangest thing that ever happened on the same CTA vehicle I was on. This is that story.
University of Chicago students often take the 6 north, to get to Downtown. It doesn't require a transfer at the train station on Garfield, and can be faster, depending on traffic and train speeds. I didn't know this until the third quarter I was at the university. Or rather, I knew it, but I hadn't internalized the 6 as going anywhere other than south. I took it every other day to the Sullivan House community center, (76th and South Shore Drive) where I taught Gaelic Football, Chicago Softball and basic reading to a group of 12 or so children.
On the last beautiful day of Fall, I had brought my Mock Trial work with me to do on the bus. In a preview of what would become my specialty, I was cross-examining a scientific expert, and I had brought his report to pore over on my commute.
The huge bendy bus rolled up to the intersection of 55th and Hyde Park Boulevard, and I got on, and sat down in the first row of rear seats. There were some open seats behind me, but the light comes in nicely in that first rear row, and yellow bar atop the divider between the back and the rear door is a place to comfortably rest the knees and lean back while reading. I was very pleased with my good fortune as I remade the acquaintance of Doctor Loren Charney, the witness I'd be examining.
The bus driver was good that day, no abrupt starts or stops, the potholes that showcase the neglect of the South Side skillfully avoided. Surprisingly few people got on. At 66th Street, right before the bus turns left toward the Lake again, a man got on who I didn't recognize. Because I had been commuting on this route for some time, I thought I knew most of the commuters, but this guy was fundamentally different.
He was wearing a thin leather jacket over purple hospital scrubs with some sort of official logo on them. He was about 6 foot 6, African-American, and with extremely strange hair. It was as if he'd taken all the hair on his head, straightened it with all the product required to supply the cast of Mad Men, and then curled it up into little inch-wide mini-waves scattered at random across his head. A thick silver chain, the kind that was extremely popular among late-90's rappers and sk8trboiz, hung from his belt.
He came into the bus and sat down across the aisle from me, and one row behind. I returned to reading, but not before I noticed his fur-lined jet-black combat boots, which stuck out to me for their seeming incongruence with his scrubs. I'm not sure why that was what stuck out to me about his wardrobe, but they tell me people notice strange things, and I'm inclined to believe them.
Some 5 minutes later, the bus was filled with the sound of the famous Busta Rhymes hit Arab Money. I turned to see its source, and my bescrubbed friend was throwing himself a one-man dance party in the back of the number 6. He danced for about 20 seconds, and then snapped himself out of his reverie and answered his phone, stopping Busta Rhymes in his tracks. "Whaddup, dawg?" he bellowed.
There was silence in the back of the bus, the grandmother with her groceries behind me was also looking at our fellow rider. He was nodding his head sadly. Then he bellowed again.
"Ya, I came in, walked in, and there he was, fucking a dead body."
The grandmother behind me lost her hold on her grocery bag. I had turned in my seat enough to catch it, and while I was stabilizing it for her, the man spoke a third time.
"Ya, I came in, and I had laid the lady out on the table, and he was there, and I left, but I had to come back and get something an there he was, banging her." Apparently my stare and the grandmother's combined were enough to cool his language, but certainly not his volume, nor the graphic descriptions he gave as the bus made its way southward.
"And I told him to stop, that he was a disgusting effed-up pervert," he said, still under the sway of the grandmother, "and he said he liked it when they were still kind of warm. I told him I was gonna go get our boss, that he'd have to have it out with him, and he begged me not to."
At this point, the grandmother crossed herself.
"I told him 'Naw, dude, you'se one effed up mothereffer' and he said no, I had seen it wrong, it wasn't like that, and I said to tell it to our boss. I went up and got him and we came back in and he was doin' it again!"
Thankfully for her, the grandmother got off here, but I still had some distance to go. The man's detailed description of the threats he had received for ratting on the perpetrator were sad, but not surprising. The code of silence in Chicago is strong.
I got off the bus that day, and I went to work with the kids, and I think they sensed some terror in me, I really do. Something like that sticks with a person, even if it's only half a conversation, on a bus. I wish I could have known how the case turned out, just to get some closure. I hope the man who saw it was able to keep working in peace. I hope the guilty man went to jail. But most of all, I hope never to die in Chicago, just in case.
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