77th Street

I wrote this for a writing camp I took last summer. The idea was sparked, I think, by Ray Bradbury’s The Long Rain, in which a group of astronauts are trying to get to shelter on Venus, where it is constantly raining (It was written before we knew Venus is actually 800 or more degrees Fahrenheit). I realize now that it was also probably influenced by “The Bus is Late,” a song by Satellite High that I don’t much enjoy but was on my mind at the time. In my head, this is set near where I live, in the street between St. Agatha’s church and a school, because there’s a lightning rod on the steeple. That spot is where I first had the concept of directing electricity so it doesn’t damage buildings explained to me.
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The sky opened up even before they realized it was cloudy. For the first few seconds wet golf balls smacked heads and shoulders like rocks. It was the type of storm that dogs hide from, that children press noses and fingers to foggy glass to watch from the warmth of the living room. Thunder overwhelmed the bright flash that struck the church lightning rod across the nearly empty street, where an old VW bug flicked on lonely yellow headlights as it ignored the 77th-street hopefuls. They huddled in various poses at the bus stop, the sign above them bent sideways at a nearly ninety-degree angle, the rain amplified by the blue metal.

And then it was different. The clouds no longer rolled, though they still blotted out the sun. Thunder rumbled in the distance. And the rain. Instead of buckets, it was a relentless drizzle: incessant, perpetual, grating, eternal. Perfect for filling boots and ruining moods, for continuing on for weeks and turning soccer fields into mud pits. They could hear it on the sign: pitter-patter-pitter, as it continued the process of rusting off the dirty white letters: “77th street. North to Farrel County, South to Jediah Square.” No one looked up at the thing, blue blending into the dark sky like stars on a sunny day.

A teenager stood huddled under a dark gray hoodie directly below it, phone screen glowing. A massive man stood next to the hunched high schooler. He was thirty-something, with a bloated nose where water ran down and collected at the rounded tip. His face was blotchy: red at the temples and forehead, and above his cheekbones, deathly white everywhere else. Arms crossed over his chest, he stood staring at the gutter, where a wrapper swirled down the drain as it added to the sign’s noise with its own repetition. Sh, sh, sh, sh, sh.

A woman with young twins huddled under a short dogwood. Even the tree looked miserable, muddy dirt square running rivulets away from its roots. One twin looked up.

“Mommy? How long until—

“Shhh. It’ll be here soon.”

On the sidewalk stood the only person remotely prepared for the rain. Black umbrella held low over her short white hair, she carefully refolded written directions and fit them back into her pocket. She was maybe seventy, wire spectacles foggy in the wet. A green hand-knit sweater sat folded in her arms, the handwritten tag, “Happy Birthday, James!” displayed neatly on top.

None of them heard the strained, rumbling motor until they saw the headlights. The seats were fraying and dirty, and one tire had begun to flatten. The driver, too tall for the seat, was more focused on the steering wheel than the road. The inside of the bus was lit in red by the night lights used to avoid blinding the driver, even though it was not quite five in the afternoon. The front panel above the window where it would say ‘To Jediah Square’ was smashed, and every few seconds it would spark, water dripping down the bottom edge. The bus was empty, save the driver.

The teen slipped the phone into a jeans pocket, pulling the hood lower over his eyes as he stood. The man next to him uncrossed his arms to go squat by the drain, never taking his eyes from the grate: sh, sh, sh, sh, sh, only slightly louder than the constant pitter-patter-pitter of that bent sign.

The elderly woman barely reacted. She reconsulted her creased directions, wiped her glasses on the sweater before sliding them back up her nose, and switched the umbrella to her other hand.

“Is this it?” asked the other twin.

“Yes. Yes, it is,” the mother said with poorly concealed relief.

And then it passed them, wheels throwing up road grime like a garden hose in summer. On the glowing panel in the back: OUT OF SERVICE.
Then it turned, and was gone. And they could hear it on the sign again: pitter-patter-pitter.