Southbound on yesterday’s #128 bus, I sat behind a gray-haired black woman who was probably headed to the airport. She had a large suitcase at her feet, a mid-size suitcase on the seat beside her, and a smaller suitcase on her lap — a matched set, red plaid.
Apparently she’d packed heavy, judging by her difficulty holding the small suitcase, as the bus turned a corner.
At the next stop, a semi-scruffy white man got on, and sat across the aisle from the luggage lady. He was carrying a large cardboard box filled mostly with vegetables, and he’d gotten on the bus at the food bank. He had a few days of gray stubble, and his clothes were sloppy and stained. Maybe homeless, definitely poor, and scruffy, or at least semi-scruffy.
The driver braked hard for a jaywalker, and the lady reached over to keep her seated suitcase from toppling. The smaller luggage in her lap nearly dropped into the aisle, but the scruffy guy reached across, and with two fingers he gently prevented her small suitcase from falling.
She thanked him, and he said, “I can keep that over here if you like.” He pointed at the small suitcase, and then at the empty seat beside him.
“Uh, no,” she answered. The ‘no’ sounded like a verbal eyeroll, and deservedly so. On a bus in the big city, you don’t hand a suitcase to a stranger.
The ride continued in relative silence for a block, and then the scruffy guy turned to her again, and asked, “Does this bus go to Tukwila Station?”
“It’s a #128,” she answered, which isn’t quite an answer unless you know the bus system, but if you know the bus system you wouldn’t have to ask where the #128 goes. Helpfully, I chimed in, “Yeah,” and that one word is my only involvement in this story.
After another block of silence, the scruffy man said to the lady, “I’m not a criminal, if you’re wondering.” Presumably, this was a callback to his earlier offer to hold her suitcase.
“I wasn’t wondering,” she answered.
“I’m just saying,” he said.
“And I’m just saying, minding my own business keeps me plenty occupied.” I liked her reply, so this was when I started taking notes.
“Gotta respect that,” the scruffy guy said to her, and then he looked at me and said, “The food bank had cupcakes.” He reached into his box, and pulled out a package of two plastic-wrapped generic Hostess knock-offs. “Major score!” Still looking at me, he added, “They only let me have two, though. Two packs of two, so I got four cupcakes, but I live with three guys so I can’t be sharing on the bus, sorry.”
I live with three guys myself, and sometimes share, but I said nothing. Why’s he talking about cupcakes while looking straight at me — a fat stranger on the bus? It was an insult, right? He’d simply assumed, since I’m 300 pounds, I’d be hungry for his damned cupcakes. And what’s worse, I was, but he dropped them back into his box, where I couldn’t quite see them any more.
As the bus turned left for the loop to the college, Semi-Scruffy rang the bell and carried his box of vegetables off at the stop. Odd that he’d asked whether the bus goes to Tukwila Station, if he was getting off miles before it gets there.
As I wondered about that, the bus rumbled block after block toward the college, where classes must’ve just finished because about 40 students were waiting. They all climbed aboard, and at one stop we’d gone from maybe ten passengers to standing room only. Politely, I hoisted my backpack from the seat beside me onto my lap, letting one of the kids sit next to me. Another coupla dozen had no seats.
Then the bus rumbled down the same street in the opposite direction, because that’s what the #128 does. The route has a spur, goes a long ways up 16th Ave to the college, then comes right back before continuing on. It’s an annoyance if you’re not going to the college, and I’ve timed it. It takes about 7½ minutes for the bus to come right back where it had been.
Let me go slightly off the main topic here, a literary detour about the bus’s detour. Imagine you’re a regular commuter on the #128, twice daily. That 7½ minute spur, on your bus in the morning and then your bus in the afternoon, eats 15 minutes of your day, every day. That’s an hour and 15 minutes weekly, or 62½ hours annually, so well over two days of your year is spend riding a half-mile north, only to re-ride that same half-mile south.
As the bus returned to where we’d started the college loop, we pulled over to let a passenger come aboard, and it was Semi-Scruffy again, still carrying his box with two heads of celery poking out over the top and presumably cupcakes inside. He’d gotten off the bus and crossed the street to wait for the same bus, a strategy which earned him 7½ minutes of fresh air and leg-stretching, but cost him his seat. Now he was standing by the front door, with his box of veggies and cupcakes in the aisle, between his legs.
The overstuffed bus continued on, and after a mile or so the lady with three suitcases rang the bell for the next stop. Ah, from here she could quickly transfer to a #560, which goes to the airport.
As our bus slowed, she struggled to her feet while lifting her biggest suitcase in one arm and her mid-size suitcase in the other, and then she tried tucking the third, smaller suitcase between her body and the mid-size suitcase. She wobbled on her high heels and nearly toppled.
The scruffy man stepped toward her, and again made a gallant albeit strange offer. “I can take that,” he said, and reached for her smaller suitcase.
Sometimes, you have to make a quick judgment about strangers — nutzoid, dangerous, or OK? Twenty minutes earlier, that same guy had offered to take the same suitcase, and she hadn’t trusted him. But this time, she handed it to him.
That’s the same moment when the wheelchair ramp started going down. A guy in a chair was getting off the bus, and the driver came back to start unchaining him, so the driver was now squatted between the black lady and the semi-scruffy man who was holding her third suitcase. With two dozen sweaty standees in the aisle behind her, the back door was moot, so the lady holding two suitcases had to wait.
The scruffy guy, though, couldn’t wait. He was between the wheelchair and the front door, so he’d need to step off the bus before the wheelchair rider could roll off. He waved and smiled at the lady, still holding her suitcase, and then stepped off the bus. He could’ve casually strolled around the corner, wouldn’t even need to run, and she’d never see her third suitcase again. But he didn’t. From the sidewalk, he waved at her again.
Standing and holding two of her three red plaid suitcases, she couldn’t wave back. She waited half a minute while the driver unchained the wheelchair, and another half a minute while the guy in the chair rolled himself off the bus. The scruffy man, who’d promised earlier that he wasn’t a criminal, stood on the sidewalk, and handed her the third suitcase when she stepped down from the bus. Probably she said thanks, but you can’t hear soft-spoken words through the window over an idling bus engine.
She walked off toward the #560 bus stop, and he got onto our #128 again, and took the same seat he’d started with. He plopped his box of mostly-vegetables on the seat beside him, and started talking to a purple-hair punk who’d just come aboard.
A few blocks later I rang the bell to get off, so that was yesterday’s ride on the #128. It was nothing momentous or especially unusual, just a tiny story that might’ve been worth telling. The point of it, I think, is that even if you don’t have enough cupcakes to share, we’re all sharing the ride.
7/23/2025
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