The International Writers Magazine: San Francisco Stories

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Riders of Dragon Number 19 • Michael Chacko Daniels Gray’s blue eyes disconnect from the mists flirting with Alcatraz, the former prison island in San Francisco Bay, during Chinese New Year week. Bare knobby knees cock and uncock. He rises from the grass, creaking and grunting and leaking gas. He cranks up his mind for his crosstown journey to the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market, but his ball and chain—how to heal Alcatraz’s wounds—stops him.

He jams lime green and purple Chico reusable nylon bags into the rear pocket of his denim half pants, frees himself with the thought, Positive mind ushers change.
Ahead, at the top of the slight rise, the MUNI outbound 19 Polk, branded with a blood-red logo and headband, throbs and fumes to life.
The desire to fly to it like he would have at the age of nine overwhelms Gray’s caution and his flamingo-legs defy age. In seconds, lungs wheeze, heart drums into ears, right knee wobbles.
Oh, not now, he prays.
Dang! There it all goes.
He sees grass, black and gray bird feathers, vendors . . . fracture and fly.
Next, what? The Big Bang?
He pops a tiny, white pill. Body beat slows. He breathes out tension, telling himself, Go, ol’ fella, go with the flow. GO!
He flashes his senior monthly pass.

PLEASE HOLD ON, the Dragon slow-booms in a sugar-‘n-vinegar voice and rolls into the traffic. Gray lurches past the unoccupied parallel front benches to his favorite single seat.
Dragon kneels for passengers at the Real Foods/Peet’s/Starbuck stop; its belly fills and onto the front bench in Gray’s fracturing space, fall a small brown woman—black coat, black head scarf—and a boy.
Gray winces, reliving his hoss-tossed butt hitting red Texas dirt, the Ol’ Man, yellowish-brown rawhide whip upraised, saying softly, “Git back on that hoss, boy.”
Now, Gray’s eyes radiate comfort to the boy, all the while thinking, Boy’s hardly eight. Already bigger than his mom. Does she bulk him up? Is he eating on the sly?
Boy bounces on the brown molded-plastic seat.
Gray’s shoulders hunch into an oouch.
Alcatraz fades from his mind.
“Mom, how long?” Boy demands; saucer-wide eyes roam. “I never want to come back to San Francisco to see Dad.”
Opposite Boy, a straw-haired young man, too big for his yellow T-shirt and brown jeans, presses finger against cracked lips. Suddenly, a wink closes and opens his face.
Boy looks away. “Mom, are we there yet?” he says.
Gray hears the woman whisper-sing-ing and thinks, Oh, how I’d love to know what she said. Surely, something loving. What a beautiful language!
Boy asks, “Why was Dad so sad?”
The mother sing-talks.
“No, Mom, no. Can’t ask Dad now. He’s not here, right now. When I was in his home, he kept repeating, ‘They tangle now on the future of the rock.’”
Across the aisle from Gray, a burly man says, “Omigod!”
Boy shrinks.
Gray wants to shut his ears, and the boy’s. Poor boy’s been terrorized, he thinks.
“Mom, are we there yet?” Boy asks. “Is this it?”

Dragon drones: PLEASE HOLD ON.
Burly Man continues, “Smell that smell?”
The thin woman next to him responds, “Smell, hon’? Hear that lingo? Are we in America, or what?”
“No, no, worse. Blow your nostrils; smell the AB slash DL. San Francisco’s least loved.”
Gray eyes them, struggles to restrain a scowl, transmits mentally, Whatever you’ll are up to, be peaceful.
Burly Man raises a pocket-size bottle towards Gray, crooks elbow, tilts head.
Gray cotinues: Be happy. Please. We’re all related. Not even one degree separates us.
Thin Woman sucks on the plastic bottle, slides the top window, and tosses.
Gray reverts face, reminding himself it wouldn’t solve anything for her to see his reaction to her littering, other than to get his jaw broken again.

Pong, Poongng. STOP REQUESTED.  The doors inhale, clatter. The straw-haired Young Man duck-walks to the exit. The odor of omnivore’s extruded waste hits Gray; his post-sunrise-maxi-munch-raw-food victuals surge.
Boy squeals, “Look, Mom.” A plump digit points.
Gray swallows; his eyes strain. What’s that? Did the seat bubble? he wonders.
Boy squeezes shut widened nostrils and says, “Yuck! He left some muck. Phew!”
Nose glued to the window, Burly Man reports, “AB slash DL’s pumping it out on the street. This, my mother in Kalamazoo won’t believe.”
Thin Woman says,  “‘Mazoo, hon’? Just say, ‘In Baghdad by the Bay, it happened this day.’ She’ll lap it up. Trust me. That’s what I say to Mummy in Shakopee . . . Daddy in Zigzag. They can’t have enough.”
Boy says, “Mom, call him back.”
Mom raises a small arm, hangs it gently on his shoulder, whispers, “Shshsh!”
Oh, Gray thinks, Mummy’s favorite sound when Daddy fondled rawhide.
Boy avoids Gray’s eyes, shrugs off his mother’s hand, and whispers, “What’s AB slash DL?”
Mom stretches up to her son’s ear.
“No, Mom. Not later. Now!”
Gray thinks, Boy’s loud. He’s learned how to pin her down with every eye on the bus.
Mom shakes her head, caresses Boy’s. “A,” she whispers, “is for Adult, B for Baby, D for Diaper, L for Lover.”
Gray expels, “Omigosh!”
Black eyes piercing his watery blues, Mom says, “So sorry my voice carried.”
Gray says, “No, no, ma’am. You know so much. I loved how your lovely language sounded—earlier.”
She says, “Thank you. I want my son to learn . . . so he can,” she points over her shoulder westward, “talk . . . to grandparents.”
Boy bounces. “A—for Adults? You’re making fun of me, Mom. I’m no baby. This is America. I feel like screaming.”
She hugs him, her arms halfway round him. “No, son, no. The scientific term—Paraphillic Infantilism. But not an AB/DL.”
Boy nods. “No diaper, Mom.”
“Good observation.”
“No underwear of any kind.” Boy bounces.
Mom gives him another hug. “He suffers from incontinence.”

Dragon reminds—NO DRINKING, NO EATING, NO SMOKING.
Boy says, “When will we reach Berkeley, Mom?”
Burly howls.
Gray turns; seams and scars, from sun, wind, and a hard life, widen.
Burly yells, “Tell the crone: MUNI doesn’t cross the big water. Hee, hee, hee. Learn English fast or get lost. There’s American Lesson # 1.”
Gray thinks, I’ll sit behind the blowhards, calm them. Or, at least, divert their attention.
But at Bush and Polk, Gray’s eyes are drawn to a tall, lean, white-haired African American woman in a black overcoat and green silk scarf who enters.
Burly laughs, Thin Woman joins in.
Gray rises, thinking, Got to stop her. But, his voice is stuck in his throat. His feet are rhinos. She stumbles, grabs a stanchion, grimaces.

PLEASE HOLD ON, says Dragon.
Boy points, says, “Double yuck.”
Mom jumps, inserts a fence of five digits in front of the White-Haired Woman’s middle. “Stop! Soiled seat,” she says.
As five fingers reduce to one to point, White-Haired Woman almost sits. “Oh, my goodness! Thank you so much,” she says. “On my way to Glide Church.” She smiles. “To talk to Reverend Cecil Williams.” She shakes her head. “Even at Glide, they’d mind if I entered with the sight and smell of a load of that.”
Burly’s barnyard words fly.
Boy cries, “Mom, are we there yet?”
Gray covers his ears, nods at Boy and Mom to do the same.
“Stop!” Dragon growls. “No swearing on my bus. Want me to call the cops? This route—plenty of foot patrols.”
Gray’s spirit soars, A dragon who cares!

Pong, Poongng. STOP REQUESTED.
Fingers turning into birds, the drinking duo skedaddle.
Gray turns to say, “Peace.”
Burly returns, blares into his ear, “Cash in, fartoid.”
Gray wants to shout, Blowhard, but restrains himself, thinking, Not very bodhisattvic of me. Instead, he sways to the Dragon. “Sir,” he says, “the young man . . . front bench . . . got off back yonder . . . went . . . on the seat . . . number two . . . health hazard . . .”
Dragon says, “Yeah?”
Gray thinks, He means, ‘What’s new?’
The Glide woman exits, saying, “He’s on a tight schedule. Fewer buses running.” Thrice, the Dragon pumps the horn. He hollers, “Blame City Hall mucky mucks—steal transit dollars, pad salaries, redesign offices.”
A chorus of “Yeahs!” One person roars, “Get the crooks out!”

Dragon rocks. Scanning the mother in the mirror above him, Dragon says, “I—seventy-thirty Burmese-Chinese. My favorite story growing up in Rangoon: Tagore’s Kabuliwallah. You think we’ll have peace before I die? I want to go eat famous Kabuli almonds, raisins, poms. My son, he only wants to go fly a kite.”
Gray says, “You, sir, are ace high—scholar, prince, and food connoisseur.”
Mom says, “Peace? I devoutly wish. I pray my son meets his grandparents, learns their ways before connection . . . lost. Forever. But . . . a long while before guns will go silent.”
Gray thinks, Poor mother and son.
He feels his heart crack open.
“Alcatraz,” he says, “will be a beacon . . . for universal peace.”
Maybe that’ll help, he thinks.
Mom’s eyes corkscrew his. Dragon’s brows spike.
Boy shakes his head, looks at Gray. “My Dad complains, ‘Even over Alcatraz they fight.’” He turns to Mom, “When do we get off, catch BART? Can’t wait to see the Kabuli exhibition in Berkeley’s Hearst Museum.”
Gray says, “My stop.” He slips his card to Mom, saying “Love to learn your language.” To Dragon, he says, “Pom season’s over, but I’ll scoop up some raisins and almonds at the farmers’ market. Will be thinking of you.”
The front door exhales.
Dragon laughs. “Now, I wrap caution tape to seat. End of line, wear disposable gloves, pray for mucky mucks, clean up seat.”
Gray says, “You’re a true bodhisattva,” unfurls green and purple bags into the wind, waves Dragon goodbye and reenters the ambulatory flow.
Yonder, Northern California’s bounty beckons. He thinks, I’m exactly where I want to be, but how I’d love to say what she said the way she said it!
He wonders, What was I meditating about at the wharf?
Tasting local raisins—one at a time, his morning unfolds.
He breathes deeply and wonders . . .
© Michael Daniels June 2008
mchackod@pacbell.net
 
About the Author: Michael Chacko Daniels (GJ, Medill, Northwestern University), former community worker and clown, grew up in Bombay, India. He lives and works in San Francisco. His short stories have appeared in Apollo's Lyre, Cricket Online Review, Denver Syntax, dragonfire, Hackwriters, Indelible Kitchen, and SHALLA Magazine.
Books:  Split in Two (2004), Anything Out of Place Is Dirt (2004), and That Damn Romantic Fool (2005).
Website: http://indiawritingstation.com/

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