by Mic Roland
“Outage shmoutage. I jus walks. Don’t take no power for that.”
“But what about at…” Martin almost said ‘home’ “…where you stay?”
Tony laughed. “That ol’ Impala ain’t never had ‘lectricity. But it’s got the best bench seats ever. Outage won’t be changing much for me.”
“Hmm. I suppose not. Still, a guy’s gotta eat. if you were going to get groceries or something…” Martin slipped Tony another five-spot. “You should probably do it quick. You know how people get when there’s a storm or something. Strip the shelves of bread and milk. Best to get there early. Beat the rush.”
“Hmm. Might be yer right about that. People ain’t buying papers anyhow.”
“Well, I gotta get to South Station,” Martin said. “Gotta catch me a bus.”
“Okay, pard’ner. You take care of myself, ya hear?” he winked.
“I will if you will, Tony.” Martin winked back.
The scenes of congestion and confusion were the same along Congress, High and Federal streets. People stood around on the sidewalks as if they were attending a large, but boring, block party, or like a crowd that had shown up hours early for a parade. Instead of peering up the street to catch the first glimpse of sports champions on duck boats, they looked up at their buildings or their phones. Some wore their coats and jackets. Others shivered and rubbed their arms, regretting having left their offices without their coats.
From the fragments of conversation Martin picked up as he passed, people were unsure on what to do. Go home? Go back to work? Wait for ‘services to be restored’? How long would that be? Call someone to complain? Who do you call? How do you call?
Some of them shared news tidbits and guesses for why the power was out. Amid the banal were some colorful theories. Terrorists had blown up Niagara Power. One woman heard that a train full of chemical weapons blew up in New Jersey. Her friend heard it was a train full of nuclear waste that blew up and it was in Connecticut. Each passed along their theory-news as if it were a revealed secret truth.
Martin smiled and shook his head at the creativity that fills a news vacuum. He wondered why the power was out too, but was more focused on getting home.
The drivers on Atlantic Avenue were not playing as nicely as those at State Street and Congress were. Cars inched along in close order. They allowed no gaps for side street traffic to enter the glacial flow. The shut-out drivers honked their displeasure. As far as Martin could see up and down Atlantic Ave, the four lanes of stalled traffic did resemble an automotive glacier, slowly inching towards the sea. Pedestrians filtered between the cars, two or three abreast, like sand running through fingers.
A sizable crowd had gathered around the Red Line T station entrance. People were filing in. Others were wandering out. It looked like business-as-usual, though Martin wondered why. The T ran electric trains. Why were those people going down the stairs? Did they think their train would be an exception?
The bustle around South Station reminded Martin of the day before Thanksgiving — thousands of people hurrying to get someplace. Except, this time, no one had holiday smiles.
Then a sudden tinge of deja vu gave him a chill. The worried faces and urgent jostling was more like what he saw back on 9/11. Back then, his carpool had left without him. Back in 2001, catching a bus to New Hampshire was his seldom-used backup plan to his carpool.
The bus station was mobbed back on 9/11. No one was smiling then either. Martin remembered waiting around the crowded station for over five hours, but there were no busses going north. A few busses departed for points west or south. After that, no new busses came for anyone. Hundreds began setting up indoor camp on the concourse. They were stuck in the city. So was he.
This day was different from 9/11 in one big way. This time, there was no power at the bus station. People marched up frozen escalators. Without all the ceiling lights, the main rotunda lobby resembled a man-made sinkhole. Soft daylight filtered down from the ring of glass block around the dome. The station hummed with a thousand conversations.
Martin merged into the mass of people trudging up the central escalator. A woman pounded on a dark ATM kiosk. She tried profanities when fists did not work. It was unacceptable that the ATM did not accept her card. Apparently, it was also unacceptable for the kiosk to be dark as well.
Martin worked his way through the swirling eddies of people on the dark concourse, towards his usual gate door. There were no HubExpress busses waiting outside.
Was this normal? He was familiar with the afternoon and evening schedule, but had no idea when the morning busses ran. He made his way back to the HubExpress ticket counter to pick up a schedule or ask when the next bus might be.
The ticket bays and food vendor bays resembled dark caves in the sink hole walls. Most were totally dark. The occasional wavering flashlight beam from within one or two of the bays resembled guided-cave-tours in progress. In the HubExpress ticket bay, the rows of jostling people were silhouetted by the soft glow of a flashlight shining on the colored back wall. Would-be riders were pressed up against the counter, three and four deep, all asking questions at once.
Most of what Martin could hear was the whining or angry demands of people wanting tickets. Martin already had his commuter tickets. What he needed was schedule information.
At one point, the agent’s phone bleeped. Martin was surprised that push-to-talk service still worked. From the snippets he could overhear, the news was not good. The 10 o’clock bus was stuck in the tunnel from the airport. When the lights went out, a chain reaction fender-bender stopped everything. No one was hurt, but the bus was blocked in. The agent announced all this to the crowd, trying to reassure them that the 12 o’clock bus would take an alternate route, though it might be a little late.
The agent’s announcement answered Martin’s question, but not in the way he had hoped. If the stalled traffic he had already seen was any indication, that 12 o’clock bus would be stuck somewhere, but not getting into or out of Boston. The ticket agent probably knew that. Whether he was following company policy to report only happy news, or from a sense of self-preservation, the agent was not going to tell all those impatient people that no busses were coming for them.
Martin pushed out of the crowd that had formed behind him. He remembered seeing a Concord Coach bus a few gates down. His HubExpress tickets were no good for Concord Coach, but their busses drove up into New Hampshire too. He overheard two women talking about their bus being the 10 o’clock Concord bus and gate 16. He felt a rush of optimism. It was 9:55. He did not know where the Concord busses stopped – Salem, Manchester then Concord? It did not matter. All were closer to home than Boston. His challenge was getting on without a ticket. He thought he could offer the driver cash.
He maneuvered through the cross flow of people as if fording a neck-deep river. He hoped there was enough time to reach the bus. A stop in Manchester seemed likely, and a good compromise. That was not where he parked his truck, but close enough. It would mean a four or five hour walk to get to it. That seemed a small price to pay. Even if he had to ride all the way up to Concord, he could have Margaret come pick him up. Maybe the phones were not all jammed up further north. She would not like having to drive all the way to Concord, but she would do it.
The windowless concourse was darker than the rotunda. The only light came from puny emergency floodlights at both ends, and from the headlights of a few busses shining through the glass walls. For a brief moment, the scene reminded Martin of old black and white war movies: prisoners of war massed in the yard for a surprise night inspection with spotlights in guard towers.
Too many old movies, Martin muttered to himself.
The concourse was packed like a stadium lobby just before the gates opened. The air was getting stale with the scent of breath and many perspiring bodies. Martin overheard more fragments of conversations as he squeezed and zigzagged through the jumble of shoulders, backs and butts. Some were angry at the inconvenience. Some were worried ab
out family.
Others shared news and questions. Was it all the work of terrorists? Someone heard there was a leaking LNG ship in the harbor, so officials cut all the power in the city to prevent sparks. That at least sounded logical, even if wrong.
Why would they cut the power in Chicago because of a leaking tanker in Boston?
One middle-aged woman was certain it was all the work of Tea Party extremists intent to destroy America. Martin was not sure how that worked, but did not have time to listen for more.
The people near Gate 16 were silhouetted by headlights beaming through the plate glass wall. It was the Concord bus, lights on and loading. People had compressed themselves into a solid mass struggling to get through the single door. Gate 14 had no bus and no crowd at its door. Martin slipped out that door and joined the side of the crowd on platform 16. Everyone was talking loudly, jostling and trying to climb through the bus door at the same time. Clearly, the driver was inside taking tickets from the driver’s seat.
Martin inserted himself into the mass of people that flowed towards the bus door. He had a $20 bill folded in his fist. Once onboard, he planned to hand it to the driver and step down the aisle. Maybe the driver would accept it, maybe not, but Martin figured that once he was aboard the bus, the inflowing stream of passengers would make it nearly impossible to send him back off. Being aboard was nine-tenths of a ticket, or something like that.
The opportunity never came. The bus began backing up while Martin was still several people back. A man and a woman continued trying to jam themselves into the still-open doorway as the bus backed out. Neither got on. They scowled at each other. The remaining crowd at the gate stared in disbelief, bathed in red light from the taillights, until the bus rounded the bend and out of sight. Many in the crowd loudly vowed to wait right where they stood — to be first in line for the next bus.
That assumes there will be a next bus, Martin thought.
Martin felt an odd tingling on the back of his neck. Something about the sight of those people scrambling to get onto the bus as it backed away, and those left behind, reminded him of old news footage. During the evacuation of Saigon: crowds on rooftops left behind, reached up for a rising helicopter.
Was this how it felt to watch the last helicopter leave Saigon?
Martin dismissed the thought as an overactive sense of drama and too much History Channel.
Things are not that bad. It was just a bus, he told himself.
He worked his way back through the station crowds slowly, not quite certain where he was going next. He could stay and join the hundreds in the station waiting for another bus. He had no confidence there would be another bus. Waiting did not work for him last time, when it was only a nervous city that still had power. This time, there was a functional problem.
Another option was go back to the office and sleep under his desk again. He shook his head. That was still waiting, but with fewer people around. He was not giving up yet. There was still his Plan B, to walk home. His mind had been avoiding eye contact with that option.
If the outage was as serious as it seemed, the city would probably open up shelters for all the stranded business travelers, tourists, and distant-commuters like himself. Martin wondered who he would ask about shelters. A cot would be more comfortable than carpet, but how long would he be there? Days? Weeks?
The only mental images he had of shelters were from news photos of the Superdome after Katrina. He cringed at the prospect of becoming trapped in the quicksand of government benevolence.
Then, an idea flashed into his mind. North Station! Maybe I could catch a train!
Martin was surprised he had not thought of the trains before. They did not go anywhere he needed to be, so he seldom thought of them.
He knew the conductors sold tickets onboard. Martin would happily pay the higher onboard rate — even if they tacked on some opportunistic “crisis fee.” Paying out a few extra bucks was the least of his worries. The train might only take him as far north as Haverhill or Lowell. But, he reasoned, that would leave him maybe a half day’s walk up to his truck. He might still be home before midnight. That was far less intimidating than a fifty mile walk. This new alternative salvaged his hope. His pace quickened, once he had a destination.
Re-crossing through the snarled traffic on Atlantic Avenue was more difficult than before. Traffic had tightened up such that the cross-flow of pedestrians could only sift through in single file. Most pedestrians were still streaming towards the station. The air in the street was hot from all the idling engines, and acrid with exhaust fumes.
The extra effort required to cross Atlantic gave Martin time to wonder if he was overreacting. Was he letting himself get spooked? What if the power came back on in a few hours? He could find himself on a northbound train, halfway to no place he really wanted to be. Had his memories of 9/11 taken on inflated drama over the years? Was sleeping in the office really all that bad?
Back on the night of 9/11, sleeping beside his desk had been passable enough. Some sort of blanket would have made it easier to stay asleep. The offices got surprisingly cool after hours.
The mayor had “closed” the city, more or less, so on the day after, nearly everyone stayed home. Businesses were closed. Venturing too far from his ad hoc office campsite did not seem wise. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and three dollars in his pocket, so he roamed only a half dozen blocks in any direction.
The few convenience stores in the financial district and waterfront were all closed. The city was a virtual ghost town. An occasional siren wailed up a side street. Some “important buildings” ( banks and government offices) were guarded by jittery security personnel or policemen. They stood with hands on holsters and eyed Martin (a lone pedestrian) with nervous suspicion. By the end of the second day, Martin had eaten what little there was in the office’s kitchenette. For all the time he spent walking the empty streets looking for food, he reasoned, he could just as well have been walking home — had he been equipped for it.
That experience had been the start of Martin keeping a backpack under his desk. If he ever got stranded again, he would at least have the option to walk home. Over the years, he added things to his bag to make his Plan B walk more manageable. That went in cycles. Occasionally, he thought it was a silly waste of time and stopped adding anything more to the bag. After Hurricane Katrina, he resumed, adding a few more things: a disposable lighter here, some paracord there.
Martin vowed to himself back then, that he would rather walk the fifty miles home — even if it took three or four days — than stay stranded downtown again. Better to be moving slowly than sitting still, became his motto, even if he never said it out loud to anyone.
Egging him on to continue adding to his bag, was a nagging feeling that never quite came into focus — that being stranded in Boston the next time could be worse than a couple of chilly nights on the carpet and meals of old cream cheese on oyster crackers.
Maybe what made him uneasy about staying in town were the horror stories from Katrina and Sandy, or travel restrictions like Boston had after the Marathon bombing. Also in the corners of his mind was the frequency with which other cities had erupted into bloody riots for the thinnest of reasons — an unpopular jury verdict, a racial incident, or a sports team not winning their championship. It took surprisingly little for cities – those cathedrals to Kumbayah enlightenment – to turn savage.
* * *
Chapter 2: Good deed quagmire
Retracing his path up Federal Street, the people were not milling around on the sidewalks any longer. Instead, the scene resembled a heavy evening rush. People wore coats and carried bags: all walking briskly. Some had worried expressions. Most looked annoyed at the interruption of their routine.
The triangle of streets where Pearl, Milk and Congress joined at Post Office Square, was more of a challenge to cross. The stalled traffic was a chaotic jumble. A T bus, blocked in mid-turn, formed an effective dam for the flow of traffic on Pearl and M
ilk. Cars continued to try to come up out of the underground parking garage, but there was no open street to absorb them.
One impatient driver from the parking garage decided to drive his big BMW along the wide sidewalk in an attempt to bypass the motionless traffic. Pedestrians jumped out of his way. The driver of a neon blue Corolla with skirts and a spoiler must have seen the BMW and thought the sidewalk was a good idea. The Corolla bumped up onto the sidewalk, trying to get ahead of the BMW, but only got one wheel up before bottoming out on the curb. Martin guessed that the Corolla was not the driver’s usual car or he would not have tried such a move. Lowered tuners and granite curbs do not mix.
The BMW driver veered around the beached Corolla, but this forced him to the left of a cast iron lamp post that stood in the middle of the sidewalk. He must have thought he could get around it. He was wrong. With a fingernails-on-blackboard scraping and a crunch, he had only managed to get his shiny black car wedged between the lamp post and atop the granite planter. It was his turn to be beached. His left front wheel spun uselessly in the flower bed, flinging up mulch and shreds of mums. The pedestrians who had to jump out of his way a few moments earlier, kicked or pounded on his car as they climbed through the planter to get around him. A few of them threw dirt on his car and yelled hostile sentiments about equality and justice.
Once Martin made his way through the traffic maze at PO Square, the northbound side of Congress was smoother going. Fewer cross streets meant less weaving through stalled traffic. The cooperative spirit was no longer present at the intersection of State and Congress. It was yet another jumbled parking lot. Martin preferred to cross in front of cars whose drivers were standing beside their cars, yelling and gesturing. Drivers behind the wheel were prone to suddenly lurch forward if they saw an opening.
On the north side of the intersection, the threads of pedestrians re-formed back into a thick column marching down Congress. In contrast to the steady flow of pedestrians, a couple dozen people stood in front of the doors to the State Street T stop. Among them, Martin saw a familiar face. Susan looked up and down State Street with a mild frown.
