The Red Line is a subway, but it’s rare you hear anyone in Los Angeles who takes it call it one. Maybe it’s because subways are something so many other cities have, and in launching its own underground rail line, the MTA was savvy enough to tap into the local compulsion to be thought of as special; so in its promotion and to its riders, it’s the Red Line.

Universal City is a patch of real estate in North Hollywood that encompasses an entertainment conglomerate, a theme park, a shopping promenade and the public transit hub across the street.  The Red Line station there had been playing host to a film shoot earlier today, where it had been standing in for Munich.  Posters on the walls promoting local destinations had been temporarily covered by those promoting their Bavarian cousins, and a pair of large, free-standing lightboxes displayed clean, precise maps of the faraway city.  Another showcased a vibrant color portrait of Neuschwanstein, the real life storybook castle that pretty much set the mold for fairy tale happy endings.

In the station foyer, a round, guardhouse-style snack stand had been left unattended. The windows showcased exotic foreign candy bars and dark-hued bottles of beer with necks wrapped in foil, but these amenities were available to no one. Not far off, a souvenir photo booth sat parked at an inconvenient angle; its lighted exterior dim, its umbilical power cord splayed on the tile floor.

It all suggested a gentler and more civilized approach to travel than any of the Los Angeles riders were accustomed to.  A lone security guard was all that remained of the film crew for the moment, but the set pieces were sure to be packed away quickly as rush hour approached. Their cockeyed post-shoot placement was meant to ensure there’d be no mistaking these props for actual services available to the commuting public. They were merely tools of the trade the city regularly stepped aside to facilitate, and no sign of things to come.

*          *          *

The bus that took me the rest of the way pulled up within minutes, and I climbed aboard to take a seat in the last row, against the rear wall. One window was already occupied, and I chose the other, leaving ample space between us. As the bus filled up, a middle-aged black man joined us, taking a spot in the middle.

Though the back row had the most seating of any on the bus, it was still unusual for someone to sit in the middle, at least when the adjacent side rows still remained open. It wasn’t that it made for cramped seating so much as it tended to make people feel cramped; and in a city notorious for an across-the-board sense of entitlement, the grievance was almost legitimate. I focused my attention out the window and watched the streets go by.

Though it was January, it was still Los Angeles, and the weather had been unseasonably cold for weeks. But the bus was humid with people, and I was warm in my layered shirts and heavy coat.  The slat window above my head was open, and though the air was stale, when the bus was moving the breeze felt refreshingly chilly.

A few minutes into the trip, my neighbor unfolded an oversized black hooded sweatshirt and pulled it over his head.  He had a bag in his lap from a fast food place; it was made of a noisy yellow plastic, and he tucked it under his sweatshirt as if to trap its warmth. His hands were rough and sturdy, with dirt trapped under the nails.

“Did you want me to close this window?” I asked him.

“No, that’s alright,” he told me.  “I was putting this on for when I get off, so I’ll be warm.”

I got a proper look at him.  His head was bald, shaved clean, but a grey five o’clock shadow covered his cheeks and chin.  He wore a thick, bushy moustache that drooped down at the sides like those in old photographs of black cowboys. Or any cowboys, really. Like them, his face had an honesty to it.

He chuckled a little.  “This weather lately, you just never know.  Sometimes it gets colder than you think it will.  That’s why I’ve always got one of these,” he said, pulling out a plain watchman’s cap to show me.

“I know what you mean,” I said.  “There’s been some nights where I’ll wake up and can’t get warm, even under blankets.”

“It’s been cold,” he agreed, “real cold for out here.  And it’ll surprise you.  You’ll get on at one stop and by the time you get off at the other, the temperature will have dropped even more.  Then some days - like the other day - it’ll be fine.  I’ll tell you what, though: the last time the weather was like this, with the Santa Ana winds blowing all their stuff through and it was warm and then really cold?  That was right around the time of the Northridge earthquake.  Makes you wonder if that’s what’s coming, another big earthquake.”

“It definitely feels like its all building to something, sometimes,” I said.  “But it’s not just the weather; it’s everything.  There’s a lot of crazy things going on right now.”

“There’s a lot of crazy things going on right now,” he agreed.  “The weather, diseases, this war…  Even with people in general.  Something’s changed where people feel they don’t even have to hear what you have to say anymore, let alone try to win you over.  Like talking it out is just a big waste of time, so now they’re just gonna steamroller on over you.”  He shook his head.  “I didn’t see the speech on TV the other night, but I read it later.  And I don’t get how you can talk about the state of the nation and not even mention Katrina, and everything that still needs to be handled down there.  It’s the greatest natural disaster in decades, and they’re not even close to where they should be, going on two years later.”

“Everything I’ve seen about it says it could happen all over again.”

He nodded.  “And it’s not even just New Orleans – it’s all those states down there.  It’s Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Florida…”

“Yeah, but to not talk about it in the State of the Union address makes it seem like there’s a reason for him not talking about it, like it’s a snub,” I said.  “Like, ‘You’ve been critical of me, so now I’m gonna treat you like it’s a grade school birthday party.’  And if that’s not the case, well, that makes it even scarier.”

“Things have changed,” he continued.  “We have come a long way.  Things are better in a lot of ways than they used to be.  In the past, there were a lot more people went along with things they shouldn’t have, that they don’t anymore.  So it’s definitely better than before.”

As he said it, it occurred to me that the notion of ‘before’ - and everything that may have meant - held very different meanings for both of us.

“This war in Iraq,” he went on, “I don’t get it.  When he first said he was declaring a ‘war on terror,’ I’ll be honest, I thought he was through.”  He let out a hollow chuckle.  “To have a President of the United States say something that makes as little sense as that and then put people’s lives on the line…  I figured there’s no way people would get behind that, let alone allow things to be where they are now.  A ‘war on terror’…  I still can’t find someone who can tell me what that even means.

“But people don’t even talk about that anymore.  You never hear anybody talking now about how a ‘war on terror’ is a meaningless idea from the beginning.  See, once you’ve got American soldiers somewhere killing and dying every day, people can’t even think about what started it.  It’s too much for people to get their heads around.  All that death and killing ends up making a smokescreen -”

“The ultimate smokescreen,” I added, pulling on the cord over the window to signal the driver the next stop was mine.

“…The ultimate smokescreen, for all the bullshit that was at the start of this whole thing!  And now he wants to send more?  Come on! 

“I’ll tell you this, though: when there’s a war going on for no good reason, and somebody’s telling you that you have to go and fight in it, there’s a real simple solution: don’t go!  People just stick together and don’t go!  We did it before, and I was one of them.  I was there!”

The bus was coming to my stop. 

“It was nice talking with you,” I told him, standing as I slung my bag over my shoulder.  “Take care of yourself.”

He smiled and nodded, then crooked his elbow and made a loose, friendly fist. 

“One love,” he said.

copyright,  © 2007 Wyatt Doyle

see also: "The Surge: Bush's Latest Throbbing Failure" by Plato Jesus

and "Fighting Words" by Wyatt Doyle

for information on Wyatt Doyle's collaboration with Stanley Jason Zappa, STOP REQUESTED, click here.