The hook flew up, down, in and out.
She watched the white-haired crafter as the bus shuttered and grumbled. Up. Down. Wrap the yarn. In. Out. She wondered how the woman could focus. Her own head throbbed. Hip-hop roared from some punk’s headphones. Two sisters, well, they looked to be sisters, animated a loud conversation with gestures and laughter. A small child chanted, “Itsy Bitsy Spider went up the water spout” in a shrill singsong. She could barely think and all she had to do with sit there. Yet here was this old woman working away; her hook blurring in a purposeful, methodical rhythm. Up. Down. Wrap. In. Out. The bus jolted to a stop as the driver avoided colliding with a light-colored Kia which had suddenly braked. The driver blared on the horn. She couldn’t see what difference it would make. Clearly the Kia’s operator was just as trapped as the bus. Up ahead she spotted billowing smoke swallowing the horizon. From somewhere behind the all the stopped vehicles, she could hear the whining of a siren and see pulsating lights. The fire department, she guessed, and wondered how they would traverse the traffic jam.
A young couple, possibly students, rose and navigated between commuters to reach the front of the bus. “Would you let us out here, please?” the young woman asked. The driver shook his head. “Not safe.” “All the cars are stopped. We’ll make better time walking,” the young man said more persuasively. “Nope,” the driver responded.
The couple shrugged and headed back to their seats. She thought she heard the young man swearing but couldn’t be sure. His shoulder slammed into the guy with the headphones, knocking him nearly off his feet. “Sorry” he mumbled.
“What the fuck?” the punk said. As he regained his footing, he pushed the young man backwards causing him to fall into his girlfriend who tumbled across the two sisters.
“Hey,” the sisters cried out in unison. “Be careful.”
“What do you think you’re doing,” the young woman shouted.
“Your boyfriend needs to watch where he’s going,” the guy sneered.
The young man swung his right fist at the guy, missing him by only a couple inches. The guy with the headphones grabbed the man’s shirt and slammed him against the fire extinguisher.
She glanced toward the front of the bus. The driver was watching everything in the rearview mirror. The old woman continued crocheting: Up. Down. Wrap the yard. In. Out.
“Driver,” she called out. “Can’t you do something?”
Just as he unbuckled his seat belt and climbed out from behind the steering wheel, a loud crunch jolted the bus, sending all the standing passengers to the floor. An SUV hit the rear of the bus while trying to get out of the way of the fire truck. The bus, in turn, crushed into the Kia causing the driver to pitch into the metal fire extinguisher case.
“Shit,” several people said at once.
“Fuck,” several other people said at once.
She righted herself, located her belongings and looked around. The punk with the headphones and the angry young man scrambled over passengers to reach the injured driver. The sisters and the young woman helped people get up from the floor.
The small child howled.
She stood and made her way to the priority seats where the old woman slouched with her chin against her chest. The woman looked up at her when she spoke, touched the back of her hand to her bottom lip, and shook her head as if to clear her thoughts.
“I’ve phoned the police,” a voice said from the middle of the bus.
“We’ve got people back here hurt,” another said.
“The driver is unconscious,” the student said.
“Let’s get him onto the floor,” the punk suggested. Together the two stretched him out in the center aisle between the rows of seats.
The old woman looked around as if she had dropped something, then spying her yarn on the floor, leaned forward to pick it up.
“Here, let me,” she said. “You stay where you are. I’ll get it.”
Her boyfriend retrieved it and passed it to her then she gave it to the woman.
A police officer pounded on the front doors of the bus, so the punk with the headphones located the mechanism and opened them for him.
“Everyone sit tight,” the officer said. “We need everyone to stay on the bus and remain calm until we get things sorted. EMT’s will be here shortly.”
“As soon as they can make it through all this traffic,” someone said and everyone laughed. Then, satisfied that the danger was past, they exhaled a collective sigh of relief.
The old woman picked up her yarn, looped in around the fingers of her left hand to maintain the tension and began to crochet again. Up. Down. Wrap the yarn. In. Out. Up. Down. Wrap the yarn. In. Out.
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brief salvage 