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The Performer
Bob Rashkow
He’d been job hunting all afternoon and had finally scored a point. The elderly woman at the YMCA on 87th and Roosevelt had taken his application, asked him only a few additional questions, and promised that someone in administration would call him back—about working the front desk evenings for 8 dollars an hour, 26 hours a week. Well, it was something; it would help pay his bills and his food. Now he was trying to relax. The Junction Boulevard bus wended its way south toward home. Crowds of passengers got on at every stop or got off. It was getting close to rush hour, maybe 4:30 or so. He sat way in the back of the bus, the classifieds tucked neatly under his arm, and almost started to doze. At Corona Avenue, a huge black woman dangling two shopping bags filled to the rim insinuated herself next to him, coming within inches of crushing his hand. He barely looked up.
This was his life, his fate, his heartbeat—He had been laid off from a chemical plant two years earlier in 2006, where he had worked in the machine shop ever since he had graduated from high school, in 1981. He had never really considered the possibility that manufacturing would become so little needed, that economic factors would conspire to close thousands and thousands of smaller and even larger factories. He was 45 years old and desperately in need of some sort of life-sustaining income; his unemployment ran out after a year. There was no one in New York to help him out. His parents had died years ago, he had no siblings, and no friends to speak of, unless you counted the beer-guzzlers over at Mac’s on Woodhaven.
So he kept on looking. His landlord was very understanding and recently had let him get behind a couple of months, but he didn’t want to push his luck. A cousin in Philadelphia, a psychology professor at Temple, had reluctantly loaned him a substantial amount of money last year. It was all but spent. Beer was his panacea; he couldn’t live without beer, at least a couple of cans a day.
He rode buses, buses, more buses. He knew every inch of Queens, every intersection of Brooklyn. He hadn’t even tried the Bronx yet. There had been a few interesting ads out on Long Island, which was serviceable by Amtrak or by the subways, but thus far he had apparently been underqualified for those jobs. He wasn’t a waiter, nor could he throw himself into a fast-food job or work in one of those huge groceries like Stop-N-Shop. For him, that was simply too much responsibility. He could, however, handle simple reception or front-desk jobs; hotel, animal hospital, construction office—that kind of thing. The Y didn’t seem to pay as much as he would like, but it would do. It would do until his ship came rolling in, as he liked to put it.
The bus was traveling along Broadway for just a bit, paralleling the subway line, until it would backtrack on 51st, then onto Queens Boulevard to eventually pick up Woodhaven at Queens Center Mall. He had about a mile and a half to go. The driver knew him, knew he would most likely ring for a stop at Penelope and Woodhaven. A white-haired, handsome-looking gentleman carrying a guitar got on the bus and stood close by the front doors. After a few more blocks, he carefully opened his guitar case and began to play a song. Interesting, he thought. He wondered if the driver would ask him to stop playing, but the driver didn’t seem to mind. The guitarist could barely be heard above the din—many riders were talking on cell phones or listening to audible hip-hop or grunge rock on I-Pods. This man was singing, in a mellow voice, a very unfamiliar tune, yet it seemed to resonate within him. He knew the music of the 1960’s, knew it as though he’d been born in 1950 and not 1963. He’d studied, and listened on the Internet, and knew about as much of the trivia and statistics as it was possible to know. This song sounded like an old sixties folk song. It was lovely and melodic—what he could hear of it, that is; it was coming toward him like waves on the Sound, calling him to a quiet, placid atmosphere somewhere in his astonished mind. The guitarist paused briefly, as if to wait for applause or some sort of acknowledgment, then launched into another folk tune. He was moved, affected in some unfathomable way. He got up and found a vacated seat behind the musician, where he listened to the words the man was crooning, so mellow, so quiet, although completely clear now he was right next to him. The older man turned quickly around and offered a brief smile, as if somehow he knew, was able to read his mind. Do you remember this one? I am a poor, wayfarin’ stranger, travelin’ through this world of woe..........I’m only goin’ over Jordan; I’m only going, over home. Yes, yes of course he knew it. He didn’t remember how, or where, he’d heard the melody, nor how he knew the words, but they called his name. He found himself singing along. Beauteous fields......where souls redeemed their vigil keep........and it was just the two of them for a fleeting minute, just the two men on the crowded Queens bus, reveling in a long-forgotten folk song, a buried treasure brought back to life in the heyday of the folk rebirth of the 50s and 60s. They finished it together, almost harmonizing. Just as the performer earnestly said, “Thank you,” to him, the bus driver called out “Penelope!” It was his stop. He had to get off, and some fat woman with a scowl on her face was waiting for him so she, too, could make her way off the bus at the front. “Thank you,” he mouthed back at the guitarist. There he was at his corner, alone and free once again. He still heard the refrain in his mind, still felt some kind of vague admiration for someone who could do that, could just get on a bus and express himself so, even to the utter indifference, the coolness of a whole universe of bus riders. Why had he been so bold? Why did he endeavor to join in with the man? For what purpose, to what aim had this been? Did no one care about this at all? Yet he was much angrier with himself for having grabbed the chance, than with the silence of the unaffected passengers. He would spend the remainder of the evening brooding about it and remembering the exhilaration, the oh-so-brief animation of their spirit. And he would continue to ask himself why, and, he told himself, hey, if the Y hires me I’ll invite him to come and play in the lobby. Right, sure, the mocking, gloomy voice in his head replied. You’ll never see the guy again, nor are you meant to.
