The Back of the
Bus
by
D.A.Cairns
There are sufficient seats at the front of the bus so he
doesn’t need to sit anywhere near the back. A stolen glance as he boards and
presses his Darwin bus card against the scanner while greeting the blank faced
driver, confirms this. Relieved, he walks through a curtain of fetid air and
takes an aisle seat so he can move at least one of his legs. The buses are
rarely crowded, in fact on a number of occasions he’s enjoyed their cavernous
and frosty interiors in solitude. The bus pulls out into what passes for
traffic in Australia’s northern capital, before he’s settled, so he’s forced to
grab the handrail and swing his backside down onto the seat.
Stony faced passengers stare out through the windows if they
don’t have mobile devices, as he allows the icy air to cool his skin. After a
five-minute walk to the bus stop he was sweating already. It’s only seven
thirty but the mercury is already poking thirty and the build up humidity draws sweat from the skin as though squeezed
from a sponge.
He watches them through the window, meandering through the
park in a loose herd formation. The front runner is dressed in a hi-vis shirt
and King Gees. Thongs adorn his feet, but he’s carrying a Coles shopping bag in
which he probably has a pair of boots. He reaches the bus stop seconds before
the bus pulls in, having received its command via a long high pitched beep
instigated by a passenger wishing to disembark. The bus stops. Two exit through
the back door as hi-vis enters via the front. He shuffles down the aisle
without making eye contact with anyone, and makes his way to the back of the
bus. The back of the bus is dark and it smells. It’s noisy too and with the
arrival of a hi-vis guy, the hubbub ramps up. They appear careless of the
presence of others as they chatter loudly in a language he doesn’t understand.
So far, his curiousity has not compelled him beyond
speculation. He’s still disappointed that the stereotype he hoped would be
destroyed by his actual experience in the Top End, has instead been
unambiguously reinforced. Hi-vis guy is a rarity for two reasons: he has a job
and he’s sober. Listening to the back of the bus jabber makes him wonder why
hi-guy sits with them. The reason strikes him quickly, making him feel stupid.
He is one of them. He looks like them and speaks their language although as
gainfully employed citizen he is inhabiting a different world. There are many
worlds on the bus. Individual planets in which people sit in safety, enjoying
their self-imposed isolation. Darwin draws people from all over the world, but
no matter which piece of geographical space one occupies it is always different
from others. Everyone experiences the world through the lens of their own
culture.
The bus stops again, relieving itself of another burden,
before proceeding along the Stuart Highway towards Palmerston. He becomes aware
of other conversations taking place, but they are not in English either. All of
his fellow passengers can speak the local language with varying degrees of
proficiency, which makes it an unsecured mode, and besides it is infinitely
easier to converse in one’s own tongue. Even though there’s no need for
discretion when no one else can understand what you’re saying, most people,
mindful of others, speak as quietly as they can. The mob at the back of the bus
are boisterous, loudly calling to a couple of their members as they leave the
bus at the next stop. Perhaps, it’s the parting shot of an argument now severed
by circumstance, or maybe it’s a hearty wish for health and happiness. It’s
impossible to tell. They always sound angry. The disembarkees, don’t smile as
they gesticulate towards the back of the bus on their way out.
Others takes their place, dressed in the uniform dirty rags
of their tribe, and set off nicely by an assortment of bandages and plaster
strips. They fight all the time. He’s seen them in the parks, staggering around
in an alcoholic fog hurling curses and fists at each other. He studies one of
the women and realizes that she might have been beautiful once, before her lip
had been split a dozen times, and her nose broken. She’s shrouded in weariness,
her dull dark face framed by thick unwashed hair. The back of the bus waits for
her: a broken and battered woman bearing ten extra years of life in every
crease of her face. They are not a good-looking race. Oversized noses, brows
and lips. He quivers with disgust at himself, but this latent racism has been
nagging him ever since he arrived. They are more different than any other
people and yet this land is theirs. They belong while everyone else, in one
sense, does not.
He wishes it was different. That his only conversations with
them hadn’t involved humbugging. That making eye contact meant being hit up for
money or cigarettes. He wishes he had not seen them sifting through handfuls of
cigarette butts looking for a smokeable remnant or staggering around the
streets of Darwin in the middle of the day, menacingly intoxicated, or sleeping
in the middle of footpaths and on bus shelter benches and in parks, flat out on
their backs and oblivious. The awful statistics are on the news every night, as
they valiant efforts of community leaders to rescue their people from despair.
He would rather not have seen or heard any of this. The rampant racism and
typecasting he heard back was easy to refute when distanced from actual
experience, and nothing is more powerfully influential than an individual’s own
experience.
It was becoming a torment for him to endure this
increasingly undeniable awareness of his own prejudice. He wanted desperately
to do something about it, to transform himself, instead of merely joining the
eye rolling and long suffering majority who with differing degrees of tolerance
shared the city with its minority of resident natives. His stop was
approaching, and he would soon be at work, fully engaged mentally and unable to
give consideration to the troubling thoughts he suffered on every bus ride. He
often thought of purchasing a car, but it made him feel sick to think that was
his best and only solution to the festering problem of how to live with his
Indigenous brothers.
He presses the stop button and shuffles in his seat. When
the bus stops, he rises and walks to the front
door. Fifteen minutes have passed but the stench of the back of the bus
passengers still hangs heavy in the air and it drapes him as he exits the bus
with a nod to the blank faced driver.
As he walks, he thinks of Rosa Parks: a champion of the
American civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Her particular brand of protest
focused on ending the restrictive and racist law which saw negroes forced to
sit at the back of the bus. More than half a century later, black Australians
choose the back of the bus. It’s their territory, as they travel around
aimlessly, resenting the white invaders who stole their land and their
children. The same invaders who pay for their pitiful, violent and alcoholic
lifestyles. The irony takes his breath away, makes him feel dizzy and
despondent.
