11/12/21 - All I saw when I turned around was a man, clad in a camouflage jacket, crouching before the emergency exit window, about to jump out of the bus and onto the traffic-jammed Connecticut Turnpike. No one knew what to say, or even what was happening. Some of us struggled for the right words; words actors have no trouble accessing: “No, no! Don't do it!”
There were competing fears in my head, as I heard a crashing sound. He dropped something and stood up for a second to pick it up. “He has a gun,” someone yelled. When the gun was mentioned, I wanted him to jump for the safety of us all. But was this an attempted suicide? Was he going to shoot up the bus? Or were both things about to happen?
The bus crawled down the highway in traffic that persisted from New York City, so he landed safely. Later on, I learned that he darted into the woods. But in the moment, I felt like he was coming back for the kill. I thought he wanted me dead. And as we stopped on the shoulder of the turnpike, yards from where he jumped, I pinned my location and texted my girlfriend “I love you.” The emergency exit window was still ajar.
I updated my friend Rob in Portland, Maine about my whereabouts. “I don’t think I’ll see you in a few hours,” I said. He called me. “What is it? What’s going on?” His tone matched my level of fear, but told me that “everything was going to be OK.” The bus driver also assured us that everything would be OK, but I didn’t trust him. The police were called and the window was closed. “You’re safe,” my friend said. “If he wanted to kill anyone, he would’ve done it already.” My pits were sweaty and my fists were clenched.
I shouted to the driver, but it came out as a whisper: “He has a gun!” Although the police were on their way, us staying in park, not far from the man with the gun, compounded the intensity of the situation. Why weren’t we driving? What if he comes back?
I encountered this man before boarding the bus. He was standing next to me at the station, on East 42nd St, around the corner from the U.N Headquarters. In hindsight, I had been suspicious of him from the moment he reached into his pocket and eyed some people around me. This triggered a memory from two years earlier when I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a friend from college. We were walking home from the club on a quiet street when two gunmen ambushed us. At the bus station, I thought about the revolver that was pointed at my head in Argentina. But I knew that I shouldn’t indulge that memory.
I moved toward the other passengers and desperately wanted this man to affirm my best beliefs about humanity and not my worst. Once the bus had been boarded and we departed for Portland, we were all seated, except for the man, who paced back and forth. I tried focusing on my work, but I knew he was going to send a shock down the bus’s immune system.
Finally, we moved from the shoulder of the highway to a nearby shopping mall with a Patel Brothers and a Subway. The police had more questions for us. They snapped pictures of our drivers’ licenses and asked if we could identify the suspect’s duffel bag. "It was the gray one. And he was wearing camo," I said. The police chief asked if anyone knew where the man jumped out of the bus. I pulled out my phone and said, “I know exactly where. I pinned my location.”
“You could be a detective,” someone remarked, unable to give me eye contact.
I smoked a cigarette. Then another. Nothing helped resolve my immense dread and that of the other passengers. And it was shown by our small talk. “Wow, this was the best bus ride ever.” Or, “only five hours left, we’ll be back home in no time.” And “at least there was chocolate at Patel Brothers. I really needed that.” Calls were made to family members. “I’ll be three hours late, honey. And “fuck, this thing just happened. I promise I’m alright.”
At some point, we clapped for our driver, Dan. He came out of the situation with grace and professionalism and was able to deescalate things. He had seen a crisis or two, having experience in mental health clinics,” which he relayed in his state of the bus address. When Roger, Dan’s colleague, took over at a Wendy’s, he said: “You probably don’t want to hear this, but this is the latest the New York bus will ever be to Portland, Maine.”
One passenger joked: “the bus company should offer us free massages.” Another added: “free massages and psychotherapy.” A peculiar but comforting camaraderie developed. No one, for the most part, would understand these events, but us. I felt terribly sad for the man that jumped and was now in the hospital and for my fellow passengers. “Dystopia,” was what the woman in front of me called it.