Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by caitlin macrae

Something is wrong with the bus drivers of north Brooklyn. I’d like to chalk it up to the arrival of these new chatty buses, the result of hours upon hours of driving across town listening those pesky recorded voices. That condescending, know-it-all motherfucker intoning demands to move away from the doors even when you’re trying to exit, the shrill smarm of the woman exhorting everyone to please exit through the rear doors every time the stop button is pushed, even though people will continue to shove their way to the front doors no matter what she says. I’d like to blame it on these stupid buses, but I don’t think I can. The buses have been here for a while; the drivers have started to scare me only recently.

They are flying down the streets. This feels nice when I’m on the bus, late for work and need to move quickly, but less so when standing on the street in the middle of a heat wave. They are not stopping at the stops even when there are people there, leaving folks stranded in the humid air with sweaty upper lips and pink cheeks, much later now than they wanted to be. They shame old ladies whose cards have run out. I have seen this happen six times in the past week, the same scenario. “Ain’t gonna matter how many times you swipe that card, it’s empty. Empty, empty, empty. You listenin’ to me? Ain’t gonna happen, lady. Just ain’t gonna happen.” The women look down at their orthopedic sandals, toes encased in nylons. They shuffle through their change purses and pull out crumpled dollars. “What you think this is? We don’t take dollars! Shit!” The buses, you see, do not take dollar bills; unless you’re wandering around with two hundred and twenty-five cents packed away in your pockets, you’re shit out of luck. So the old women shuffle down the aisles, holding bills out hoping someone will have change while the drivers mutter their irritation. There is more honking, more yelling at other drivers, a surprising amount of unrestrained swearing. Someone asks for the back doors, notoriously sticky, to be opened. Ignored, they ask more than once. “Can you just wait a minute? Hold up, DAMN!”

Everyone on this air-conditioned, super talky, driven-by-an-angry-person bus seems to take on this blind rage, the feel tense and irritated. Nobody gives their seat up for anyone; people with big, bulky packages are roundly shunned with unmoved shins and feet, unapologetic shoulder nudges. Of all the places to be in a heat wave, you’d think that an air-conditioned boat, careening down the road would be the happening place to be, soothing enough to unfurl the white banner of inner calm. But it’s becoming less and less worth it, and I find myself taking to the pavement a few stops early, where the crazy gets muffled by the warm sticky air.

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by Liz Wyckoff

Mr. Chartrand lives in Harrisville, New York—a village forty miles south of my hometown, with a population of six-hundred and fifty-three. He’s eighty-seven years old, wears his shirts tucked in, and has deep creases stretching from either side of his nose to the corners of his mouth.

Since he was twelve, Mr. Chartrand has been a dowser. He uses a stick to detect water far below the earth’s surface. Some people call this water witching or divining or doodlebugging. Others call it bunk. Rubbish. Hooey. Mr. Chartrand calls it “a gift from the good Lord.”

“There’s quite a lot to it,” he says. The stick must come from a fruit tree. It must be large and freshly cut and shaped like a Y. He pulls the branch apart with both hands and walks off in the direction of hidden water veins. Once he’s found them, he paces off the precise location for a well and provides instructions on where to dig and how deep.

Some dowsers have been known to locate other things, like gemstones or gravesites, but not Mr. Chartrand. He can’t explain why—he’s just good at finding water.

Still, I can’t help but wish he’d help me find other things. I wish Mr. Chartrand could pay me a visit, clip a crotched branch from a cherry tree down the street, and extend his arms to find me a job, for instance. I’d follow him and his tucked-in shirt on a jagged path across town to an office building with some open position waiting to be filled.

Or, even better, what if Mr. Chartrand could find love? He’d collect an apple bough from behind my apartment and allow its invisible pull to lead him to another human—some man that he could mark for me like an X in the dirt.

Maybe each of us has a gift for finding something. Lucky pennies on the sidewalk, arrowheads in the weeds, used clothing that doesn’t smell, funny friends with infectious laughs. And maybe those things are just as important as water.

If I told that to Mr. Chartrand, I’m not sure he’d agree. But I bet he’d smile, stretching those creases on his face just like a divining rod, and that might tell me all I need to know.

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Hi!

Welcome to our “Slices of Life” blog. The concept is simple: we want to take the time to focus on the little things in life that we normally would let pass us by, but that are actually the details that make the world extraordinary. We’ll be posting entries every few days from folks across the globe describing something they observe that makes them pause and smile or ponder their surroundings. We hope these everyday observations allow you to see the world in a new way. Enjoy!

If you have a little slice of your day that you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you at blog@slicemagazine.org (an accompanying photo is always welcome).

And please, if you haven’t already, click here to swing by the site for the magazine.