I Want to Be Alone

None of Manhattan's bitter intramural feuds is waged with more desperate intensity and temper than the battle of the bus driver v. his passengers. To the riders, the driver is a chronically exasperated ogre who delights in abandoning them on rainy street corners, or, if he consents to take them aboard, greets them with insults and treats them to bone-crushing lurches. To the driver, the enemy is a hydra-headed beast: a door blocker, a purse fumbler, and willfully uninformed. Jockeying his big green and cream-colored juggernaut down congested Madison Avenue one day last week, Driver James Coyne gloomily considered such frustrations.

At the corner of 85th Street, as pennies and nickels rattled into the coin box, Driver Coyne thought he spotted an arch foe: the cheapskate who tries to beat the fare. Angrily, he demanded the rest of the 7-c- fare. As angrily, the passenger shouted back that he had paid in full. Coyne gave up: "All right, Jack. Forget it."

But the passenger had tasted blood. For the next four blocks old indignities fanned a running, profane tirade. Other passengers listened with moody satisfaction. Finally Coyne could stand no more. He wrenched the wheel, tromped on the brake and slowed to the curb. Leaping to his feet, he turned on his passengers: "Everybody off the bus. I don't have to take this. I'm going back to the garage."

He handed out transfers to all hands. He wheeled his bus around. Then, in a state of exultant triumph such as all Manhattan drivers dream of, he headed back up Madison Avenue--unhurried and alone.

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