The Gauntlet

Friday evening.

Coming down Queens Drive into Montego Bay, I ready myself.  I am prepared for this journey.  My windows are rolled up.  My two Jamaican one hundred dollar bills are tucked under my leg.  I approach the intersection of St James Road & Howard Cooke Highway.  I breathe deeply.  I stop for the light.  I like to do the unexpected.

Just outside my window stands a skinny black man with an unkept beard, no teeth & a dirty red rag.  He is holding his hand out.  I look forward.  He approaches my window & knocks on it with his rag.  He mumbles.  I edge forward.  On my other side a fat woman with orange hair is walking between the lanes selling newspapers.  I catch her eye & shake my head 'no thank you'.  The man with the rag bangs on my window again, then waves his red rag around while yelling at me & bending forward to peer with both hands into my window.  I look forward.  The light changes.

I toe the gas pedal, happy to make my escape from the rag man.  I get about two feet away, & find myself stuck in the intersection with at least 30 other cars coming three different directions.  The light is in my favor, but the intersection is packed solid.  We make the best of it.  We all creep forward until we are fully committed to the intersection.  Like entering a stream of mud; we are not moving much but cannot escape.  Now & then a cross traffic vehicle manages to slip thru.  It honks.  I honk.  Everybody honks.  Could be "thank you!"  Could be "fuck you!"  Hard to tell.  The man with the rag is banging on someone else's window behind me.  The newspaper woman is doing some business with another car.  As I inch forward I begin to hear the sound of the peanut machine whistling.

The cars around me & I make it thru the intersection, packed together as if on a ferry.  The peanut machine is just outside my window now, whistling its shrill story.  Beyond the peanut machine I can see the ocean, & the sun making its dive over the hills, just out of view.  On my way to the next traffic light I encounter:

The Peanut Man:  long & lanky, wearing a knit rasta cap, he walks between the lanes, as they do, offering his peanuts wrapped in heavy paper
The Phone Card Man:  stretching out accordion strips of perforated phone cards
A Newspaper Man:  in case I missed the lady at the last intersection
Another Newspaper Man:  the competition
The Michelin Man:  He is not really carrying tires, but around his neck are many steering-wheel covers, which look like bicycle tires.  Not only that, he is carrying a battalion of little flags sticking out of his rasta cap & other tourist souvenirs dangling from both arms. He unrolls windshield sun shades like ancient scrolls for my perusal - assuming I had come on this trip, fighting my way thru this Friday evening traffic, for the express purpose of buying a sun shade. 

Meanwhile the slow lane is stopped due to three different taxis on-ing & off-ing passengers.   Effectively a dam, the taxis are stopped in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken exit, blocking a substantial artery of cars whose passengers clutch their buckets of chicken.  There is honking.  There is yelling & waving of chicken wings .  The cars in the slow lane are trying to merge into the fast lane to get around the taxis, not that one can tell from the current crawling pace which lane might be which.  Of course, I expected this; I am territorially guarding my right to be in the fast lane by only allowing the required two inches between my bumper & the car in front of me. The pedestrians, who outnumber the cars, rise up en mass to cross the street between the stationary traffic.  The more agile place their hands on the two vehicles they are trying to squeeze between & swing their legs over the bumpers.  There is more honking, amid the continuous din of the peanut machine.  I can see the signal up ahead. But before I can get there I find: 

The Drink Man:  selling water & juice, dancing & singing, belly waggling, happy as can be, he bounces & jives in between the lanes of sluggish traffic
The Cashew Man:  I do business with the cashew man.  I hold my two bills up to my windshield, spread apart so he can see how many bills there are.  I make eye contact with him & point at him with the money.  He comes to my window, breaks off two plastic-wrapped bags of cashews from the wire hanger that he uses to carry them, trades them for my two hundred & then blesses me.
The Windshield Wiper Man:  This man tries to sneak up on me from the side with his bottle & squeegee while I am dealing with the cashew man.  Without even turning my head or interrupting my transaction I quickly turn on my wipers & successfully send him on to the next vehicle.

Then the light changes & I am thru the gauntlet!  There is still more traffic & more vendors up ahead, but I have cleared the worst.  The sun is gone & the whistle of the peanut machine is but a memory - until I begin to hear another one, somewhere up ahead in the dusk...