Fiction Friday

The sequel to this.

The bus ground into second gear. The driver, short and ugly in the way of the unlucky, knew not to expect much from this particular bus. CCT No. 1125 was not known for legendary ability. The driver hated CCT No. 1125. This bus had a bad habit of stranding the driver with a couple dozen angry passengers along the trashy highways of his route. CCT No. 1125 smoked terribly, and the old sealing along the windows, long since been dried and rotted away by long, hot summers of dust and wind, let in exhaust fumes that had led to a number of vomit cleanups. The failures of the transit system, especially on this route, through this area where desolation sat on the terrain, were taken out on the driver. The driver by nature was a sensitive man. His wife had left him for a man less sensitive, but more assertive and exciting. Somewhere he had children who shared his eyes, his mouth and nose, but held the hand of an exciting (and taller) man.

He held the throttle down and cursed the Detroit 318 groaning and screaming against its governed maximum speed. CCT No. 1125 had no air conditioning. The passengers and the driver sweat in unison.

A passenger sat in the back of the bus, his leg over the faded green bag rescued earlier from the official carpet. A plastic shopping bag rested in his lap, still new. Inside the bag was a collection of the cheapest hygiene and food items that money could buy. When starting a life, the system of public assistance does not equip the journeyman well. John Pine sat straight and rigid, cheap headphones in his ears connected by a many times repaired wire to an equally cheap portable CD player. Music flooded his brain. Old Dylan tracks pushed out the cloud of angst and anxiety that wanted to erupt. John was not one to ride a bus. He had never attempted in his adult life, at least the last few chaotic years of it, to ride a bus, train, or plane without music.

Outside his window, the life and death struggle of CCT No. 1125 against the hill and the heat was ebbing down. Diesel fumes and chaos lingering on the fringes of his mind were giving him a headache. His sweat was not the sweat of uncomfortable heat. There was heat, heat from the sun beating down on the passengers; a beat up woman with bony arms and self-inflicted scratch wounds, a young boy of several recognizable races and probably one or two hidden, two skinny chocolate colored women in Wendy’s uniforms cooing softly in Spanish, a dilapidated waste of man wearing a white sleeveless shirt and an expression of either boredom or sadness, and a slew of the underground and unseen workers of every community. John’s sweat was of fear, and it soaked his heaving T-Shirt and ran down his pulsing neck. His eyes were closed against the onslaught of vision.

The driver, his charge rounding over Coyote Wash Hill spoke into his microphone, “Coyote Canyon, 3rd and Morrison.” Then went back to hating a man more exciting (and taller) than he. He expertly, but absently, pulled the bus into the bay of gravel and weeds that passed for a bus stop. A sign, long since riddle with bullet holes of various calibers, hung loosely from its post with a picture of a friendly bus welcoming the types of people who have to ride a bus.

John gasps, garnering the attention of a small child hanging on his mother’s arm. He stands with slightly more enthusiasm than most would have to leave a bus. The bag again makes a twisting journey on to the shoulder of John Pine. The bag speeds toward the front of the bus where a door, an escape, hangs open. The aisles trip him and cause stumbles that he does not notice. The door is closer. The last obstacle of the stairs flies past and he’s safe on the ground.

“You alright, buddy?”

The voice comes from the driver’s seat while John bends almost double panting in the dust and sun, his shaggy dust colored hair hanging over his face. A beaten and dried and cracked hand waves the driver off.

Thank you, I’m fine. Thanks. Sir. I’m fine.