Bus Ride Downtown

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The bus was a green-painted machine, old and heavy, smelling of scorched rubber and the dry, baked breath of seventy passengers. It rumbled down the asphalt river under a July sun that beat like a brass gong against the roof. Inside, the air did not move; it hung thick, a warm gelatin that smelled of gasoline and old wool. The mother sat straight-backed on the cracked leather seat, her cotton dress pinned neatly at the collar, her hands folded over a vinyl purse that held three crisp dollar bills and a list written in pencil. She did not look at the heat or the drivers in their passing sedans, those cool, glass-enclosed worlds she could not enter because she did not know the secret mechanics of steering wheels and clutches. She simply rode, a quiet captain in a box of iron and glass.

Beside her, the two boys were small, soft creatures of perpetual motion, their legs too short to touch the floor. They were not yet of the school-world, that vast, coming country of chalk dust and clocks, but existed in the timeless country of early childhood, where every hum of the tires was a rocket blast to Mars. The older boy, his hair a shock of sun-bleached yellow, pressed his forehead hard against the window pane, unmindful of the glass that burned like a stovetop. He watched the telephone poles flash past like lonely, giant toothpicks sticking out of the earth, each wire carrying a million invisible, electric whispers across the city. The younger brother leaned against his mother’s arm, his thumb tucked into his cheek, his eyes wide and round as he watched the dust motes dance in the shafts of light that cut through the open, useless vents.

The city grew up around them then, brick by brick, a canyon of concrete and promise. The bus squealed to a halt, the pneumatic doors folding back with a sound like a great, tired beast exhaling its final breath. A wave of sidewalk heat met them at the steps, smelling of popcorn from the five-and-dime and asphalt melting into tar. The mother stepped down first, her shoes hitting the pavement with a clean, sharp click, and reached back to pluck her sons from the steel steps. They stood together on the corner of Ninth and Main, three small figures under a sky so blue it hurt to look at, ready to brave the cool, cavernous aisles of the department stores where the fans whirled like airplanes overhead.

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