By the time he reached Boston, Steve had been driving without really seeing for a few hours. He’d picked up seven passengers at H— and another ten at L—, and by the time he was halfway to Boston, the smell of the gasoline trailing from the cars irked and smoothed him. Irked, because the smell worried him, made him think the oily black smoke would curdle up through his fingernails and into his blue black veins. Smoothed, because he was used to it and because he could half-smell the pavement soaked with rain through the grain of the gasoline.
Passing through yet another woodland town, Steve wondered why there were no high speed rails in America. He pictured himself on a white bullet train speeding through Japan. His mother had read him a book that talked about the Shinkansen once. He’d enjoyed picturing that long-nosed train jet across the landscape, Mount Fuji behind it like some ancient, watchful grandmother. He missed his mother reading to him. He missed his little wooden bed. He missed having to reach up to take his favorite books down from the top shelf. Now, all he could smell was the perfume of the woman in the row behind him who was, as he’d overheard, “working on a Reddit brand lift.”
Steve pulled the bus over for a routine examination at the border with Massachusetts. He almost put the bus into park on the shoulder of the road. But no policeman came, and he drove on through. He crossed the Tobin Bridge. He noticed the rickety structure advertising “Boston Sand + Gravel Co.” on the side of Highway 93 had received a bright repaint. The blue and grey was nice, Steve decided. Less flashy.
One hour and forty-three minutes later, Steve pulled his coach out of South Station, honking thrice before backing out and pulling the bus around the garage divider. In the station, he’d seen an orange gummy bear at the base of a toilet. It made him chuckle, and he thought of that famous shrine in Kyoto. The bright orange had no place being there either. Japan was probably a fulsome place, Steve thought. Then he got back on the bus and waved the next round of passengers aboard.
Somewhere along the highway on the bus ride home, a truck pulled up next to Steve’s bus. The cab was high enough for Steve to sit face to face with his driver, and he surprised himself by looking the truck driver in the eye. Startled, he fought the corners of his lips, but to no avail—they lifted. He remembered being in fifth grade, riding a bus through St. Paul to see a play-pretend Benjamin Franklin in his printing press museum. Steve had been so small then, but he’d looked the guy in the car next to him in the eye, and the man had actually maintained his gaze. Little Steve, wide-eyed, had simply stared. It had briefly occurred to him to duck and hide himself away, but then he remembered he was in a big yellow school bus and the man couldn’t do anything to him. So he stayed. He stared until the man couldn’t stare back at him anymore and he had to move the car forward in traffic. It was Steve’s first taste of power.
Now he looked at the man next to him and tasted that metallic grin again. Triumphant, he drove the bus homeward. At the next stop, he was more gallant than usual. He escorted the elderly passengers down the bus steps and made like a train conductor, calling “all-aboard” and telling passengers it was a great day for a bus ride in the sunshine. On the way from the second-to-last stop to his home station, he passed a woman in a Hyundai who’d glued fangs to the front grill and laid faux tiger hide on the seats inside it. Her license plate read “Dragula.” She did not make Steve think of Kyoto. But still he tipped his hat, and he kept his sunglasses on his forehead all the way home.
~
📍En route to Boston
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