The Bus

      The bus that morning was four minutes and twenty-seven seconds late to reach the stop by the park. The smartly dressed woman waiting alone for this very bus was perspiring a little more than she had expected in her navy blazer. The brief thought passed through her mind that it might make her face shiny and give her boss an excuse not to take her seriously today. But as quickly as she realized she was thinking the thought, she tried to throw it out of her mind. That was not important right now, and she was overthinking her day as usual anyway. Where in the world was the bus? She wished she had a car.

           The bus driver knew he was going to be four minutes and twenty-seven seconds late to reach the stop by the park, but frankly he did not care much. Actually, he knew he was going to be late, but not by exactly how much. There were nine people in the bus already, but he was paying them as little attention as possible. What did little girls want for their sixth birthdays? Wondering this took up much more of his thought process today, and he was beginning to think he may just have to go to Walmart after his shift and picked whatever looked nice. He had to get something before his daughter went to the birthday party tonight. Oh look. Only one woman at the stop by the park today. This should be quick.

           Before the day had really begun, and definitely long before the woman in the blazer had woken up this morning, the man sleeping on the bench next to the bus lot had started awake, woken by a loud and unpleasant noise. The noise woke him, but he cared little about what happened on the other side of the chain link, so long as it did not affect him. He fell back asleep in only eighteen seconds.

           On the other side of the chain link, three kids froze at hearing the screeching noise. Surely someone heard that. Would there be someone nearby to come and investigate? Hearing no footsteps or car engine, they drew their bicycles closer together and tried to hush their giggles. Whispering fiercely, they decided to leave the bus lot. It was too much work to ride the bikes between the busses anyway, what with the tight spaces and gravel. It was not as much fun as they had anticipated. What should they do about the long scrape one of their pedals had just made on the side of one bus? Well, there was not much they could do about it now. Better to leave and not get in trouble than hang around, of course.

           So when the bus driver had gotten to work that morning, of course he had immediately noticed the large scratch, even though it was low and near the bottom edge of his bus. It was exactly five feet and three inches long, which he did not know. What he did know, however, was that it had most certainly not been there when he had left the bus last night. After driving this bus for so long and keeping it looking decent the whole time, it was annoying to see the scratch. What had caused it? Nothing should have been happening in the bus lot during the night. So he spent an unplanned four minutes and twenty-seven seconds that morning inspecting the scratch and wondering at its origin.

           The man sleeping on a bench nearby had woken for the day and gathered his few belongings to leave, as usual. He was perfectly in routine for the morning. But in the back of his mind, he was a little frustrated at having been woken in the night by the unusual noise. He usually slept hard, since there were always strange noises in the night. But for some reason he had woken up last night, and he did not appreciate it. Ugh. He started walking, in search of a breakfast.

           After scraping the bus as they snuck through the bus lot in the night, the three kids snuck home and into bed. They woke up too soon the next morning and dragged themselves out of bed for school. None of them told their parents they were tired, of course, and of course none of them mentioned anything about the night before. They all met in the middle of the cul-de-sac at seven forty-one to walk to school together. They discussed the birthday party two of their little sisters were going to that afternoon at another house in the neighborhood. The three wondered if they could get some cake if they showed up just after all the younger kids ate. They knew the birthday girl’s mom, so they figured she would probably feed them if they showed up.

           As the three kids walked through the front doors of school, as the man from the bench ate his breakfast, as the bus driver continued driving his route and forgot all about the scratch, and as the woman in the navy blazer sat down at her desk to begin the day’s work, the day, though it had begun slightly unlike normal, was proceeding as it always did. A jagged scrape on the side of a bus seemed forgotten and unimportant.

           But what the woman did not know as she sat at her desk looking intently at her computer screen was that, in the four minutes and twenty-seven seconds she was late to work this morning, her boss had answered a call meant for her. What she did not know was that this call had been the very call she had been awaiting all month and that her boss had forgotten to tell her she missed it. And so, the offer of her dream job went forgotten, and the woman assumed she had been passed over without even being declined. The woman continued to work the same desk job she had for years, and her boss remembered the call he was supposed to tell her about only weeks later. To save face, he decided not ever to tell her what had happened.

           What the bus driver did not know as he drove his route all day, barely paying attention to the roads he knew so well, was that the city would hold him accountable for the scratch on the side of the bus he drove. At the end of his shift, he would be let go from his job and his pay would be deducted to cover the damage he did not cause. As he headed home in shock and frank disbelief, he would forget all about the errand he needed to run. And so, the man’s daughter had no gift to take to the birthday party she attended that afternoon. The mother of the birthday girl assumed this was due to laziness on the part of the bus driver and his wife, and she no longer allowed their daughters to play together, assuming the bus driver and his wife were bad influences on her child.

           What the man who had been sleeping on the bench did not know as he found a new and hopefully quieter place to sleep the next night was that it was very fortuitous that he did not sleep again by the bus lot. Another person had taken his place on the bench the next night but was himself woken up in the early morning. This time, however, the cause of the arousing was not some kids messing around in the bus lot nearby, but rather two masked robbers taking what little the man had. The first man’s new sleeping place was much more peaceful and his sleep much more restful. And so, the man was inadvertently saved from robbery.

           What the three kids who had decided to sneak into the bus lot and had accidentally scraped the side of one of the busses did not know as they went to school the next morning was that their neighbor, an elderly insomniac, had been sitting on the porch nearly all night and had seen them sneak out of their homes and, later, back in. And so, by the time they arrived home from school that afternoon, their parents all knew about their sneaking out. Because each of the kids refused to share what they had done in their time away from home, they were each punished as if they had been out for all the wrong reasons. But none of the adults on the cul-de-sac were ever the wiser about the five-foot, three-inch long scratch on the side of one of the city busses. None of the kids went to the birthday party with the little sister that afternoon to ask for slices of cake, but all were instead at home and not allowed to visit friends for many afternoons to come.

Six slices of cake were left uneaten at the close of the birthday party, and unfortunately, they grew mold at an astounding speed and were thrown in the garbage uneaten two mornings later.