The Brunston Bus Tragedy

Buses still run through town, despite them being empty. The Brunston Bus Tragedy has rocked us to the core. Ours is considered a town of constant dusk – a sandy bitterness has settled over the foothills; the sky is blank and dusty. Brunston is the doorstep to rolling grey hills. The clouds above them are flat and few, the bitumen of the roads below them segregated into large black puzzle pieces. Stacked, white paint-peeling beams form drunken walls, crowned with broad tin roofs. The inhabitants are scarce, standing idly about in dirty doorways, as purposeless fence posts.

The buses never fit in. They purred instead of rattled, engines fresh and new, the windows clear, uncracked and the paint on the doors blue and crisp. Nobody wants to look at them. Not those buses.

The buses trundle up and down Alders Road, nevertheless. Alders Road is a hill itself, sloping down through the town’s heart, lined with locked doors set into sombre facades and trailing past the stained ground where the old red water tower once stood. Beside this, the council building – a two-storey wooden establishment – crouches on broad log posts flaking with green paint. Ryff’s Pub is its stooped neighbour and, as with many struggling, remote communities, is the tired retreat for the remaining townspeople. Entering with long strides, I am wary of the wan aged eyes turning my way. I approach the bar, and perch on one of two low stools. It groans beneath my weight; weak, like the rest of us.

A young, lean figure – barely out of his youth – emerges from beneath the counter, thin fingers toying gently with a square of fabric embroidered with a red letter ‘L’. His left hand nurses a glass. Typically, a bartender would be in the act of cleaning it with the cloth. Not the case here, though. The glass is half-full of liquid and froth the same colour as the sky; he lifts it to his sweat-lined lips before meeting my gaze.

“Welcome to Don’s Pub,” is the slow greeting, “What can I getcha’?”

Uncomfortable shuffling from behind reaches my ears. It was Don’s pub. We’re all still getting used to the changes, even after having months to adjust. I brace my boots against the floorboards and shift the worn leather strap of my watch, “Just a water, please.”

He chuckles softly, almost imperceptibly, the creases beneath his weary eyes deepening, “Iced?”

“Oh, you bet,” I return, offering an unconvincing smile and a laugh that dies before reaching my lips. My hand wanders over the page of the newspaper on the bench, dated weeks ago.

“Ryff?”

He turns back, sliding across my glass. I take a brief sip.

“How’s things?” The question carries risk.

“A’right.”

I nod.

“You?”

I nod again, “The same.”

A beat, and Ryff turns away to refill; he sniffs, shoulders dragged toward his chest. The silence is oppressive, dense in my ears, fractured only by supressed coughs and the depressing thuds of bottles against benchtops. Occasional lines of golden light spike the air, suspending dust motes a metre off the floor. Everything else feels grey, heavy. It drags on me.

I down my glass quickly. Standing to leave, I place down three carefully folded bills, “Sorry, this was a mistake.”

“Town’s full of ‘em,” is the reply, but not from Ryff. I turn as a large hand drops onto my shoulder. A wide man – cloth shirt tight against his chest and unbuttoned a third of the way down – stands erect, dark moustache like the bristles of a brush twitching in a fleeting grin. His teeth flash white against his russet skin.

“Hank. Hey, man.” I slam my own hand down over his forearm in similar greeting, “Thought you were still at Maggs’ place.”

“Kicked me out,” Hank tips back his head with a beer bottle pressed firmly to his lips, loose droplets catching in the hairs on his wrist.

“Can’t imagine why.”

“She’ll have me back soon, don’tcha worry.”

“And when exactly do you expect that to be?”

His hoarse voice takes on a resigned quality, “Two to three weeks?” He clears his throat, “Actually maybe four, since… it’s coming ‘round again. Best leave her alone for it.”

I swallow, beginning to approach the exit. The shuffling has played up again, “Prolly’ a good idea. Where do you think you’ll stay ‘til then?”

“Thinking I could bunk with you?” Hank grins, jamming an elbow into my ribs.

“Sure,” I shrug him aside and shove into the door, stepping out onto the pavement, “You can take the spare room.”

“Right, spare room…” he trails off, swinging the bottle from his fingertips, “You got a car? Penner dropped me off, but he’ll be in there a while.”

“No,” I lead the way across the road, toward the general store, “I took the bus.”

He stops and faces me. Heat rises in my cheeks. Hank’s eyes are pits of black, boring into mine with that sour intensity so often present in the faces of Brunston folk.

“Yeah,” I mutter, walking forward swiftly, “the bus.”

Violently, I’m torn around, my arm in Hank’s fist. Hank’s voice clicks down an octave, gruffness taking on a far more dangerous quality, a gritty wrath borne from grief. His fingers pressing deep into my muscle.

“Why?” Beer-laced spittle flies and panic punches my gut.

“Gord has to charge more for fuel nowadays; bus is free.”

His response is a whip crack in my ear, “That shouldn’t matter. We all agreed.”

“We didn’t. Not really. Look, it’s one time, alright? And nothin’ happened.”

“It’s not about that,” he growls, “And you know it.”

I do know it. I sigh past the pain in my chest.

“Where’s your respect?” Hank pushes harder into me. The bottle drops from his grasp and shatters, the sharp sound penetrating the swollen outdoor atmosphere. But his stare doesn’t waver, “You’ve seen what it did to us –”

“–Maybe,” I prise myself from his grip, “But maybe I’m moving on. Is that so bad?”

Again, I’m slammed backwards, my head cracking against the timber. Instantly my ears are ringing, and I draw my hands to them, blinking past tears. Hank’s back is to me, now. His boots meet the ground heavily as he stumbles back toward Ryff’s. His final shout – more of a roar – reverberates across the empty road.

Fatigue echoes through my forehead, a low sickness groans in my stomach. I force movement into my limbs and make for the dip in the ground next to the council building, where I stop. My foot stirs the dark dirt gently before I kneel in it, avoiding the holes. Rubbing my sternum, I raise my eyes to the tarnished expanse of afternoon sky, picturing the tall, rusted legs that had supported the water tower once here. How they’d snapped and crumpled, weak as twigs. How the great container atop them had dropped, so heavy. How the metal squealed and shrieked as it tore apart, and the water charged out with brutal force. How the bus had-

I’m upright once more, returning the way I came. As I pass the general store again, brushing the earth from my jeans, I hesitate, looking over my shoulder. Following Hank’s outburst, I doubt anyone will offer a ride. Nauseous, I turn from the woebegone sight of the pub squatting there and keep walking. My sigh curls into the thick air. I came by bus. If I want to get home, I’ll need to return by bus.

It resides where I left it, six streets over at the stop on Colby Lane, a dead stretch lined with hollow houses. A wind is picking up, keening mournfully through the broken wood and leaning signs. The bus’s interior produces a sterile odour. Each seat on either side of the long aisle is wrapped in dark pressed fabric, with seatbelts hanging like whips straight down on one side. The nameless driver clicks the engine into gear, guiltless and ignorant. A city-dweller, most likely, unaware of the scathing devastation associated with these buses. My stomach twists as I sit and memories break, like waves, into my mind. Me exiting the general store at 5pm, just in time to see the bus tear by, much too fast. Just in time to hear the screams as they rent the air and smell the smoke as it plumed from the wreckage.

Yet too late to do anything, to stop the colourless desolation that seeped through Brunston, like a disease, that day, where it remains still.

The fabric of the community pulled apart at the stitches, leaving us in limp threads. Disturbing the dust with haunted steps, we moved like lost ghosts for a long time. Our hearts consumed with black infection, rendered us only capable of basic motion and sometimes, not even that. We are tied to this place – by grief, by memory – but do we have to be?

The bus sighs to a stop outside a field of greening grass, my house sitting solidly in its centre. Something gnaws at me, sudden courage blended painfully with guilt as my mind revisits my words to Hank, “Maybe I’m moving on. Is that so bad?” The weight pinning me to this town – to its people – has to go.

“Do you mind coming back here in a couple hours?” I call back, as my first foot meets the soil. Though Brunston may not be ready, maybe I am.