“Can you do more than trusses and buses?” the drunk said. But I could smell what he meant by that. And there was more poetry in his mistake than in the trucks I had sketched out flat.

The bus lurched along, and he sang his vodka song. He dropped his bag, and it rolled down the aisle like a bottle falling out of a crib. The smell of street medicine hung thick in the heat, and I told him he should tone it down. But the driver knew what this was leading to, and like a sheriff told the drunk to leave town.

Smell the bus ... feel the truss. Open the door that leads to evermore, and in the street you can forget about us. All our traps ... all our slaps. But you’ve inherited the windy dust. Wander down, out of town, within your carriage of disgrace and disgust. No one to hold you when you need to fold, yet in collapsing lies the ultimate trust.

“Can you do more than trusses and buses?” Can you do more than romanticize grief? ‘Cuz in the smell of your breath lies an impending death, just as sure as the falling of a leaf. You can lie in the gutter, you can look at the stars, but you’re still populating buses and bars.

And he had still been dressed quite nicely. So I wondered who was missing him now. Who was calling him from her dream, like a mother calling out to a child trapped under a building? Was there someone who would still cook him dinner that was fit for a king? All of that rained down on me, like the smell of his medicine wafting free at last. He’d grabbed at his bag like a slave holding onto his past.

And in that instant I could see how well he’d done his trusses and buses.


copyright © 2006 Bill Brent

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“He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind:
and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart.”
--Proverbs 11:29

[interpreted as:] When people create problems within their family, community, or country, they ultimately suffer the consequences of their actions.

—quoting www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-27,pageNum-37.html


57 minutes, 325 words
stopped 4:35 a.m.