_ Girls! Especially twelve-year-olds. If they weren’t so pushy, he might have gotten his Snickers. They sure giggled! Freckles! They were all freckles. His arm rises, and he stifles a yawn. Then he shivers. Alf and Jex had to leave. Said they’d wait on the corner for him. They waited. They waited until the bus came. Then he had to get on the next bus by himself at ten o’clock. Jon swallows. Even the trees by the road are staring at him. The old lady across the aisle coughs. Jon straightens, his warm breath choking at his tongue. He drops easily back into his seat. Just the old lady. She coughs again. With liver-spotted hand she reaches up and pats herself gently below the rutted leather of her throat. The light above her makes. her hair shine white. She lowers her hand and sits rigidly, hands in her lap and eyes riveted on the sausage-like bulge of the driver’s back. Jon breathes quiveringly for a moment and feels a chill flash up his spine. The ten o’clock traffic is scattered along the boulevard. The bus slows wheezingly for a red light. The light flicks out, and a green one replaces it. The motor whines, and the bus lurches forward. Jon sways in his seat and slides to the window on the right side of the back seat. He looks out. Below him glides a red Tempest which looks brown in the light from the street lamps along the boulevard. Two people seem to sit behind the wheel. The girl seems to Jon to be “scrunched” against the sweater-clad shoulders of the boy. The bus passes below another green light. Jon sees the white oblong sign on the corner. Twelfth street. His street is Second. The night is now darker because of the lack of stores with their bright signs. Through the smudged fingerprints on the window Jon sees the dark tangling forms of weeping willows that rustle in the intermittent breeze. The motor purrs. Jon leans his head against the cold pane. He breathes deeply and exhales. His throat vibrates. The dusky ragged mountains loom, smoothed and softened by the shrouding darkness. The Boyle house, set back among the tangling weepers, stares at Jon blankly through lightless windows. Branches sway, making moving shadows on the red brick walls. His stomach tenses almost unnoticeably, and he turns his head to look at the sausage driver. His gaze shifts to the old lady. The hair of the old lady shines white in the bus light. She sits in tombstone stillness, rigid, unmoving. Jon’s head shakes, and he leans it back against the pane. The bus nears Second Street. Jon stands. His eyes blur in a patchwork of greys, and he feels them burn for a moment. He sways and walks down the aisle along the ribbed mat up to the front of the bus. He leans toward the driver’s ear and asks to be let off at Second. The driver mumbles something about pulling the cord. Jon lurches as the bus slows. He catches himself by grasping the pole by the door. The brakes squeal, and the bus whines to a stop. The door yawns open. The driver opens his thick lips and says in a slow mellow drawl, ‘Watch your step, son.” He stares straight ahead at the red light. Jon steps down the three steps, stopping at each level. He 34 35 Silver Shimmers The fA against pond s boy Cant deur picks blue silence Up a rock, aims, but throw. — LAURENCE TEN HUSTON O’CLOCK BUS RIDE Through the film and running cracks of the bus window Jon watches the lighted stores pass in the late autumn dark. The oval lights inside the bus above each seat illuminate the green sameness of the seats and walls. He sits at the back of the bus, isolated from the driver and the only other passenger, a veined and shriveled old lady. With chubby hands of an eight-year-old he rubs the silver cowboy buckle on his white belt. He rubs the small bronze covered wagon which stands out from the nickel plate of the buckle. When the shiny surface is smudged, Jon doubles himself until his mouth is just over the bronze wagon. His belly rolls and folds beneath the cotton softness of his plaid flannel shirt. The blood begins to drain to his head. His mouth opens, and he breathes enough to cause a film to form on the silver surface. Then he straightens and feels the warm blood surge from behind his forehead and cheeks. He grasps a small knot of flannel material at the bottom of the plaid shirt and wipes the buckle. The material snags on the sharp edges of the covered wagon. The bus motor drones. Jon stops wiping and leans his blond head on the slickness of the green upholstery. The vibration of the motor through the back seat massages his back. His eyes gaze at the tombstone-like stillness of the old lady. Her grey-white hair blurs. If only he hadn’t gone to that movie at the Plaza Park. Yeah, the guys said they'd wait before they’d left the candy counter. It was eight forty-five when Frosty, the Arctic Leprechaun let out. Then there was that mob at the candy counter. Jon shifts his weight, window. blinks, and looks out the cold glass of the