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The Bus Ride Along the bumpy road the shuddering engine bucked and sighed dirty whispers while the strangers inside stared blank-faced at the seats in front of them. Phil, seated four rows from the front on the left in his usual spot, held a newspaper between grimy fingers and had let his eyes wander over the words of one paragraph for nearly half an hour, but still couldn't tell you what it said. The long ride home was almost as exhausting as the long days of heavy work he had done for sixteen years, but twice as monotonous. The route was the same for as long as he could remember. Lucille, the driver, wore the same uniform, the same hair style and the same grimace that she had for the past eight years. The only thing that had changed about her was the amount of jiggly flesh that hung from her arm and rippled when she changed gears. Still easily half an hour from Phil's stop, the bus slowed to a halt and the doors squeaked open. An elderly man with a slight ring of remaining gray hair around the back of his scalp stepped onto the bus, deposited a dollar into the plexiglass box, and smiled at the driver before walking down the narrow path between the seats. The man stopped when he approached Phil's seat, although there were several seats in the vicinity that were vacant. Phil raised his eyes, but not his head, to meet the stranger's. The man smiled as he had to the driver. “This seat taken?” Phil glanced at the empty seats in front and behind him before answering, “Well, I suppose it isn't.” Without another word or gesture, the man sat gently beside Phil and rested a black walking cane between his knees, and the bus hissed and squealed its way back onto the road. A few moments passed, and Phil's eyes returned to the paragraph that he would never really read. “Thanks,” the man nodded toward Phil and said. “Huh?” Phil asked. “For the seat.” The man patted the cracking vinyl between them with a spotted hand whose skin resembled wax paper. He chuckled to himself. “I know there are other, more available seats on here. I just wasn't in the mood to sit alone on such a beautiful day.” Phil shrugged his shoulders and gave a slight nod before pretending to look back at his newspaper, but his eyes wandered to the window beside him. The man was right. It was an uncharacteristically pleasant day for this time of summer. Here, sandwiched between several excruciating hot days and the torrential downpour that was promised for the weekend, was a late afternoon where the sun hid behind lazy clouds and a cool breeze tickled through the leaves. Even the birds had noticed, and they darted in sharp arcs through the traffic playing tag. As if the man could sense that Phil was noticing the weather, and with utter disregard for Phil's attempt to ignore him, he laughed and patted Phil's leg. “We don't get a lot of days like this one this time of year. Funny thing is, it took me eighty-four years to figure that out.” He paused for a moment. “I wonder how many of these days I missed?” His question hung between them unanswered, and Phil felt the man's eyes not looking at him, but past him through the window, seemingly lost in the world outside of the groaning steel box they were sitting in. Phil remembered a day like this many years ago. He and his brothers each had a sack of fireworks, and they spent hours in the tall grasses of the field behind their farmhouse lighting them, throwing them, hearing them pop and crackle until their ears rang and their fingers were blackened from the dusty paper shells. They took turns lighting the bigger ones that had waxed wicks and tossing them into a small pond, seeing who could have theirs explode closest to the water's surface. They laughed and played until it was dark, when they brought out the roman candles and shot balls of colored fire into the darkened sky while fireflies hovered in clusters nearby. Without realizing it, Phil smiled, and it was the first time he had been genuinely happy all day - maybe all week. Maybe longer. It felt like longer. The man noticed Phil's smile and asked, “Whatcha thinking about?” Phil turned to him, the smile still playing between the corners of his mouth. “Nothing really. Just a time when I was a kid. Shootin' firecrackers.” The man laughed as if he had been there himself. “Oh, what a time that must have been!” “Yeah. I just about blew a finger off. My younger brother held a long wick in his hand while he lit it. I guess he didn't figure that wick would burn all the way through his closed fist.” Phil laughed again. “God, was mom mad at us for that. Of course, we didn't tell her 'till bedtime.” Both men laughed. “You know,” Phil continued, “I oughta buy a sack of fireworks for the boys. Maybe drive out to the country and light 'em off.” His eyes took on a faraway look as he pictured it. “Of course, I don't get paid again until the end of the month, but I'm supposed to get a little mid-year bonus next week. I guess it'll have to wait, but I'll sure look forward to it.” His words notwithstanding, Phil's tone had changed from excited to dejected in hardly a breath. The older man sighed. “I used to be like you, if you don't mind me saying so.” “How's that?” “Always waiting for 'a few days from now', or to be a few years older, or to get the next raise, or the next house, or the next car. I spent most of my life wishing every day was the next day because of something I thought might come along. Kind of like fast-forwarding through life, I guess. Always trying to get to the good parts.” Phil nodded, but said nothing. “When I was young, I wanted to land a great job, and sooner or later, I did. Then I wanted raises and promotions, which I got. Eventually, I pined away for retirement, so I could 'really live'. All those years I was just waiting for the next big thing and I wasted a huge portion of my life learning that it was a foolish thing to do. You see what I'm saying?” Phil's eyes fell to his lap and he nodded slowly. “One day,” the man continued, “I realized I was never happy today, because I was always looking forward to tomorrow. Now look at me.” The man spread his hands, inviting Phil to look at his fragile frame. Phil looked from the man's intelligent eyes to a body that he could easily imagine was once powerful and agile, but was now withered with age. The man's bony knees were visible through his thinning slacks. His hands were still strong, but weakened by inflamed joints. Still, the man smiled. “Maybe you think I'm unhappy.” “No, not necessarily,” Phil replied, but his lowered eyes seemed to say otherwise. “Well, I'm not.” The man moved his head closer to Phil's. “I've been happier the last few years than I've been my entire life, and do you want to know why?” “Sure,” Phil said. The man removed a wedding band from his finger and held it out for Phil to see. “When we were married, I had my wife's initials engraved inside, just there, see?” Phil cocked his head to the side to get a better view. “Nancy Ophelia Wilcox. N-O-W. We used to joke about it. 'Come here, NOW', I'd say, and that joke never got old.” Phil smiled with him. “She passed on years ago...” “I'm sorry,” Phil replied, as was customary. “No, it was her time. That's part of life. I didn't think about that then, though. I sat around and moped. That's all I did. One day I took off the ring and looked inside, and for the first time, I didn't see her initials: I saw a command. Now. Now. You see?” “Not exactly,” Phil replied “Now is all we've got. In fact, right now,” the man snapped his bony fingers, “is already gone. Now we've got another now, and there, you see? It's already gone too.” “Yeah, I guess.” “There's no guessing to it. It's just how life is. If you sit there in your seat and ignore Now, waiting for your bonus or whatever, you're doing the same thing I spent the better part of my life doing: Throwing away the meat of your life just to get at the dessert. Life's a lot more than just dessert, my friend.” “If you want to really live,” the man continued, “you have to feel every breath, smell every scent, taste every bite, hear every laugh, and touch every surface. Embrace every waking moment, or your dreams will revolt and do it for you. Your life begs to be lived...not just meandered through, but truly embraced and experienced.” The men sat in silence for a moment. Thoughts ran through Phil's head, but they took on a different tone than usual. They seemed brighter, somehow. The man continued, “If you waste the next bunch of days waiting for that check, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Believe me. Think about when you were that boy with that sack of firecrackers. You didn't give a hoot about 'tomorrow', then, did you? In fact, I bet you hated to see that day go. That's what I'm talking about.” “You're right,” Phil said. The man smiled. “I know I am. Why do you suppose I sat here with you instead of in one of those empty seats?” Phil shrugged. “I don't know.” “Because life doesn't last forever, and no one can guarantee that there's anything afterwards. I'll be damned if I don't spend every day of my life learning something new, meeting new people, trying new foods, enjoying Now.” Phil felt the bus slowing to a stop, and heard the familiar squeal and hiss of the brakes, but this time, he really heard them instead of letting the sound just bounce through the air unnoticed. Even the smell of a fresh cloud of exhaust fumes seemed to tingle in his nostrils, reminding him he was alive. The man beside him began to rise. “This your stop?” Phil asked. “Yep. I'm going to find a nice bench in that mall and watch the pretty gals walk by,” he winked. “Maybe strike up some conversation.” Phil smiled at him and extended his hand. “It was really nice to meet you.” “Likewise,” the man said as he took Phil's hand. “Go home and play with those boys. Enjoy them now, and if you get to shoot firecrackers with them later, so be it. If not, oh well. Either way, enjoy every moment, and to heck with that bonus check.” “You're right, I will,” Phil said, as the man walked away. “Thanks.” The man turned one last time, waved goodbye, and winked again just as the doors swung shut.
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