Terminus

a microfiction

I had just put out my third cigarette and finished loading my bags in the luggage bay when I saw him looking down through the window. He stared in a way I hadn’t seen another person stare before.

I was tempted to sit across from him. Instead, I sat down a couple of rows in front on the other side. The bus was nearly empty. Most people had gotten off in Birmingham; only me and a mother and child had gotten on. Another person, already on board, sat in the back with music playing so loud through headphones I wondered how they could, despite this, be fast asleep—and snoring.

I glanced back at the staring man in snatches. He wore a dark blue cardigan, with a neatly knotted, thick gray scarf. The collar of an off-white shirt peeked above it. His hair, mostly black, was slicked back, with a broad patch of gray that swept from his temple down behind his ears. His umber face—the parts not hidden by a salt-and-pepper beard—was shiny.

He sat there, frozen in place, as if the world had made his head weigh more than his neck could bear. I imagined he was thinking about a love that had just ended, or had just begun and was being tested, or that he was rehearsing what to say when they saw each other again.

He stayed this way past Oxford, Villa Rica, Douglasville. Finally, the bus pulled into the downtown Greyhound depot.

“End of the line,” the driver said.

Everyone else disembarked. He still did not move. I got up, walked back and leaned over the seat in front of him.

“Excuse me, sir. We’re in Atlanta. End of the line.”

I scanned his face for a moment. He had already departed.

***