Nathan managed a foot on the platform, but he had to hold on to the rail to drag the rest of his decrepit body up the steps.  It always took too long, and though the bus driver never said a word, the other passengers always gave him hard and cruel looks.  He couldn’t help it.  He was eighty-four and no longer allowed to drive, so it was the bus or nothing.  He feared soon enough it would be nothing.  God knew how his knees hurt.  He sat heavily on the bench just behind the driver where there were plenty of metal bars to hang on to in the turns.  Once he was settled, his lower back shivered as the muscles let go of their great effort to keep him upright against the hard pull of gravity.  Of course, Lisa, his nag of a daughter wanted him to take the metro, but there were steps there, too.  Besides that, even if the walls were white and the lights were bright, there always seemed to be something of a going-down-into-the-pits-of-Hell about the place.  Nathan preferred the sun, even if the bus windows were terminally dirty and it looked like rain.

Nathan looked down at his suit jacket.  It appeared terribly wrinkled.  He supposed he could have it dry cleaned and pressed, but he had long since given up getting to such places on his own.  He knew he could ask Lisa.  She would do it, but she would also pay for it and more important, he would pay for it because she would use that as an excuse to start going through all of his things and weeding out what she did not like or what she did not think was important.  His hand came up to smooth out some of the worst of the wrinkles, but all he saw was age spots and more wrinkles where his hand used to be.  Getting old felt as hard as gravity.  He let the winkles lay, like sleeping dogs, and decided that no one would notice an old man in a disheveled suit, and if they did, they would not care.  He might have sighed, but he used up all of his sighs ten years earlier.

Nathan looked at the other passengers to pass the time.  He saw a young man about mid-way to the back.  Ha! Young?  He had to be forty even if he still clung to the outrageous clothes of youth and still projected the attitude of the disaffected and disenfranchised.  Nathan could read it in the man’s eyes.  He felt sorry for the man who had probably been convinced from a very young age that he was incapable of doing anything.  Ha!  He should not feel incapable of doing anything until he turned at least eighty!

With that thought planted firmly in his mind, Nathan turned to look at an elderly woman who was probably older than he was.  She was smiling, for Christ’s sake!  Nathan remembered the ninety-three-year-old he found in the supermarket the other day.  When he remarked on the two gallons of cherry vanilla ice cream while they waited in line, her response sounded interesting.

“Two scoops doused in two jiggers of brandy is really good.  How do you think I got to be ninety-three?”

Nathan had not thought.  He just smiled and she checked out first.

Now this elderly woman was smiling like that one.  Nathan decided it must be the brandy.  He could not imagine any alternative that would cause such an old woman to smile.  He concluded the little-old-ladies club must pass around recipes.  Nathan rubbed the back of his hand as if the age spot might be a bit of dirt.  Then he rubbed the back of his stiff neck and held on while the bus came to the next stop.

“Stupid car!”  The man virtually swore, and Nathan heard.  Everyone heard, before they saw the man.  Nathan noticed the collar right away, and supposed the man was a priest or a minister.  He shouted the words “Stupid car!” as he dug for the cost of the bus ride and made everyone wait and dig out their hard and cruel looks in response.  Evidently the man wanted everyone to hear and see.  Nathan understood.  It was the man’s way of saying that he did not normally ride a bus and he would not be caught dead on one now if his car had not behaved stupidly.  Nathan was not sure it was just the car behaving stupidly.  He watched as the man looked down the aisle, noticed the young man and the old lady, looked at Nathan, and took the seat in the front, opposite.  Before Nathan could speak, just in case he had something on his mind to say, the minister pulled the Washington Post from under his arm and ignored everyone.  The bus started again.

Nathan coughed and produced a large bit of phlegm.  He even disgusted himself, but he had a handkerchief in his suit pocket so he kept the disgust to a minimum, and while he was at it he rubbed his nose before putting the handkerchief away.  He imagined it a remarkable thing he did not embarrass himself more often.  He had lived alone for too many years and was of an age where he should not care, yet he did care about others—not what they thought of him, but to not disgust them if he could help it.  Too many men, once alone, went to pieces.  At least most of Nathan’s dishes were currently clean and put away.

Nathan straightened his shirt collar and sat up straighter for a minute.  He had not worn a tie, of course, since he retired all those ages ago.  He leaned out to look down the aisle once again and noticed the minister with the newspaper slid a little closer to the window, beyond touching distance, just in case Nathan wanted to touch.  The man turned the newspaper page as if to say, “I’m busy, leave me alone.”  Unfortunately, there was little more to see beyond the young man and the old lady.  There were other passengers, but they were hunkered down to where Nathan, with his not so good eyes, could hardly catch their hair color.

A man stood.  He was a big, burly kind of a man; the kind of man Nathan never was.  He staggered a little in the sway of the bus and jerked forward a bit as the bus came to a stop.  He sat behind Nathan and Nathan guessed he would be getting off at the next stop.

The air whooshed and the bus door opened.  Nathan turned to see a little girl come slowly up the steps.  Nathan waited for the mother or father to follow, but none came.  The bus driver asked for his money.

“Please, sir.”  The little girl spoke softly, shy or embarrassed.  Nathan would have had to turn up his hearing aid if he had not been sitting so close.  “I missed the school bus, but I have to get home.  My grandmother is very sick.  My mother will pay you when we get to my stop.”  That took real courage.  Nathan admired the little girl

“Sorry kid.  You’ll have to walk.”  The bus driver looked sympathetic, but it was his job, and Nathan wondered how many rotten things were committed in the name of doing one’s job.  He hated that expression.  “It’s nothing personal, it’s just business.”  Here is the little secret, business or not, everything in life is always personal.

The little girl looked ready to cry.  “I can’t,” she said and both Nathan and the bus driver were drawn to her feet where one shoe looked stiff and metallic.  Nathan did not know if it was a club foot or the result of some disease or accident, but come to think of it, the girl did limp up the steps.

“Listen, kid.  I’ll lose my job.  I’m sorry.”  The bus driver spoke kindly but shook his head before he looked back into the bus as if to suggest that someone from the city might be there spying on him.  Nathan knew no paper pusher would leave the warm security of an office to ride a bus, but he allowed that the bus driver might have thought this was a set-up to see who they could fire, given the current state of the economy.  “I need my job.”  The driver said honestly enough.

The little girl began to cry, softly.

“Look, I’ve got family too.  I have to get home.”  The burly man spoke over Nathan’s shoulder.

“Yes, can we get on with this?”  The minister spoke up from behind his newspaper.

Nathan glanced back.  The young man turned toward the window to ignore the whole scene.  The old lady began to dig through her purse, but Nathan preempted her.  He pulled a bill from his pocket.  “Here, child.  You sit right up front with me and sit by the window so we don’t miss your stop.”  Nathan pulled himself slowly to his feet while the bus driver made change.  The little girl hesitated.  She looked once into Nathan’s sad, old eyes while he looked into her sad, young eyes and they understood each other in that moment.  The girl scooted past him to sit next to the window.  Nathan barely got his change pocketed and sat down again before the bus driver shut the door and took off.

After that, Nathan put the rest of the bus out of his mind.  He looked at the back of the little girl who dutifully stared out of the dirty window.  He judged her to be about seven or eight and he wondered what kind of world we had become to have school busses leave without their passengers accounted for.  Surely the school had some resources for those inadvertently left behind; and especially for a little girl like this, lame as she was.  Nathan understood being lame even if both of his feet were normal for his age.

“Do you know which stop is yours?”  Nathan asked, not certain if he would get an answer out of the child.  She had to be scared, all alone with strangers as she was.  He was pleased to see her able to respond.

“Yes, thank you.  I have ridden this bus before, with my mother.”  The girl gave up on the dirty window and turned to face front and the hard-plastic translucent board that separated her from the bus driver’s back.  “And thank you for paying.”  She added as if remembering her manners.  She looked up into Nathan’s old face, seeking his adult approval of her polite words and Nathan, who caught that look in her eyes, smiled in response.

“So, what are you, eight?”  Nathan asked.

“Seven,” she said.  “I’m in the second grade.”

“Second grade.”  Nathan repeated as he thought a long, long way back.  Fortunately, the ancient days were easier to remember than that morning’s breakfast.  “So, you know all about reading and writing.”

“Oh, yes,” the girl said.  “I love to read, but my writing needs some practice.”

Nathan nodded.  “Do you stick out your tongue when you write?” he asked.

“No.”  The girl shook her head.  Clearly, she did not know what he meant.

“Like this.”  He let his tongue a little way’s out of the corner of his mouth and pretended to have a pencil in his hand.  “You see?”  He pretended to write on the translucent plastic in front of them.  “A-B-C.”  He spoke as he wrote.

The girl put her hand quickly in front of her grinning mouth.  “That’s silly.”

“But it helps,” Nathan insisted.  He did it again.  “D” he said, and he pretended to have trouble with the letter and let his tongue move as his hand moved.  The little girl giggled and Nathan smiled again.  He had a grand-daughter—no—a great-grand daughter that was seven.

“My name is Nathan.”  He introduced himself.

The girl paused to examine his face before she spoke.  “Mine is Mya.”  And she lifted her little hand up to touch his wrinkled, craggy face.  “You are very old, like my grandmother.”

Nathan lost his smile, but slowly.  “You grandmother is not well.”  It was a question though he said it like a statement.

Mya nodded.  “She is in the hospital.  My mother is going to take me to see her tonight.  I think Grandma is dying.”  Mya took her hand back and straightened up.  Her eyes looked once again near tears.  Nathan thought we are all dying; only some of us are closer to it than others.  He forced a smile.

“Now, enough about dying,” he said brightly.  “You just give her a big hug when you see her and tell her that you love her.  That is all that really matters.”  He wanted to hug the little girl himself and pat her hand to comfort her in her distress, but he did not dare.  Surely someone would accuse him of terrible things, and he wondered again what sort of world they had become.  All he could do was lift his heart in a kind of prayer for this little soul while the bus brakes brought them to the next stop.  The big man started to get up as the doors opened, but before he could move far, someone jumped in and ran right past the driver babbling something about paradise and Satan and you demons.  The minister hid behind his paper.  The Bus driver grabbed and missed.  The big burly man also made a grab, but it was too late.  Nathan instinctively threw himself over the little girl like a shield of flesh and blood.  He heard the deafening sound, felt a moment of pain, saw a brilliant, blinding light, and then nothing.