None of the buses worked anymore. Every time they fixed them, someone vandalized them again. Someone got into the depot and ruined their engines or stole their wheels. The entire budget for the buses had been exhausted, so there weren't any buses. None of them worked, so I didn't have a way to get to my job washing dishes and making salads and burning myself on the bread trays anymore. No one would drive me, and I didn't have a car. My grandma wouldn't drive me, and she kept her keys on her at all times. I didn't want to wrestle them from her, though she often goaded me into wrestling them from her. She had an empty swimming pool in her backyard. Every day, she would spit in it. Sometimes, she would pay me to spit in it. She would pay entire groups of people to spit in it because, after all, wouldn't it be some kind of record if you filled a swimming pool full of spit? I had no car. The reason I was working at the restaurant was to earn 2K to buy a 2K car and leave the town.
No bus, no ride, no car, so I had to wait for a boy, Graig, who rode his bike around the town all day. He never stopped riding--even in the incredible heat and sun, even when he was hungry, even when he had to defecate. Graig did not appreciate how much he depended on us in the town. We were the ones who held out sandwiches and water for him. We were the ones who gave him wipes. We were the ones who occasionally tackled him off his bike so that we could take off his shirt and slather him with sunscreen. Graig had fair skin, so if we didn't get him, then he'd have terrible scarlet burns on his face, his neck, and his arms. Somehow, even in the incredible sun, his legs remained pale.
No comments:
Post a Comment