Medicine

The bus stop is a stoic, singular tooth poked up from the land. An open mouth to the road to the road slush, which, in the prickle of November is pinched by the wind in such a way as to form a row of tiny crests, soon to be flattened by the wheels of tractor trailers.

The wind also pinches your shoulders and your spirit. All is tight and bracing.

You follow the sidewalk, salted green, and then wait. Why you are taking this bus is unclear, but the steps feel certain the movement feels necessary: a shedding of the house, of the hermitage.

If only for your legs, you will brave the wind and the awful, relentless stimulus of creaking trees. The bus growls it’s arrival. It is fanged with icicles. You heave up the stairs into the warmth, slip change into the token box, and loosen your scarf.

The driver is a large man, ruddy-faced, who seems to look at the road with reverence. He pulls the doors shut, nearly ceremoniously. There is a click of acceptance for your arrival into this community of warm, solitary people, unpretending and honest in their shared quiet.

A third of the way down the bus is Iggy’s familiar seat. It doesn’t seem right to sit there, so you sit across from it to conjure the image of him looking out at the passing streets. Your senses flair with this imagining, like you can light the image of him with your longing, project his physical form onto the seat in front of you: his crossed legs, his knit hat with ear flaps descending over freckled cheeks. It’s enough to be bewilder.

The aperture of your concentration moves out from the startling reverie of this, your Iggy, and you begin to slowly notice other bodies, other slumped and jostling bodies.

A woman with tired, joyless eyes looks back at you. Behind her, a brown-skinned kid with a graphic novel propped onto his knees, and at the far end of the bus, a man with plastic grocery bags at his feet, caked with mud.

And then you notice her — a woman ringing the bell to be let out at the next stop. The thick braid of her hair twitching like the tale of a wild animal.

Could it be her?

You stand up before you fully decide to, and follow this woman back out into the icy air. There’s a small parkette laid out in front of you with benches edged in red light from the sinking sun.

The woman walks ahead of you with steady, unhurried purpose. You follow her, keeping pace, drawn forward as to a fire. Her back is turned so you can’t see her features yet.

She passes a snowbank, grey at the edges, and as she slows her pace to wait for a crossing light, you close the distance. You get close enough to smell faintly fragrant cumin, and garlic. Her hands are ungloved, holding a small paper bag, faint stains of turmeric at the cuticles.

“You work at the dollar store,” you say at the crosswalk. They light beckons. She doesn’t cross, but instead looks at you, studies you. Her face is striking, a nose carved from clay.

Sometimes, she replies.

Close by, the air reverberates from a struck bell. You both cross, her, keeping a brisk pace. The wind is slipping under your clothing.

Are you walking there now? you ask. You are emboldened by the wind it seems, feeling entitled to the intrusion.

“I’m headed that way, too.”

to this. The woman doesn’t respond with words, but she assesses you from the periphery. I didn’t mean to crowd you you say and this is when she stops and faces you the faint half flat windows of the dollar palace just ahead, but you did she says yes because you are in pain, ma’am my husband Iggy he used to come in here a hard breath truncates the words I know him she says he talk to you then you say, surprised never she keeps moving down the aisle and you follow her past plastic bins and offbrand detergent. Follow the flicking braid under a thin fluorescent light he said you come from healers you say through tears which makes her turn, but surely he was just I do she says resolutely I’m from a long line of healers and I know how to help you this catches you off guard oh, I’m not here for she takes your hand and process something into your into it. It’s a hard nut wrapped and wax. It’s a hard. It’s a hard nut wrapped in wax a wax wrapper like a candy.