The bus pulls off to the side of
the road, into a turn-out watched by a few dilapidated shops. It’s raining
softly and steadily, making a lulling cocoon of hammering in the bus. Before
the wheels stop, bodies are flying, leaping, bolting from under the tin awnings
of the shops toward the bus. Windows fly open and passengers lean out both
sides, like a plow has cleared the central aisle.
The runners have reached the
bus and proffer their wares: great globulous orbs of white and off-white and brown
as large as chickens, as large as hubcaps, as large as full-term woman swollen
with child.
It’s mushroom season.
Hands fly out the windows as the mushrooms
are vaulted up and up to meet them, perfect umbrellas against the rain.
Crumpled bills are cast down in return, mostly to the sellers that are owed.
Such urgency: the mushrooms are few and the bus will not tarry long.
As more of
the luminous hubcaps are transferred on board, an earthy, subterranean smell
starts to glide through the humid bus along with a palpable air of
satisfaction.
One young seller has handed up his mushroom but has not been
rained in cash as the bus starts to pull away. With eyes cast upwards, the rain
on his stern face looks like tears as he yells to the woman with his wares. She
doesn’t hear or pretends not to as the bus pulls into the road. He runs
alongside, jumping through the door before it closes and battling down the
aisle through smiling people cradling fungus in their laps like babies. The
woman still doesn’t seem to notice him imploring her for the money until three
other men start to yell. With an oscitant wave, she tosses the money in his
direction and he caracoles back towards the door.
The bus doesn’t even stop as
he leaps out the door into the rain.
He jogs back towards the coven shops and
waits for the next bus to pass through.
10 November 2017
10 November 2017
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