The happy one

I have to take the bus to work. No car, not enough money. Just a mile out to the bus stop and then at least two more hours of bumping and stopping and squealing air brakes, stinks and coughs and weird dudes jamming their knees against mine just to take up as much space as they can. If Satan hasn't got a bus in one of his levels of Hell, he's missing out. It's boring, too. I'm not much of a reader. I don't really listen to much music, either. If I didn't need this stupid job so badly...

But the story, right. So the bus stop is on a highway. Not a fast one, officially. I think maybe forty miles an hour? But everyone takes it at sixty, minimum, and it's two lanes each way plus the sort-of parking lane that the bus burps along in. It's a pretty heavy truck route, too, considering it's not an interstate. I figure there's some nasty speed traps they're all dodging out on the main roads. Which makes sense; the little satellite communities around a big city have to squeeze their pennies where they can, right?

The day it happened, I'd gotten to the stop early. It was cold and kind of rainy, the sort of day where accidents snarl up traffic all over. They build those crappy shelters uncomfortable on purpose, you know; gaps in the walls and weird slanted benches. It's to keep homeless people from sleeping in them. Because God forbid someone stay warm for a couple of hours or anything, not unless they paid for it. Anyway, I'd walked fast to keep warm, and now I was kind of hopping and shivering in place. The other regular riders were trickling in, too, but one guy I didn't recognize. He looked maybe thirty, thirty-five tops. Pudgy. Sandy hair, going thin on top. He had pale eyes, I remember, blue or blue-green. Dressed real nice. Suit and tie. He stood a little bit outside the shelter, holding a briefcase and facing us like he was about to give a presentation. He was smiling. I remember that. I can't forget that smile.

He nodded politely to everyone, but he didn't say anything. I made eye contact accidentally - strange men find enough ways to talk to you without you encouraging them - but he just smiled at me, too. Comforting, like he was saying hello to an old friend he hadn't seen in a while.

Nobody talks in the bus shelter. We just shuffled and sniffled and coughed, looking out the open side toward the street. The happy man smiled back at us, cars whizzing past behind him. I heard the rumble of the bus and glanced to the side. When I looked back, the man had walked out into the bus lane, facing the oncoming bus with an expression of childlike joy, which is when I started feeling really weird about him. Nobody is happy to see a bus.

Anyway, the bus driver rolled on a little too far and then slammed on the brakes, clearly pissed at the man. Even if you're loading a bike onto the front or something, you're supposed to keep clear of the lane until the bus is stopped. The bus grill came to a halt a little past the striped yellow loading zone, a few feet away from the smiling man, who was still looking just pleased as punch about the whole thing.

Everyone else surged forward, and I let them. I'm not fighting for a seat on the bus; they're all shitty, one way or another. I started forward at the back of the line, like usual. The man hadn't joined us, was just standing in front of the bus, beaming up at the driver like a proud dad at Little League. He looked over and met my eyes, and gave a jaunty wave. Jolly times we were having! What fun! He winked, like we were sharing a secret.

Then he just took a big step sideways, still smiling, into the tractor-trailer that was barreling past at seventy in the misty-gray morning light.

God, the sound. The sound he made. I ran over a possum once, when I had a car, and I swear I *felt* its backbone snap through the tires and the pedals and the floor. This was like that, but the sound hit my entire body at once, like a physical wave. Afterward, there were screams and brakes and shouting and sirens, but it was that first dull, quiet thud that won't leave me. And the smile. He was smiling all the way out. Not a grin, not manic. Just gentle and calm. Peaceful.

Happy.

I tried to do research, a little. Like maybe he was a stockbroker and he knew some crash was coming. Or if there was a cult in the area or something. I never did find out even his name. His briefcase landed near me, but the police took it. It was locked, anyway.

I can't get his smile out of my head. I find my own lips curving up, slow and easy, and I realize after a moment that I'm thinking of him. I wonder what he knew that made him do it. I wonder what his secret was. He seemed to think I knew.

And maybe I do.

Maybe I do, at that.