Re: Bus stop: Misha & Lou
The kid sounded old. Older than bones, older than teeth, older than marrow. Lou watched him keenly, the flicker of interest wetted like a candle-flame in her face. Yeah, she knew the difference between those types of hopes. One kind waited in the line for the phones, clutched a receiver with fingertips that went red, then white and clutched hard enough that the telephone cord looked like a lifeline as they worked, desperately with plastic and quarters to keep a place open in a life that was trying to close over like a healing wound. The other kind, maybe it walked out the doors and knew it was never going back.
"Adrian?" She roused herself from the listening. "I don't know how often he'll take the fork that leads the right way. Maybe it's the kind of hope that don't have much to it. It's hard, making that fork stick. Hard work to get up in the morning and know it's a choice you're going to face same as any other, hard to know there ain't a thunderclap or a hand in the sky to signal today you're going to fail." Her smile was brief. Lou hadn't ever bothered with hiding hard, and she knew she sounded like a jailbird now, that or an addict.
The kid was right, well enough. All those faiths and explanations for why the sky shook and the ground quaked and people and animals lived alongside one another. "Same story to start off with. Why all that water?" Lou's smile spread like melted butter. "My grandma was a pillar of the damn community. Wasn't a person in that church who'd tell her anything. Only reason I survived Repose the first time 'round. Least, after I stole a truck."
The bus was groaning a greeting, and Lou looked up, eased her weight off the bench and over her feet, in worn boots. "I don't know," she said, finally. Didn't know if animals were violent exactly. "Do they kill clean? That's what it comes down to. Killing. If they make it sport, maybe that's violent. It's a pretty song. Wasn't my grandma's favorite, she liked His Eye is on the Sparrow."
The bus hissed brakes and slid low in the road. Lou held out a hand, a gesture the kid should go on and get on first.