Traveling Sitting Still

(From "Traveling Sitting Still," the title story of an unpublished collection.)

The old woman has skin like dough, floured white and smooth. Stacy imagines she is a fixture of the bus, like a tobacco store Indian. In the mornings the driver carries her onto the bus and places her on the bench, smoothing her skirt so it covers her bony knees. Each evening he carries her away from the cold, black, staring glass and metal. He carries her to a storage shed or an oversized closet where an embroidered chair and an age-yellowed lamp wait dustless, a humidifier humming in the corner. The driver grooms her hair with an antique ivory brush and pats her doughy face while she stares at the wall, anticipating sleep. He wipes the spittle from the edges of her mouth, says nothing.

Like something petrified, she needs no water, no food. She has become a living artifact to be moved wordlessly from place to place, and in the morning he will return her to the bus where she will once again travel sitting still.

(Coming in 2007)