The Chronicles of a Public Bus (part 3.01)

Saturday, 11:00, route 40 westbound

Mr. Talisman is more wintry than yesterday’s cold and snow and angrier than the spring gales that crash over the sagebrush-covered hills. As he storms onto the bus, he stomps his feet so hard that the snow stuck to the bottom of his shoes flees in a tiny cloud.

“Good morning,” Rick says, though he isn’t sure why. Mr. Talisman neither replies nor acknowledges the greeting, instead choosing to clomp down the center aisle and growl at nothing.

Near the bus’s center sits Mr. Pyus, hands folded with almost ladylike delicacy in his lap. He offers a saintly smile at Mr. Talisman and tilts his head to one side. “Good morning, Mr. Talisman. How is the One God treating you this fine day?”

“You and your stupid cult religion. Your cryptics got me into this mess, you know.”

“What mess?”

The bus jolts into motion, and Mr. Talisman stumbles, flailing his arms for a handhold and cursing. When he regains balance, he is red as a tomato and still angrier than before.

“Are you implying that riding the public bus is a mess?” Mr. Pyus asks. “If you are, I should remind you that the One God believes in acts of kindness, not acts of destruction. The driver is right over there.”

Mr. Talisman rattles a fist and snarls. “My arthritis shouldn’t be a good enough reason for the government to steal my driver’s license. I committed no acts of destruction; I’ve been violated!”

Chuckling, Mr. Pyus pats the seat cushion next to him and hugs a canvas bag full of books closer to his side. “I stopped driving years ago,” he says. “The One God told me through the gift of pain that I must stop bringing harm to the environment. I can no longer steer sharply enough to be a safe driver, and I believe the One God is showing you the same message.”

“Shut up, you idiot,” Mr. Talisman spits. “You claim the One God shows you everything, but when the he told you that the nature of my estate would become permanent, it turned out completely wrong. There’s nothing permanent about it anymore, and since I lost the ingredients for the elixir, the estate never will be unchanging or harmonious, as you put it.”

“The One God does not often mean what his non-believers want to hear. Or have you forgotten the outcomes of my former predictions?”

Mr. Talisman lashes out with his free hand and freezes a split second later, his index finger millimeters from Mr. Pyus’s half-closed eyes. “Your predictions are like horoscopes. They’re vague enough to apply to any situation, and they come true because people believe they will. But after this, no one will ever listen to you again.”

“Perhaps you ought to sit down,” Mr. Pyus says.

A moment later, the bus rattles across a bump on the highway entrance, and Mr. Talisman loses his grip on the handrail. His skin squeaks on the painted metal, and he flies towards the back of the bus like a bird with clipped wings, landing in a heap of woolen overcoat and creaky joints. In a flutter of fabric, he flings himself back up, spluttering and coughing out bits of lint.

“Gah!” Mr. Talisman shouts. “I don’t care what kind of prophet you think you are, you’re not one of the powerful folk and you never will be. Nothing you say matters.”

“Powerful folk? The only power we have comes from the One God.”

Mr. Talisman scowls deeper and pulls himself into a seat. His breaths are labored, but he still summons enough air to bellow across the bus. “There is no One God! This world is chaos; we have a Renaissance Frenchman living on a street that brings luck, and apparitions haunting the town, apparitions that my family kept locked away for almost a century. I should have stuck with my original plan instead of listening to your parenting advice.”

“Marcy’s death was not your fault.”

“And yet, if I had convinced her to carry on the family legacy and not let her "make her own mistakes," she would still be here. I’m not a fool; I know whose actions started the serial hit-and-run incidents.”

At the front of the bus, Rick jerks his foot off the pedal. He recovers before the bus slows too much, but his focus wavers from the road and onto more dangerous subjects. A plan for telling Mellie and Mr. Stevenson about what strange things he just overheard sprouts in his mind, but he shakes it away. He has no proof, and neither Mr. Talisman or Mr. Pyus has directly confessed to anything.

Grimacing, Rick reaches for the volume dial on his driver’s seat speakers and turns up the radio so he hears only the world outside and the familiar riffs of the week’s top forty pop charts. He doesn’t need any more dealings with powerful folk.