Yellow
3 min read
The bus was still warm when she boarded it. Chassis 204, the last one in, the one with the broken overhead in row twelve. She took the mop and bucket and went to the back. Dirt traveled forward.
By row seven she found it. Under the seat, against the wall: a yellow dinosaur, plastic, small. She crouched and picked it up. Turned it over. One back leg had grooves in it, the shallow kind teeth leave. The air inside held diesel, damp wool, the warmth of coats and breathing.
She carried it to the front and set it on the driver’s partition. Then she went back to the mop.
The woman on the last 47 had exact change ready before the doors opened. She’d had it in her coat pocket since Thursday. She’d moved it from the lining to the hip pocket when she changed coats. She paid with it now without counting. She went to the back.
The child was almost under. She’d been carrying him since the taxi rank. His weight had changed: heavier, looser, his head rolling. She put him across both seats with his head in her lap and her hand on his back.
He still had the dinosaur in his fist. Past the junction she felt him let go of it. It slid to the seat beside him, then off the edge. She heard it hit the floor.
She didn’t reach down for it.
Out the window the streetlights ended. Just the dark, the pale reflection of the bus moving through it, her own face in it looking back.
She clocked out at five-ten and took the coffee from the machine in the corridor. The car park was still dark. She drank it at the machine and threw the cup in the bin on her way out.
She was on the bypass before she thought of it again. The specific yellow of it.
The driver got on at six-forty. He put his bag under the seat, checked the mirror, clipped his ID to his jacket. The yellow dinosaur was on the partition, looking at the windscreen.
He pulled out without moving it.
He drove six routes that day. He forgot about it somewhere on the second run, the long one out to the retail park and back. He remembered it when a boy in the third row pointed at it and said something to his mother. She looked up and looked away. The driver kept his eyes on the road.
At the terminus he ate his lunch in the cab. Cheese roll, a bag of crisps he left mostly unopened. The dinosaur was there while he ate. He brushed the crumbs from his jacket, put the wrapping in the bag, started the engine. He didn’t move it.
The last run was the 18:20. A man got on with a pushchair and folded it in the space by the door. A woman with shopping. Three teenagers who didn’t look up. Nobody sat in the front seats.
The driver pulled out into the evening. Shop fronts, bus stops, the orange of the streetlamps.
Yellow, small, one leg bitten.