Queue

He queues. Red coat. Green gum boots. A prune-coloured bowler hat. He queues for the bus but the bus does not come. He stands there anyway. Stomps from foot to foot. Hunkered underneath the tweed red coat grandfather had left him after the death. The family calls the death the death because the death was the death of all deaths, grandfather’s death and nobody else’s. He queues and stomps and looks at the wee woman swathed in violet blue, a yellow scarf across her cheeks. Black-eyed, the woman. Grandfather’s dead black eyes. Across from the woman a toddler alone. No mother no father no-one at all. Just a toddler that screams for the bus. No, not screams, more throaty growls, arms that wave and bare feet that stamp stamp stamp all out of sorts. He queues for the bus she queues for the bus and the toddler stamps on the concrete all out of sorts.

The burst, unexpected. A burst detergent. Bubbles all over the place everywhere. The queue jumps and leaps, grasps and snatches. Bubbles that shatter flaunt and scatter. The man wants more bubble bomb bursts. Explode over here, he shouts. More bursts and more bubbles! The bus does not come. Not now, not ever. Not a bus stop after all. A laundry shed. A shed full of bumble bubbles. The man walks off. Crosses the road. Leaves the black-eyed woman and the fowl smell of the toddler. Laundry? Pfft! No need for that!

The man has long left when the bus comes. The bus comes for the laundry and the queue and the bumble bubbles. The woman enters the bus. The bubbles enter the bus. The man cannot see whether the bare-footed toddler enters the bus or not. He walks up the road. Spots another bus stop. Rubs his prune-coloured bowler hat. And queues.