Voyage of the Bus Rider

Our paths cross at the street corner opposite the stop from where my bus ride home begins.

He's an older man, with long white hair, covered with a black toque with grey trim. He wears a black fall jacket and blue jeans. The light turns green, and we start across the intersection. "Can you believe there's a winter storm warning for tonight?" he asks. The stiff wind is indeed full of winter's bluster, and ominous clouds from the east are hastening over the city.

"We've had it pretty easy so far," I reply.

"Yep," he agrees. "It's been a nice fall. Say, did you hear about that accident this morning?"

"The two police cruisers that collided? Yeah, what happened there?"

"I'm not sure," he says. "It was bad though. The engine of one of the cruisers was literally in the front seat, from what I've heard."

"With speeds like that, you can be sure there was a high speed chase of some sort. The intersection was still closed this afternoon when I went by, and they had spread sand everywhere. Probably a ruptured gas tank."

The bus arrives in short order and we board, both taking seats near the front. He reaches into his bag and pulls out a book.

"Can you believe I'm actually reading this?" he laughs, pointing at the title: Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of the books in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

My face lights up. "I just read that a few weeks ago! It's a great book."

"You can sure tell he was religious though."

"Oh yeah, for sure. Those books are highly allegorical."

He nods, locates the bookmark, and resumes his reading.

He's enough of an interesting character that I almost press him to continue the conversation, but then I think better of it - if anybody had interrupted my recent journey through Narnia, I would have been seriously peeved.

Instead I read my Discover magazine.

There's my stop.