Walter Misses the Bus

Walter rose at his alarm, the light bleeding through his curtained windows a faint gray. He stretched his arms as he walked to the bathroom. Face pulled in the fogged mirror, he hummed as he scraped his stubble off with a disposable razor, the tune a jingle from a breath mint commercial.

He downed a quick mug of coffee, leaving it on the narrow table in the foyer as he hurried to meet his bus. He never missed the bus. Walter’s record at work was exemplary in the most ordinary of measures, except that in the course of nine years, Walter had missed no work days.

He walked down his driveway with long steps, his loafers thick in the sole, his short hair slicked back from his face. His jacket flapped open in the wintry morning bluster, echoed by his wide tie, which was striped on a jaunty diagonal with blue and gray. Walter walked with his coat draped over his arm, briefcase handle dangling from the fingers on his other hand. He followed his track, neither happy nor unhappy.

Walter strode along the concrete sidewalk, his steps unconsidered as he looked to the bus stop a few hundred yards ahead. The Franklins, Walter’s neighbors, had contracted a local man to repave their front walk. The concrete had set with grooves the Franklins found unattractive. Also, birds had set their own grooves into the soft firmament with their tiny forked feet, and this didn’t set well with the Franklins.

So, Walter strode along, looking ahead, and planted one of his broad, thick-soled loafers plum into the almost-set cement, all the way to the tops of his shoe and over. He didn’t notice the odd step until the duo sensations of cold cement leaning against his ankle and the suction preventing him from raising it forced him to stop humming. He paused and looked down. When the familiar rumble and squeal of the approaching bus rounded the far corner up the street, Walter realized he had no patience for this kind of interruption to his routine. He tugged on his foot, confident he could clean up the mess at the office. But nothing happened, except for a slight shift under the surface and the possibility of the front of his shoe wedging beneath a band of rebar support. He tried again, this time assisting with his free hand, his draped coat bunching up at his wrist. Nothing, but for another very slight shift deeper into the cloying wet. Not only was Walter’s shoe stuck fast beneath the surface of the solidifying sidewalk, but his foot was as well. And to top off Walter’s unprecedented sinking walk to the bus stop, at that very moment the chemical and physical elements bound together (along with a certain guided principle of the universe concerning lessons we learn and those serendipitous moments of opportunity in which to confront them) to complete the process, and Walter found himself an integrated feature in the Franklin’s front walk. He stared down at his offending extremity, wrists resting on his hips. If the Franklins were unhappy about a few birds’ tracks and a groove or two, he couldn’t see them feeling too good about a person planted in their sidewalk. Walter tugged once more as the bus pulled out into traffic, continuing on without him. He watched it roll past, noting his empty seat five rows from the front.

“Well,” he spoke. He turned to survey the settling concrete, noting for the first time the bright yellow tape marking the small construction site, the protruding rebar sporting plastic protective knobs marking the corners. How had he missed all of that?

Walter set his coat and briefcase onto the Franklin’s grass, wondering if they’d left for work yet. The drive was empty, so he guessed they had. He tried another pull at his foot. Stuck fast, like magnet to iron. Gritting his teeth, he clamped onto his calf with both hands, his pale leg exposed to the brisk air, and yanked for one long breath. The cords stood out on his neck, and his forehead reddened with the effort, but nothing happened. When he relaxed, his foot sank a few centimeters with a thick squelch. Walter’s embarrassment rose to the surface, dark memories of standing out in the recess playground resurfacing with it, and he looked around to see who might be watching him struggle. The street was empty, as the morning was still gray with new sun. He fervently wished he could replay the last few minutes, and his hair slipped forward to tickle his face.

Walter uttered his first curse. “Damn.” He blushed, but refused to take it back.

Inside the Franklin’s, a rabid yipping erupted as their small schnauzer launched itself at one of the front windows. Walter recoiled, even as the dog clearly couldn’t break through, but his helpless feeling added a slick layer of anxiety onto the most benign happenings around him. The excitable dog worked Walter’s heart into an uneven fritter of thumping, and he began to hum again to cover the sound. He hummed the tune to “The Battle Hymn Of the Republic”, unaware he moved his head for emphasis on the heavy downbeats. His eyes bulged, the vein in his forehead evident again, but he kept admirable time and even injected the song with some of its historic rallying call. An objective listener would say the rendition showed heart.

The sun finished its rise, and birdcalls joined and clashed in chorus as the neighborhood awoke. Rumpled parents schlepped outside to retrieve morning papers, and schoolchildren dragged garbage bins to the end of the drive for pickup. Walter waited to be noticed, for the inevitable circle of onlookers and laughter. But no one even looked his way. He thought a man bent over his own foot sunken in new cement would cause quite a stir, but so far he hadn’t disturbed anyone’s routine except the schnauzer’s. And he wasn’t even sure of that. For all he knew, those windows suffered under schnauzer attack on a daily basis.

Walter’s heart slowed a tic, and his spine stretched out as the muscles alongside relaxed as well. He brushed his hair back, and released a long, slow breath. The corners of his mouth tilted up, even as chilled cement soaked through his sock inside his shoe. With a gust of a sigh, he sank his buttocks into the cement as well, ruining his trousers but taking the strain of the odd angle from his feet. The Franklins were going to be upset as it was. As the clammy cold cradled his bottom, Walter leaned back to look up at the sky. Clouds drifted across his vision, ethereal and nonsensical shapes he hadn’t noticed since he was a boy. He leaned farther, letting his back settle into the giving sidewalk, and crossing his elbows behind his head. He noted with surprised pleasure the shape of a pillowy platypus cruising across the wide expanse above him. The cell phone inside his briefcase droned at him several times and then stopped. A finch landed on his upraised knee, hopped once as it crooked its tiny head his way, and then flapped off to a nearby bush. Its song was bright and lilting, and Walter started to whistle along with it as he watched the clouds tell their story.