Bea was forty seconds late when the mechanic came running.
He had a tool case in one hand and a paper address in the other. Rain washed the ink down his wrist.
She could shut the bus door. The next bus would come in half an hour. At the Cedar Street grocery, however, Anil had phoned twice about a dead refrigerator. She had heard him arguing with the repair company while she bought her morning tea.
“Cedar grocery?” she called.
He held up the address and nodded.
She waited.
The mechanic climbed aboard, breathing hard.
“You could’ve walked,” said a man in the front seat.
“I tried that first,” the mechanic said.
Bea watched the light ahead turn red. Now she’d lost more than forty seconds.
The mechanic put his case under the front seat beside a boy holding something wrapped in a thin school folder.
Water dripped from the case. The boy moved his shoes.
“Your address is running,” he said.
The mechanic unfolded the paper. The grocery’s street number had become a blue stain.
“Thirty-six,” Bea called from the driver’s seat. “I stop outside.”
The boy offered his folder.
“Put the paper in this.”
“What’s in it?”
The boy drew out a clay bird. Its head leaned a little sideways, and one wing was larger than the other. He put it carefully in his lap.
“It’s for my mother. She works at the clinic.”
The mechanic slid the address inside the folder. The cardboard took water from his hands, but the remaining words stayed dry.
Bea pulled into traffic. In the mirror, she could see the boy looking at the bird as if he could hold it together by watching.
At the grocery stop, the mechanic gave back the folder.
“Sorry about the wet,” he said.
“It’s already wet,” the boy answered.
The mechanic hurried into the shop. Anil came out to meet him, apron flapping in the rain. From the bus, Bea could hear him say he’d already moved the milk into coolers.
The mechanic pointed back at the window. Anil looked at the boy, at the dripping folder, and at the bare clay bird.
“Wait a moment,” Anil called.
Bea checked the road behind her. The front-seat man folded his newspaper with a crack.
“It’s always a moment,” he said.
“This one is,” she said.
Anil came back with an empty egg carton. He held it up to the window. The boy shook his head at first, embarrassed, then brought the bird down the aisle.
“No eggs?” he asked.
“If there were eggs, it wouldn’t be much use to you.”
Anil made a little nest of clean packing paper in one end. The bird fit inside with its large wing tilted up.
The boy closed the carton and returned to his seat.
“Otis,” he called before the door shut. “My name’s Otis.”
Anil lifted a hand.
Behind him, the mechanic was pointing toward the coffee pot.
“Coffee’s one coin,” Anil told him. “Repair first.”
Bea drove on. She was two minutes late now. She wrote the delay on the small route sheet at the next red light.
At the clinic, Otis got off with the egg carton under his coat.
Bea watched him climb the steps. She had a return trip to make and people waiting at six more stops. She closed the door.
Inside the clinic, Otis asked for his mother.
“She’s asleep in the rest room,” the receptionist said. “Long night. Can you wait?”
He’d imagined handing her the bird while the other workers looked on. She would say how fine it was. Someone might notice the feathers he’d pressed into the clay with a fork.
Instead he sat beside a woman whose ankle was wrapped in a towel.
His carton had dried on top. The folder under it had not. A blue patch spread through the drawing of a tree he’d made at school.
He opened the carton to check the bird. The woman smiled.
“Did you make that?”
He nodded.
“It looks ready to argue with somebody.”
He turned it toward her. The tilted head did look like that.
They laughed, quietly. Then the nurse called the woman inside.
Otis waited another twenty minutes. The room grew busy. He took his carton outside so his mother could see him when she came down the steps.
The rain had stopped, but the stone bench was cold.
Bea found him there on her return trip. He stood when he saw the bus.
“She’s still asleep,” he said through the open door.
Bea was due to stop at the clinic for three minutes before turning back toward the depot. She pointed to the empty front seat.
“Warm up while I wait here. You get off before I leave.”
He sat with the carton on his knees. Warm air blew against his shoes.
The man with the newspaper had left. In his place sat two people talking about the rain. Neither seemed to mind a boy warming his feet.
At the last minute, a woman came out of the clinic carrying a lunch bag.
“That’s her,” Otis said.
He got off carefully. Bea watched him lift the carton. His mother opened it and put one finger under the bird’s crooked beak.
Otis’s voice came through the door.
“The wing’s bigger on that side.”
“Then it can steer.”
She took the bird out. He began to throw the packing paper into the bin, but she stopped him.
“Keep it. I don’t want to break it on the way home.”
He gave her the carton and his stained folder as well. She looked at the blue tree.
“That had a busy morning.”
“It helped somebody find the grocery.”
She held it under her arm.
As they walked toward the crossing, Otis looked back.
“Can you wait until we’re over?”
Bea glanced at the boarding passengers. One was still finding his fare. She nodded to Otis, then waited until he and his mother had reached the far pavement.
At the grocery on her last trip, the light over the refrigerator was on. Anil stood inside, writing something on the repair bill. The mechanic had a coffee in his hand.
Bea reached the depot two minutes late. Beside her first entry on the route sheet, she wrote the actual arrival time.
A little blue streak remained on the front seat, rubbed from Otis’s wet folder.
She wiped it away so the next passenger would have a dry place to sit.
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