The Gray-Painted Bus

There is, occasionally, a sort of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, that crops up in my neighborhood, in the form of an old school bus. It’s been repainted gray – even the windows, except for the front ones – boarded shut in the back, and has a cooking-stove pipe sticking out of one side. It appears to be inhabited by a Jesus-looking fellow, all in black, his two androgynous, half-intelligent, heavyset teenaged progeny, also in black, and a snarling pit bull.

I’ve noticed this bus over the course of the past year, as it tends to park itself on the street across from my friend Colette’s apartment, although last year it was emblazoned with the fading insignia of some Apostolic Church. This year it’s just lived in. The other night as she and I sat on her front lawn, talking, our conversation faded like the daylight as we watched the Boarders of the Bus coming and going between their dwelling and the lovely, trim, well-kept house that the Bus is usually parked in front of.

It was an intriguing kind of people-watching. The discrepancy between the house and the bus, and the frequency of the bus’s visits to the house, made for some interesting speculation. Colette says a woman lives in the house. The paint on the house is all new. There’s scalloped wood trim around the eaves. The landscaping is lovely. It has a fence and a gate. She drives a hybrid. She’s evidently earth-friendly. Then there’s The Bus. With cooking smoke pouring from the pipe. Noisy engine and gas fumes. Long-haired people living inside wearing jackboots. Where’s the connection?

Colette surmised the Jesus-looking Fellow is a boyfriend; I thought maybe a brother. She warmed to the theory – maybe the siblings took their earth-friendly natures in different directions, she to a more "upscale" environment, he to a more "hippie" one, working an "honest" job, kind of a drifting, Bob Dylan-style.

But the kids were weird. They looked like twins, and in the half-light you really couldn’t discern their gender. We swore at least one of them had breasts, but their voices cracked and soared, and they both were running around the bus playing hide-and-seek like they were four, when they were at least fourteen, and giggling these really off, strangely pitched goblin giggles. They went into The Bus and lit some kind of lantern, and then we heard the dog yelping. It was disturbing.

When it was fully dark the Jesus-looking Fellow came out, got into the front seat, started the engine, tried to pull out, got stuck in the brick ruts, got out, pulled down the hood, fiddled with the running engine, got back in, ground The Bus back and forth for a few minutes, then tore away. I found myself wondering what it would be like to live on a bus, driving off at night to some new place to park, and some Conestoga corner of my spirit grinned at the thought of the freedom, and the simplicity. But the childcare worker in me thought it had turned out pretty badly for the kids.