I stepped off the bus tired and achy, fuzzy and dull, but happy to be free, relieved to be anywhere that was not a metal tube on wheels. How many hours had I lost in that asphalt monotony? Once the batteries in my Walkman died, I felt like a hostage. I might even have empathized with my seatmate if I hadn't soon tired of his muttered observations on the unfairness of our penal system.
The depot was a one-story wooden building in need of paint, which leaned in a way that would have caught the eye of a public safety official back home. I turned to gaze back at the bus almost with longing. The door swooshed shut, and the bus did a frantic U-turn and sped away. I watched it grow smaller between fields of corn that marched all the way to the horizon as if in mass escape.
So this is Fraleton, I thought: not exactly bustling. Then I realized I could just as well think these things out loud since there was no one around to overhear.
The town could be taken in with a glance. Behind the depot, bungalows and ranch houses lined rows of streets ending at a green river. The water in the river must have been moving or it would have been a swamp, but you couldn't tell from a distance. Across the river, pastureland stretched out to rounded foothills speckled with isolated trees. Beyond them, blue mountains faded like smoke into the sky.
I was downtown, in the commercial hub, marked by a dozen or so shops on either side of the depot, none of which showed any sign of commercial activity. I eased open the door of the depot, and when the building didn't fall over, stepped inside. A round-shouldered man with wool pants and a poor man's tweed cap shuffled behind a janitor's broom. Intent on following the broom in vague patterns about the floor, doing little in the way of sanitation but at least not making things any dirtier, he didn't see me come in.
I cleared my throat with an obvious "Ahem." The Sisyphus of the Sticks plodded further away. I stepped nearer to try again. Still no response. Was he deaf? Or whatever the correct term is these days. I walked closer to tap him on the shoulder.
He looked first at his shoulder and then further back at me. He had a mustache that could have served a walrus. His cheeks sagged in a way that made it droop further.
I countered with a friendly smile. "Sir," I said brightly, "excuse me, I'm wondering if you can help me."
He continued to stare, so I tried again, this time raising my voice and, in case he was a lip-reader, stretching my mouth around each syllable.
"Do you know... where... I might find a coin locker?" He took off his cap before answering, like some gesture from an out-of-print etiquette book, his forehead scrunched in contemplation. Eventually he looked at me in earnest, before answering with a shout of his own.
"Why you want to lock coins?" His accent may have been European: "want" sounded like "vant." "I mean for my luggage," I said at a normal volume. I pointed to my suitcase, an outsized rectangle of leather and brass, wide enough to carry shirts unfolded but only a thin layer of them. It had been my father's, an heirloom of some sort no one else had cared enough to keep. "So I can look around town."
He seemed baffled all over again.