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Flower Child

He always wore an orange toque and a huge red plastic poppy in his lapel. His smile was so pervasive that it might well continue on its own if he disappeared, like the Chesire cat's.

Summer or winter, rain or shine, the Chesire Man was always in the loading zone of the bus terminal, smiling, silently watching the buses come and go. He was neither young or old - forty-something, perhaps, with perpetual stubble. He wore jeans, a red checkered shirt, and an outdated suit jacket. Occasionally, he wore a blue checkered shirt. In winter, the suit jacket was replaced by a frayed green parka. But the toque, the poppy, and the smile were always the same.

The passengers flowed around him, never getting too close, as if he were enclosed in an invisible force field. He might have been invisible too, except for the margin of empty space surrounding him. No matter how busy the terminal was, no one invaded his magic circle. His smile endured unwaveringly like the impersonal beneficence of the sun, asking neither acknowledgment or appreciation.

He bothered Lynn at first. He needs help, she said to herself, needlessly fiddling with her backpack. Somebody should do something. Every time she took the bus home for week-ends and holidays and study week, and every time she returned to her citadel of higher learning, she would look at him from the corner of her eye and think that someone should do something.

One day he was gone.

His absence startled her. Uneasily, she scanned the flow of humanity, seeking his island of empty space. She lingered in the waiting room, pretending to be occupied with the soft drink machine. Could he be in the washroom? When she emerged from the front door of the terminal, she looked left and right several times. No toque, no poppy. No Chesire smile.

Was he sick? Or had some well-meaning person spirited him off to be cured of his unsociable abnormalities? Was he immured in some warehouse for substandard humanity? Had they let him keep his poppy? Did he still have that smile?

Two trips later, he was in his usual place, his smile intact. Lynn smiled back.

When she took the bus home for the last week-end of her final semester, she was feeling very pleased with herself. In two weeks, she would be finished her exams, and moving out of her tiny residence room into a place of her own. She had been lucky enough to find a job before graduating. She would not be using this bus again for a long time, maybe never.

She eased a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet.

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