Pilgrimage: The Book of the People

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THE Window of the bus was a dark square against the featureless night. Lea let her eyes focus slowly from their unthinking blur until her face materialized, faint and fragmentary, highlighted by the dim light of the bus interior. “Look,’ the thought, “I still have a face.” She tilted her head and watched the wan light slide along the clean soft line of her cheek. There was no color except darkness for the wide eyes, the crisp turn of short cuffs above her ears and the curve of her brows-all were an out-of-focus print against the outside darkness. “That’s what I look like to people,” she thought impersonally. “My outside is intact-an eggshell sucked of life.”

The figure in the seat next to her stirred.

“Awake, deary?” The plump face beamed in the dusk. “Must have had a good nap, “You’ve been so quiet ever since I got on. Here, let me turn on the reading light.” She fumbled above her. “I think these lights are cunning. How’d they get them to point just in the right place?” The light came on and Lea winced away from it. “Bright, isn’t it?” The elderly face creased into mirth. “Reminds me of when I was a youngster and we came in out of the dark and lighted a coal-oil lamp. It always made me squint like that. By the time I was your age, though, we had electricity. But I got my first two before we got electricity. I married at seventeen and the two of them came along about as quick as they could. You can’t be much more than twenty-two or three. Lordee! I had four by then and buried another. Here, I’ve got pictures of my grandbabies. I’m just coming back from seeing the newest one. That’s Jennie’s latest. A little girl after three boys. You remind me of her a little, your eyes being dark and the color your hair is.

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