trevor’s dictionary of lost words

The Greyhound bus chugged out of the station in downtown Charleston into the South Carolina night. 

There were 4,000 miles between Charleston and Point Hope, Alaska. 

"That's a out how far blue whales migrate from Mexico to Alaska," thought Little Salt. 

"If they can make it, maybe I can make it, too."

This first part of the journey would take four days. 

He closed his eyes. 

He felt the tires of the bus thump against the road.

He listened to the soft snore of a soldier in the seat behind him.

He swayed gently from side to side as the driver moved from lane to lane around late night traffic. 

He drifted off to sleep and became a blue whale, the thump of his giant fluke in the deep waters moving him along at 14 miles per hour, the songs of other blue whales from different waters touching his great heart, his giant body swaying from side to side in the Pacific Ocean waters.

He woke to the hand of a frail, old woman on his shoulder. 

"'Scuse me," she whispered, "I hate to wake you up but my ticket says I'm 'sposed to sit here beside you."

He rubbed his eyes with the fists of his hands and looked up into the face of the woman in the soft glow of the bus lights.

There were deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead.

They didn't seem like wrinkles of worry that he'd seen form on his mamí and abuelo’s faces as they worked the fields and lived among strangers in small southern towns. 

No, they seemed like wrinkles of kindness that might come from years and years of loving and hoping, the kind of wrinkles you get when you cradle a baby in your arms and rock it deep into the night, the kind that come when you study the small, quiet things in the world and wonder why so few people see or hear the beauty in them.

She tried to keep her eyes open, but they stayed closed a bit longer with each blink, and her head nodded to each passing mile along the Interstate. 

Her breathing came into rhythm with the wheels of the bus on the road. 

The bus moved around a curve and she slid ever so slightly against Little Salt’s body. 

His small shoulder sank into her tired, withered breasts and his smooth cheek rested on the folds of skin on her thin, bony neck. 

Her gentle breaths made a soft whistle through her nose, so soft that no one who was not as close to her as Little Salt could hear it.