There is a man named Pete.
He rides the bus almost every day.
I used to ride the bus every day, so I saw him a lot– a gray-haired man, all skin and bones, gray hair, red cheeks, and secondhand clothes. He had a great big duffle-gray suitcase on wheels he carried with him. It was stuffed with his belongings, always including a few paintings in cheap thrift store frames. Some are compositions he made by mixing different colors of play clay together until it looks like a sunset or a desert scene. Some are his sketches in marker. Some are paintings, with cheap acrylics on salvaged cardboard.
Pete used to sit toward the back where Rosie and I sat. He told us corny jokes, the kind of jokes old men tell little girls on bus trips. “What did the snowman say to the other snowman? Do you smell carrots?”
Sometimes he smelled strongly of beer, and at those times his jokes were worse.
Often, he’d ask for a little cash, or try to sell his paintings, which could lead to his getting kicked off the bus for panhandling.
Once, I heard one of the bus drivers calling him “Postal Pete,” and boasting about kicking him off the bus for trying to come on with an open container. I don’t blame her for not allowing open containers, but I don’t like it when she calls passengers names.
Last March I finally bought a car, and now I’ve been driving The Neighborhood Trolley instead of taking the bus. I used to chat with the regulars who take the bus several times a week, but now I haven’t seen them for almost a year.
I don’t exactly miss the bus. Riding the bus in a small town is difficult. It only came once an hour during the times I needed to get out of the house. It went such a limited number of places. A single errand took a whole day’s energy: walking to the stop, waiting, getting off at the nearest place, walking the rest of the way, loading my grocery bags, dragging them back to the stop, waiting, riding home. Now I can get everything done in a fraction of the time, which feels like magic. But I do miss the company, all the people I used to know.
Yesterday, in the blowing flurries and bitter cold, I was running errands. I drove downtown to the library with Rose so she could pick out a Hardy Boys book, then to the post office and then up to Wintersville to help a friend. By the time my errands were done, I was tired, and when I get tired I get anxious and depressed.
I kept thinking about how much I dreaded going home, to the drafty rental house in grim LaBelle and my terrible neighbor, and how much I wanted to flee to someplace beautiful. I thought longingly of my plan to run away to Florida in a time machine, and stay in my grandfather’s ranch house on the canal.
I was worrying and longing and daydreaming so hard, I nearly missed the skinny gray figure dragging his rolling suitcase down the steepest part of Sunset Boulevard.
The figure stuck out a chapped red thumb.
I stopped.
Pete jumped into the passenger seat, bringing a cloud of that familiar beer smell with him. He yanked and tugged at the suitcase and then, comically, all at once, heaved his suitcase into his lap. That suitcase was bigger than he was. It sat on his skinny legs like the earth on Atlas’s shoulders, the top of the suitcase touching the car’s ceiling. Then he yanked and tugged at the door, finally closing it, not quite closed enough to turn off the “door ajar” light on the dashboard.
“Glad I saw you,” I said, and I was genuinely glad. “No one should be walking in this!”
“Will you take me down to the Krogers?” he mumbled.
I took him to Kroger, the grocery store in the shopping center at the bottom of the hill.
He slid out of the passenger seat with almost as much difficulty as it took him to get in, and made for a fast food restaurant near the Kroger. He yanked and tugged his backpack out of the Neighborhood Trolley.
“Do you need a ride back when you’re done?” I offered.
“Naw, I’ll be fine.” He smiled for the first time.
“If you’re sure.”
“Sure. Here, I’ll give you a painting.” He unzipped the top of his suitcase and handed me a skinny square of cardboard. “Did it myself.”
“Thank you,” I said, sincerely.
And then I was off home.
The painting is the one in today’s photo: a tropical island sunset, with palm trees and a fisherman. The sky is about the color the sky got in Naples at sunset, in February, when I once went to visit my grandfather’s ranch house.
It’s painted on the carboard from a case of beer; I found this out when I turned it over.
I think I’m going to put it on my wall.
I think everything’s going to be all right, pretty soon.
It’s just a matter of getting through February.
Image: a photo taken by the author of, a painting by Pete
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.
Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In