volume one IN THE D U D L E Y C L A R K - Ohio Vine Tours

MIST PREVAILS
in Seattle throughout the winter, but occasionally it actually
rains.
The day’s mist has turned into exactly that—: a torrential
rain.
Roy flips up his raincoat’s hood before he steps off the bus.
There is a different driver sitting behind the wheel from earlier in
the day, and this fact gladdens his heart considerably.
(Roy has learned that there is an expiration date to chance
encounters. The way he figures it, if more than two days go
by after a nod or a few words are exchanged, the opportunity
for that event to be made into a Big Deal slips forever beyond
recovery.)
Before stepping off the bus, he ties a knot in the plastic
Safeway bag to keep out the rain that peppers the bus’ shell and
creates a deafening roar.
Raindrops shatter and deepen puddles. Seattle’s grit, grime
and birdshit sluices off buildings, windows and rooftops to
disappear in a gushing torrent down the city’s drains, plunging
through a network of ancient clay pipes to Puget Sound.
Thunder is so seldom heard in the Great Northwest that the
passengers are startled, perhaps filled with dread of End Times,
as it rolls like bowling balls through the cloudy alleys overhead.
Roy steps off the bus and into a fast-flowing freshet filled with
candy wrappers, cigarette butts and other cast-off bits and pieces
of the productive world.
The beat-up boots he wears he bought new at Chubby &
Tubby’s several summers back because they were advertised to be
weatherproof.
Roy had supposed that to mean waterproof.
ROY ROGERS IN THE 21ST CENTURY 10