Sequim

The bus to the Bellingham Amtrak Train Station was long and grueling; nothing short of a suffocation chamber for its passengers that day. Crowded, overlapping voices. The seats were packed: businessmen in tailored suits, mothers with infants on their shoulders and children on their sides. The elderly hunched over with the weekly newspaper and a spilling coffee in hand, thin-framed glasses crooked on their face. Beanie hat-wearing tramps with stained jackets, rocking with every stop, holding the rails like it was the only steady thing in their lives. Groups of loud teenagers—boys with faded dyed hair and bleach-blonde girls. Oliver and his father sitting side-by-side, three overstuffed backpacks across their laps and under their feet, their luggage filling two overhead bins.

They spoke minimal words to each other, despite them being so tightly packed together. Oliver happened to fall asleep during the ride with his head wrapped in his arms, resting on his backpack. His father ran his fingers and dragged his thumb through his son’s curly brown hair. He did not fall asleep once. He stared out the window for a while, looking past his son’s back, since he gave him the window-seat like he asked. His eyes traced the blurry, moving trees that lost their green so early this year, the distant cityscapes, the road beneath them. The gray, rippling lakes, the snow-capped mountains, the rural tourist farms with u-pick berries and old lavender sprouts. There was once a time his son would have stayed awake the entire ride, naming all the colors the sky had turned and the blinking airplanes that passed through the clouds. Later on, he read the news headlines for the week like the elderly and their coffee, then took his glasses and read a book. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, a book he said Oliver might be interested in picking up. He’d read it several times, twice in high school, once in college, and twice again in adulthood. He told his son that when they got to Bellingham, he would give the book to him. He didn’t know if he would actually read it, but he still wanted him to have it. “Kafka’s an outstanding author,” he said back home. “And I know you like that kinda stuff, Oliver. Give ‘em a shot.” He looked towards his son again. He stirs in his sleep, lifting a finger and pushing his head deeper in his arms. Backpack for a pillow, limbs curled like birds’ claws. He was too young to be that exhausted, the man thought, but he said nothing.