your suitcase,” the man said.
There must be a mistake, Michael wanted to say. But there was no time to explain. The uniformed man had already reached between his legs and plucked his case from under the seat.
The two other inspectors looked on as the first man undid the latches and shuffled through the contents. Michael stood to block the morning sunlight seeping through the curtains. He didn’t need them to notice his unusual appearance. The inspector’s fingers ravished the clothes and papers inside while Michael’s own fingers trembled—he desperately wanted to snatch his belongings and stow them away—but he was the stranger here. He had to comply.
“What’s this?” The uniformed man held up several bloated socks.
This couldn’t be happening. His brothers, Michael realized, had called the checkpoint. Somehow, Michael imagined wildly, they’d already discovered he was gone—somehow, they had awoken early and announced to their father his escape. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was no story, no excuse that would get him out of this.
The uniformed man shook out the contents of one of the socks. Into his palm, strapped by a blue rubber band, plopped a bundle of cash.
“Why hello.” Michael’s neighbor welcomed the money with sour morning breath. He leaned closer to get a better look. Michael pressed his jacket sleeve to his lips again.
This was all the inspectors needed. One of them sniffed the case and then reached in and withdrew Michael’s ledger. He flipped through a few pages before glancing at Michael, who was now bracing himself for the worst. The inspector passed the sketches of a shimmering city skyline and splayed the ledger to pages with crude drawings of his brother choking on a scorpion tail.
Before he could help it, Michael’s hands went into action and snapped the ledger book shut and pressed it tight against his stomach. The inspectors ignored him, but he still tried his best to stop shaking and stand his ground, to make himself an imposing silhouette against the window.
“Any coffee beans in this case?” the inspector asked.
Two stowaway silverfish crept out of his suitcase, dropped to the floor, and scurried away. No one seemed to notice this except for Michael, who accepted his belongings back. The inspectors began sniffing again, deeply inhaling, and continued along the main aisle of the bus.
“Wrong guy,” the neighbor said to Michael. “This time.” He laughed and slapped his legs with his large hands. “Apparently, that chump change of yours wasn’t even worth taking.”
One row back, a woman jumped when the inspectors lunged at her and searched her bags. Michael held the curtain in place to block the light leaking in, but it was pointless. The sun had risen and daylight spilled into the bus. He glanced back. The woman held her face in her hands while the men revealed several pillowcases inside her luggage. They were full of lemons and laurel leaves, all of which were immediately confiscated.
Once the bus departed again, Michael was kept awake by imagining the scene he feared most: the surrounding passengers turn, see him, their eyes widen, unable to stop staring, and they ask—Where did you come from? Why are you alone? How old are you? And then, the key question: What happened to you? The few strangers who had happened to catch a glimpse of Michael at home always believed at first that he was encased in a kind of decorated body cast. More than anything else, it was terrible to watch their expressions change as his father admitted the truth. Michael pressed himself against the curtain until it undulated around his head, allowing him to sink into its fading darkness.
The man next to him, now fully awake, began to ask the basic questions politeness required. Michael mumbled responses, hoping to end the conversation, but soon realized that the man really didn’t want to converse; he wanted to tell a story, and so Michael had to take on another role he was comfortable with but nevertheless somehow resented—the role of listener.
“I’m on my way back from a funeral,” the man said. “My father passed.”
Michael said nothing.
“But that’s not the worst of it. I went all the way south, and when I got to the funeral home, they told me there was a terrible mistake. They sat me down in front of this large wooden desk, with a vase of beautiful flowers and a stack of papers on top. They hemmed and they hawed about telling me. Apparently, they had their paperwork wrong, and so they followed the southern custom to bury him at sea. I had purchased a plot of land in the north, where my mother is buried. They tried to apologize, but sorry isn’t exactly good enough, is it? Not for that kind of thing! So I demanded they bring his body back, and they said that wasn’t possible. Before I knew it, I had that vase filled with flowers in my hands and then it was gone. Smashed it on their floor.”
He turned and said, “When my mother died thirteen years ago, I bought the two gravesites up north. They were supposed to end up together. Now he’s in the sea—fish food, can you believe it? Don’t you think I had a right to smash things up? Tell me, kid, what would you have done in my position?”
“You’re from the north?”
“Originally, but I live in the city now.” The man glared at Michael and leaned in closer. “Come on now, don’t change the subject! What would you have done?”
This was when it became apparent the man only had one eye. How had Michael not noticed this before? Covering the man’s right eye was a white patch that curved like the shell of an egg, held in place by an elastic band disappearing into his shaggy mass of hair. Michael had the advantage of a face that showed little emotion, and hiding in the shadow of the curtain, his surprise was muted. The one-eyed man stared at Michael, his face full of sincere patience, waiting for validation.
“I wouldn’t know what to do,” Michael said. He clenched his feet around his valise.
“I’ll tell you what to do. You destroy everything within your reach.” The man grunted, as if approving his own statement.
Michael imagined those large hands before him—snapping the stems of calla lilies, stomping on the ceramic vase, tearing the pages from the guestbook.
“The final blow,” the man said, smiling, “was tossing some plaque with an engraved prayer through the front window of the funeral parlor. The shattering glass was the most liberating sound I have ever heard.”
While the man spoke, Michael continued fidgeting with the curtain. The bus was filling with light; soon the people would single him out. And yet here was someone who also looked different, who was completely comfortable talking with a stranger. He even seemed to disregard his difference, or possibly even flaunt it, by highlighting it with a bright, white patch. Michael took this as a sign of inspiration.
“I’ll be glad to have that behind me,” the man said. He lived in the city by the sea, which he said was tolerable since it was close enough to his hometown in the northern continent. Perched at the top of the large peninsula they were crossing, the city, though still technically southern, had a lot of northern influence, the man noted. The patched eye faced Michael again. “And where are you from?”
His last word was accompanied by a fleck of spittle that landed on Michael’s face. Michael hastily wiped it off with his coat sleeve. Moisture that sat on his skin for too long, even the smallest of drops, was always a problem.
“I’m from the inland,” Michael
