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**PRINT: THE2NDHAND’s 31st broadsheet features a short by Portland-by-way-of-Montana writer Aaron Parrett that captures the power and glory of ambivalence after, during, and prior to what the unemployed poet-protagonist comes to clearly see as, if not love, then surely "Tolerance," the story's title. Parrett is the author of The Translunar Narrative in the Western Tradition **WEB: GRADING ON THE CURVE Eric Beeny
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GRADING ON THE CURVE
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Eric Beeny
This story is part of a novel in stories still in progress, dubbed "The Immortals Act Their Age." See also Beeny's The Origin of Man.
"Corner of Washington B.C. and Middle-East Blvd," Errol said, slipping his coins into the fair box slot.
The bus driver looked at him.
"Just kidding," Errol said.
The bus driver closed the doors and checked his rearview mirror. He clicked his left blinker on and pulled out into traffic.
Errol turned his head to the side, and a man was standing at the front of the bus holding onto the balance bar.
Errol sat down in the seat right behind the driver and that man moved to the middle of the bus near the doors there.
Errol turned to the rear to see another man all the way at the back of the bus.
Errol turned back to face the front of the bus. He leaned forward a little and whispered, "Is that Former Man?"
"Yeah," the bus driver said.
"And is that..."
"Yep."
"Latter Man. Huh."
The bus became the glass case.
Errol was inside their museum exhibit.
Errol stared at the bus driver's face in the mirror hanging above the bus driver's head.
His dark skin, his long, crushed blinks were practically thrust open by dollar signs like shovels prying the lids off coffins.
Getting paid to sit on his ass. He and Errol were in similar lines of work. They both not only directed people to their destinations, they took them there -- only difference was the bus driver's being a literal sort of thing, Errol's figurative.
Tutoring in the English lab at the Community College, Errol guided people in the right directions concerning their papers.
Grammar and punctuation.
Organization and content.
He'd just flunked Journalism, and he felt tutoring English was a lot easier than Journalism.
"You like your job?" Errol said.
The bus driver's eyes jumped up into the mirror and grabbed onto Errol's reflection like it was the monkey bars.
"It's OK," he said, yawning.
His eyes fell back to playing in the street.
Errol looked out the window.
He hated his job, all day telling people they're wrong about a silly choice of words. Really, Errol was slow as a cloud drifting over a bowl of eyelashes floating in milk. "You know," Errol said, "Einstein failed math and still managed to come up with relativity."
"What?" the bus driver said.
"You know, the bending of space and time."
At least this guy took the same route everyday.
He didn't have to worry about where these people were really going.
"I don't know about any of that," the bus driver said.
Errol looked out the window.
Construction workers were performing surgery on some side street, maybe giving the side street a tattoo with their jackhammers.
"I couldn't graduate high school," Errol said. "Failed English my senior year."
"Too bad," the bus driver said. He rubbed his eyes, wiping something from the corner of one of them.
"Now I tutor it to college students." Errol wondered why he was comparing Einstein's genius to his own idiocy. He thought it was maybe because they used Einstein's theories to develop the atom bomb. "A few more of those babies drop around the world and I won't matter any more than Einstein," he said.
"What?" the bus driver said, his eyes squinting, holding Errol's reflection tight.
Errol thought he was just thinking something he just said.
He only meant to think it, then there he was saying it out of context.
The bus driver seemed to be falling asleep.
Errol pulled the string before every stop to wake him up, kind of like plugging his nose so he opened his mouth to breathe, untangling his eyelashes to soak up the scenery.
Maybe Errol and the bus driver didn't have that much in common after all.
The bus driver, Errol thought, he didn't have to deal with his clients on an individual basis like Errol did, tutoring in the English lab.
Errol pulled the string and the driver pulled the bus over to the curb.
"Thanks," Errol said in getting off. The bus driver groaned a little, looking in the rearview mirror. Errol got off and walked to the curb and stood there. He wasn't anywhere near his apartment. He thought of hailing a cab.
Errol decided maybe he was more related to the cab driver.
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THE ORIGIN OF MAN
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