Quietly the abandoned child sits, alone on a bench in this out-of-the-way bus shelter, hands folded neatly in his lap, ticket safely in his pants pocket, neither agitated nor calm, ever watchful and intent, under the dying rays of a late sun, more than a little hungry now, and will sit until a man as alone as the little boy is (could that be an appropriate grown-up?), driving a late model black sedan (no, as even the child can see, this is not the bus he’s been waiting for, though it’s harder to see now that the sun’s gone away), picks the uncertain little boy up to take him somewhere else. Should he give the man his ticket, he wonders, or keep it for himself so he can use it later?
