...sometimes lean against me. A gentle pressure, unaggressive. The first time, a young first nations man with bush fever wheeled onto the 257 and greeted me enthusiastically. Mind if I sit here, he said, and talked and talked, about how he had to get out of there... there being Dogpatch, so-called, the former site of the company town in Port Mellon. There are only a few houses left, perhaps some mobile homes. Port Mellon shivers in the thick dampness at the far end of Howe Sound; steepsided mountain slopes, mostly grey and green, are brightened in spring by the optimistic lime of the budding alders and broad leaf maples. It is dark down there, and in winter, which it was, the gloom never lifts because the sun is too low to struggle over the mountains. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone drinks too much. Soon he stops talking, this 20- something guy in shirt sleeves and a ball cap on a February day. The 257 rolls along Highway 1, above West Vancouver. He closes his eyes, nods off. Soon his head falls on my shoulder and rests there, not too heavily. When the bus turns veers right onto the 15th Street exit, he stirs, moves away, then back into position as the bus turns left onto Marine Drive at the bottom of the hill. Only when we reach downtown Vancouver does he fully wake, look around. This is the excitement he's been missing. He says goodbye before he steps off.
The second sleeper, also a young man, even younger, tall, short brown hair, dressed in red shorts and a t-shirt. Perhaps 18, or even 17. Obviously having come from one of the summer camps on the Coast, he was carrying a big pack into which he had stuffed a rolled up sleeping pad, the one and a half inch, medium blue"mattress," which may have explained his weariness. He also carried a white plastic bag that appeared to hold some garbage. The bag would drop, he would rouse himself to pick it up from the floor of the bus. His head did not fall onto my shoulder but his arm and shoulder pressed against me, and when the pressure penetrated his sub-conscious as actual resting against a stranger, he straightened himself before sleep returned and he bent, head over chest, the shape of an elongated cane head.