Vegetables

I rolled down the window of the taxi to smell the vegetables lining the street like garlands laid out welcoming a victorious army. The army notes through the piles, filling boxes, bags, backpacks. The victory is plenitude. The bus is not yet full but I've been told that this is the last available seat. Number 13. It will be about four hours of traveling. There is an old dirty vomit-smelling rag hanging on the seat rail in front of me. When no one seems to be looking I brush it off so that it gently wafts down to the floor. A man appears at the front of the bus with a clip-board and hands it to the man in the first seat and then hands him a pen.  It seems like some sort of sign-in. The man with the clip-board progresses down the aisle, each person taking the clip-board in turn. I see him go to hand it to one woman. She gestures at the clip-board with a motion that reminds me me how I brushed away the dirty rag - maybe not the same depth of a question of what it actually was but of a similar wish for it to maintain a nice functional distance, not repulsion as much as just wanting to have it be away. The man seated next to her takes the clip-board. I wonder if what I thought I had seen was what I had actually seen. Even in my mind I try to re-see that gesture. A well-practiced subtlety; a sort of easeful purpose and I can imagine that she just likes her man to do those sorts of perfunctory boring things like filling in clip-boards just as I can imagine the dignity with which she would ask her man to remove the rag from the seat railing? We see what we see and on any given day we can only hope to celebrate our own little victories of sight in the never-ending war of comprehension. Victory, and sight, are relative things.