The sun was starting to go down. The extra chill in the air caused people to pull their scarves up over their faces, slap their mittened hands together and stamp their feet. Snow banked along the sidewalks made it difficult to walk. By the bus stop, people, shoulders hunched, huddled in store doorways to get out of the biting wind.

The Grant bus pulled into the curb. Eagerly the waiting people clambered aboard. A warm fug filled the bus. At the back, three teenage boys guffawed and shoved each other, showing off. A tall, well-built man, getting on in years, dumped his three bags of Safeway groceries on the long seat behind the driver. He undid his parka and relaxed, a cheerful soul ready to chat to anyone ready to listen.

"Have you ever seen an alien?" he asked the startled woman next to him. She gave him a horrified look and clutched her purse to her chest.

"I've seen aliens down at the lake," he said. "Remember that man that got burnt at West Hawk Lake? Well, our cottage was near there." The woman shrunk back into the corner and stared fixedly out of the window. She was too proud to get up and move away.

"One night I was woken up at two o'clock in the morning by a loud banging on the door."

"Weren't you scared?" asked a woman across the aisle who had been listening.

"No. I'm a big guy. I don't scare easy. I thought someone must need help."

"And...what was it?"

"There were five aliens at the door, and behind them through the pine trees, I could see the lake all lit up. There were spaceships, lots of them out on the water, all lit up, bright and shiny."

Outside the bus, the sun had set. The sky, a flaming orange and red, turned the sides of buildings to a pink glow. Inside the bus, the noisy boys stopped their horseplay. They were listening to the old man. One woman came to the front of the bus as if to get off, but she sat down opposite the man to be able to hear better. People who were reading put down their books and listened. He continued his tale.

"The aliens were grey. Their skin looked like gunny sacking. Their eyes were fixed in their heads. If they wanted to look at anything on the side, they had to turn their whole head. You know, they were so wrinkled that they looked a hundred years old."

"Did...did they do anything?" asked the woman who had changed places to be able to hear better.

"They glided. That's why they don't leave any footprints, you know. They glided over to my new truck which was in the driveway. It had lots of shiny chrome on it. They made strange murmuring sounds. They were talking to each other but you couldn't understand what they were saying. They sounded excited."

"How big were they?"

He held up his forefinger and thumb about two inches apart. "This big," he said. "They really liked the truck. Did you know they make their spaceships from shiny bits and pieces that they gather and put together? Inside their spaceships there's a central elevator that goes up and down through the top of the ship. They never stand or sit down inside, they just fly around. I watched them looking at my truck. Out on the lake the spaceships were shining as bright as day. There were so many of them! It was quite a sight."

"When I looked back at the aliens, they were gone and then their ships were gone too. The lake was dark. I stood for a moment and the night sounds of the woods came back. The moon came out from behind a cloud but there was nothing there. The lake was empty, the aliens had gone. The ships had gone. I went back to bed."

"In the morning I found that they had taken a bit of the trim off my truck. I was sorry about that. My new truck! But, you know, before the summer was over, they returned it. My son found it in the long grass. I guess they couldn't use it. I felt good that they left it."

The man did up his parka, rang the bell and gathering his grocery bags, he got off the bus.

It was quite dark outside now. No one said anything, but it seemed as if everyone on the bus relaxed. The woman who had been sitting next to him, brushed imaginary crumbs off her coat and pretended nothing had happened. She fiddled with her gloves.

"Do you think that was true?" an elderly woman asked.

"No way," said her friend. "You don't believe all that stuff, do you?"

"Me? Of course not. But...well, he might be telling the truth. I mean if it wasn't true, how could they have returned the bit of trim from his truck? That proves it's true."

"Here's your stop, dear. You'd better get off. And don't talk to any strange beings on the way home."

As soon as she was off the bus, her friend turned to the other people, laughed, and said, "She's as crazy as an old coot, poor dear. Anyone can tell that wasn't a true story, and I can prove it. If they really were only two inches high, how could he tell they had wrinkles?"

The bus rolled on into the night dropping off passengers as it went. The bus was quiet now, each passenger pondering what had been said. That tale of a winter's night: was it true or just the figment of an old man's imagination?

(Author's note: This is not a figment of my imagination. Not every author is fortunate enough to meet such a character on the Grant bus.)

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