We were the waiting bored in a bus to the airport in Tired Town, Brazil. Tire problems, the driver explained. But then the door breezed open and a child stood at the entrance to the bus. I heard him ask if he could talk to the passengers before we took off, and handed the driver an envelope.

 It was the hottest day on record in Brazil, thirty-nine degrees in the shade, but this child didn’t sweat through the thick dirt camouflaging his skin. His soiled World Cup T shirt fit him tightly, just covering torn shorts tied by a rope. Skinny—I could count his ribs. He could have been my brother, dead so young of Cystic Fibrosis, same bony arms and legs, same scarecrow face and straw hair. He looked like the poster boy for missing children.

But his eyes were alive to the surrounding passengers, his trembling mouth, scared of rejection. Shy. Shivering like a kid with stage fright.

I heard him ask the conductor, how much time do I get? But I didn’t catch the answer. He nodded and turned back to us like a contestant with so little time to get the answer right and win the glittering prize.

I’d seen it all before during my year in Brazil. I expected him to hand us each a small, typed piece of paper like the ones handed out so often from the poor children working the “bus circuit.”  That was the usual routine, five-year olds, ten-years olds, dead tired, walking up to us with cards that read “My parents are dead,” or “My parents cannot work”  “We need money. We need food. We need medicine. We need anything. Help us, please, help us if you can.” “God bless you,” they said, if they lucked out occasionally. For God had not blessed them, that much was clear. No education. No future.

Seldom did these ragged children get much as they collected their precious cards back, to be used on the next bus. Some passengers grumbled. Today one shouted, “There are laws, get him off.” But no one cared enough to agree. After all, this little drama occurred every day, and it was exhausting, heart-breaking to admit that a person could only hand out so many coins, and aren’t we poor, too? On a wage of 400 Reais a month with rent to pay and kids to feed?

But the new kid didn’t have a card to hand out. This scarecrow child handed us nothing but his smile. He cleared his throat and, softly, slowly, started to speak. His glance drifted out to us while he talked, or he stared at his feet, abashed.

 He was utterly eloquent. He was just as good as Kennedy, as Martin Luther King. He would have made a wonderful statesman, if he had any hopes in the future, which he didn’t.

“Hello passengers on this bus,” he started. “I’m here because I don’t have a father and my mother is sick. I could rob you, you know, if I wasn’t so small, but I don’t ever want to do such a thing in my life. As you see, the conductor let me on the bus because he knows my story. All I want to do if help my poor family. I’m not going to take your money to buy video games or to sit around on the beach. I’m too young to get a job, but I’m the oldest child and someone has to take care of the rest of them. Look, someday I’ll get a real job and sell water at the beach, but right now this is the only way I have, to help my family.”  He stared around, frightened and lost for a moment, coughing silently, like my brother.

“You don’t have to give me anything,” he continued. “You know that. It is your choice. But I am the future of Brazil. I could grow up to be a thief or I could grow up to be like the man driving this bus. It’s up to you. I am your future, too.”

Finally, he took a long breath because it was over. He looked at each of us like an actor would, smiling after an especially difficult performance. He could have been lying or telling the truth, but one thing was clear; he couldn’t have been more than seven. A statesman if he had a chance in his future. Too bad there was no chance in the cards for him. A boy without a name. The future of Brazil.

No one spoke on the bus, not even the man who’d complained about him. The boy walked slowly down the aisle, his grubby little hands stretched out. One person refused, and he thanked him anyway, head down. And then, one by one, everyone else gave something, One Real, five Reais.

“This is only the fourth time I have made this speech!” The boy cried happily. You are good people, bless you.”

Then the person seated behind me stopped him and handed him more money and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. “I don’t want to be a robber,” he said again. “I have a dream. I want a respectable job, like selling water to tourists on the beach.”  We laughed. After all, he was just a child. He thanked us again and walked erect to another bus, ready to face the world.

The passengers all began to talk, wondering if we’d been conned. They didn’t usually give money to children on buses. But no matter what, he was poorer, by far, than the poor on the bus.

So for once, we believed. Sometimes truth shines out in the eyes of a child. I his my tears behind my sunglasses, hoping no one would notice. One year of this, too much, every day. To cry for one lost child because I couldn’t cry for so many others. Give me money, I’m hungry. No money, give me food. I’m seven, I work, I can’t go to school, my father is dead, my mother is sick. And like the others, I usually turned away. There was just too much of it. You couldn’t give everything to everyone. Children. Children who will be paying their parents’ debts. Children who gaze at toys in the shop windows they can never own. Children rumbling through the garbage for leftover food, such longing in their eyes that it stings any humanity passing by.

For a childhood, they can be seen kicking cans for footballs, Dreaming of themselves in the world cup, the girls dancing, longing for Samba days. They search all day for a pittance, these children who eat and drink sunshine because there is nothing else, and so many of the ones who survive become waiters, bus drivers. Thieves.

The future of Brazil. The future of the world. There are so many of them the soul weeps.

Years later, I imagine this child, all grown up, wandering the streets. I recognize him in my mind’s eyes as I park my car. He no longer wanders among the passengers, brave and sure, telling his story. I try to find news of the man who could have been the next Martin Luther King. I want to talk to him, ask him questions. Is he a water seller, like his dream? Did he become a robber?

I can’t ask. I will never know though I have never forgotten him. Instead I imagine him still a child, coming home to his sick mother. He shows her the money he has earned too young. Just like the others, millions. The others who don’t talk such a good line.

He is the past. present and future of Brazil, and I can no longer see hope for him.