by John Smelcer
Lucy nodded as she rubbed the red welts on her wrists.
The man walked over to a vending machine between the men’s and women’s bathrooms, slid some coins into the slot and pulled hard on a lever until there was a clunking sound. He walked back to Lucy, handed her a candy bar, and told her to keep it in her pocket until later.
“It’ll be a long ride,” he said, careful not to look into the deep well of her eyes. “The driver knows where you’re going. You’ll have to do exactly as you are told, otherwise you could get in trouble. And you’ll be in real trouble if you get off the bus when you’re not supposed to.”
Lucy nodded again. She didn’t want to get into trouble.
“I need to pee,” she said with her knees pressed together.
“Over there.” The man nodded. “The ladies’ room.”
When she returned, the man who had taken her from her mother—from the only world she had ever known—sat in the hard, red, plastic seat beside her, without saying a further word, until it was time to board the bus.
When it came late in the night and opened its door for boarding. Lucy stepped up the tall stairs and walked down the dark, narrow aisle. Almost everyone on the bus was asleep. She found an empty seat near the back of the bus. She sat next to the window and looked around her. A man with skin as black as the night beyond the windowpane was sitting across from her. He was sleeping with his head against the window, his jacket wadded up for a pillow. Lucy had never seen a black person before. She stared at him for a long time until her head fell on her chest and she slid into a restless, uncomfortable sleep.
The bus was cold, and the little girl who had no jacket dreamed of falling snow, of frozen lakes and faraway hills, shivering as the rocking bus passed through the night, whispering or coughing through her fitful dreams, crossing an unfamiliar and ever-changing landscape, and an ever-expanding universe beneath a half-withered moon casting little light in the hopeless dark. Occasionally, she would wake up, glance drowsily out the window at the fleeting houses, dark against the sullen night, before falling asleep again, her head nodding or rolling back and forth with every bump and turn of the long and lengthening road.
The next morning the bus stopped at a bus depot that doubled as a service station in a small town that looked like all the other small towns it had passed through in the night.
“Ten minute break!” the driver yelled as he pulled a lever that opened the outward swinging door and stepped off the bus to light a cigarette.
Lucy had to go to the bathroom again. She stepped from the bus and asked the driver for directions.
“Over there,” he said without looking, only pointing. “Don’t forget,” he continued. “Ten minutes.”
Rushing back to the bus for fear of being left behind, Lucy found her seat occupied by an elderly white couple, the nearly bald man looking out the window, his wife reading a magazine. Lucy stood for several moments, not knowing what to do.
“What is it? What do you want?” the woman asked, looking up from her magazine, her expression signaling both confusion and irritation.
Lucy shuffled further toward the back and sat in the only remaining seat, on the aisle and next to a man who looked out of place in a blue suit and starched collar. He sat hunched over a thick book of church-choir music, making notes on a lined sheet of paper. He looked very fit for his age, she thought. One of the names on the tag on his leather briefcase read “Bard.” She couldn’t make out the last name. When she looked around, she saw an Indian boy sitting across the aisle from her beside a portly woman who was snoring. He looked to be about a year or two older, fourteen or fifteen. It was hard to tell. Lucy was small for her age, scrawny as a starved rabbit. The boy was wearing a dark blue shirt and blue jeans, the cuffs rolled up a couple of turns. His jacket was neatly folded on his lap beneath a brown grocery bag. As the bus driver boarded and closed the door, the boy leaned forward to speak.
“My name is Noah, Noah Boyscout,” he said, smiling, holding out a green apple. “Want one?”
Lucy was hungry. Recalling that she had not yet eaten the candy bar the government man had given her, she took the apple, bit into it, and when she had finished chewing and swallowing half the apple, she replied.
“My name is Lucy,” she said, smiling, her long, black hair strewn across her face.
The two young Indians sitting across from each other talked as the bus cruised across the next several hundred miles. Sometimes they took fitful naps. As the bus made its way south, small towns sprang up more and more often from the flattening earth. While an increasingly unfamiliar world passed by the closed windows throughout the day, Lucy and Noah talked about their homes and their families. They talked about the place where they were going, wondered to each other where it was, what it was like, what would become of them. When the elderly couple who had occupied Lucy’s seat got off in some town, they took the vacant seats so they could sit together.
That evening the bus stopped in another small town. After so many, they all looked the same. Only the names changed.
Rising out of his seat, the bus driver walked toward the back of the bus and spoke to the two children.
“You gotta change buses here,” he said. “Go to the counter and show them your tickets. They’ll tell you which one, but this one ain’t going that-away no more.”
Lucy and Noah stepped down from the bus. The sun was going down. Tall grain bins speared up through the fat horizon. It would be dark in an hour or so. The man at the counter said their bus would not arrive for another hour. He told the two children to sit and wait in the drab terminal until they heard their bus announced. But the Indians were tired of sitting. They wanted to stretch their legs. As they walked down the long street lined with storefronts, which were already closed for the day, Noah memorized street signs and store names so they wouldn’t get lost.
They were several blocks away, walking across a vacant lot, when a pack of roaming mongrel dogs came out from behind an abandoned warehouse. At first, neither child thought anything of it. They knew dogs. Reservations and villages were full of dogs. But then the stray dogs saw them and ran straight at them, stopping short, barking at them, growling and baring their yellow teeth—slobber whipping across their snouts, their ears laid back against their mangy heads.
Lucy was frightened. She clutched Noah’s arm. But Noah wasn’t afraid. He stepped toward the angry animals, knelt on the brittle, dry grass, and held out a hand with his palm turned upward. He spoke to them softly in a sing-song fashion. The dogs stopped their menace, twitched their ears forward, and closed their teeth-filled mouths. One by one, they crept forward on their bellies, inch by inch, while the smiling boy spoke to each one, still holding out his open hand.
Lucy stood behind him, watching in amazement as the dogs smelled his palm, licked it, and then came in close and licked his face while Noah petted each one, stroking the matted coats of their backs and bellies. After a while he stood up, pointed in the direction they had come, and told them to go home. And although the dogs had no home, had no people who fed them, they trotted back across the empty field and disappeared behind the abandoned building.
Noah stood up, brushing dirt and grass from his knees.
“We’d better get back,” he said, noting the low sun. Neither of them had a watch.
The two young Indians walked quickly back toward the station, side by side, passing carefully remembered storefronts and street signs. Lucy pulled the candy bar from her pocket, opened it, broke it in two pieces, and handed the bigger half to her new friend.
“That was scary,” she said as they crossed the quiet street to the station.
Noah looked down at Lucy and smiled, and in that single smile she knew they had never once been in danger.
Ten minutes later, the half-empty bus left on schedule.
For the rest of the uneventful night and through much of the next day, the
gray bus crossed over rivers and creeks, crawled across wide farming valleys, crept up hills and mountains on its long southeasterly journey. Passengers came and went and towns blended into one another. In all that time, Lucy and Noah talked and slept and laughed and cried and shared Noah’s grocery bag of food. And with every passing mile, the boarding school loomed ever closer in the steadfast distance.
THE TRAIN CAR was stifling and poorly ventilated, and Simon Lone Fight was hot, sad, and hungry. He could at least do something about the heat: open the window beside his seat. Occasionally, he went into the small bathroom to wet his shirt. Wringing out the excess water, he’d put the soggy shirt back on and for half an hour would feel cool until the shirt dried out again. He could do something about the sadness, sleeping curled up on one of the worn seats, which were almost wide enough to accommodate three sitting passengers. With sleep came forgetfulness, driving the fear and sadness out of his immediate thoughts. In his dreams, red canyons passed softly beneath his feet, eagles soared in a blue sky beneath a yellow sun, and his shadow slouched against a canyon wall, catching its breath, its long black hair hanging nearly to the ground, waving him on to keep going.
In his peaceful, if strange, dreams, no long train headed northeast, and no parentless boy had been taken from his home. Instead, he felt the sure-footedness of his feet running across familiar earth, along with the constant rhythm, the drumbeat of his heart.
But nothing he could do would make the hunger go away. After so many jerking miles, the hunger built up inside him, and although one of the passenger cars was a diner, Simon had been given no money to buy food. Not a dollar. Like his belly, both pockets were empty. When he asked one of the porters how far it was to the town printed on his ticket, the man said it would be at least two days. On hearing the news, his shriveling stomach rumbled. What good was it that the conductor knew where he was supposed to go? What good was it that he “was not alone,” according to the government man?
Two days would be too long.
That night after most of the passengers had long since gone to supper, Simon made his way forward through three passenger cars—the first and third full of double-wide passenger seats, all facing forward, the second a lounge car with tables and magazine stands and skylights in the ceiling—to the dining car, which was nearly empty. He could see a few people sitting at tables toward the middle of the car and, at the far end, what looked like a family of four. A waiter was cleaning tables toward the front and moving steadily toward the back. The car smelled of cigarettes and smoke from the greasy grill. The Indian walked slowly up the aisle, glancing at table tops, looking for leftover food. Spying an uneaten roll on one table, Simon grabbed it and slid it in his pocket before the waiter turned around. On another table half a steak lay in its cool, white-laced congealing juice. He grabbed it, too. Simon smiled when he passed the waiter.
“I was just looking for my parents,” he said to throw off suspicion.
As the waiter resumed collecting dirty dishes in a gray, plastic container, Simon walked to the far end, smiling at the family members—a father, mother, and twin daughters—who were just finishing their meal. He could see that one of the little girls had not eaten all of her fried chicken. An untouched drumstick lay on the plate beside a pile of peas. He hoped they would leave soon and that the waiter wouldn’t beat him to it. When Simon sat at a nearby table, the waiter asked if he wanted to order something.
“My parents said they’ll meet me here soon,” he said, smiling. “I’m just waiting.”
It worked, because the waiter went back to his business. When the family left, Simon snatched the piece of chicken, rolled it in a napkin, and tucked it beneath his shirt. He strolled casually out of the diner. Two cars away, in the observation-lounge car, he found an empty table, sat down, pried the roll open with his fingers, and made a sandwich of the cold steak. He ate the chicken for desert. After his little meal, the boy sway-walked back to the next passenger car and lay down across the seat where he had opened the window and fell asleep again, temporarily allowing his mind to wander all the way back to the reservation.
When he woke up, it was morning. Simon sat up and looked around, yawning. There were more people in the car, mostly men in hats, wearing gray or black suits, reading newspapers, talking to one another, or smoking cigarettes while looking out the windows. Then Simon noticed an Indian boy, about his age, sitting in the double seat across the aisle, his back to the window and with his legs stretched across the neighboring seat.
Looking toward Simon, the boy asked, “What’s your name?”
Simon yawned again and scooted to the aisle-edge of the coarse-fabric seat.
“Simon. What’s yours?”
“Elijah,” the boy replied, leaning forward, holding out a hand.
“Where you headed?” As Simon put this polite question and before Elijah could answer, a man in a gray suit with a briefcase walked up the aisle between them.
By what seemed a remarkable coincidence, the boys were going to the same place, an Indian school in the east with heavy iron gates out front that were connected by an iron arch emblazoning a name neither could remember. They shook hands and as the rattling miles passed they talked about their lives and about where they were going. Simon learned that Elijah had been traveling for a day and a half longer than he had, switching trains twice.
Around noon they both agreed they were getting uncomfortably hungry.
“You got anything to eat?” Elijah asked, having long since eaten the food his father had provided him in a grocery sack.
Simon knew just the thing.
“No,” he said, standing up. “But I know where we can get somethin’.”
Elijah grabbed his tan knapsack and followed Simon to the dining car where they were able to sneak food whenever no one was looking. At the porter’s earlier instruction, Elijah had stowed his suitcase in the luggage car. Once they snitched enough food, the boys made their way back to the same seats and sat across from each other, eating and looking out the window. It felt good to fill their bellies, but they both endured sadness as the passing miles compacted behind them, like a logjam separating them from their increasingly distant homes.
Elijah had a deck of cards stashed in his pack. He taught Simon how to play several games, and for the rest of the day and into the night they played cards to pass the time—Go Fish, Hearts, and a simplified version of rummy that Simon’s grandmother had taught him. Two sisters, both about their age and both white, boarded the train and played cards with the boys until they got off a couple towns down the track. They were going to visit their grandmother for the weekend.
That night Elijah and Simon slept on seats across from each other while the train inched its way across the map of the continent, slowly bringing them ever closer to their unknown destination. One boy dreamed of running beneath a long sky toward a low sun and across red earth; the other dreamed of half-frozen rivers, things long since dead, and things yet to come.
The next morning, after the boys had dawdled over a breakfast of leftover biscuits and one cold and limp piece of bacon, the train stopped at a busy station in a large city. The platforms were crowded with people, the sounds of their many voices and footsteps echoing in the porcelain light of the cool, gray morning. A black porter came by and told them this was the end of the line.
“Ya’ gotta get off now, boys,” he said, without looking at their tickets. “Go on inside and they’ll tell ya’ll which train to take next. That man in the blue uniform, over there, he’ll tell ya’ what you need to do. Make sure to mind him.”
The station was the largest building either boy had ever seen. It seemed big enough to hold every person in the world and most of the animals, too. Inside, at the ticket counter, a fat man behind a window told them which train to take. He told them what time it would depart and from which platform. The boys sat on one of the long wooden benches beneath the high, vaulted ceil
ing. The man in the blue uniform eyed them, then pulled out a small notebook and wrote something. Finally, he walked over to where the boys were sitting.
“You boys know where you’re going?” he asked.
“Yessir . . . uh, no sir,” Simon answered, showing the man the folded piece of paper that told him the name of the town for the school.
The man read the paper and then looked up at a big board on the wall.
“Your train doesn’t leave until one o’clock. Be sure you’re here and don’t miss it. Understand?”
“Yessir,” both boys answered.
Simon looked at a big round clock on the wall. They had several hours to wait. Just beyond the cavernous structure with its high, arched ceiling, the boys could see the whole downtown district of the great city. Skyscrapers rose to the clouds and through them. Cars and trucks and buses passed on the busy street. The sidewalks were packed full of people. Even from inside, they could hear the city and smell it. Neither boy had ever been to such a place, though they had seen pictures of great cities in movies. Simon had watched King Kong at least five times. It was his favorite movie. This place looked like the steel and concrete and glass city in the film.
Wherever it was, whatever it was named, the restless city called to the fascinated boys, and they answered by stashing Elijah’s suitcase in a coin-operated locker and then walking through the wide doorway into the noisy sunlight.
Elijah stopped to stare at the intimidating height of the surrounding buildings. He had to tilt his head way back to see the tops. Narrow slits of blue sky appeared between the high rises. A cloud floated quickly above the thin slice of daylight and briefly stole the sharp-edged shadows the buildings cast across one another. The amazed Indian imagined all the people working in offices behind the gleaming windows. He looked back to the busy street, saw all the people crossing at lights, coming and going in both directions—some just milling around looking into shop windows, others hailing taxis. They reminded him of spawning salmon, the way they congregate in the sea just beyond the emptying mouths of rivers at low tide, waiting for high tide, the signal to begin their mad rush upriver to lay eggs or to fertilize them before they die, their bodies slowly rotting inward from the outside.
