“I’m not the first eleven-year-old traveling alone, am I?”
“For someone so young, you sure do catch on pretty fast.”
“I don’t have any other choice, do I? I mean, I’m here and they’re…wherever they are.” I petered out and sipped my coffee.
“Your mother included,” he said softly, lighting a cigar. Mr. Hastings was laughing. “I just want to let you know that I called the information operator up in Stockton. I found a listing for a Charlotte Ranes.”
“My mother.”
“Mmm-huh. Anyway, I called the number.” He looked over at me darkly.
“You probably thought I ran away or something.”
He laughed again. “Or something…” he admitted. “Nobody picked up.” He showed me a piece of paper with my house number on it.
“You get a lot of this, don’t you?”
“Well, Sebastien…I’ve been the station manager for about eighteen years, and I’ve seen a lot of kids come through here. But not many come through here having been sent alone by their own parents. People are shocked to see you here, that’s for sure. It’s obvious that you’re not a runaway. You don’t look like a runaway.” He glanced around, watching several people stepping down off an arrived bus. “You get a lot of this, don’t you?” He repeated what I had said, putting it back at me.
“I never thought much about it. But I know my mother’s not normal, Mr. Hastings.”
“No, I wouldn’t think she is.”
“She’s probably in San Francisco. She went with another new man to go get married again,” I continued. He looked me over, shaking his head.
“Not the first time, eh?” he rejoined with laughter.
“No,” I answered, sipping my coffee. Sitting there talking to him, I started to feel better. It was much better than being alone and being stuck in my head wondering about my aunt, who still hadn’t surfaced.
“Well, look…you hungry?”
“A little,” I answered.
“Why don’t we get something to snack on from the café. If they come looking for you, I’m sure they’ll page us. Okay?”
I got up and left the platform with Mr. Hastings and headed for the Grey Café once more. He told me all about how he’d been driving Greyhound buses since just after the end of the 1950s. I figured that was a long time to be anything.
Inside the terminal, the loudspeaker was still going full tilt.
“Departure to San Francisco through Simi Valley, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Simeon. Aisle 4.”
“1202 arriving on Aisle 1 from Palm Springs.” I found it hard to hear everything Mr. Hastings was saying, so I leaned in close as we sat at the counter, trying to catch his words. He probably just thought I was interested.
“Maybe I should try to make a call from the pay phone,” I interrupted.
“Go ahead, that’s probably a good idea. I’ll be here.”
I wandered across the lobby, speeding up and slowing down, trying to get to the pay phone and around the thronging masses. I reached up, grabbed the receiver, pressed zero for the operator, and requested a collect call. It rang twenty times before the operator came back on and apologized. I imagined the phone in the front room sitting on the small table ringing off the hook. Listening to the sound of it began to bother me, and I felt incredibly let down. I could’ve been killed or wounded in a bus crash, and my mother wouldn’t have known or thought to care. I made note for the second time that the only people who gave a damn about me were complete strangers—just like the mannequins. Only the people looking in the shop windows ever cared, even if it was only momentary. Maybe that’s all real love was—just something that happened quickly and vanished, a kind gesture to a stranger or a fleeting moment of passion. One false move or embarrassing slipup, and I’d be pulled from the display and either put back up into the storeroom or thrown into the industrial-sized trash compactor out back. At least my department store counterparts seemed to have a destiny. I had no clue about mine.
When it was time to board the bus, Mr. Hastings made sure I was the first person on. I saw the porters wheeling my bags around from behind the counter where they were stored. I thanked Mr. Hastings for taking care of me and told him that I wouldn’t forget him.
“Send me a postcard once you get to Altoona. Would you do that?” he asked. I nodded and shook his hand. He was very generous and kind.
“Have a safe ride, Sebastien Ranes. I’ll call ahead and check in on you as you go through the major terminals.” He handed me a few more café vouchers and his business card. “If you need to get in touch with me for any reason, call me collect. If you miss your bus, call me immediately. Okay?”
I nodded again.
“If anybody asks about all those vouchers, just show them my business card. But always make sure to get it back.”
I boarded and looked back as he stood on the platform with the cigar in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. Once the bus was full, the driver climbed on and closed the door. The only open seats on the bus were the two next to me at the very back. I had opted, once more, to sit in the rear seats, and thankfully, I was alone. I either had the plague or everyone really hated sitting next to the toilet. I now knew that it was probably the latter. After Mr. Hastings went back inside, the driver came on over the intercom and did his business.
“Welcome aboard the 1364 to Columbus. My name’s Bill. We’ll be traveling through to Phoenix just before midnight and Gallup, New Mexico, tomorrow morning. All those continuing on toward Pittsburgh and New York, you’ll transfer in Columbus. Please remember that there’s no smoking inside the bus, no alcoholic beverages, and no swearing. Please alert me of any emergency immediately. Thank you for choosing Greyhound, and enjoy the ride.”
It was then I realized that every driver’s overhead announcement was different and probably originated from a well-practiced script that over time had slowly become their own. I decided, though, that there were several things they were obligated to say like “welcome,” “no smoking,” and “enjoy the trip.” Just as Bill was closing the door, I saw a black man in a leather jacket running for the bus, carrying a small backpack slung across his shoulder.
“Wait for me!” the man yelled. Bill stopped the bus and reopened the door to let him in.
“Almost left ya behind, buddy!”
“Thank you,” the man acknowledged, producing his boarding ticket. I saw him coming up the aisle looking for a seat, knowing that the only seats left open were next to me in the back row. He had a wide smile and just seemed relieved to have made it. I was watching him approach, and when he saw the open seats, he saw me. So far, I’d been lucky to have the backseat to myself. Now the thought of company didn’t seem so bad. I was more relieved to be pulling out of Los Angeles than anything else. I was still reeling about my Aunt Sharon not showing up. Those feelings were floating off in the background, surely to confront me soon enough. I was tired, it was the middle of the day, and I figured that at some point I’d fall back asleep.
The man settled himself in his seat quickly, stashing his bag at his feet and breathing another sigh of relief. “How far you going?” the voice beside me asked. I hesitated, unsure how to answer.
“Ohh…me?” I finally responded. He was now looking me over with a very curious expression. He looked on the verge of laughter.
“Yes, you!” he replied. “How far ya headed?”
“Pennsylvania,” I mumbled feebly. I watched his face for the obvious response that I had received from everyone else, but he just watched me. Nothing in his expression gave away that telltale sign of shock. He lifted up in his seat and peered down the rows over the heads of the passengers. Pointing with his fingers, as if he was trying to select somebody from the crowd, he landed on an older couple who were oblivious to the world around them.
“Your parents? They keeping an eye on you?” I didn’t know what to say, so I just stayed quiet. I shook my head no. Looking around, he was chewing gum slowly, but stopped when it sudden
ly hit him. He was overtaken in the next moment with nervous laughter. “Wait…no?” Now he shook his head in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Hearing the words coming out of his mouth made me feel for the first time that I wasn’t alone in the way I felt.
“No, I guess not.”
He stuck out his hand. “Marcus Franklin,” he announced. I smiled, grabbed his hand, and shook it.
“Uh, I’m…Sebastien…Sebastien Ranes.” I felt as if I had whispered my name, as if I was wholeheartedly ashamed. He smiled a second time and went back to chewing his gum. He dug in his pocket and produced a green pack of gum and pushed it toward me.
“Stick of gum?” he offered.
“Thanks, Marcus.”
“No problem, Sebastien. Pittsburgh, huh?”
“Well, just past there actually. Altoona. I’m going to go live with my grandparents.”
“Is that right? And your folks just put you on the bus, all by your lonesome, said ‘Happy trails…don’t forget to write,’ and away you went?”
I felt both nervous and stupid for being put in this position by my mother. All I could do was just look away. “I guess. Something like that. Just my mom and her boyfriend. I got on back in Stockton.”
“How old are you?” His voice now had the same sound of concern the rest of them had. He was slipping into the emotional hole that had surrounded Jenny the waitress, Mr. Hastings, and the ticket lady.
“I’m eleven…or rather twelve tomorrow. It’s my birthday.”
“Sebastien, forgive me,” he said, taking a deep breath and leaning forward. “Traveling the country, eleven years old for one more day, and cruising solo?” There was a certain comic appeal about him that made me chortle.
“Yeah, I guess I never thought about it like that,” I responded. The loudspeaker came on, and the driver’s message interrupted our conversation.
“Stuck on a bus on your birthday? Damn, that’s cold, man.”
“1364 to Phoenix, Amarillo, and Columbus. No smoking on board, and enjoy the ride.”
Another truncated greeting from the great Greyhound speaker in the sky. I took out my notebook from my shirt pocket, clicked my pen a few times, and made note of what was said. “Short and sweet,” I mumbled to myself.
“And we can count ourselves lucky for that, partner. I once heard a driver talk in that mic as if it was his own late-night radio show. The guy talked for five hours straight before people started yelling at him to stop.” Marcus made a face of someone getting upset and yelling over the seats.
“You’ve traveled by Greyhound before?” I asked.
“Sure, many times actually. Not always by choice either, but I’ve spent a lot of time on buses. You look like a seasoned pro on the bus.” He leaned in and gave me that look as if I was in on a secret with just him.
“Whaddya mean?”
“It’s pretty easy to spot a pro. Someone who travels light—you ain’t surrounded by a bunch of plastic bags or anything like that. Some people bring their whole damn house on the bus. Also, you chose to sit in the back, which is the most choice spot. You can stretch all the way out if need be, and you have direct access to the trash and toilet too.”
I laughed again, looking out the window, watching the bus slowly make its way through a labyrinth of buildings, skyscrapers, gas stations, elevated parking garages, and kamikaze people making mad dashes on the street, trying to get to where they were going without a thought to traffic.
“Yeah, I saved all my lunch money for a year and skipped school just to be here,” I joked back. Marcus gave me a strange look.
“I’m just kidding, Marcus. I don’t even get lunch money.”
He laughed heartily and made note of my mood.
“You doing any better now?”
“Yeah…I guess. Thanks.”
“You guess about a lot of things, huh? Well, don’t worry too much about it.” He grew quiet and watched the path of the bus out the window for a few blocks, as if he was seeing Los Angeles for either the first or last time.
“Are you from Los Angeles?” I asked, wondering if this was his home by the expression that had overtaken him. He pulled a paperback book from his jacket pocket and clapped it a few times against the palm of his hand, trying to decide how to answer. I looked at the title, trying to see what he was reading. Something called The Panther and The Lash. I’d never heard of it. He caught me looking at the cover of the book trying to read the title.
“Well, I guess there’s no harm. Yes, I’m from L.A.” He was leaning in close now. “A place most people call the ghetto.” His voice had dropped to almost a whisper.
“Really?” I replied, wide-eyed. “I once lived in a place with my mom and one of her boyfriends called The Grotto.”
“Say what?” Marcus responded, a little shocked and quite possibly annoyed.
“It was the name of our trailer park on Watt Avenue. ‘The Grott’…” Before I could finish, Marcus had burst out laughing. This time it was loud, and a few people even turned in their seats to look back at us.
“Ahhh! The Grotto!”
“Di-di-did I say something wrong?” I stuttered.
He was beside himself with laughter. A tear formed in his eye and rolled down his cheek, and he was now doubled over, gasping for breath.
“Wow…I’ve really heard it all now. I thought I’d seen and done it all too,” he answered, calming himself. His long arm reached out and grasped me by the shoulder, patting me thoughtfully.
“Nice to meet you, Sebastien Ranes from ‘The Grotto.’”
“Nice to meet you too, Mr. Franklin from The Ghetto,” I answered, a bit dumbstruck in my naïveté.
“Just call me Marcus,” he responded, wiping the tear from his eye.
The bus drove slowly through the thick traffic, taking up its own space on the freeway, which made all the other passing cars steer clear. Los Angeles sprawled onward, as if it was the city with no end. Endless communities of houses with red tile roofs collected at the sides of the interstate like a fungus. They were all connected together with miles of thickly layered electrical wires, light poles, and off-ramps that all had Spanish sounding names: Arcadia, Duarte, Pomona, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana, Temecula. Outside my window, mountains rose up in the distance, which were ever moving in and out of the obscurity of thick, acrid smog that covered the sky like a blanket.
I looked over at Marcus a few times while he was reading, wishing again that I had brought along a book. I couldn’t read the brochures jammed in the seat pocket again, although I felt tempted to pull them out every few hours to look them over to make sure all the information was still the same.
“What are you reading?” I asked, feeling bad for finally cutting in on him.
“Poetry,” he answered. It wasn’t the answer I had expected. He looked at me from the top edge of his book. “Ever read any poetry?”
“Once in a while, in school,” I replied. I had a vague recollection of having to read something aloud from a bulky textbook in front of the class, only to have embarrassed myself when I opened my mouth and spoke.
“Only once in school,” he repeated. “Well, that’s a damn shame. What do they teach kids in school anymore?” Marcus asked, being forward. I shrugged.
“You’ve never read anything by Langston Hughes, have you?” he asked.
“I’ve never even heard of Langston Hughes.”
“Good God…you’ve never even heard of Langston Hughes!”
“I’ve read The Hobbit,” I remarked, trying to redeem myself somehow.
“You’ve read The Hobbit, huh? What else?”
“Uh…um…” I had to think about it. “I’ve read a lot of Sherlock Holmes. I finished reading all the stories last December.”
“You mean you’ve read Arthur Conan Doyle?”
“Oh, yeah…right,” I replied, embarrassed. “What’s that book about?” I asked, trying to get the focus off of me. Marcus stared hard at me but glanced once more at the cover and then took a
long look at the world outside the window.
“Well, here, I’ll read you some. How’s that?”
“Okay. Sure,” I rejoined.
“Take a deep breath first,” he stated.
I blinked twice and tilted my head. “Why?”
“Don’t ask. Just trust me and think about what I’m reading. Now take a deep breath.” I did as he said and took the same kind of breath that I would take at the doctor’s office every time they put one of those cold stethoscopes to my bare back.
“Do you know what the word deferred means, Sebastien?”
“No,” I answered bluntly.
“Deferred means to postpone, or put on hold, like layaway, or waiting for Christmas in May. Got it?”
“Okay. Deferred is like layaway.”
“Now listen to me.
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?”
He hammered out the words with immediacy and I could almost see them with my own two eyes. Each one was sharp and flew at me like an object, sending my thoughts reeling. His voice changed just slightly as he read, like he was becoming someone else for a few moments.
When he was done, Marcus settled back into his seat, which he’d been leaning out of to speak to me, and watched me for a response. I could see it all: the raisin dry and crinkly on the hot, white sidewalk, and then a steak in the dirt. I had never heard anybody read poetry like that before, not even my teacher, who had forced us to read aloud from the oversize textbook.
“I never heard anything like that before,” I stated.
“I know,” Marcus responded. “What are you going to do about it?” he added.
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“I said, What are you going to do about it?”
“Uh…what can I do about it?” I answered. I felt confused and confronted all at once. I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“The point of poetry is to make you feel something. When you do feel something, you should write it down on a piece of paper. I know you got a notepad.”
I pulled out my notebook again and clicked my pen a few times. When Marcus saw me deep in thought, he disappeared back into his book. I made some notes, stared out the window, and then wrote some more. I thought about the two words that stuck out the most: Dream Deferred.
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