Greyhound

by Piper, Steffan

  “You remember the man in the tan suit? White guy, kind of tall, red face, bad acne?”

  Monty gave us both a thoughtful look as he lit his smoke, trying to recall the passenger. “Yep. I ’member ’im. He had a funk like he didn’t bathe and had a real dirty asshole.”

  “Mmm-hmm. That’s the one,” Marcus rejoined. “Let’s just say that some of his interests weren’t altogether wholesome,” he replied, motioning at me. “After he got off in Phoenix, he showed up in a fake cop’s outfit in Flagstaff. I had to sort him out as he thought the youngun’ here was his luggage.”

  Monty’s face hardened and grew grim. “He was like that then, huh? Kiddie fiddla. Folks like him showin’ up on the bus more an’ more,” he responded bitterly.

  “I’d appreciate it if this just stayed between us,” Marcus asked of him.

  “You got nothin’ to fuss ’bout, young man.” I was unsure of who, exactly, he was talking to, as he could’ve just as easily been addressing Marcus as myself.

  “If I hear anything ’bout it at all, I’ll send you a message, see. Best check when you get up to Saint Louis or Pittsburgh.”

  “You don’t need to get involved,” Marcus suggested. “It will just complicate things for you.”

  “I wouldn’t want to get anyone in trouble,” I said. My voice came out meekly, and I was unsure if they heard me.

  “Best I leave y’all some kind of message that only the three of us will understand, else if it ever came back, people might ask.”

  Marcus and Monty contemplated the message over their cigarettes.

  “You could just leave us the message with the information booth if people were looking for the two of us,” Marcus uttered, more to himself though.

  “But like code or somethin’,” Monty spoke back. My brain spun upon the suggestion.

  “How about ‘Daryl Hall’? The message could just be ‘Daryl Hall’ if everything’s fine and no problems,” I spoke up bluntly, blurting it out just as the idea formulated in my mind.

  They both laughed at my suggestion. I felt embarrassed and looked away, shaking my head for not thinking before I spoke.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Monty agreed.

  “And what if people are asking questions?” Marcus joined in.

  “‘John Oates,’” I replied simply, somewhat relieved.

  The two of them thought it over and agreed on the message, as it was simple and no one else would get it.

  “I’ll leave the message for Sebastien Ranes, alright?” he queried.

  “Okay, we’ll check in Saint Louis and Pittsburgh.”

  Monty laughed about the whole thing. It was humorous any way you looked at it.

  “One thing though,” Marcus interjected, gravely. “What if there’s heat?”

  “C’mon now, you shouldn’t be havin’ any of that kind of trouble. You sent that dirty white boy home to his momma, din’t ya?” Monty was checking the severity of the beating Marcus gave to Leigh Allen.

  “He was still in one piece when we left him crumpled up in his van,” he replied.

  “Sara Smile,” I mumbled.

  “Pardon?” shot Marcus.

  “Just say: ‘John Oates and Sara’ if there’s heat. Whatever that is.”

  “What do you think ‘heat’ is, youngun’?” Monty put it to me directly, shaking his head.

  “Uhhh…police?”

  “Hmm. I reckon, huh?” he finished.

  The three of us stood there for a few more minutes watching the clouds tumbling across the sky and slowly beginning to black out the last fragments of blue. When the bus finally pulled up, the porters slipped through the automatic doors and parked the carts on the platform alongside the huge, aging metal monster. The replacement bus was much different looking and noticeably older than our previous transportation.

  “Damn, a forty-foot Buffalo! They must’ve had this thing in a garage somewhere. Sure glad I ain’t drivin’ that.” He was fighting to conceal his laughter but couldn’t help but let it slip out.

  “Something funny, old man?” Marcus smiled at him.

  “Oh no. Enjoy that ride, boys. Enjoy that ride.”

  When all the bags were aboard and the compartment doors were shut and locked, our new driver stood by the doorway welcoming everyone up and checking their tickets. Monty’s replacement was a woman. I was only surprised for a moment, as I remembered that the majority of my school bus drivers were women too. After that, it didn’t seem so out of place, even if she was the only female Greyhound driver that we’d seen so far. After Monty finally said his goodbyes to us, he meandered over to the lady and shared a few words with her. Marcus and I made our way toward the bus, hoping we’d be able to get the backseat again.

  From the looks of things, it probably wasn’t going to be a problem, as a few more passengers had disembarked, and on first glance I couldn’t see anyone new. The thought crossed my mind that maybe at some point Marcus and I might be the only people on the bus, even though it was highly unlikely.

  The thunder above us was loud and sounded like a bowling alley in heaven. As flat as the earth was in this part of New Mexico, there was probably plenty of room for bowling. As I stepped up onto the bus, it became clear what Monty must’ve been finding so funny. The seats didn’t look as comfortable, and the coach wasn’t as big and spacious as the one before. There were still overhead compartments, a toilet, and a backseat, but no overhead lights, no floor lighting, and the chairs looked worn-out and hard. The windows actually had red curtains on them too. I couldn’t figure out why, but everything was red instead of the traditional gray-and-blue Greyhound color scheme. All those thoughts faded as I saw that no one, again, had wanted anything to do with the backseat.

  6.

  ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  After we pulled out of Gallup, I started taking notes about what had happened with Leigh Allen in Flagstaff and Luanne’s death. So much had actually occurred on the bus that I started feeling drowsy and experiencing a sense of complete overload. Most days I stayed glued inside my bedroom, protected from the world and avoiding as much as possible. But out here, alone, I was opened up to everything and didn’t have the ability to hide if I needed to. I began thinking about all the conversations I’d had with Marcus, and it slowly began to dawn on me that for whatever reason, he had in twenty-four hours been able to give me more advice and guidance than either of my parents had in twelve years. I knew that feeling this isolated for so long wasn’t something that only I was going through, but so far, Marcus was the only person who seemed to understand it. And he at least gave me the benefit of the doubt of being somebody worthy of his time and consideration, which again was more than I could say for Charlotte, Dick, and her endless string of useless men.

  Flat earth whipped underneath us in various shades of tan, red, and rust. Road signs welcomed us to The Petrified Forest National Park. Several other signs also pointed out that we were crossing the Navajo Desert. When the bus stopped momentarily in Grants, New Mexico, two Native American men boarded the bus. The old man was wearing a wide-brimmed black cowboy hat with lots of light blue jewelry. His son, who was taller and hulked up, looked serious, with a stern gaze. They had taken the seats that would’ve been occupied by Luanne had she continued. Marcus said hello to the old man as he came up the aisle toward the back and was within earshot.

  “Aho!” he replied. When the old man saw me in the back corner, he didn’t smile or say hello but just sat down in the window seat in front of me. From what I could see between the crack in the seat, he was holding some type of bushy green plant in his hand and waving it in the air, singing something quietly, almost under his breath. No one else was talking, the driver didn’t have the radio on, and no one protested or seemed bothered by it. Listening to the old man singing started to lull me and made my eyelids feel as heavy as lead. I listened to the sound of his voice as long as possible before I slipped off into unconsciousness.

  The experience of sleeping on a Greyhound bu
s is unlike any other. Something about rattling around in the back of a large, badly vibrating metal coffin and crossing endless miles of uninhabited earth has a way of heightening not just a few of your senses, but all of them. Typically, a person would benefit from such unfiltered and pure input, but being surrounded by nameless, faceless, unwashed, and unhappy strangers who are all going through different levels of muscular discomfort and joint pain shuts down the possibility of experiencing anything meaningful. Even in moments of complete bodily failure and heavy drooling, I was still acutely aware of the groaning engine, Marcus’s Walkman, and the smell of whatever the old man was waving around in the seat in front of me.

  Lying curled up on the seat, I began to notice that my body was really starting to feel the pain from the constant assault of my surroundings. My shoulders felt as if they were slowly turning into knotty wood, and my hands ached from being constantly clenched into tight fists, and my fingers felt like a collection of steel rods. The bus was transforming me into something else, from the inside out, and I was powerless to stop it. My brain was telling me that one day I would achieve an even greater status by becoming a lobby fixture with a pay television and a plastic seat permanently attached to me in some type of hideous and grotesque fashion. It was another stage in my eventual development from a boy into a full-fledged mannequin that was evidently under way.

  The few times I opened my eyes, I saw the quick flashing of more road signs and colorful billboards whiz past. New Mexico had apparently decided to turn its barren and unused open landscape into revenue-generating real estate. Many of the signs, in the absolute middle of nowhere, warned of hitchhikers and instructed drivers not to pick them up. I knew that if I was on my own on the side of the road, waiting for someone to come pick me up, the last thing I would want to see would be one of those signs.

  One sign read White Elephant, designating a town, but as far as I could see, there was absolutely nothing in sight except a semi-truck rest area and a weigh station. There was another large sign, brown and wooden and unlike all the other signs, that told the reader he was now crossing the Continental Divide. But even though the visibility was dramatically shortened from the thick and pelting rainfall, either side of the divide looked equally monotonous. Each one was as flat and sandy as the other. Small bushes littered the shoulder and the ground below us. Tumbleweeds were getting carried away on the wind and floating off the opposite side with the rushing sheet of excess rainwater.

  Although I was aboard a bus of twenty-plus people, and even with Marcus sitting two seats over, feelings of isolation were playing with me, making me thankful for even a single breath of fresh oxygen. A heavy chemical odor floated from the restroom like a frantic jailbreak every time the door swung on its hinges. Cigarette smoke did little to disguise it either. But when boredom strikes, especially in the middle of the desert, it can be depressing.

  Marcus was reading his poetry book again. Several times I had been able to see the back cover of the paperback; the photograph of the author had been captured in the middle of his taking a drag from an ashy butt. The large, round-faced black man stared out at me, squinting with a half smile. His hand was perpetually waiting to take the cigarette out of his mouth. Marcus glanced over at me and hit the hot-line button.

  “What’s going on over there? You gettin’ eaten by boredom?”

  “A little,” I answered. “What would Langston Hughes say?”

  Marcus shifted in his seat, piqued by my interest in poetry.

  “Did you have any thoughts about the last piece I read you? What did you think of it?”

  I squirmed, unsure of what to say. I’d thought about the poem a few times and had borrowed his book once to read it myself.

  “Getting left behind,” I answered.

  “Really?” He looked at me questioningly. I felt as if he was challenging what I said. “That’s what you thought of?”

  “I did. Is it wrong?”

  “There’s no right answer, but you’re definitely not on the wrong track, that’s for sure. It’s more than what I thought you’d say though.”

  “Will you read it again?” I asked.

  “How about I read you something else? You down with that?” he asked, leafing through his book now.

  “Okay, I’m down,” I replied. He laughed as he flipped a few pages, never looking up at me.

  “Here we go.” He cleared his throat. “This should go along nicely with your ‘getting left behind’ feeling.

  Now dreams

  Are not available

  To the dreamers.”

  I was again grabbed by Marcus’s reading. I noticed one of the other passengers glancing back at us, listening in. The boredom was enough to make anything worthwhile. I thought Marcus was easily the most interesting person on the bus, without doubt. I was just glad to be sitting next to him.

  “But the dream

  Will come back,

  And the song

  Break

  Its jail.”

  He closed the book after he finished reading the passage and watched me for a few moments without saying anything further. He handed me the book turned to the page of the poem that he had recited, and I read it carefully.

  “That’s cool,” I said. “‘And the song break its jail,’” I pondered aloud. “Does it?”

  “Every time,” he answered peacefully. We both lapsed back into silence and daydreaming.

  I started taking more notes on the toll that riding across endless vistas of vast nothingness was taking, and the increasing fidgetiness of my fellow passengers. It seemed that people were now making more-frequent trips to the bathroom just to get out of their seats and move around. A couple of the same offenders were returning habitually to smoke cigarettes, which was beginning to cause noticeable tension for the riders who were getting stuck outside the lavatory, waiting for them to finish getting their fix, only to find the bathroom turned into a smoky and acrid choke box.

  A large green road sign slipped by, pointing out mileage: sixty-five more miles to Albuquerque. The distance wasn’t far, comparatively. The miles began to fade like they were falling faster the longer I kept my eyes closed. I had hoped, curled up on the seat, that it was all a dream, and I would soon wake up in my bed tucked away in the attic of my grandma’s house, in front of the arched window that looked down onto the quiet street outside. But if I opened my eyes and discovered that I was in Gallup, or worse still, Flagstaff, I’d probably get off the bus and just wander away into the rain-soaked Painted Desert around me. But I knew better, and I knew that I could’ve never dreamed what I’d seen in the past two days. If I did, I probably would’ve jarred myself awake long ago. There was most likely many a great number of things that a person could dream about vividly, but driving across country on a Greyhound bus for three days surely wasn’t one of them.

  The hours of the early afternoon passed by us quickly and quietly. Marcus and I both reclined almost motionless and speechless, listening to our Walkmans and only breaking to use the “head,” as he kept calling it. After I had successfully exhausted every song on my Hall and Oates tape, I gave a listen to the Simon and Garfunkel tape that the girl from the gift shop in Phoenix had given me. It only took a few songs to realize that Simon and Garfunkel was very different, and that each song told a story. One song that captured my attention was about traveling across America on a Greyhound bus. As I pieced the lyrics of the song together, it sounded as if the singer was going in the opposite direction. Another adult trying to make it out to California.

  Around noon, Marcus and I briefly exchanged cassettes. He passed me two tapes and told me the order in which to listen to them. The first tape was Chet Baker in Paris. There were no lyrics at all and no photo on the front. My brain was far away, and I was startled when the machine clicked and grinded in my hand, going through its motions of auto-reverse. After listening to that strange voice singing “My Funny Valentine” once more, I switched over to the second cassette. Oxygène by Jean Michel Jarre
. I made quiet guesses as to the proper pronunciation of the words in my head and wondered if the performer was a man or a woman. No words at all, but it was much livelier, more upbeat, and it sent my imagination into over-drive. The music seemed other-worldly and extra-terrestrial. Sound effects, synthesizers, and laser battles fired off in my head.

  By midafternoon, the coach began to go through its usual set of operations as we slipped off the freeway and mounted the off-ramp heading into downtown Albuquerque. I was now two and a half days from Stockton and a day and a half from Altoona. As I checked out the schedule and my map, it felt like the halfway point, even though we most likely had already passed it. The rain was still angrily attacking the flat desert earth; brown water gushed through the gutters below us. In several places, the rainwater was already over the tops of the curbs and flooding the sidewalks. Mist and thick clouds rolled across the angular surfaces of nearby mountains that shot straight up. The tops were obscured and could’ve continued up into outer space. They could have gone higher than any peaks I’d seen before.

  The bus slowed, the driver spoke a few words over the intercom, and the air-conditioning shut off, as it seemed mostly unnecessary now. The rainy May weather chilled the air outside and again made me thankful for my brown Salvation Army windbreaker. My mother called it “monkey shit brown” when she bought it, which didn’t make me very happy to receive it, or to have to wear it to school every day.

  I started to believe that all the terminals would look the same after a few more miles, but when I stepped through the single glass door, which wasn’t automatic, I was shocked at how small the terminal was. There were only three double rows of padded black vinyl chairs and absolutely no pay televisions, no vending machines, and no homeless people loitering around in the lobby or in the hallways. Large red tiles that covered the floors had the look of being recently mopped. The trash cans stood empty, and the sand-filled ashtrays were void of any vachas, which is what I had heard one passenger refer to them as in Phoenix as he made the rounds collecting anything worth smoking. I had taken notes and committed the sight to memory. I’d never seen anyone collecting used butts before. A few stands holding brochures stood against the wall next to the ticket counter, where an elderly man in a well-pressed and very neat Greyhound uniform was standing guard and at the ready.