Greyhound

by Piper, Steffan

  “Sebastien…wake up, wake up!” I was being shaken forcefully with a tight grip around the bottom of my jacket. “C’mon, man…the bus is on fire!” Marcus’s face was panic-stricken, and the bus, although slowing, was still moving. I snapped up from the seat, rubbing my eyes and seeing that the lights were all on and the cabin was quickly filling with smoke. My eyes were burning from the chemical fumes. We were reducing speed and pulling off onto the shoulder. People were scrambling in their seats to grab all their stuff. Several people who had their whole lives in plastic trash bags, because they couldn’t afford anything in the way of luggage, were struggling to get all their stuff together.

  The old Navajo man was wide awake and standing up in his seating section, ready to go. It was the first time he smiled at me and nodded.

  “That was quite a dream you were having,” he announced loudly. His voice was deep and easily penetrated the smoggy air, the buzzing overhead alarm, and the wailing old ladies who were all coughing and choking from the acrid haze.

  “Well, old man, you did say that this bus was getting ready to keel over and head off for the New World. You weren’t kidding,” Marcus commented.

  The old man remained calm, as did his son. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re all going to make it off in one piece.” The bus screeched to a long halt on the shoulder, and the lady driver threw open the front door and yelled for us to get off quickly and safely. Dazed passengers moved with purpose and efficiency. The lady driver told everyone to step down the embankment and get clear of the motor coach.

  Within a few minutes, we were all off the bus and standing approximately thirty feet in front of it. A fire had started in the engine compartment while I slept, and there wasn’t anything that could’ve been done to prevent it. The fire burned out of control and escaped from the engine compartment in bursts. The driver, Marcus, and several other passengers decided to salvage as much luggage from the storage compartments on the bottom side of the bus as possible.

  The sky was black, and the sun had set hours ago while I slept. The flames grew taller and started to spread. Soon the bus was fully engulfed, and we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. I stood as close as I could to the old Navajo man, who was singing, or rather chanting, with his son loudly. Their gaze was fixed on the bus, and both held one palm upward, possibly calling to the spirits. We watched bags being hurled off into the ditch. The backseats of the bus, where I had been sleeping only moments prior, were now completely engulfed in flames. White and black interlaced smoke billowed out the front door, and the putrid stench of the toilet cooking blasted us in the face with frequent bursts of warm air. Cinders rose up into the darkness, spread out, and floated back to earth like a massive swarm of fireflies being released from the soul of the bus.

  No one else was driving on the road as we stood on the gravel shoulder watching our transportation quickly turn into a fiery nightmare. The few cars that were going in the opposite direction slowed, but they didn’t stop. The spectacle of the flaming Greyhound bus against a clear and moonless night sky was both engaging and distracting. Listening to the two Navajo men singing made it less frightening but other-worldly. They were both bobbing around as they sang, and the old man had one hand on my shoulder the whole time. I didn’t know if he was leaning on me or telling me something that I just couldn’t understand. At times he was singing directly into my ear. He was singing in his own language and keeping the rhythm with his son. My mind was fixated on the moment. They were also laughing periodically between the long phrases of the song, as if they knew there was a joke that no one else understood. In a strange way, I thought it was funny too. But I just couldn’t bear to laugh.

  After all the bags had been saved, the passengers stood motionless along the ditch, watching the bus burn, mesmerized. Ahead of us, far in the flat distance, flashing lights were heading our way. The closer they got, the larger they looked. Wherever they had come from, it looked as if a whole battalion of emergency vehicles was speeding toward us. I felt a sense of relief watching them approach. I knew we’d all be okay, but the bus was a complete hulking waste. Everyone’s face along the roadside shoulder was cast in a golden light that wavered gently as the flames struggled out of the cracking windows, which were breaking from the intense heat, and escaped up into the dark night sky.

  “Should’ve brought marshmallows!” the old man announced in a singsong voice, mixing it in with his song. He was probably just trying to settle me.

  I stayed with the two men from the Navajo Nation during the entirety of the blaze. We watched a steady stream of vehicles pull up, long after the bus was too far gone. We kept waiting for a fire truck, but none came. The first few flashing vehicles were several State Police from Elk City, followed by three ambulances, the fire chief in a red sedan, and then three school buses.

  Flares were set out on the highway farther back to slow any passing traffic that had difficulty observing a bright ball of flaming metal and seat cushion in complete darkness. The old man and his son kept laughing about the emergency vehicles and thought it was fitting that no fire trucks from Elk City or anywhere else had responded.

  “He must be the fire chief!” the son pointed out in a quiet tone, just for the three of us. They were both laughing heartily about that most of all. The old fire chief was wearing sweatpants and a button-down shirt. He had the look of someone who had already turned in for the evening but was forced to make an appearance.

  “The spirit is free now. No longer a prisoner here. We should be so lucky. Aho!” the old man spoke.

  “Aho!” the son answered back.

  The police officers who had gotten to us first were a bit on the young side and busied themselves checking out all of the passengers for injuries. They took a head count, then grouped us together farther away from the flaming inferno and quickly loaded us, like cattle, onto school buses.

  “You’d think that they’d gone through this before,” the old man’s son remarked. They both must have been really enjoying themselves, being there to catch the last moments of the old bus. Marcus and several other men, and the lady driver, had all volunteered to load up the second school bus with luggage.

  I waited for Marcus, holding a seat for him in the back. He was one of the last people to board, and I heard him coughing as he got on. He made his way up the aisle, looking a little exhausted, and had ash and gray powdery dust in his hair and covering his jacket. I thought he would’ve been upset, but he didn’t seem bothered by the incident at all. He had the same expression that the two Navajo men had and was laughing when he finally sat down next to us.

  “You wouldn’t believe it, but I spoke to an ambulance driver, and he said that this was the third Greyhound that’s burned up on the freeway in the last year. All in the middle of the night too.” The two Navajo men thought this was hilarious. I didn’t understand it at all.

  “I don’t get it. What’s so funny?”

  Marcus responded incredulously to my question. “Are you kidding me? We’re lucky to be alive, man. We could’ve been roadside casserole back there. That place is like the goddamned Bermuda Triangle.” He was shaking his head, laughing about the whole thing.

  The school bus started up, and we pulled out of there without further ado, or any overhead notice. I looked back out the rear window and got a long glimpse of the smoldering and smoky remains of the old forty-foot Buffalo. The thought occurred to me that Monty probably would’ve loved to have seen the bus burn just as much as Marcus and the Navajo Nation men did. As we sped away and closed in on Elk City, Marcus turned in his seat as if he had just remembered something important. He asked me about my luggage.

  “Oh yeah…” he started, clearing his throat and coughing. “Are you going to tell me what’s in your suitcases? I couldn’t believe how heavy they were. It felt like they were packed with bricks.”

  “What luggage?” I feigned ignorance.

  “Oh no…c’mon now, don’t bullshit me. I saw your name on the tags. You’re t
he only Sebastien Ranes on this bus as far as I can tell. What the hell you got in those bags? Car parts or something?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Something, I guess,” I finally admitted.

  “No, no, no,” he said, not giving up. He wanted to know. I felt up against the wall but just couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Explaining it would be too much.

  “Ask me later,” I gave in. “I’ll tell you if you just ask me about it later.”

  The two Navajo men were listening in on our conversation with rapt attention. After so much excitement, most of us sat quietly, as we were being driven by a man who looked as though he might’ve been a hundred years old. He peered through Coke-bottle glasses into the night, hunched over the wheel, taking us to our destination at fifty-five miles per hour.

  Once we got to the depot, we noticed that a lot of people turned out to get a good look at us. It was as if the whole town had been alerted and had decided to converge on the Greyhound stop, which in itself wasn’t much to look at. The tiny depot couldn’t hold everyone inside who had gathered.

  “Do they always greet the buses like this?” the old man joked. “Maybe we should move here. At least our nights won’t be boring.”

  “I don’t think so, Dad,” the son responded, absently but not amused, surveying the crowd with distrust.

  For a half hour, I quietly shadowed Marcus and the two men from the Navajo Nation. The biggest problem, which was taking the most time, was getting another bus to take us all into Tulsa, where we could be handed over to yet another Greyhound coach. The lady driver was locked in the terminal office and on the phone with someone, reporting the situation and trying to work it out. We went through a luggage inspection to make sure that everyone still had all their belongings. Several people had lost their bags, either in the fire or on the side of the road. I still had my two cases, which had mud smeared and caked on the edges and compacted on the handles. Two Greyhound porters were busying themselves by brushing off the bulk of the mud from everyone’s luggage, one by one. I was probably the only person who wished his luggage had been sacrificed in the fire. But standing next to the bags on the platform outside, I realized that I would have a lot of explaining to do once I got to Altoona, regardless of whether they had burned up or not. I knew my grandma wasn’t going to be very happy with me, and she probably wouldn’t appreciate the kind of phone call my mother would engage her in.

  I kept pivoting around to watch the continual stream of people making phone calls at the kiosk behind us. It didn’t look as though anything was about to happen immediately. When a phone freed up, I told Marcus I was going to make a call.

  “You going to call your grams again?” he asked.

  “No, not till tomorrow,” I answered, walking toward the phone stand.

  Not having anymore change, I knew I was forced to make another embarrassing collect call.

  “Operator?” the voice answered, after I punched zero.

  “I’d like to make a collect call, please.” Weary and tired, I spoke calmly into the receiver.

  “Number?” she answered. I gave her the phone number to our house in Stockton, California, on Mendocino Street. Maybe someone would be home.

  “Thank you, just a moment,” the operator responded. On cue, I heard the dialing of numbers, then the silence.

  “I’m sorry…but the number you have dialed has been disconnected and is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again.” An annoying tone followed, and then the recorded message began to repeat. The operator interrupted it.

  “Are you sure you gave me the correct number?” she asked.

  “I am,” I replied. We verified the phone number and tried again. I thought that it must have been a dialing mistake, but the recorded message began to play again.

  “Is there another number that you would like to try?”

  “No, thank you,” I responded. She hung up without another word. Dial tone formed in my inner ear. I hung up, momentarily confused. The thought occurred to me that the phone was purposefully turned off and that Charlotte and Dick had moved, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about it to me, and I hadn’t accidentally overheard anything regarding a move either. It just didn’t make sense, or I didn’t want to believe it.

  “What happened?” Marcus asked, when I got back to the bags.

  “The phone was disconnected at my mother’s.”

  He cracked a smile and started laughing. “It’s been a long day, now. Don’t be bullshittin’ me again.”

  “I’m serious,” I said. He gave me a stern look, taking a deep breath.

  “You’ve gotta be joking, right? Maybe the phone got cut off for not paying the bill?”

  “No, I saw the bill get paid on the first of the month. I watched Charlotte write the check. The thing said ‘This number has been disconnected.’”

  “That’s cold. Not only did your moms drop you on the bus, she gave you the okey-doke and then the slip.”

  “Okey-doke? What’s that?” I queried naively.

  “The okey-doke, y’know…‘Okey-doke, baby, everything’s gonna be fine. I’ll see you in a few days.’ That’s the okey-doke.” He had raised the pitch of his voice to imitate a woman. Once again, I knew what he was saying now was the truth.

  “She gave me the slip too.” I confirmed my thoughts out loud.

  “That’s some real ghetto behavior, man. That’s a straight dope-fiend move. Don’t you got a social worker or something?”

  “I don’t know?” I was drawing a complete blank now. She’d vanished into the night with Dick. I should’ve seen it coming, but I was too trusting. I should’ve been happy about it, but I wasn’t. I felt strong earlier about deciding to never leave my grandma’s house again. But now I just felt dumb, as if I had been beaten to the punch line of a really bad joke.

  “Dope-fiend move…” I repeated under my breath, as a statement, not a question, standing there quietly, staring off into space.

  As I stood there burning time, trying to better understand my mother, a bus finally pulled up. At first, I didn’t think it was for us, because it wasn’t a Greyhound Lines motor coach. The outside was painted red and white, and the logo along the side read Trailways. When the door opened, a driver stepped down and dismounted. He quickly waved at us to come forward.

  “Are all of you from the Greyhound bus that caught fire out on the 40?” he asked. The lady driver emerged quickly from the terminal office and confirmed it. We’d be continuing forward on Greyhound’s main competitor. Now, having seen it, I knew they actually had one. Before, it was just a myth to me. The compartment doors were unlocked, our luggage was stowed beneath the behemoth before anymore time was lost, and we all boarded and pulled back out into the night for Tulsa and Oklahoma City.

  It was an odd thing, but even though we were on a different bus, everyone sat in the exact same seats. Maybe with the entire world shifting so intensely around us, everyone just naturally sought a little bit of order. The tension and tired feelings were palpable. Nerves were shot, some of the older women had broken out into tears a few times, and if someone had decided for whatever reason to switch seats, there would’ve been a fistfight. I was thankful to have the back row with Marcus and the two men from the Navajo Nation. It felt like we were a team. Perhaps we were. Riding was the sport, and successfully getting to your destination was the goal. With everything that had taken place thus far, we had experienced more than enough obstacles, several delays, and an ample amount of frustration and anger. Traveling on a Greyhound bus might’ve looked like a simple thing from afar, but it wasn’t. One of the first things that I had figured out at the start of the trip, which felt like so long ago, was to avoid looking at the schedule and not to follow the journey on my watch. I still had the paperwork with the route schedule that I’d picked up at the ticket counter in Stockton, but it was now crumpled, folded, and creased from being jammed in my back pocket and sat on endlessly. I hadn’t glanced at it since Albuquerque, and I knew it was bet
ter to just leave it be.

  The Trailways bus interior bore a striking resemblance in color to the forty-foot Buffalo, except for the lack of curtains. The bus had recently been cleaned and smelled of oranges instead of Pine-Sol, but the toilet had a sign on the door that read: Out of Order. The door was secured and put into the locked position. The small occupied light just above the handle was lit.

  The ride to Oklahoma City apparently wouldn’t be long—an hour and fifteen minutes at most. A few people really needed to smoke and ignored the no-smoking curfew. No one complained, and the majority of the passengers just slept, including Marcus. The two Navajo men were lightly snoring and slumped over in their seats. The old man was huddled against the window, buffered by his jacket. This was a position that almost everybody on the bus would eventually succumb to. Even though I felt sleepy, I sat there awake, staring out the window at the passing lights and the shadowed landscape. My eyes were tired and heavy, but I knew that I wouldn’t be at ease until we transferred buses again and got back on schedule.

  Greyhound management agreed to pass one of the stops altogether. In Elk City, we were asked if anyone was getting off in Tulsa. When no one responded, the lady driver got back on the phone, and I watched her through the glass shaking her head no. A panic had struck when the reality had set in that bus 1364 would be at least an hour to an hour and a half behind schedule for the rest of the trip. Whoever had been on the other end of the phone wasn’t very happy and had given her some explicit instructions. We were now driving in the leftmost lane and moving at a speed I hadn’t seen since the evil Frank Burns was behind the wheel. But anyone waiting for us in Tulsa was going to be out of luck.