Greyhound

by Piper, Steffan

  We got up onto the oversize back patio that was connected to the rear of the house and covered with a large sloping roof. My grandpa had already disappeared inside to get everything started for the day. “Don’t step a foot inside the house with any of those filthy clothes,” he called out from inside. I very quickly, and without any protestation, stripped down to my underwear, leaving everything, including my bag, on the porch beside me. I made my way in a daze through the kitchen and upstairs to the bathroom to run the hot water. When I hit the sheets and closed my eyes, I had a vague recollection of my sister’s face beside me and my grandma taking my temperature.

  When I woke up, a full two days had passed. The sheets I was tangled in were soaked with sweat, and several bottles of medicine were sitting on the small bedside table. I found it difficult to focus my eyes and read the labels. Sunlight was filtering in through the window. Beanie was sitting in a chair on the other side of the room, listening to my Walkman. I watched her for several minutes before she noticed I was awake.

  “Well, someone’s returned to the land of the living,” she announced, pulling the headphones away and stopping the tape. Beanie got up from the chair, crossed the room, and went down the staircase and into the hallway, calling out for Grandma.

  “He’s awake!” she bellowed.

  “Nice to see you, sis. I missed you,” I managed, when she came back over to the bed.

  “Where did you get this Walkman? It’s the coolest!”

  “I bought it in Los Angeles,” I uttered, clearing my throat and looking around the room, realizing fully that I had made it. I reached for the glass of water beside me, but it was empty.

  “Grams is bringing you up some tea. She thought you’d get up late today. Good thing you woke up though. We thought we were going to have to put you in the bath again.”

  “Again?” I asked, blushing and a little embarrassed.

  “Grandma, Aunt Jeannie, and me had to drag you into the bathtub yesterday because you had a fever of a hundred and five. You were limp and babbling insanely.”

  “Babbling? What did I say? What was I talking about?” I hurriedly questioned her, immediately worried, rubbing my eyes and trying to break all the sleep away that had collected in the corners.

  “Dunno, something silly about you thinking that you were a mannequin and you didn’t want to be put in storage or get taken apart? You just kept repeating it. You passed out at one point while you were in the tub and slipped under the water. It took us a second to get you out, but for a moment…”

  “Yeah?” I wondered, following her words as her eyes hit the floor.

  “For a moment, when you were underwater, I actually thought you looked like a mannequin. It was creepy. You were pale and still like those figures over at Macy’s. Once we got you out, it took you forever to breathe again. Grandma thought you were going to drown in the bathtub.”

  “Wow…I would’ve drowned in the bathtub.” I murmured her words aloud.

  “I’m just glad you’re awake, and I cannot believe that Mom put you on that bus like that!” she continued, her tone changing to bewilderment, “…and she also lied to Grams too. What’s she going to do for an encore?” Beanie asked sarcastically.

  “Disappear, I hope,” I muttered.

  “Don’t count on it,” she rejoined, narrowing her eyes. The door, which had been left ajar, swung open, and my grandma slipped through, carrying a large tray of tea and other stuff for me.

  “Well, as usual you gave us quite a scare and had us all on the edge of our seats. You wouldn’t wake up, and we had to have Dr. Michelson from across the street come over to check on you.”

  “Hi, Grandma. I missed you a lot,” I blurted out, without waiting. “Good thing I made it home in one piece just to drown in the bathtub.”

  “Ahh…she told you about that?” Grandma responded with concern. She smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed next to me, holding the tray in her lap. Beanie just shrugged it off and went on listening to the Walkman. I watched Grandma prepare a dose of cough syrup for me, and she forced a cup of hot tea on me.

  “Here, drink this,” she said, handing it over, not taking no for an answer.

  “So where did you get the money to buy the Walkman?” Beanie asked, shifting her focus back to the tape player, already bored of me. “They’re almost fifty dollars!”

  “Where did you get the money for that thing?” my grandma followed up.

  “Greyhound refunded my ticket money when we got to Los Angeles,” I stated.

  “And why would they do that?” she continued, without missing a beat. Beanie had the same look of incredulity on her face, wondering why.

  “Somebody hijacked the bus when we were in Bakersfield.”

  “Sweet Jesus!” Grams announced loudly. “A crazy person hijacked the bus with you on it? Oh my gawd,” she replied, looking absolutely mortified.

  “No…not a crazy person.” I tried to clear it up, but it was no use. I fumbled over my words as they fell on deaf ears. Beanie was wrapped up in the Walkman, and my grandma was imaging God knows what. I knew I wouldn’t be able to explain everything that happened. I drank the tea and tried to settle back into the bed, but I was ushered out and made to sit in the chair in the corner while they changed the sheets and handed me a fresh pair of pajamas.

  “I spoke to your father yesterday. He said he was going to come down to see you in a few weeks. That should be something to be happy about,” my grandma informed me, while stripping off the sweat-soaked sheets.

  Glancing over at Beanie, I could hear the Hall and Oates tape playing loudly in her ears. She was gathering up the sheets and my old set of pajamas. I didn’t say anything about what I was feeling in regard to my father to my grandma. She wouldn’t understand and probably wouldn’t want to. I wondered if she had ever lectured him for abandoning us. She probably didn’t see it that way. I decided to change the subject.

  “Has Charlotte called at all?” I asked.

  My grandma glanced at me, disapproving of the subject and the use of my mother’s name. “No…not a word at all.” She hadn’t called, which I found a little surprising, seeing as I had taken off with her entire wardrobe in the middle of the night without her knowledge. I thought for sure that she would have hit the roof over the loss of her precious dresses. As I drank my tea, the image of Marcus and me handing over the suitcases to the homeless woman on the sidewalk brought me some consolation and a smile.

  “Something funny?” my grandma asked.

  “No, it’s nothing,” I concealed. I wondered to myself if it was just a matter of time before Charlotte finally disappeared for good.

  It took almost a full week before I was let out of bed and declared recovered. They couldn’t tell if I had pneumonia or something else. I began to get settled and was thankful I still had my room in the attic. Dr. Michelson, the neighbor, had told my grandpa that I had picked up something nasty on the bus being exposed to so many different germs while traveling the country. He also made a point of saying that I was most likely not washing my hands.

  The weather had changed dramatically in one short week. Summer had taken over completely. It was hot every day, and I spent as much time as I could outside catching up with Beanie and everyone else in the neighborhood who had the luxury of never having to move. I rode my bike over to the community pool a few times, watched baseball games, and read comic books on the steps of Miller’s Corner delicatessen. I quickly forgot about Charlotte and Dick getting married, and just as Marcus had said, my memory of being on the bus began to fade. I had read my journal a few times, thinking about all the places we went, everything we had talked about, and everything he had told me to remember. I even wrote all those things down again, as I thought they were important enough to repeat a few times to myself. In my head, I could still hear his voice telling me about “cowards and men.” Those words floated across my consciousness like a billboard advertisement.

  It was almost three weeks after I had gotten back w
hen my grandma handed me Marcus’s letter, postmarked from New York City. She hadn’t opened it to search through it for money, as my mother undoubtedly would have.

  “Who do you know in New York, sweetie?” she asked. “That’s not your mother’s writing, that’s for sure.”

  “Oh…just a friend,” I rejoined sheepishly. I carefully opened the letter and sat on the edge of the porch outside and read it slowly. It was handwritten.

  July 1981

  Sebastien,

  How’s everything in Altoona? Feeling okay? Sorry I didn’t write sooner, but I was feeling a bit under the weather after I got off the bus. You’re not going to have many adventures like that one again. I can almost guarantee it.

  New York is just as I remember it. It’s just as crowded as it was when I was your age, when we moved out to California. I saw my mom and my pops, God rest them both. I didn’t make it back in time to see my mom before she passed, as she was pretty sick the last few months with the cancer. I didn’t want to say anything about it on the bus, as I didn’t know how to tell you, but I guess you know now. Being on the bus and talking with you seemed to take my mind off things for a while, so I hope you’re not mad at me.

  It was a good thing that we separated when we did. When I got to Philadelphia, the police questioned me about Leigh Allen and you, but they couldn’t hold me, as they had nothing, and I denied everything. Sometimes you gotta do that with the law. I hate to say this, but you’re probably going to have to keep looking over your shoulder for Leigh Allen for some time to come.

  I’ll never forget our trip together across the country, and Mount Vernon now seems etched in my mind forever. I heard that “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” song the other day, and it reminded me of sitting in that coffee shop at six a.m., watching it rain and waiting for John F. Kennedy. No one would believe it if I told ’em.

  Anyways, remember what we talked about, and things shouldn’t ever be that bad. You’ll never need to look too far for friends if you just be yourself. And don’t forget that it’s easier to be a man than it is to be a coward. It’s just harder to be an honest man than an honest coward. You can always lie to yourself, even if you never lie to others.

  Have a good summer. I hope you like the book I left you, and stay safe.

  Your friend,

  Marcus

  I laughed as I read and then reread his letter. It was unexpected, but good to hear from him, and unsettling to think about Leigh Allen. I still had his driver’s license in my inside jacket pocket, which was now boxed up and stored away in the attic. His license was the only thing I had that would serve as a reminder to me. Maybe in the future I’d be able to do something about it, but for now there was nothing to do but bury what had happened away in the back corners of my mind.

  Later in the middle of summer, my mother did call, rearing her ugly head. She had spoken very briefly with my grandma and told her that the house had been broken into when she was on her honeymoon. The television, a radio, some knickknacks, and the majority of her wardrobe had all been stolen. I was a little surprised by the turn of events, but I honestly didn’t care, as I was now off the hook. All I wanted to know was if she was planning on coming to Altoona to uproot me or my sister again. Hopefully, she wasn’t. It was the only time she had called, as they had most likely argued about putting me on the bus by myself. Knowing my grandma, she probably gave Charlotte the tongue-lashing she deserved. Knowing my mother, she most likely dismissed everything that was said to her and lit another cigarette with her nose in the air.

  When I had gone through my backpack, I found the Langston Hughes book that Marcus had left. I read it several times from cover to cover, but once, when I was randomly flipping the pages, I caught sight of something that I had previously overlooked. On page sixty-seven, someone had put a pencil line through the title of the poem “Color” and boldly retitled it “Have Hope.” It was the same handwriting in the book as was in the letter. I knew it must’ve been Marcus.

  The book was more of a request than it was a present, and I was beginning to understand what these small things meant. Even though he was gone, he was still thinking about me and probably always would be. Sometimes a thought, though, isn’t enough. A few kind words can carry you a little further. That’s what Langston Hughes did. That’s what Langston Hughes would do. The last message from Marcus was an easy one, and I understood it. He was worried enough about me to care, and it wasn’t something that I would soon forget.

  During the intense humidity of July, I sat on the porch playing Scrabble with Beanie and my grandma. I had been struggling with the letters, trying to come up with something better than bus for five points. The task of double and triple word scores was all I was focused on, even though we were, once more, waiting for my father. He was supposed to have come for dinner, but he was running late.

  As the night wore on, clouds rolled in and lightning bugs swarmed the yard around the house. We sat watching the small lights floating in the darkness and listening to the building thunder approaching from the distance. When it was ten o’clock, it was time for bed, and my father still hadn’t shown up. The only person who was upset about it was Beanie. My grandma and I had watched her sulking in her chair on the patio for most of the evening, even though she had successfully come in first place on the Scrabble board. The fact that he didn’t show didn’t bother me in the slightest. I guess it was what I expected. I went to bed that night and slept peacefully, happy to be where I was, and happy to be home. The last person I thought about before I fell asleep was my friend, Marcus Franklin.

  GREYHOUND:

  A FEW THOUGHTS…

  Greyhound Bus Lines was founded in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1914. For most Americans, traveling by bus was the preferred mode of travel for almost seventy years. Greyhound, and later their main competitor, Trailways, built up a large infrastructure across the continental United States, replete with bus depots that were considered state-of-the-art, and even luxurious, by many standards. Many of the stops, often called depots, stations, or terminals, depending on where exactly you were in the country, had large lobbies with pay televisions, a full-service sit-down restaurant chain known as The Grey Café, Grey’s Café, or The Road Grill, and many other amenities like gift shops, showers, vending machines, coin-op laundry, lockers, and other services.

  Since that time, a lot has changed. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Congress deregulated the transportation industry, which gave more people access to passenger airlines such as People Express and PSA. The airline industry offered lower rates to fly, putting both Greyhound and Trailways on the brink of bankruptcy and extinction. Both companies could not compete with the new lower fares for both short and long distances and thus saw the bulk of their patrons lifting upward into the clouds and away from the tradition of bus riding forever.

  In 1981, Greyhound Lines had posted an almost $2 billion surplus for the year. In 1982, because of the deregulation and the launch of People Express and PSA in 1981, the company nearly folded.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, I both need and want to thank my close friend and editor Mark Espinosa for the many hours and days spent editing, questioning, revising, and “making another pass,” as well as all the late-night phone calls, the wise words, and mostly the encouragement. Always number one in my books.

  I would also like to thank Courtney Abruzzo and Bryce Lowe for their early edits when the book was in first draft form and for exhibiting a gracious amount of patience.

  Many thanks also to Gene Nicolelli, director and founder of the Greyhound Museum in Hibbing, Minnesota, for all his help verifying some of the more important details and historical information that only he would’ve known. Thanks also to Debra Jane Seltzer for her unending obsession with photographing the ever fading American landscape.

  Many thanks also go to Terry Goodman at AmazonEncore for waking me from that afternoon nap to tell me congratulations and for putting up with me, ever after. Thanks also to Sarah Tomashek
, Shoshana Thaler, and Cheryl Della Pietra for marketing and editing.

  Special thanks to Ben Gibson for his amazing artwork on the front.

  I also need to thank U2. Thank you for saving my life and keeping me here long after I thought I had given up. You’ll never know how grateful I am. People’s hard work does have meaning to others.

  I also want to thank all the readers, including you. The point of this book was to give something beautiful to the world and to whomever sees themselves within these pages and to know that you’re not alone.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Born in Pennsylvania in 1971 and raised in England and various parts of Alaska. Attended school at the University of Alaska, Anchorage and the University of California, Los Angeles.

  When Piper lived in Alaska, the mayor of Nome asked him to “leave and never return.”

  Steffan Piper currently lives on the outskirts of Los Angeles with his family. Most of his writing occurs in the dead of night unlike the bulk of his contemporaries.