by Jim Lehrer
“She didn’t see anything, I guess.”
“The movie?”
“It must not have come out or they didn’t have one in the first place. They wouldn’t show it to me, so that must mean they were bluffing about something having to do with it.”
“I hear they had real good movies of Sunshine,” Paul said.
They started walking toward the bus depot.
“How come you came up here to tell me all of this?” Paul asked.
“I had to tell somebody, and you’re the closest thing to a Kenny in Kingsville I have.”
“Well, well. I don’t know what that means and I don’t think I get it and I am not sure I am so glad you told me but that is that and here we are and that is progress, you see.”
Paul pointed toward the bandstand, which was several yards off to the right of where they were walking. “You ever play a musical instrument, Mr. On Time Master Operator Oliver?”
“Nope. You?”
“The piano. I played the piano when I was in the seventh grade. I played it a whole year and loved it and then quit.”
“Why?”
“I kept getting my fingers stuck down in between the keys.”
Jack laughed. “I’m going to miss you, Progress.”
“Nobody misses bus drivers except other bus drivers.”
“Are you a Communist?”
Paul reached over and slammed his right fist against Jack’s right shoulder. “Those are fighting words, Jack.”
“College told me Communists want bus drivers and other people like us to run everything in Austin and Washington and the world.”
“College is a stupid man who doesn’t know it. They’re the worst kind.”
“He knows it. He told me himself he was stupid or he wouldn’t be driving a bus like Sunshine and me.”
“See what I mean?”
Jack didn’t but it didn’t matter. They were almost to the door to the bus depot.
“Was the woman in the photograph the one you had the hotsie-totsies for?” Paul said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Didn’t I warn you about them White Widows? Sunshine thought he had himself one, too.”
Jack didn’t even have to ask about Sunshine.
Paul just told the story. “You know on that Port Lavaca–Victoria turnaround he’d make four round trips a day from here to there and back. Every once in a while, it turns out, he would pay his kid brother, who worked at a gas station, to dress up in one of his extra driver’s uniforms. At Bloomington, the first town out of Victoria, Sunshine would disembark and the kid brother would take over and drive the schedule on to Port Lavaca, do the layover, and then drive it back to Bloomington. Sunshine would then get back on and take the bus on into Victoria like nothing had happened. What had happened, of course, was that Sunshine had a couple of hours in the layover sack with the White Widow wife of the junior high school football coach. Let that be another lesson to you, too, young Mr. Oliver.”
“Don’t fool with wives of football coaches?”
“You’re right, because they want to call all the plays and that’s progress, you see.”
Jack grabbed Paul’s right hand and shook it hard. If Paul had been a woman he would have hugged him.
“Did they let you keep your gold badge?” Paul asked.
“Nope. I turned it in this morning to Sweet Jennings. They said it was company property, not mine.”
Paul reached up to his own uniform cap and pulled it off of his head. “Here, I’ll give you mine.”
“No, Paul. No! You can’t do that.”
Paul undid the little screws that held the badge on the front of the cap. “I’ll tell them some dirty rotten thief stole mine. They’ll give me another one.”
The badge came off in his right hand and he thrust it at Jack. “You earned this,” Paul said.
Jack took it, admired it and put it in a trouser pocket. “If I was a girl I’d cry,” he said, as Paul turned around and headed back toward the Palace Theater.
There was no guarantee, of course, that she would be there, that she would ever go again on a Friday afternoon on the bus from Victoria to Corpus Christi.
If she did come, if she was there, he would not try to talk to her inside the depot. He had already decided that. He would wait until her bus got the first call, until she came outside into the loading-docking area and got in line.
That was where he waited, with his head down. He was not interested in talking to the extra-board man who would be driving his old schedule, or to Willie Church, the porter, or to anyone else. Johnny Merriweather knew he was around but he would be busy inside the depot, handling things for the schedule.
Out of uniform, Jack was some guy waiting for a bus. Everyone else had the same problem Paul did in recognizing him as Jack T. Oliver, Master Operator.
The ACF-Brill IC-41 on Schedule 726, his schedule, pulled into the driveway nine minutes late. Jack was delighted to see that this rookie guy off the extra board, Billy McDougal, couldn’t drop in from nowhere and pull his old schedule on time.
You’ll never do it like I did, Billy! he wanted to shout.
Jack was also happy to see the bus was #4101, one of his favorites. She had tight brakes, soft-shifting gears and great pickup from a dead start. He felt good about seeing her now, probably for the last time.
Just under ten minutes later the awful voice of Johnny Merriweather came screeching through the PA loudspeaker. “May I have your attention, please! This is your first call for Great Western Trailways Silversides Air-Conditioned Thruliner to Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley, now leaving from lane one for Inairi, Vidauri, Refugio, Woodsboro …”
There she was. My God, my God. There she was!
Jack moved over to her.
“Hello,” he said.
She turned her head toward him. “Hello.”
“Do you know who I am?”
She smiled pleasantly. The blue eyes were fully visible and exciting. “You do look familiar but I can’t really place you exactly … I’m so sorry.”
“I’m Jack T. Oliver.”
It was obvious that was still not enough.
He cleared his throat and said: “Good afternoon, folks. Our travel time to Corpus Christi this afternoon will be two hours and thirty-four minutes. My name is Oliver. Jack T. Oliver. If I can assist you in any way or do anything to make your trip more comfortable, please give me a holler …”
“Oh, yes,” she said. She did not smile.
“I’m the regular driver of this schedule.”
“I see that now.”
“I’ve been the one behind the wheel four of your five trips on this schedule. You rode across from me a week ago in the front seat. We call it the Angel Seat.”
“I know I did.” Her voice was no longer pleasant. She turned her blue eyes away from him, toward the door of the bus. There were still four passengers ahead of her, each having his or her ticket punched by Billy, each being helped aboard the bus.
She took a step forward. Jack moved with her.
“I’ll never see you again,” he said, in a voice that he hoped was low enough for no one else to hear. But he really did not care that much right now if anybody did. The important thing to him, the only important thing to him, was that she hear his every word.
She kept her eyes straight ahead and said nothing.
Jack noticed for the first time what a majestic nose she had, how magnificent she looked from the right side. He had seen mostly her left side when she was in the Angel Seat a week ago. There was something familiar about her right side. It took him a second to figure out why. He had just seen a similar profile in the lobby of the Orpheum on a poster for High Noon.
Ava had a profile like Grace Kelly.
She was now the next one in line to give her ticket to Billy McDougal and board the bus.
“You’ve given me the most wonderful times and memories of my life,” Jack said to her. “I wanted you to know that before we parted for
good.”
“You ran over those people, didn’t you?” she said. “You killed that woman and her daughter.” Her expression, at least as viewed from the right side, did not change.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Billy said to her, to Ava.
She handed him her ticket. He looked at it, at her and then at Jack, the man standing next to her.
“Jack? Is that you, Jack?” he said.
“Hi, Billy.”
“Well, well. What are you doing here? Checking to see that I don’t screw up the schedule? They held me for a Shreveport connection, that’s why I’m late …”
Billy handed the passenger stub of the ticket back to her, to Ava. Then he took her left elbow, which was fully exposed below a short-sleeved green and white flowered blouse, and assisted her up the first step onto the bus.
Jack watched her take the first step with her left foot and leg and then the second with her right. And then she was gone, out of his sight down the aisle to a seat.
“Good-bye,” he said quietly. “Good-bye, my love.”
“Hey, Jack,” said Billy. “You all right?”
Jack nodded and walked away. He had been delighted to see and now to know forever that the bump, the bite, was still gone from the calf of her right leg.
He went back inside the depot to get his suitcase and the Santa and to buy a ticket. But to where? What bus would he actually get on now? What did it matter anyhow?
But it did matter. He had to go somewhere.
She didn’t know me. She didn’t even remember my name. She thinks I ran over that woman and her daughter.
I did run over that woman and her daughter, that woman checker and her daughter checker, that Tamale woman and her Tamale daughter, that Fort Worth cop’s wife and daughter.
Mr. Abernathy, his suitcase on the floor beside him, was talking to Johnny Merriweather.
“There won’t be another one going to Panama City, Florida, until five-fifteen,” Johnny said to Mr. Abernathy.
“I hate to wait that long,” Mr. Abernathy said. “But if I must, I must.”
“Do you know who I am, Mr. Abernathy?” Jack said, coming up to him.
Mr. Abernathy looked at him only for a second and then quickly looked away in obvious embarrassment.
“I’m Jack Oliver. That’s my regular run to Corpus that just left here. Look at me closely. You’ll see it.”
Mr. Abernathy was clearly confused, annoyed, scared. “Where is your uniform and your punch and your bus if you are him?” he said.
“I quit, packed my suitcase just like you and decided to go off somewhere on the bus. Not as a driver but as a passenger, just like you.”
Mr. Abernathy grabbed his suitcase. He obviously did not want to talk about this any more.
“Do you want to go with me?” Jack asked. “I will go anywhere you want to go.”
“I was going to Panama City, Florida. I want to go to Panama City, Florida.”
“Great. I’ll go with you on the five-fifteen. We’ll change in Houston and go to New Orleans and Mobile and then to Panama City,” Jack said, turning to Johnny. “Isn’t that the route?”
“That’s it,” Johnny said.
“What do you say, Mr. Abernathy?” Jack said.
“It’s only four o’clock now,” said Mr. Abernathy. “I’ll be back after a while.” He moved toward the door with his suitcase.
“In case I don’t see you anymore, Mr. Abernathy …” Jack ended his sentence there.
Mr. Abernathy stopped, put his suitcase down and turned back to Jack. “I said I would be back at five-fifteen,” he said sternly.
“I know, I know. I thought just in case you didn’t make it, that I would say good-bye for good, because I’m going even if you don’t.”
“Where are you going even if I don’t go to Panama City?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go to Charlottesville, Virginia. Go to Thomas Jefferson’s house. It’s called Monticello. Go there.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t a Communist?” Johnny Merriweather said.
“He was a Democrat!” Mr. Abernathy said.
“Same thing,” Johnny said.
Jack hadn’t heard that before, even at the Tarpon Inn.
The Tarpon Inn. That was another place he would probably never see or smell again. But he wouldn’t miss it. At least, he didn’t think he would. How can anybody know what they’ll miss before they start missing it or them or they or whatever?
He would miss Ava. Now he did know that. He would miss her in a way he had never thought possible to miss an it, a them, a they or a whatever. He did know that. Even if it turned out she looked more like a Grace than an Ava, didn’t even know who he was and believed he had run over that woman and her daughter.
I did run over that woman and her daughter!
When he looked again at the door, Mr. Abernathy and his suitcase were gone.
Johnny Merriweather said to Jack: “Okay, now what can I do for you?”
“Let me think,” Jack said.
“Anything you say, ‘Mr. Abernathy,’ ” said Johnny.
Jack’s plan when he left Corpus had been to switch to Texas Red Rocket Motorcoaches at Victoria after talking to Paul and, if possible, speaking a few parting words to Ava. Great Western was no longer a part of his life and the sooner he got it out of his life and soul the better. But that meant getting off Great Western and its glorious ACF-Brills onto a Red Rocket thirty-three-passenger Beck, a plain flat-nosed bus with a second-rate pusher engine that whined and groaned like an old Chevy. Jack had driven a few in his early days on the extra board and did not care for them. They had a high road-failure record and were hard to hold on the road in heavy winds.
He had thought he would take the 4:45 Red Rocket from Victoria to Austin, where he would transfer to a Greyhound. Then buy a ticket to Dallas and maybe as far as Kansas City. Or go on to Minneapolis. Jefferson Lines was headquartered in Minneapolis. Jefferson was one of the major independent companies in the Midwest. He had met a Jefferson driver two years ago on a charter in Corpus and he said they were good people to work for. They might want the services of a real Master Operator. Pharmacy and Mr. Glisan had promised to give him good references. That was part of the deal. He goes quietly, no charges, no noise, no repercussions, no problems.
But he might try for a job as a dispatcher or as a ticket agent. No, forget that. If he was going to do anything at all having to do with buses, he would have to drive them. He would not give up driving for Ava, so why do it now for nobody, for nothing?
There was time to work that out. It wasn’t written down in Heaven or somewhere that he had to be in buses. There were other things to do in Minneapolis or somewhere.
No, no. It had to be buses. It had to be driving buses. It had to be out there on the road somewhere in some bus. It had to be.
They might also like his Santa Claus and his Christmas decorating abilities in Minnesota. Maybe he could get a job going around decorating people’s houses and yards. No, no. It had to be buses.
Hey, Mr. Abernathy! Come with me and we’ll go where there are buses named after Thomas Jefferson, who was a Democrat and not a Communist. I’ll drive them, you ride them. Okay? Will that do?
Minneapolis, like all the places he was thinking about, was somewhere he had never been and knew of only from some travel brochures he had occasionally glanced at. It was up north, where it was cold and there was snow and there were no beaches. No beaches at all, he was sure. So even before he got to Victoria that morning he had begun to think that maybe he would turn east at Dallas and go to one of the Carolinas, instead of north to Minneapolis. Both Carolinas were supposed to have great beaches. So was California. He would decide all of that when he got to Dallas.
In six Fridays he had gone from being a regular bus driver to being a Master Operator, something College called an “elite,” to being a nothing who didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing, another Mr. Abernathy.
What abou
t Panama City, Florida? Weren’t there beaches there? Charlottesville, Virginia, surely didn’t have any there by Jefferson’s house.
He had said good-bye to Loretta only in a note. He didn’t try to explain anything; he just said he was leaving. He could not have explained it to her. He left with only a few hundred dollars from their savings, some clothes in a suitcase and Oscar the Santa. The rest, he told her in the note, was all hers. That meant the car and the house, the manger set and all the other Christmas decorations.
He could not explain it to himself, much less to Loretta.
Now he wasn’t sure about going through Austin and all the rest. Where else was there to go?
And through the door came Mr. Abernathy again.
“I’ll go with you if you’ll go to Charlottesville, Virginia,” he said to Jack.
“It’s a deal,” Jack said.
“What time does it go?” Mr. Abernathy asked Johnny Merriweather.
“Four forty-five, through Austin. Then to Dallas, Texarkana, Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Roanoke and then across to Charlottesville.”
“I’ll be back,” Mr. Abernathy said and he left again.
“One way to Charlottesville, Virginia,” Jack said to Johnny.
“You serious?”
“As life itself, Johnny,” Jack replied.
He had told Ava, his White Widow, that she had given him the most wonderful times and memories of his life. It was true. But how could anyone ever believe or even begin to understand that.
How could anyone ever believe or even begin to understand that it was worth it to him. It was worth everything, and that included no longer being a Master Operator for Great Western Trailways. The moments he spent with her, with Ava, the experiences he had with and about her, were the best he had ever had with any woman, with any person.
He closed his eyes and was with her again.
I understand why you had to act the way you did at the bus just now, dearest.
Thank you for being so understanding, Jack dearest. It was my way of showing my love.
We were not to be, were we?
No, dearest.
