Greyhound (17 page)

“Damn!” he announced, coming up the aisle. “It’s coming down like hammers and nails out there!” The old man thought his comment was funny and laughed.

“You got pounded?” he cracked, under a chesty laugh. When Marcus got to the back, he handed both of the cans of Coke to the son.

“Here ya go. Thought the two of you might enjoy a cold one.” I was shocked that he gave the soda away, but I realized that his gesture meant more.

“Thank you, Marcus,” the younger man responded.

“Aho!”
cried the father again in delight. It was his trademark call now. Marcus laughed and then thrust his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and produced two more cans of cold soda.

“You were beginnin’ to wonder, huh?” he remarked, catching the look on my face.

The cold soda was refreshing, and we both drank it slowly listening to our Walkmans, mentally hundreds of miles away. I knew Marcus was thinking about getting back, and I didn’t ask about his phone call for a change. I just hoped he’d been able to get through. I realized that if he had, he wouldn’t have had time to buy us all soda.

By three o’clock in the afternoon, we had crossed over the border into Texas. A large sign, shaped exactly like the state itself, welcomed us to
the largest state in the Union.
Marcus shook his head in disgust when we both caught a glimpse of it. The old man actually flipped the bird with his middle finger at the sign.

“You’d think they’d take that relic down. It’s offensive,” Marcus spat.

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Well, first off, Alaska is now the largest state in the ‘Union.’ And the connotation of the word
Union
only serves as a symbol to rednecks far and wide, and people like that fool back in Gallup, who maintain ‘Southern Pride,’ if you catch my drift. God only knows what kind of road signs we’re going to see driving through this next stretch.”

“Well, it is the Wild West, right?” My mind locked onto a few fleeting images of Clint Eastwood standing in the middle of a dusty street, wrapped up in a poncho, chewing on a cigar.

“No. It’s not the Wild West, Sebastien. Hell, we ain’t even in the West!” he admitted, laughing. Marcus spoke loud enough that the old man had heard our conversation. He lifted himself up and leaned over the seat, jokingly beating the palm of his hand against his mouth, making that whooping war cry that all the Indians make in movies. I couldn’t help but laugh at it, and the old man smiled at me.

As we drove across the unending asphalt and rolling plains toward Amarillo, I kept thinking about the conversation I had with Marcus back at the Woolworth’s diner. He had told me bluntly that there didn’t have to be any guarantee on a parent’s love for their child. I wondered if my sister, Beanie, had already figured this out. Maybe that was why she had refused to leave Altoona or my grandmother’s house ever again. If she knew, why didn’t she bother to tell me, or stop me from leaving last summer? Looking back on it now, I was just being foolish. I was wrong for believing that everything was going to work out and be different. I was actually mad at Beanie for not coming with us. At the time, I thought I had to give Charlotte one more chance. I heard her words from the night before echoing in my head.

“It just wouldn’t be fair to Dick, having to raise another man’s son. Can’t you understand?” I couldn’t understand, and nothing around me made any sense. Having Leigh Allen’s driver’s license in my inside coat pocket kept my brain bouncing around angrily. I kept asking myself how she could have put me on the bus by myself without any thought for my safety. It seemed that both my sanity and my happiness only extended to the edge of the glass window that I was leaning against and no further. I wanted to scream out at the top of my lungs until I either turned blue in the face or was lying in a crumpled and exhausted heap on the floor. I knew I couldn’t make a scene, and I wouldn’t embarrass myself like that. I just sat perfectly still without saying a word and listened to Simon and Garfunkel. Maybe that’s what “The Sounds of Silence” was. I would do nothing about it at all…just as Marcus had said in Woolworth’s. I didn’t understand why, but he had also told me to always be respectful toward women, which I didn’t see as related. Maybe at some point I would understand. Maybe it was important.

“Yo,” Marcus tapped me on the shoulder, trying to get my attention. I took off my headphones and hit stop on the Walkman, ignoring the hot-line button altogether.

“Hey, Marcus, what’s up?” My voice sounded hollow again.

“You alright? Deep in your head somewhere?” he asked.

“I was,” I answered honestly.

“Are we cool?” he asked with a worried tone.

“Of course. You’re not upset with me, are you?” I wondered. I’d had my headphones on all afternoon, essentially blocking out everything around me. The old man, his singing and his strange plant, the groaning of the bus, the toilet and its strange smells, all of it. Marcus had spent a good part of the afternoon talking with the old man and his son.

“When we pull into Amarillo in about twenty minutes, I’m going to go inside to the gift shop to buy some batteries. You going to come along or hold our seats?” he asked.

I pulled out my wrinkled bus schedule and examined it carefully for a moment before giving an answer. I ran my finger slowly down a long list of stops that we had already passed.

“It says that we’re going to be here for thirty minutes. I have to call my grandma, but we can go to the gift shop first. Maybe they can give me some phone change,” I finally replied.

“Works for me. Must be another fuel stop. We’ll probably get ourselves a new driver as well.”

“Time flies on the bus.”

“Smooth sailing from here out, hopefully.”

Amarillo was apparently the twenty-second bus stop on my route between Stockton and Altoona. I counted from Stockton down to Los Angeles and then out to Amarillo. When we merged into the city—the freeway drove directly through it—we very abruptly slowed and pulled into a small, blue-painted station that looked not just out of place but unlike any of the other buildings around it. The Greyhound Terminal resembled a converted church, with painted stucco and a neon sign, but no cross. A large rotating elongated greyhound dog turned above us.

“Amarillo. Thanks everybody,”
was all the driver announced after she turned the key into the off position. She grabbed her clipboard and thermos and opened the door. Everyone on the bus got up to get off, as it was looking to be the last big stop of the day and probably one of the last places to get something good to eat. The rest of the stops would probably be just vending machines, if they even had those. We wouldn’t hit Elk City until just before ten o’clock tonight, but the schedule said it was only another ten-minute stopping point. That usually meant that if the terminal didn’t radio the bus that a passenger was waiting, we’d keep right on going. Oklahoma City was listed as a stop at almost midnight, with a forty-minute layover, and then Joplin, Missouri. Mount Vernon wouldn’t have to be dealt with until five in the morning. The closer we got, the more I just wanted to get there and get it over with.

The lady driver smiled at me from under her umbrella as I touched down onto the ground and stood at the bottom of the metal steps. I was always the last person off, and after twelve hours of driving, she’d already figured it out.

“Nice jacket, honey,” she said, admiring my would-be Greyhound uniform.

“Thanks,” I answered, following close behind Marcus, heading for the terminal doors. As we crossed inside, the standard bus arrival call greeted us from above.

“1364 on aisle 1, to Springfield and Oklahoma City. Departure in thirty minutes.”

I was expecting more Eagles again on the radio for some reason, but instead a song that I actually recognized came on. It was Hall and Oates, and it was the first time I’d heard the song not wearing my headphones. It was the second song on side two: “I Can’t Go for That.”

“They’re playin’ our song!” Marcus said with a grin.

“How appropriate,” I answered.

All I really wanted to do was make my phone call and talk to Grandma, but I needed batteries. Standing with Marcus in the gift shop, I felt frustrated and just wanted the whole damn trip to be over. I’d seen enough, sat enough, listened enough, and talked enough. I was really missing being home and was feeling anxious about it.

I went through the slow process in the gift store of buying batteries and making sure that I paid for my own, not letting Marcus continually pick up the tab. I asked the girl behind the counter if she had change for the phone, and she gave me a dollar in quarters, which I had calculated on the bus would give me more than enough. Marcus brought a book down from a tall wire book stand next to the register and paid for it.

“Ever read this?” he asked. I craned my neck to get a better look at the title.

“What is it?”

“
The Catcher in the Rye,
” he answered.

“No. What’s it about?” I engaged him, looking at the books on the rack. They were all used and well read. The majority of them were Westerns or Harlequin Romances. I only recognized the romance books because my grandma read them nonstop. Even though I was looking over the book he had in his hand, my brain was disconnected and elsewhere again. On the way in, I’d seen the only pay phone, unattended. I felt magnetically attracted to it. I was just hoping Marcus wouldn’t go into a long explanation about the book, but I knew I needed to act.

“I’m going to go make that call,” I said quickly, interrupting what he was about to say. I headed for the phone in a mad dash, worrying that someone was going to step in front of me at the last moment and get in the way. When I picked up the receiver and put it up to my head, I was immediately slapped hard across the face by the lingering odor of cigarettes and beer. The phone looked and smelled heavily used and hadn’t been cleaned in some time. There were several stickers for the same cab company plastered all over the sides of the metal housing. When I heard the hum of a dial tone, I dialed the numbers and then dropped in all my coins in a steady procession, listening to the clicking of them being registered and counted. After I dropped my last nickel in, the tone changed, and I waited. I thought it was about to ring. Instead, the line went dead and all my change dropped through the machine and deep into its bowels, not into the change slot like it should have. The machine had ripped me off and left me penniless. I gripped the handle and wanted to start beating on it, but I knew that was probably the worst thing to do, as the ticket counter lady was watching me with a grimace. I tried to stay cool, but I wasn’t happy. I dialed zero.

“Operator?” a voice beckoned.

“Hello, I just put four dollars and twenty-five cents into the phone, and it took my money.” I unfurled my tale of woe.

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do on this end of the phone line. Would you like to make a collect call instead?”

“What about my money?” I asked.

“You’ll have to call a local number and get in touch with a technician where you’re located.”

“But I’m in a Greyhound bus station in Amarillo.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. Would you like to make a collect call instead?” she repeated.

“Yes…I guess,” I answered, dejected.

“What’s the number?” she asked. I slowly and carefully read it off, doing my best not to stumble over it or chew on my words. I read it off like it was today’s date or something from the Bible.

“And who’s calling?”

That was the part that I stumbled and stuttered over every time somebody asked that question. My name. It was the absolute hardest phrase for me to speak clearly. Why? I didn’t have a clue. But saying “Sebastien” paralyzed me.

“Uhm…it’s like, ah…like…”

“I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

“Like, uh, Sebastien,” I replied.

“Michael Devin?” she repeated.

“No! Sebastien,” I spat back, annoyed. Dealing with the operator was quickly becoming humiliating, and I hated it, but it was something that I just couldn’t escape, no matter how hard I struggled. Fighting an inner urge to stutter only made it worse. I always thought maybe it wouldn’t be like this if I just changed my name.

“One moment, please,” she stated. I heard noises in the background, and after a moment, the phone on the other end started ringing. On the third ring someone picked up.

“Hello?” my grandma answered. It was her, finally.

“Would you accept a collect call from Michael Devin?”

“Ah…Whooooo?” my grandma’s voice swayed over the line, confused.

“Grandma, it’s me!” I interrupted the operator.

“Sebby, honey? Is that you? Yes, I accept,” she said.

“Thank you,” the operator responded and then clicked off.

“Who in the heck is Michael Devin, honey?” she asked me immediately.

“No, Grandma, she misheard me. It’s good to hear your voice,” I replied, speaking loudly into the booze-soaked receiver.

“Where are you, Sebby?”

“I’m in Amarillo, Texas, Grandma.”

“Is everything alright? Are you having a good trip out so far?” she asked. I could hear the obvious concern for me in her voice.

“I guess,” I replied, immediately seeing the error of saying that now. “Everything’s fine. Just can’t wait to see you, that’s all,” I added.

“How’s your mother? Is she alright? Has she been feeding you?”

“I don’t know. I guess she’s alright?”

“Honey, whattya mean you don’t know? Is she feeding you? Is she there with you now?”

I was confused now. “No, Grandma. She’s supposed to be in San Francisco getting married to Dick Brown.”

“Whaaaaaaat? Where’s your mother? San Francisco? She told me the other day that she was coming out with you on the bus!” I could hear the terror on the other side of the line, and it wasn’t what I was expecting.

“No, Grandma, it’s just me,” I supplied. It was the very last thing that she wanted to hear.

“Aww my gaawwd, Jesus, Sebby. Your mother’s going to give us all a heart attack over here!” She was flabbergasted, and I could hear her talking with my grandpa, who was probably standing beside her in the kitchen. “He says he’s by himself and that Charlotte’s in San Francisco.” I very clearly heard my grandpa swearing in the background, calling my mother names.