Greyhound (26 page)

“Lemme just check the books,” the old man growled from behind a continuous puffing of smoke. He flipped through two pages slowly and seemed surprised as he came across something. He finally looked back up after a brief hesitation.

“What the hell…you do got a message.” My heart started racing even faster now, and I felt hot underneath my thick Greyhound coat.

“I do?” I responded, stunned. The old man didn’t say anything at first. He put the log book down on the small shelf built into the flimsy Dutch door affixed to the office wall. He thrust a pen at me and pointed with his thick digit to a blank line in the book.

“Sign it and date it first,” he ordered, sharply.

“What’s today’s date?” I queried, not looking up.

“May thirteenth,” he replied, annoyed. Hung on the wall, beside the man’s head, was a small paper flip-calendar with dark numbers that took up the entire square. Thirteen was the size of his red face, and the word
May
was harder to read but still visible. I wished I had looked up before asking, rather than the other way around. I quickly signed and dated the register, then handed him back his pen.

“All it says is:
Message for Sebastien Ranes. John Oates and Sara.
” The old man read it off aloud, never letting me see the original in the book. After he read it a second time, realizing that it wasn’t much of a message, he grew confused and a little bewildered. “What’s the matter with you now? You look like someone just walked over your momma’s grave.” I stood still, as it felt as if every ounce of blood had just dropped out of me through my shoes. I was probably as pale as a sheet.

“Thank you,” I replied, quickly making my way outside. Marcus was smoking a cigarette on the platform when I caught up to him.

“Well?” he asked, as he watched me quickly making my way up the parking island. “Was there a message?”

“Yeah…” I rejoined gravely. His face immediately shifted to show concern.

“John Oates
and
Sara,” I whispered, still heading for the bus.

Marcus quickly stomped out his cigarette underfoot and pointed at the open door of our transportation. “Hurry up and get back on. Let’s just get the hell outta here, if we still can.” His tone was urgent. We were both nervous during the last five minutes in Columbus as we waited to pull out and get back onto the road and deeper into the world. I had intended to listen to my Cat Stevens tape on the way to Pittsburgh, but the never-ending barrage of bus fumes, coupled with sheer exhaustion and raw nervous tension, knocked me out cold. I drifted off as soon as we turned left and headed down the on-ramp, merging back onto the freeway and toward whatever was going to be waiting for us in Pittsburgh.

When I opened my eyes again, my head hurt and I felt absolutely awful. I was congested and had to wipe my nose on my jacket cuff to stop it from running. Overhead, my mind registered the words
Welcome to Pittsburgh
followed by a loud clicking noise, as if someone was cocking a gun next to the speaker. I looked over, and Marcus was still fast asleep, which was uncharacteristic, as he seemed to be awake and alert at all times. I had to nudge him back to life.

“Marcus…we’re here. Wake up,” I said, pulling on his arm. He quickly came around and rubbed his eyes.

“Man, I’m dead-ass tired,” he announced, sitting up quickly and yawning. The bus was already in the terminal, and people were pouring themselves down the metal stairs.

“I guess this is it,” I said, looking over at him, waiting for a response. He just smiled, grabbed his stuff, and started slowly down the aisle.

“C’mon, kiddo. We’ve got one more thing to get done before all that.”

Once we were off the bus, we both waited with everyone else on the platform for my bags. One of the porters came over to us.

“Name?” he queried.

“Ranes. Two cases,” Marcus replied, interjecting with expedience. I didn’t say a word, but I was thankful that I didn’t have to speak. A moment later, the man came back with my cases and set them down on the pavement in front of us.

“The tags say that we’re supposed to transfer these to the 4692. You still traveling on to State College or Altoona?”

“My bags are traveling separate,” I announced. I gave the man the two stubs that I had been given three days before back in Stockton and finally redeemed my luggage. As soon as we picked them up and moved a mere ten feet down the platform, we heard the overhead announcement.

“First call. First call. Now boarding Greyhound 4692 on aisle 4 to Altoona, Hollidaysburg, and State College. First call.”

We both stopped and looked at each other, unsure about what to do next. I looked up and realized that Marcus was obviously getting a kick out of this, judging by the ecstatic grin across his face.

“This is the most entertainment I’ve had in days!” he admitted.

“What are we going to do, Marcus?” I asked, now frantic.

“You got anything inside you need or that has your name on it?”

“Uh-uh. Nothing,” I responded.

“Hurry up and take your Greyhound tags off the handle,” he pointed out. The paper tags were being held on by white rubber bands that easily broke when pulled at with any amount of force. Marcus quickly peeled off the red Trailways sticker that had been slapped across the case he was carrying.

“C’mon, let’s get to the front of the building. I’ve got an idea,” he said. We hurriedly made our way around the terminal through an alleyway that opened out onto the main street in front of the bus station. Even for three-thirty in the morning, it was busy. The bus station sat on the corner of a huge intersection that was brightly lit by a barrage of streetlamps. People were coming and going from the terminal or hanging out on the benches, waiting for a city bus to come pick them up. Marcus was looking around for something or someone.

“Here we go,” he exclaimed. “Follow me!”

I ran after him, dragging the suitcase with what little strength I had left, as we made our way down the sidewalk and away from the bus terminal toward an old homeless lady pushing a shopping cart a half a block away from us.

“Excuse me, ma’am!” Marcus called out to her. At first she didn’t turn around, but as we got closer, she slowed and eventually turned her head and her whole body toward us. The old woman was dressed in multiple layers of clothes and rags, which were all filthy. She was hauling two baskets full of what looked like worthless and random junk. As I stood beside her, next to Marcus, I began to notice how badly she reeked. I never thought anything could smell like that, but it was awful. She smelled ten times worse than the man who had defecated in his pants back in Phoenix. I tried not to let it show on my face, but I was overwhelmed by the smell. When she saw me, she smiled, and her face lightened and relaxed.

“Are you alright?” she asked me. “Why are you out so late?” Her words seemed out of place, like she recognized us. She was talking to me as if everything was perfectly normal.

“Sorry to rush, but these are for you,” Marcus informed her, putting the cases down next to her. “We both wanted you to have these and thought you might get some use out of what’s inside,” he added. She smiled, stared at Marcus, and then started to feel the outside of the cases with her hands.

“Ohh…now these are really lovely,” the old homeless lady pointed out. “Let me get you a receipt for these.”

“We’ve got to get back. We have a bus to catch. Kind of in a hurry, okay?” We both scratched our heads as she fumbled around in her basket for a moment, looking for a “receipt.” When she turned back around, she was holding two empty bags of pretzels and handed us one each.

“One for you…” she said, giving an empty pretzel bag to Marcus, “and one for you,” she stated, patting my shoulder and looking closely into my eyes.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Alright, boys. Have a nice trip and don’t miss your flight. Call me when you get in,” she followed up.

“C’mon, we’ve gotta get back to the bus,” he said, as he headed down the sidewalk. I felt a little strange as I turned away from the two suitcases and picked up into a full sprint after Marcus, racing to the bus in the middle of the night. We rounded the back end of the terminal and returned to where we had started. We took a second to catch our breath and watched people climbing aboard our buses, which were parked beside each other. Sweat beads were running down my face, and we were both panting for air.

“This is it, Sebastien Ranes,” he said, sticking out his hand. I felt compelled to give him a hug.

“Thanks for everything, Marcus Franklin,” I replied. I patted him on the back twice and then backed off, feeling odd. Even though I had only known him for three days, it felt as if we had been friends for much longer.

“Oh, here…” I interrupted myself, distracted, and handed him a small piece of paper. “I wrote down my address in Altoona. Maybe you could write me during the summer, tell me how everything’s going up in New York.”

“Okay…look forward to it, then. I’ll send you word, alright?”

“Final boarding call, 4692 to Altoona, Hollidaysburg, and State College. Final call. Final call.”

“Damn!” I swore. “Gotta go.”

“You be good, Sebastien. Stay safe,” Marcus called out, as he stepped over toward his bus. It was an odd moment getting on the new coach without him, and it felt strange, bleak, and unsettling all at once. Everything had gone smoothly, and I was almost home. I would be there in a few hours, and I wondered how much of all this would begin to fade out and be forgotten. Nothing ever felt permanent. Sitting in the back of the bus for the last time, I looked over at my old bus and saw Marcus in the window, waving goodbye. He was standing up and had his palm against the glass, giving me the thumbs-up. I did the same and watched him smiling as we pulled backward, away from the terminal, beeping the whole way.

MAY 14, 1981…

As tired as I was, and as early as it was, I should have just tried to sleep the next four hours away, but I couldn’t. I was wide awake. My brain had fallen into the habit of automatically tuning out all the background noises, the groaning engine, the muffled coughing, and the endless pockets of people snoring. Now it was absolutely dead quiet, and it was disturbing. Most of these people were just making a short road trip to an out-of-the-way place in the middle of the state. They weren’t road-weary, filthy, and exhausted like I was. I felt like a thoroughbred of travelers now. I was a real professional. Now that I was finally alone, just as I was when I had started out, the entire experience of the last three and a half days began to wash over me and sink in. I felt older, and I could sense that I’d probably feel like this for the rest of the summer. Or at least I hoped so. My thoughts shifted back to Marcus, and I knew that he was somewhere on this same stretch of highway, sitting in the backseat and wondering how I was doing, and if someone would be there to pick me up once I got to Altoona. It was a safe bet. In the past, every time we had moved, I had left behind a few friends, and sometimes it would hurt to leave. But after so many moves in such a short period of time, I had slowly become numb to it. Now I was feeling sad for not getting to spend more time in Pittsburgh saying goodbye, even though I knew it was something I was going to have to deal with all day long. No one had ever been a friend to me like Marcus, and no one had ever spent so much time talking with me as he had.

I stared out the window into the waning light of the morning, which seemed slow to come. The moon was now low in the sky, near the horizon and thin like a fingernail, getting ready to fall off the edge of the world, plummeting into daylight. Pulling away from Pittsburgh, the driver must’ve known it was too late at night for any announcement, as it never happened, and the runner lights on the floor and along the ceiling had been placed in the off position.

The majority of the passengers who had gotten on the bus were younger than the people riding on the previous legs of the trip, and a lot of them were wearing purple sweatshirts with a large cat head on everything. The weekend was now over, and they were probably all returning to school in State College. I really didn’t have any hard evidence, but I assumed it by the name of the place.

The farther we got from Pittsburgh, the darker and more uninhabited the world outside became. Mountains rose up all around us, and thick rows of trees blotted out any views that might have been had. The bus slipped through tunnel after tunnel, forging through the innards of small mountains. The inside of the bus momentarily flashed with a brief amount of dim white light from inside the tunnels, illuminating the way. I relaxed and sunk into my headphones to finally listen to the Cat Stevens tape that I’d bought back in Columbus. I started to think that with as much darkness as I was surrounded by, I was bound to eventually fall asleep.

When I popped the cassette tape in and hit the
play
button, I didn’t know what to expect, having never heard of him before. I turned down the volume just in case it was going to be loud. When a few seconds passed in complete silence, I turned the volume slowly back up until I heard the very faint sound of a guitar playing. Checking the back of the cassette box, I saw the title of the song was “The Wind,” which seemed more than fitting. The music was very soft and similar to the Simon and Garfunkel tape, but more soothing. As the bus went on and Cat Stevens sang, the sun rose up from the front of the bus and very slowly, mile by mile, replaced every inch of darkness.

I didn’t close my eyes the whole way in. When the bus finally came to a stop behind the large red-brick building in downtown Altoona, I was overcome by an immediate sense of terrible sadness knowing that, as the engine died, my trip had finally come to an end. I was home.

I filed off the bus behind everyone else, and as soon as I stepped down onto the platform, I saw my grandparents coming toward me, smiling. It was still a little cold out, and my grandpa was wearing a red flannel hunting jacket, which could have been spotted from several hundred yards out. I immediately thought back to the shop window in Gallup.

“Ohh my gawd!” my grandma cried out as she saw me and finally took a hold of me. “You had us all so worried for the past twenty-four hours, Sebby, honey.”

“Sorry, Grams. I didn’t know my mother told you that she was coming.”

My grandpa was staring at me and sipping coffee from a white Styrofoam cup that had Dunkin’ Donuts printed on the side.

“Let’s get you back home and into the bathtub. You smell like you’ve been working on a dairy farm,” my grandma said, as she continued to hug me. “And let’s not talk about your mother right now, okay?” she suggested under her breath, motioning with her eyes toward my grandpa.

“You have any luggage, Sebby?” my grandpa asked, his voice booming across the platform against the cold morning air.

“No, Grandpa, just my bag here,” I rejoined, slinging my small backpack over my shoulder. They both had horrified looks on their faces, thinking that my mother had sent me away without even a change of clothes. I could’ve said that Greyhound had lost my luggage in Pittsburgh, but I decided to just keep quiet and not complicate things. I didn’t want to start off with an outright lie that I could very easily be caught in.

My grandma made me peel off my Greyhound jacket and put it in the trunk before getting into the car. The huge white Cordoba with the black velvet interior was just soft enough and just dark enough to put me to sleep on the ride back to the house. When I woke up, I felt my grandpa pulling on my arm, trying to get me out of the backseat. I came around after a few moments and realized that I wasn’t feeling very good. I now had a headache, and my nose was running like a faucet. When I told my grandma this, she chuckled and said that I’d feel a lot better after a hot bath and a long sleep.

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 when 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.