Greyhound (8 page)

Night started to close around us completely. The freeway was an endless stream of white headlights coming from well past the far horizon. The bus was the most comfortable for a few hours just after each layover, when they had filled the gas, emptied the toilet, and given the engine a rest. The air-conditioner was steady and cool and lacked the sooty gas-chamber odor that it normally forced from its tiny vents.

“You said your mother’s getting married?” Marcus asked. He was drinking his soda as if it were the greatest drink on earth. He was fixated on the shape of the can or what was printed on it.

“Yeah, San Francisco.”

“Any reason why you weren’t invited? Seems odd you not being there, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, but I’ve been to a few of her weddings already. They never last,” I answered. “She’s only interested in the idea of being married.”

Marcus chuckled. “What does your moms do for work? She got a job?”

“My moms? I’ve only got one?” I answered, confused.

“Moms…it’s your moms, the lady that you love. The only one. Got it?”

I stared back at him with a blank expression. It took a second for it to settle in. “Oh…yeah. I got it.”

“You got to learn to blend in, little man. It’s important. No one ever told you ’bout all that, did they?”

I shook my head no. He just grunted “hmmph.”

“So what does she do?” he asked, getting back to the main subject.

“She’s a bank teller, handling money, opening checking accounts. Stuff like that. She works in a bar at night as well.”

“Well, at least she’s got a gig. That’s something—and don’t say ‘I guess’!”

“She works in a bank, but we never have any money for school clothes, food, or the rent. She always has money from the bar though—single dollars.”

“Singles, huh? That might be a conversation for later, but it sounds like you should be happy she’s getting married. Who’s the guy?” he asked.

“Dick,” I grunted in disgust. “I really hate him. He’s an obnoxious insurance salesman.” I did my best to sum him up in as few words as possible.

“Damn.” Marcus’s face cringed as if he had just bit into a lemon. “That can’t be good.”

“Tell me about it,” I answered, dejected. “It’s not. He went to prison a few years ago. I overheard them talking. He doesn’t think I know.”

“Prison?” Marcus responded curiously. “Did you hear what he went in for?”

“Yeah.” I lowered my head.

“Well, don’t clam up and be ashamed about it. You ain’t the one that went in,” he smiled. “C’mon now, what was he in for?”

“I heard him say that he held up a liquor store and also set a house on fire when they tried to arrest him.”

“Damn, that ain’t right. Robbery is one thing, but arson is a whole other bag of problems. Maybe that’s why he sells insurance.”

“I don’t understand,” I responded.

“Don’t worry. It’ll be clear to you later on. People who set stuff on fire shouldn’t be trusted. At all. Got it?”

“Okay,” I answered.

“So, your moms doesn’t see anything wrong with her working in a bank and marrying a man who has a taste for armed robbery and who will set himself on fire when backed into a corner?”

“I guess I never thought of it like that.”

“I bet he did.” Marcus finished his drink and put the empty can, along with mine, into a small paper bag and then stowed it under his seat. “Smells like real trouble, if you ask me,” he rejoined.

“Why, because he went to jail?”

Marcus gave me a stern look. Maybe I’d said something wrong. I had a tone in my voice when I blurted out what I had said. It was difficult for me to swallow
all
of my anger.

“First, to answer your question, no—I don’t have a problem with him going to prison. A lot of people go to prison. It’s just a fact of life. Almost every man in my family has done a bid, or served time somewhere.”

I was shocked. Dick was the only person I’d known who had been to prison. “Really?” I answered, my mouth agape.

“Second, jail is one thing and prison is another. Don’t confuse them. Trust me when I tell you that there is a world of difference between the two.”

“What’s the difference?” I asked on cue.

Marcus just shook his head with a slight grin. “You really want me to tell you, huh?” he asked. He seemed reluctant.

“Sure, why not? I honestly don’t know.”

He looked around the bus quickly and then shifted in his seat a little, moving closer, as if he was about to tell me an important secret.

“Ever see someone get pulled over on the side of the road by the police?” he asked.

“Yeah, all the time.”

“All the time?” he answered incredulously, with a broad smile. “Well, guess where he went.” I knew better not to answer right away. “He went to jail. May have even stayed the night. But in the morning, he probably went home or someone came to post his bail. Someone paid hard cash for that man’s freedom.”

I nodded in understanding, following his logic.

“When you go to prison though, chances are you’re never going to get to go home again. And no amount of money will break you free,” he emphasized. His words were terrifying. It was a reality I’d never considered. He sat back in his seat again, looked away, and then stood up.

“If you do get to go home again, it’s only by the grace of God. And they usually let all the wrong ones out, like your good friend Dick. Like I said, arson—don’t trust ’em,” he added, as he opened the lavatory door and quickly stepped inside.

The bus cruised through the empty desert, slipping through the black of night, vanishing without an argument. The only interruption was the headlights on the freeway, breaking the world apart like a knife wound across its invisible face. Stars dotted the sky above us like nails, pointing downward as if there just might be something to pierce and hold down. Low voices were barely audible over the sound of the tires roaring underneath us. The sound of a chuckle from the front was the only familiar thing, the only human thing. Trapped inside the large aluminum shell, we were not of the same world.

We traveled for an unknown period of time, sliding through a black vacuum at an easy speed with a continual low groan. Occasionally, my head would jerk and dislodge itself from the folded-up jacket that separated it from the window. As I watched the road beneath me, several cars swerved and were pushed left and right as they tried to whip around the bus, passing us at breakneck speed. The large bus weaved dangerously a few times into the next lane from the occasional blast of wind.

“You’re pretty quiet, huh, Sebastien?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “It’s a problem. Sometimes I want to say something, but I can’t.”

“You do alright in school?” Marcus queried.

“No…not really. We move around so much, it’s impossible. As soon as I start meeting new friends and getting comfortable, my mom either has a change of plans or I have to go stay with my grandma.”

“You don’t have any say in it, do you?”

“What do you think?” I scowled. “They never ask me. That’s for sure.”

“All you have to do is speak up. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”

“Yeah…and then I get smacked and told to ‘shut up’ or ‘go to my room.’”

Marcus didn’t take an eye off of me at all. “Yeah, so? You telling me that you’re afraid to get hit a few times?”

“Wha…?” I answered, confused.

“Lesson number one: everyone’s going to—always—dish it out and do everything they can to beat you down. You better get with that, quick.” His face was calm and relaxed. He blinked a few times and even cleared his throat. “But it doesn’t mean that you have to take it. You gotta be ready to repeat yourself and make your case, and for you that’s a problem.”

“Are you insane or something, Marcus?” I was a little annoyed at him for pushing it. He just laughed it off without a care.

“I bet you get into a lot of fights in school, too, don’t you?”

Now I was watching him. “And how would you know that?”

“Just a lucky guess, I guess,” he rejoined with a grin. He was being funny at my expense. It was alright though. I wasn’t bothered.

“Kids make fun of me all the time at school. Every time I start a new school and find myself surrounded in a classroom full of people staring at me, it starts without fail, and it’s always the same. They tease me because I stutter.”

“You stutter?” he asked, incredulously.

I opened my second bag of pretzels and slowly began chewing a few to give my brain a break. I didn’t answer right away. I don’t know why I told him that, but it was too late to take it back.

“I stutter a lot,” I responded, almost in a whisper, as if I had only thought the words rather than vocalized them.

Marcus spoke with concern in his voice. “I couldn’t tell, honestly,” he confided. I shared my pretzels with him. He took a few from the bag and then handed it back.

“I have to be careful what I say. Sometimes the words just won’t come out, no matter how hard I try. There’s a lot of words I can’t say, because if I do, well…” I paused. “It turns into a mess. Sometimes I just have to think up other things to say, even though what I want to say is clear in my mind. That’s when things go wrong, and I end up saying some really stupid stuff.”

“And that’s why they tease you, huh?”

“Yeah. I try to be cool, but it just makes things worse. My mother always gets mad if I stutter when I’m around her. She usually tells me to stop stuttering or stop talking, period. She said that I would probably stutter my whole life because of the way I was.”

“And what way are you?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s…” The tension approached, causing me to pause and re-route my mouth. “I’m just always alone.”

He laughed. “You’re a loner.”

“A what?” I responded.

“A loner?” he grunted. “Someone who’s by himself, alone, doesn’t travel around in a pack or a large group of people. Like a lone gunman or a gravedigger.”

“Yeah, that’s me then. The Lone Gunman.”

Marcus laughed, cracked his knuckles, and stretched his feet out into the aisle. “So, you’re a loner. You travel around a lot without your parents. You get into fights at school, and you stutter. I bet you don’t have many friends either.”

“Most people don’t like me. Even when they say they do, they’re usually lying. I had a friend for about six months at one school, but when he found out that I was moving again, he didn’t want to be friends anymore.”

“I knew it. You got it rough, kiddo,” he remarked.

I felt strange talking with Marcus. I wasn’t hesitant to tell him what was on my mind. He was probably the only adult who had ever listened to me or asked me questions, or rather the only adult who asked me questions not related to some kind of trouble I was in.

“My cousin has a stutter,” Marcus said after a few moments. I paid close attention as I ate my pretzels. “He used to get teased a lot in school too. It started a lot of fights, and he was always messed up in some kind of hassle with the school or the police. He wasn’t too well liked either. Trouble always found him, no matter what. He was pretty smart though, but always being under the eye, he eventually got kicked out of school. After he was gone a while, everybody just forgot about him, even the boys who’d picked on him.”

“What happened to him?”

“After he dropped out, he started working as a janitor for a clothes manufacturer where my moms worked. It was easy work, because he didn’t ever have to talk. He just kept the floor clean, helped move the large bolts of fabric, and straightened up the dock on the ground floor. Pay wasn’t bad. Probably the best he had.”

Marcus looked away without saying anything. He was quiet and stared off into space. For a few moments I thought he might say something, but he didn’t. When he looked down at his hands, I had the urge to speak.

“What’s your cousin’s name?” I thought it was the best thing to ask. He looked up at me again.

“His name was Elias.” His response was cold. “The two of us used to spend a lot of time together, but it’s been a long time since I’ve laid eyes on him. He’s thirty-five now. I haven’t seen him in seven years.”

“What happened to him?”

“Take a guess, but let’s see if you get it right.” Marcus began folding up his jacket, getting ready to close his eyes for a while. I was starting to feel sleep catching up to me as well.

“He went to ja…I mean prison.”

Marcus nodded, made himself comfortable, and yawned. “Yep. You got it, chief.”

“What did he go to prison for?”

“You really want to know?”

“I do,” I said steadfastly.

“Well, Sebastien…he killed a man. It wasn’t his fault though.” He shook his head. “The man had broken into my mom’s house in the middle of the night. My cousin was there…” Marcus seemed reluctant to tell the story. “He hit the man across the head with a lamp. He fell quick. They said the blow had killed him instantly.”

“He went to prison for that?” I asked, surprised.

“The man he killed was white.”

“What does that matter?” I answered.

Marcus grinned and eased back into his seat. “Well, unfortunately, life is a little more complicated than you may realize. But that’s another story.” He yawned and slowly began to disappear into the darkness of the bench seat, his clothes and the wood laminate wall behind him.

“Did your cousin…stop stuttering?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know?” His eyes were still closed as he answered, and he shifted around a little, trying to find the sweet spot on the seat.

“I don’t know,” I answered absently. “I sometimes wonder if it will go away.”

“How long have you stuttered? Since you could first talk?”

“No,” I rejoined. “Just two years ago.”

Marcus opened his eyes and glanced over at me sideways. “Two years ago?” He seemed surprised as he repeated my words. “Usually kids who stutter start young, pick it up early. You were, what, ten years old then? Something happened, didn’t it?” His words seemed sharper, more direct. His tone was crisp and had an edge to it. I didn’t know what to say to Marcus about that. Maybe he knew. I wanted to say something, but I realized I was having one of those moments where my mouth wouldn’t function without falling to pieces.