Bus Station

I parked that green Mustang in front of the bus station. Without hesitating, I went to the Greyhound ticket counter and bought a one-way fare to California. The bus ride through Indiana went rather quickly; my mind was full. No landscape out the window or idle conversation taking place around me could numb me enough to forget the image I had mistakenly walked in on. Really—Gun and Jo? When did this happen? How long have I been unaware? Why? What was I lacking? What does this mean? A thousand and one questions soared through my brain, rattling it painfully with a paramount of juxtaposed thoughts. Had I done something wrong? Was it right for me to leave? Would it be right for me to come back?

The power surge that I had felt in the house, the adrenaline high that gave birth to my near murderous vindictiveness, had well been subsided by the time those bus wheels crossed the state line. My sensation of independence had been diminished by the time and distance placed between my husband and I. Really, the whole trip was absurd, now that I grasp the clarity and stability of retrospect, but the greatest irony is that was the one steadfast destination in me; I never doubted it. I doubted who I was running away from but I never doubted who I was running to.

When we reached Illinois soil, the second layover was not far behind. It was early morning on the second day; I had been awake all night, just barely falling asleep an hour or so before we stopped at the Grayhound terminal. From its next stop the bus would be heading north. Extreme north.

But, alas, I didn’t wake up at the terminal, and this Canada-bound bus was taking me hostage. I noticed this somewhere in Madison, Wisconsin, when the landscape became interestingly unfamiliar and nothing at all like I had pictured the plains of Oklahoma—byway of the original route—to be.

“Your attention, please. We will be reaching Rochester in approximately three hours. All passengers destined for Saskatchewan, this will be your final and only bus. For those of you going on to Milwaukee, your bus will be ready for loading at the terminal.”

I couldn’t believe it. What was this bus driver talking about? We were going the wrong way! Saskatchewan? –As in the province?

“Excuse me,” I turned to the girl in front of me, a ginger-haired beauty with a beige cap on her head and brilliant yellow headphones around her neck. Some rock band—possibly The Cure—was wailing through the Walkman even though she had removed the set from her ears. “Did he just say that this bus was headed for Saskatchewan?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” she said nonchalantly, round eyes glistening in the morning sun. “Three hours to Rochester.”

I sighed emphatically, my hand sweeping my forehead. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh…”

“Why, where you headed?” the stranger said.

“I thought this bus was going to Tulsa! It was supposed to go to Tulsa—I’m supposed to be heading west not north!” By this time, I was gripping the soft cloth seat in front of me in aggravating panic.

She squinted her eyes as if in silent calculation. “Did you get on the wrong bus or something?”

“No! I’ve been on this bus since I left home—Ohio.” I pulled the creased ticket stub from my pocket, “Look, see?”

The girl took the stub and read it quietly, mouthing it softly, the curves of her petite lips rounding over the
vowels. “Well, says here you were supposed to transfer in Illinois. That’s where I got on, you know.”

“Where are we now?”

“Wisconsin.” She handed the ticket back to me with a slight shrug. “You’re going to have to get on another bus in Minnesota.”

“Oh, man, I can’t believe this!”

“You in a hurry?”

I stopped blinking, looking up at her curiously. It was then that I realized I was not slave to a time-crunched schedule. Why was I concerned about this detour? No one was expecting me except Rowland, and I wasn’t going back.

I smiled suddenly. “No, no I’m not, actually.”

She smiled back at me. “I’m Natalie—or Kit.” She extended her left hand in a kind gesture.

Smiling in curiosity, I shook it gently. “Mae—just Mae.”

“Well, Mae looks like you have a few hours to kill. Company?” Kit patted the empty seat next to her.

I happily relocated, being starved of verbal human contact over the long absent hours of interstate travel.

“What about you? Where you going?”

“All the way to the great Eugene, Oregon,” she laughed, her voice trumpeting in mock grandeur.

Perplexed by her reaction, I commented, “You seem less than thrilled.”

“They say you always return to your beginnings, eh?”

I smiled and muttered under my breath, “Hopefully not.”

“I swore when I left that place I would never come back. I swore Manhattan would be it—the place for me… I was never going to set foot on the west coast again.”

“Yeah?” I said, glancing around the bus. “What happened?”

“Well,” she paused introspectively and then gave a soft chuckle. “I guess I’m not good at being alone.” Her bright face beamed. “My boyfriend—I left him after five years. He wanted to get married—I wasn’t ready to be tied down. So I left. I wanted to be on Broadway. More than anything I wanted to be on Broadway. Been a dream of mine since I was a little girl.”

“Did you make it there?”

There was an uncomfortable pause. “Yeah, I made it there… but dreams don’t typically come true for people like us, Mae. I made it to New York and I made it to my first audition after ten months… I was the best damn New York waitress you’ve ever seen.” Natalie paused dreamily. “But Danny—he’s still waiting for me back in Eugene…”

“What did you mean just then—‘people like us?’ ” I decided to challenge, a look of perplexity plastered on my face.

She looked startled, as if she was worried if I had offended her. “I mean, you know, dreamers. I hope you find who you’re looking for, Mae. You’d be incredibly lucky.”

I was becoming bleaker by the second. Was there something to this girl’s loss? Was she right?

“If it’s fate you won’t be traveling back this way. No, you’ll be staying in those golden hills. Your ticket— ” she pointed to my pocket where the ticket lay slumbering.

I looked down to my pocket, “Oh,” I muttered. But she said who. She had been under the impression that I was staying.

I looked up at her once again. There was a trailing silence where neither of us really knew what to say. She was still smiling—it seemed to never stop. She was looking at the window as if she recognized the trail, as if she had embarked down this path previously.

“Do you love him?” I softly asked.

She inhaled deeply, still smiling, earnestly fastening her eyes to the Wisconsin hills. “Yeah.” Her eyes seemed to sparkle with some hidden information; like she had the key to some great treasure that I didn’t even know existed.

Naturally, I was fascinated, but I couldn’t bring myself to question her any further. She seemed so content with her answer, so content with her passage home in spite of her mourning of intrepid dreams lost, that I could not bring myself to further question it nor trivialize her tranquility.

“Do you love him?” Kit asked me.

I had let myself slip into a temporary state of disorientation. “Pardon me?”

“Do you love him? The one you’re leaving?”

“How did you…?” I was startled but once again decided not to fight it. “Yes.” I shrugged nonchalantly. “But I guess he doesn’t love me.”

“Another girl?”

“Best friend.”

“Ouch,” Kit said, nodding her head as if she had experienced a similar experience. “What about the one you’re going to now? Does he love you?”

I flashed my head suddenly to look at her, eyes large, and mouth bustling. Who was this girl? How did she know these things? I laughed suddenly for it was the only suitable thing I could think of to do. The anomaly of my answer was too bizarre even for me once I heard it spoken aloud, “I’ve never met him.”

Judging by Kit’s expression, this is the one reply she hadn’t been savvy to. There was an instant where she looked confounded but it quickly erased from her gentle face.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s a long way to travel for a blind date.”

I smiled. “He doesn’t know I’m coming.”

“A surprise visit to the man you’ve never met? This is interesting,” she grinned mischievously as if she were reading a steamy quarter paperback.

I sighed, a slight smirk on my face. “He doesn’t even know who I am.”

We stopped somewhere outside of Omaha at a cheap truck-stop. The driver, a husky fellow in an under-washed uniform, was grunting obscure directions to the disgruntled, restless passengers.

“I firmly believe in the hereafter—if you’re not here at this bus in fifteen minutes, count on catching the next bus here after.”

Very few murmurs of acknowledgment came—very few people were listening to the large man who had already found his way down the bus’s jaws, choking the railing as he made his descent.

Being in the back of the bus, I had to yield most irritatingly to the hosts of stale people ahead of me. It was two o’clock in the morning but these people needed their Subway meatball sandwiches and Big Gulps. I just wanted to get to the bathroom—the Greyhound atrocity was a lost resort. After a cross-country bus ride, ones’ appreciation of a stationary bathroom with fixed plumbing cannot be measured or translated in the English language.

Nesh was fussing with Tyrone’s bulging jacket. Why he needed a jacket in this delightfully and unusually warm weather was beyond me—but no matter how she naively pushed this child on me, I was not his mother, so what could I say about jackets and such things? I had no children, I didn’t know any better. I was a child myself.

She held him outstretched with both hands like some bizarre adolescent offering. I took him gently in my arms, making strange auntie faces that would have scared the roughest of souls.

“You want anything?” I asked, continuing to recite the baby language to this adorable creature.

“Just some water,” she said in her thick Ghanaian accent. “Are you hungry?” She called behind me as I escorted Tyrone off the steel monster, the engine sounding in the night like a gaggle of deep-throated bullfrogs.

“I could really go for some Redvines,” I said nonchalantly—you must realize that it is never too early in the morning, or too late for that matter, to enjoy a whole box of luscious red licorice straws.

Nesh took Tyrone from me at the foot of the steel stairs, handing me the suitcase diaper bag in his place. I proceeded to strangle my shoulder with the white strap.

We found our way into the fern-filled restroom, Kenny G. crooning nauseously in the background.

“Here,” she said, handing the little human back to me. After he was in my arms and she was halfway in the cubicle she asked, “Do you mind holding him while I go?”

I did so willingly, of course, as I had been doing the last twelve hours since my introduction to this strange woman not because she had already walked away from me but because I felt strangely obligated to assist her.

The stall door closed and zippers were played like xylophones. And then came the god-awful silence where Kenny G. reigned and Tyrone’s hungry pleas uncomfortably resounded off the eggshell walls.

Occasionally a woman or two would walk in and glance at me—a pure product of an Irish marriage bed—holding this Ghanaian child in the middle of a truck stop bathroom, completely still and unresponsive to a child that clearly was eager for dinner.

A look was given and I sighed slightly, diverting my eyes to the face of the stall where rustling sounds reverberated—the longest bathroom occupancy of all time was taking place. The toilet had been flushed—what was the delay? I felt entirely too involved with this. My mind, a polluted result of maturity, left me paranoid in this place where every face was a strangers’, even the one whom had served as some ironical counterpart—she was still an alien to me. Would she leave me here? Never coming out of that stall and forcing me to take Tyrone under my own wing, the two of us traveling to rest stop to rest stop on Greyhound busses for the rest of our lives?

“Are you alright in there?” I asked uncomfortably. What if she had had enough? Decided to end her life right there in that bathroom stall in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska? A sweeping sense of aloneness washed over me as I held this strange child in my arms.

Or perhaps, perhaps we would miss the bus, the three of us. Perhaps because of her long-winded bathroom adventure, we would be stuck in this Subway food mart until the next bus passed through town in a few days. At this point this seemed to be the more immediate danger. My only possessions were on that bus. That steel dog was my torpedo to future hopes and dreams and I could not afford to miss it.

More rustling. “Yes, I’m fine,” Nesh called as the rustling continued. “It’s these dang—”

I never did figure out what she was talking about. Shortly after, she came out of the cubicle’s mouth and made her way to the diaper bag. Taking out a can of powdered Similac, she began to make Tyrone’s next three meals while he squirmed anxiously in my arms.

By now the clock was taunting me. I began to make for the door slowly and insinuatingly. I was highly tense as the hands on the clock drew closer to the “hereafter.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Nesh called out in the distance, fumbling with the bottles.

I watched her, most interested, beaming a brilliant smile. For she had burrowed her way into my heart, you see. This woman who seemed undeniably and achingly alone, without anyone at all besides the company of a wordless child—I felt strangely protective over them both, even though she was alluringly independent.

“We really have to get to the bus,” I pleaded mildly as I peaked out the bathroom door to see the bus driver placing his Tasty Cakes and 32oz. Mountain Dew on the counter. “That guy won’t have any qualms about ditching us.”

We finally made our exodus from the bathroom when Nesh turned left to the cooler instead of straight to the exit. “I just need to get some water first,” she said. “And your Twizzlers?”

“Redvines,” I said insistently and impatient. “We don’t have time, Nesh, we’ve got to go.”

“Nonsense. If he can’t wait for two women with a baby then he has no heart.”

I glanced back at the man at the counter and shrugged, unimpressed by the likelihood that he would, indeed, have one.

She gathered and paid for the items in what seemed like an eternity. But we were right behind the driver on our descent from the store. Walking at an unusually quickened pace, he allowed the glass door of the gas station to shut in place of chivalrously holding it for us, being that our hands were completely full.

Before I could blink, he was manning the bus door—a seemingly full bus—but I was convinced that this tubby man had every intention on making examples of us.

Nesh was far behind me, fumbling with God-knows-what this time; I jogged earnestly with little Tyrone bouncing on my hip.

“Hold the door!” I demanded as the driver gripped the lever lustfully.

The man and I exchanged annoyed glances. Could he possibly argue that we weren’t at the bus in time? I was right below the bottom step. And there was no way he was going to drive off without Nesh while I was standing there with her son on my hip.

The door swung closed swiftly, a marriage of glass and rubber, as we made our way down the throat of the wheeled ship and reclaimed our cluttered, cramped seats. The engines roared like a lioness in heat, idling long enough for me and several others in the back of the bus to catch a glimpse of a man running in great determination.

I recognized the man. He sat a few rows ahead of me, an elderly Japanese man named Aki Miyasuki. I glanced at his empty seat and then again to the window. Startled by a sudden grinding sound as the bus driver threw the clutch into gear, I swung a glance to the port of the bus. Several commuters continued to intercede for the delayed passenger.

“Wait! Wait!” they cried. “Someone’s left behind!”

“Well,” the oafish man began, “that’s just too bad. Fair warning.”

I stood up swiftly in protest, “What? You can’t do that!”

I could see his eyes reflected in the large rectangular mirror above his head. They were fiery strong. There was a sudden jerk as the wheels were awakened and began to roll under the command of its master’s foot. I began to make my way to the head of the bus where the driver smugly sat, clearly enjoying this.

“You can’t leave him here! He’s just a poor old man! Look, he’s having trouble walking!”

But still he ignored me.

“Pull over!” I screamed, gripping the back of his chair as the turn threw my balance off center.

He flashed his head to face me, “Back off, lady!”

“No! You’ve got to stop the bus!”

“If you don’t sit down you’ll be joining him, do you understand?”

“Pull over or I’ll report you,” I said firmly.

We were approaching the stop sign, the gate barring the freeway. After this point, all hope would be lost for the poor man who was still desperately trying to catch up. Something in the driver’s reserve was shattered with the challenge. Perhaps the endeavor had lost any form of reward. Perhaps he was bored. Perhaps he was intimated by me—something I could not fathom because it was such a foreign occurrence. His moved his hand in defeat to the door lever, pulling it back harshly, causing the doors to fling open with the trademark sound. Aki was a few paces off yet but catching up nicely for a man with a walking disability.

When he set foot on the steps, a chorus of clapping resounded through the spine of the bus. Shyly, he found his way back to his seat, his posture bowed in submission and what I’m sure was great embarrassment. Two o’clock in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. Not a sight for miles, save the sandwich-filled truck stop.

Copyright © 2002 by Melanie Faith