A Greyhound bus traveling south on an interstate connecting states that are fly over tracts––moors and farms––cut apart by rivers that are damned, and locked, when not free flowing. In the bus stale air is humid with breath. Outside the windows are harvested fields. If vestiges of corn stalks stand they are sparse, lone. They are dried and broken and look like an arm sticking up from a shallow grave bent at the elbow pointing back down at scorched earth.
It’s been a few hours from the starting point. Some passengers are moaning under their breath to generate distress amongst the whole as though to be uncomfortable with others is better than to be so, alone. To board a bus for a long journey, comfort should not be sought. Bad feelings and times are the best to consider. Pessimism can land you sanguine, in certain light, in a certain way, in a seat on a Greyhound.
The driver has heard kin of every compliant. He’s teary-eyed––a hangover from boredom. He’s missing someone he no longer knows. He can drive, now, always away––both distance and destination not of importance. He will always end up in a prior place.
People talk to him. They tell him things they don’t like. He assures he will pass it on to his superiors. And then he gets back to looking between the lines, to not colliding with vehicles––commerce or leisure (though here it’s often the former).
He knows the signs of a man with too much drink. He coyly notes this as people board the bus. Best to let the passengers be such; best that he himself not incite problems; best create solutions––this he does with silence. As a doctor is, he wants his patients to be patient. He himself must stay calm and mostly quiet and in so doing hopes others will too be.
These are days where the cheapest mode of travel is by bus. Gone are horses. Gone are the days a man is free to walk one hundred miles, unmolested.
So, when he sees a man board, a man who’s drunk some, the driver will be wary and hope that the man will soon slumber. And just this has happened with a man who had boarded grumbling unintelligibly, his hips swaying and bouncing between the seats as he staggers down the aisle. He falls into a seat midway back and, taking up two seats, pushes himself into a slouched position with his head leaning against the window. Soon he falls asleep.
He had been asleep, but now he is awake and he is headed to the restroom in the rear of the bus. His balance and his coordination do not seem to have improved from him having rested. In addition to his hips jostling the seats he braces every other headrest to steady himself. The latter action is not indicative only of drunkenness, it’s a precaution many passengers take while walking up and down the aisle. They are walking on a moving vehicle after all. The passengers are fewer farther in the back.
The driver had been trying to twist the cap off of a hydrating sports beverage between his legs, using his inner thighs muscles and his left hand, his right hand on the wheel. But he had noticed the commotion in the rearview and now watches as the man moves towards the back. He lets the beverage stay unopened. He has a skill for this––one eye watches the road while the other watches the action that occurs behind him. But he can only perform the feat for less than 30 seconds, which is long enough for him to see the man reach and enter the restroom.
He stays in the restroom for upwards of fifteen minutes, and now a short woman with ivory hair, with thin grey lines, woven into a sloppy bun, is waiting for it to free up. Her age makes her look innocent, as though whatever wrong she had done in her life has been lifted. She has tried the handle twice and has looked around a few times like she is searching for a more pleasing restroom, or for an answer.
She decides to knock on the door. Her knock is returned by a muffled voice that seems to yell, but the words cannot be deciphered.
A few minutes later the man reemerges. He looks for who was knocking but the woman has sat a few seats away. He stares at a few passengers none of whom make eye contact with him, and so he makes his way forward.
His eyes so weary they seem to be loose in their sockets. Sheening skin from sweat that’d cooled and dried and then sweat again and then mixed on the surface. Grease through the pores from a deep-fried diet. He stands 6’4. His chest looks supple atop his belly––a half-sphere erect with bloat. It stretches his t-shirt. It’s a black shirt with feathers and some words screen-printed across the chest, but the letters are obscured by the cracking of the paint, from the protrusive, outward pull of his belly, by the sunglasses that he has looped around his collar.
(He is not indigenous of what is now called The United States of America. He is not a Native American. He is not Chippewa; he is not Lakota or Dakota; he is not Navajo; he is a long way from the Apache. He is an Indian; if you must, he is an American Indian.)
It could be that he had wanted to make eye contact with anyone. It could be that his sunglasses––tinted only faintly the pale color of herbal tea––serve too as his prescription glasses, and he would not have been able to tell that no person was making eye contact with him. But no faces had been facing his.
He has chosen a new seat not more than six before the bathroom that he had exited with scorn. In the few paces he’d slowly made he had stopped twice, to find what may pose as a set of eyes looking at his, however they might. He may have been having fluctuations of thoughts and feelings about how to be. Many wars may have been fought within him in these fleeting increments. Whatever had happened there, it had past and he was back in motion and is soon sitting down next to the youngest looking solo passenger. He is a slim, healthy looking teenager save a cast that reaches from foot to femur. He wears a navy blue baseball hat with a strongly curved frayed bill, pulled low on his forehead, shadowing his eyes.
The man falls into the seat with a motion that is of minimal alarm. Fellow passengers take notice of it. As he sits the seat makes a grinding squeal of a noise, it doesn’t altogether give, but something snaps. By this time, there’s a silent camaraderie amongst the passengers.
At first the boy is excited to see his new seatmate but he is also troubled as how to react. He first acknowledged him––his body, his person––as a gift for his loneliness. It was the smell of the man that quickly made the boy weak with unease. From his mother the boy knows that only very large amounts of vodka can be detected on a drinkers’ breath. He had yet to learn how to subdue his fear in any stoic manner. He moves the headphones from his ears so that they grip just above them on the sides of his cap. He says hello to the man.
A row ahead sit two punk youths. Their hair discolored, their clothes cut apart and sewn back together––this done poorly by hand. Idealistic, anarchist wordy patches (and patches of plaid and animal print) present a façade of intrigue for a conversation it appears neither is educated enough to have. One in a denim vest, the other in a leather motorcycle jacket, unified by metal studs punched through either material with thought and artistic intent but little geometric proficiency.
Their heads turn most when the man falls into the seat. They have reading materials before them. Fanzines printed on bible-thin paper. They turn back and forth and talk under their breath to each other.
They then stay quiet and listen to the boy tell the man the story of how he broke his leg. He was on his aunt’s ranch where he was helping her tame horses. One of the horses had bucked him off. This itself didn’t fracture his femur. The horse then stomped on the boy breaking a few ribs and his leg. The boy says this with both pride in that it is helping him into manhood––that he has sustained these injuries and that he has a very real, good story to tell about a situation that was bad but could’ve been worse, one he can tell with a sort of wisdom––but also some humiliation in that he let the horse buck him off, that his bones were able to break.
The boy then yelped. The boy then caught up with his yelp and yelled. Distress followed by something more acute.
When the boy yells one of the punk youths stands. He seems unsure in his rising. When he first gets to his feet his body is tense and he’s trying to recall as to how to react in a passive manner. His legs are stilted. His arms are slack in a way to evoke coolness. His body is ready to catch something that may fall; it’s ready to let what falls settle. But the weight he cannot know with his altruism, his naivety.
Now as the punk youth is standing in the aisle, he sees that the man is jolting the boy’s cast leg around, asking the boy if it hurts. The boy’s face is red and his eyes are searching for help. The break is recent. The punk youth asks the man if he wants to come sit near him and his companion. He asks so in an inviting way, not at all threatening.
The man assures the punk that he will get to he and his friend, eventually. The punk youth then raises his voice a few octaves, his inflection clearer, he tells the man that now is the best time. He touches the man’s shoulder with a fist, more a rub than a punch. He leans closer to the man, his voice back to some drawl, and tells him that if he wants to play a little rough he should do so with him (the punk youth) and his friend, neither of whom have a broken leg. He has no idea what will come if the man approaches them, but he’s sure he can talk him down if he does.
The punk youth is not moving. He is not going to sit down again until the boy is left at peace. And this he has told to the man. The man has threatened the punk youth and warned him about what he will do if he gets up. The punk youth tells the man that none of that needs to be acted upon, but he says this as he straightens the man’s mesh baseball hat that had been mindlessly cocked since his slumber.
The man says that that’s it and tries to pull himself out of the seat but he can’t. He falls back into it. The punk youth offers his hand to help the man up and the man takes it. The man is gripping the punk youth’s hand too firmly––he grimaces and his legs nearly buckle. This happens when the man gets to his feet. He releases the punk youth’s hand and then looses his balance and falls into the aisle. The punk gets behind him and lifts him by his armpits.
He sits the man in the seat that he (the punk) had been sitting in and now the man is sitting next to the other punk youth. He talks to the man like a man talks to a man under a bridge where most people are scared to go. The man searches the new punk youth and discovers him quick. Even if the punk youth knows some lingo, some rogue street talk, he is still young and knows no humility, only what may rub off as thistle.
The second punk youth’s biceps are twigy. His skin is paste on pale. He gets fidgety quickly and looses his blasé demeanor. His tone becomes whiny. He looks back at the first punk youth to see if he can help.
The man pulls out a plastic pint of vodka. It’s near empty. The inside of the bottle has achieved some accumulation from being in the man’s warm pocket. The sun has come through clouds, but only for a moment, and the bottle is the only thing the light emphasizes. It sparkles. It’s crystalline; it almost makes an ethereal, noxious screaming noise.
The man drinks the last sip and sets it on the ground. It is heard tipping over on the floor, rolling and sliding up and around, hitting a few persons’ shodden feet.
The man has pushed the second punk youth against the window he was sitting along side. He holds him there with his left hand around the punk’s neck, and has his right arm cocked back, his hand in a white-knuckled fist. Each finger has a generous size ring on it. Each ring looks cheap. But each one could do expensive damage.
The second youth’s eyes cry something at the first’s, and even sometimes beyond the first to see who might next take on the burden.
The man, holding the second punk youth, looks down at himself, surprised by his ability to do just such. The punk, despite his numerous spiked studs, is a pacifist––this inferred by his politically correct wordy patches. From the fear in his eyes, he is not going to attempt anything, not even attempt to pry the man’s fingers from around his neck. It doesn’t seem that he’s choking, he’s just being held there. He may get beat-up, that’s up to the man. But he will not make a first move. The man doubles him in weight and is conceivably much taller. A few punches from the man’s ringed-fingers, his fist, will tear lumps of skin from the punk’s face.
The man, impressed with his prowess, is now shouting that he will kill everyone on the bus. All of them. He has a gun, he warns. Everyone is going to die, he announces.
The first youth has fled to the front of the bus to tell the driver what has happened, what is happening, to make sure the driver is fully aware. The driver stays calm, he tells the youth that he will pull off when he can. He can’t just pull over and stop, he says, not there in the middle of the interstate, because that would only cause more problems. It is the driver’s wont to be calm in these situations. They are just moments that happen and pass.
The man’s threat was met with unease and some alarm but not fear of death. Possible injury may come about but only to men who want to stand up to the man. Most passengers pretend to keep to their reading and daydreaming and one woman kept on knitting. A handful of passengers appear to be sleeping. Some are just listening with their eyes closed, creating their own interpretations of what is occurring.
Now, the first youth is back standing next to the seats where the altercation is taking place. The man who, when the first youth had left was threating a type a manycide, is now crying and hugging the second punk youth. The youth hugs him back. Then the man asks for a kiss. The second punk youth refuses this pass. The pass angers the man and he makes another fist but this time he refrains from grabbing the punk by the throat.
The first punk is standing in the aisle beside the man ready to hold his arm back if he starts with the punching.
Two or three of the more bold passengers are kneeling on their seats facing the back of the bus. They have stern looks on their faces, contemptuous, that convey that they are not trying to understand the man and the situation. They are perturbed and ready. The man begins to cry again and the passengers sit back down. The bus’s speed has not altered. It keeps in the direction it had started in. Time slowly slows.
Two seats ahead a woman is seated. She has short spiky hair in front and on top, and then longer hair in back. She has Oakley Razors Blades and a white, oversized Hard Rock Café sweatshirt on. It’s difficult to decipher which Hard Rock she visited because that portion of the text is folded between her breasts and her paunch. Still seated, she has swung her upper body around out into the aisle. She lowers her glasses on her nose so that they rest on her nostrils and then looks over them at the man. She stares him down for a few seconds. The man only watches, his mouth slightly agape, anticipating her words more so than readying himself to speak.
Still staring at him she pushes her sunglasses back up, and then turns around and goes back to looking out her window. The man continues to watch her. He fights an urge to say something crude but ultimately stays wordless.
He turns back to the punk youth and after a short moment of silence––the man’s head lightly bobbing––he again asks the punk youth for a kiss. He accents the k in kiss and when he does involuntary spit sprays from his mouth and then his bottom lip stays slacken exposing his bottom front teeth and their early decay. The punk deflects the minor proposition by suggesting another hug. Their second hug lasts longer than the first had. The punk gentle rubs the man’s back and then gives him a few quick pats––as much as a way to somewhat comfort him as it is a cue to think about wrapping it up.
The man has grown bored with the punk. He is now trying to get back onto his feet. After ten seconds he is holding himself up in the aisle. The first punk is standing back a few paces, blocking the seat that the teenager with the broken femur has limped to. The man pays no heed to this and heads toward the front of the bus. A fear would be that he’d reach the driver and fall on him or physically assault him in some way, one that may cause the driver to lose control of the vehicle causing death to passengers as well as to occupants of other vehicles on the interstate.
The state the man is in has rendered him mostly innocuous. If he did have a weapon he would have brandished it. He scans the seats and the passengers in them. He peers at each passenger in a tryingly intimidating way, though uncertainty looms in his visage. He moves by feel down the aisle not looking directly before him. His peripheral vision is inactive. He nearly collides with a squat young man built like a boulder––a wrestler returning to college––who is waiting for him, blocking the way. He wears a thick hooded sweatshirt embroidered with the acronym of the school he wrestles for and sweatpants to match. The man retracts and warns the wrestler that he’d better move. The wrestler doesn’t flinch when the man mocks a punch. He seems let down that the punch doesn’t receive him.
Both seats to the left of the wrestler are open. When the man begins to again move forward and is alongside them (the empty seats), the wrestler flits beside him, and is like a phantom at his back. He puts him in a incapacitating hold: he sticks his arms beneath the man’s armpits, then around his shoulders, and then locks his hands together behind the man’s neck. The wrestler is more than half a foot shorter than the man, and the man bends backwards as the wrestler secures his positioning. The man’s back makes a cracking sound. He first tries to stiffen and stand straight, then he flails some; his body becomes languid. The wrestler deftly sits him in the window seat. He himself sits in the aisle seat like a wall of the quarry.
The man continues with his threats but the wrestler only listens with a wry smile that implies his love of violence. The man’s voice has grown horse and––vanquished as he is––feeble. His threats begin to veer more in a litigious direction––focusing on the physical action taken upon him. He tells the wrestler that he has broken his back.
The wrestler stays mute save for an occasional throaty chuckle. He is more proud of himself than most others are relieved by what he has done.
No passenger could deny that before the man reached the driver he needed to be repressed. The more passive approach that the punk youths had attempted––which proved futile––made a physical one feel imminent, but the pathos it has evoked was unforeseen and they wonder if there were a better way to have dealt with it.
The buses air brakes hiss and the driver turns the bus in the direction of a gas station with a sky reaching sign. After having parked near the parameter of the parking lot, the driver asks over the intercom in a monotone voice, that everyone remain in their seats for a short time. A man two rows behind him is heard to ask in a pleading voice if he can sneak out really quick to stretch out his legs, and explains that one of his legs is really cramping up. He’s prone to getting leg cramps, he adds. The driver looks at him deadpan in the rearview.
The rumble of the engine stays steady as it idles. A state trooper car circles the bus and stops near the door. Two troopers get out. They are wearing matching mirrored sunglasses that reflect the concrete sky, which almost matches the mirroring. The driver repeats that everyone stay seated as he opens the door. He slowly rotates in his seat and then stands and walks down the steps.
The troopers and he talk for a few minutes outside as the passengers watch from their windows. The troopers are laughing but the driver keeps a poker face.
He climbs back on the bus and walks to the wrestler and whispers in his ear. The wrestler nods. The two police officers walk on and ask the passengers around the man to step off the bus. Once they do, the officers stand before the seats surrounding the man. The driver then returns to his seat and asks if everyone can please exit the bus, now. The wrestler stays seated, as does the man. The driver stands outside the door and counts each passenger as they exits.
In the gas station upbeat commercial music is playing. The old woman is asking the cashier where the restrooms are. The punk youths are at a rotating sunglasses display unit, trying on different sunglasses, imitating the state troopers. The teenage boy is on crutches coyly approaching them with a nervous laugh. A few other passengers are filling up large paper cups with fountain soda, selecting offerings of beef jerky and bags of preserved fried snacks. The only child who’d been on the bus is bargaining with his mother over how much candy he can have if he spreads it out over the rest of the trip.
When the wrestler comes in a few people clap, but not the whole lot. And there are other patrons in the establishment who are not privy to why applause should be granted. A greying wiry man with a hunchback, who had been on the bus, shakes the wrestler’s hand. The two exchange a few words and share a short laugh as they jovially shake their heads.
The driver, mostly undetected, sneaks into the back of the establishment, near the restrooms. He’s on a payphone. He dials a number that makes a phone ring many miles away. The phone rings eight times and then an answering machine picks up. A woman’s voice is the voice giving the greeting. Her voice says that you have reached the Andersen’s and that they are not available to answer your call, right now. Please leave a message, her voice says. Since he had last talked to her in person, her voice has become more raspy, and it’s maybe even beginning to shake, but the tonalities are much the same. Even in the short greeting she clears her throat twice, in a polite feminine manner (this, something she’d always done––clearing her throat in a considerate way). The driver calls the number three times. His pocket is weighed down by quarters and it is no bother that each call costs him five of them. He only calls during business hours, knowing full well that no one will be home to answer. But even so he wonders why the woman and her husband––and maybe by now, even a few kids––why the family, herself namely––has yet to change their number. He wants to think that it is for him. That she wants to provide for him a number to call even if it’s not to talk.
At some point the Indian has been moved from the bus into the back of the police car and has been driven away to a nearby holding facility.
After the driver has walked down the aisle and counted heads, he gets behind the wheel and releases the brakes. Back on the interstate the air in the bus is less stuffy than before. Passengers are talking to each other. The punk youths have moved a few seats back, across the way from the teenager. They’re all donning headphones and passing cassette tapes between each other. The wrestler is in conversation with three other men around him. Their conversation jumps between baseball and football. On occasion the last names of professional athletes and names of teams are heard, and statistics, but relating only to sports.
Once the bus has been at a steady pace for a safe amount of time, the old woman walks to the back of the bus, to the toilet. This time the restroom is unoccupied and she walks right in.