Greyhound (23 page)

“I can’t believe it!” I responded, shocked. I was surprised, but found it funny that he’d gone for McDonald’s. “I’m starving to death, Marcus. How did you know?”

“Buddy, that makes two of us.”

We ate the food as the bus pulled away from the Greyhound Terminal and out of downtown Saint Louis. Like clockwork, the driver came on the overhead and addressed us.

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 1684 to Columbus, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and New York. We have an approximate drive time of eight hours and fifteen minutes. This is the afternoon express, so we’ll only be stopping in Indianapolis long enough to refuel. There will be an adjustment to time as we cross into Indiana and the Eastern time zone of one hour. According to the latest reports, the rain should slow this afternoon and finally break by this evening. With any luck, we should be pulling into Columbus with clear skies. Other than that, all posted rules apply. Thank you for riding with us.”

Both Marcus and I listened with rapt attention as we ate our cheeseburgers and drank our ice-cold soda.

“That was informative,” he said.

“Easily the best yet. Weather report, time change, schedule announcement, and no rules.”

“Yeah, I think I’m pretty clear on what not to do on a Greyhound bus at this point,” he replied sarcastically.

“Well, they never said anything about half the stuff that we’ve seen in the last few days.” My words came out in between bites and chews of French fries and hamburger.

“This is it, buddy. The final stretch. You’re almost home,” he pointed out. My mind could now see the distance between Pittsburgh and Altoona. It was a matter of continually dwindling hours before I’d have to switch to the last bus, taking me into Altoona. The schedule said five-thirty tomorrow morning in small black numbers.

“Thanks for the lunch, Marcus.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’ll let you pick up dinner tonight in Columbus with your vouchers. You still got some left?”

“Sure do,” I answered.

“Alright. Then we set,” he affirmed, enjoying his French fries. “I’ve gotta say, that was the coldest May rain that I’ve been caught in in a long time,” he continued.

“Eight years,” I said thoughtfully, or rather without thinking.

Marcus stopped his eating and looked over at me without saying a word. “That’s right, eight years. A long time.” His words were a little darker now, more contemplative.

“Were you able to get a hold of anyone back home?” I asked. We hadn’t spoken about our phone calls, but it seemed like a good time to ask.

“I did. I’ve spoken to my moms. She said she’ll be glad to see me.” His voice trailed off behind his words. Anyone paying attention, including myself, could’ve been able to tell that something was wrong. Marcus’s expression altered. He drank his soda and looked away from me. He was making slurping sounds as he got to the bottom, finishing it.

“Some people don’t want to see you anymore because you were in prison?”

He sighed. “Something like that. For me, my moms is the only person who ever stuck by me. She sent me packages all the time when I was on the inside. Letters, pictures, candy, magazines, cigarettes, even though she don’t smoke herself,” he said, leaning in closer. “She kept my spirits up, helped me to remember that there was always still something for me outside of that place, that life would always be there and that folks thought about me and cared. Prison would’ve been very different without her.” He looked at me closely. “That’s what a moms is supposed to do.”

“Life would’ve been different without her,” I repeated. Marcus looked at me carefully, understanding what I meant as if it was crystal clear.

“That’s absolutely right, partner,” he agreed with a grin.

“Did you get in touch with your grams?” he asked.

“No, she was out when I called.”

Marcus was a little shocked. “Uh-huh, nobody was home?”

“I spoke to my grandpa. He said he’d be there to get me in the morning.”

“Okay…that’s a good thing, then. Let me ask you though…” Marcus’s face was serious. “They’re gonna be there, aren’t they? I won’t be able to get off and stay with ya.”

I laughed about it, making light of what he’d already heard and witnessed for himself. “Thanks, Marcus. They’ll be there. I’m sure of it,” I answered.

“Okay, but I’m just sayin’…y’know?”

“I appreciate it, but I know that they’ll be there to get me. She’s my grandma.” Even the thought of my grandma letting me down or not being there to get me seemed completely out of the question. She had never given me a reason to doubt how much she loved me, and it was probably why I was just glad to be getting back. Even though I knew that Altoona wasn’t my home, and probably never would be, being with her and my grandpa at their house, with my bedroom up in the oversize garret room, felt more like home than any I had known thus far.

I hadn’t thought about my room in the attic the whole trip, but I remembered how much Beanie always wanted it for her own. She probably took it after I left, leaving me the small bedroom on the second floor with the wood-paneled walls and narrow windows near the ceiling, which no one ever slept in. The room in the attic was well lit, spacious, and airy. I used to lie in the huge bed near the front windows that overlooked the street and watch the rain fall on the rooftops of the other houses. The attic was always warm in the winter and cool in the summer. During hot days, my grandpa would pull out the fans from the garage and put them up there to circulate the air, making it even nicer. He used to tell me to not play with the plug and electrocute myself, as if I was a baby, but I knew he was just kidding around. I’d spent hours sitting in the bed reading alone and listening to the radio, happy all by myself.

Part of the attic was used for storage. Walls had been built going in all directions, making three different rooms from the space the attic provided. It was like a maze. There was over thirty years of storage in the attic and always lots of interesting stuff to look through. I got in trouble a few times for digging through some of it, but it never stopped me, as I always thought it was the most fascinating place in the world.

Altoona was a place I knew like the back of my hand. I’d spent entire summer days from sunup to sundown riding my bike through all the different neighborhoods. My grandma’s house was connected to a rolling churchyard and an old stone church that never had a Sunday service and whose bell rarely ever rang. I’d spent more time on church property playing ball in the grass than people probably spent praying inside. The church tower, with the foreboding bell enclave, could be seen from a long way off, which made it easy to find my way back.

A small deli and market called Miller’s Corner was usually the first stop for soda and gum. Just past the Weiss Grocery Store in a different neighborhood was a community swimming pool and a few baseball diamonds. The climb up the hill was so steep, I usually had to get off the bike and walk. The farther I went, the stranger and more run-down the houses got. The house that I had been born in, that my mother had once rented, was several blocks in that same direction. I would often bike over just to get another look and see who was living there now. All I knew was that it wasn’t me, and judging by the shape the house was in, I was thankful. But maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.

My aunt lived next to the baseball diamonds, and we would all pile in the car and drive over to see them every few days and watch Little League baseball. My grandpa always drove us, and it seemed to be farther than it was because of how slowly he drove. I would usually get carsick in the backseat, as it was the only car I had ever been in that was upholstered in black velvet. It was a white 1977 Chrysler Cordoba, and my grandma loved it. I loved it too, whenever I got to ride in the front seat, but I hated it whenever I got penned in the back with Beanie. It was stifling, soft, and everything the backseat of a car shouldn’t be. It was a long way from the backseat of a bus as well.

I was going to listen to my Walkman, but the driver had turned on the overhead radio, which was tuned to the oldies station that played long blocks of the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley. Marcus was reading his book, and his face was stuck in concentration. We had pulled away from Saint Louis entirely now, and all my thoughts were focused on being back. I couldn’t think of much else, and I imagined it was the same for him too.

When Marcus finally put the book away, he gave all the usual signals that he was about to have a cigarette. As I watched him light up, it occurred to me that I didn’t have the same ill will toward Marcus and his smoking habit that I had for my mother and her habit when she would light up. Maybe it was because he didn’t chain-smoke. He didn’t have endless fits of coughing until his face and head exploded or fill up drinking glasses with cigarette butts and only ever rinse those same glasses in lukewarm water. Maybe it was all those things and the fact that he didn’t reek like a wet ashtray all the time, or rather at all. That’s what made me have no concern about his habit. He was sparing with his cigarettes, often had people openly offering him one, without having to ask, and always seemed happy, relaxed, and in good spirits. He could’ve been in a television commercial advertising Marlboro cigarettes, he was so calm and relaxed. Not the frantic, hacking, red-faced mess that my mother was. She was fit for the funny farm and looked like someone in front of a firing squad every time she had a cancer stick hanging haphazardly from her lip. I wondered if I would ever smoke cigarettes but quickly hoped not. Marcus said people never seem to learn from the mistakes of others, no matter how many examples they’re given. He said you could probably test it in a laboratory and prove it every time. This stuck in my mind and resurfaced as I thought about whether I would smoke cigarettes or not.

For a few hours, we both sat quietly, listening to the radio. Marcus had spent a good portion of the afternoon reading
The Catcher in the Rye
and was now more than halfway through it. I found it exciting that he could read that fast. When I asked him if there was a special trick to it, he just laughed and kept right on reading.

After a pause, he said, “Once you’ve read a couple hundred books, you’ll figure it out as well. It ain’t hard.”

“You get to read a lot of books in prison?”

“You get to read constantly,” he continued, still absorbed, flipping another page methodically in time, like the beat of a drum.

“Food any good?” I asked.

He laughed. “Mine was, being the head cook. I ate better than all the prisoners and most of the employees. I only ever ate what the warden ate.”

“Did you fight a lot in prison?” I asked. “People in movies about prison always fight a lot.”

“Some do, some don’t. I rarely ever did,” he answered. He put the book away, folding a corner over. “Rarely,” he emphasized.

“Were you ever in prison with Al Capone?” I wondered aloud. He was someone I’d heard about in school who had gone to prison.

“Al Capone?” He laughed out loud. “Man, he died a long time ago. Long before I showed up.” He shook his head and kept right on chuckling. “What’s your latest interest in prison? You planning on making a visit? I hope not.”

“No…me neither,” I answered sheepishly.

“I was in the same prison as Charles Manson,” Marcus noted aloud.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“You’ve never heard of Charles Manson?”

“No,” I replied meekly. “Who’s Charles Manson?”

“Don’t worry. If you don’t know who he is, you will. He’s on TV enough,” he stated.

I began to mentally drift. “Maybe my dad was in prison. Maybe that was why he never called or came around,” I suggested.

“What makes you say that?” he rejoined.

“I don’t know. Maybe…I…just…” I couldn’t find an explanation for what I was thinking about.

“Look, sometimes there is no answer or reason. Some people don’t want to be fathers, y’know? Not everyone’s cut out, see. I’m not making any excuses for the sorry piece of trash, but he doesn’t have to be in prison to not come around. Besides, you know what the truth is, and it has nothing to do with prison.” I looked at Marcus silently for a moment.

“Sorry I called your birth pops a sorry piece of trash. I was just trying to be real with ya, that’s all.”

“Cowards and men.”

“That’s right,” Marcus acknowledged. “Soon, you’ll come to grips with the fact that deep down we’re all the same, but some folks will work overtime to not act the same. It’s real life.”

“Deep down, we’re all the same…” I repeated quietly, contemplating what he said. I didn’t feel the same, not by a long shot, but I think that I understood it.

“Deep down…we are all the same, and don’t you forget it,” he reaffirmed. “But it doesn’t mean to turn your back on them or let your guard down.”

Marcus and I continued talking for the bulk of the afternoon. The conversation shifted around from getting home by tomorrow, to music, to all the waitresses we had met, specifically the black waitress back in Gallup. I admitted to Marcus that I thought she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. He just laughed out loud and told me I’d feel that way about a lot of girls in the next few years and that it was perfectly natural.

“If I can tell you anything about girls, the one thing you need to remember—and never forget,” he emphasized, “is that you can’t choose who you’ll fall in love with. You may
think
you can choose, but it just gets more complicated. Things get weird when you mix women with your own expectations.”

“I think you may have lost me,” I rejoined, but he made me write down what he said, word for word, in my notebook.

“File that under ‘
incredibly important,
’” he remarked, pleased with what he had said. During the afternoon, I found myself looking out of the windows on the opposite side of the bus. We had passed lots of semi trucks on the road in the past few days and even seen a few convoys, but what we were seeing now was different. We kept passing large convoys, one after another. The line of trucks at times was so long that it blotted out the view as we slowly crept past. Marcus and I counted a few lines and were surprised every time we would break twenty.