Greyhound (24 page)

“There’s no way this convoy’s gonna break twenty,” he’d say, but we just kept counting. The record was thirty-two trucks in a row. Once, the driver even came on the overhead, a little overwhelmed and amused.

“That’s the biggest convoy I’ve ever seen.”

Trucks filled the sides of the highways at rest stops and weigh stations. Pieces of blown-out rubber tires seemed to litter the roadway across the entire landscape and could’ve been a healthy food source for any animal that would eat them. Numerous times we passed lone tractor-trailers on the soft shoulder changing a tire. Once we even passed a truck that had gone off the side and into a field, spilling boxes of fruit everywhere.

When we had talked about almost every subject I could think of, Marcus finally asked me the question.

“You gonna tell me about what happened two years ago?”

“Why do you ask?” I deflected it unknowingly.

“Stuff like that is usually best let out of the darkness. It’s usually like a poisonous snake that someone might put inside a black box, and then you’re always afraid to open the lid.”

“Maybe it’s better that way. Not to ever look, you know?” I stated.

“Well, it’s all well and good, but eventually the snake in the box is going to die and turn to dust, and the person who put it in there to begin with goes on being afraid to open the lid for no reason.”

I knew what Marcus was driving at, and he was right about that as well. “You learn about all this stuff in prison?” I asked.

“Maybe…maybe not, but you’ll be the one with a dead snake in the box if you don’t lift the lid.”

“Where do I begin?” I asked.

“Just start off anywhere you like. It’ll be easier than you know.”

“Two years ago, my mother…” I coughed, clearing my throat, “…my sister and I all lived together in an apartment. She was dating this sleazebag named Roger McDougall-Daggett,” I began.

“Are you messin’ with me? Roger McDougall-Daggett? What kind of a sissy-ass name is that?” he asked, almost at the point of laughter.

“I don’t know, but everybody he met, he always introduced himself that way. He was even more annoying about it on the phone because he would spell it out.
‘Capital em-small-cee. Capital Dee! Oo-you-gee. Ayyy. Double ell. Hyphen! Capital Dee! Ayyy. Double Gee, E. Double tee. McDougall-Daggett, just like it sounds!’
” I imitated from memory.

Marcus couldn’t help but laugh hysterically now. “Man, I didn’t think your story was going to be like this,” he rejoined, laughing.

“He was always drinking, and he talked nonstop about his great-great-grandpappy being a Civil War hero in the history books. I didn’t like him at all, nor did Beanie, but my idiotic mother was in love with the guy and laughed at all his stupid jokes and dull stories.” I was breathing bitter disgust as I thought of Roger.

“Civil War hero, huh? North or South?” Marcus asked.

“South. It was all he ever carried on about. How the South would one day rise again. He said he was a descendant of Stonewall Jackson too.”

“Stonewall Jackson…wow, that’s rich.” Marcus seemed to be taking mental notes, pressing his lips and leaning in to hear better.

“Anyway, he was always drunk and on something. One day, when I came home from school, our dog, Gorilla, was nowhere to be found.”

“You had a dog named Gorilla?” he interjected.

“It was a little black poodle and always made strange grunting sounds all day and all night, even when it slept. Beanie named him that. Our neighbor said the dog probably had asthma.”

Marcus made the sound of a wheezing gorilla as quiet as he could without making a scene. “Man, your story just keeps getting weirder,” he added.

“Roger was passed out in the bathroom drunk, but before I could wake him up, the police came and were knocking on the apartment door. Someone had seen him outside in the parking lot of the complex beating the dog to death with his bare hands. They arrested him and took him away in handcuffs. He struggled with the police and tried to get away. He was yelling at me the whole way out the door.”

Marcus’s face cringed when I mentioned Roger beating the dog to death against the hot cement like a madman. “What the hell did he do that for? Sorry. Did you see the guy again?”

I paused for a moment and stared out the window, watching the traffic. “When my mother found out that he’d been arrested and had killed the dog, she broke it off with him and refused to post his bail. At the time, she had been saving money for us to move into a house or buy herself a different car…something. She had almost a thousand dollars, and Roger knew about it. Four days later, I came home from school, and no one else was in the apartment, but the door had been kicked in.”

“He broke into the apartment to get the money,” Marcus surmised.

I nodded yes. “Did I mention that my mother also had a loaded shotgun in the hallway closet? My uncle gave it to her after someone tried coming through our bedroom window one night.”

Marcus’s eyes grew wide. “Damn” was all he said.

“Roger was angry and looked strange. He was raging and pissed off that my mother had quit him and left him to sit in jail.” I took a huge breath of air. Marcus just watched me without interrupting.

“I’d never seen him like that before. He was holding the shotgun and loading it with shells when he saw me. He pointed the shotgun at me as I stood in the hallway. He started screaming, ‘
Where’s the money? Where’s the money?
’ When I tried to run, I ducked from the hallway into the kitchen. I didn’t think he was going to fire at me, but his first shot hit the air-conditioning unit in the window. The gun sounded like a loud explosion going off in my head. He fired a second time and hit the kitchen cabinets above me. They splintered everywhere. I was crouched down on the kitchen floor against the refrigerator door in the corner. He screamed again about the money as he got closer, but my head was ringing. I remember I was crying. He put the front end of the shotgun against my forehead and pushed me back into the refrigerator door. When I looked up, all I could see was the bottom of the barrel of the shotgun rising back up toward his face. He was smiling on the other end. He told me to quit crying.”

“Holy shit…say what? What an evil son of a bitch,” Marcus said, squirming around in his seat.

“It wasn’t a good moment for me. When he pulled the trigger back, all I heard was this loud metallic sound, like a dry snap, but nothing followed. I looked up at him, and he was confused. He thought he was going to kill me. As soon as he took the gun from my head and began to lift it upright, it fired. He blew a hole in the kitchen ceiling, and plaster showered down on us from above. My ears were ringing so loud I could barely hear anything else. Before he slammed the butt of the gun to my head, I heard him say that if he ever saw me again, he’d pull the trigger and I wouldn’t be so lucky. After that, I don’t remember much. It’s kinda blank.”

I sighed and sat still for a moment and stared blankly into the nowhere that I was surrounded by.

“I couldn’t hear very well for weeks. I had a ringing in my ears for almost a month. Once the ringing faded, I began stuttering all the time. It came on gradually, but it might as well have been there the whole time. I was teased about it a lot. Saying my own name is
still
the hardest thing for me to do.”

“That’s a really messed-up story, Sebastien. My heart goes out to you, bro. Did you ever see that fool Roger McDougall-Daggett again?”

“No. He drove off with the shotgun before the police got there, but he didn’t get the money. Beanie and my mother were downstairs in the parking lot when they heard the shots go off. They were terrified, but they both ran upstairs to help me. I think it was the one time my mother may have cared. After that, she was mad about Roger not working out, and was upset and seemed to blame Beanie and me for the whole thing. Beanie and my mother argued about it, and within a few months we were finally sent to go live back in Altoona, which was last year.”

“Your mother is a cold-ass piece of work, man. Animals in the wild take better care of their kids.”

“If you ever listen to her talk, all she ever talks about is ‘all the sacrifices she made for us’ and all the things she had to do without because of us. She likes to lay on the guilt and doesn’t listen to anybody else.”

“That’s some tragic-ass shit. I don’t know what the hell to say. I’ve been through some hard times my damn self, but my moms and pops were always close—they were always together, no matter what. I saw some messed-up stuff in prison too, but you’re just a kid. No offense. You shouldn’t have stories like that for another fifteen years.” Marcus’s tone seemed to rise as he began to get angry thinking about it. Even though he had never met her, I could tell that Marcus had had just about enough of my mother.

“And let me say this,” he spat, now furious. “Some people will tell you that they make, or have made, sacrifices for you, but don’t buy it. The truth is simple: everything they ever did was for themselves, and what they did had little bearing on what was best for you. You were just a…hostage, along for the ride. You were just furniture, luggage, window dressing, dead weight to them. At least it’s a good thing that you’re hip to it now.”

As I watched Marcus going off on a rant, I listened, because he was more serious than he had been. “People like that are toxic and will do everything they can to ruin your life. And if they can’t do it alone, they’ll find others to help them, no matter how long it takes.” What he said got to me and crept under my skin, giving me a chill. It was a disturbing thought. She was doing it all again with Dick and didn’t care on any level about Beanie or me. Everything she was doing was for herself, and she’d never change.

Marcus and I both sat quietly for quite some time after I told him my story. Feeling the urge, I stood up, excused myself and went inside the bathroom. After I closed the door behind me, I slid the small metal knob to the right, locking the door, which activated the
occupied
light on the outside.

I sat down on the closed stainless-steel lid of the toilet. The whole bathroom, four feet by four feet, was stainless steel, including the floor. Part of me wanted to cry, and another part wanted to scream and break something. Both options at that moment seemed out of the question. A slight breeze was filtering in through the small window that had been left open by someone else. I could see the sun setting one more time in the sky outside. It was my last Greyhound sunset, and I watched it locked in the bathroom. After the final sliver of light had fallen below the horizon, I got up and washed my face and hands in the sink. Seeing myself in the mirror, I realized that even though I felt older, I was still twelve years old. I couldn’t quite recall how I’d felt getting on the bus, but I knew getting off that things would have to be at least a little different.

Just as I reached up for the knob, somebody rapped loudly at the door. I emerged with a surprised look as a young man with a beard was waiting to use the toilet. Slipping out and back to my seat, I looked over at Marcus, who had hit the hot-line button on his Walkman.

“You alright? I thought you might have fallen in or something. I was about to call the cavalry,” he joked.

“Just as long as it wasn’t Stonewall Jackson,” I responded.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“I guess I do. I think I understand the snake in the box thing a bit better.”

“I knew you would, kiddo.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“It’s cool. It’s your life, my man. Just don’t feel too wounded about it, and you’ll be cool.”

I nodded in acknowledgment. After I checked the time and my schedule, I estimated we were only a few hours out from Columbus and we’d probably get in early. I slipped my headphones on and faded away to Hall and Oates again. My favorite song on the tape, after listening to it so many times, was “I Can’t Go for That.” It had a beat and catchy lyrics, which I had almost completely memorized.

I thought about what I had told Marcus, and while it did feel a little strange telling him, I knew on some level I would feel better. He said it would change me by telling “my story,” as he referred to it, the way I saw it. I knew better than to expect any type of dramatic shift in my personality or to stop stuttering tomorrow. I had been told many times already that I would eventually grow out of it. Maybe this would help me to grow out of it just that much faster. Marcus had a way of making me feel more included in everything around me than I had ever felt before, but by myself I still felt as if I was separated from everyone else. It wasn’t hard to understand, or reason why, when being noticed was equivalent to a “ghost sighting.” Usually when people took notice of me, they’d follow it with the sentence “What are you doing here?” or “How did you get in here?” I was always in the way. Maybe the biggest thing I had in common with Marcus was staring me in the face the whole time. While he knew what it was like to be imprisoned and freed, I knew what it was like to be taken hostage mentally and imprisoned inside myself.

The problem with being trapped inside your head all day is that it’s difficult for others to notice it. Most people will just say, “Ohh…he’s so quiet and well behaved.”

Sitting in the darkness, I could feel another level of anticipation and frustration peel away like an invisible layer. The interior lights were on, illuminating the ceiling and the floor. Almost all of the small overhead lights above each passenger were shining down, even my own.

Early evening on the bus was just another set of routines. People began pulling out food, snacks, drinks, leftovers they’d brought from home, and sat enjoying whatever company was around them. One man who had gotten on the bus back in Blythe had been sleeping almost the entire time. I only saw him awake twice, and that was only for a short bathroom visit. It was as if life on the Greyhound was too much to absorb, and thus shutting down was the only option. A long rotation of bathroom visits and smoke breaks ensued, and the driver would usually turn on the radio to the evening news so folks could get a sense that the world hadn’t actually ceased to exist, even though everything on the bus typically pointed in that direction.