The White Widow: A Novel (24 page)

There she was. My God, my God. There she was!

Jack moved over to her.

“Hello,” he said.

She turned her head toward him. “Hello.”

“Do you know who I am?”

She smiled pleasantly. The blue eyes were fully visible and exciting. “You do look familiar but I can’t really place you exactly … I’m so sorry.”

“I’m Jack T. Oliver.”

It was obvious that was still not enough.

He cleared his throat and said: “Good afternoon, folks. Our travel time to Corpus Christi this afternoon will be two hours and thirty-four minutes. My name is Oliver. Jack T. Oliver. If I can assist you in any way or do anything to make your trip more comfortable, please give me a holler …”

“Oh, yes,” she said. She did not smile.

“I’m the regular driver of this schedule.”

“I see that now.”

“I’ve been the one behind the wheel four of your five trips on this schedule. You rode across from me a week ago in the front seat. We call it the Angel Seat.”

“I know I did.” Her voice was no longer pleasant. She turned her blue eyes away from him, toward the door of the bus. There were still four passengers ahead of her, each having his or her ticket punched by Billy, each being helped aboard the bus.

She took a step forward. Jack moved with her.

“I’ll never see you again,” he said, in a voice that he hoped was low enough for no one else to hear. But he really did not care that much right now if anybody did. The important thing to him, the only important thing to him, was that she hear his every word.

She kept her eyes straight ahead and said nothing.

Jack noticed for the first time what a majestic nose she had, how magnificent she looked from the right side. He had seen mostly her left side when she was in the Angel Seat a week ago. There was something familiar about her right side. It took him a second to figure out why. He had just seen a similar profile in the lobby of the Orpheum on a poster for
High Noon.

Ava had a profile like Grace Kelly.

She was now the next one in line to give her ticket to Billy McDougal and board the bus.

“You’ve given me the most wonderful times and memories of my life,” Jack said to her. “I wanted you to know that before we parted for good.”

“You ran over those people, didn’t you?” she said. “You killed that woman and her daughter.” Her expression, at least as viewed from the right side, did not change.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Billy said to her, to Ava.

She handed him her ticket. He looked at it, at her and then at Jack, the man standing next to her.

“Jack? Is that you, Jack?” he said.

“Hi, Billy.”

“Well, well. What are you doing here? Checking to see that I don’t screw up the schedule? They held me for a Shreveport connection, that’s why I’m late …”

Billy handed the passenger stub of the ticket back to her, to Ava. Then he took her left elbow, which was fully exposed below a short-sleeved green and white flowered blouse, and assisted her up the first step onto the bus.

Jack watched her take the first step with her left foot and leg and then the second with her right. And then she was gone, out of his sight down the aisle to a seat.

“Good-bye,” he said quietly. “Good-bye, my love.”

“Hey, Jack,” said Billy. “You all right?”

Jack nodded and walked away. He had been delighted to see and now to know forever that the bump, the bite, was still gone from the calf of her right leg.

He went back inside the depot to get his suitcase and the Santa and to buy a ticket. But to where? What bus would he actually get on now? What did it matter anyhow?

But it did matter. He had to go somewhere.

She didn’t know me. She didn’t even remember my name. She thinks I ran over that woman and her daughter.

I
did
run over that woman and her daughter, that woman checker and her daughter checker, that Tamale woman and her Tamale daughter, that Fort Worth cop’s wife and daughter.

Mr. Abernathy, his suitcase on the floor beside him, was talking to Johnny Merriweather.

“There won’t be another one going to Panama City, Florida, until five-fifteen,” Johnny said to Mr. Abernathy.

“I hate to wait that long,” Mr. Abernathy said. “But if I must, I must.”

“Do you know who I am, Mr. Abernathy?” Jack said, coming up to him.

Mr. Abernathy looked at him only for a second and then quickly looked away in obvious embarrassment.

“I’m Jack Oliver. That’s my regular run to Corpus that just left here. Look at me closely. You’ll see it.”

Mr. Abernathy was clearly confused, annoyed, scared. “Where is your uniform and your punch and your bus if you are him?” he said.

“I quit, packed my suitcase just like you and decided to go off somewhere on the bus. Not as a driver but as a passenger, just like you.”

Mr. Abernathy grabbed his suitcase. He obviously did not want to talk about this any more.

“Do you want to go with me?” Jack asked. “I will go anywhere you want to go.”

“I was going to Panama City, Florida. I want to go to Panama City, Florida.”

“Great. I’ll go with you on the five-fifteen. We’ll change in Houston and go to New Orleans and Mobile and then to Panama City,” Jack said, turning to Johnny. “Isn’t that the route?”

“That’s it,” Johnny said.

“What do you say, Mr. Abernathy?” Jack said.

“It’s only four o’clock now,” said Mr. Abernathy. “I’ll be back after a while.” He moved toward the door with his suitcase.

“In case I don’t see you anymore, Mr. Abernathy …” Jack ended his sentence there.

Mr. Abernathy stopped, put his suitcase down and turned back to Jack. “I said I would be back at five-fifteen,” he said sternly.

“I know, I know. I thought just in case you didn’t make it,
that I would say good-bye for good, because I’m going even if you don’t.”

“Where are you going even if I don’t go to Panama City?”

“I don’t know.”

“Go to Charlottesville, Virginia. Go to Thomas Jefferson’s house. It’s called Monticello. Go there.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t a Communist?” Johnny Merriweather said.

“He was a Democrat!” Mr. Abernathy said.

“Same thing,” Johnny said.

Jack hadn’t heard that before, even at the Tarpon Inn.

The Tarpon Inn. That was another place he would probably never see or smell again. But he wouldn’t miss it. At least, he didn’t think he would. How can anybody know what they’ll miss before they start missing it or them or they or whatever?

He would miss Ava. Now he did know that. He would miss her in a way he had never thought possible to miss an it, a them, a they or a whatever. He did know that. Even if it turned out she looked more like a Grace than an Ava, didn’t even know who he was and believed he had run over that woman and her daughter.

I
did
run over that woman and her daughter!

When he looked again at the door, Mr. Abernathy and his suitcase were gone.

Johnny Merriweather said to Jack: “Okay, now what can I do for
you
?”

“Let me think,” Jack said.

“Anything you say, ‘Mr. Abernathy,’ ” said Johnny.

Jack’s plan when he left Corpus had been to switch to Texas Red Rocket Motorcoaches at Victoria after talking to Paul
and, if possible, speaking a few parting words to Ava. Great Western was no longer a part of his life and the sooner he got it out of his life and soul the better. But that meant getting off Great Western and its glorious ACF-Brills onto a Red Rocket thirty-three-passenger Beck, a plain flat-nosed bus with a second-rate pusher engine that whined and groaned like an old Chevy. Jack had driven a few in his early days on the extra board and did not care for them. They had a high road-failure record and were hard to hold on the road in heavy winds.

He had thought he would take the 4:45 Red Rocket from Victoria to Austin, where he would transfer to a Greyhound. Then buy a ticket to Dallas and maybe as far as Kansas City. Or go on to Minneapolis. Jefferson Lines was headquartered in Minneapolis. Jefferson was one of the major independent companies in the Midwest. He had met a Jefferson driver two years ago on a charter in Corpus and he said they were good people to work for. They might want the services of a real Master Operator. Pharmacy and Mr. Glisan had promised to give him good references. That was part of the deal. He goes quietly, no charges, no noise, no repercussions, no problems.

But he might try for a job as a dispatcher or as a ticket agent. No, forget that. If he was going to do anything at all having to do with buses, he would have to drive them. He would not give up driving for Ava, so why do it now for nobody, for nothing?

There was time to work that out. It wasn’t written down in Heaven or somewhere that he had to be in buses. There were other things to do in Minneapolis or somewhere.

No, no. It had to be buses. It had to be driving buses. It had to be out there on the road somewhere in some bus. It had to be.

They might also like his Santa Claus and his Christmas
decorating abilities in Minnesota. Maybe he could get a job going around decorating people’s houses and yards. No, no. It had to be buses.

Hey, Mr. Abernathy! Come with me and we’ll go where there are buses named after Thomas Jefferson, who was a Democrat and not a Communist. I’ll drive them, you ride them. Okay? Will that do?

Minneapolis, like all the places he was thinking about, was somewhere he had never been and knew of only from some travel brochures he had occasionally glanced at. It was up north, where it was cold and there was snow and there were no beaches. No beaches at all, he was sure. So even before he got to Victoria that morning he had begun to think that maybe he would turn east at Dallas and go to one of the Carolinas, instead of north to Minneapolis. Both Carolinas were supposed to have great beaches. So was California. He would decide all of that when he got to Dallas.

In six Fridays he had gone from being a regular bus driver to being a Master Operator, something College called an “elite,” to being a nothing who didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing, another Mr. Abernathy.

What about Panama City, Florida? Weren’t there beaches there? Charlottesville, Virginia, surely didn’t have any there by Jefferson’s house.

He had said good-bye to Loretta only in a note. He didn’t try to explain anything; he just said he was leaving. He could not have explained it to her. He left with only a few hundred dollars from their savings, some clothes in a suitcase and Oscar the Santa. The rest, he told her in the note, was all hers. That meant the car and the house, the manger set and all the other Christmas decorations.

He could not explain it to himself, much less to Loretta.

Now he wasn’t sure about going through Austin and all the rest. Where else was there to go?

And through the door came Mr. Abernathy again.

“I’ll go with you if you’ll go to Charlottesville, Virginia,” he said to Jack.

“It’s a deal,” Jack said.

“What time does it go?” Mr. Abernathy asked Johnny Merriweather.

“Four forty-five, through Austin. Then to Dallas, Texarkana, Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Roanoke and then across to Charlottesville.”

“I’ll be back,” Mr. Abernathy said and he left again.

“One way to Charlottesville, Virginia,” Jack said to Johnny.

“You serious?”

“As life itself, Johnny,” Jack replied.