Riding By Window

  

     Busses intrigue me.   I enjoy watching and riding on them.  Forget about people -- they've got their own problems – it is the ride I thrive on.  

     Best position to be on a bus, depends on demographics.  Riding through city is a fifty/fifty toss-up, with anywhere okay; maybe.  If you sit in the wrong location, you might regret being there.  My first most vivid city memory -- several police beating on a man who'd had his throat slashed, ear to ear by thugs, while I’d watched from a bus -- for his own protection. 

     I was thinking about the afore- mentioned while I rode along a New England city corridor of seemingly endless traffic lights and numerous stops enroute to Chicago.  Thinking of the incident reminded me of another similar and older haunt. 

     We were sitting at a strange teenage location, we'd called, Bums Jungle.  There's lots to tell about the jungle, but not here.  Crazy drunken teens -- we were --, and where was I? 

     I was somewhere in the middle of every group, between hard rock and stone.    It was the saddest thing about my life.  I often wished to vanish.    But, they called us, five spirits.  We appeared from nowhere and partied into nights on weekends and beyond wee hours of mornings, till week days dawned and once again, work began.

   Anyway, I must confess that alcohol and I do not cooperate.  Yes, I sloshed away a few; but mostly, it made me sick.  If you're all alone in your silly world, you tend to drift downward for entertainment.  Rick was entertainment one warm afternoon.  It was a train yard, partly abandoned, and every once in a while a train would come by.  We'd played there since we were kids.  We were sitting there watching and, Rick said, “Look at me, I'm Jesus Christ, and about to stop the train!"

     "Superman!" I encouraged him, without realizing what actually was transpiring.

     The train coming up fast, but still distant.  We could see the engineers and eerily, the whistle blew.  But, Rick jumped directly in front of it.  "Common train,"

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Rick goaded.  But they chickened and slammed brakes.  Screeching reminded me of finger nails on chock board. 

     I watched wheels turn red, then white.  And, Rick held his ground.  "I'm Bat Man,” Rick chided, forgetting Jesus Christ.

     They got so hot those wheels, that sparks flew and some of the old rotting train timbers started burning off a pile in the rail yard, kindled by heat and dry wood slivers; so, now we were watching fire, my nemesis and only enemy.  I just watched timber burning, and the train kept coming, while wheels whitened.

    His girlfriend saved him in nick of time.  She leapt.  Connected.  Kicked and pushed away.

     Rick still took the hit, but it didn't matter, he had no feelings anyway.  He was there for his own pleasure.  Somewhere in those woods was a tent he slept in.  But, his girlfriend?  She kicked his ass that night, probably saving his life, I thought.

     The train hit.  Rick flew about twenty feet down the track, but off to the side, and his arm was slightly bent.  But it could have been worse, I theorized.

     The train screeched, blew both whistles while engineers cussed then blew by, just like the breeze that warmed summer days there, and once again we were children, in minds inebriated eyesore.

     Rick tried to get up to wander back to his pad, but not quick enough.   Cops were on top of him.  But, he was tough.  "There's no such thing as, Jesus." he proclaimed.  And, I was inclined to agree there.  Nobody came reciting the rosary that night; as hours had passed.  

     When it comes to religion, I don't know where I stand.  I recollect cousin, Jesse.  She was a divorced woman back then and nobody wanted her, she'd said.  But, I thought she was pretty and always encouraged her.  I know it's sick, and never would I really do such thing, but I told her, I'd marry her if she wouldn't be my cousin.  I guess she’d realized the plutonic implication of an addled character who harmed nobody; almost.

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    Rick was fighting with them, and I confess I batted one badly before booking into the forest and that tent ensconced in brush, and quietly awaiting morning and escape.  

     But, the cops were beating poor Rick, for his own protection, so they could fix his broken arm and baton head wound, at the hospital after a night in jail.  My thoughts precluded what came next.

        The only way I enjoy being right seated is if I'm going a short way and hopping off soon, sitting at the front.  It's a good place to bail out before others; what I learned on city streets.  

     There was no hurry here, lounging while the bus seemed to choose its own path.  I was sitting midway and you couldn't see even his head; the driver of the bus, who just kept it steady, even while hydroplaning around curves, in the evening rain. Pouring rain beating that roof top, and wipers going, “splat, splat, splat,” flip flopped back and forth, dampening already dour moods.

     Then, somebody came on board, a young man with beautiful almost cherubic features and voice that would be coveted by any human choir; but his body was bent beyond reason.   I recognized him as a gang leader.  Some guys you just know at impact.  I know.  First thing we'd ever done during childhood was fist fight.  His scars were too many to be normal.

     An engineer can look at a log and analyze it.  You can tell a lot from a log.  Lots of different logs make many different products.  I’d begun my paper-mill job at age sixteen.  In winter in early morning, some guys would go with me to climb two and three story buildings with solid wood ladders built for such purpose as to get us on top those specific structures to shovel snow from slanted rooftops.   

      My analytical intuition had led me to know that deformed character I'd met.    He sat directly across the aisle from me, kicking his heals up on to the next seat

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chair rail, draping boots across the aisle and retracting when somebody walked by.  His right arm rested upon his bag, and his guitar top case braced itself against his window, which presented little interest to him.  Instead, he turned his attention to those black mysterious binders.  That guy had engineered his own version of me.  "You're a writer," he assumed. 

     I'd never written about anything; that ever amounted to much.  Those diaries would have made a great subject, probably about nothing.  Not much to talk about, I thought.  The black binders bothered me more than anything now.  I felt like offering them to him, and walking on with my life.

     So I started telling my own story, whence he unveiled his beautiful arch top guitar.  Not normally my choice for that instrument; those things have their problems.  They're difficult to tune and keep tuned.  His was polished beyond shiny.  I could see my own face which I seldom look at, in that glossy cherry wood, reflecting on my mood and almost exposing my soul.  He began strumming ever so quiet, but that music just resonated throughout the bus that day.  When he sang, I thought I'd died in Heaven.  His voice carried so well that it felt like quiet stereo.  He played for an hour or two while we rode quietly through hills.  Lots of people closed their eyes.  I just kept staring, and staring at the black books, beside me.

     Then the space man expelled from aerospace began ranting; raving about beauty and mountains while his loving wife kicked him again.  Mountains?  I thought they were hills compared to where I'd come from.  Rounded tops with sledged rock slices along the sides, they were. 

     He was crooning Leonard Cohen songs while we slipped into twilight; the guitar guy.  I had to wonder, what made this man?  Here was a guy whom I’d judged by jagged looks, slightly unshaven and Dingo boots, but with that golden voice; which made a good point with the idiot as well, as he himself said, "If God had given me a voice instead of a brain, I'd be singing on broad way instead of stinking in brew,” making a point to his pint size wife about women being there. 

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     She refrained until the next stop, to kick his butt at the, Buffalo exit.

     I was thinking about the books.  I let my eyelids droop; and welcomed an old friend into my dreams after thinking about my sister, Sarah.   

     While I was age five, one April; my sister and I were shooting arrows at a large target placed in front of a corn patch, with little space between, to catch those arrows missing mark.  The bulls eye, big enough to swallow a basketball, was difficult to miss at close range.  We were standing at a distance, behind a white lime line.  Sarah, my sister?  It was a nightmare turned man. 

     We shot our quivers empty and went to pick our missing arrows.  I'd over shot into the corn patch an arrow or two between rows and headed there for retrieval. 

   Anyway, before that, I was telling her about my plan to write stories and she'd laughed.  I loved my big sister, but she'd had no mercy.  I'm average height.  For a man, I feel average.  My sister is six foot tall.  Not that that matters.  Mom was tall as well.  But me?  I'm just five foot, five.  It wouldn't bother me if they didn't bring it up; the rest of our family -- that is -- most being taller than me.  

     Sarah found her arrows quicker than I did and headed back.  "Common, move it lard ass,” she mimicked Mother. 

    But I was a few rows too deep for her patience.  She proceeded to place her target on me.  It was a good idea I guess.  I was moving and resembling something of a deer (or, perhaps pig).  She aimed for my buttocks while I rose, penetrating my chest.  Shock knocked me backward, but fortunately I was okay.  I pulled the shaft, removing it, and began stuffing milk weeds that grew wild into the hole; which clotted.

     My dream shifted to an old friend, Dolly who’d acted differently.  She had a heart.  A well-dressed governess, the first woman, Harvard graduate (she'd once confided in me), and I loved her the way a son loves his mother -- while her son loved the neighbor next door.   Dolly always encouraged me.  She gave me a place to stay.  She made my bed and cooked.  She cleaned cloths.  She wrote and published stories, while I watched.  Then, dreams vanished.

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     We rode through night and night lights while dozing.  Music ceased, but the guitar still lay across the now snoozing rider.  My attention turned toward the window.  I stared into night plagued by books.  What could Mom have to say?  I

loved Mom.  We both loved each other, I think; maybe, more than we knew, or ever demonstrated.

     As a teen ager, I ran away to be free from home duties and responsibility.  I was living in a half-way house making room and board with food; all you could eat; in exchange for cooking, doing dishes, washing pots and pans.  I got fifty dollars a week, if it didn't get stolen. 

     Those black books?  Rewriting her diaries to try and make sense of my life?   Mom mostly down played anything I'd done constructive in that department.  She mastered three lexicons and languages, was class valedictorian, an Army officer,  President of PTA, a secretary and ongoing list of achievements, none of which I'd ever reach.   "You'll never amount to anything," she'd often confided. 

     It was peaceful riding through nighttime.  Everything was quiet, except for soft sounds of a muffled motor, and an occasional crunch of gears meshed out of sync.  The bus rode like a pillow under my body and I marveled at the plush seats, resting my arms on a quilted arm rests, repeatedly dozing through night. 

     We picked up another character along the way.  This guy needed to take my spare seat.  He eyed the books, interrupting any thoughts I'd had about writing, picked up the stack and callously tossed them with his suitcase on the overhead rack, as if they belonged to him.  I’d hoped he'd take them.  Then he sat next to me to begin sizing me up.  Where am I going?  I didn't know, but wanted to tell him where to go.

     I made up some brilliant story about being a successful, Chicago writer. 

     When it comes to writing, I'm timid.  Dad never wrote more than a handful of pages, several paragraphs long and never more than one preposition or less per sentence.  Sometimes, I wished I'd taken time to teach him better grammar.  Most of anything I ever said got wasted on deaf ears.  Writing takes too much

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time, when there’s other work.  Mom always told me a distressed mind was one unemployed, without some menial or tedious duty.  That was her reason for

keeping me, and keeping me busy.  There was lots of farm work.  She’d called me her family mule.  “You act stubborn like a mule,” she’d often said, “I’m treating you like one, so that you will understand good ethics and endurance.  Someday, you’ll thank me.”

     It was a good tale.  He believed me, and even offered me his own; free, he said.  Nobody really wants to write a book, it's painfully insane; long boring hours sitting before a laptop, waiting for an epiphany.  But, it's a good line if you ever want to impress somebody, or make a fool of yourself.   Someone is always willing to tell a story.

      Mom was much less impressed with my efforts.  She'd be a tough act to follow, just like sister Sarah (my eldest and tallest), peas in a pod; if I'd listened to them, I would amount to nothing.   I guess she’d had her point --Mother.  At her home, I did little other than chores.  Three years old, two years before deciding to be a writer, I wielded a hammer, pulling rusty nails from charcoal planks that needed cutting as firewood, another job I did.

     He wouldn't ever know, unless I could get a spontaneous nose erection as the infamous, Pinocchio.  I guess I could have said anything.  It seemed like a good idea.  He bought it.  Now he was spinning his own yarn, which began in, Serbia, Russia.  He'd been born in war, seen lots of blood and fighting, which he took great length describing.

     Blond, short hair; except for his slight (okay, heavy) accent, he spoke remarkably well, looking almost American.  You can't tell much, looking at a guy in night, with no light except streetlights, and occasional flickering car lights.  He was a tall stocky build and appeared muscular.  He was heading toward, Chicago as well it turned out, to retrieve an auto.  Since gaining economic freedom, some states over there, he said, were spawning US vintage car collectors.  He told me the story about a Cadillac he’d once purchased for a guy, and how it broke down

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midway on a trip.  They’d made him install a new transmission where they left the vehicle; set off of the curb.

     While he spun his saga, we docked in Buffalo, where we learned we were absolutely unwanted.  Groups of men in arms swarmed the bus.  They boarded, demanding credentials of anybody who looked scared; and carried poster pictures of wanted suspects.

     The Russian, was openly flustered, and perspiring.  Sweat beaded his forehead.  He cracked his knuckles while the Gooks (we’d called them) dressed in black, faces covered, sunglasses at night, and guns focused on my head, demanded a passport from that man.  Coincidentally, I happened to carry mine in my jacket pocket, and handed it quietly to the Russian, who passed it forward, as if it were his own.

     They  didn't look too hard in the dim lit night light of the bus; just tossed it back and he caught it without saying, thanks; for which, I was thankful.  Then they turned their attentions across the aisle, to people there.  They held up pictures, comparing faces of strangers they met.  When they got to the singer across from us -- he no longer had his boots blocking traffic -- one Gook, decided to make a scene.  They told the singer he resembled somebody on that photo list, and even as he protested, they handcuffed, and shackled him for our evening display.  But, I knew he'd probably done nothing wrong.  They did not even apologize; broke his guitar and spilled luggage all over for his lack of cooperation, then; shoved him back on after discovering they were wrong.  You never call cops wrong.  You never look at them.  You hope they don't look at you.  That's the message they gave.   To me, it looked like he hadn’t done too much to get that treatment; except, maybe he looked the wrong way to him. 

     I never ponder about what others think of me.  Mostly I go unnoticed, which is good from my perspective.  I hide scars to avoid bad names.  There’s no reason degrading myself, when I have family to keep me humble.  You don’t always get to choose people you meet, especially in a bus or along the, New York boarder.     

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      US is a free country.  Drive anywhere without law breaking and you have a ticket o everywhere along Route 66, so to speak.  But board a bus, or public airplane, and count on free rectal exams, or Halloween type nights.

     Nobody seemed sleepy after adrenalin rush.  We walked mostly, not even sitting at the stop; for two hours, waiting for departure.  They could have frisked us there instead of on that bus.  I thought it was pointless anyway.  Some people got scared, some angry, and everybody hated them.  I guess they’d accomplished their mission.

     We boarded busses, exchanged luggage racks, addresses and seats for our new places and destinations.  I didn’t see the Russian.  He stayed there.  Probably, he got a hotel room somewhere before his next trip ticket.  Who knows?  People are different.  Some get a one way ticket to an abstract location, knowing exactly where they’re going.  Others visit cities and have round trip fares offered them for less money.  Me?  I just happened to be there.

     The poor man whose broken guitar had left him, in the garbage; suddenly looked ragged, worn out, and sad.  While we were riding and everybody bummed out about Gooks, he began singing, Halleluiah, to everyone’s relief.  It might have been better without the chorus of sorts; but he held his tune well and it carried over all. 

     

      A few rough edges can be sanded to perfection.