This is what I imagine shouting from the back of the bus, on days where I actually look at the window and see things; the pigeon with fifty-cent bread, gyrating in its mouth. Snow laying its slim body down on the groaning highway. All kinds of things that wake up all of my desires, the cheap lunch, the distant sex, most especially a kind of electric isolation that I hungered for more than I am even aware. Gotta be on the move, gotta be going somewhere before I find myself and sink into a pit of self-dissatisfaction! Gotta go faster before I catch up to myself!
Drive like the wind, old man!
Gunshots go off from under the bus. It’s the Wild West of the Eastern Mid-West. Except that it’s nearly high noon and the town square isn’t silent: it hums with the energy-saving pride of the city buses, criss-crossing paths and hopping over each other like elongated checkers; an eagle soars overhead but it’s so damn loud at the back of the bus you can’t hear it. No one knows when it’s time to put down our books and pens, and when it’s time to
DRAW!
He got up from the front quarter of the bus and, bobbing around carelessly, made his way back to where I was sitting. He had one of those walks that felt like subconscious intention. Somewhere, he knew what it was that he intended to do, but his body acted only out of habit and without driving force. I half-expected him to turn around upon arriving and sit at a different seat than he was sitting at before. But the dude was looking straight at me, so I threw away my preconceived notions as I have trained myself to do, subtly reached my hand down towards my pocket to pause my IPod, and leaned forward to hear his story.
“Can I use your phone?”
Of course he can use my phone, I figure if someone wants to steal my phone they must really need it and I was probably better off before I even had one. Even so, I made sure he was in my sight at all times. Good to be generous, better to be intelligent about your decisions. Keeping track of someone often involves overhearing their conversation, which they should be expecting anyway, because who borrows a phone and expects it to remain secret?
“bzzzzzzz—warrant—bzzzzzzzz—arrest—bzzzzzz.”
Must’ve been high noon, ‘cause all I heard were gunshots and not a single more word could be heard above the din. I could tell something in me wanted to be apprehensive but I was still hopping, was still eager to be moving, so I didn’t care much, and nearly started up my music again just in time to catch the massive Mississippi outside my window when things got just a little real,
he started yelling and before I knew it, I was looking at my father, wearing maybe the same clothes but with darker skin, yelling at his woman over the phone, trying to get to St. Paul, fresh out of jail, going to court, like my father, like my father, and she was giving him hell and he deserved it, and he just kept yelling, because that solves all kinds of problems, and it was clear then that the world was falling in on his mind.
Wherever it was that he came from, I saw on his face that he wouldn’t be going back. He handed my phone back to me. “Women,” I could barely hear him, “Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.”
But I pretended he said something that wasn’t so dull, something more like,
“Son, don’t let ‘em ruin your life.”
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