It began snowing as the shuttle
entered the Portland
I
remember James and the energy around him; it was almost tangible in total juxtaposition
to his garb a blue bandana worn loosely over long hair a black shirt and an old
beaten P-coat. We would become close on the short leg of our journey together.
He told me after we had exchanged a few stories that his Shaman had sent him on
a journey and to meet someone, who in reference was I; he inclined. Our bus
left out of Portland
A small squat yet
lean man with silvering hair became our next driver. His method of driving was
amazing to behold. I had a bag of weed, so I was up at night when all the
others on the bus had long since fallen asleep. As we hit the high Rockies the bus driver got into his grove. The snow storm
had stopped and the sky was the kind of clear where you feel you can reach out
and touch the stars. The jet black was interposed with the purple and white
topped mountains that lay in embroider on the entire horizon. Every where ice
and snow caught the star and moonlight creating a surreal landscape out of a
fairy land. The asphalt of the highway had a hard frozen layer of snow which we
were zooming across. I thought a while for what word would best describe the
bus’s movement and zooming is really it. The driver had a system of controlled bursts
of petal to the metal, and I would think he knew his route hill by hill for his
method of climbing each one required that the road was straight on the other
side. He sort of built momentum for the next hill and gathered together a
rhythm which left us almost flying above the ice. I will explain. The hills
were laid out like waves on the sea each following in a succession and as each
hill was attacked by the bus the driver would smash down on the gas. The bus’s
tires would spin while the bus drove forward like a great locomotive attacking
a steep grade, and as the bus began to crest the hill he lay off the gas
letting the tires grip the frozen icy road for the few seconds it took the bus
to top the hill and begin its downward journey. Then again the driver gassed
the engine and the bus surged forward down the hill gathering speed until the
very frame shook and the frozen icy scenery flew by. Over each hill the bus
with all its sleeping passengers sped through the night.
After a while the
hills became lower and the flats longer. It was then that I saw them, the wild
horses. We were on a long straight stretch and a wide plain lay to the right of
the bus stretching far and ending in small hills. A great black stallion headed
the herd across the snow covered plain. I could hear their hooves pounding the
frozen ground like distant thunder; I felt their energy like a powerful beating
drum deep inside my being. They came twenty strong or more from the plain and
matched speed with the bus. Their breath shot forth from their muzzles blasts
of steam from the internal mustang furnaces which propelled them thought the
glassy frozen night. I cupped my hands over my face against the window to see
them better. The great black’s mane flew in his wind, his great muscles rippled
and flexed, and his hooves caused clouds of snow to erupt from the plain. Behind
him drove forward the herd, golden brown, white, painted and palominos in full
gallop shoulder to shoulder across the table of snow they flew, freedom of the
night, bounding muscle, and thundering hooves tearing a path through the frozen
turf, and as fast as they arrived the were gone. I continued watching out the
window with a deep respect and reverence for the night, for the cold frozen
landscape, and the wild horses that ruled it.
Our bus was full
and it was set up for long rides so we had our own privy. We also had our own
Heroin junkie who would make his way to the toilet every hour or two to get
high. He would go into a heavy nod after his return. He obviously had not
bathed for some time considering the strong body odor that emanated from him.
He was a young white male brown hair thin and pale, heroin sheik with a sweat
stained yellow button up shirt, gray slacks and a beige coat. James and I had
chance to speak of his activities forming a sort of prejudgment mixed with
pity. Until something change all that. A Hispanic lady was traveling at the back
of the bus with her two children and after her daughter had gone to use the
restroom she made her way to the front of the bus. The intercom turned on and
the whole bus shushed for the up coming announcement. The driver said, “If
anyone has diabetes, you dropped your needles in the restroom and a little
three year old girl found them on the floor.” The bus maintained the silence of
a library after the Librarian lets loose a deafening ‘SHHH”. I knew what it
was. I got up and went to inspect the restroom and as I surmised what lay on
the floor was the Junkies works with a loaded syringe full of black tar heroin.
I picked them up and made my way back to my seat to confer with James. After a
few minuets we decided that the Junkie had to go or turn over his product. It
was then James starting asking, “I wonder what heroin is like?” I turned and
looked at him with disbelief in my eyes. He did not fully grip the extremity of
the situation and lent himself into musings of getting high. That is not where
my mind went at all; I lay my concerns for the safety of those around me.
Shortly after this the Junkie made his way to the seat across the isle from us.
As he sat down I noticed the heavy object that lay in his jacket pocket which
pulled on his coat, and his hand as it slid into the pocket to hold the item
which lay within. This man was armed. He knew what we had been talking about. I
looked at him and let my gaze penetrate him for a long second and said, “You
fucked up dude.”
James interjected
and said with a menacing tone, “Either get off the bus or we’ll take that from
you”
I saw the muscles
on the man’s arm tighten and his face became more sallow mixed with a great
fear. He said through clenched teeth, “I will fight for this.” This was not a threat
but a harsh reality that could prove very dangerous and quickly get out of
control.
I looked deep into
his eyes forcing him to keep his attention on me not James. I asked one question
that still echoes in my ears, “If that little girl died from what you
carelessly left on the floor could you live with that child’s soul on your conscious?”
The young man
looked at me with a look of surprise on his face and then the question touched
something within him. A frown crossed his eyes and he replied in a subdued and
morose voice that belayed his true trapped spirit. “No” he said “No, I could not.” “I’ll get off the bus at the next rest stop.”
When we reached the next rest station I spoke
with the driver, and told him someone would be getting of at the next stop. I
got off the bus and threw the works on the ground stomping and smashing them
with my black combat boots into the snow and then put them in the trash. I
remember the young man beset by fear across the parking lot. The fear was jail
and a forced with-drawl from the heroin that he had become so dependant on. I
asked him as his bag was taken off the bus and asked, “What are you going to
do?” I was really curious because the next stop was in the middle of no-where.
He looked at me and said, “I’m going to find a program, and get clean” turned
and walked off into the snow. I have always wondered what happened to him.
The buses next
stop was a change over, and we were required to gather our luggage and wait in
the terminal. James and I were pretty close by then and still wound up sitting
next to each other. I saw some of our new passengers in the terminal among the
hustle and bustle of the Gray hound holiday schedule. A family unit was joining
our bus a mother and her adolescent daughter and young son. I noticed the way
this young girl was acting was to mature for her age. We all got on the next
bus and the family sat in the row in front of us. The boy and his mother on the
left side of the bus and the teenage girl on the right side, and after a while
a young man sits down in front of me boxing the teenage girl against the
window. My red flags went up and I said to my self, “This guys either a pervert
or he is just going to teach the girl what is appropriate in way of teasing and
playful flirting.” I pointed at the two of them and looked at James while I
shrugged my shoulders. He responded in kind with his own gesture of
non-committal. It was late and we soon all fell asleep for we had been waiting
in the terminal for some time. I have a sort of alarm system that wakes me when
something is wrong. I know to keep quiet when this alarm goes off, quiet,
still, and just to listen. Only two people were awake on the bus, the man in
front of me and the teenage girl. In
this case I was awoke in time to hear this, “No, stop, please,” in barely a
whisper. In one motion I reached over the seat with my left hand and grabbed
the man by his hair while my other hand with knife enclosed circled around and
jacked the man against his seat with the knife pressing so hard on his throat
he was barely able to speak. I yelled with a deep attack voice, “How fucking old
are you?”
A strangled “nineteen” issued forth from his
mouth. The bus was suddenly very awake.
I continued with
my assertion of the facts, for I had asked the girl how old she was earlier and
he was present. “That girl is fifteen years old, and you’re a full grown man.”
The mother assumed a tardy control over her daughter and moved her across the
isle. The bus driver stopped the bus and made a radio call to center dispatch
who in turn called the police; they would be at Salt Lake City
The police offered
the proper amount of questions, and then one asked about the knife. I said,
“Knife? What knife?” Apparently the lady did not want to press charges which
would have been a difficulty because she lived in St. Louis
After finishing my
Q and A I got back on the bus. The whole bus erupted into applause. I was
surprised, and I nodded my head as I walked back to my seat. Just before the
bus left the Sergeant got on and introduced himself to me, and shook my hand. I
said, “There something you don’t see everyday; a cop shaking a bikers hand.”
The bus geared up and we on our way to St.
Louis St.
Louis
The bus was only
half full as we entered the eastern states. The trees all began to change and
the hills rolled low and long. The back of the bus filled up with brothers
which is slang for Afro-American young men, some of whom were trafficking weed
to the city. I made a trade for a ¼ ounce of brown weed for my last bud of
cronic, and was set with weed until I got home. The whole demeanor of the back
of the bus changed with the influx of the brothers. The conversations turned
more to stories of adventures and the dozens were thrown at unsuspecting
passers by on the highway or side of the road. I want to add a note. If you’re
on a long distance bus ride with weed don’t eat every time the bus stops or you
might wind up with a stinky sour stomach with no where to go. Black people have
this very direct indirect way of talking about the elephant in the room by such
statements as, “Somebody needs to take a shit” or “Somebody stinking up the
back of the bus” and around until the only person who hasn’t said anything is
the one with the funk. A simple and effective indirect direct message which is
given with definite direction as such is the way of a community with a powerful
willfulness.
The bus last major
stop before Washington D.C.
was in Pittsburg Pennsylvania
We loaded back up
on a full bus all the seats had been filled by new passengers. The last leg of
the journey was a fourteen hour drive which I managed to sleep most of the way.
I woke as the bus began to enter the Washington
D.C. Silver Spring station on the corner of Fenton Street Sligo Avenue
I walked up to my
father and gave him a hug and we headed for his car. It was a big “landlord”
sedan that floated down the road like my moms four door Bonneville. We talked a
little about my trip in a way of making conversation. I looked out the window
watching the neighborhood slide by covered in ice and snow from a previous
storm a week before my arrival. Dad pointed out the new center for homeless
people where a soup line ran. We were close to the new house and I would get my
first look since the renovation and addition. Dad told me a story of him
hanging Christmas lights in the form of a tree by accident with the help of
Evan on the side of the house. We entered the house from the back where the
family room was and Dad said, “Go ahead and just wait for breakfast everybody
would be up in a little while. I’m going up to take a nap until then”
I sat down on the
couch in the basement and turned the television I had watched for many years on
and sat staring at the screen. I thought about what I had just gone through,
what I was going to do, and what it meant to be home. I had been flying by the
seat of my pants for some time allowing the winds of some unseen force to send
me along like a sail boat tacking against some wind from a torrid storm which
fully intended to test my seamanship. I had a quiet moment, just for myself, a second
frozen in time. I smiled to myself daring something to change the brightness
that surrounded this moment. I was home and it was Christmas.
THOR
