Greyhound to Omaha

471 miles of asphalt is a long stretch of highway. It was the road to Omaha and my last nerve.

Summers in Chicago are long and sticky, and a chance to pack my checkered cardboard suitcase and board a gleaming grown‐up mode of transportation without the clucking of an overseer was as good a reason as any to get up those narrow bus steps. But there was more to the trip than that.

My big sister, Rhonda, married Scooter just out of high school and they moved to the Great Plains, where his people hailed. I don’t know why. It’s not like they were all one big happy family out there in Omaha, ‘cause they weren’t that’s for sure. But Rhonda and Scooter packed up that fancy red Corvair of theirs and waved adios to our side of things.

Rhonda was okay, what I knew of her. She kept pretty much above the fray at home, so me and my little sister didn’t really socialize with her. In the bedroom she got to have all by herself, Rhonda hid her scrapbook of all things Elvis Presley up high on the shelf so Jenny and I didn’t have access. We did get it down once and threatened to rip a page, but she marched right into the kitchen and Mom came marching back out with the spatula and new rules about going into Rhonda’s room. We never got it ripped and that was the last time I remember getting inside that room. She had tight skirts in there, too.

When Mom got sick I got a ticket on a Greyhound and Jenny got a ride in Uncle Walt’s sort of, almost like-­‐new Chrysler up to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin where she slept on a summer porch in a hammock all through the month of August. Neither Rhonda nor Uncle Walt would take both Jenny and me together for this emergency vacation; it was strictly one or the other. I guess me being the older sister, I got the bus ride.

It’s hard to imagine what our clues were supposed to be about this coming event concerning Mom, but if I had to pick something I’d say the first sign was the sudden disappearance of our dog, Jake. He was getting old in dog years, the same age as me. People used to say that when Dad didn’t get the boy he’d been waiting for and got me instead, he bought a dog and gave him the name I was supposed to have if I’d turned out right. Well, Dad’s long gone, and now so’s his consolation prize. Dad took off and didn’t look back and once Mom unhooked Jake’s chain, I imagine the dog did the same. That bad‐tempered hound never had a place of honor whatsoever with the women in our house, so whatever his fate may have been when he was made to disappear, it’s probably a better one.

Once Jake’s bowl and leash hit the trash, Mom started looking at Jenny and me a little differently, like there might be something written on our faces that would answer a question she had. She was lining

up our futures like troops ready for battle. Next thing we knew was that we were bound for our disparate destinations, and afterwards the air would just go out of things. She told us that we’d be having lots of fun for the summer, me with Rhonda and Scooter, and Jenny with Uncle Walt and Aunt Olivia. When I asked her why she didn’t come, too, Mom said that she was busy with things. It wasn’t what she said but the way she twisted her apron when she said it that made me not ask about the particulars.

I packed up in a hurry ‘cause that’s how I did things. It was hot so I didn’t need much in the way of clothes anyway. On the appointed day Mom, Jenny and me loaded into what was left of the Rambler and I was delivered to the Greyhound station long before the 9:00 a.m. departure time. We sat there on the slippery, polished benches all lined up with our toes together like birds on a wire for an hour and half. Mom didn’t like to be rushed when traveling was involved. I don’t know why, but normally Jenny and me would be climbing all over those benches and sliding on the gleaming tiled floor to see who could do a thing the best, but not that particular day. We all just sat there and looked into our laps.

The big silver bus pulled into the lot, its air escaping the brakes like a dragon breathing its last; our cue to get to our feet and look at each other. Mom wasn’t a hugger, but she was that morning. She hugged me hard but never smiled. She hugged me

and then she hugged Jenny, even though Jenny wasn’t getting on that bus; just me. Then we’d go a few more steps towards the door, and I’d get another one. Jenny and I didn’t say one word. The three of us shuffled our way to the bottom of the bus steps, and it was hard to know if I’d better get on or wait for another hug. It seemed to be over, so I broke the silence that had confused me. “Say ‘Hi’ to the cows for me,” was all I could think of to say about Wisconsin.

“Maybe I will,” Jenny said.

Then mom slicked back my ponytail with the palms of her hands like she always did and whispered in my ear, “I love you, Honey. I love you.”

“Okay, Mom,” I said. And that was it. I got on board.

I picked out a place on the right side, about halfway back where I could see Jenny and Mom still standing there. It was a window seat, which is what I’d hoped for. They’d put my suitcase underneath in the luggage compartment with the other travelers’ baggage, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask them not to. I had pictured it next to me, so I could get something out if the need arose, but so much for that.

Out the window Jenny was kinda hopping around, so either she had to use the bathroom or was just good and ready to go home, one of the two. But Mom

stood straight and still and in that yellow light of the morning, she looked like a picture in a book. She stood that way until the bus left the station and I couldn’t see her anymore, even when I twisted all the way around in my seat.

~

Rhonda worked at the University of Omaha’s cafeteria serving the students that rushed in and out on their way to classes. She learned some interesting skills, like how to crack an egg with one hand. She never cooked one single thing when she lived with us at home, but now she was a professional.

The school had a laboratory down in the basement with a room full of mice they did experiments with, like running them through little mouse‐sized mazes to see if they’d learned anything. That’s where Scooter worked, keeping the cages clean and the mice fed. More than anything, I wanted to see those mice. I was ready to hold one, if he’d let me. I liked Scooter. He was really nice, though he was married to my sister. I’d rather he was just a friend and leave it at that. I had butterflies in my stomach to be going to their apartment where they ran the place like adults. It would be my first time under those kinds of conditions and it made me feel grown‐up, but not exactly good.

“Hello, young lady,” said the old man sitting in front of me who’d turned around in his seat.

I didn’t say anything at first, sizing him up. Then he smiled and looked just like my Grandpa.

“Hi,” I answered.

“How far are you going?”

“To the end of the line. Omaha, Nebraska.”

“Well, good. We’ll keep each other company,” he said. He smiled my Grandpa’s smile again, and turned back around in his seat.

We rolled along the interstate and at first I was afraid to look down into the cars that drove along side us, right under my nose, almost, with the windows cranked down. I thought the strangers would see me, and give me dirty looks to mind my own business. But I soon realized that behind the tinted glass and way up in the clouds, nearly, I was invisible. It was like I was an angel watching from above, and no one could see me. For the first hour I did nothing but stare at them and imagine where they were going. One weary looking woman in a housedress and curlers had her kids with her, and so I decided that now she had to drive them to school because they’d missed the bus, and she’d had to borrow the neighbor’s car to do it. She did look mad, so I was sure I got that one right. There were men in white shirts and ties so they were on their way to the office where they’d make big deals and laugh with their secretaries as they left for lunch with big groups of other laughing men in polished shoes.

The secretaries would laugh until the men were out the glass doors, then they’d get back to typing.

When I looked back into the bus, the old man was asleep with his forehead against the glass. That’s when I noticed the guy up three rows and across the aisle with his head turned back, looking at me. I smiled, to be polite, and he smiled back, and kinda laughed. It made me nervous, the way he laughed. This caught the attention of a lady sitting across from him and he stopped. When she looked away, he winked at me, put his head back on his headrest and stretched out his very long legs. A chill ran up my spine and my head began to ache.

There didn’t seem to be enough air on that bus. For years I had had trouble with migraine headaches. Mom took me to a blind chiropractor with a seeing eye German shepherd to straighten out my spine and cure me, but it never did do anything intended. The blind doctor would feel his way to the table where I was laid out, put one hand on my shoulder and the other on my hip, and twist me like a pretzel. The dog would lie there and watch the whole thing, tipping his head at the sound of my bones popping. I still have those headaches, and not much helps me to feel better but to pull the curtains and lay still in bed, bag of frozen peas on my forehead. Mom would give me aspirin, but never enough. Right now I didn’t have any pills, and the worry of the pain that was coming made it worse. The bus was bright with

sunlight, and with every flash of brilliance streaking through the trees outside, the blood would beat against my skull a little harder.

Over against the window across the aisle was a kid with a box in his lap. All he did was look down at that box, then look around and snicker. A scratching noise that had begun to bother me was coming from the box. It was an irregular kind of scratching, frantic at times, weak at others. The kid kept looking at it, then slumping down a little farther in his seat, cradling the box tighter. He saw me looking, and grinned. “Do you want to see it?” he asked, all excited.

“What is it?” I answered weakly, rubbing my forehead.

“A lizard!” he proclaimed.

At that the thing scrambled for all it was worth to escape its tormentor and the airless dark confinement. Its fragile claws dug into the cardboard box with the Morse code of the Reptile Kingdom: “Desperate. No compassion. No kindness. Unending cruelty. Send help.” The kid, looking right at me, opened his eyes wider than wide and laughed, clamping the lid down tight ‘til his knuckles turned white.

The old man woke up with a snort, pulled himself together, and shifted his weight around to talk. “I’m Herbert, young lady,” he said, reaching out his veiny

old hand to have a shake. I was so glad for the diversion I took that hand and shook it with only a moment’s hesitation. “I’m Grace.”

“Happy to meet you, Grace. Are you going to visit relatives in Omaha?”

“I am. I’m going to my married sister’s apartment,” I answered, one eye on the activity across the aisle.

“Well, that’s fine. That’ll be a good visit. Is this your first trip so far away?”

“I’ve been to my aunt’s and uncle’s in Wisconsin once, but I was little and don’t remember the trip itself. But I do remember there was a store in town where you walked right up to a window… you didn’t go inside… and bought flavored popcorn. Caramel popcorn, cheesy popcorn, cherry popcorn, root beer popcorn... anything you could think of. That’s all they sold, only popcorn.

“I could use some of that popcorn right now... it’s getting to be lunch time, don’t you think?” he said, kind of wincing and shifting in his seat.

“Do you have a watch, Herbert?” I asked, because I didn’t and I was hungry, too. A little food would help my aching head.

“Not these days, I don’t. My wristwatch got stolen from me downtown, and now I don’t wear one. No sense in calling attention to yourself.”

Herbert rubbed his wrist where he had once had a

watch. The two of us sat there wondering if it was lunchtime until he squinted out the window. “Yep, it’s noontime. The sun is just overhead. We’ll be stopping before long.”

This cheered us up, and we straightened in our seats to be ready. There was a toilet on this bus, but I didn’t want to use it. It was all the way to the back, and I didn’t want to walk past the other people, all watching me parade to the bathroom. But I sure had to go. I decided to wait for the lunch stop, and use the bathroom there. Having to go made my head hurt more than ever. I tried to look out at the cars and imagine about the people in them to pass the time, but now there weren’t very many, just bean fields and telephone poles. I could feel something bearing down on me, and looked up to see the long‐legged man staring back. I decided to make it look like Herbert was my Grandfather, a fiction to keep me looking in any direction but his. “Herbert, are you going to visit relatives?” I asked.

Herbert turned around again, but I could see he was stiff, and it was hard for him to move. “Well, not relatives, but a very old friend. A lady friend from long ago.”

That other man gave me a lopsided grin and kept right on watching, like he knew I was a faker.

“Are you going to marry her now?” I asked, pushing in on my temples with my fingers to stop the pain.

“That’s what I’m going to find out.”

Herbert’s eyes were sparkling, and he was straightening his tie. My head just hurt too much to keep up my end of things, so I mustered up a big smile and leaned over to rest on the window. Weakly, I murmured, “Do you think they’ll stop soon?” But Herbert didn’t hear me.

I closed my eyes and wondered if Jenny was already on her way in the Chrysler. Riding in the car sounded like the better end of the deal right about now. I really wanted to get off that bus.

When I woke up we had stopped and people were getting up and filing off. Herbert was on his feet, leaning in to wake me. “Grace... wake up. It’s our lunch stop. I’m going on in to the bathroom. I’ll see you in line at the cafeteria.”

I looked up the aisle, and the seat where the long-­‐legged man had sat was empty. I got up, spinning with the pain of my headache, and wobbled down the aisle and off into the fresh air. It was bright and still on the driveway after all that rocking and swaying on board, and I could hardly wait to have a cold drink and a sandwich. Maybe they’d have Twinkies. I’d have enough money to get two; one for dessert and one for a snack later on the bus. Mom had given me traveling money, and I meant to spend it.

As I hurried to the bathroom, I saw that winking man leaning against the doorway to the cafeteria

smoking a cigarette. When I finished in the bathroom, I peeked out and sure enough, he was still there. I looked all around for Herbert, but he was nowhere to be seen. Everyone but that man and me were eating their lunch in the comfort of the White Swan Restaurant. So that was it. I had to wait it out. I put my head under the faucet and drank the cold water, and when that didn’t fix me up, I splashed the water on my face. My head was throbbing and my stomach was growling, but I was not going to go anywhere near that man. I wondered if Jenny was standing at that very minute in line at the Fond du Lac Popcorn Emporium, marveling at the selection, unable to decide.

It seemed like hours passed until I heard people passing in the hall and going back out to the bus. The driver called out to get on board and next thing I knew the engine was rumbling to life. It got quiet in the hall again and I knew I couldn’t wait much longer. I bolted out of that bathroom and raced to the bus, the doors closing behind me. Herbert was peering out the window looking for me, and waved to me the minute I got on board. The man… the smoking, grinning, winking, staring man... was not there.

“Grace?” Herbert said as I collapsed into my seat. He looked older with the worry.

“I just wasn’t feeling good. I was in the bathroom,” I told him. Well, that was the truth.

“I’m not feeling too good, myself. I saved you my

cookies,” he said as he handed over a cellophane package of shortbread. He dropped them into my hand and turned right back around to loosen his tie. He was perspiring around the collar of this shirt.

“’Think I’ll rest a bit,” he said, and slipped down in his seat, head on the cool glass of the window.

I finished the cookies, and with the relief of the staring man being gone, I felt a little better. I decided to take a real nap and spread out the length of the seat, curling my legs up against the wall of the bus, my head on the armrest. Just as I was settling in, I looked behind me down towards the toilet, and there he was, smoking a cigarette and watching me. I whipped my head back to the front, closed my eyes tight, nausea building. The bus hummed under me while the lizard scratched its message of woe across the aisle, and under a blanket of fear, heart and head pounding, I drifted off to sleep

~

Suddenly everything was different, and I opened my eyes. It was dark, and a cool breeze drifted in the windows. There was a murmur all around, and from my reclined vantage point, it seemed like a dream. The bus wasn’t moving and the stillness was like a slap in the face. I bolted upright, jarring my head out of its slumber and back into its pain. The bus driver and crowd of passengers who had gathered in the aisle jumped back with a gasp. The whole mass of

them shuffled back a step. “What happened here?” demanded the bus driver, glaring down at me.

“What?” I whispered, utterly bewildered.

I turned to ask Herbert what was going on, but he wasn’t sitting up anymore. He had slumped over, much like I had slept.

“Herbert?” I said, reaching over the seat to shake him awake.

Everybody watched me do it, and not a soul tried to stop me, even though they knew what I alone did not. I shook him, and then I shook him some more until he slid down and wedged between the seats, face first. The crowd gasped some more.

“Now look what you’ve done. Don’t you see this man is dead?” screamed the driver as he yanked me hard into my seat. I looked into the faces through the evening gloom all around me, and they looked back as though I had been a part of some kind of shenanigan that had caused Herbert’s inconvenient demise.

The bus driver heaved Herbert back onto the seat, but the bulk of the man was too much, so he ended up shoving old Herbert back into a sitting position, head against the window once more.

“Are you quite sure he’s gone?” asked a lady in a hat.

The driver said he was, quite, and pushed his way

to the front. The passengers went back to their seats, glancing my way with wary eyes.

“I’m getting off to call the authorities. Don’t anybody touch the body.” announced the driver.

I sat, head hurting so much I could hardly focus, and tried to get my footing. Herbert leaned into the window, dead, with no chance now to approach his lady friend with the question he’d waited a lifetime to ask. His tie was off, his shirt undone at the neck. He hadn’t felt good enough to keep up appearances any longer. The tie lay listless on the dusty floor beneath his feel like a stricken snake. And here I was, the only person on this bus who knew his name and cared about the old lady in Omaha who was probably this very minute putting on her lipstick to go pick him up. I stood up and everybody turned to stare. Slowly, through the haze of my spinning head, I shuffled around the seatback between us and sat beside him. I took his veiny old hand, now waxy and cool, in mine and waited.

~

I lost track of the kid with the lizard and the scary winking man. I just remember the long wait and then the flashing lights and how hard they banged the stretcher down the narrow aisle.

By the time we pulled into the Omaha station, it was after midnight. Rhonda and Scooter, themselves exhausted from the hours’ wait, hugged me tight.

“We’d about given up on you,” joked Scooter, ruffling my hair like a good sport.

“Grace, you’re a mess. Where’s your bag?” began Rhonda, all business.

It was too big a story to begin it, so I just did what needed to be done. I scanned the little gathering in the stark station, and found what I was looking for. There was a lady wearing lipstick and a pretty summer dress for an old person, and I figured that was her. She would have been just right for Herbert. She would have said, “Yes”.

When the Greyhound people finished talking to her she sat down on the polished bench clutching her purse and crying into her hankie. They patted her on the shoulder and, job done, drifted away. It was now or never, so I told Rhonda to just hold on a minute, and walked over to her. “My name is Grace. I was a passenger on that bus.”

“What?” she said, wiping her nose.

“I was sitting behind Herbert.”

“Oh... did you know him?” she pleaded, hopeful. It was almost like he wouldn’t be quite as dead if I had.

“We kept each other company on the trip,” I answered with as much sweetness as I could muster. She needed it. “I have something of his I thought you ought to have. It was left behind.” I opened my hand to show the tie, Herbert’s tie, that I had picked up off

the bus floor. “He looked real nice in it. It’s what he picked out to meet you in, so I just thought maybe you might want to have it.”

Instead of taking the tie, she wrapped her arms around me and squeezed tight. She cried and cried, me standing there and Rhonda and Scooter staring dumbstruck. Finally the storm passed. She blew her nose hard, took a deep breath and reached out to take my hand. “Grace, I can’t thank you enough. I’m so glad Herbert had such a good friend on his last day.” She took the tie and ran it between her fingers.

“I guess I’d better go,” I said. She reached out, kissed me on the cheek and smoothed my frazzled ponytail. I walked back to my sister and she didn’t say a word.

~

It was a lot of fun staying with Rhonda and Scooter. I got to do lots of things with them like go to work and watch them do their jobs. It was more together-­‐time with Rhonda than I’d spent in my entire childhood. She was smart and funny, which I had never known before. And pretty, too, except they made her wear a hairnet on account of working with food. The people at the cafeteria sure liked her. You’d have to say she was popular just like she was in high school. It made me feel popular, too.

Scooter took me down into the laboratory with him to care for the mice, and I did get to hold one. It

squirmed and I dropped it, but Scooter captured it and never yelled at me. I think he thought it was kind of funny, trying to outsmart that little mouse to getting back into his cage. I really didn’t like it down there, though, like I thought I would. The scratching of the mice on their newspaper floors made my skin crawl.

I slept on the couch in the living room of the apartment. One night with only the streetlight shining in on me as I waited to drift off to sleep, I saw the silhouette of a man prying off the window screen right by my head. I gasped for breath and rolled off the couch, belly crawling all the way to Rhonda and Scooter’s bedroom.

“Rhonda! Rhonda!” I yelled in a whisper-voice. Even though I knew time was of the essence, I was afraid to break that invisible boundary of respect; I did not cross into a married couple’s bedroom. When I did get their attention, all hell broke loose. Scooter shot up outta bed and hit the outside lights and the burglar lit out of there. The police were called and I recounted my story for them. Rhonda had her robe on over her nighty, and they interviewed her several times.

Once they left, Louie, the apartment manager, made a statement to reassure us. “That sons’ a bitch won’t bother you again until I’m laid out and candle lit.”

And he meant to back that up with a rifle he kept for just such an occasion. From that night on, Louie

sat up on the roof in a lawn chair with that rifle resting across his lap, smoking from dusk to dawn. I guess he slept during the day to make up for it, which would explain how one morning, groggy but mindful of procedure, Louie cleaned his weapon. The problem was he never cleared the chamber, and the Winchester fired straight up from his basement room into the floor next to my bed on the couch. The carpet caught the bullet when it would go no farther, peeking its metallic head up through the shag. Rhonda said it was high time to find a new apartment.

I liked Louie, though. While Rhonda did the dishes at night I’d get to climb up on the roof with a folding chair and stare out into the night with him. He was born in Florida, but raised in Louisiana. He said he was a conflicted man, as he never quite felt Cajun. He always thought there was more of the cowboy in him. One day he set out for the west but quit when he got as far as Omaha. He said he was like a catfish in a cornfield in the city, and he meant to get going west again where his cowboy heart could soar. Louie was layin’ off to find his rightful place in this world, and I hoped some day he’d find it

~

One morning when Rhonda, Scooter, and I were finishing breakfast and hurrying around, the phone rang. Scooter answered and handed it right away to Rhonda. He stopped getting ready for work and sat

down. I was listening to the strain in Rhonda’s voice and almost didn’t hear the words. “When did she go in?”

Silence.

“How serious is it?” Rhonda sat down and grabbed a pen. “Give me the number.”

Silence.

“We’ll leave tonight.”

Uncle Walt had called to tell us what Mom had tried to shield. She had a cancer and was now in the hospital after the treatment she had endured all by herself this long summer had made her even sicker.

It was a long ride back to Chicago in the Corvair with none of us in the mood to talk. When we pulled into our driveway, the sound of gravel crunching under the tires made me cry.

~

The weeks that followed were full of the smell of hospital disinfectant and Arpège, eau de Parfum. Rhonda brought in Mom’s bottle to spray the room and the hospital smell that burned my nose changed to sickly sweet. Mom got worse over the days that followed, but then one day smiled at us in a fresh way and got a little better. We started to play Go Fish on her bed and she had us bring in her travel kit with its tiny travel-size cosmetics. She brushed her hair and put on her own robe.

Scooter packed up and headed back to the job he had put on hold, but Rhonda gave up her position at the cafeteria and set up shop again in her old room to look after things until Mom was okay again. She and Scooter were lovebirds, and I wondered about that, and I think Scooter wondered about it, too. They were both pretty somber and I figure it wasn’t entirely about Mom. It was another kind of test, a different kind of faith. With Scooter speeding back to the waiting mice, Rhonda now turned her attention to Jenny and me.

She left the door to her old room open now, even when she was in there. She cooked up eggs and tuna sandwiches and never complained when we wanted them done different; the way Mom did them. She set our hair in rollers and watched “Get Smart” with us at night. One afternoon we had a Beauty Parlor Party and all got Liz Taylor nails lacquered deep red with two layers of topcoat.

We brought our supplies to the hospital and got Mom glamorous, too. While Jenny and me were being careful not to wiggle the bed and cause Rhonda to smudge the polish, I noticed Mom’s hands. They had gotten old, with blue blotches on the veins where the needles had been. I just couldn’t stop looking at those veins, even with her nails all dolled up. I just couldn’t stop thinking of what those hands would have felt like if she had gotten cold and waxy like Herbert. I wanted to reach out and hold them, to feel

the warmth and life in there and know that for now, she was alive, and Rhonda and Jenny and me were all alive together, just like it used to be, but not at all like it used to be. There had been a bus ride, and everything was new.

The End