Susan Dale writes regularly for print magazines Shadow Poetry and WestWard Quarterly. She won the grand prize in Oneswan for her poem Where Go Our Dreams. She writes too for online publications Jerry Jazz Musician and languageandculture.net. Throughout the winter she will have poems and short stories on various websites and in print.

Time To Leave: That’s All (December 20, 2009. Issue 12.)

Step by painful step, he made his way towards his escape; a pint-size bus station rammed between an apartment building with boarded windows and a bar of blurred lights. The bar’s sour stench seeped out its walls to choke David as he limped by. He shifted his gaze to a bus that he saw pulling up to the station; its headlights refracted across the road even as its sizzling motor promised a journey. His heart leapt then wept when he saw the driver swerving the wheel in an arc to angle the bus close to the station. After he pulled in, he would gather up the wayfarers; of which David knew he would be one. A down-shifting groan brought the bus to stop in front of the depot. A low rumble of brakes swooshed, fumes of gas escaped, and the brakes moaned to a stop. Looking into the mirror above him, the driver surveyed the passengers looking back at him sleepily.

“San-dus-ky, Ohio, folks. Sandusky on Lake Erie.” Rich’s voice drifted back to the travelers. “Twenty-minute layover here; this bus leaves this here station in twenty minutes.”

Doors parting, the bus’s steps falling onto the sidewalk. While he pulled his trip sheet down from the visor above the wheel, the more alert of the passengers stretched to their feet and tugged at their overhead baggage. The groggiest yawned their way to sitting up. Others mumbled, as they turned from one position to another before falling back to sleep. Drowsy voices were coming alive from a faraway world of dreams.

Engrossed in penciling in his arrival time, the driver didn’t see the elderly woman grasping the back of a seat for leverage. She strained to
pull herself up in a crippled effort of knobs and hobbles.

But when she stumbled on the first step going down, Rich’s head jerked up with a harried expression. “Lady, I told you to wait.“

Hard of hearing, she continued plodding down the steps with her arthritic hands clutching the rail for support.

Though the night hung heavy with unseasonable humidity and heat, she was wrapped tight in a wool coat, and her bent fingers checked the babushka knotted under her chin. Finding it intact, she gummed simpers of satisfaction. Then, while leaning on her cane, her knurled feet plodded her stiffened body down a street smothered in a misty gray of twilight.

In front of the station, the doors swung open. Pushing them open with his hips, a harried man bumped his way out of the station as he struggled to hold on to striped suitcases; one in each hand, and both girded with belts to hold them closed. Behind him, a surly man burst out the open door. In his haste, he came close to knocking over the man with the suitcases. Sixty-ish and shiny bald, Pete was intent on making his way over to the bus.

The man struggling with the suitcases pleaded, “Say there Pete, can you give me a hand with these suitcases?”

-Ignored by Pete, his body a thick stump planted on the first step of the bus. “Yer late,“ he informed Rich in a loud broadcast.

“Had a tie-up bout twenty minutes ago; put ‘bout thirty minutes on my time.”

“You mean forty-five minutes, don’ cha?”

And without waiting for a rebuttal, he queried in a gravely voice, “How far yah goen there, mister?”

“Vermillion to Cleveland. Avon, Youngstown. We’re moving through Pennsie tonight; get into New York around noon tomorrow.”

“Noon? What kind a’ timing is that? Yah must stop in every berg from here to the Pocono's.” His slurred words bespoke a liquor fog.

“That’s exactly right, fellah.”

“Why, Ah could crawl faster.”

“Suit yourself,” Rich returned. “You aiming to get on?”

“What fer else would I be standing on the steps?”

“Well, you’re gonna’ have to stand back and let the passengers get off first.”

A low grumble; in rebuke Pete turned to spit. Brown tobacco mucous soared through the air.

Rich‘s voice took command. “Get your tickets inside, folks. Departure time is ten-thirty.”

Rich’s words bounced off the night to land on David; he thought, ‘Its ten thirty that I‘ll be leaving; and it is time to go. Here and gone; another promise that didn’t keep.’

With his head down to hide his grimaces of pain, David trudged towards the station to purchase a ticket; one that would wrangle him a ride off into the night. Inside the door he trod; each step slow and focused. He drug his battered torso, bruised and aching, to the ticket counter. It sat above a glass case showcasing cigarettes, candy bars, maps, and bus schedules free for the taking. The ticket seller, a woman of indiscriminate age with sharp features was sitting on a stool reading a newspaper. Her elbows were propped on the counter, and her glasses kept sliding down her nose.

Opposite the ticket counter stood racks holding newspapers, comic books, movie magazines, and the detective stories now being poured over by two hoods in leather jackets. As they turned pages, they clicked the spurs of their cowboy boots; hissing obscenities followed their leering looks.

One turned to the other- “I sure could dig me a girlie magazine with titties in ‘em.“

“Yea man,” the other seconded. With his forefinger he brushed gingerly over his skimpy mustache.

And from the back of the station boomed loud disgust. “Hey punks, if you ain’t gonna’ buy a magazine, git your grubby paws off ’em.”

Turning sheepishly, the pimply-faced, tat-toed young men came face to face with the janitor whose command was hanging heavy in the air. He was headed towards the men’s bathroom while swinging a bucket in one hand. In his other he held a mop that drug across the floor.

“We ain’t buying ‘cause you ain’t got any titty magazines,” one of the hoods dared before their tittering snickers built up to loud guffaws.

Benches were lined up in the back like church pews. On one of them a woman nodded with sleep: her outraged daughter rebuked, “My gawd, ma, how can you sleep in public? You’re snoring so loud, the people on the bus can hear you.”

On other benches slumped the elderly … like discarded newspapers with skin yellow and crinkly, bodies swaying in sleep, hats drawn over their faces as they coughed, dozed, and belched. Bathrooms were located back of the station: from out of the ‘MEN’S’ emerged an old wretch with runny eyes. Coat hanging to his ankles, he shuffled towards the benches with a pasty whiteness plastered across his face.

“Say man, this here station smells like a rotten fart,” one of the duck-tail cowboys sneered.

“You can say that again. That old wino comen’ from the head musta’ crapped his pants,” the other seconded, as he lit up a cigarette.

“Save the butt for me.”

“What are you; a mooch?” Followed by a knee-slapping laugh.

“I ain’t had a weed for better ‘an hour now. I run out last stop.”

“Hey punks, put out the smokes,” the janitor snarled in a voice that jolted with lightening that forked into the station.

His face was lined in a map of disgust and physical abhorrence. He tripped over the pail of water beside his feet with a motion that shook the pail’s contents to a foulness that roamed through the station and caused the wayfarers to gag.

Leaning heavily on the mop handle until color heightened his cadaverous face, the janitor’s focus shifted his attention from the duck-tailed cowboys to an old wretch he spotted slinking by the lockers lined up across the back wall.

“Hey, you!” he shouted in deep-down disgust that rocked the station. “Next time that you toss the toast, hit the toilet, will yah?”

All background for David‘s journey; he sighed. ’Not exactly the Orient Express, it’s simply a way out.’

“One ticket please,” he mumbled in words struggling to emerge through his swollen mouth; he dropped his eyes to hide his eyes swollen in shiny black and blue circles.

Looking at him with eyes peering over her glasses, Gladys, the ticket seller, squinted with disbelief at the stinging sense of disproportion standing in front of her; battered face and tortured eyes contradictions to his features of lapidary refinement. ‘Another on the run: someone’s messed him up bad.’

“Where to young man?”

Looking past Gladys, David was caught up in envisagement; recalls of the hostile environs of New York that he encountered when he was there with his father: the wrong moves that resulted in hard-line confrontations. Nonetheless, he could lose himself in New York.

“New York, I guess,” he replied in a hazy voice. He extended the ticket money to Gladys, and his puffy fingers flared with the pain of his cut knuckles.

’Getting away, trouble on his heels,’ Gladys summated.

Moreover, Gladys knew most everything there was to know about leaving. With over half of her life spent behind the ticket counter of greyhound get-aways, Gladys had been handing out tickets for over three decades. She was well acquainted with the many faces that leaving wore. Like David, trounced. Fleet-footed with darting eyes looking at what they were leaving. Sometimes wrinkled and weathered from the miles worn through dim and distant pasts that led from one destination to another. Slumped over tired bodies with heads nodding in dreams draped in cobwebs ... like the old men nodding on benches. Or teetering on canes with housedresses hanging limply on shriveled limbs; half-eaten apples, brown and dried in the bottoms of their apron pockets. From gnarled hands, remnants of afghans crocheted across the miles that shifted elderly mothers from sons to daughters ... a poverty of old age moving them along.

And it was Gladys who orchestrated these varied and wayward journeys; Gladys who confirmed arrival times and departures. She checked luggage, sold tickets, and made change. Gladys eased the journeys of rolling wheels. She sold magazines to read, bags of chips to nibble on, and/or soft drinks to wile away the journeys.

Turning to the boy with tears in his throat, Gladys slid her finger back and forth from the map to the bus schedule. She matched them up with a monotonous monologue that rat-a-tat-ed along the little Ohio villages nestled between farmlands.

“Sandusky to Berlin Heights. Pick up 80 in Florence. There are stops from here to Cleveland. A one-hour layover in Cleveland, another in Youngstown. On to Pittsburgh ... “

Her voice clicked out the one-horse bergs blown by the winds of destination. Past fields of corn and grazing livestock to villages encased by winter wheal ripening for early summer harvest. Orchard trees of apples and peaches ... June’s wee nubs of promise replacing the fragrant blossoms of May. One farm community after another popping up along the Ohio countryside.

“There are stops in Harrisville, Reynoldsville ... “

Feeling Gladys’s probing eyes burning their way into his fractured face, David was filled with apprehension. “Yea; that’s fine,” he mumbled hastily.

Taking hold of the ticket flapping aimlessly in Gladys’s hands, he turned swiftly.

Meanwhile, anxious to get behind the wheel, Rich inserted himself in the doorway with a bold stance. Small of stature but marine-trained with shoulders and head back; chin up, Rich’s resonant words took command. “We gotta’ get going, folks. I need to make up thirty minutes.“

“Forty-five,” Pete charged with his bottom lip carrying his words, as they slackened to expose his wide, yellow teeth.

“Had a tie-up in Toledo,” Rich said loudly with a feigned smile stretched across his mouth for the sake of the passengers who were lined up behind Pete.

He under-toned to Pete with his eyes narrowed. “And say here, mister; I want you sitting back of the bus.”

Pete’s sidekick, Adam, fidgeted beside Pete. “Cc-cc-ertainly, we will do that,“ he stuttered gratuitously.

“Umm-mm,” Pete grumbled in a rumbling discord that promised trouble.

Hauling a brown bag close to his body, and with his legs spread wide, Pete lumbered over to the bus. Turning for a final fat spit in the air, he lifted his leg for the first step. The rancid liquor and sweat smell of his body trailed behind him, as did his coeval who reproached him.

“Pete, spitting and chewing are loathsome habits,“ he admonished while shifting the suitcases to slide them across the sidewalk towards the side of the bus. They were caught by Rich, who slung them inside the baggage compartment.

But neither Pete’s expectoration nor Adam’s reproach could touch David. He stood gazing longingly down Columbus Avenue reflecting on the wide thoroughfare of yesterday’s promise. Cruisen’ down the Ave; Lea by his side; carefree youth steering him straight. A turn from Columbus, heading to the tumbledown Rieger Hotel of special forces work-shop where he trained for the Green Berets. Then around a darker corner of he and Rita racing towards passions that took them to secluded beaches. A flash of the lake’s currents washing over them; hands reaching, closing. Mouths searching, legs entangling. But Josh found out; Josh, Rita’s steady. David cringed remembering Josh bursting into his apartment; both of them charging, clashing in rage; fists flying. The salty taste of blood running down his face, their shadows shooting up the walls, blood dried on his knuckles; their clothes in shreds, his apartment torn helter-skelter.

He shuddered remembering … a cold chill shoot up his back. With great effort he brought his focus back to the streets around him, and knew he was looking at them for the last time. East and west, north and south; they all ran together on this main drag from which so many roads sprung. A corner here, a bend further down, and whole lives were altered.

Rich punched his ticket. “New York, huh? Long way, kid.”

“Yea, I guess so.”

He spiraled on the last step. Searing in his gaze, a boulevard of hopes ended; security again escaped. In a sad trance, he positioned his duffle bag to carry up the steps then inside the door. He turned left to trudge into a dark interior, down the dark aisle. Light-headed of a sudden, he felt as though he was floating to the back of the bus. He fell down in a seat to join the strangers with muted voices. He became but a part of their interrupted dreams.