Chapter Four
I was tired and dirty from raking leaves all day, and I didn’t feel like walking to the Greyhound station. I took a city bus instead, which was something I’d never done before. I had to ask another kid at the bus stop how much it cost and how you could tell where the bus was going and all that good stuff. It’s always embarrassing when you have to admit you don’t know things everybody else takes for granted.
When I finally got to the bus station there was a long line of people waiting at the counter to buy tickets. Things were moving slower than granny’s molasses, but since I had no choice I just stood there and waited my turn. After a while my mind started wandering, and I got to thinking about what I might do after I made it to Sulphur Springs.
The simplest thing would be to open a phone book and see if Justin was listed, but I knew that was a long shot. I might do better if I got on the Internet and used one of those online phone directories. That way I could include a bigger area than what was in the local book. Then if I did find him I could either call him or go over to his house.
I decided I’d try that plan first, and if it didn’t pan out then I’d think of another approach. Like Jonathan used to tell me, there’s always more than one way to tackle a cat. He was such a goofball.
“May I help you, sir?” the ticket woman asked me. The line had moved up while my mind was drifting, and the question startled me. I don’t remember anybody ever calling me “sir” before. I guess she was just mouthing words she had to say to everybody, but it still felt weird.
“Oh, yeah. I need a ticket to Sulphur Springs, Texas, please,” I told her. She fiddled around and typed something on her computer, not paying me any more mind.
“One way or round trip?” she asked.
“Just one way please,” I said. She typed a little more.
“That will be forty-six dollars and fifty cents. How will you be paying today, sir?” she asked. I reached into my pocket and pulled out four tens and two fives and laid them on the counter. They were a little crumpled from being in my pocket.
“Oh, I’m sorry sir, we can’t accept cash at this location. Do you have a credit or debit card?” she asked. This was a problem I hadn’t thought of.
“Uh, no. . . Isn’t there any way you could take cash just this once?” I asked.
“No, I’m afraid there’s no way we can do that, sir. We can only accept credit or debit cards at this location,” she said. I swear that woman must have been a robot. It sure was a lot like talking to one. I might as well have been arguing with a fence post.
I went and sat down on one of the benches in the terminal to think, and I guess I must have looked lost. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I did.
“Is something wrong?” the lady beside me asked. She was a middle-aged woman in a long flowery dress who looked like she needed to lose a few pounds. You know the type. The ones who read romance novels and eat chocolate all the time, and always want to pinch your cheeks.
“I need to buy a ticket to get home, and the girl at the counter won’t take cash,” I said, truthfully enough.
“Your mom doesn’t have a credit card?” she asked.
That was a dangerous question, because I certainly didn’t want to get into an explanation of why I was trying to buy a ticket with cash. At least not a true one. I thought fast.
“I’m going home from my dad’s house. He gave me the money for the ticket and dropped me off cause he was in a hurry, and I can’t get ahold of him or my mom either one, and now I don’t know what to do,” I said smoothly. I was also lying through my teeth, and I felt pretty cruddy about that. The woman looked disgusted.
“That’s just like a man, to not think of something like that,” she declared, “Where do you live, honey?”
I almost laughed, but it would have blown everything if I had, so I bit my tongue to keep from it.
“Sulphur Springs, Texas,” I told her meekly, trying to look as pitiful and helpless as I could. It must have worked, too.
“Well I think we can take care of that. I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll buy your ticket for you with my credit card, and then you can just pay me back with cash. How would that work?” she offered.
That was exactly what I was hoping she’d say, and I gave her the sweetest smile I knew how to make. Mama always used to say I could look like an angel when I was up to no good, and for once I really hoped she was right about that.
“Would you? I’d really appreciate that, ma’am,” I told her, oozing with gratitude.
“Why of course I will, baby,” she said, and she walked right up to the ticket counter and bought it for me with her MasterCard.
I gave her the cash, and I let her pat my head and kiss my cheek and buy me a Coke and do all those other things middle-aged ladies like to do to you for some reason. I knew it was coming, but I figured I owed her that much. She left pink lipstick on my cheek and that really grossed me out, but I resisted the urge to wipe the kiss away until after she was out of sight.
There are some good people in the world like that. I don’t know how I would have got that ticket without her. I never did know that lady’s name, but wherever she is today I wish her well.
After she disappeared I looked down at my ticket and noticed that I’d have to wait till eleven o’clock that night before the bus left. It was barely five-thirty at the time, so I sat on a bench in the terminal and killed a few hours reading my book. It’s one of the best ways to keep people from talking to you. I’m not shy or unfriendly or anything, but I knew better than to talk to any more people than I had to. The more I talked, the more chance I had of slipping up and saying something wrong to somebody who didn’t need to hear it, and the more people there would be who might remember me later if somebody came nosing around asking about me. That kind of thing was exactly what would get me caught and sent home if I wasn’t careful. I had to be smoke, invisible as a fly on the wall.
So I drank my Coke the lady bought me and ate a couple of Twix bars from my food stash and waited till it was time for the bus to leave.
Sitting around twiddling your thumbs is no fun. There wasn’t even a TV in that danged bus terminal. I spent about thirty minutes in the lavatory and did my best to wash a little bit of the grime and dirt off my body. I got a wad of paper towels and wetted them down and washed my face and my hands and my neck, and also behind my ears and under my arms. Then I rinsed my hair under the faucet and shook it as dry as I could, like a dog scattering water everywhere after it gets its fur wet. I tried drying it with the paper towels, but they just fell to pieces and left little bits of paper all in my hair. It wasn’t much of a bath, but it was a whole lot better than nothing. I felt much better when I was done.
Then I went back outside and waited some more. My hair kept dripping down the back of my neck for the longest time, till it finally dried. I thought eleven o’clock would never come.
There was just one more little thing that happened while I was in Fort Smith. I barely paid attention at the time, but since it turned out to be important later on I guess I better tell you about it.
It was maybe ten o’clock, and I was half dead with boredom by that time. There was a boy across the aisle from me, signed into Yahoo Messenger on his cell phone. I knew that’s what it was because he had the volume turned up real loud and I recognized the little beeps and sounds it made, cause Mama is addicted to Messenger. She talks to people on there all the time. Usually it’s late at night, after Lola goes to bed, but I’d heard those sounds more times than I could remember. She even signed me up for an account here awhile back, but I hadn’t thought about it in months.
After a while the boy got up and walked away, still wrapped up in his messaging, and at the time I thought no more about it. But later I was glad he reminded me.
When I got on the bus I sat by myself and asked for a blanket and a pillow. The bus was a lot more comfortable than the septic tank, and a whole lot warmer. Honestly though, I was so tired from raking yards
all day that I probably could have slept on a park bench and thought it was heaven.
I did stay awake for a little while, looking out the window. You couldn’t see much except the dark silvery outlines of tree-covered mountains against the sky, and some little farms and things scattered on the valley floors. It reminded me of Tennessee. After about an hour or so I got tired of looking at scenery, and I laid my head back and closed my eyes.
I drifted off to sleep, and not long after that I had a horrible nightmare.
I dreamed I was out in the woods by myself, and there were wolves chasing me to tear me to pieces. It had that fuzzy, unreal kind of flavor that dreams sometimes have, but that only made it worse. I ran and ran, but they were always coming closer, and I finally felt myself knocked down from behind by a snarling monster.
I guess he ate me. I’m not really sure, because I snapped awake right then, breathing hard and with my heart beating fast. I used to have nightmares like that when I was really little, but it had been years since it happened. It was weird to be having one again now.
“Bad dream?” the kid sitting next to me asked. He hadn’t been there when I went to sleep, so I guess he either got on the bus later or else changed seats. He was about my age I guess, but taller and thinner. One of those bean pole types that looks almost like he could walk through a picket fence without opening the gate.
“Yeah, I was dreaming about monsters chasing me,” I told him. I realized how stupid that sounded even while I was saying it, but it was too late to take it back. The other kid smiled a little, but at least he didn’t laugh at me.
“Musta been a bad one then, cause you thrashed around an awful lot,” he said.
Dreams are awful hard to remember, and I’d already almost forgotten most of what happened. When he said that, it reminded me how bad it had really been, and I wished he hadn’t.
I wonder sometimes if dreams mean anything. I’ve always heard you could dream about stuff that hasn’t happened yet, and that’s always what scared me more than anything about nightmares. Especially that one I had on the bus. Because I knew there were really such things as monsters in the world, even if this other kid didn’t.
All that ran through my head in just a second or two, but I didn’t say anything about what I was thinking. He didn’t need to know all that.
“Yeah, I guess it was,” I finally said.
“Well hey, my name is Jonathan. Nice to meet you,” he told me.
“I’m Zach. I used to have a friend named Jonathan,” I said, realizing all of a sudden that I’d probably never see him again.
I guess I hadn’t thought about it till then, but it wasn’t just my family I gave up when I ran away, it was my friends and my home and a hundred other things too.
That stung more than I liked to admit, cause me and Jonathan had been best buds for as long as I could remember, and I hadn’t even told him good-bye.
“Where you from, Zach?” the new Jonathan asked. We were getting onto territory I didn’t want to talk about if I could help it, but I’d already told one brazen lie this evening and I didn’t want to do it again.
“Aw, I’m from Tennessee. What about you?” I asked him, trying to turn the conversation away from me.
“I’m from Gillham, just down the road a little bit. I won’t be on the bus much longer. I’m just comin’ back home from visiting my sister,” he said. He probably expected me to tell him where I’d been and what I was doing, but I didn’t take the bait.
He didn’t seem to notice, though. He started telling me a long, drawn-out story about his cousin riding a horse to school last winter when the roads were icy and how he tied it up to a tree in the parking lot. It sounded like something I would do. . . if I had a horse, that is. I’d been wanting one for a long time, but Daddy always said maybe someday.
I smiled and nodded and let Jonathan talk as long as he wanted to, which seemed to be a lot. He talked almost nonstop until the bus stopped in Gillham to let him off.
He wanted to trade addresses and phone numbers and stuff like that, and maybe I would have any other time. But as it was, I honestly didn’t know what to tell him for either of those things. I told him I was moving and didn’t know my address or phone number yet, but I’m not sure he believed me. He did give me his information. I think I’ve still got it in my billfold somewhere, maybe.
I liked the boy, but truthfully I was glad when he left. He was a chatterbox and I was ready to go back to sleep if I could. Maybe we could have been friends if we’d met some other place and time, but not right then.
I’ve never seen him again since.
Before long I went back to sleep, and as far as I know I didn’t have any more bad dreams that night. Or if I did, then I don’t remember them.
I was sound asleep when we crossed into Texas, so I missed my first glimpse of it. That kinda disappointed me. I woke up when we were about forty miles from the border, just about to cross the Sulphur River.
We passed through three or four more little towns I don’t remember, and maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long if we hadn’t had to stop in every last single one of them. We stopped for nearly an hour in Mount Pleasant just for breakfast. I do remember that one, because the first thing I saw when we came into town was a billboard of a cowgirl holding up a big plate of cheesecake and saying “Welcome, Y’all!” I was hungry at the time and cheesecake sounded pretty darned good right then.
I knew I better save my cash though, so I ate a candy bar and an apple sitting outside on a bench in front of the restaurant, cause the driver wouldn’t let us stay on the bus while he wasn’t there.
It was still early, and I could see dew glistening like diamond dust on the leaves of the oak trees that bordered the parking lot. The sun was really bright that morning, and I had to shade my eyes with my hand to keep from squinting. I try never to squint because Nana told me your eyes can get stuck that way and never come loose. I’m pretty sure that’s not true, but why take any chances?
Not long after breakfast the bus pulled into Sulphur Springs.