from Part 1: The Ride West, Part One Ohio -- Early April 1993
1 Payphone, he's got a few minutes before the bus pulls out.
Two in the morning, sodium-arc lights turning the remnants of old black snow into yellow piles around the sides of the parking lot. Behind lines of Airstreams and idling semis the moon is trying to crawl its bloated self out of a frozen cornfield. Upturned collars and hands shoved deep in pockets for the rushed, half-sleeping walk from truckstop diner back to the Greyhound. The phone rings in Jones's ear, shivering cold plastic against his skin. Trevor Alphabet answers, from a barracks phone in Virginia. The army never sleeps.
"Where are you?" Trevor asks.
When the 710th shut down in Kismaayo -- their southern Somalia home -- Trevor went with the boats back to Kenya and Jones went with the lieutenant to Mogadishu. Trevor was supposed to get home to the States first, but it hadn't turned out that way. Jones beat him by almost three weeks, on a priority medical flight.
They were going to travel together, when they got home, got out of the army. That's what they'd said. That's why Jones was calling. That, and Trevor was his only way of getting in touch with Liz. That, and Jones was so lonely he didn't know what to do with himself.
"I'm in Ohio, on a bus," he said.
"On a bus?"
"In a parking lot. It's cold."
"What the fuck are you doing in Ohio?"
"Gone fishing."
"What?"
"I was gonna run off and be a rock star -- you know." Jones laughs, nervous, a cloud of frozen breath escaping his lungs. "Changed my mind. I liked your idea better. So now I'm going fishing. Seattle, I think. You joining me?"
Silence from Trevor's end.
Then, "Jones, I reenlisted."
Silence from Jones's end.
"Did you hear me?"
"Yeah, I heard you."
"They offered me hard stripes."
Jones can picture Trevor's face as he hears this, how his friend looks when he makes a decision and then goes with it, as if there had never been any alternative course of action. Trevor's Polish eyebrows would set after a decision, just like they would set with a rifle sight to his cheek -- sure and steady and confident.
"Good," Jones says. "There it is. Good."
Jones worries that the phone is going to spot-freeze to his cheek. His left foot is twitching, unnoticed. Hard stripes -- good. Good.
"Jones -- "
"Yeah?"
"Nothing."
"Yeah."
Silence.
Then, Jones: "Where's Liz? Where's my girl?"
"Still in Mogadishu. Until August. Maybe July. They held her back, said they needed her in the Harbormaster's office. She said she'd send you a letter."
Still in Mogadishu. This was news to Jones. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the phone booth, eyes closing by reflex, staring into depths of emptiness.
"I gotta go, man," he whispered into the phone.
"Jones, I -- "
"I know, Trev. I know."
2 Two hours later the driver pulls the bus to the side of the Ohio Turnpike. Four in the morning, so cold outside, so cold, old black snow on the ground -- isn't even winter anymore and that snow doesn't know to go away. The driver pulls the Greyhound to the side of the turnpike and opens the door, wind rushing in, Jones's body shakes, waking up, wondering Where the hell did the heat go?
The driver opens the door and three big men, all denim and flannel and boots, pull a little brown man by the collar, lifting him right out of his seat, legs kicking in surprise. They take him out the door to the side of the turnpike and beat the living shit out of him. It takes less than a minute. They go around and around with him, his face is such a mess. He's not making much noise, only a high-pitch almost-wail. Jones's face pressed sideways against the tinted glass of the bus window, so cold, he's sure he's still sleeping, his eyes open watching this right beneath him. They ditch the man head and chest forward into that old black snow, one guy driving his boot into the little man's side, a final good-bye, and they all get back on the bus, the driver closes the door, then pulls away.
3 The little brown man was Pakistani, Jones was pretty sure of that. There was a Pakistani infantry company in Somalia, living in a row of khaki tents in the far southern corner of the Mogadishu seaport -- they'd been a friendly group, trading little tin plates of hot curried mutton for dog-eared copies of Penthouse and Hustler.
When Jones first got on the Greyhound, the day before, he'd been sitting forward in the bus, where the brown man would finally end up, next to a skinny, sickly woman who had three kids scattered around the bus, two boys and a girl. Her old man had put her and the kids on the Greyhound in Allentown; he'd meet up with them at her mom's house in Laramie sometime later in the year. Jones thought she was okay, a little slow, but she was putting a good face on things. The fella sitting across the aisle from them had brought on a case of warm Bud somehow stuffed in his overcoat, they'd been drinking it and offered her one. She said no, but later when her kids were sleeping she drank a few, and talked about her mom and her husband and her boys and her little girl and how much her little girl looked like her sister who had died in a car accident five years ago. She was putting a good face on things, and got a little silly with the beer in her, but it was good to finally see her smile. With the beer and the strangers and her responsibilities for the kids suspended as they slept, she smiled, big and wide, and it made Jones smile.
She woke up -- she said this later -- and thought she saw this guy, the one Jones thought was probably from Pakistan, put his hand on one of her boy's knees or thigh or something. Jones could imagine her, could see her in his head, waking up contorted like you do on a Greyhound, looking around half asleep through eyes that didn't see much better than Jones's had, pressed against the dark glass, but there was no glass, she was just looking around. She said he'd had his hand there, and she'd seen his hand move up and down and she screamed and it woke up these denim-and-flannel gentlemen sitting all around, half drunk, beat and tired and going home
or going away but going somewhere they probably would rather not be -- going where someone had said there might be a job or money, or promised something, Christ there must be something good, why the hell else would you be on a goddamn Greyhound bus in the ass end of winter -- woke them up with her scared screaming, and the little brown man sitting there. They took him outside and they hurt him pretty bad. Jones sat and watched, his hands white-knuckled around the armrest, unable to move, unable to lift himself from his seat and help the poor son of a bitch getting the snot kicked out of him. Buddy, he thought desperately in his direction, through the cold, dark window, forcing his thoughts to him through the glass, Buddy I'm with you, I'm here, hold on man, I'm here...
But it's bullshit, and Jones knows it. He wasn't with him at all.
He couldn't get out of his seat.
4 Wayne is the name of the kid sitting behind Jones on the Greyhound, and he didn't wake up during this, same with the girl Jan, both directly behind Jones, in the last seat. Slept through it, their arms around each other -- found love. Craig, twenty with a cowboy hat and a world of annoying questions, sitting next to Jones, woke up and saw it but for once didn't say a thing. He watched over Jones's shoulder, pale and maybe scared, then just quiet and watchful as the men got back on the bus and took their seats. Later, twenty minutes later, back on the highway, the diesel low and pulsing under the floorboard, he chewed his gum and said, "Well, if I'da been up there I'd have done the same, y'know, that's ALL fucked up, fucking dot-head pervert, I'd have fucked him up good, too, I'd have stomped him."
Jones wants to slam him in the face with his open palm -- what Trevor Alphabet would call a bitch slap -- that's what he deserves. But I don't have the right, he thinks. I don't have the right. I gave up all rights when I couldn't bring myself to get out of my seat and help that poor man on the side of the road.
Jones looks at Craig quickly, without a word, then hurries into the little bathroom in the back of the bus, barely getting the door closed before he vomits into the blue sterile water in the steel bowl. He lights a cigarette and doesn't come out until the pack is gone. When he finally opens the door the sun is coming through the tinted windows and they were somewhere in Indiana.
Copyright © 2002 by Christian Bauman