Travelogues III

My ticket gave 31st and 8th Avenue as the address for the Midtown Manhattan bus stop. You wouldn’t expect a half mile walk and a dawdle on a corner for the start of a 24 hour bus trip, in New York, but so it was. Midtown was plumb dead at 7 in the morning. I circled round Madison Square Garden onto 8th Avenue, hitting the post-concert stomping grounds, legions of fakey 4 AM Irish bars the morning after, glimpses of upended stools through darkened glass, buildings with their hearts pulled out. A gust of pointlessness swept through me. The bars formed a sort of grey wall, blown with the wind as if they were part of a film set. What was the point of New York anyway?

But there it was, on 31st and 8th, life. Three buses like beached whales. Bodies clustered around one another or off to the side, smoking or with arms hanging or clutching themselves for warmth, so quaint and naive. I could almost rub it in my hands like a piece of fabric. I walked up and in to the chatter. People drew together or strayed off, trying to find something out, coming back with nothing. ‘That one’s going to Memphis.’ ‘To Canada you need a visa.’ ‘He leaves in ten minutes.’ ‘Does he leave in ten minutes?’

A tall black man puffing at a dank-looking cigarette, his hood spouting with fake fur, shouted over everyone and waved his ticket, exasperation flourishing. Something about Buffalo. I was going to Buffalo. ‘Is it this one?’ I shouted to him, pointing up at the bus beside us, ‘I’m looking for it too! The 0836?’ ‘I haven’t found it!’ He shouted back. We clasped our tickets and started wandering. Well, there was still some time. I moved to the shore of the crowd, next to the empty attendant’s office. At once the chatter ebbed as the middle bus shuddered. A man in a yellow vest ran ahead of it and into the street, putting his hand out to stop the traffic as the bus swayed around its fellow like a whale around a submarine. I felt a stir of longing and excitement. Who knew where all those people were heading! Held off by Yellow Vest all the taxis started honking, a bus behind the taxis honking too, the air awash as with a chorus of starlings. Honk honk, went the taxis. Honk honk honk, went the bus. A few of the drivers rolled down their windows to gesticulate and for a moment the street unfurled into a great organism, a sea star stretching its tendrils for joy. Slowly the bus pulled out into both lanes, Yellow Vest running beside it; it paused, straightened, and gathered speed towards New Jersey.

Yellow Vest. He must be the one to ask. ‘I’m looking for the 0836, to Buffalo,’ I said as he walked up. ‘It’s that one,’ he said in a West African accent, pointing to the bus Hoodie and I had been scouting. ‘But —’ ‘I know, I work here! It’s that bus!’ He was right. I looked again at my ticket. Five minutes to go. I joined the sediment of people around its side slowly straightening itself into a line. The driver, a frowning, meticulous-looking Indian man, scanned us in and we climbed up. Now we were somewhere. I found my seat, stuffed my bag at my feet, and with the feeling of a king gazing on his subjects from the terrace complacently viewed the crowd below.

The driver scanned the last passenger and climbed on. He walked down the aisle resting his hand briefly on each seat as he nodded left and right, counting us off. All accounted for. He settled in to the driver’s seat, fiddling with the mirror positions and making himself comfortable before beginning a long and fuzzy announcement full, one felt from the intonation, of stern yet reasonable exhortations. Then our bus too, trembled, Yellow Vest ran into the street, all the taxis started honking, we arched into the road, and we were off.

I fell asleep quickly. Somehow I always stay up late when I have to get up early for a trip. When I awoke we were pulling into a Flying J’s in New Jersey. The driver made another muffled announcement and it became clear that we would all need to get off. Arising with sighs we trooped en masse to the Flying J’s, which was dependably huge, sparkly and bright, the bathrooms just rinsed down with a deep blue chemical, the yellow cleaning cart just outside the door. We were far enough into the country for the gas station clerks to be pale and slightly flabby, fat-thin, as a friend says. The lighting must be partly to blame. Perhaps I too am pale and fat-thin in a gas station, a creature seen as if underwater, awash with fluorescent lights, flaccid from decades of cigarette smoking.

I liked the clerks’ emo stare that lances right through you, tats and vapes and hair still pink at the ends from the dye they put in last Christmas all stamped hard with everything they want to say about themselves. It hits you hardest coming in at 3 in the morning on your way to Chicago, Baltimore, California, mummyish and hankering for cigarettes and Red Bull. So many hours and still so far to go. They don’t quite look at you, but toss off a quick word about the next shift and an eyeroll to a coworker who says ‘oh my god’ and runs out to sit in her Sentra with the window cranked down for a quick smoke, it is so cold.

Three of the yuppies from the bus were gathered just inside the doors. New Yorkers heading upstate for Christmas, it must be. They made a few get-to-know-you remarks and laughed. Where are you headed? Haha I know right? I poked through the lug nut coverings in a row of vehicle accessories, listening. A round man in a bright orange work coat with mud cresting up the sides came in puffing from a stretch of snow-shoveling, bursting upon them. He was grinning blotchy red, whiskery. ‘Ah!’ he gusted, ‘Taking the bus upstate? Cold outside, eh?’ The effortless unselfconscious good nature of the man washed over them, helpless in its midst. He stamped the snow off his boots, red from cheek to cheek. They made some customary courteous replies. Something was wrong. I couldn’t figure it out. I frowned. Was it the New York analysis machine, so many pages spent explaining such a man? Trump country, late stage capitalism, Jesus billboards. Encrusted with explanation before you even met him, what could you possibly say when you did? I saw the pages fluttering around us like an invisible blizzard. The man smiled, made his last stamp, and went in to pee.

Our driver came in in his flat-faced, trustworthy way, calling us back to the bus. He’d been cleaning the windows, his shirt-tails flying up each time he stretched to reach the top. I left the lug nut coverings behind, heading through the snow to my seat. One of the yuppies had bought a slice of Hunt Brothers pizza in a triangular box. He nodded in recognition to his friend behind him, who said, gesturing to the pizza, ‘How is it?’ ‘Surprisingly ok!’ They laughed. ‘Yeah, that’s about all you can say!’

Again I frowned. It was the knowingness of the exchange that made it wrong, the faint sarcasm that said ‘I know,’ the helpless lilt that cordoned off every utterance as if it were occurring on another plane, vacuum sealed, resistant to outside influence because it had somehow made itself unable to sit, listen, and, simply, respond. But I too had caught the disease. What made me watch and judge like a vicious little recorder? Why could I not smile, say hello. Surely I would learn something. Surely I would. We could crack each other open like eggs. But I could not. I would not. I was ashamed. The bus looped around the Flying J’s and for a few seconds I could see Orange Coat’s back and shoulders bobbing against a snowdrift.

It felt late but it was just one pm or so, the afternoon riding lazily along with us as we worked into the country, that vast and close expanse of the Northeast. I always felt a little inhibited, a little claustrophobic and short of breath in these parts, all that red brick parceled out into water tower, tavern, paper factory, all, one imagines, as if in a story from Borges, once rummaged from the remains of a massive wall that circled the region in its entirety, still casting its Puritan shadow upon the whole. I did not understand these close-knit towns, these fields and forests and ancestral pasture grounds with eighteenth century walls of crumbling stone you can drive through for hours without quite leaving civilization. It was too old. People had been here for too long. Washington, probably, had marched across this very field. I wanted to get clear of history.

I grumbled within and my mind turned to that moment driving west on I-70, crossing the plains, Kansas behind you, purple-blue lining the horizon. Is it a cloud? No, it is the Rocky Mountains, and on you speed full at them. It could be the second coming rushing deeper higher wider darker until, there, look! a crest of snow. Too much to handle. Better turn around and go back. That is the moment when you hit the West, the easy-does-it, whistle-your-way-through plainsman-flâneur-cowboy West. Rise the mountains and like fairies hitchhikers appear around the off-ramps getting into Denver, brownish shaggy people with greasy hair and good human smells. People who know how to live as they like…

My mind fed upon itself, lazed by the rocking and rushing of the bus, hurtling each of us through the elements like Captain Nemo beneath the sea — yes, let us have the space to be unfair! — lulled, my head against the window where I could see only the dark reflection of one eye and the bulb of my nose. I thought of New England horror, cowboy movie landscapes, my mother, dirty men squatting and scratching themselves in Flannery O’Connor, college, Camille Ralphs, a friend’s atheist prayers. The white expanse swept them together and handed them back to me, stirred, encouraged, drifting. I nodded off.

In Ithaca we picked up a line of Cornell students waiting on the curb, heading home for winter break. They loaded on in their parkas and phones and settled about in silence, serious types. There was a single variable among them, a loud young man sitting a few rows in front of me beside his friend. He was clever and he knew it, someone who smiles with composure when everyone else is worrying over a test, flipping through their notes in the seconds before the professor drops it on their desk. He wasn’t arrogant. He was a young bird trilling, who must speak, grating like a pitchy bluebird outside your window, but after awhile I got used to him, even affectionate. Every statement flew out of his mouth and flapped, testing its wings of knowledge. He was cheerful, excited to be talking, to be opinionating, letting loose his arrows and preparing for the coming assault. I imagined his cheeks reddening with pleasure and effort. That makes sense economically…. I’ll take a serviceable bourbon when it comes to bourbon…. Though I see what you’re saying…. I guess that’s true…. Yeah but basically… I almost wanted to talk to the young man. And what do you think about Kant? or Kafka or Camille Paglia? I could have said. I would have been excited, too.

I looked out again and saw it was dark, the snow turning blue, the sky closing in, the country laid out as if for a nativity scene. Three deer nosing together in a blank field, houses blinking at each other between the trees, the world spread smooth. I got out Camille Ralph’s After You Were, I Am and pieced out a stanza in the last of the light —

Harbinger, dervish, persifleur,
Tellurian and colporteur,
Salt of the earth and escapee -
O world, have mercy unto me.

— suddenly filled with wild joy I pressed my forehead to the window, smiling headily out on our very own world ripping past us. It was all so demure! So confident and demure, sitting comfortably back and unselfconscious like a small child in a waiting room playing with a toy. For a minute I stared in a crazy rictus, rushing, transfixed. But even before the feeling had at all ebbed I wanted more. More, more! I got out my flask and took a tilt of Sambuca, warmed to the elbows. Greater joys, longer joys. Omne gaudium! I shook myself and looked a little more lazily out. ‘There can be no peace of mind in love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires,’ Proust says. Must we apologize? Let us lay claim, lay claim, lay claim… And so I fell asleep.

We reached Rochester and a black man boarded, seating himself behind me beside an older black woman. They were both going on to Cleveland, I made out. The man leaned around and asked if he could put his backpack in the seat next to mine. Sure, I said. In the dark the darker blot of his pack lowered beside me. Now and then he’d stand up and lean over, pull something out. I was grateful for the trust.

At seven we reached Buffalo. Two hours to kill until the bus to Cleveland. The station spread with people. I wound around the benches looking for a place to sit, but few of the bench-occupiers seemed approachable. They talked to themselves, spread their bags from end to end, wore sunglasses, or simply seemed like the kind of person you didn’t want to stir too hastily. I followed the man and woman from the seat behind me. They seemed like well-meaning types. We paused together and I introduced myself. ‘You all are going on to Cleveland too, right?’ ‘Yes, looks like it’ll be a couple of hours.’ The man’s name was Cory, the woman’s, Ruth. In a quick and confident keep-to-himself way Cory set his bags down and found a seat while the rest of us were still peering around. Ruth found a place near him. I moved back and forth on my feet, thinking. ‘I’m going out for a walk!’ I said. ‘See you both in a little while.’ ‘See you!’ Two hours! I’d never been to Buffalo. It was perfectly frozen outside, just as I’d hoped. I’d get out and find a bar, have a couple drinks and read my book and be back with plenty of time.

I went through the double doors into the silence of spreading avenues. My breath puffed out before me as I headed off to the right. I couldn’t see any sign of a downtown. I must be in some tertiary part of Buffalo, perhaps decayed, perhaps up-and-coming. It looked, anyhow, like it would soon all be conference centers. I turned here and there, catching the street signs as I went, heading for some smaller, friendlier brick buildings. There had to be a bar somewhere. It was upstate New York, not Alabama. It would be nice getting a little tiddly and walking back with a warm belly. The street darkened and quietened. An aging white man, unkempt but not quite ragged, appeared in an alcove as I passed, relaxing. Surely he could have found a warmer place to hunker down — the bus station if nothing else. ‘How are ya how are ya?’ he said. ‘How’reya doin?’ I said. I walked on and he called after me ‘Merry Christmas!’ ‘Merry Christmas to you!’

I looked down all the side streets for that friendly jangle of lights denoting BAR. Only one and it didn’t look cheerful. It was all windows, through which you could see televisions and a gleaming counter. MILLER’S TAVERN. A pub should be a dark hole, Iris Murdoch says. Especially in winter. These wicked modern places are altogether too windowy, smooth and light, sending you skimming across surfaces and talking vapidly, hurried on by your intoxication, feeling that you’re somebody, that other people can see you, that you can see yourself in the polished metal, having a good time. You shouldn’t be able to see anything in a pub. It should, in the grains of its wood and the closeness of its smell, its humid dark revealing gestures and bodies for what they are, weighted, solid, dim, unknown, a mixture of will and fate impossible to root out, force you to huddle, thoughts and moods and utterances floating up and mixing together in the confusion and settling back on you anew.

Just across the street was what appeared to be the old Miller’s Tavern, a stand-alone dilapidated brick building, a corner of the sign peeling down on itself. If the new Miller’s Tavern used to be the old Miller’s Tavern, perhaps it had been hurried into the future against its will. I forgave it.

I walked in. A late-middle-aged white man with something approaching a crew cut sat staring at his beer. I removed my wrappings, folding them onto a stool. The bartender was jolly in a way that denoted liquor. He wore a baby blue tuxedo, his belly pleasantly distending, his torso slung with glowing Christmas lights. Somebody from the kitchen walked past. ‘Sammy I can’t stand ya, you’re blinding me!’ I got out my book and pulled my stool up to the counter. ‘What are ya havin?’ the bartender said. I got a Sam Adams Winter Lager and he set it down a little heavily in front of me, saying ‘And more to follow!’

I opened my book and wondered whether I wanted to make conversation. Well, why not, I was traveling. Meg White pounded away over the speakers. ‘I’m going to Wichita!’ The crew cutted man poked at a flip phone. I smiled over towards him — ‘I’ve got one too!’ He looked cheerfully at me like he’d been waiting to say something to someone but didn’t know where to start. ‘You’ve got one?’ ‘Yeah I’ve got a flip phone too!’ I dug around in my bag and held it up to him. ‘Cheers to this girl! Look at that! Good for you!’ His name was Ken. He was at that happy and talkative stage of drunkenness without the wherewithal to listen or even care much about the response. We talked about the difficulties of group texting and he told me he’d bought out the flip phones from the local Best Buy so he’d never be without. The bartender came over and refilled his beer. ‘This is Sam over here,’ said Ken. ‘Been around here awhile.’ I asked about the Miller’s Tavern across the street. They said they’d had to move just last year. ‘It was falling down?’ I asked. ‘Yeah the ceiling was starting to come down on top of everyone.’ I took a sip of lager. Nostalgia for the old Miller’s Tavern flooded through me.

‘What’ll you have? Ken’s getting you a shot.’ I smiled over. ‘Thank you! I’ll do a Jameson.’ ‘Jameson!’ Said Sam. ‘You a bartender?’ ‘No…’ I said. ‘Bartender choice. Good.’ I raised my glass with Ken and we downed them. ‘Ken here’s a bartender. Part of the family.’ A gay couple came in, seating themselves between me and Ken. Ken turned back blearily to the tv with the tenuous self-control of the habitual barfly. He’d get home all right. But he’d just get there. These Northern climes were rough, the days and nights awash with drink, the conversation about drink, the day sloping toward drink, the half-humorous self-critique about drink. It was boring, really. Bars were boring. But so comfortable, they fit like going home for Christmas; you could predict all the conversation and chime right in. I knew Sam and Ken and they knew me and it had all happened so very quickly, it was sad. I looked up at the clock. I wanted to get back to the station with half an hour to spare. I told Sam I’d pay up, and stood to get my things. Ken started. ‘Sam! Get her another! She’s leaving us!’ ‘No no!’ I said. ‘Get her one, get her one! ‘‘No, I’m fine really, thank you —’ As this had no effect I leaned in conspiratorially and said ‘Let me tell you a secret, I’ve got a flask of Sambuca for the bus ride…’ but Ken only scrunched his face and said ‘Sambuca! Sugary licorice. Have something real!’ One could only accept. I raised it. ‘Cheers to you both! I’m off to the bus station! Have a good night!’ I downed it, slamming the glass down with the appropriate relish on the counter. I only just tore myself away. You can waste a lot of time at bars. I knew. Hours vanish. Weeks and months. Years. And in those hours you realize how decades can become as nothing, mashed into one filmy moment of unearned bonhomie.

I crackled my way back to the station, feeling good, a little buzzed, shortcutting across the park, the station’s red tower shining behind the branches like a beacon. The park was crawling. Figures moved across it like soldiers or spies. It wasn’t yet seven, but it felt like midnight. I walked up and into the swarm. There were tables, something being passed out – it was a soupline! The liquor sloshed in me with enthusiasm. I rushed up to someone who looked like she knew what she was doing. ‘Excuse me, what is your group? This is wonderful!’ ‘Let me introduce you to my mother, she started this,’ said the young woman, tapping someone on the back. ‘Excuse me, this young lady…’ A woman with hair swept up and out of the way turned to face me, the very picture of someone with well-exercised authority.

‘Hello, I’m the founder of Friends Helping Friends.’ She held out her hand and shook briskly. ‘We come out every Tuesday and feed people here — Sir! Sir! Turn that music off please, we’re playing our own music.’ She turned back to me. ‘Here, let me give you something,’ I fumbled. ‘…this is wonderful… I helped with a soup line too, in Alabama, it’s still going… how wonderful… what you’re doing.’ I pressed money into her hand. ‘Let us get you a plate!’ said the woman, already reaching over. But I had to leave. The station shone at me across the street. ’I have to catch a bus, thank you, thank you!’ I ran off, the woman, her daughter and their troops working themselves warm in the wind.

I pushed into the blare of the station. Ruth was still stately on her bench. ‘Ruth!’ I said. ‘How is everything?’ ‘Cory said there might have been a gate change, he’s walking over to look.’ A pale youngish white woman stood close to her. She was dressed as if she’d run through the bargain boxes at Goodwill without looking, entirely nondescript. Her pants were white and plain as scrubs, her coat a boyish blue puffer, thin and almost translucent, her black shoes like something a nurse or waitress might have worn, devolved. She stood beside a white roller bag, her hand tight on the handle as if her mother had said ‘Hang on to your bag! Don’t leave it behind!’ She was quite pretty, her thin limp blond hair graying at the edges. She wore glasses, and stared out somewhere unnamable and beyond, restless, unsettled, naive. I felt intimidated; I wanted to get to know her. I must wait for the right time, I thought. I can’t spring myself upon her, she’ll just stare at back at me. The bus should throw an opportunity my way. But I never learned her name.

Cory was hunting for the gate. There had been a mix-up. We waited for him for instructions. ‘Cory says it’s gate two, now!’ said Ruth, and we made for gate two, a small crowd following behind. We passed through into the cold and stared up at a bus trembling before us. ‘No, it’s still leaving from gate eight,’ the driver said. We walked back to gate eight. Cory went off somewhere. Ruth and I stood together, Grey-blond behind. I turned around and seized a chance. ‘Where are you heading?’ I said in my best good-natured fashion. ‘I’m going to Nashville,’ she said softly. There was no remaining question or curiosity in her statement, which floated away like a bubble, un-popped. The minutes passed and we let ourselves slouch, slipping our bags back on the floor. Cory had not returned. ‘Where is he?’ I said to Ruth. ‘He went off drinking and smoking,’ she said vaguely, and in a few minutes he was back, hovering again at the edges.

Finally we boarded. There weren’t many of us. Ruth walked behind me, and as I slipped into a seat toward the back she said ‘Do you mind if I sit with you?’ though there were free seats all around. We tucked our coats primly in the half dark, respectful of one another. ‘What happened to that other girl?’ Ruth said. I assumed she meant Grey-blond, and peered ahead for her. ‘I don’t know… I don’t see her… She’s probably there somewhere.’ ‘She asked me to sit with her… Well, I hope she’s here.’ I was not such a catch as I thought — I merely looked like Grey-blond, one of two not-yet-old white women, plainly dressed, with short hair. Ruth, her eyesight going, trying to be kind, got me. Or was that the story? It didn’t matter now. The question mark drifted off with the others.

I asked Ruth where she was traveling from. Vermont, she said. She worked for a white well-to-do family that was in politics. Ruth settled in and started talking. She had worked for the family for many years. They trusted her completely. She knew where the safe was. They opened it in front of her sometimes! She knew they’d always help her out, but she didn’t push it. Whenever the man of the family called her he’d say, ‘Ruth! Ruth, how are ya? Anything you need? Anything I can do?’ Once she didn’t have the money to get her car fixed. They helped her out on that one. But she didn’t want to ask for too much.

Ruth was on her way to visit her family in Chicago. She’d stay with her cousin in Cleveland and head out the next morning. They were always trying to get her to come live with her. Her son was there. She hadn’t seen him in a couple of years. She liked where she lived. Respectable people. She was the only black person in the neighborhood. ‘That must be a bit tough sometimes,’ I said, hazarding at something to say. ‘Oh no,’ said Ruth. ‘I’m not prejudiced like that!’ ‘Were your people always in Vermont?’ I asked. No, she’d come up from Mississippi years ago. Outside of Jackson, a town called Pelahatchie. Her grandmother had been the chief baby-catcher in Mississippi. Traveled all over. Didn’t know how to read, had to write an X for her name. But smart as they come. There was a statue to her in those parts. ‘I caught a baby once,’ said Ruth, rolling along comfortably, ‘My daughter’s first child! I dropped it! I didn’t expect it to be so slimy. It was like a wet cat!’ ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘But it was all right.’

Ruth pulled her bag up from her feet and rummaged through for some mints. Would I like some? She insisted I take several; I was going on to Cincinnati. ‘I’m glad I stopped for something to eat before Buffalo!’ she said. Yes, I said, I saw there was a Popeyes. It smelled so good. ‘You know, I’ll have to get rid of some of this,’ she said, rummaging some more. ‘I got a Popeyes sandwich. You take it, I won’t be eating it. I just scraped a little off the inside with a fork, that’s why it’s like that.’ She dropped it into my lap. ‘And what else, here…. take these…’ Half a package of Ritz crackers and a half-full bag of Lindor truffles. ‘I won’t be needing them, you take them!’ I pictured myself downing this meal behind a bench somewhere the next morning, just before my walk — cold Popeyes, ritz crackers, truffles, Sambuca. ‘Thank you, Ruth. I will enjoy them!’ and added, as a little surety, ‘Are you sure you don’t…’ ’Take them, take them!’ she said.

We eased back. Ruth was telling me about her grandmother. ‘She used the switch! She never stood for swearing. One time I was walking to church with her and saw something amazing and I said ‘Goll-eeee!’ But she thought I was taking the Lord’s name, and she gave it to me then.’ We bounced along. Ruth said she knew Jesus was black. She’d always known it. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘A Palestinian Jew! Certainly not a white person.’ ‘I remember when I was six years old I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘You are a black Jew!’ ‘Oh!’ I said, and not wanting to pause too long — ‘How did you know that?’ But the question came off flat and Ruth rushed on to other things. We discussed our favorite psalms and what Ruth was reading in the Old Testament. The bus stopped. We were a couple hours from Cleveland. There was time for a smoke break, the driver said. Ruth fumbled with her Newports. I said I’d get off too, to stretch my legs. We stood together in the headlights of the bus, blinking, pulling our wraps closer. I took a Newport. Grey-blond appeared. Ruth started. ‘Oh, there you are! We were looking for you! We weren’t sure where you were!’ She glanced at Grey-blond suddenly, sharply, then at me. ‘Are you… which one is?… Are you the one I was talking to?’ she stared at me, brow knotted. ‘Oh, yes, we sat together,’ I said. ‘What were we talking about?’ she asked, suspicious. ‘We were talking about the book of Joshua,’ I said. ‘Oh yes,’ Ruth said, relaxing, ‘Now I remember. That was the girl who asked me if I would sit next to her. Oh, we have to leave soon.’ She crushed the end of her cigarette to put in her coat pocket, then said impulsively, ‘Let’s just throw them away!’ We cast our half-smoked cigarettes into the beam of the headlights and swept back up into the bus, everyone saying ‘Ah!’ as they pierced through the warmth.

‘I should give you my phone number!’ said Ruth. ‘I’ll write you a message.’ We exchanged numbers and with deliberation Ruth pressed out a Christmas greeting, a happy new year, a lovely time in Cincinnati with my family, and safe travels. It was getting late. We settled into the respectful poses taken by sleeping strangers, knees together, arms crossed, head tilted away. When we woke we were in Cleveland. I helped Ruth with her bag, walking with her across the station hall looking for the exit. Her cousin would be there to pick her up. Gray-blond came up with her roller bag, looking like someone in a Hallmark movie just come out of a coma. ‘Ruth….’ she said, ‘Ruth… I’m going to Nashville.’ I did not understand this strange relationship. I was jealous. Ruth took her bag in hand, bade us goodbye, and walked into the night.

We had two hours to kill. I looked for where to sit. The hall was vast and dirty and bright. Relics of an earlier age dotted the walls — ripped-out payphones, water fountains with out of service signs, a string of ticket booths that hadn’t been used in years, and, forlornly, the Food Lounge, which even just installed must have been a dismay, simply a nod in the direction of human need, offering up microwaved sandwiches and cheese dip from the hands of a slumping cashier. Now it was defunct. They had not bothered to do away with it. A metal grating would stand before it until the building was taken down.

There were no attendants of any kind. The place was swarming with oddballs. You thought, what if something happens? But nothing did happen. After your eyes adjusted you saw it was just a bunch of people, their strangeness going no further than the limit they had perhaps years ago settled into. And if someone did get weird, well, we had our capacities.

I sat near the back with the hall spread out before me. Maybe I would try to sleep. A handful of raggedy swells crisscrossed and circled, on, it seemed, predetermined routes, like planets, stopping to do little businesses with one another. A large round white man with a week’s worth of beard walked before me every fifteen or twenty minutes like Santa Claus gone to seed. He dragged his feet in worn rubber sandals, the dirty edges of his sweatpants trailing behind him. Slowly, slowly, to the right, and out the door. Then back and slowly, slowly to the left until he reached the far wall, where he’d collapse next to the plug charging his phone beside a black woman of whom you could see only a rounded back and head, as if they were sharing a bed, spreadeagled so the most you could see of him was his crotch.

A young black woman immediately denoting there-is-something-wrong-with-this-person came in, went out, came in went out, on every third or fourth entry making a circuit of the hall asking people for change. She seemed to know many of the hangers-on, or what I thought were the hangers-on. Sitting at her spot of bench she would plaintively holler across the room, hardly seeming to care whether she got a response. ‘Mamaaaa!’ she called. ‘Mamaaaa!’ Can I get a little chicken? Can you give me a little chicken? I want chicken, how is that mama, is that good? It looks real good. Can I have a little chicken?’ Finally she was given some remains in a styrofoam box. She tumbled back with it and gazed listlessly at the contents, as if time, drawn out through all eternity, were nothing but a poking and a gazing, a crooning and a padding across a strip of dirty floor. ‘This don’t look like chicken. Ain’t it ground beef, mama? This don’t look like no chicken.’ No one answered her. She poked at it and subsided into herself.

A nervous, perhaps manic, perhaps drugged young black woman made four or five revolutions for every one of Beef-not-Chicken’s. She was dressed rather elegantly in black, the leg of her sweatpants reading U.S. ARMY, her hair tied up in a black kerchief. She had the beauty as well as the slight, unsettled not-here quality of a model. She swung her arms and talked fast and loud, like someone in a terminal at LaGuardia having an important meeting on her phone and letting you know it. She wasn’t unlikable. She was even winning. Bold and brash.

Cory had settled at the far end of the station. We were in view of one another. He’d put on sunglasses and looked to be sleeping. Occasionally he’d get up and stir about some and I’d nod over, raise a finger. He’d nod back, connecting the dots. Grey-blond sat ten or twenty feet down my bench. She didn’t try to sleep but sat, staring, hand on the bag handle, at once at ease and alert. She seemed to belong here and nowhere at the same time. Occasionally she’d get up to walk around. She’d wheel her bag twenty, thirty feet out into the hall and stand uncertainly, circumnavigate, and return. Perhaps she was mental, I thought. Perhaps… perhaps she was a retired drone operator, traumatized and wandering the country in her shapeless black shoes. A tall, thin black man with a loping gait asked her for a cigarette on one of her rounds. She fumbled vaguely at her pockets and said she was looking for one too. Later he approached her — ‘Hey, I found one for you.’ Grey-blond smiled a Mona Lisa smile and took it in her fingers. They walked outside together.

Thin Man was a nice guy. He was hoboish at first glance, perhaps one of the hangers-on, shirt half in half out of his pants, sneakers unlaced. In fact he seemed to know most everyone, in a casual, friendly, low-maintenance way. He sat next to Gray-blond, so naturally, so respectfully, good boyfriend material — ‘Hey, may I?’ — and quietly talked a little. I couldn’t make it all out but I picked up pieces. He’d been in the military. He’d had women problems. His tone was humble, considerate, with the upward lilt of the good listener. Gray-blond joined in for a bit. But then she would stare, or stand up, holding onto her bag. I felt for him. But Thin Man had his friends. He’d stride over to Gone-to-Seed stretched out on the floor, chatting at him from above, even to Beef-not-Chicken, who clumped around like she had just gotten out of bed, scratching her tush with no one to see.

A late night bus rolled in, its small crowd dispersing through the station. A Muslim family set up in the bench in front of me, a mother and three children, the eldest a girl around 15, headscarfed like her mother. The mother made out a bed beside her for the smallest, a boy of two or three. She patted it, beckoning him. He eyed it, then settled down with his head on her lap. But he couldn’t stay still. He’d sit up, shake himself, look around. She’d pat the blanket. The older girl read a book, her middle brother bent over his phone. The mother was young and beautiful, her scarf perfectly pinned.

Finally the boy jumped up, took a few steps out and ran into the middle of the hall. He nosed up to several groups in turn, eyeing them with attention from a short distance. His greatest find was a a lapdog with a long brown snout, jumpy like himself, held to the bosom of a young woman in pink pajamas and dyed orange hair as she tried to sleep, both covered in blankets. Dog and boy considered each other, the dog finally crinkling its eyes in a great yawn so you could see its gullet. The boy shrieked and ran back, laughing and pulling at his mother’s shawl. He pointed and stretched his own head back in a yawn, demonstrating.

Beef-not-Chicken walked by on one of her money-grubbing rounds. Her patter was automatic, reflexive, as if it no longer pertained to an action but was simply what came out of her mouth. She got round to me and my response too was automatic, a saying-no in an effortless stare as if I had been programmed. Did she live in this station? It would be easy to — no attendant had appeared; it seemed none ever would; it was beginning to feel like we were part of a new society that had to build itself from scratch. Thin Man should be in charge, Cory his deputy. Someone would have to drain the water fountain. Someone would have to put the toilet paper dispensers back in the stalls. U.S. ARMY could probably hustle some money for food. Other than that, we seemed to be doing okay. Beef-not-Chicken was in front of the Muslim family, and shame on me, the mother handed over a bill. Beef-not-Chicken did a perfunctory obeisance and moved on to the next person. The mother again patted the blanket, the son again squirmed, sat up, rubbed his eyes.

The mother looked around and I caught the moment. ‘Excuse me’ I said, walking up. ‘Do you mind if I ask where you are from?’ ‘Afghanistan,’ she said. ‘Where in Afghanistan?’ ‘Herat,’ she smiled at me. ‘I have been to Afghanistan! To Kabul and Bamiyan!’ ‘Ah!’ Said the mother. ‘You have been?’ I felt I was approaching the limits of her English. I made that universal gesture of goodwill, a hand to my heart and a faint bow. Again I curled up and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t keep my eyes closed. I sat up again. Cory was nodding off in his sunglasses, Thin Man stopping to say a few words to Grey-blond. The dog stared brightly out, rising and falling on Orange Hair’s chest.

An hour and a half left to go. I was trying to get back into my book when an Hispanic woman came up, determined. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, with just a touch of accent, ‘My brother is taking the bus to Cincinnati — do you know when it leaves?’ ‘Oh, yes, it leaves at 2:35,’ I said, ‘I’m getting on it too.’ She paused, then said with a sure quick step, ‘He doesn’t speak much English — I have to leave — could you see he gets on it ok?’ ‘Of course’ I said. ‘Where is he?’ She gestured over and a shy man in dark jeans and blue checkered shirt approached. The woman beamed at me, less out of thankfulness than in pure relief — she had a job to get to, I thought, kids to get home to, the relative who promised to watch them for a few hours texting importunately by the minute. They hugged and she was off. We looked at each other, he glancing down modestly. ‘I’m Sarah,’ I said. ‘What’s your name?’ ‘I am Alberto,’ he said. ‘You are going… where?’ ’To Flor-i-da. To work construction.’ He was from Michoacán. I was from California. We spoke as far as we could about the places we grew up, California and Michoacán becoming the Gardens of Eden of our childhood. Las montañas! El mar! Que hermosa! He was playing a game of chess on his phone. He beat it and turned the screen to me proudly. ‘Ah! Congratulations!’ I said. ‘I do not know how to play!’ I showed him my French travel dictionary and the book that sentence by sentence I was working through. ‘I am very bad at French. I am trying to learn.’ ‘French.’ He said. ‘I learn this, in México,’ he said, ‘In school!’ He rattled off a few sentences.

Nervous now that I had a charge, I made a few ventures to the schedule board, though there was only one bus ahead of ours. 1:30. ‘Una hora mas!’ I said to Alberto, though I’m sure he knew. The passengers for the next bus began to stir. The Afghan mother packed up the blankets. I should offer something, I thought, I should welcome them. I picked out one of Ruth’s Lindor truffles and tapped the mother gently on the shoulder as she packed her bag. ‘May I?’ I said. ‘A chocolate? For your son?’ She smiled, taking it, then turned to confer with her daughter. ‘My mother says, why were you in Afghanistan?’ said the girl. ‘I was there with a group to bring peace,’ I said. ‘We were called Voices for Creative Nonviolence.’ It is hard to know what to say. No doubt in such cases you cannot be too simple. Gray-blond walked uncertainly up to us, perhaps thinking we were discussing bus departure times. But the timing was off, and as the family rose to leave she withdrew. The little boy walked up to me, instructed by his mother. ’Tank you!’ He said. ‘You are welcome!’ I said. Off they went.

U.S ARMY made another round, Gone-to-Seed spread-eagled again by his charger, Thin Man paying a friendly attention. Peace reigned. I made another foray to the schedule board. 2:31. I came back and nodded to Alberto. It was time. We drifted to the boarding door along with most everyone else. 2:35. 2:40. 2:45. We stood, staring out through the glass doors, as if awaiting aliens. Gray-blond walked outside, dragging her roller bag back and forth in the parking lot, looking into the night. Someone finally sat down heavily on the floor and we all relaxed. We began making little remarks to one another, pointless but comforting — ‘It’s late!’ ‘2:35, wasn’t it?’ ‘I wonder when we’ll be getting in to Cincinnati?’ ‘Is there anyone to ask?’ Gray-blond was back inside, just a few feet from me. I glanced at her, hoping to catch a look in return, a chance to make a similar gratuitous remark, but she didn’t catch the bait.

I was starting to get hungry. I thought of my Sambuca sparkling in the front pocket of my bag, but I didn’t feel like drinking. I made for the station microwave to heat up my Popeyes, saying to Alberto ‘I’m leaving just for a minute, be right back.’ ‘You want me watch your bag?’ he said. I should have said yes. Once you miss such a moment it is hard to get it back. ‘No, I got it!’ I said cheerfully. As the words came out I realized my mistake. I stuck in the sandwich for a minute on high, for some reason swallowing it in tremendous gulps until it felt like it was poking out of my chest. I hastened back to Alberto. He smiled at me — ‘Please, you watch my bag?’ ‘Yes, yes!’ I said. He went off for the bathroom. I was redeemed.

Twenty minutes passed. A black man, elegantly bearded, in sunglasses, hanging with chains and sporting a bomber jacket over his uniform, strolled out of the staff lounge. It was the first staff we’d seen. ‘Excuse me! Sir! Sir!’ Called out U.S. ARMY — surprisingly, she was one of our number and obviously more helpful than any of us – ‘Sir! We’re waiting for the bus, when is it gonna come?’ Indeed we were all waiting for the bus. The entire station population, minus Gone-to-Seed, his floor companion, and Beef-not-Chicken, stood about the doors, ready. The man glanced at us as he passed. ‘The bus is here,’ he said, as if it was our mistake. He mumbled something and kept walking. U.S.ARMY walked after him, staring through the glass doors he had banged through. The bus is here. What did it mean? Here? Our bus? I turned to a black girl standing beside me. ‘What was it he said?’ She rolled her eyes, exasperated. ‘He mumbled something…’ Several of us walked to the doors, peering. He must be the driver. It was coming on an hour since our scheduled departure time. Finally the bus eased in. Again we stood and shouldered our bags. ‘He sure is taking his time,’ said the girl. We watched him through the windows, poking about dimly within the bus. He flipped the windshield wipers on, off, adjusted the mirror, stood up and turned around. Then he opened the door and stepped out, walking this way and that way in front of it, looking about and touching here and there as if in a pantomime - getting ready to drive the bus - then came through the double doors and from behind his sunglasses said ‘Form one line. One line.’

The bus was freezing, each person making some comment coming up the stairs. ‘Whew!’ ‘Ooo Lord!’ ‘He didn’t take much trouble to warm it, did he?’ I put on all my wrappings and got out my pajamas to strew over my legs. The body heat would warm us eventually. A white man I hadn’t seen before with a wandering orange beard grinned down at me zanily from the seat in front, coughing, apparently rather drunk. ‘Heyyyyy we’re leaving now!!!’

I slept hard until Dayton when I was poked by someone in need of a seat, and, scarcely opening my eyes, thrust my bag below my feet and pressed myself against the window. I woke up and we were crawling up an exit ramp. 8:50 am. The Cincinnati Bus Station was a lot fringed with U-Hauls and barbed wire, a neat white waiting room built into a corner. ‘Do you need to get off?’ said my seat-mate, a young bearded black man. ‘Yes, please,’ I said, and, pulling the extra clothes from around my legs and stuffing them back in my bag, said ‘Sorry, I’ll be done in a sec.’ ‘No worries, take your time.’ Alberto was a few rows ahead, on his phone. He was going to Florida! I pulled out Ruth’s bag of truffles as I edged into the aisle, holding it out to him as I passed. He was talking rapidly in Spanish to someone he loved, laughing, free, transformed by his language into the whole person he was from the shy and silent man I thought I’d known, a shock, the real Alberto — ‘Chocolates, for you! Have a safe trip!’ I swept off the bus and into the station, heading straight for the bathroom to brush my teeth, put on deodorant, take the sleep from my eyes.

I came out fresh and excited. The morning, the walk ahead, the night passed as if in some alternate world where relationships simmer, boil over, and subside. Gray-blond was resting in the station. Nashville. I smiled down at her. ‘Have a good trip!’ She looked up absently. ‘You too.’ Fifteen miles to my brother’s house. I smiled, I couldn’t help it, the smile glowed out of me as I drew the directions from my coat pocket, glancing at them again, and then again, to make sure. Right on Waldman. Right on Galbraith. North, north, north!

Two days later, in a room at the Hampton Inn, my mother eyed the half-stack of Ritz crackers I’d set out with my things on the desk, the wrapper neatly curled at the end. ‘May I have a couple? I’m feeling hungry.’ ‘A woman gave them to me on the bus!’ I said. ‘Her grandmother was the chief baby-catcher in all of Mississippi!’ ‘Oh, is that so?’ said my mother, biting through a cracker, perhaps themselves a gift to Ruth, from a traveler, from a relative in Vermont, from a friend at the last minute, which perhaps had been a gift to them, each of us leaving behind our trail of crumbs.