Greyhound (27 page)

“Who do you know in New York, sweetie?” she asked. “That’s not your mother’s writing, that’s for sure.”

“Oh…just a friend,” I rejoined sheepishly. I carefully opened the letter and sat on the edge of the porch outside and read it slowly. It was handwritten.

July 1981

Sebastien,

How’s everything in Altoona? Feeling okay? Sorry I didn’t write sooner, but I was feeling a bit under the weather after I got off the bus. You’re not going to have many adventures like that one again. I can almost guarantee it.

New York is just as I remember it. It’s just as crowded as it was when I was your age, when we moved out to California. I saw my mom and my pops, God rest them both. I didn’t make it back in time to see my mom before she passed, as she was pretty sick the last few months with the cancer. I didn’t want to say anything about it on the bus, as I didn’t know how to tell you, but I guess you know now. Being on the bus and talking with you seemed to take my mind off things for a while, so I hope you’re not mad at me.

It was a good thing that we separated when we did. When I got to Philadelphia, the police questioned me about Leigh Allen and you, but they couldn’t hold me, as they had nothing, and I denied everything. Sometimes you gotta do that with the law. I hate to say this, but you’re probably going to have to keep looking over your shoulder for Leigh Allen for some time to come.

I’ll never forget our trip together across the country, and Mount Vernon now seems etched in my mind forever. I heard that “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” song the other day, and it reminded me of sitting in that coffee shop at six a.m., watching it rain and waiting for John F. Kennedy. No one would believe it if I told ’em.

Anyways, remember what we talked about, and things shouldn’t ever be that bad. You’ll never need to look too far for friends if you just be yourself. And don’t forget that it’s easier to be a man than it is to be a coward. It’s just harder to be an honest man than an honest coward. You can always lie to yourself, even if you never lie to others.

Have a good summer. I hope you like the book I left you, and stay safe.

Your friend,

Marcus

I laughed as I read and then reread his letter. It was unexpected, but good to hear from him, and unsettling to think about Leigh Allen. I still had his driver’s license in my inside jacket pocket, which was now boxed up and stored away in the attic. His license was the only thing I had that would serve as a reminder to me. Maybe in the future I’d be able to do something about it, but for now there was nothing to do but bury what had happened away in the back corners of my mind.

Later in the middle of summer, my mother did call, rearing her ugly head. She had spoken very briefly with my grandma and told her that the house had been broken into when she was on her honeymoon. The television, a radio, some knickknacks, and the majority of her wardrobe had all been stolen. I was a little surprised by the turn of events, but I honestly didn’t care, as I was now off the hook. All I wanted to know was if she was planning on coming to Altoona to uproot me or my sister again. Hopefully, she wasn’t. It was the only time she had called, as they had most likely argued about putting me on the bus by myself. Knowing my grandma, she probably gave Charlotte the tongue-lashing she deserved. Knowing my mother, she most likely dismissed everything that was said to her and lit another cigarette with her nose in the air.

When I had gone through my backpack, I found the Langston Hughes book that Marcus had left. I read it several times from cover to cover, but once, when I was randomly flipping the pages, I caught sight of something that I had previously overlooked. On page sixty-seven, someone had put a pencil line through the title of the poem “Color” and boldly retitled it “Have Hope.” It was the same handwriting in the book as was in the letter. I knew it must’ve been Marcus.

The book was more of a request than it was a present, and I was beginning to understand what these small things meant. Even though he was gone, he was still thinking about me and probably always would be. Sometimes a thought, though, isn’t enough. A few kind words can carry you a little further. That’s what Langston Hughes did. That’s what Langston Hughes would do. The last message from Marcus was an easy one, and I understood it. He was worried enough about me to care, and it wasn’t something that I would soon forget.

During the intense humidity of July, I sat on the porch playing Scrabble with Beanie and my grandma. I had been struggling with the letters, trying to come up with something better than
bus
for five points. The task of double and triple word scores was all I was focused on, even though we were, once more, waiting for my father. He was supposed to have come for dinner, but he was running late.

As the night wore on, clouds rolled in and lightning bugs swarmed the yard around the house. We sat watching the small lights floating in the darkness and listening to the building thunder approaching from the distance. When it was ten o’clock, it was time for bed, and my father still hadn’t shown up. The only person who was upset about it was Beanie. My grandma and I had watched her sulking in her chair on the patio for most of the evening, even though she had successfully come in first place on the Scrabble board. The fact that he didn’t show didn’t bother me in the slightest. I guess it was what I expected. I went to bed that night and slept peacefully, happy to be where I was, and happy to be home. The last person I thought about before I fell asleep was my friend, Marcus Franklin.

A FEW THOUGHTS…

Greyhound Bus Lines was founded in Hibbing, Minnesota, in 1914. For most Americans, traveling by bus was the preferred mode of travel for almost seventy years. Greyhound, and later their main competitor, Trailways, built up a large infrastructure across the continental United States, replete with bus depots that were considered state-of-the-art, and even luxurious, by many standards. Many of the stops, often called depots, stations, or terminals, depending on where exactly you were in the country, had large lobbies with pay televisions, a full-service sit-down restaurant chain known as The Grey Café, Grey’s Café, or The Road Grill, and many other amenities like gift shops, showers, vending machines, coin-op laundry, lockers, and other services.

Since that time, a lot has changed. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Congress deregulated the transportation industry, which gave more people access to passenger airlines such as People Express and PSA. The airline industry offered lower rates to fly, putting both Greyhound and Trailways on the brink of bankruptcy and extinction. Both companies could not compete with the new lower fares for both short and long distances and thus saw the bulk of their patrons lifting upward into the clouds and away from the tradition of bus riding forever.

In 1981, Greyhound Lines had posted an almost $2 billion surplus for the year. In 1982, because of the deregulation and the launch of People Express and PSA in 1981, the company nearly folded.

First and foremost, I both need and want to thank my close friend and editor Mark Espinosa for the many hours and days spent editing, questioning, revising, and “making another pass,” as well as all the late-night phone calls, the wise words, and mostly the encouragement. Always number one in my books.

I would also like to thank Courtney Abruzzo and Bryce Lowe for their early edits when the book was in first draft form and for exhibiting a gracious amount of patience.

Many thanks also to Gene Nicolelli, director and founder of the Greyhound Museum in Hibbing, Minnesota, for all his help verifying some of the more important details and historical information that only he would’ve known. Thanks also to Debra Jane Seltzer for her unending obsession with photographing the ever fading American landscape.

Many thanks also go to Terry Goodman at AmazonEncore for waking me from that afternoon nap to tell me congratulations and for putting up with me, ever after. Thanks also to Sarah Tomashek, Shoshana Thaler, and Cheryl Della Pietra for marketing and editing.

Special thanks to Ben Gibson for his amazing artwork on the front.

I also need to thank U2. Thank you for saving my life and keeping me here long after I thought I had given up. You’ll never know how grateful I am. People’s hard work does have meaning to others.

I also want to thank all the readers, including you. The point of this book was to give something beautiful to the world and to whomever sees themselves within these pages and to know that you’re not alone.