Innocents on the Lamb

   Our departure from the terminal in Lexington, stirred up the passengers again – we finally stepping over the threshold into “The West”, although in truth that distinction went to St. Louis later when we crossed the mighty Mississippi. We traveled in growing predawn light, although lights also came on above many of the seats. We could see the growing green of the hills around us, and staples of horses, reminding me of some of the tales Laura had told me earlier about her brothers’ love of cars and horses – and country music. Trucks crowded the highway around us, coming from or going to the west. Signs posted for cars gong the other way boasted of places like Fork Knox, Radcliff, Elizabethtown and other places the night had denied us. I even saw a sign for a place named “Horse Cave,” and tried to envision it. Sounds stirred from many seats whose lights remained un-illuminated. The two young lovers had constructed a blanket tent above their two seats out of which a strin...

    The young woman climbed aboard the bus a moment after the drivers changed, small with dark hair that wrapped around her face like a seashell. She wore a white dress buttoned up the front almost to her throat, though tight enough to show off her firm breasts. She drew everybody’s attention as she made her way down the aisle in search of a seat, when she decided to take the vacant seat next to me. Mrs. Warton glanced over, her gaze curious, bearing its usual nosy humor. The young woman smiled and held out her small hand. "My name is Laura, what's yours?" Her southern drawl made her that much more attractive, not like the phony accents from bad movies about the Civil War, but deeper, carrying whole history of the south in word. I told her my name, and then told her I had come from New York. "New York?" she said, exaggerating the words so that they sounded like some other town from the one I meant. "Why that's where I just came from. Not dir...

      The snow tapped the windows as the bus plunged ahead, stirring up in me rumors of the north, and the reports of a blizzard sweeping across the northern states. A vision of blotted out highways and buried cities came to me like a dream, making me wonder about Louise and how she fared in far off Boulder where such storms made up a way of life. Winter in mountains came early and left late, fingers lingering deep into spring as if to threaten even the coming of summer. The snow pellets clung to then fell away from the windows, melting under the consistent blast of the bus’s heaters, turning into tears wiped away by the motion of the bus. Not yet two days away from my family, I wondered had they already picked up my trail or at least the rumor of where I might go. Had they reached out to Louise’s parents, gotten a number to call her, and had they already altered her to my possible arrival? Would she cooperate with them if they had, agreeing to call them if my shadow fe...

  We left Pittsburgh and its Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers was behind, a dark memory of flowing under bridges I never expected to see again and the city’s stench slowly fading as the bus plunged into the darkness, tires rubbing over asphalt as we continued west. I kept nodding, but could not sleep, jerked awake by some flaw in the road, my face reflected in the dark windows floating on a sea of black – the other passengers floating there, too, like ghosts. Sometimes, the headlights of the bus or passing cars illuminated the mileage marker like a countdown to our next destination. We passed through West Virginia, happy home of Wheeling, slowing through smaller towns, gray shapes of dilapidated buildings like grave stones, punctuated by monuments to Confederate heroes put up a half century after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, not to intimidate former slaves, but as a gesture of defiance to the carpetbaggers that had come south from the north to rape the Old South and to perm...

After all that waiting, Pittsburgh rolled around us before I could blink.  Thousands of lights glowed in the twilight, including monstrous glowing shapes Wanda, the hostess informed us were steel mills. This was capitol of American steel. I shivered. The passing hostess paused, asking if I needed a blanket, although we knew we would be halting soon, her voice nearly as sweet as her perfume. Mrs. Warton woke from a slight dose. She blinked for a moment as if trying to figure out where she was.  "You'll be leaving us soon," she said. "This is the most difficult part about meeting new friends on the road. After a little while you have to part."  "I don't want to," I mumbled. "If I had my druthers, I'd go all the way to Los Angeles with you."  "Sure, you do," Mrs. Warton said, reaching across the aisle to pat my arm. The more I thought about it, the more attractive Los Angeles seemed to me, palm trees and warm air, even in Winte...

  We crossed bridges, four of them, with an island in the middle, then Harrisburg was behind halfway between Philly and Pittsburg, signs along the highway counting down the miles until I had to change buses for Chicago. Twilight came. Blue mountains rose around us, and blue grass. The man in the seat in front of me noticed my stare. “If you think it looks good now, you should see it in daylight,” he said. By daylight I would be in or on my way to Chicago and I wondered if I should get off the bus. The signs said 200 miles to Pittsburgh with a number of smaller less significant towns in between: Green Spring, Breezewood, Bedford, Somerset, Mt. Pleasant. The hostess stayed silent now; the wheels hummed. Would the bus stop before Pittsburg? What would I do if I got off? But the bus never stopped. The restroom at the rear of the bus provided whatever passengers needed between where we were and where we were going. No one thought to supply an escape hatch. Until I bought the ticket in N...