Chapter 6: Counting the cars on the NJ Turnpike

 

 



The interior of the bus stank of old cigarettes and body odor, mingling with the stench of exhaust. An old man lay across one of the seats in the rear near the door to the toilet, snoring, as if he had lain there through several trips.

I settled a few seats up from him, avoiding the hump where the rear wheels took away leg room, relieved that the high back of the seats in front of me kept anyone – including the driver – from seeing me. The wide tinted windows looked out on a garage-like world where other buses sat in their slots waiting to load, bearing destinations north and south. A smudge marred the glass where someone’s greasy head had rested. Then the bus pulled out into the open air, down twisting ramps that led to the Lincoln Tunnel, going back the way I had just come, sending a small shiver of panic into me as if the bus was bringing me home again.

But the illusion soon faded as the bus followed the signs for the New Jersey Turnpike, and in my head, I heard Simon and Garfunkel singing about their search for America.

Dawn bloomed finally, illuminating a landscape that had moments before hid in shadows, changing again as the bus rolled south, the massive illumination of Newark International Airport replaced by the flaming-topped stacks of the Elizabeth oil refineries, while along the Arthur Kill the docks glowed with giant dinosaur-like cranes lifting and lowering massive containers into and out of massive ships.

These were very familiar sites from my nights going AWOL from Fort Dix, my friend Vinnie and I, making

our way to Manhattan each night to drink and carouse, only to rush back for 6 a.m. rollcall to play soldier by day.

My discharge from the army slightly more than a month earlier had spoiled my French Foreign Legion fantasy, my seeking to escape the arms of unexpected love by thrusting myself into the arms of military service, only to have my plans foiled by a bleeding kidney the army didn’t want to treat – even if it meant providing one more body to its war machine in Southeast Asia. Instead, the army send me home with a promotion, a medal and an honorable discharge – but no real options as to what I should do next.

Home wasn’t where I wanted to be.

My family no more understood me than the military did – too many police cars, juvenile misdemeanors and tendency for mischief.

My uncles actually expected me to get a job, pay rent and contribute to the general welfare of the old house, when all I could think about was the girl I’d left behind, a Doris Day lookalike who set my hormones to boil whenever she came near, who had mysteriously vanished when I sought her out after my discharge.

Her suspicious stepparents wouldn’t tell me where she’d gone and only begrudgingly agreed to pass on my address to her, her letter later informing me she had fled to Colorado to escape those parents, a Boulder motel as her return address, from which I formulated a plan to go see her.

For days I had moped in Manhattan, wasting away in Washington Square Park, writing pathetic love letters to Louise – some of which I foolishly sent, my mood so vile my best friend avoided me, as did the drug dealers who mistook me for a narc.

Passing the airport scared me a bit since my uncle Harold worked there.

I slipped into the toilet – which was about the size of a phonebooth and stunk of vomit and pee – seating myself on the closed toilet lid to take stock, pulling out the bundles of cash from my bulging pockets to arrange them better so not to seem so obvious, figuring to buy some kind of luggage once I got to Philadelphia, I could keep the cash in.

Someone knocked on the door. I jumped. Another passenger wanted to know why I was taking so long, a bald-headed pudgy man glaring at me as I came out, glancing around the interior of the toilet to see what ungodly act I might have been performing in there.

I took refuge in my seat, knowing that my uncles had already risen, most likely discovered the crime, and perhaps even had called the police.

Would they track me down? Would they interview the cab driver and the clerks at the bus station?

Would the police be waiting for me when the bus arrived in Philly?

Exhausted, I leaned against the glass and the vibration from the wheels over pavement lulled me to sleep. I woke with a start when I realized the vibration had stopped.

The sign outside said “Camden.” The driver stood up and announced, “We’ll be here for about a half an hour.”

Panic seized me. I assumed the worst and searched the bus station outside for signs of police as the other passengers rose and exited, looking no doubt to stretch their legs.

Colorado seemed so very, very far away.

My hands shook at I lit a cigarette. It was the longest half hour of my life.

 

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