Chapter 27: The last hurdle
I had either fallen into sleep or an extended daydream, because I didn't realize we had reached California until the bus pulled over next to a huge sign declaring our arrival in that state.
The signs telling 1930s Oklahoma refugees to go home no longer showed, yet within moments I understood how independent California saw itself as the door opened uniformed officers climbed on board.
Highway Patrol officers surveying the interior of the bus with stern gazes, uniforms as crisp as the Nazi SS.
I sank down in my seat, pressing myself against the cool window, hoping that they might somehow miss me in the shadowy interior as they strode down the aisle, dark against the police flood lights that bathed the exterior of the bus. It was like being in a movie.
Other passengers mumbled, many stirred out of a doze the way I had been, alarmed as the officers made their way seat by seat down the center of the bus.
"We're in the middle of the dessert," a person a few seats behind me said. "What could they want?"
In a panic, I glanced back towards the toilet in the rear of the bus and wondered if I could reach it without their noticing, although I suspected this would only draw attention to me.
In my head ran an itinerary of escaped, planned and unplanned throughout my life, most of which hadn’t worked, from those few attempts to run away only to have the police catch up with me within a few miles of my home. And now, I’d traveled nearly 3,000 miles only to get done in within a stone’s throw of my destination.
When the grim officers reached my seat, I sagged, ready to surrender.
They looked dusty and bored, their tan uniforms seemingly more military in nature than what was common among cops back east, with the leather strap across their chest. One held a clipboard -- and I imagined him having a photograph of me, perhaps one when I still had long hair -- studying it and me to determine if I was the same person.
"We're checking to see if anyone has any fruit or flowers," the other officer told me.
I must have looked confused.
"We're worried about bugs," the other officer said. "We don't let people bring anything that'll carry bugs in with them."
"Fruit and vegetables and flowers are a big part of the state's economy," the first officer said. "Do you have anything to declare?"
"No, sir," I said, my voice sounding so distant, I almost didn’t think it was mine.
They moved on down the aisle, then back out of the bus when they were done, leaving us to pull back onto the road, as another bus pulled in behind us, and other cars pulled into toll-like slots where other guards grilled them about their fruit and flowers.
This encounter stirred up talk in the bus again, relieving the boredom with speculation as to why any state needed to put guards on its border.
The Wartons particularly seemed put out by the intrusion, claiming Florida had just as much agriculture but did not have to put guards at the entrance of the state to keep other people out.
I was only relieved, thinking this was the last hurdle and my family would not find me after all.
Outside, Death Valley passed in the dark, and we saw only glimpse of the great Mojave desert, shadows of shapes that leaped out from the dark with the passing headlights.
At that moment, Los Angeles could not have come fast enough, and I sat on the edge of my seat, waiting for it to arrive, counting the milage markers along the side of the road as we plunged through the dark in its direction. Signs burst out of the dark indicating nearby locations, though few seemed civilized to me, such Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree. I saw signs for Desert Hot Spring and Box Springs, and eventually Big Bear Lake, but by that time, we had climbed out of the desert and into the mountains, where signs began to boast of various valleys and more pleasant places such as Forest Home.
The highway, while still retaining its number 10 from Arizona, changed names somewhere in those mountains, becoming the San Bernardino Freeway, by which time, I knew we were closing in on our destination, and I more furiously counted the milage posts, as if counting them would make them pass more frequently, when the opposite seemed true.
Comments
Post a Comment