Chapter39 -- Denver or bust?
I was back among the bums again, competing with them for
bench space in the Los Angeles Trailways bus terminal. The stench of bus
station reminded me of New York and the Port Authority, although it was harder
there where news reports claimed a huge blizzard had blanketed the area. Bums
would be huddled in every corner trying to stay warm.
Here, warmth wasn't the problem. Although cooler at night,
L.A. exuded a luxurious sense of comfort that other cities lacked, even the
poorest of the poor need not suffer through the elements, fearing freezing to
death because of lack of shelter space.
Most of the bums here had come in to get out of the rain, a
slow steady drizzle that usually accompanied winters here and led to reports of
mudslides in the hills that overlooked the city. The terminal smelled of urine,
wine and cigarettes, and I watched the suited businessmen struggling to keep
their composure in the corners as the bums panhandled change.
I had made the mistake of coming too early and suffering the
usual wait for the bus, although unlike my previous wait in Philadelphia, I
feared no sudden arrest nor worried over a change of buses half way to Denver.
I held the ticket in my sweaty hand, and still had the original ticket from
Philadelphia to Chicago in my wallet, a souvenir to another time and another
me, and one wise, accidental decision I made in a panic.
I kept wondering about my family and how they had managed to
track me to Denver when I had kept that part of my life a secret. Had I
mistakenly left one of Louise's old letters behind in the house, one she had
written to me from her parents house in New Jersey while I was in the Army? If
so, then my uncles had likely followed the same trail I had in seeking her out,
going to the house in Wayne to inquire of her parents as to where she had gone.
Those very religious people would have been much more cooperative with my
family than with me, especially after they had told the family about my crime.
Being the fundamentalist they were, Louise's parents would
have wanted to help punish me, while believing the worst about their daughter
as well.
Even as I sat with my back stiff against the wooden seats of
the bus station, I shook, that old fear returning, putting me back into
circulation where the law might once get its hands on me. My life seemed a
choice between boredom and fear, loneliness and pursuit, when all I wanted was
to find peace.
I kept thinking, too, about the drugs I was supposed to be
associated with. Where had that come from? The only drugs I had done to date
were a few codeine pills in the Army and a few tokes of pot with my friends
from Little Falls. Perhaps my family had simply assumed the worst, gauging from
the habits of my generation. Yet that was not the way they typically thought.
They were practical people, often disbelieving things until they could prove
things for themselves, measuring the evidence they way they measured a wooden
plank in their boat-making and carpentry. If they believed I had engaged in
drug use, they must have had some kind of evidence.
But what? And how did such a conclusion feed into their
fears and stir up their desperation to find me? It was one thing to be
motivated by anger and the wish to recover their money. It was quite another to
believe me in need of their help. Professing the need to save me might push
them further than mere greed would.
I found myself clock watching, a sport I hadn't engaged in
regularly since my days in high school, each tick bringing me closer to the
moment when the bus would arrive and I would have to make my move, to go or not
go, to return to the world of the living or forever float in this limbo of
loneliness: East L.A.
I kept staring out the glass doors to the street, where gray
figures huddled against the drizzle, making me think again and again of New
York and a similar population of characters. I kept thinking how California was
supposed to be all sunshine and warmth, advertisements that seemed false.
Yet I am a rainy day kind of person, and the mood of the day
seemed to lift the fear from my shoulders. I was going east, hitting the road
again, and the prospect cheered me greatly, despite the veil of sadness
dripping from the gutters outside.
BUS 715 NOW DEPARTMENT FOR LAS VEGAS, SALT LAKE CITY AND
DENVER.
The public announcement stirred me out of my dream world and
launched me to my feet, me, dragging my bags behind me as I made my way towards
the bus. Other people seemed to be making their way towards the same gate I
was, dragging their own bags across the floor covered in cigarette butts and
scuff marks, people making their way along the street side of the terminal and
along the side where the ticket boots formed the inner wall. It was like a race
to see which one of us would reach the gate first.
That's when I noticed the flashing red lights of a police
car which had pulled up to the curb outside, and saw the movement of men in
uniform as they hurried to enter. The old fear rose up in me, the fear I felt
in New York and later in Philadelphia, and thoughts flooded into my confused
head saying: "They've found me out!"
God only knew the real reason the police had come or who had
called them or who they actually wanted. I had convinced myself they had come
for me and that I needed to get on that bus where I might escape their
attention. I shoved the ticket into the waiting hands of the driver and then
stumbled up the steps of the bus, the driver telling me to be careful and not
to hurt myself. Even after I had made my way down the aisle and pushed myself
into a seat, I feared capture. To me, the police chasing the bums from benches
in the terminal was merely a ruse, something to throw me off and convince me
that they had not come for me.
I turned my attention away from the scene in the terminal to
study the interior of the bus. It was slightly different from the one I had
rode into Los Angeles, even though it had the same gold and red seats, the same
overhead racks, and the same rubber flooring. In the back, however, the more
luxurious elements did not exist, the special seating, the table, and the
storage area for food and beverages. Only the coffin like box in the right rear
corner remained, with a small sign on it saying: toilet.
I had settled into a seat close to the front, exactly where
I had sat during my three-day trip west. It was disconcerting. I kept glancing
over the top of the seats, searching for the familiar faces from that previous
trip, looking for the professor with his pipe, the lovers, the man with the
hacking cough, and, of course, the Wartons.
None were there.
Despite the announcement and the driver's taking my ticket,
the bus appeared not yet ready to leave, the familiar vibration of the running
engine absent. And with the police still moving through the terminal outside,
stirring up the bums the way they might dust with a broom, I felt as if I would
be next, that they would spot my face in the window staring back at them.
None did, but many of the seats filled up around me, and
eventually, the driver climbed into his seat, closed the front door, and
started the engine -- a hiss and shift of gear finally sending us on our way,
first backwards, out of the slot the bus had slid into and then forward, out of
the tunnel-like garage and into the open, rainy air.
The bus crawled passed the front of the station, inching
along the curb where the police cars sat, red lights setting the wet pavement
ablaze, as uniformed men stood with car doors open as other cops escorted bum
after reluctant bum from the terminal to car. Inside, the raid continued,
sweeping up the trash as if part of the city's department of sanitation.
Although I had witnessed such scenes before, for some
reason, this moment would remain frozen in my mind, perhaps as evidence to
Hank's claim that we already lived in a police state with the poorest and most
helpless its biggest victims. Horrified passengers and ticket clerks became
permanent fixtures in a stop-action photograph of downtown L.A., and the only
relief I felt at that moment was the fact that I had no place in that image.
If the police intended to catch me there, the bus thwarted
the effort, picking up speed as it pulled onto 1st Street, then onto Los
Angeles Street, and through other streets like Aliso, E. Commercial, for a
brief ride up a ramp onto U.S. Highway 101, headed towards Route 10, the highway
that had brought me to Los Angeles in the first place.
Signs showed for San Gabriel and Rosemead, though neither
meant anything to me except as places I was not likely to see. We passed
through the heart of El Monte and over bridges that might have crossed rivers,
but in the rain, I could not make out the details
Around us, traffic struggled with the rain, L.A.'s
population never quite able to handle weather when it arrives, too spoiled by
the Spring, Summer and Fall when sunlight predominated. Wheels spun to pick up
speed, cars veering badly to avoid contact with crazy drivers changing lanes. I
could not help watching their frustration, faces locked behind windshields that
wipers could not adequately clear, the dust of the landscape making muddy
streaks through which people had to peer.
My vision, impaired less, allowed me to study the signs of
the route, familiar towns passing in the day light that I had previously passed
the other way at night: Whittier, Brea, West Covina. Around us, city streets
glowed with dull lights that the rain darkened day had fooled into remaining
illuminated, houses barely visible to me through the veil -- like ghost towns
of a modern suburbia through I had to pass to get to my intended destination.
The bus towards Pomona thirty miles distant, passed Forest
Lawn and towards San Bernardino beyond that, where we were supposed to turn
north and make the high hump over the San Bernardino Mountains and into the
heart of the Mojave Desert.
In the rain, travel slowed. The bus often came to a halt as
the highway patrol cleared the wreckage of some previous accident, their lights
supplemented by the harsh red glow of flares. The glitter of shattered
windshield the only remaining elements of the disaster by the time we passed,
yet enough for our fellow blood-thirsty travelers to have them slow their cars
to stare.
Yet even these small snarls faded as we put distance between
us and downtown, L.A. as many of the other cars turned off headed for suburban
destinations in Orange County or distant locals that required other highways to
access. We passed towns with names similar to those I had left in the east,
such as Montclair. Then just passed Ontario and just short of San Bernardino,
the bus turned North onto Route 15, passing the city of Upland on our west and
Rialto on our East, catching signs for Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana.
Out the window, I could see the shape of the peak of San
Antonio Mountain hiding its head in the clouds with its wilderness sides
flowing in and out of rain-manufactured fog -- with signs giving us the short
mileage report to Silverwood Lake. Around the mountain, surrounded it, part of
the San Bernardino park, something that soon engulfed us as the road twisted
east then north again, plunging into the center of the park as it climbed
towards a place the signs called Cajon Pass. Once over it, we would descend
towards the dessert, shedding the park and the trees until we made the dessert
at Victorville.
The Mojave Desert in California along with the Sonora Desert
in nearby Arizona has been called the driest corner on the continent, long
brown lands colored by iron ore and borax.
Jedediah Strong Smith -- considered one of American's
greatest explorers -- wandered here in 1826 from the area around the current
Salt Lake City, searching for trade routes and rights for fur trapping.
Now, descending into that space, I felt like an explorer
myself, seeking something greater than fur. We had shed the rainy weather with
the mountains, but we also began to run out of daylight, so that the dessert's
mysteries and its furies were kept secret in the dark, hinted at by the
headlights as the passengers settled down into sleep or reading.
I checked on my luggage, into which I had dumped a couple of
changes of clothing, as well as all that remained of the stolen cash. Although
I had told no one of my leaving, I did not trust the apartment in East L.A. to
hold anything too valuable, and though I could not bring everything, I brought
everything I couldn't afford to lose.
I was a little worried about carrying the gun, so stuffed
that into a compartment of a not-so-portable tape recorder I had brought with
me, hoping that if I got searched anywhere along the line, the police would
miss that. I didn't yet know how thorough police could be.
As with the trip from the east, I could not settle long into
reading, the vibrations of the road and the discomfort of the seat making me
edgy. Worry gnawed at me again as the miles shrank between me and Louise, and I
became more and more certain that I would find the police or my uncles or worse
waiting for me when I arrived.
I didn't even have the other passengers to comfort me the
way I had coming west. Most of the others were headed for Las Vegas, old men
and women rattling cups of change, young punks sipping wine and planning out
their futures based on winnings they'd not yet managed to achieve. Like my
previous bus trip, this bus did have its lovers, two cooing pigeons who were
headed to Vegas to get married, so caught up with each other they hardly
noticed me or the trip or the rowdy characters in the rear.
Comments
Post a Comment