Seven minutes until the hour and the 12:01 to Kansas City
hasn't boarded yet. The driver announced a delay – some
“beer problem” he called it. Jefferson Lines – the great
Western Carrier from Minneapolis to Sioux City, Rapid City,
through Bozeman and Billings and west, until Seattle –
can't keep to a schedule for shit, and a drunk with a weak stomach
is one more reason to shave 10 minutes off a 15 minute smoke break
in Mitchell, South Dakota, home of the Corn Palace.
Strangers chit chat to pass the time.
It was 106 in St. Louis yesterday. Be 110 tomorrow.
Full moon madness brought to full fruition by the heat.
The western lands are burning.
(The Kentucky Hills are, too –
but no one notices when poor folks
go up in smoke.)
No storms predicted southbound.
But north of here, tornadoes fomenting,
and the rain is never enough anywhere
in spite of the prayers offered
by lips too parched to articulate
highfalutin' words
from a centuries dead faith.
Ten minutes to after the hour.
The bus to Kansas City rolls out
nine minutes late –
in spite of passengers bum rushing the door.
I want to smoke; but the night air is a wall of heat
93 degrees in the city –
and it's after midnight
and I am tired.
Eighteen hours to Cincinnati
via Chicago … where I have no friends...
then Indianapolis, which is kind to no one
with the smell of the Ohio River in his veins
then Dayton, where the alien bodies are kept.
Tomah, Wisconsin. It's 3:40 in the morning.
I am smoking in the middle of a McDonald's parking lot,
debating about buying coffee I know
will not satisfy and hoping against hope
I might get some more sleep –
that, not surprisingly, does not come.
The bus smell of salty grease,
burnt and watered down coffee,
and heat lamp cooked ketchup for miles
deep into the Eastbound darkness.
Chicago terminal 9 AM. Enough time to find my line
and pick a good place. There is no solace among the familiar faces,
the red shirted station attendant will not answer my questions.
I am surrounded by mothers traveling with children,
beat cops and private security pushing off the ne'erdowells,
(I have a ticket. They can do nothing to me.)
Passengers and travelers jockeying for a better position in line
hoping for whatever their definition
of a good seat is, praying
they will not have to sit next to anyone
and risk the conversation
or the potential body odor of someone
who has not had time to brush his teeth
or put on stink covering deodorant,
or to even change his clothes.
They do not know that traveling is as dirty as it is glorious:
that the world rubs off on you – whether you like or not –
and that humanity is glorious and smelly and crude
and honest and ugly and beautiful
and does not care whether you care or not.
We crossed into the Eastern Time zone around 10AM.
Taking note of the time on my cell phone
(which insists on counting for me)
and changed the time on my wristwatch.
I prefer old clock faces to digital time,
the sweeping of the hands lends the passage of seconds
a more poetic feel. Digital clocks tick fast
and no one notices until it reads the hour
they are waiting for:
Alarm.
Go to work.
Start work.
Finish work.
Go home.
Sleep.
Respite
is a sweaty hour at the gym.
Salvation is Friday cocktails with the women from the office,
when the office shrew will let her freckled tits hang out
and maybe not object to a casual grope,
but living to tell the revised tale to her husband:
though the other women will not forget
and will find some way to mention it
in some secret interdepartmental report.
The clock face lends the passage of time,
which sometimes passes too too fast, just a smidgen of grace.
(Which a vagabond needs in these interesting times,
in the parlance of the ancient Chinese proverb.)
Indianapolis is a quick change, not even time to get fresh water.
Just past the halfway mark, another 8 hours to go,
though it is, I know, only 90 minutes straight to Cincinnati down I-74.
The cafeteria window is closed for lunch
and none of the vending machines accept loose change,
and the drink machines all have signs warning me
they are not keep anything cold enough
and that I buy at my own risk.
Even the water from the fountain is warm
and tastes like old minerals.
We got off schedule somewhere between Indy and Gary,
there was no time to stop. And no one wanted to, anyway.
Smokers only get bitchy on night buses, when they can't sleep
and the drivers are sourly and unsympathetic.
Down I-70 into Ohio. Outside of Clayton and Englewood,
the landscape started to roll more
the way it does in the southwest corner of the state,
formed by receding glacier that formed the riverbed
and the seven hills. An hour and twenty minute layover
and an hour bus ride down 75, into the city
via the Norwood Lateral, Gilbert Avenue,
and into one of the main arteries downtown,
next to the casino being built
(that has already collapsed once).
Construction is ongoing, the Hamilton County Sheriff
needs a solid retirement plan, when graft and petty racism
run out.
The bus rolls in at 8:30 – a full 10 minutes early
(slower holiday weekend traffic). I step off the bus,
into the humid Ohio Valley summer air,
and hold my breath for moment
giving my soul a chance to adjust
to the stark change in scenery.
THANKS FOR READING. Look for a post about the trip from Minneapolis to Cincinnati in the next day or so.
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