THE HELL OUT OF DODGE

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"Proof that Noah's flood was but a courtesy flush..."



Sorry about the delay, folks; I had actual assignments due this week. Hopefully, I will make a double-post today, time permitting...


EPISODE III: the hell out of dodge. (or, "Are We There, Yet?")

So there we were—not really anywhere at all. It was gridlock everywhere the eye could see, vehicles so limp and lifeless, that many set up tent. But still we rattled on. After an unlikely break in all this deadness, the tumbleweeds blew away, and we accelerated up to five, and sometimes even ten (!), slothful, hard-earned miles per hour(s). Then I heard the last thing that I wished to, but not the worst I would: the bus driver slammed his hands against the wheel, and picking up his phone, called back to base: “Fuck this. We’re dead in the water. We’ll never make it to Longview. The train leaves in an hour anyway, and even if this picks up, we’re four damn hours from being even close. I’m dumping all these people off in Houston.”

Great…our own driver had given up. Houston? Houston had traffic like this on a daily basis, hurricane or no. This was simply worse going to worst, and working on new adjectives to take us even further down below. If this sucked any harder, I’d be getting off, or losing tissue through the wound.

Houston was a greasy netherworld of crusts and scabs, overrun with wino piss and too much rap. While I’m not a racist, I am a music nazi—and (Public Enemy aside) I’ve always hated hip-hop, especially in its neutered Nelly hip-Pop form. It was a strangely motivating reason for my departure from St. Louis to begin: It might be my birthplace, and the Gateway To The West…but I’m not Catholic, and I hate rap; honestly, I had to leave—there was really nothing left. Houston was like St. Louis, only bigger and more congested. The drivers were even worse, if that were possible. It was certainly no place to be stranded.

***

No one spoke to us when we arrived; no one approached us. The impression was that we might be on our own, although this was really never specified. Of the four others on the bus, one poor girl spoke very little English, if she spoke a word at all. I felt sorrier for her than all the rest. Two other passengers, both stout and stocky black girls, surmised the situation, and hit the payphones. One girl apparently had relatives nearby, and the other caught a cab. I was shocked to see the taxis even running, to be honest…but that was the strangest thing about this town—nothing was different than it was on any other given day. Houston, to its credit, was intent to be defiant to the end. I wondered around a bit, while the others were in line at the customer service desk, seeking help. I noticed another bus about to leave. An older gent walked out, and I asked where it was headed. “Oh, we’re running late. This bus is headed to Longview—I have to catch a train to California. We should be leaving any second now; I think the driver is in the bathroom…”

This seemed like a mere writer’s convention, but I assure you that it wasn’t. This was fortune with its pants down, prepare to leave a whizz. I sized it up again—that bus was absolutely packed. My neurons began to fire once again. This wasn’t our bus, and was clearly very full. It was only still here by sheer dumb luck…mine, to be specific. Rather than haggle with the desk for permission or another ticket, I grabbed my goods and hopped aboard while the driver was illdisposed. I motioned for the immigrant girl to follow; I’m not sure that she understood quite why, but she nabbed a seat far in the back. I hope she was going to Longview…I should have checked, in retrospect. Sorry babe; no abla Espanol.
I found a seat that seemed utterly perfect, beneath the air vent and behind one of the many TV screens descending from the roof. Could it get any more perfect? (Wait for it… no, really…wait for it.)

I kept a low profile, in the event that I might be unwelcome, or need another ticket. Logically, it would seem they would almost have to put us on here…it was really common sense; but I just didn’t take that for granted anymore. Strange days, these were.

The trip to Longview lasted through the night. My seat turned out to be less a blessing than I thought: being underneath the vent meant that it never stopped blowing in my face, and that I would perpetually be too cold to fall asleep. Being so close to the TV meant that every grinning idiot on the bus huddled around my seat to watch it, robbing me of any privacy, or a chance to sneak that flask of Mexican tequila out of my bag. It was going to be a long, LONG night. And then…the TV begin to flicker. What sort of evil would this spew toward my eyes? Oh…oh dear…they were playing Sister Act. And I was its taunted hostage.

“At least you didn’t have to sit through Sister Act 2,” you say, amidst your chortles.

Well...what do you think they played after Sister Act?

I was trapped…I was, and would be, Whoopi’s shivering prisoner of pain.

(Sort of like Ted Danson, I suppose…and am I the only one to notice that this demon has no eyebrows?)

***

Shipped out like so much FedEx, we finally arrived in Longview. Longview was on the ass end of Texas, like an aged and crackling dingleberry off the assflaps of a Bush. It was the first cold that I’d felt in well over a year. It was nearing midnight, and alive in all its death. It was blackness, bleakness all around, with acres crawling into miles, filled from ground to empty starry sky will nothing all around. I looked out over the horizon…where was this place? Oh…nowhere…right.
My worst fears soon seemed realized—well, second-to-worst: I wasn’t trapped in an Oklahoma jail next to Celine Dion, a neocon, and a Samoan Scientologist with a penchant for buggery, emo-rock, and forced-intercourse four-ways—but I still seemed pretty screwed: the ticket booth was closed. Anyone who didn’t have a ticket was certainly not getting one at this time.
So here I was...stranded 400 miles from home, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. I had no idea if my girlfriend even made it out, or if my house was still standing. Had all my rotten karma finally come bearing my name? Was this it—me spending the frigid night, sleeping with the hobos in a derailed car, swapping crude stories and trading lude favors for cigarettes and stale donuts, until the ticket booth reopened, and a train became available again?

Finally, after a few moments spent pondering whether or not I could sneak aboard that train—which was set to leave at any minute—I happened upon that immigrant girl again. She was about to become a useful commodity—and not in the way one might think; I’m sure you all have proper concepts of what I’d normally, on any other day, consider using a poor, cute immigrant for. Sure, it was on my mind; but I had bigger fish to penetrate, er, fry.
She looked a bit confused, as if she had no concept of where she was supposed to go. She seemed to understand the word “ticket” when I asked her. She shook her head emphatically “no.” So I marched the poor, cute, visibly-distraught-but-thoroughly cherubic immigrant girl right up to the conductor. Who could resist a face like that? I certainly couldn’t—if this frail gambit failed, I would have loved to use her as a blanket for the night. She sadly and pitifully sobbed something in Spanish—I crossed my fingers and hoped against all other hope it wasn’t “Help! This man’s a rapist!”
The conductor seemed concerned enough; he turned to me, and asked, “Brother, do you know any Spanish? What’s she saying?” I smiled, and said, “She's saying that you really need to open up the ticket booth, because she needs to board this train. If you don’t, she has nowhere to go, and is afraid of being raped by hobos in the cold.”
Okay…so that’s not probably what she said. But like most times when a woman spoke, I didn’t really care what she was saying; I was only there to use her pretty face.
(Wait…I’m sorry—was that out loud?)

The conductor nodded sympathetically, and opened up the ticket booth for her. I hoped that’s what she wanted—to board the train. In retrospect, I suppose I should have checked…

But now I had another problem: I had no idea how much this thing would cost. My funds were rather limited, you know—I had exactly $113, and not a quarter more. I asked how much a ticket to St. Louis would cost. The conductor replied, to my amazement, “$113.” Again, I’m not making that up… The man had no idea how much cash I would have on me; he couldn’t know. This was another synchronicity—a synchro-nicety, really.

Once on board and settled in, there’d be another strange adventure still to come. The weirdness wasn’t over, and the Death Angel had still not fully passed. Thankfully, for me, it seemed he was on break, and tonight was only doing catch-and-release. I supposed he had a larger harvest on the way. Heading south? You bet. He'd been working on the railroad...all the live-long day.


TO BE CONTINUED...


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