She’s shriveled down to almost nothing. Each breath she takes is a labor. Still smiling, still glad to see me. I can’t bear to tell her the truth.
I was on my way to see her in the hospital, just outside of Charlottesville, and the Greyhound caught a shudder in the drive train. All engine noises ceased, replaced by various “what-the-fuck”s and “you’ve-got-to-be-kidding”s. Indignant first-timers’ protests, outraged by not getting their sixty bucks’ worth, mingled with veteran road-warriors’ one-of-those-days, happens-all-the-time mutterings.
“Did the bus just die?” asks a passenger who already knows the answer.
“Sho as shit did,” declares the driver, who was waiting for this to happen.
He waits a few, turns the key and hope springs eternal as the dinosaur coughs back to life, and we get another mile or two before the inevitable rises its ugly head and brief history repeats itself. This happens three more times before he throws in the towel and calls back to Richmond for help.
Acknowledging the circumstance, we all get off the bus, on the side of some poorly marked highway in front of somebody’s house. The more stoic passengers prepare for the long haul by producing from their bags all the available mind-altering chemicals necessary to keep from having an episode. The good-ol-boys on the porch offer rolling papers and a ride to the store. I sent a dollar with them for a water, and realized I should have sent three dollars for something stronger.
Turns out the company fed this poor driver to the wolves. They knew the bus was a goner, but sent him out with it anyway. He had to pick up a disabled passenger between here and Dallas, and this was the only bus equipped with a wheelchair lift. Luckily, among us passengers, the cooler heads prevailed and word spread that it wasn’t his fault, it was just The Man once again being an asshole.
Everyone gets more irate with each passing hour. The few snacks, beers and laughs available are exhausted quickly, but we’re all in it together. Everyone resorts to trading “where-ya-headeds” for “where-ya-beens” and various other bullshit. Two Arkansans, a seventeen-year veteran of the Fire/EMS department, and her 23-year-old son, twice divorced and proud owner of (no bullshit) over 750 misdemeanor charges, charm the hell out of me. Another guy, a 300 pounder on his way to truck driving school in Memphis, regales us stories of fights he’s been in, one in which he and his brother, after being insulted by some guy, chained the doors shut in a Denny’s, and beat every man in there until the strobe lights showed up. “Not one woman was harmed,” he bragged over his chinstrap/goatee. I tell them all that most of my life I’ve successfully avoided real violence by either being funny, patient or savvy enough to either run like hell, or carry an empty beer bottle in my pocket and when the time came, smash it over my head and yell, “YOU WANT SOME?!” The respect is mutual. The bottom line is we’ve all got scars and stories to go with them.
Chaz, a door-to-door salesman with facial tattoos and balls like grapefruits, pulls a Frogger across the highway to ask for some snacks for the huddled masses. “Five bucks says they shoot his black ass,” says the enormous would-be trucker.
“No bet,” says I. “First shot I hear, I’m ducking behind your fat ass.” We both laugh, hoping we’re wrong, but this is the Commonwealth.
He is successful, and we give him a standing ovation. He hauled in eight Dr. Peppers, 16 Pop-Tarts, and 20 packs of crackers, which we split between about 50 people. Life is good.
After three hours, a black pickup truck arrives, and the drunk redhead in the brown skirt yanks my sleeve. “Hey, you’re going to Roanoke, right?”
By now everybody knows I’m going to the hospital to visit my last grandparent, we’ve all bowed our heads together in prayer. These strangers care about her as if she were their own.
I hop in the back with Shay, a guy who builds prisons for a living, on his way to get the last of his stuff out of his girlfriend’s house, a junkie who pawned his brand-new Mossburg pistol-grip assault shotgun, which he had not fired even once. “I’ll get it back one way or another,” he yells over the din of the highway.
“Look at it this way,” I holler, “At least you didn’t get to love the gun before she hawked it. At least it wasn’t grandaddy’s gun.” His eyebrows raise and a slight smile signals his agreement. “True.” Nothing else needs to be said.
Just as I begin to think that despite it being a shitty afternoon, I was on my way and there are worse fates than watching the Blue Ridge Mountains fly by, wind in my hair and all that, when the raindrops start to catch up with us. Somehow we raced them all the way to Mill Mountain, and I made it to the hospital just barely damper than when I started.
I dash into the elevator, hastily snagging myself a palm-full of hand sanitizer, trying to scour away a day’s worth of forehead-rubbing and head-scratching. I follow the signs to Room 1025, and there they all are, waiting for me.
She’s barely there anymore, but she beams at me. I tell her she’s beautiful and her hair looks great. We linger for an hour before it’s obvious she can’t take any more company, needs another pain pill and a good night’s sleep. We file out slowly, hoping she’ll still be there in the morning. I’m the last to leave, I kiss her and she asks me questions I don’t want to answer. I tell her I’ll see her in the morning.
