The Juke (Changes Book 2) Page 10

  “Look, I’m all alone out here. I really need a lift bad. Just to the nearest town…” He again tried to look helpless, but was also unrelenting.

  “I can’t…”

  “Please, sir…I could get killed out here. Someone tossed me out here…I got nobody to pick me up…”

  He heard a woman’s voice behind the driver say, “You can’t leave him out here…”

  “It’s against company policy, ma’am. I can’t give him a ride…” he said over his shoulder.

  “Just to the next town…” the voice directed.

  The driver looked at the voice in the rearview mirror, then down to Frank. He was shivering now, and it wasn’t an act.

  “Okay, listen…I take you as far as the next town. That’s Springfield. I drop you off, and that’s that, okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks…”

  “Okay, get on.”

  Frank scurried up the steps and took the first seat on the right side of the bus, just past the driver. Nobody was in this row. He looked over to his left and saw an older woman sitting under a blanket, three rows behind him. He smiled at her. She smiled back, leaned her head against the window, and closed her eyes.

  “I’m serious…no farther than Springfield…” the driver reinforced as he pulled out into traffic.

  “Yes, sir, I understand.”

  The hard shifts of the old bus made him lurch back and forth. He again regarded the road ahead of him.

  The road took secrets. The road took desperate people. The road didn’t judge. How many men, how many desperate men, had taken this road? How many had seen this same gray line, hoping to be free? Did their ghosts shamble up and down this highway? The road was egress and ingress. Sometimes it was a destination all its own. There’s no turning back now. He wanted to roll past cities and over miles of highway. Feel the road rolling under him.

  “How much is a bus ticket?” Frank asked, just audibly.

  “Why?”

  “Just curious…wondering what a ticket to Philly usually costs is all.”

  “Those who left Reno paid about a hundred fifty.”

  “How about if I bought a ticket?”

  The driver looked up at him in the rearview mirror.

  “Can’t do it…you gotta go to a station and buy a ticket.” The driver continued to regard him.

  Frank looked over his shoulder and saw that the bus was sparsely populated. “Look, you’re not filling this bus up. I’m just looking to get to Philly…”

  The driver was still regarding him. He looked between Frank and the road a few times. He motioned Frank to him with a single finger. When Frank was next to him, he said in a low voice, “Three hundred.”

  “What?”

  “Three hundred.”

  “Why so much?”

  “Well, you look like someone on the run. No offense…” He downshifted up the next hill. “I figure you’re running from the law. Three hundred keeps you on the bus and keeps me quiet.”

  Frank looked around. Nobody seemed to hear them. The woman under the blanket seemed to be sleeping. He nodded to the driver and went back to his bag. He opened the small pocket on the side of his duffel. He pulled out wet bills and counted them. Three hundred was almost all he had left. He looked out the window and could just see the outline of his face. But only darkness where his eyes were. Scraggly beard and shaggy hair. He stood up and handed the driver the wet bills. The driver put them in his shirt pocket, all the while scanning his passengers. Frank slid back to his seat.

  “Just sit tight, sir. We have a rest stop in Columbia, then I’ll be driving through the night.”

  He pulled out his wallet and took out the familiar picture. It was damp. The edges were worn. He looked at the smiling faces of his children. Proud, tall boys. Little Ruth’s gap-toothed grin. He now regretted scratching out Shelly’s face. This picture had caught a happy moment in his life. A moment only. That moment was now all he had to remember them. That moment might have been their last. It might be all his children had to remember him.

  Distance. Longing. Emptiness. These spirits wrestled inside him. Fought for control.

  He looked again at the road ahead of him, thumbing the photo. The rain picked up, and the red taillights around him would dissolve into the darkness, only to reappear in new shapes and sizes. He could just make out the profiles of those around him. A sea of profiles, like schools of swimming fish, all trying to get somewhere on this rainy night.

  And these outlines, profiles, and red swimming lights were his new friends. He was now in love with the road ahead of him. His new path was his only endearment. Now he would be in love with the road itself, as it would never betray him. It would never lie to him. The road, after all, is truth. The path in front of him held no obfuscation and had no ulterior motive. It was a direction he could believe. It was a bare honesty that only made sense to him now, and it made the only real sense he could summon together at this moment. The road is verity and validity. Everyone knows its direction, and you could touch it and see it and believe it. It was all he had, and he would embrace it.

  And there would be no turning back. No reverse. No U-turn. Forward. Along this gray and rolling artery. Mile after mile. He would point himself into the wind and drive for all he had. He put the still-damp picture in his wallet.

  He felt the bus wheels bump over uneven road, road that was pitted and scarred. Seen from a distance, the road was a long, smooth gray strip. Up close it was filled with angry sores from weather and wear. Frank was the same.

  When a bolt of lightning flashed in the distance, he again saw the outline of his face in the window beside him. It ended his reverie. He rested his head against the glass and fell asleep almost instantly.

  XII

  The East. Old. Uneven. Tight narrow streets and five-way intersections. Confined. Pockmarked and blemished. The East is a man who lived too hard, was prematurely aged and diseased. Stately old cities of the East are young compared to Old World capitals, but they had grown and lived too quickly. Nearing death. Rheumy, decaying, waiting to give up the ghost.

  As the bus lurched over the Schuylkill River on the 676, Frank took in the tall buildings and traffic of Philadelphia with the long shadows of the afternoon. The rain had subsided earlier as they cut through Delaware on the 95, and now the sun was shining through the clouds, stinging his eyes just a bit. Passing under the overpasses, he would go from dark to light, dark to light, and the sudden transition would startle his vision every time. He wished he had sunglasses.

  Taking the Ben Franklin Parkway, the bus soon swung into the parking lot of the bus station. Frank saw the crowds of people moving into and out of buses. This was bad for him, as he was likely a wanted fugitive. He anticipated arrest warrants waiting for him, and perhaps they were even tracking him on this bus. He put on a ball cap, nodded to the driver on the way out the door, and stepped into the spring air of early afternoon.

  He pointed himself toward the red-brick row houses, and started walking with a purpose. He slung the duffel over one shoulder and kept his face cast to the ground. When he reached the old homes and slid into the backstreets, he relaxed a bit. No shouts, no whistles, no sirens, no cops. Nobody knew he was here. Yet.

  So then he walked, now more leisurely.

  Where does one go when one has nothing to do? Frank hadn’t lived without a purpose his entire adult life. He always had more things to do than time to do them. People had expectations of him. He had people counting on his actions. He was always expected to deliver on deadlines, and his calendar was packed with a full, active life. Now, he knew he had nowhere to go at all. He knew nobody would help him. He was alone and unneeded. People still wanted him, he was sure, but for different reasons. He had a small roll of cash, which wouldn’t last long. He knew using banks and IDs would create a trail, so they would only be used in a pinch and only when he was ready to move on.

  His shoes were still damp from the rain. His clothes had dried, but now sweat began to wet his shirt
. So he walked. And kept walking. One foot in front of the other. Moving in a straight line, it didn’t matter where. It felt good to be walking, and he stretched away the road stiffness.

  When he came to a gas station, he stepped into the bathroom around the side. He fished out his pistol and stuck it into his pants at the small of his back, cinching his belt tighter. He turned to the mirror, and with his long shirt over it he could barely notice the bulge. He scratched at his scraggly beard, and he seemed like a different man. He pulled the duffel over his shoulders, which pressed the pistol against his tailbone. Still, he felt he would need it to protect himself here on the tough streets of Philly. He was right.

  Philadelphia freedom, after all, was hard-fought and hard-won.

  And so again he walked, turning down Arch Street. He moved through a small business district and then passed a few restaurants. The food smelled good and he was hungry, but he didn’t want to show up on security cameras if he could avoid it. Just in case they came looking. Just in case there was an APB out for him. All he knew about justice he had seen on television shows, and he half expected squad cars to come screeching up at any moment.

  He walked like he had a purpose. He walked as if he knew exactly where he was going. He rolled his shoulders under the weight of the duffel, and avoided eye contact. He wanted to be sure people knew he wasn’t to be fucked with, and the gun gave him the high hand in any altercation. He also knew that any sign of a gun would get him attention he didn’t need, so it was only the very last line of defense.

  He could smell the Delaware River as he approached it. He could see the docks and piers and knew this would be no place for him. He turned south on Front Street and kept walking. The sun was lowering, and he knew he would need a place to sleep.

  As the sun neared the horizon, he came upon the Korean War Memorial Park. On his left, the smaller Spruce Street Harbor Park rolled out to the water. The trees near the water looked dark. A good place to sleep for the night.

  He entered the park and passed through the trees. He saw a ship harbored to his right. It appeared to be an old warship. Just past it another ship was harbored, this one an old sailing ship. He was alone in the park. Alone with the sound of the water. Alone with the creak of ropes and wood under pressure. Alone with the soft breeze and the squirrels in the trees.

  He walked to the water and sat down. He put the duffel behind him and sat cross-legged, looking out to the water. He had stayed busy to keep his thoughts at bay, but now he opened himself and surrendered to them. He let the swirling vortex of feelings and images compete for his attention, his mind whirling with these images. Tony’s piss stain. Red’s red Camaro. The courthouse. The judge’s black robes. The meat-fisted van driver. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Ruth. The smell of gunpowder and pistol oil. The hum of the highway. Rain on his window.

  All these images contested and ran through him with blinding speed…but he wanted them out. He didn’t want them in his mind’s eye. He wanted to clear the slate. So he focused on the river. The blue river. Not muddy like the American River back home, but dark all the same. A timeless river. A historic river.

  As he sat near the water, legs crossed, he took in the power of the river. He took in its strength. It could build cities, yes. Water was mighty. Its waters gave life to people and animals. The water was the giver of life. But it could also take life. How many ships rested at the bottom of these waters? How many were on the ocean floor? Water was weight. It was power. Yet it flowed and gave life and under its surface hid secrets. On its surface people had sailed and traded and migrated throughout history. Fish from this river fed the people of the city. The river, then, was as powerful as any god. Ancient peoples had worshipped river gods, lake gods, ocean gods. They knew then what he knew now.

  And the river was as fluid as time. The river was cycle. A vast cycle. It was never the same at any point in time someone looked at it. The water he saw now flowed past him and was gone from his sight, replaced by other water. Rivers flowed to the sea. And oceans swelled. The water vaporized, turned to clouds. Clouds dumped water, which then flowed into rivers.

  Were people the same? We dump our carcasses into the earth, which swallows us. Yet food pushes up from the earth from our decay. And humans eat that food. Earth, then, was like a river or an ocean. Earth and water. Consumption and growth and return.

  A tree pushed up from the humus. It swayed in the breeze and tasted the air for the soil below it. A tree was the same as the hair on skin, moving and sensing and sending signals for what lies beneath. They push into the clouds, drawing from the soil and sending back to it. A send-and-receive vector for a spinning ball of rock hurtling through space.

  Circles. Cycles. We were locked into them. Never free of them. Dependent on them, in fact. Any process that stopped ended all life around it. When the heat of summer dries up the pools of water on the African plains, all life ends. When the rain returns, it feeds the earth, and life flourishes. No matter man’s growth and knowledge and technology, every person on the earth counted on these cycles wholly.

  He felt at once as if the stars and history and life and water and earth filled him. His eyes were closed, and he was feeling the universe—all life—flowing into and through him. He was a piece of stardust on a ball of rock and water, flying through the vastness of space. And yet this speck of dust was interconnected with all around him in ever-widening circles. If he pushed out with his soul, he sent ripples through the galaxies. Across time. Through matter light and dark.

  In each breath he inhaled particles from exploded stars. Each exhale sent reshaped molecules back out to the cycles and circles. He was consuming the universe with each breath and creating a new, changed universe with each exhalation. He ate life and returned death. He consumed plants and animals, and his leavings, his dead tissue, his excrement fed new life around him. His body would feed worms someday, and plants would grow from his rot.

  He didn’t know how long he had sat in his musings, but he felt a ripple in the space around him. Felt a presence. He jerked his head, and his hand found the pistol behind him.

  He saw two older men in ragged clothes, both with packs and carrying plastic bags. They were seeking a place to sleep. They saw him, but they weren’t approaching any closer than they needed to. Like all homeless, they knew that they had to set boundaries without ever challenging anybody around them. They were setting up their bedding near the tree closest to Frank. He now scanned the park, and saw other dark shapes moving about, setting up for the cool evening ahead of them. Some had blankets. Some had only plastic and newspapers. All had something, but piled in a mound together nothing worth more than a few dollars. It was like a post-apocalyptic movie…hungry, dirty scavengers sleeping in the open air, hoping bandits and predators left them alone for a while.

  Frank knew this park was frequented by homeless for the same reason he chose it.

  He looked back at the two old men near him. Both watched him with their peripheral vision. He reached into his duffel and found the blanket he had packed. He used the bag itself for a pillow. He pulled the blanket over him, and set the pistol on his stomach under the cover. He was more tired than he thought and fell asleep quickly.

  XIII

  Frank found it important to stay moving. Too much staying put made him vulnerable to many things, especially theft and violence. He made use of public lockers and facilities when possible. YMCA showers. Lobby restrooms. Naps in a coffeehouse. Food was inconsistent, but the longer he was on the streets, the more places he knew to find it. He knew which restaurants tossed their uneaten food into dumpsters when they closed. He knew which churches offered food on which days. He kept a calendar in his head and knew where to be to stay fed and which parks were the safest. He was lean from the streets, and there were no signs of the paunch he had maintained in his early thirties. He was wiry and tanned. In other circumstances, he would have been considered in great shape.

  Still, his hair and beard grew ever shaggier and unkempt. His
clothes became ragged, and he needed layers of them, and those layers were filthy. Where he once wore Italian leather shoes, he now wore castoff sneakers he found in a dumpster. Instead of Hugo Boss, he wore layers of Goodwill shirts, with an army surplus jacket over the top. He began to smell, and he couldn’t get the stench off. Not just body odor, but soot and mold smells. He got used to them, but he began to see the eyes of others look away hurriedly. Their noses turned when he was close. Businesses began to shoo him away. Children laughed and adults huffed and tsked. He was a shambling mound of rags, offending all around him.

  So he kept moving and shunned contact.

  On a warm summer day, he found himself downtown on Market Street. There were long lines of tourists, and the streets were crowded. He kept to the edges, trying to discern his location. He realized he was standing across a green field from Independence Hall.

  He moved to a row of trees, and admired the brick façade and the white cupola crowning it. He moved across the expansive lawn. He approached warily, especially when he saw police near the entryway. This visit was fraught with peril, but he had nothing else to do. He remembered seeing photos of it as a child, and paintings of all those Founding Fathers signing a document that once meant so much to him. He had never found himself here and was impressed by its presence. He gazed at the statue of Washington, so stately and proud.

  When he approached the side entrance into the rear courtyard, he fell in behind a family. Each person in front of him was emptying their pockets, opening their purses, and throwing out any bottled water.

  The tired mother holding a blonde-haired little girl in front of him took no notice, but the child in her arms looked right at him. She was staring blankly with big green eyes. He looked back at her and smiled.

  The girl shrieked, and buried her face in her mother’s shoulder. Frank had forgotten the forming gaps in his mouth…bad diet and lack of care had quickly taken their toll. The mother turned around sharply, and gave him eye daggers. She looked him over and took in his filthy attire. She could smell his musty stench. She put herself between her delicate little child and the filthy man she saw behind her. She looked urgently to the man beside her.