by Scott Blade
Widow left the USA Today on the table and stuffed his new book into his back pocket. He walked out to the highway and started looking for a ride, which didn’t take him long. He ended up getting into an old blue Buick with two women who weren’t much older than he was. They wore college-branded clothes—comfortable T-shirts with the same three Greek letters. They were obviously sorority sisters. Widow didn’t recognize the letters or the name of the sorority because he had never been to a public university and had no interest in fraternities or sororities or what he had heard called the “Greek Life.”
The girls were half road-tripping and half on a mission. They explained to Widow that they had begun their trip in Amarillo about a week earlier. They had started as a trio who were best friends through all four years of college. The third friend was getting married in Las Vegas.
Now that school was fading into the past and one of them was getting married, they were going to be split up for the first time, something they were a little nervous about. Therefore, they had thought they should go out on one last adventure—one last road trip from Amarillo to Las Vegas to deliver their missing friend to her wedding. Which they had done.
Widow rode with the two remaining girls the rest of their trip back to Amarillo, which didn’t feel as long as it actually was, not at all, because he had a good time. He had met a lot of drivers on the road. Some talked, and some didn’t. Normally, the ones who talked, talked a lot. They’d ramble on and on, and Widow would nod and smile and try to listen in case he was quizzed afterward. He tried to memorize small tidbits of the conversation so that it seemed like he was interested, even though many times he wasn’t. And sometimes it wasn’t because the driver was boring or he wasn’t interested, but many times different people had similar stories. These drivers tended to be the ones who drove long stretches and were lonely and needed single-serving companionship, which Widow was happy to provide for the ride.
After the girls had accepted him into their fold, he felt for a brief time like he was part of their clique, like he was one of the girls, which made him smile because he was a large guy, a former Navy SEAL, and here he was, having girl talk. But Widow was never one to disrupt the flow. Sometimes going with it was the right course of action. So they talked, and he listened, and then he talked. He told them he was traveling the country like a tourist, and for no particular reason other than just to wander. Sometimes people needed a little more explanation, so he’d say he’d already seen the world. Why not see America?
They drove on I40 east until they winded down into Amarillo. They stopped at a gas station to fill up and asked Widow where he wanted to be dropped off. He shrugged and told them they could leave him at the station if they wanted. But they refused this because they claimed to be new friends, and friends didn’t abandon each other. They asked if he had ever taken the bus, and he told them he had ridden the bus before, but not that often and not for any particular reason. It was just one of those things. He enjoyed walking and following the road. When you buy a bus ticket, you have to choose a destination, and Widow didn’t like to make choices or plans. He didn’t mind hitching rides, but choosing a destination was like having an idea of where he wanted to be, and the truth was that he wanted to be wherever life led him.
But in the end, he decided to ask the girls to drop him off at a bus station, which they did, and they said their goodbyes and good lucks.
Widow stepped up on a curb and stopped next to a man in an old motorized wheelchair. He had a blanket over his legs, and his legs looked a little short, like maybe he was missing part of them from the knees down. Widow didn’t stare, and the guy didn’t ask for money, which Widow hadn’t expected because in his experience across America, homeless people in wheelchairs tended to find better territories than bus stations in which to panhandle for change. People who rode the bus weren’t looking to donate money to charity. Typically, they were at the bus station because they needed to be somewhere and couldn’t afford a plane ticket or didn’t have a vehicle of their own. It wasn’t the best place to find charitable people with spare money. The American bus system was basically a last choice and not a first choice for most people.
Widow walked past the guy without looking at him.
He walked up to a two-story building with red brick that looked orange. He glanced up at three oversized white letters painted high on the building that read BUS. Part of the building was painted white and wasn’t two stories but was attached to the other section.
He walked through a set of double doors into the white part. Inside were maybe a dozen or so people waiting around for buses. He stepped up to a ticket counter where a short guy with one lazy eye stood ready and smiling like he had the best job in the world—different people have different expectations. Widow smiled back because the guy had a warm smile and a glow about him. He might’ve been in his late thirties or early forties. When he spoke, he sounded a little slower than most, but not as dumb as many.
The guy asked, “You need a ticket?”
Widow said, “I do.”
The guy asked, “Where to?”
And for the first time in a while, Widow froze because he was stumped. He hadn’t planned much farther than walking up to the counter.
So he said, “I don’t know.”
The guy continued to smile and asked, “You don’t know where you’re going?”
Widow shook his head.
The guy said, “Well, that’s like most people.” And he chuckled a little at his own joke. Then he said, “Where would you like to go?”
Widow asked, “What are my choices?”
The guy said, “Well, you can go just about anywhere, but I’d suggest taking a direct bus, and that limits your choices by a lot.”
Widow said, “Okay. Where’s the next bus headed?”
The guy tapped his fingers on a keyboard to a computer that was hidden beneath Widow’s line of sight. A first tap. A second tap. He could see the guy staring off to the right at a computer monitor.
And the guy said, “There’s one in thirty minutes, south to Rough Creek.”
Widow asked, “Rough Creek?”
“Yeah. It’s a small town on the way to San Antonio. That’s the soonest bus.”
“Why can’t I just ride the bus to San Antonio?”
“It goes to San Antonio. But the ride from Rough Creek to San Antonio is full. There’s one seat left, but you’ll have to get off in Rough Creek. Another passenger from Rough Creek is already booked for the seat to San Antonio.”
Widow furrowed more than his brows, his whole forehead showed his displeasure.
The guy said, “You can buy a ticket to San Antonio from there. On another bus.”
“Why the hell does your bus stop there anyway?”
“Native American Casinos. There’s two of them. They’re popular.”
Widow thought for a moment and shrugged and said, “Fine. Give me a ticket to Rough Creek.”
The guy clicked away on the keyboard some more and then he said, “That’s fifty-five dollars.”
“Do you take debit?”
The guy said, “Of course, sir. We also have an ATM around the corner. Near the bathrooms. But it has a three-dollar fee for use that is automatically deducted from your bank account.”
Widow backed away from the counter and turned a corner in the lobby. He found the bathrooms and the ATM. He decided to step into the bathroom first because life for him was all about opportunity. He went to a urinal, which had a Power Ranger shoved in it on top of a bright green urinal screen. Widow was finding that he was having a good day so far. Full of little bits of humor.
He did his business and zipped up and walked to the sink, which was the main reason he had gone into the bathroom in the first place because it was the middle of the summer and he was in Texas. Texas wasn’t a friendly state when it came to summer temperatures. It wasn’t as hot as it could’ve been, or even as it normally was, but it was still somewhere in the eighties, and Widow had been sweating
from the moment he stepped out of the blue Buick. He felt the need to wash his face.
He stood over the sink, ran the water as cold as he could get it, and splashed it in huge shovelfuls with his hands onto his face. His hair had started to grow back out from the last time he had shaved his head. At the moment, he had small, messy sprouts of hair cropping up. Black hair. It wasn’t much, less than an eighth of an inch. In a month, he figured he would have a good half an inch. He debated on shaving it again, just because of the heat, but he wasn’t planning to stay in Texas long. He considered the bus to Rough Creek and thought it sounded quaint, which was something he liked about small towns. Maybe he’d like it there. Maybe he’d stay a while.
After he got his face cold and wet, he didn’t dry it or his hands.
He dug into the pocket of the pair of khaki cargo pants he had obtained back in Colorado. He walked out to the ATM and withdrew some cash. The machine returned his card, ejected the money in crisp twenty-dollar bills, and then shoved out a receipt, which blew downward from an air vent above that rushed cold air out. He ripped the receipt free from the machine and gasped in horror at his dwindling bank account.
Being homeless was getting expensive, he thought. He had money, tucked away in a saving account from when his mother had died and left him a bank account balance from selling his family home. That was some time ago, nearly two years. Widow had stayed in a lot of motels and bought food at least twice a day since then. And he didn’t have a job or investments or stock or any sort of income. Maybe it was time to think about that sort of thing. Better to have money coming in, even if it was a small percentage, because living the life of leisure, which was how he thought of it, was getting expensive.
Widow crumbled up the receipt, tossed it into a wastebasket next to the wall, and returned to the happy guy behind the counter.
He said, “One ticket to Rough Creek, I guess.”
The guy smiled and took three twenties from Widow. He printed a ticket and returned a five-dollar bill back to him.
Widow took the change and the bus pass and stuffed them into his pocket. He smiled and walked out of the bus station and sat on a bench, waiting for the bus.
JACK WIDOW rode the bus, got off in the small town of Rough Creek, and decided that after a nearly fifteen-hour day of riding, he needed sleep. But first, he was hungry. It was already close to midnight. He walked for a bit, stopped at a lounge playing live jazz music, and ate cheese fries and had another coffee—black. He sat at the bar and asked about the town. It turned out that there really wasn’t much to it other than the Indian casinos. He wasn’t a fan of casinos, nothing really against them, per se, just not big on them. So he decided to call it a night and ended up staying in a motel off the highway about a mile from one of the casinos. He got the last room, probably because the spillover from the casino had booked up the rest.
He woke up the next morning to a hot, humid day with a relentless sun. Which only added to the fact that he had no desire to stay in Rough Creek any longer, or Texas, for that matter. So he grabbed a quick breakfast at a McDonald’s and headed to the bus station. He bought a ticket to Shreveport.
About thirty minutes after he’d sat down on a bench in a place far from the other passengers, a little, old lady walked over to the benches across from him. She sat down like she had picked Widow out of everyone else as the guy she wanted to be near. He said nothing to her, but gave her a casual nod.
Another ten minutes passed and the sun felt like it was getting hotter. It fired hot rays down on the earth and across the Texas terrain like it had a personal grudge against the people in the Lone Star State.
Widow sat a little uncomfortably on a black bench that was half-rubber, half-plastic, and completely worn out. He sat straight up with his legs out, feet planted firmly on the cement like tree trunks that had grown up and burst through the pavement. His knees went up higher than everyone else’s who sat around him because he was a big guy, six feet four inches tall. The seats weren’t meant for him. The manufacturer had probably never even imagined that kind of strain on the frame, or the lumbar support required for that kind of man. Which wasn’t exactly what you’d expect in a line of chairs designed to be used by all—a one-size-fits-all situation.
He ignored his slight discomfort on the bench because he was more concerned with the state of health of the woman who sat across from him.
She wore a short-sleeved, button-down black shirt with an unstarched collar like it had been pulled straight out of the laundry and put on. She had a brown skirt on and different color socks, one brown and one pink, which made no sense. He figured maybe she was colorblind. She had a tiny purse, which rested neatly on her lap. A very proper woman, minus the pink sock.
She wore a ring, possibly a wedding ring, on her left hand. It looked ancient but well-kept, polished to a shine, like it held memories of good times, and she wanted to preserve it as long as possible.
She wore little makeup, but what she had on was done like a seasoned professional.
The heat was becoming unbearable for Widow, and he was younger than she was and healthy. He could only imagine how it must’ve felt for her.
She kept looking at him, but every time he returned her gaze, she looked away. Besides the look of concern on her face, she also looked like she wanted to say something, but she stayed quiet anyway.
Widow wasn’t sure if he should speak first or just wait for her. He let this go on for a good while.
Finally, Widow looked at her. He straightened out his back and held his head high, which might’ve been out of habit of seeing an older lady who looked so proper. She reminded him of Mrs. Schneider, a teacher way back in his Sunday school days. She’d been the ruler-wielding type who barked orders like “sit up straight” and “eyes forward.”
He asked, “Ma’am, are you okay? Maybe you should go sit inside where the air conditioner is blasting. Nice and cold. Get outta this heat.”
She didn’t speak.
Widow said, “I can come get you when your bus comes if you want.”
She stayed quiet.
“Ma’am, it’s very hot. Why don’t you step back inside? Let me come get you. I don’t mind. Really.”
The old lady looked at him, her watery eyes filled with a look like she was praying for him to help her. She said, “Oh dear. No, I’m not worried about the heat.”
Widow said, “Tell me. What’s going on?”
She shook her head and said, “I shouldn’t involve you.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
“I need it.”
“So tell me what’s going on.”
The old lady clutched her purse tight and brought it up to her midsection. Her fingers strummed the strap in slow nervous taps like it was a musical instrument. She said, “I don’t know where to start.”
Widow said, “Why don’t you just breathe and start wherever?”
The old woman took a deep breath, a deep inhale.
“Nice and slow.”
She nodded and said, “It’s my granddaughter.”
She reached for her bag. She started with the long zipper, pulled it all the way down to the end of the track, and then she plunged her hand into the bag.
Widow expected her to pull out a cell phone to show him a photo of her granddaughter like grandmothers do, but she didn’t pull out a phone. Instead, she pulled out an actual photograph, a Polaroid. She leaned across the space between the benches.
A normal guy would’ve had to stand up and walk over to her, but Widow had long arms and a long reach, mostly because the old caveman genes never evolved out of his family. He leaned forward and took the photograph. He hadn’t seen a Polaroid photograph in probably a decade, or maybe even two. He hadn’t even known they still existed.
The Polaroid had a black backside and a thin, white trim around the photo on the front side.
He looked at it.
There were two females in the picture. The first was an older version of the other—obviousl
y a mother and daughter.
The mother was attractive. She was Hispanic, no question. She wasn’t too skinny, but far from having too much meat on her bones. She had dyed hair—Widow thought the color was called platinum. She had brown eyes and a great smile. There was a glow to her face. She was a naturally happy person. Widow could tell.
Then there was the little girl, who was around six years old in the photo. She also had a huge smile on her face and that same glow embedded deep in her face. She was laughing. It looked like she was being tickled by her mother. They both looked up and smiled at the same time for the picture. A great moment that didn’t look planned, couldn’t have been. It had that look of real authenticity that people who created catalogs always wanted to capture and use as actual cover photos. Widow figured a professional photographer could’ve been behind it. Perhaps there were tricks of the trade that allowed him to capture such a joyously natural moment, but Widow doubted it. He believed that more than likely, every moment with these two ladies was authentic. He doubted there were ever dull times.
He said, “They’re beautiful ladies. You must be proud.”
The old woman said, “She’s seven. Almost seven.”
“What happened to her?”
The old woman started to cry. She was a sweet old lady, but she didn’t seem to be in a good frame of mind. She said, “I’m so sorry.” And she reached up with her right hand, wiped a single tear off of her face.
Widow stayed quiet.
The old woman said, “My name is Claire Hood. And that’s Jemma. And the older one is Lucy. Lucy’s my daughter-in-law.”
He repeated, “What happened to Jemma?”
Claire said, “It’s my son.”
She paused a beat and looked around. She said, “He’s not well. He makes mistakes. He’s a mixed-up man. His name’s James.”
“What did he do to her?”
Claire’s lip started to tremble and quiver. She looked like she was on the verge of more tears, and maybe she would’ve started gushing tears, but she also looked very, very tired, like she’d been up for days.