Looking for Przybylski

by K. C. Frederick

  The other man snorts. “Hell, if this bus lasts the year it would surprise me. The company I work for wouldn’t let a piece of junk like this on the road. Have you heard how it strains through the gears? If this were a horse, it would already be in the glue factory.”

  Ziggy looks at him disbelievingly.

  “Maybe you’re wondering why I’m riding this bus at all,” he says. “Sometimes I wonder myself. Call it professional curiosity. And then,” he chuckles, “I do get a substantial discount.” It’s dark and the man’s face is half-turned so that Ziggy can’t get much of a look at him; but somehow he has the feeling that this guy’s enjoying a private joke, only it seems to be a joke that isn’t very funny.

  “I heard what that guy said,” Lennie tells Ziggy when he settles back into his seat. “I knew it. I had a bad feeling when I got on board.” He shakes his head. “This is exactly like some movie I saw as a kid.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ziggy says. “This isn’t a movie. Things are going to be fine.” What else is he supposed to say? “Take the plane,” Maggie had urged him. “You’ll be there in a flash.” But no, for some reason he’d insisted on doing it this way, as if it was a penance a priest had assigned him in the confessional. Trying to sleep in his seat has been penance enough, but he figured that was going to be a short-term pain in the ass. He certainly never counted on weather delays. He looks outside. It’s hard to gauge their progress, but it’s clear they’re going nowhere near the speed limit. There’s no way they’ll get to St. Louis on time unless the driver really stands on the pedal later on. It’s not going to help to think about things you can’t do anything about, though.

  “Are you really going to be working as a comedian?” Ziggy asks Lennie. “You mean like Red Skelton or Milton Berle?”

  “Well, no,” Lennie says, “not exactly.” His nose wrinkles as if Ziggy’s called him a name. “Those guys are, like, from vaudeville days. I’d say my stuff is more like Mort Sahl’s or, say, Bob Newhart’s.”

  Ziggy nods at the last name, which he vaguely recognizes, though in truth he hasn’t kept up with the comics on TV. What’s so bad about Uncle Miltie anyway?

  “Do you know Robert Klein?” Lennie asks and Ziggy shakes his head. Lennie sighs. “Really, you know, it’s such a long shot even to think of making it like those guys.” He’s silent for a while. “I have an agent there who’s going to look for gigs for me.”

  Ziggy’s never understood exactly what an agent’s supposed to do. “That should be a help,” he says nevertheless. “Does this agent have anything lined up for you once you get there?”

  Lennie shrugs. “Like real jobs?” he says with a frown. “No, he figures that’s going to take a while. But he promised to set me up with some kind of work I can do while I’m looking for opportunities and getting around, going to comedy clubs, doing some improv, making connections.”

  The bus by now has slowed to the pace of a funeral cortege and the once-sleeping passengers are all astir, energized by the storm. The man on a busman’s holiday introduces himself as Royall K. Spears (“Plain Roy’ll do, though.”) and offers a silver flask to Ziggy and Lennie. Ziggy takes a gulp: some kind of bourbon, anything but velvety as it goes down, but appreciated. Lennie hesitates a moment before taking a modest sip and returning the flask, his eyes glistening. In the midst of this unexpected distraction, a general camaraderie seems to be sweeping the bus. The strumming of a guitar coming from the front is interrupted by someone’s shout: “Can you play ‘Nearer, my God, to Thee?’ ” which produces a burst of laughter from some, though it seems clear that not everybody’s taking the situation so lightly. Ziggy thinks of the bus driver, trying to squeeze in a visit to his daughter as he slowly pilots his vehicle through sheets of rain while whips of lightning slash across the black sky. There may be floods ahead, bridges may be out, and he’s driving a rundown jalopy of a bus. Ziggy can imagine the man’s grim and desperate determination, grimly pushing on while half his passengers are partying and the other half are praying.

  At the moment, though, Ziggy’s feeling surprisingly good. Maybe it’s just that swallow of booze, but he realizes that he’s glad to be part of all this. True, he’d already have landed in California by now if he’d have taken a plane, but unless the plane crashed, the trip couldn’t be anything like the adventure he’s experiencing.

  “You don’t sound like you come from New Jersey,” he says to Royall Spears when he’s passed on the latest bit of news. “If I may say so.”

  “I guess that’s not hard to figure out,” the man says. “I’m from Texas originally but, hey, you go where the money is.”

  “You headed back to Texas?” Ziggy asks. “On your vacation?”

  The man shakes his head. “I’m visiting my son,” he says, his eyes going suddenly dark. “He’s at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.” After a moment, he asks, “You ever serve in the armed forces?”

  Ziggy shakes his head. “I had a deferment during the war,” he explains. “I had a family.” It’s not a subject he’s comfortable with, since the war was a boom time for the numbers and Ziggy really raked it in during those years, while so many others from the neighborhood served and some were even killed, like his friend Vince Nadolnik. He was going to set up Vince in the numbers when he got back. Get into something safe, he kept telling him, like the quartermasters corps, don’t be a dummy and put yourself somewhere they’re going to be shooting at you. But Vince was stubborn, he wound up in the infantry at Anzio, where he was first declared missing and finally dead—a hero, his commanding officer had written to Vince’s widow, Helen. Ziggy had a hard time connecting that word to the fun-loving horse-faced Vince he’d known before his friend had enlisted, the kid who’d pulled the fire alarm at school so that they didn’t have to spend the pleasant spring day inside. The word “hero” turned him into someone else, someone Ziggy didn’t know.

  “Hey,” Big Al used to say, “we’re performing a service with the numbers by keeping up morale. Think people are just going to spend all their time building tanks and planes? We brighten up their lives, give them a little sizzle, a little hope. FDR ought to give us medals.”

  Yeah, and Ziggy sure was brightening up Helen Nadolnik’s life when he went to see her after they’d heard about Vince, bringing her little gifts like ham and butter that were hard to get in those days; and talking with her about Vince and how unbelievable it was that he was gone and the empty way it made you feel, until . . . well, they were consoling each other, he kept telling himself.

  Ziggy doesn’t want to think about any of that, least of all how he had to abruptly break off the affair when things got too complicated. It was one of the worst times of his life. There’s no way of knowing how much Maggie knew about Helen, but Maggie’s not dumb. In the end, he wound up hurting both of them. And why? He still doesn’t understand why some things happened. The numbers brought him a lot of good things, sure, but there was a lot of grief along the way too.

  Christ, though, this is something he hadn’t counted on: with all the time to himself on this trip, the memories keep being dredged up. He thought he’d got all that under control long ago.

  He’s grateful that Spears has passed back a photo of a young guy in an army uniform. The G.I. in the picture looks like a million other soldiers, but Ziggy says, “Nice looking kid. He have any brothers and sisters?”

  The man hesitates before answering. “No,” he says at last. “Tyler’s all the family I have.” He clears his throat. “Lou, my wife, died five years ago.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Ziggy says, and the man falls silent, no doubt caught up in sad memories. What the hell must it be like, after all, to be a widower? For five years too. You drive a bus for a living, and when you have some time off you get on another bus and travel a couple thousand miles to an army base to see your kid. He sure hopes father and son get along better than he and Charlie do.

  It’s quieted around them now and Ziggy’s attention turns again to the outside, where there’s been
no letup in the storm. The rain keeps pounding the bus and he can hear the whistling of the wind on the other side of the window. Lennie is quiet, looking straight ahead. Even in the darkness, he seems to have turned paler.

  Ziggy settles back in his seat and closes his eyes. It’s not just his trip anymore: this bus may be carrying him toward a showdown with Przybylski, but it’s also taking Lennie either to some kind of recognition or to obscurity; it’s taking their bus driver to a visit to a daughter he probably fears he’s lost in the breakup of his marriage; and it’s taking the transplanted Texan to a meeting with his son that seems more than just casual—this is a bus-ful of stories. And that’s not even counting the storm they’re driving through that’s battering the plains. Whatever he’d been expecting, this sure isn’t what Ziggy bargained for.

  When they approach the outskirts of a town, marked by the familiar shopping strip, he comes alert. The department stores, supermarkets, fast food joints, pet shops, beauty parlors and auto supply stores are shut down at this time of the night, but the flashing lights of police cars and tow trucks are reflected in the plate glass windows.

  “What’s up?” Lennie asks as the bus slows down to make a wide turn into a residential street.

  “Looks like they’re sending us on a detour,” Ziggy tells him. For a few blocks the big vehicle lumbers slowly past deep-porched houses set behind generous lawns. From the time he was a kid the briefest glimpse of places like that made him wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a small town. How would his life have been different? Would he have become a different person? At last, they leave this street of houses and emerge on another road, presumably on the other end of town. As the bus executes this maneuver, word gets around among the passengers that a portion of the highway they were supposed to travel on has been closed because of a tornado that apparently touched down somewhere near here. So we’re close to this thing now, Ziggy thinks, following in its tracks. Even here, in a seemingly safe area, limbs ripped from trees lie in driveways. Further along he becomes aware of more damage from the big wind: a marquee that’s been torn from its supports dangles in front of the entrance to a bank, a utility pole leans drunkenly, sparks from a nearby wire crackle on the wet pavement. Everywhere lights flash, men in slickers are gesturing, and through the bus window he can faintly hear the sounds coming from a bullhorn. What was it that the Indian in Chicago said about nature taking its revenge? If I start believing he had anything to do with this, Ziggy thinks, I’ll really have gone off the deep end.

  The driver has already announced that their next scheduled stop has been delayed. Sitting beside Ziggy, Lennie looks on forlornly, as if this scene of devastation is pretty much what he’d expected when he’d signed on for this trip.

  “We’ll stop somewhere,” the driver says after a while, making no effort to hide the frustration in his voice, “only I don’t know where.” And on they continue.

  Ziggy comes awake suddenly and realizes that the bus has pulled to a halt. Where are they? A check of his watch tells him it’s well past midnight. When he looks out the window, he can see that they’re in the wet parking lot of an all-night restaurant and the driver is announcing a twenty-minute stop. Because of the hour, some people who are trying to sleep choose to stay on the bus, but Ziggy is among those who get off, and Lennie’s decided to join him.

  “Smell the air,” he says when they’re on the pavement. It’s cool outside but the rain has stopped. “I think I can still smell the electricity from the storm.”

  Ziggy sniffs. It’s a change from the bus, though he can’t tell if it’s electricity that’s filling his nostrils or the bus’s exhaust.

  Inside the restaurant, he has Lennie order him a coffee while he steps over to the adjoining convenience store where he buys some cigarettes and Twinkies.

  “Looks like you’ve had some pretty rough weather around here,” he says to the big, tired-looking woman about his own age at the cash register.

  “We’ve been lucky here,” she tells him. “A couple of twisters touched down in the next county. Lots of damage. My sister-in-law Renee lives down there. She says there’s been roads closed and a bridge near her is down because of the flooding. Hope that’s not where you folks are headed.”

  “I don’t exactly know,” he tells her. “I think we might have to change the original route. All I know is that eventually we’re supposed to get to California.”

  The woman’s face softens. “Don’t I wish I were headed that way,” she sighs and looks away. “I always figured I’d get out there while I was young enough to enjoy it.” She turns down the corners of her mouth. “Something always seemed to get in the way. Now, all I want to do is to get out there and see the place.” Turning back to him, she gives him a wink. “Well, I can dream, can’t I?”

  Ziggy remembers the song with that title. Wasn’t it the Andrews Sisters who sang it? He and this woman were both a lot younger then. He takes his change. “I hope you make it to California, and soon,” he says. He wonders why he’s feeling so good until he remembers that in the woman’s eyes he’s one of the lucky ones, headed as he is to the Golden State.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be getting back on the bus pretty soon?” Lennie asks when he rejoins him at the counter.

  Ziggy looks at the clock. “We have a few more minutes yet. The driver is still on the phone. We can’t leave without him.”

  “That’s the problem,” Lennie says. “He’s been in that booth the whole time we’ve been here. I don’t think he’s even been to the john.”

  “He’s probably getting directions from Greyhound for an alternate route,” Ziggy guesses. “I mean, they’d know more than he does about the weather conditions ahead, wouldn’t they?”

  “I always heard that weather moves from west to east,” Lennie says. “Maybe the bad stuff’s over.”

  “Could be,” Ziggy shrugs.

  But Lennie no longer seems to be interested in meteorological speculations. “What’s with that driver?” he asks. “Did you see what happened? He left the phone booth and I was sure he was going to be heading back toward the bus, but he only got more change from the counter to make another call. I’ve got this funny feeling we’re going to wind up staying here a lot longer than twenty minutes.”

  “I guess he figures he can make it up once we get back on the road,” Ziggy tries to reassure him.

  “I don’t know,” Lennie says. “He’s got this weird look. Something’s going on with him.”

  “Well,” says Ziggy,” at least we can stretch our legs a little longer.” He does so, enjoying the luxury of the extra space.

  “I don’t like it,” Lennie says. “There’s something fishy going on.”

  Does the guy ever calm down, Ziggy wonders, other than when he’s asleep? No, he figures: his dreams are probably frantic too.

  By the time they get back on the bus after a stop of more than a half hour, though, Ziggy’s begun to think Lennie may be on to something. When the driver finally finished his phone calls he looked not only upset—he looked like someone who wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do next. Whatever his thoughts might be, though, he keeps them to himself. When he starts the bus up again, he makes no explanation for the delay, nor does he offer any illumination about what he might have learned from his phone calls; he just settles back into driving. If he’s determined to make up for lost time, though, the road conditions are working against him, since the bus seems to be following the precise path of the windstorms, and every couple of miles, there are delays and detours that slow their pace. When Ziggy is able to get a glimpse of any of the towns they’re passing through, he sees more evidence of the storm’s force: power lines sag, utility poles are down and stoplights don’t work, broken glass litters the road. Police are directing traffic and power company trucks are in the streets. Lights flash, sirens wail and chain saws whine.

  It’s obvious they’ve been thrown way off of their schedule and when they arrive in St. Louis they’re hours
late. At least, though, they’re off the open prairie with its small towns scattered across empty spaces. This is a city with a downtown and tall buildings, and it might just be the sheer concentration of people, but whatever it is, Ziggy feels more at home here. There’s a confused clamor in the big bus station. Buses are late, buses are cancelled, schedules are being changed. Names of places echo dimly from the public address system while would-be passengers are sleeping on benches, waiting for things to clear up. The storms may have passed, but they’ve left their mark on people’s plans.

  “This is a spooky place,” Lennie says, flicking his head in the direction of a couple of shady characters in hooded sweatshirts hanging around the fringes of the station. “I’m staying close to my bag.”

  “Watch mine too, for a second, will you?” Ziggy says. He has to use the rest room and makes his way downstairs where, in contrast to the bustle above, he’s entered a zone of eerie quiet. Closing the door to his stall, he’s just about convinced himself he’s alone down here when he hears a low, protracted moaning coming from somewhere nearby. He strains to hear the words but nothing comes clear, at least nothing that resembles English—it’s just sound, primitive, prolonged, indecipherable. He can’t even tell whether the man making that sound is experiencing pleasure or pain. It’s creepy listening in on something so intimate, Ziggy doesn’t want to be here. He’s hoping someone else comes into the men’s room, which would at least provide a distraction and maybe even convince the moaner to stop. It doesn’t happen, though, and Ziggy quickly finishes his business, the sound continuing all the while, barely audibly now. He hasn’t a clue to what it might mean or what he should do about it. Is somebody in trouble, maybe having a heart attack, or is it some guy jacking off, is there more than one? He knows he has to get out of here, though. He pumps a dab of liquid soap into his palm, splashes on some water and rubs his hands quickly, running them across his gritty face. Out of the men’s room at last, he catches sight of a scrawny old white guy in rumpled clothes with hollow eyes and a look of general aimlessness about him, like some wino who lives on the street. God, he thinks, what a loser, just before he realizes that it’s himself he’s seeing, his reflection in a full-length mirror, and the recognition rattles him. He makes his way quickly up the steps, fleeing the apparition, and in seconds he’s back in the lobby. The worst thing about that guy, he realizes, was that he seemed barely visible, like a ghost or even a smudge that could be removed with a shot of Windex.