Take Those Pills To Stay Alive

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When my bus wife woke up in Norfolk, she didn’t even thank me for the shoulder.

I was tired and achy. My joints protested as I rose painfully and stretched out in the aisle of the bus. My bus wife took her daughter and was gone in the exiting crowd. I moved out also, with my backpack and came alongside the bus. The baggage handlers had tossed out luggage and were working their way into the secondary luggage compartment further down the length of the bus.

I found my luggage on the tarmac, but no book. Shit! I looked around the tarmac, and then into the open maw of the luggage compartment. As the handlers worked on the luggage in the next compartment, I climbed into the first one and further in, near the back, was my book. I snatched it up and jumped out, lifting my other bag and headed for the terminal. My pack pack had my laptop and it’s hardware; my carrying bag, my change of clothing.

I made my way through the terminal in Norfolk and headed for the john to take a leak. You know, at those urinals without privacy partitions. So to hide the smallness of your prick you have to stand into the porcelain urinal to piss. While well endowed men, with garden hose dicks, stand back and pour a stream of urine into the bowl. I hate toilets like this.

I came out of the toilet and found a guard in the terminal and asked him where was the bus to Norfolk loading. “What time does your ticket say?” Ticket? I took the ticket out of my pocket, scanned it and didn’t find shit that looked like a time. I scanned it again as the seconds ticked by and found the time of the bus departure on the ticket. 5:30pm. It was 5:32pm. “You want gate seven, but your bus is probably leaving”, the guard said. Hell, I bolted. I flew down the terminal to gate seven and the bus was still there, with it’s driver standing beside the open luggage compartment door.

Are you leaving for Ahoskie? “Yeah. Where were you when I said that I was leaving in a few minutes?” I was in the john, I told him. “Well, you almost got left behind.” I laughed. Life’s been good to me so far, sir, I replied. I threw my luggage into the compartment and climbed aboard the bus. This was a good ride. No one sitting next to me. Two hours to go for the rest of the trip. The sun was up and shining by now. It was good. Ahoskie, here I come. As I walked into the bus I could hear the irate bus driver, complaining to more people outside. “Where are all of you people coming from. You didn’t hear me when I said that I was leaving five minutes ago?”

In time the bus pulled out of the station and struck onto the streets of Norfolk, and the streets melted away to the highway and then the open road that spanned the great reaches of green plantations and distant deep woods. I sat and stared out of the window and put my cellphone to my ear, letting my mother know that I was just hours away from getting to the Green Apple Depot before the cell phone died. For some reason, Ahoskie has no cell coverage to my phone. There never was. I sat and waited at the miles melted and civilization seemed to shrink to the great outdoors.

In two hours the bus pulled into the Green Apple quick stop. A conven- ience store/gas station on the outskirts of Ahoskie. I climbed down off the bus with my backpack, came out and grabbed my bag and waving from the door of an SUV was my mother. I crossed the parking lot and climbed in, her friend Shirlene driving her around. Shirlene pulled out of the parking space and once again struck on the road and we past the sign for Ahoskie. A town so small that on one side of the sign it says you’re entering Ahoskie, and the other side it says that you are leaving. Shirlene drove us to my parents house, now my mother’s house and I entered in.

I had finally made it to Ahoskie.

I’m here to bury my father.

Hobobob