Chapter Eight
Greyhounds From Hell
Hipster Hibbing and it’s Minnesotans and the hounds of grey, terminal passengers about to board. Abort! Abort! Abort the boarding, and run like hell from the hounds of hell!
Leave the driving to us, natty dressed, hemeroid infested drivers with pulp fiction ralph kramden hats…Luggage with stickers that say, things like, Kansas City..San Francisco…others from Mobile load up into the beasts belly as unwitting travelers step up into the steel and aluminum volcano heading east, west, south and yes, magnetic north..north to places like Fuckin’ Fargo, Bullshit Butte and Woosed Out Washington where Spokane is spoken in hushed northwestern tones, in complete nez perce secrecy..a totem of their esteem.
Leg room, head room, no room, scenic cruiser view of wide open Wyoming and claustrophobic Connecticut, cities whip by in the wind as you view them through hair gel stained plastic windows that could blind a seeing eye dog…you have landed in the eye of the hurricane, past the forties, past the fifties and collide now head on into the groovy sixties…’cept now, your trapped in Downtown Denver…down and out..further down..alone! Bums who talk to them selves about religion and spare change wash their holy feet in the drinking fountain mumbling a blessing as your are now deployed, annoyed the Church of the Diesel Depot.
You head east, but change buses like underwear at a junkie needle exchange program in Switzerland that exists in Barstow, the Mojave, the California Mojave. Backpack heavy, legs stiff and down to three crumpled cigarettes and not one fucking match. It’s 1:45 am, three hours to kill for layover, to kill or be killed in Denver, a mile high in a lunatic lunar bowl of smog, smoke and skid row streets…
Transfer on the bluesline to St. Louie, Louie, transfer again in old Capone Chicago and switch to Trailways for the I-94 leg of the trip to downtown motown, Now cramped and stubble faced and smelling of three maybe four days on the road from Oakland, fried chicken, sweat, same socks and the stench of the bus toilet won’t leave you, like the smell of death on the field in Vietnam…piss stopped and cig stopped until your head spins like Linda Blair, and nothing but stores with magazines about rodeo’s…
Cig break over..butt’m and board, re-board, as you make way for the girl from Oregon, why, I don’t know, except they are easy game under the cover of night and your jacket to cop a quick feel as they snuggle close under your coat, your sometime pillow, sometime blanket. The steel belt serenades the bumpkin with pink skin next to you as you sit quietly her fully formed breast nesting in your warm hands,eventually getting a handjob before Hannibal looms on the horizon.
Depot food, fit for hounds, not people, rewarmed dogs on a roller spit, warmed up and served up by Mel Tomaine, torpedoing the digestive system..outside in the loading area, bums on bikes, hells hobo’s and divine butch dykes watch the narco angels that free the demons in their heads…outside a cornucopia of crazies, breathing in the diesel screaming out expletives among the excrement s the big engines fire up and head up out of El Pasa, the texmexexpress….soon you arrive where you aimed, constipated and bleary eyed, shuffle your duffel inside to wait in gates, the lines snake back, like chinee dragons for miles, a Thai drag queen sits beside you as you lie on the floor using your backpack for a pillow, number four inline and you ain’t giving up that spot ..low murmurs in the depot, dull denizens in denim and that rodeo hobo from Missoula you made temp friends with, that kid, that kid that you met that reminds you of you, younger dazed and he gets off in Reno and of course missy breasty got off long ago, and thanks to her, so did you…now shes home, safe from you and them, giggling at her memories of her night dance under the leather veil under your jacket in the backseat of a greyhound from hell, with a blue eyed stranger and making 1200 miles of hell into a garden of hedon!
CHAPTER NINE - THE PRICKLY PEAR