The bus driver cocked his head to the left and arched his single brow at me.

“Tennessee?” he said

“It’s not that far,” I said. I was determined to defend my ticket, knowing he thought I was crazy.
The bus pulled out, three passengers full—myself, a preadolescent boy who seemed to be super glued to his cell phone, and a nineteen year old headed for an unknown army base, gripping his Bible just a little too tight.

This won’t be so bad. It’s only 2,500 miles. What the hell did I know? The preadolescent boy jumped from his seat in the back of the bus with roaring enthusiasm. He moved forward and jammed a Rodney Daingerfield movie into the VCR then cranked up the volume.

Four glaring static filled five-by-five televisions stuttered to life blinking in and out over each pothole. I drove my nose deep into my book to drown out the attempt at entertainment.

The bus pulled into our first stop; Ellensburg, Washington. Twenty people shifted and shimmied their bags in line, waiting impatiently to get a seat. I had no intention of sharing my two-person seat unless someone forced themselves in. I threw my two, over 50 pounds each, carry-on bags onto the seats to protect my spot and stepped off the bus to smoke.

These five and ten minute breaks would quickly challenge my social skills. A woman marched over to me with the confidence of a bear on crack and asked for a lighter. I handed it over without hesitation and she lit her cigarette. No big deal, other than she looked as if she might kill me just for the fun of it. Hard eyes and gang tattoos might have added to my paranoia.

“You like skulls?” she asked.

I blinked, before remembering the small skulls dangling off the black hoops in my ears.

“Yeah, sure,” I managed to get out.

She pulled down the back of her shirt collar to reveal an intricately tattooed skull and crossbones.

“Nice ink,” I smiled and wandered back toward my bus. As I entered the now half-full box on wheels, people began to complain about space. I managed to keep my seats. We pulled out of Ellensburg at 11:49 a.m., scheduled to leave at 11:40; this was the start of our downhill slide of being drastically behind.

The drivers voice crackled over the attempt at a PA system. It hummed and screeched in protest of his words.

“We’ll pull into Yakima soon. You’ll have to grab your own stuff; they don’t pay us enough to do it for you.”

As the bus rolled into Yakima, people inside scurried like rats to gather their things and figure out how to carry them. Plastic bags rattled and things hit the aisles as they tried to retrieve them from the overhead traps. I strapped my backpack on and slung my duffle bag across my chest, purse hanging somewhere in-between.

The assistant flung bags out from under the bus as if they were bales of hay. They landed clattering the aluminum carts. I pushed my way through the crowd, grabbed my suitcase on wheels, and found the next bus.

My suitcase was then, again, pitched under the carriage of another bus, and the driver’s assistant closed the rusty hinges. I found my way to the line of people to file onto the bus. I handed the accordion-like ticket to the new bus driver and got nearly the same reaction as I did from the first. He took two pieces of the ticket; I’d be on this bus for a while.

I heaved my way up the steps. I knew by now that I was drastically over packed and should have put a few of the books in my suitcase. I found an empty seat near the back of the bus, slid in next to the window desperate to keep it to myself, and threw my bulging bags beside me.

“Good luck,” said a shorthaired freckled redhead sitting across from me. “There is no way you’ll get to keep that seat. They pack you in here twice as tight as sardines. Where are you headed?”

“Clarksville, Tennessee,” I said, looking up at her and the seven or eight-year-old boy who sat beside her. “Your son?” I asked

“Oh, hell no,” she replied and laughed. “My nephew. I’m on my way back from Spokane to Florida. I went down to pick him up from his jack-ass dad.”

The boy was completely engrossed in his Nintendo Game Boy.

“That’s a long trip,” I said.

I knew my own reasons, but I couldn’t figure out hers. This could be my last chance to see him, last chance ever.

“Oh I took the bus down there to get him too,” she said with a chuckle.

The conversation between us grew silent. She curled into an awkward sleeping position her body contorted between the metal armrests.

I learned quickly to ask people to guard my things when I got off the bus to smoke, hearing horror stories of people losing everything at ten-minute breaks. In Stanfeild, Oregon, now nearly an hour behind schedule, ten passengers unloaded their belongings to wait for another bus and we were joined by a group of three. A young girl with dark brown hair down to her hips and a white flower tattoo curving the nape of her neck. Her boyfriend, who’s disarrayed dreadlocks stood up like porcupine quills carried a bag full of organic fruit. A musician, much more clean cut, had joined them somewhere along their cross country trip, for no reason other than to “see the world” as they said.

They were quiet and spent the time between Stanfield and Salt Lake City, Utah, sleeping and making beautiful macramé necklaces and crochet earth-toned hats. Accompanied by the musician who strummed the ukulele on and off.

“Everyone gets off the bus in Salt Lake City. You can leave your things, but be sure they are off the floor. The bus will be cleaned, anything on the floor will become property of Greyhound,” barked the bus driver robotically.

We had an hour and a half to spend in Salt Lake, so I grabbed my purse and filed off the bus with the rest of the herd. The redhead and eight-year-old decided to follow me. I found the smoking area and plopped down on a stone structure. The eight-year-old was hid behind his aunt who was uttering obscenities under her breath.

“Something wrong?” I dared to ask.

“My bitch girlfriend still hasn’t refilled my phone card,” she said. Her eyes damp, her face contorted as if she couldn’t pick an emotion.

“Maybe it’s just a mix up?” I offered, attempting to sound sympathetic.

“Nope, no mix-up. She started cheating on me with some guy’s wife just before I left,” she said. “I told the guy.”

We walked in silence into the bus station and waited for our metal cage. The eight-year-old decided I was friend rather than foe.

“Wanna’ hold Mister Stinky?” he said thrusting a tattered blue bunny at me.

“No, that’s alright, you hang onto him. I think he needs you,” I said, shaking my head.

I found my seat, which until this point I had still managed to keep to myself. The group of self-proclaimed hippies had left us and the bus was filling to capacity. It had become a running bet as to how long I would be able to keep the two seat row to myself—I was about to lose. A giant of a man walked onto the bus. He looked as if he could happily snap the neck of the first person to speak to him. He found his way to my seat. He told me to move my junk. I grumbled, but obliged.

I turned to continue a conversation with the rail of a man with a dark tan and hair that shot like long wires down to his chin who had asked me about a book I’d been reading. He’d been watching me read for a few cities now. His pleasant attitude was refreshing enough to ignore the stalker factor.

The man who had taken my spot growled, “Ya know, I’m crabby. I haven’t gotten sleep for a day and I’m a bit crabby, keep it down.”

I ignored him, tending to forget my 5’3 size doesn’t much compare to someone 6’5. I continued my conversation.

The giant’s voice inches from my ear raged a string of profanities where shut up was mixed somewhere in the middle.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me bitch, I told you I want to sleep.”

“Well, you know what, there are a bunch of empty seats in the back of the bus,” I snarled back.

“Then you should move your ass back there or shut your face,” he said and began to stand up.

My courage crumbled and I gathered my things and moved to the seat behind me with the man I’d been talking to, my head down in shame.

The four of us, the redhead with freckles, the man with wires for hair, and the child, well five if you counted Mr. Stinky, arrived in Denver, Colorado, reasonably unharmed.

Somehow I ended up with Mr. Stinky who, I came to find, has suffered a devastating armpit injury. I pulled a safety-pin out of my purse and temporarily stitched up Mr. stinky after sliding an incense stick into his fluff to help with his odor issues.

I now knew I was prepared for anything.

In Denver, we changed buses. I lost my wired haired stalker to a different destination.

After a rushed bus change and unknown amount of traveling hours, we crawled, tired and frustrated, back into the metal prison we had created for ourselves. I curled into another book and slept for the first time.

Selena, Kansas. Two-thirty a.m. We had fifteen minutes to stretch and grab something to eat or drink. In a still half-sleep state, I trudged my way through the small aisle and stumbled off the bus nearly landing on my face.

We were making our way to what I, as a northern girl, would call the south. The entire outside wall of the mini-mart was covered with oversized black flying bugs. Even at this hour in the morning, the humidity fell over me like a hot wet blanket. A small group was gathered around the front of the Greyhound, and out of curiosity, I went to see what they were looking at. The bus grill was covered with bug-guts--enough of the turned inside out winged creatures to fill a five-gallon bucket. There was no getting away from the miniature-winged invaders. I decided I was safer on the bus.

Marilyn the redhead with freckles and Tyler who gripped Mr. Stinky, and I arrived in St. Louis, Missouri. When the doors to the bus opened the wall of sticky heat was enough to make me step back. My hair clung to my flesh, and my sweatshirt and jeans enveloped me in a sordid rotting ball of fabric. I looked more than slightly out of place. I slung my bags back on and gathered my suitcase on wheels. It which flipped, tumbled and spun fighting like a fish trying to break the line, or in this case my wrist. I tried not to pass out from heat stroke.

The so-called bus station looked more like something out of a B horror flick. The blue painted cement walls were crumbling and a scattering of bullet holes didn’t seem to help hold it up. Somehow, the three unarmed security guards did not settle my nerves.

As we headed inside, sirens and lights roared through the parking lot. Five cars filled with what we found out were U.S. Marshals pulled in. They huddled together making some sort of a search plan and then split up. Aggressive German Shepherds accompanied each group of human searchers, who barked codes over their communications systems back and forth across the parking lot. They determined that their perpetrator had already left on another bus and tore away from the station as fast as they had come.

We were finally allowed to load our bus two hours later than expected. I slept the rest of the trip away. I woke as we crossed the Kentucky, Tennessee, state line. I was minutes away from leaving my 3,360 minute trip. I called him, and I’m sure the entire bus could hear me when I said.

“You’ve got to be kidding you’re going to be late?” I slammed my cell phone shut.

I said my goodbyes to Marilyn and Tyler, even hugging Mr. Stinky, then got off the bus with one last thought. It will be another 3,360 minutes to get home.

By Amy Koenig