BUS RIDE

The Bus Ride

The swaying motion,from side to side as the bus picked up speed onto the interstate, was rhythmic and comforting. The cancelled ticket in my hand was stamped "New York City, from Buffalo.

The driver had just stopped by a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet, in one of the Thruway rest areas. The passengers had feasted on the fried and breaded cluckers, like it was a repast of renown. Several of the handiwipe sachets, and a toothpick were all that remained of the meal now past. The next stop was Grand central Station in Manhattan.

Thoughts of Jenny, who would meet him there, made him reach in his pocket and fondle the heart shaped pebble that Jen had given him when they had spent the week at the Jersey shore last Summer. The tactile touch, of the cool stone, together with the funny Kermit the frog key ring that Jen had insisted he put his house and auto keys on, brought a smile to his face for the first time today. "I really have missed the little minx, " he thought.

" I hope Jen got the telegram, he mused. All I have to contact her is an old phone number hastily scribbled on a old scrap of paper, written when they had walked the beach and then stopped at a concession stand on the boardwalk. The lord knows whether or not it was still good. "I hope I don't have to find out He thought.

Right now, all I have in the world is a credit card, nearly maxed out, a hundred dollar bill tucked inside my waste band, three two dollar coins and a couple quarters. It was a far cry from the salad days when dinner bills and weekend excursions had consumed more money than most people earn in a month. But then, that was then and this is now. A run in, with an overbearing boss and a few ill chosen words, had cost him his job. The rest had seeped away gradually as the money ran out. It seemed to have happened faster than I could have imagined.

As if to ward off more of the ill wind that fate directed to him, I nervously fingered the worry string that I habitually carried. It was only an old string, with five knots twisted into its length. To him however, it was a talisman to ward off evil and bad luck. It's funny how formal education and the thin patina of sophistication peeled so rapidly away when chance turned its winsome face away from you. It seemed like all things bad descended at once upon the luckless, as if realizing that a weakness existed which the evil ones could exploit mercilessly.

At least there was Jen though. That shining-haired creature of love, laughter and energy that had bubbled into his life, by chance, on the ocean shore. Sometimes, she seemed a munificent apparition that the capricious sea god Neptune had sent him to wash away the dark times and thwart the intentions of the Dark Lords of the Land and sky.

Out the window of the bus, the farm land passed by in rolling waves of tall grains, swaying in the September wind. Behind them, along the sky line, sat the tall conical silos that signaled the outpost of a farm and family. Here and there a herd of Guernsey's or Holsteins grazed in the afternoon sun. It was a picture both restful and bucolic, after the turbulence of life in a city.

Far in front of him, along the winding stretch of the New York Thruway, lay the magical wilderness that was New York City, with its concrete canyons and throngs of people moving in a troubled and crowded sea. There was life there and there was Jenny. It was a bastion of hope that I hoped would fulfill and revive me. I thought as I reflexively fingered the knotted worry beads in my coat pocket.

Future, the far country, I look forward to the journey.

-30-

Joseph Xavier Martin