A Pompous Bunch of Asses

. She shifts her bulk and bellows again,
"You'd think that when a person pays money, they'd be treated with some measure of respect."

She extracts a magazine from one of the bags and begins to fan herself.

"It's hot in here!"

She glances through the window and stares at the steam already beginning to rise in distorted illusion from the concrete. Quite suddenly, the puffy eyes fill with tears, and she gropes for something to dab at them. She recalls the unpleasant exchange with her son who had bluntly told her that she was no longer welcome and to just leave. Bitter words; unleashed passions; scars of remembrance. She sits for a moment while her mind rescinds the hurt. Then, as in epiphany, she rises with difficulty, leaving the shopping bags on the seat and lumbers to the exit, almost stumbling as she disembarks. She slowly, as in a dream, walks toward the terminal and disappears into its depths.

Passengers begin filing on and wearily taking seats. One young man leaps aboard and begins to chatter rapidly and with barely contained excitement.

"Wow, man. Some old broad just offed herself in the john. Somebody couldn't get the door to open and called for assistance. Her body was blocking the way, and there was blood everywhere. Wow, man."

The shopping bags sit guarding the seat for which she had so dearly paid.

an unexpected ending but did she die on the bus or in the terminal


her state of mind is sharply written and her sadness is apparent. but why is she unhappy, why did son throw her out

Thanks, John, for taking the time to read my post. If you notice she got off the bus and went into the terminal. The fact that she left all her shopping bags is foreshadowing. The reader can only assume what the problem was between her and her son. Perhaps her loud voice, the fact that she talked to an empty bus might give one a clue. We don't expect the woman to have a hidden and hurt side, but I see that you observed that.

Oh my, Letty, this wasn't quite what I expected. My idea was that contributors would add a character to the bus. Sort of a modern version of Canterbury Tales. But there are no rules and you wrote an interesting ending to the setup.

Anyway...

The young man is Griffin. That is his first name. It comes from the family name of some folks on his mother's side. His parents have a small farm in Ohio. That is where Griffin is headed.

Griffin is good-looking and brash. He can walk into a room full of strangers and within an hour everyone has met Griffin and likes Griffin.

He wasn't a great student in high school but his parents were determined that he go to college. Griffin wasn't sure he wanted to go that route but it sure beat working on the farm. Some of his teachers wrote letters of recommendation and somebody made a phone call. Griffin ended up at a small college in New Mexico. I forget the name.

Griffin rode the same Greyhound home for Christmas at the end of his first semester. And back to school in January.

He didn't bother to tell his folks he was on academic probation.

...

So Griffin gets on the bus and heads straight for the back seats. If any other travelers his age get on board, and if they are cool, this is where they will come.

Ohio is a half a country away; many, many hours as the Greyhound runs. When he gets there the **** is going to hit the fan.

Griffin actually got expelled in February. His academic performance never improved. He got hit with a drunk in public charge and then, on Valentine's day he got caught smoking pot in his dorm room.

He's spent the last few months sleeping on the floors at friends' apartments.

But now he has to go home.

THE EX-STUDENT'S TALE - johnboy

and the woman with a shopping bag on an empty bus? Wow...guess I missed something. Sorry.

Josie takes one last drag off her cigarette before boarding the bus and then flicks the butt off into the driveway. She takes one last look at all she's seen of Albuquerque and then climbs aboard.

None of the stops she's seen so far have "spoken" to her -- and as she struggled with the decision of where to sit on the bus, she was beginning to get nervous about the prospects of finding the perfect town.

She had to get out of San Diego. Her bad childhood was born there along with a promise of much of the same misery in the future, and this bus ticket to New York was the only thing that would save her life. She would see places across the continent (if only from the bus station) and figured that one of those stops would be better than what she had in California. She had a feeling that she would "get a feeling" about the place (wherever it was), and that destiny would do the rest of the work.

She listens very hard to her instincts so that she knows which seat to sit in -- this is very important, she's found, in finding good travelling partners. It gets tedious when you're wired but have to fein sleep for hours just to avoid hearing about someone's divorce or about their aunt's gastric problems.

She looks around as she makes her way down the aisle with her backpack, sizing up everyone else along the way. She sees several bags in otherwise empty seats on her right, behind which sits a man who looks like one of those old-fashioned country music stars -- the kind who smoked pot and avoided the draft in the 70's. Across the aisle from him sat two women, both of which reminded her of her mother. Keep on walking.

She looks to the back of the bus and sees a young man watching her. She's intrigued and intimidated at the same time, and tries not to look him in the eye. She looks for an empty row where she can pretend to save a seat for someone by placing her belongings next to her.

She hears a loud popping sound and looks out the windows on the left side of the bus along with everyone else on board. The people standing outside look confused as they try to figure out where the noise came from. A woman comes screaming out of the restroom, waving her arms and shouting something in Spanish. More people become alarmed and shout "Police!" "Someone call 911!"

Josie finds the nearest window seat from where she is so that she can check out the action. She is four rows from the back. The young man moves to her side of the bus to share the view, but remains in the back.

"What's going on?" he asks her.

She shrugs, "I don't know."

She instinctively starts to pull a cigarette out of the pack to light it before remembering that she can't do that on the bus. She shoves the cigarettes back into her backpack and settles into her seat, watching the activity outside.

Hi, LibertyD. Thank you for putting Josie on the bus. I'm not sure how the action outside the bus is going to play out but I'm sure it will. Interesting character.

With quick farewell kisses in case tears start too soon, Tina helps the smaller of her two children lift their backpacks onto the bottom step of the bus. Then she stands back and waves them both on up the stairs, into the bus. This will be their first trip alone, and she is fighting waves of anxiety and nausea.

If that damned ex-husband of hers hadn't moved out of state, this wouldn't be necessary, she thinks. But the judge had ordered regular visitation, and she knew they had to go. She also knew she was not welcome there. His new wife had seen to that. The new Mrs. Brinkman had sent bus tickets for the children only, assuring Tina that she would meet them at the end of their journey.

Tina isn't so sure. She hands the bus driver an envelope. "Their father and step-mother are meeting them in Kansas City. They're only going that far...be sure they get off there. And here's my phone numbers in case of emergency."

The bus driver looks at her and smiles. "Don't worry, lady. I'll watch after them. We do this all the time, you know."

"Well, I don't!" Tina mutters under her breath. Then, seeing the driver frown, she adds, "Um, this is the first trip for both of them. They've never been alone, and they didn't want to go. I-I-I just don't want them to be scared."

The driver smiles reassuringly. "None of you needs to be scared, ma'am. I promise, I'll take real good care of them. And I'll stay with them in Kansas City until their father gets there. Please don't worry. I've got three grandkids of my own. I know how to take care of little ones."

Tears spring up in Tina's eyes. The time has come to let them go.

"Their names are Olivia and Michael," she tells the driver, looking at the blonde 8 yr. old girl in the lavender sundress and her 6 yr. old brother. The boy's lower lip is trembling.

I've got to go now before I lose control, Tina tells herself. She backs away from the bus and turns to go. When she reaches her car, she slides into the driver's seat and glances up at the bus one last time before driving away. Michael's face is in the second-to-last side window. Even from fifty feet away she can read his lips as he crys, "Mommy!"

Tina puts her head down on the steering wheel and sobs.

(Hi Eva!)


RJB, do you want us to expand on the characters as we go or just leave them at their entrance on the bus?

LibertyD: As I mentioned before I introduced Griffin there really are no rules here. I certainly have no desire to cramp anyone's contributuion by dictating rules.
If you would like to tell us more about your character, feel free. There are 34 seats on the bus. Introduce another passenger if you would like to. You are welcome to expand on another writer's character, although I personally would do that in small increments out of respect for the creator of that character.
For example, I would have no problem probing Tina's broken marriage (Eva's submission) but it would strike me as mean spirited to take Tina from the bus station to her job in a brothel.

I hope this helps.

By the way "realjohnboy" has been tossed off of Able2know again.
When I tried to log on last night, I was told I was a mere "guest."
I think it may have something to do with the forum time (as of Thur July 10 @ 5:18 pm ET) being listed as Fri July 11 @ 1:53 am.

I found a back door using an alter-ego but I now show up as "jb" or "umjohnboy"
I am really dumb when it comes to computers, so when nice people tell me to right click, double down click etc it never works. Eventually some administrator will take pity and fix it for me, for which I am grateful.

Oh no, no, no, Tina doesn't work in a brothel. Dear me, no. That would be a travesty. But from here forward, we must learn more about the broken family from the children's point of view. They are the ones on the bus, not Tina. (I thought it would be interesting to have children there and not just all adults, rjb.)

Hi, LibertyD! Perhaps Tina's story was a little over the top. I even found myself crying while writing it. I'll be on vacation for a week starting Saturday, so we'll hear from the children after I return. Meanwhile, I expect the bus to fill up. Keep it going, everybody!

Have a nice vacation. Eva. Wel'll try to take care of the kids but as you know things can get a little wild.
...
This is one of the older buses in the fleet and the first step can be a little daunting. Lisa puts her left arm over her granddad's left shoulder and her right hand under his right elbow. They make that first step and the remaining two are easy and they are next to the driver.

"Well, good morning, Mr Curtis and hello to you, Miss Lisa. Nice to see you again."

Curtis fetches a five dollar bill from his pocket and hands it to Lisa.
It's not for her, of course, but rather a tip for the baggage handler helping the "boys" load the equipment and luggage.

I don't know how old Curtis is. I've never had the nerve to ask. Sometimes he'll tell stories about things that happened in the 1930's; what it was like the summer that the boll weevils hit or about the day when something like 25% of the farms in Mississippi were auctioned off after forclousure.

The "boys" Curtis travels with are younger, perhaps in their mid 60's. Together the four of them are "The Chariots." They travel throughout the Southwest and the South. Lisa, the granddaughter comes along to run things.

Anyway, Curtis pulls four white paper napkins from his pocket and places them on the row of seats in the front of the bus; two on each side of the aisle, reserving them for Lisa and the boys.

He looks over the rest of the bus that is slowly filling. There is a child crying, apparently unattended by an adult, and there is a blond haired kid in the back scoping out each new passenger.

Curtis has spent too many years riding in the back of the bus. He
certainly isn't going there anymore. Instead he chooses another place, sort of in the middle of the bus.

realjohnboy

Eva, I don't think that Tina's story was over the top -- I liked it. I hope you have a wonderful and safe vacation, and I'll be looking forward to hearing the children's story after you return (with an extra box of tissues on my desk).

Thanks for the info, rjb. Curtis sounds like a cool guy -- can't wait to see how "the boys" add to the equation!

34 seats.....hmmmmm.....

Curtis reserves the front seats for Lisa and the boys but he has found over many years that it is useful for him to sit elsewhere. If he listens hard he can hear stories, stories of hope or despair, and sometimes he will hear just a single sentence or a snippet of a sentence. And based on that he can write a song or a sermon.

Curtis, like Josie, knows about how the seating on a Greyhound works. You can choose a pair of empty seats and hope that the bus doesn't get too crowded but if it does you have no control over who will be next to you for many hours.

Or you can play kind of a game of checkers. You can't really plop yourself down right next to a stranger when there are a bunch of empty rows of seats nearby. But you can postion yourself such that if the bus does get crowded as this one may for some stretches, you can make a jump to another seat.

So Curtis walks from the front of the bus to the back, seeing who's on here so far. Checkers strategy.

Without hesitation he picks up the crying little boy that has been driving the other passengers nuts. Curtis holds the kid against his starched white shirt and whispers something in his ear. He sets the
boy down and the boy stops crying.

Griffin thinks "Oh f@#k, I hope this old fart doesn't intend to park his ass back here."

Curtis moves back towards the middle of the bus. He knows where he will put his checker but there is really something that perplexes him. There is this one passenger. Curtis has seen this person before. But where?

johnboy

Good evening. I was hoping that the "set up" of the Greyhound filling with diverse passengers might appeal to y'all. It didn't seem to work though.
I do enjoy the concept of "communal" writing where different poster's add to the story.
Perhaps we can try again sometime?

I returned from my vacation and was disappointed to see that the bus hadn't filled up. I'm willing to continue writing on this, but I want to see more participation before I write again.

If not, we'll try something else soon. Okay?

RJB, sorry for the lack of interaction. I'm surprised that more people haven't "jumped on board," too.

One never knows which new postings will generate interest and which ones will go over like the proverbial lead balloon. There is a site called "Lola's Salon" that is up to almost 300 pages for no discernible reason that I can understand.
I made one appearance there, on page 250, in the costume of Gothboy, a character I have used in a number of writing threads.

LibertyD: Come on, you've got another character already thought out, don't you? Or you want to tell us more about an existing passenger, right? That will get Eva started with the kids' story which I'm sure we'd love to hear. Old Curtis is getting lonely and Griffin is feeling pretty horny.

Realjohnboy the Panderer

Helen stares up at the bus, belching billows of smoke (the bus, not Helen). Ugh. She'd never liked buses. There was something, well, non-classy about them. Not that she'd ever had much to see that was classy. Her trailer park home just didn't allow for such things, even when a home was decked out in deep piled shag carpeting and tastefully appointed with velvet Elvis paintings.

"Anyone got a cigarette?" Helen whines. She ignores the conspicuous No Smoking sign.

"Can't you read?" scolds the bus driver.

"Oh, God, no!" Helen cries. She'd never admitted her illiteracy to anyone before. "I didn't know you'd be testing me!"

"Hey, baby," says Ramon, sitting in the back. "I've got a cigarette." He makes room for her.

She'd never sat with a man like him before. He looked so strong, so powerful. He smelled of Marlboros. "Why, I just love your cologne!" she gushes, putting her old Barbie suitcase down and settling in with Ramon. "Do you have a light?"