9 Tales From Elsewhere 10 Read online

  The bus rolled straight back until the rear bumper crammed against a camper trailer with a for sale sign fading under the sun and the weight of an absurd asking price. Roddy popped the shifter into first and floored the pedal. The bus hit 11KPH/7MPH on the speedometer by the time it jumped ten inches, screeching the belly pan of the bus over the cement barrier.

  People beyond the bus gawked, cops, pedestrians, travelers stuck behind the jack-knifed truck. The people within the bus hooted and cheered, a few thank gods as if visiting revival tents, arms to the ceiling.

  Williamsford – Running Closer

  Barely more than a sun-baked splotch residing on either side of the highway, Williamsford is short minutes from Chatsworth, but still, it demanded a stop. Again, nobody departed.

  Six stood in wait at the stop, all older women. All wore the village equivalent of dolled-up, checkered shirts, grey or khaki slacks, leather sandals and wide-brimmed hats with leather flowers riding the cosmetic bands around the base.

  The first showed strain and last two were complacent by comparison.

  “What a shame,” said the second to last.

  “I sure hope it’s not for all of them,” the last added.

  Roddy looked at her ticket an extra second. Her ticket was to Guelph, the old women all headed that far.

  “What do you mean by that?” asked a man seated mid-way.

  “You know, you all know.”

  “So why the hell are you so chipper?” a young woman cried out from the back, it was the squeaker again and again Roddy missed placing the face with a voice.

  “I had breast cancer, oh twenty-, uh I guess twenty-five years ago now. I had it licked, but those nodes are like coals waiting for a blow. I have breast cancer in my lungs now, somehow it’s different from lung cancer. Don’t understand it, don’t care much either. I haven’t even told anyone, not until now. Doesn’t seem to matter much anymore, something’s coming at us like a fucking bullet!”

  The woman ahead of the sickly woman sniggered right along, “Cunt! Ha, I’ve never said that word in public. Ha! Fucking cunt bitches. Fucking shit cunt bastard whore! Ha!”

  The woman with the foggy-eyed child covered his ears, but only half-heartedly. They were correct. It didn’t matter.

  Roddy checked his clipboard and there were to be seven boarding in Williamsford. He looked at the post office that pulled double duty as a general store and a bakery. He’d heard the pie was fantastic.

  Go give it a try, you’re ahead, go, the voice of the spiked ball suggested.

  Eyes wandering up the highway, he glanced over to the former brewery, former pot grow-up, current hippy restaurant and bookstore. He saw a small boy in Nike tracksuit. The boy pulled a brass pocket watch from his jacket and shook his head.

  “Oh you bastard,” he whispered and put the bus into gear before swinging the door closed.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  In his mirror, the driver watched a husky man run with a hockey bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Leave him, go!” someone shouted from the back of the bus.

  “Then what happens to him?” Roddy whispered and put the shifter into neutral, pulled his break. Out like a shot, Roddy opened the undercarriage.

  “You’re early, Jesus!” the man was angry.

  Don’t you feel it? You must feel it! “Yeah, and I need to keep it that way. Where have you been?”

  “You’re early!”

  Roddy shoved the heavy bag into the designated compartment and took the ticket the man held out. There was something in his face, hidden recognition.

  A true Atheist in every sense, no God, no bigfoot, no luck, no destiny. A genie could pour from a rubbed lamp and offer him a lifetime of wishes. The man would ignore it and declare the world only as much as he grasped it. Life, death and decay.

  “Get in and hurry up,” Roddy demanded.

  “You can’t talk to me like that. I’ll call Greyhound!”

  “Do it from the bus, or do it from a dust cloud.”

  “I don’t have to…” the man started to argue, but a window opened and the squeaky voice rang out.

  “Let’s go! Leave him if he’s too damn stupid!”

  The bus driver threw his arms up at the man.

  Sweat droplets came down the man’s face and darkened the rim of his t-shirt. He hadn’t taken a bus since grade school, but there was a price to pay and he had court in Guelph. A DUI involving two moderately injured pedestrians and now this bus driver was giving attitude.

  On the bus, the other passengers stared at the husky man him with caged-tiger eyes.

  Despite the annoyance, they were once again ahead by seven minutes.

  Dornoch – Ahead, Steadily Losing

  A teen boy shifted his weight from foot-to-foot as the bus pulled into the open lot across from the general store (the kind of place where the ice cream scoops are huge and the farsighted owner rarely checks ID for cigarettes because it’s just too much of a pain in the ass).

  Roddy Barsten swung open the door and the teen burst up the stairs with two old leather bags in tow. They’d belonged to his grandmother, she died and his parents inherited them. It was unlikely that anybody would miss the old luggage.

  It was beyond running away to see his uprooted girlfriend who now lived in Mississauga. It had become a life or death thing, as if his heart would stop if he didn’t face that horrid ride southbound on Highway 66.

  “Go buddy, I got a ticket! Just go!” the teen shouted. A few arrant blood drips on his cheeks, neck and forehead bubbled from nervously picked acne.

  All were in agreement and Roddy rolled to the sound of their demands.

  Dornoch was a scheduled drink and toilet break stop. There was a toilet for customers of the general store and a Pepsi machine that charged two-fifty a cold drink, a price on the brink of highway robbery.

  Roddy let a grin meet his lips when he checked his watch, they made up twenty-one minutes thanks to the anxious riders. It felt good, so good.

  Too good to be true.

  Just as the bus passed the former inn and meth lab, the highway took a turn and that’s where he first saw fate working its magic. The spiked ball actually laughed in his head. It felt like spinning blender blades nicking away the layers of his sanity.

  Slowing and then stopping, all for the pretty blonde with perky breasts under her skimpy tank-top and vinyl vest. Below the waist she wore short denim cut-offs and brown work boots, in her left hand she held a seven-foot stop sign.

  Roddy put his head down and waited. The passengers quieted.

  She was attractive, sure was with her bronzed body and tight features, but who the hell cares?

  Five kilometers at a time, the traffic approached and an impatient asshole in an old Kia tried to pass a camper going about 3KPH on the freshly pressed asphalt. The car skidded and halted everything as he tore into the soft blacktop. Rutting and peeling, rubber tore away the hard work and the Kia bumped past the screaming blonde swinging her sign.

  The blonde stopped waving and let her eyes return to the sluggish camper putting along. Roddy and the passengers headed southbound saw the Kia shiver and blink away, disappear as if it never really was. There were groans and few started to sob quietly, feeling the grasp coming back to the sickness within.

  They were on time, perhaps a minute early when they finally rolled through the construction zone and Roddy pushed the bus to its governor, an annoyance that kicked in at one-twelve.

  Truro – Minutes on a Schedule

  The bus came to a stop in a vacant gravel lot in Truro. Eight people from the front third of the bus rushed to the door. They poured away, elated. These were the passengers knowing all along that their destinies lived on beyond the bus ride. An older woman kissed the ground while the others celebrated.

  The grief inside was so strong that two of the Williamsford riders rushed off the bus, shouting that they couldn’t do it.

  You can’t sneak away from this one. You face it and hope you
know something it doesn’t, but you can’t hide. Then again, you know that too.

  Roddy looked into the mirror, “We all know that,” he said under his breath.

  Never had there been a sadder bunch of riders looking up at his mirror.

  The husky man from Williamsford demanded to know, since they’d changed schedule according to the itinerary, when they got a break, “I just like to know what’s going on.”

  The squeaky voice spoke up and Roddy scanned the faces for the speaker but never found her. “How about you shut up or get off here?”

  The consensus agreed and the man shut up.

  The clipboard stated that one adult and three children were due to step on the bus. So sad. A young woman with dust in her dark black hair gazed up the steps with chocolate eyes and pale cheeks.

  “Do you think I should? I know I’m s’posed to, but I got kids,” she said and one of the children started crying. The woman didn’t turn to check on the child, the bus driver was the gatekeeper to her future. “Is it safe?”

  Is it safe? Does it feel safe? “You have to do what you feel, but please hurry,” he checked his watch, “we need to move.”

  The woman bit her lip and then turned back for a look. Roddy slammed a fist against his steering wheel. Running away wouldn’t work, he felt it in his core, but a small boy started up the steps, then a little girl and the woman, holding a child of about four.

  “I have luggage, but we won’t need it, will we?”

  Roddy stood, luggage was part of it, they were intimate with something beyond them, something people felt, but did not understand. Luggage was the norm and the universe likes appearances, same as any proper governing body.

  “We need it. It’s just out there?”

  The woman nodded and placed a ticket with the pertinent information about her and her children on the dash next to the driver’s seat. Roddy swung open the front carrier and didn’t his best to remain calm, he felt as if he felt a fear of the dark, his mind chiming along with orders of rationality while he fought to run to the light. Bags away, he climbed the steps and swung the arm that closed the door.

  The door stopped mid-slide.

  A long dark arm flung in the swinging path and pushed the accordion door open. The dark man was tall and he wore a scowl, in his left hand, he held a brass pocket watch, “You don’t want to play with time. Time has teeth,” the man said without moving his lips. His voice carried the pressure of his icy stare.

  Roddy opened his mouth and wheezed.

  “Time is rabid and hungry. Time gets what’s owed. Time is the tool of fate.”

  “Fuck that!” a voice screamed from the back and Roddy knew that, without question, all heard the voice of the man at the door.

  The bus driver lowered the parking break lever.

  “Have it your way.”

  The man backed up and the door swung closed, a few voices rumbled what if this and what if that. It didn’t matter, if nothing else the power of the bus still belonged to Roddy. Time was a tool of all, not just fate’s tool.

  They rode down the hill and once to the only stoplight in town, all had grown silent in wait. In front of a Royal Bank, a dirty man and a dirty woman sat on a bench, a teenaged girl walking past with her friends spat in their direction. The dirty woman yelled and the teens ran, giggling. Across the street, in front of the CIBC, a mother pushed a carriage, across the street from that, in front of the ReMax and the used furniture store and two young men stumbled along appearing still flying high from a long night gone.

  A horn honked behind the bus and Roddy glanced at the light. Green.

  Rolling, two minutes ahead of schedule. There was hope to make up more before Arthur or Fergus, but it felt closer, it felt sooner.

  It’s coming and you’ll meet it, why rush?

  It was the voice of that nasty ball.

  Why? I’ll tell you why, destiny is bullshit. Fate is bullshit. I own some things, I have control, for now and I have a chance, if I didn’t, I would’ve stayed home.

  If I didn’t have a chance, you’d shut your yap.

  The final bits of town common behind them and up a long hill out of town.

  Sure, but who am I? Shit, Roddy, you can’t even understand how voices in your head work. Hell, you might be home right now, freaking out!

  “No chance,” he whispered and glanced into his mirror. The foggy boy had fallen asleep, but all the rest watched the streaming roadside.

  Varney – Unscheduled Stop

  Varney is two minutes south of Truro, a village turned hamlet. There are signs of former business and former blood, somewhat abundant (never quite thriving, but there nonetheless). A former convenience store and gas station. A former auto shop. The pond remained, but it was empty of children. The motel was under construction. The flea market and attached burger joint both had signs on the doors, closed, sorry for the inconvenience.

  Roddy Barsten slowed the bus from three digits down to ninety as the bus passed the world’s largest Adirondack chair. Ninety was still twenty-KM over the posted limit. He rolled to the rust heaps occupying the lot around the former gas station and the former auto shop. A rusted chain-link fence surrounded a rotting Pontiac Fiero and a patch of five-foot weeds. The pond came into view on the right and then the motel.

  Reaching the pond and a small cottage trail, former train track, the bus engine died and several gasps rang out as if choreographed.

  It’s now! It’s now!

  Roddy shifted to neutral and twisted the key off and on, off and on.

  The bus coasted as if the driver rode the break, if only gently. There was a slight incline in front of the motel and the former flea market and burger joint. The bus stopped and then rolled backward. Roddy pressed the break, but time set the motion and they had skipped into something, he had no control.

  “Is there a problem?” the husky man demanded.

  His voice revealed what his words had. He felt it and rather than admit it, the man grasped onto his lifetime of disbelief like a safety blanket.

  Roddy turned the key again and again, felt nothing, not a cough or buzz.

  “It’s dead,” he said and glanced out the window.

  It was Varney, blink and you’ll miss it, Varney, but it wasn’t.

  You don’t belong in this time, Roddy, wait it out.

  According to his watch, he had made it to Varney, early. Approximately three and one half minutes early (give or take). About the time it takes to rush to kitchen during commercials for a beer and come back to miss only a little bit.

  “No bars!” the husky man shouted and stormed up the aisle with his cellphone in hand. He’d sat closer to the back than the front, just as the others had. “Open that door!”

  “Where are you going?” the squeaky voice from the back asked.

  “Payphone, right there,” the man pointed toward the motel.

  Everything seemed softer as if a fine and transparent moss coated the world. The man stomped down the steps and through the open door, fighting the feeling within.

  “Shut it, please,” said a voice.

  Roddy glanced and recognized the speaker as one of the first fares, one of the few men on the bus. It was more often women on the early trips, women and children, the evening trips usually weighed in favor of the opposite.

  The door closed and all watched the heavy waddle toward the phone. The man punched numbers, put the receiver to his ear and then banged the receiver on the base with three angry slams. He stopped frozen and looked around, he then started back to the bus.

  Walking backwards and quickly.

  “Something’s out there,” said one of the Williamsford women.

  The man turned toward the bus, scurrying, looked back over his shoulder and sprinted. “Open that door!” he screamed.

  Roddy put his hand on the swing lever and glanced through the door. The quick motion of silver-coated beasts ran a shiver up his body. They were the size of Saint Bernard dogs, but gaunt and hungry, they had long m
uzzles and slime dripped from around their long teeth. Silvery grey, long hairy fur, fat paws, long canine teeth like vampires and sunken reddish eyes.

  “Open! Open!”

  Unthinkable, he had to open the door no man deserves to die that way. Roddy swung open the door and the collective voice of the passengers bellowed.

  “Come on, hurry!” Roddy shouted.

  Heat flowed into the bus. So hot that Roddy struggled to breathe.

  The man stumbled just outside the door, but rebounded quickly. He got to within inches of reaching an arm into the doorway when the door swung shut and a small woman blocked the driver’s view of the chow line.

  “He’s gone, but we’re not,” said the squeaky voice and Roddy finally put a face to the voice.

  It was a grim but nice face. She was smallish and wore a long summery skirt that went nearly to the floor.

  Outside the man screamed and wailed, the passengers turned away, rushing to the opposite side of the bus as if it was a sinking ship. Men and women cried and sniffled, children balled at their mother’s breasts. The foggy boy jumped out of the reach of his grandmother and to the opposite window.

  “Doggies!” he screamed, “Time doggies. Dream Mama got time doggies, too!”

  He sounded almost wise in his certainty.

  “Popcorn, get over here, now!” the old woman shouted.

  Dream Mama got time doggies, too.

  Roddy looked at the woman, it was as if they thought collectively, minds sharing a route. Collective panic and curiosity lived on that plane of mind.

  Outside the screams ceased. Feasting, the beast smacked their fanged jaws.

  “What about the time doggies?” the Truro mother begged, her children clung to her.

  “Dream Mama got time doggies. Mama got ate by time doggies, just like him. Time doggies ate her up and made her Dream Mama!” the boy cheered.

  “Popcorn, shush.”

  “Popcorn, your name is Popcorn?” the squeaky voiced woman asked, stepping back from the driver and up the aisle

  “Don’t, he’s crackers, just like his mother was,” said the grandmother. She then put her head in her palms. “Goddamn time doggies, he roared it at her funeral. Only six then. Nine now and damned if he ain’t just as stupid and nutty. I don’t know what to do with him he can’t go to school, not normal school. He scares the others talking about his dead mother. She died on a helicopter tour, wasn’t no goddamn time doggies. I took him to church. Sunday school couldn’t even fix him!”