In other news, I took a much needed adventure last weekend to Sin City--not the one you're thinking of, but perhaps equally deserving: our nation's Capitol. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was visiting from Oz, Sarah the Leepfrog from South Africa, and the beautiful people who live in DC were in town to ice the cake. The weekend was wonderful, but in my School of Education we emphasize process over product as much as The Man will let us, so I mustn't get ahead of myself. Getting there proved half the battle.
I cringed as I bought the Greyhound ticket, my memories of South American buses functioning in much the same way as the memory of what you were drinking when you drank so much you threw up. Not one to waste days, I booked an overnight bus with two changes. I left Winston at 11:40 PM (mad props to John for waiting at the station with me to discourage rape-and-pillaging) and, blatantly judging books by their covers, took a seat next to the person closest to the front who looked like she didn't smell bad.
Her name was Sarah. She was 17, traveling alone for the first time to visit her fiance, a Marine stationed in Jacksonville, NC. She had been on the bus for about 20 hours, having started in Ohio. No one had sat next to her the whole time, so she was eager to talk. She works at Burger King, which is better than KFC but her manager is a bitch. She graduated from high school a year early so she could get married. She has three younger siblings, she can't wait to move from her parents' house. She met her fiance when she was 15, and only wishes she could have met him earlier so she could have been spared several bad experiences with men. He is 19, and enlisted earlier this year, despite her pleading him not to. Despite her hatred of the war. He has been gone since February, first in boot camp and now in further training. He may or may not be deployed within the next few months. If he is deployed, they'll get married first, "because he wants to take care of me," she said.
She was so young. It was evident in her false bravado: sure there were sketchy people on the bus, but she would beat up anybody who tried anything with her. But it wasn't so evident in how she spoke of love. Whenever our conversation turned to Josh (her betrothed), she softened, and spoke simply but never trite-ly about him. Inadvertent smiles would dance over her otherwise plain face (her description as much as mine: Sarah, Plain and Tall is her favorite book, because that's what she is), she never wavered in her certainty of their destiny together, which impressed me in one so young who has spent the last 7 months far from the one she loves. She spoke simply, truly. For much of it, she could have been describing my relationship. She was, in a word, wise.
We rode together to Raleigh, where we waited for 3 hours (2 more than we had bargained for, as is the way with Greyhound) for the buses to come that would take us our separate ways. A guy with a Nascar T-shirt and a huge hole in the crotch of his jeans bummed a cigarette from Sarah and proceeded to tell us a story, of which about 15% was at all intelligible (he was very Southern and spoke very fast), of why he had had a bad day.
Let's call him Bo. I never caught his name, but calling him Bo will communicate more about him to you than description ever could. Apparently, Bo's bad day had started 2 weeks ago when he was wrongly arrested in Virginia. I didn't catch what for--but he was definitely innocent, of course. He had to sleep on a concrete floor because they were out of beds, and his woman back in Fayetteville wouldn't answer the phone. So when he gets back there she will probably have moved out because she'll have thought he was gettin' busy behind her back. Meanwhile, during his jail time, his truck got impounded, so his brother picked it up and made off with it and all his stuff, which is why he had to hitchhike and then take the Greyhound from Virginia to Fayetteville and why, apparently, he didn't have a cigarette. He asked where I went to school. I told him. He whooped, and congratulated me, because their hospital is the only one worth its salt and he wouldn't have nobody pokin' around inside him unless they worked at Duke. I felt strangely validated.
By the end of our 3-hour layover, he had some woman with a ratty perm and scrunchie and a few missing teeth sitting on his knee bouncing up and down playing horsey.
Sarah's bus left before mine, and boarded as soon as it was called, so she hurried over. "It was nice to meet you," she said, and before I could say anything, she was gone. Strangely, I felt as though we hadn't had proper closure. No words of well-wishing or advice. No knowing looks of sympathy for the hard road ahead (I had told her all about Jodi as well). She should have gotten back to Ohio sometime today. I can imagine her sadness, but I can't decide whether I'm glad I'll never know if Josh gets deployed or not, if she goes on to nursing school (as was her dream) or works at Burger King for all her life. Because this way, I'll never know they made it, if they do.
So here I am, faced with the Little-Prince-paradox. In one universe, the stars are laughing, in another, they are crying. I guess having both is something to be thankful for--and may be better than knowing the truth.
