PLLS

The bus depot was reminded him of a horse barn. It smelled vuagely of feces and all these expresive young faces suffered the captivity of having to wait. Young is the urge to be free, as is the conundrum of being a horse. As a horse you are geneticly engineered to run and walk, but there’s no where for you to do it anymore. Sam always respected horses. Quiet, but full of rage. Obsolete too. Obsolete like rage.
After waiting some time in line, he finaly got his chance to speak to the tired old lady behind the counter.
“Gold beach please,” Sam said and with hands shaking to an almost dibilitating degree, he produced his wallet and managed to extract two twenties. A ticket printed and the old lady handed it to him. Sam nodded his thanks and walked into the bathroom.
He went into a stall and sat on the toilet with the lid down and produced his bottle and drank. A young man droned on and on a cell phone. His conversation was repetative and adjitated. It seemed to endlessly cycle. Sam peeked through the crack in the door and saw the kid. He was dressed in that urban ganster style, gaudy fake gold jewlry, the kinds you see for sale at the mall hung from all over his body. Finaly the kid shut up and closed his phone while looking at his hair in the mirror. Right away the phone rang again and the kid said, “what up G.”
Sam became aware of a groan comming from the stall next to him. Looking down he saw mud caked boots and jeans down araound the ankles. From the stall another young voice said, “Please shut the hell up.”
Sam’s eyes jumped over to the ganster talking on the phone who didn’t register the complaint. His annoying conversation cycled on. Sam took a drink.
“If you don’t shut the hell up, I’ll throw you the hell out of this bathroom,” the voice from the next stall said.
Again Sam watched the ganster for a reaction. He seemed to increase his volume to taunt the man in the stall next to him. Sam looked down in time to see the jeans rize and the cowboy boots leave the stall next to him. Sam took another drink. Amzingly the man in the next stall was more of a kid. He looked either part Mexican or indian. His clothes were worn and muddy and his face didn’t have a a lick of hair on it. That would come in a few years. He diliberatly and slowly grabbed the ganster kid by the jacket and led him from Sam’s view through the crack inthe stall door. Shortly there after Sam heard the door to the bathroom close. The kid with the boots returned, walked back into his stall and vomited wildly.
Sam noded with admiration, took another drink and left the stall. As he stopped to get a drink at the hand washing sink, the kid in boots emerged from the stall. He looked pale, skiny and preoccupied. Sam wiped his mouth with his sleeve and followed him out of the bathroom. The ganster kid was standing at the door of the depot with another ganster kid watching. Sam followed his new hero as he moved towards the ambush.
The kid with the boots held the door for Sam as they walked outside the depot. The two ganster looking kids stared at Sam, but didn’t say anything. Sam returned their stare for a moment before the two turned and walked away. It was a ridiculous interaction and the boy Sam followed out to protect didn’t even realize it happened. He was leaning against the wall of the depot, letting saliva drool out his mouth.
“Hey kid,” Sam said. Need a drink?”
The kid looked up with eyes that seemed on the verge of tears. He shrugged like he was willign to try anything. They walked down a narrow alley between the depot and the next door warehouse. Sam couldn’t remember being that hung over when he was a teen. He remembered being drunk, but not looking or feeling that wasted. He handed his big bottle of whiskey to the kid, who braced himself, then took a drink. He held it in his mouth for a moment, then spit it all over the wall. Sam chuckled and drank a little himself. Whiskey tasted like wood smelled, and he liked that.
The kid walked away from sam, down the alley, without saying a word.

Chapter II

Sam’s bus didn’t leave for another three hours. There was nothing to but sit and watch the faces in the depot. The gansters had returned, but they left Sam alone.
Latino girls sat quiet, trying to nap. They had eight times the patcience of the white girls who talked and talked. There were a few college girls in cotton hoodies and sweaters. They seemed so clean and erotic.
There were a few older men, like him, in their thirties, maybe looking for the next gig. They were meeker, orbiting the fringe of the depot, smoking and laughing togetheroutside, or admiring the vending machines.
Sam was feeling reflective. He could feel the drunk moving up his spine. He found an empty part of the floor next to a vending machine and let his eyes un-focus.
If he were younger, he’d be in the same damn position, he thought. No where to go, no real future. Just a hasty retreat on a bus. He had made the decision to escape before, some seventeen years earlier.
It was spring in Topenish. His mother had married a man with a horse barn a few years earlier. They were having trouble keeping the horse boarding buisness afloat and Sam sorta disapeared to his mother. He went to school on his own schedule and dated girls.
Sam stood sudenly and checked the time. He didn’t want to dose off and miss his bus. There was a big map of Oregon on the wall. There was graffiti scratched into the surface all along the Interstat Five corridor which reached up the West part of the state. The coastal towns dotted the shore. Some had indian names, some had generic sounding names. He wondered why the town he was headed to was called, ‘Gold Beach,’ and what kind of work he would find there. He wondered too if he’d have to improvize a place to sleep for a while. A good way to find a place to sleep, a job or a woman was to find a bar and make friends quick. He could stay drunk on cheap whiskey, he thought, and buy cheap beer. It would work out. He sat down again.
He looked at his callused hands. They were ugly, foreign and old looking. It mildly amused him to try to accomplish small tasks with them like touching his thumb to pinky. The shaking made it impossible. He leaned back and closed his eyes.
Giving up was a relief. WHen he was in his twenties he amlost daily thoguht of suicide. Now in his thirties, he rarely thought, which was a relief. A few years ago he sometimes worried about his future. He felt weak next to men his age with some semblance of establishment. Pot bellied men in line at the supermarket on there way to play golf made him feel meek. Drinking made him feel like he was getting somewhere. And that somewhere was drunk.
Giving up did take a daily work. There were a few moments of panic during the day. They came like waves in a dream, drowning in an irrational situation. Thinking about thes emoments of panic often brought the panic on, as it was doing at that very moment. Sam stood to pee and take another drink in the bathroom.