One Good Deed(2)

The other passengers looked as bedraggled as he, perhaps more so. Maybe they’d been behind their own sorts of bars that day, while he was leaving his. They were all dressed in prewar clothes or close to it, with dirty nails, raw eyes, hungry looks, and not even a glimmer of hope in the bunch. That surprised him, since they were now a few years removed from a wondrous global victory and things were settling down. But then again, victory did not mean that prosperity had suddenly rained down upon all parts of the country. Like anything else, some fared better than others. It seemed he was currently riding with the “others.”

They all stared up at him with fear, or suspicion, or sometimes both running seamlessly together. He saw not one friendly expression in the crowd. Perhaps humankind had changed while he’d been away. Or then again, maybe it was the same as it’d always been. He couldn’t tell just yet. He hadn’t gotten his land legs back.

Archer spotted an empty seat next to an older man in threadbare overalls over a stained undershirt, a stubby straw hat perched in his lap, brogans the size of babies on his feet, and a large canvas bag clutched in one callused hand. He had watched Archer, bug-eyed, for the whole time it took him to reach his seat. An instant before Archer’s bottom hit the stained fabric of the chair, the other man let himself go wide, splaying out like a pot boiling over, forcing Archer to ride on the edge and uncomfortably so.

Still, he didn’t mind. While his prison cell had been bigger than the space he was now occupying, he had shared it with four other men, and not a single one of them was going anywhere.

But now, now I’m going somewhere.

“Joint stop?”

“What’s that?” asked Archer, eyeballing the man looking at him now. His seatmate’s hair was going white, and his mustache and beard had already gone all the way there.

“You got on at the prison stop.”

“Did I now?”

“Yeah you did. How long did you do in the can?”

Archer turned away and looked out the windshield into the painful glare of sunshine and the vast sky over the broad plains ahead that was unblemished by a single cloud.

“Long enough. Hey, you don’t happen to have a smoke I can bum?”

“You can’t really borrow a smoke, now can you? And you can’t smoke on here anyways.”

“The hell you say.”

The man pointed to a handwritten sign on cardboard hanging overhead that said this very thing.

More rules.

Archer shook his head. “I’ve smoked on a train, on a Navy ship. And in a damn church. My old man smoked in the waiting room when I was being born, so they told me. And he said my mom had a Pall Mall in her mouth when I came out. What’s the deal here, friend?”

“They’ve had trouble before, see?”

“Like what?”

“Like some knucklehead fell asleep smoking and caught a whole dang bus on fire.”

“Right, ruin it for everybody else.”

“Ain’t good for you anyway, I believe,” said the man.

“Most things not good for me I enjoy every now and again.”

“What’d you do to get locked up? Kill a man?”

Archer shook his head. “Never killed anybody.”

“Guess they all say that.”

“Guess they do.”

“Guess you were innocent.”

“No, I did it,” admitted Archer.

“Did what?”

“Killed a man.”

“Why?”

“He was asking too many questions of me.”

But Archer smiled, so the man didn’t appear too alarmed at the veiled threat.

“Where you headed?”

“Somewhere that’s not here,” said Archer. He took off his jacket, carefully folded it, and laid it on his lap with his hat on top.

“Is all you got the clothes on your back?”

“All I got.”

“What’s your ticket say?”

Archer dug into his pocket and pulled it out.

It was eighty and dry outside and about a hundred inside the bus, even with the windows half-down. The created breeze was like oven heat and the mingled odors were…peculiar. And yet Archer didn’t really sweat, not anymore. Prison had been far hotter, far more…peculiar. His pores and sense of smell had apparently recalibrated.

“Poca City,” he read off the flimsy ticket.

“Never been there, but I hear it’s growing like gangbusters. Used to be the boondocks. But then it went from cattle pasture to a real town. People coming out this way after the war, you see.”

“And what do they do once they get there?”

“Anything they can, brother, to make ends meet.”

“Sounds like a plan good as another.”

The older man studied him. “Were you in the war? You look like you were.”

“I was.”

“Seen a lot of the world, I bet?”

“I have. Not always places I wanted to be.”

“I been outta this state exactly one time. Went to Texas to buy some cattle.”

“Never been to Texas.”

“Hey, you been to New York City?”

“Yes, I have.”

The man sat up straighter. “You have?”