Bus

My cousin Sal was twenty-one when he offered to give me a place to stay in Yuma when I graduated high school. Can you believe that name? Sal. Poor loser. Sal Tater. Tater Sal. Tater salad. His parents must’ve been high when they named him. Actually, knowing my crazy aunt, they probably were.

Well anyways, when I got out of high school, I was eighteen and there was no chance in Hell that I was going to college anytime soon. Everybody in my family except my aunt Sandy, Carrie, Sal, and my weird uncle Paul was dead, and of those people, none of them had any money to throw my way for me to fulfill my stupid-ass dream of being a car designer. So basically I was left on my own to get a job and work my entire life some place I wanted to die in.

My aunt Sandy kicked me out when I turned eighteen and graduated. When I left Duluth, Minnesota – my boring hometown – I was leaving tons of stuff behind: not just my roots and former schools, but Carrie too.

You gotta understand something. When our parents ceased to exist upon planet earth (when I say that, I mean when my dad kicked the bucket from pancreatic cancer and then when my mom killed herself), we were sent to live with our aunt who lived a few neighborhoods over. That didn’t mean she raised us. I basically raised Carrie, since when Dad died she was only nine and when Mom died she was barely twelve. I was the one who helped her with homework, drove her to school when she didn’t want to ride the bus, and was at all of her school assemblies and orientations.

Aunt Sandy was this crazy lady who forbid us from climbing all of the trees in her backyard and touching her herbal garden. Somehow she was related to us but I never really believed that. And we weren’t allowed to say “Oh my God,” or “God bless you” when we sneezed because she was agnostic and didn’t realize that those were just figures of speech and I wasn’t much of a religious dude anyway.

Well, when Carrie was twelve and I was sixteen, after Mom overdosed, we had to live with Aunt Sandy. It was weird adjusting to things because Mom was so distant after Dad died, and then Aunt Sandy was just in our business when we didn’t want her to be. I guess I didn’t really get to know her as well as Carrie did since I only was under her roof for two years and then I was in Yuma, but Carrie had to stick with her for six years.

I put up with Aunt Sandy most of the time. Other than a few arguments that any kid would have with their guardian, I was a pretty well-behaved boy. Carrie didn’t have the kind of sixth sense that I had that could tell when adults were mad. She only made it worse with the attitude she developed over time. I mean she was already a pretty mouthy kid when we were young, but when she hit the teen years, bam. Teenage girl from hell.

In 1996, Carrie hit thirteen. Now I was already seventeen so I was kind of sick of all of that grunge-aftermath crap since I’d lived through it already, but she just was eaten up with a bunch of it all. That punk stuff, you know what I’m talking about. It’s hard to believe, even for me, that she spent her teen years in red lipstick and ripped jeans. God, she’d been so innocent at one point. (I can’t remember when that was, but I’m sure she actually was innocent at some point in time.) She had always been one to stick up for herself when someone was being an ass to her, though she kept that side under wraps up until that point. Then I guess she just let it out.

Carrie was a “riot grrrl” in high school from what Aunt Sandy always used to tell me over the phone and from what Carrie would call me about. It’s weird to picture, especially knowing that she grew up and went to college to get a degree in biology. I guess everybody goes through that time period of hating authority and just people in general. Some of us never grow out of it. The principles got ingrained into her brain – not that that’s a bad thing. I’m glad she lived her life without letting people walk all over her.

Anyways, back to Sal. Weird guy. I think he dropped out of high school or something since I know he didn’t go to college, but he had a job at a sub shop for years without being promoted or anything. He was three years older than me and seemed to be doing less with his life than I was – and I had nothing going for me either.

He was a pretty nice kid and wrote me a letter in ’97 when I graduated high school offering to give me a place to stay in Yuma with him. Aunt Sandy was his aunt too and he knew how batshit crazy she was, kicking me out when I got my diploma, so he sent me a gas money to drive to Yuma – I packed a couple of suitcases and said “Good riddance” to Duluth.

Pretty much the only person I trusted completely at that point in time was Carrie, and she was pretty much on the other side of the country by the time I got to Arizona. So it felt kind of weird, adjusting to the plains and rocky soil that crumbled beneath my feet in Yuma, being surrounded by people I didn’t know for a hole in the ground, relying on one person who I saw maybe once or twice a year.

I wasn’t even home when I was in Duluth, not since I was in grade school. And just when I was starting to warm up to Yuma, crap happened and that sunshine turned cold and dry.

Sal said he could hook me up with a job as a mechanic since he knew I liked to work on cars and everything, and since I was only eighteen and only knew of a few of the world’s terrible disappointments in store for me, I was eagerly awaiting a nice future. Saving up a couple bucks, going to some college whether it was community or state, getting a degree…it sounded nice, and it rang like something that wasn’t a complete pie-in-the-sky deal.

His apartment was pretty small but within a day I was moved in with all of my crap strewn across the only guest-type room. It felt nice to feel like I had a friend for once. I had somebody who had my back, instead of me having everybody else’s back all the time.

For a few days, things went well. We got along and Sal even talked to the local mechanic who ran an auto shop up the road from his apartment.

As a matter of fact, Sal was so freaking passionate about talking to that damn mechanic that he’d gone there in the afternoon one day to discuss what somebody needed in order to get a job working there. And just imagine that – the same time he went over there to talk to the guy, it was around three in the afternoon.

That was the time that the elementary schools in Yuma got out.

That was when the school rush began.

And that was when all of the school buses traveled to their destinations to drop off all of the stupid little under-twelve brats that crawled all over Yuma.

I guess you can probably see where this stupid sob-story is going, but the point is that when Sal swaggered on over to my hopeful job’s headquarters, he’d walked across a street to get there and then got pulverized under the gritty tires of one of those golden shitmobiles.

I wasn’t there, but it was on the news later on that evening. Sal hadn’t come home when he said he would, and after a few hours I got kinda worried. I was all alone in his apartment, riding solo in Arizona, and it felt like I was the only person like me in the whole world. I remember what he said to me that noon – “I’m gonna go hit up Rusty’s and see if they got a job opening. I know the guy who owns that place and I think I can hook you up with a job there. So I’m gonna be back in a little while, dude. Don’t wait up.”

And I nodded back and said, “Alright, thanks.”

But then an hour passed. Then two hours. Three. Four. It got dark outside and I didn’t know how to reach him – neither of us used cell phones back then. I couldn’t just drive up there since I didn’t have enough gas at the moment. The clear blue sky turned to a deep purple tinted with shades of orange and yellow as the sun set.

Then the phone rang. I answered it, scared of who was calling and somewhat hoping that it was just Sal, calling to tell me that he was fine and just somewhere where he didn’t want to be and that he apologized for taking so long, but it was the police. They said Sal was dead because he got hit by a bus. There was no sincerity in the officer’s voice. He just basically said I was on my own and that because Sal was a nobody he was just gonna get cremated and placed in the local cemetery without a funeral. I mean, what’s the point of having a funeral for some loser with no family or friends? Nobody’s gonna come. Nobody’s gonna cry.

And that thought kinda rung in my head for a while. That’s how I always pictured my own death – no funeral, no people coming to weep my loss of life.

But I had bigger fish to fry. I didn’t have a job, I was stranded in some strange town, and basically all of Sal’s crap then belonged to me. I inherited his car and his apartment and all of the crap he kept in there. The guy didn’t have any other family other than me or Carrie or Aunt Sandy or our weird uncle, so they just assumed that he wanted me to have it. I mean, I was living with him after all.

Sal died, and that was that. Wasn’t anything I could do about it, as much as I wished that I could. So life went on.

The bus driver who was piloting that stupid bus got shitcanned, and that left an opening in the county transportation system for anybody who wanted a crappy job like that, but I shunned the numerous classified sections in the newspaper calling out for a new driver, and instead went for something that seemed easier – Mal-Wart.

They took my fat loser ass in and gave me a pretty steady job as a cashier for about ten years. Year after year, as I aged and neared closer to the big thirty, there was a tick in my head that wouldn’t shut up. I think it was partly about Sal, partly about being lonely, and maybe a little bit about just wanting to be something more than some sucker who touches people’s groceries and takes their money.

But in order to be someone more important than a Mal-Wart cashier, there were a few things I had to do first. Yup. ‘Cause God knows nobody’s more important than a damn bus driver.