Tag Archives: running

Chapter 15 – Left Alone

The eye with which I see God is the Eye with which God sees me.
Meister Eckhart

Walter had been back from Mexico for almost two months and had bid farewell to Mara at her home in River City and then left to make a pilgrimage, of sorts, to parts of the land that had raised him. He had loaded his Honda Civic with the items he wanted to keep himself comfortable; his sleeping bag and pad, a tent, some books, clothes for hot and cold, wet and dry conditions, some cooking and eating utensils, his camera and laptop computer, running gear, and a few talismans to serve as reminders. He took his sarong, of course, and would cover himself with it when he napped during his occasional stops at the rest areas along the interstate highways and back roads. On top of the dash, but without obstructing his vision, he’d Velcro mounted “Skully”, the blue and black porcelain skull with the glittering flowers and birds, which would serve to remind him of his death and its place in life. He also hoped it would remind him to keep his eyes on the road and the oncoming traffic. Hanging from his rear-view mirror was a leather strap with an aquamarine stone attached, a solid representation of the color of the sea, as well as a dragonfly constructed from small, colorful glass beads – just in case he came across any mosquitoes.

On the ring finger of his right hand, he wore the same ring that he’d worn for the past five years, silver and black with the Mayan calendar, and next to it he wore the one with the wings, crest, and tab. Both of the rings were flat and low-lying to the skin on his large fingers.

His younger brother, on seeing his strong hands, had once remarked, “Look at those meat hooks!”

At times, when Walter was driving, he’d look out through the windshield at the road and horizon and then, as his gaze drifted back in, he’d see those hands on the wheel and think that it was his father’s hands he was seeing, that his father was driving. The realization, a moment later, that they were his hands always came as a shock to him. His destinations, so far, had been Wyoming and Colorado, Utah and Nevada and the trip had been good for him. He had plans to hike the Continental Divide Trail for a month or so but, now, Walter stood in line on the campus of Dominican University in San Rafael, California. He knew that the people around him were “Spiritual Seekers” and he supposed it would be fair to place that label on his being, also.

He was looking the people over – they seemed to be good, gentle looking people, as most people on the path were.

He was listening to them and thought, “Is it that they understand that there is no true Awakening and they’ve chosen to attend satsang just to be better people, to feel good, and to surround themselves with community? “

He let that thought go, and then, “Most of them don’t really want to awaken.

There’s all of this head nodding, and maniacal laughter, and egoic conversation about energy, and bragging about other satsangs they have recently attended, and all of this bullshit just to make clear, to themselves and whomever is listening, how special they are.”

He did see, however, some quiet creatures in the midst of the carnival that, he thought, might honestly be hoping to awaken.

So, for Walter, it was back to the question, “Does one spiritually awaken when one is ready, regardless of focus, effort, and intention, or can one cause their own awakening through intention and autolysis?”

The California weather was slightly drizzly, that day, but the campus grounds were beautiful and the old stone building where the talk was given was cozy with wooden floors and comfortable seating. The man, whom he’d come to see, the one who gave the talk, was someone he once idolized but was now someone whom he accepted as a brother and respected for being wise, kind, and humorous – and awake. Through the morning session, Walter thought how the formal lecture, and then the conversations between the teacher and the audience, were good and rang true but he felt, in a sense, that he’d wasted his time and his money coming all this way to hear what he’d heard and read before and what he felt that he already understood.

“Maybe it is good to hear it as often as possible,” he thought.

All of the seats were filled. There were two people who were, obviously, a couple seated to his right and, on his left, there was a pleasantly attractive woman that he judged to be around his age and, to the left of her sat one of the most beautiful, older oriental women Walter had ever seen. During the lunch break, most participants left the hall but Walter sat, in silence, leaving only to hit the restroom and take a short walk outside. When the break began, the woman, two seats to the left of him, pulled her legs up under her long white gauze gown, lotus style, closed her eyes, and remained fixed that way for the hour of the break.

The people returned, refilling the auditorium, and the same individuals sat on each side of Walter.

The afternoon session began, and Walter, again was thinking, “This is just more of the same stuff I’ve read in his books and heard him say. I should just leave at the next break.”

Fifteen minutes later and without warning, the truth that was unspoken but carried in the silence between the words that the teacher spoke, pierced Walter’s heart, took his breath away as if he’d fallen to the ground and had the wind knocked out of him, and left him sobbing, trying to keep from disturbing those around him. His emotion passed to the woman on his left, and she accepted his handkerchief with gratitude. He sat through the remainder of the satsang, feeling emotionally drained, but in a good way, as if he’d had some tumor or sickness excised from his soul.

At roughly the same time, but 2,200 highway miles to the east, Jade was just driving into River City. The day before, she had a chemical face peal and, her skin pink, raw and covered with gel, her two Papillions safety-belted behind her in their car seats; she was driving home to see Sam and planned to spend the week in seclusion with Mara at the lake cottage, letting the skin on her face heal before having to interact with coworkers and the public.

At that same exact time, Mara had just sped home and hurriedly parked her car in the garage, shutting the door behind it, before running through the breezeway, locking the doors behind her as she went, then into her house, past the piles of new clothes still hooked with their tags, and into her bedroom closet to hide next to her hidden booze. Huddled there in the dark, amid the dust and cobwebs, on and between her shoes and boots and under her hanging clothes, she made a call to Jade.

Jade pressed the answer button on her steering wheel and said, “This is Jade,” and heard Mara whispering a scream but couldn’t, quite, understand what she was saying, although it was clear that Mara was frightened.

Instantaneously infected with that fear, Jade phoned Sam, who lived two blocks from Mara. He had been up all night and was trying to sleep but was awakened by her call and with a skill of the eldest child, which she’d refined over the years, Jade commanded him to go to his sister’s house immediately.

Just as Jade’s Lexus rounded the corner to Mara’s place, two county sheriff’s officers on a mission, pulled their separate cars into her driveway. Within minutes, the two burly policemen, red-gel-faced size one Jade, Sam with his hair in disarray and shirt on inside out, the growling Paps, and having been found in her hiding spot, handcuffed and crying Mara, were all clustered in the driveway; and that’s when the shouting began. Before it was over, Sam had been warned to back off and threatened with arrest, Mara, for the second time since returning from Mexico, was hauled off to the county jail, and Jade could not believe what had just happened. Back on the west coast, Walter had left the satsang, and spent a pleasant night in San Rafael, ordering a salad and carrot cake, to balance things, through room service before drifting off to a peaceful sleep that night.

The next morning, he checked out and drove south to Los Gatos, enjoying the drive and the scenery. In The Cats, he visited his childhood friend, Jou, and his German wife, Kati. They shared lunch together at an outside café, taking joy in one-another’s company, catching up on things passed and past. Walter was struck, again, at how similar Jou’s mannerisms were to his own but was also impressed by how calm Jou seemed and how truly peaceful he looked. It was a good visit.

After parting, Walter headed east, driving through the almond orchards and into the El Dorado National Forest, headed back to Colorado. Taking his time, enjoying the natural beauty, he stayed out of touch with family and friends, traveling on some of the smaller, less used roads, making his way to Creed, Colorado, in just over three days.
In Creed, he dined at a small, combination general store and restaurant, having a veggie sandwich and some good coffee. The waitress was a dark haired, athletic woman of indeterminate age; he couldn’t tell if she was younger or older than he was. She took his order, served him his food, and then took his money when he got up to leave.

“There’s a reason why you came in here,” she said to him.

“I was hungry,” he responded, with a laugh.

“I mean, there’s a reason why you came into THIS restaurant, rather than the one next door, or the one next to that, or one of those across the street,” she fired back, as if a little irritated.

Walter tried to always watch for the signs.

“Okay,” he said now attentive, open to what she might say.

“Can you stay until I get off work and then meet me out front?” she asked.

He paused, thinking about it. “Sure, what time?” he asked back.

They agreed on the when and the where and then he went for a walk, and then took a short drive up the canyon and back, before finding a bench in the small city park and planting himself there, alternating between reading and just sitting and being aware. At the appointed time, he walked the short distance to where she was standing, waiting for him, and then they hopped in his car and she directed him to the turnoff to a dirt road that took them to a good lookout point, above the little city, where he parked.

Moving from the car, they each found a dusty but comfortable place in the buffalo grass between the sage and pines and mica, and she began to talk, asking him questions and telling him things about her experience, as she tried to understand why he had triggered this fateful feeling in her. She continued asking questions and leading the conversation until he began to understand; she quieted and it was his turn to ask the questions and take the lead.

The sky was beginning to darken when they’d finished. They rose from where they sat and kissed.

He drove her back to where they’d met and they said, “Goodbye.”

He drove away, taking the night and the darkness with him as he passed out of those canyons and pointed the Civic back towards River City, thinking to himself, “a fortiori.”

The next morning, when the sun had arrived high in the sky and Walter had taken time to wash his face, fuel the car, and purchase a waxy paper cup of coffee in a drive-thru at a chain restaurant, he phoned Mara. It had been a week, at least, since they’d spoken.

The phone rang and a voice answered, “Hello.”

It was Jade. “I’m sorry. I thought I was calling Mara,” he apologized.

“Did she call you?” Jade asked.

“What do you mean? She’s called me but it’s been awhile,” he answered.

“Oh, so you don’t know,” she proclaimed; and then she proceeded to tell him the story of Mara’s repeated shoplifting, her arrest, the mess that her house was, the mess that her life was, and that she was still in jail but would be making bail today.

He told her how he’d caught Mara stealing in Mexico, and how it had been the final straw.

There was a pause from Jade, and then, “YOU LIED TO ME!”

“What do you mean” he asked, totally confused, trying to think where he might have.

“You told me everything was okay. That she was doing fine. You knew about this and you didn’t tell me,” was her reply, and then, “YOU LIED TO ME!” again.

It took Walter three more days to get back to River City and, by that time, Jade’s face had healed and she had returned to her home, her job, and her life. Over the objection of his lover and the ensuing verbal battle between that woman and Jade, a battle in which Jade had prevailed, Sam bailed Mara out of jail for the second time that summer. Walter arrived back in Michigan, finding Mara at the lake cottage where she was taking refuge from both embarrassment and temptation. Their reuniting was, understandably, emotional and meaningful. To Walter, the course of his path had now become clear. Days passed. The weather was good for running, and Mara and he put as many miles under their feet as they could, running the paved or gravel and dirt roads that connected the chain of lakes around the cottage. They’d spend their other hours on the water or sitting together on the balcony overlooking the water, talking and just being.

One morning, when he started out the door to run, Mara had asked him, “Do you want white or black?”

She was making him a “special” friendship bracelet, with the primary beads being made from stone and carved in the shape and detail of skulls so as to remind him, again and in another way, of his death and its place in his life.

“Oh, they’re both beautiful. It’s tough to decide but I think I’ll choose the black.”

“Even black men have white skulls,” was all she said as she turned back to her work and let him leave for his run.

He ran south from the driveway of the cottage, down the hill of the paved street named Gordon, through the dead spot where it was always hot and where there was no breeze as the road bridged the channel between Pickerel Lake and Kimball. He pushed up the first hill of the run then turned, at three-quarters of a mile, on to Pickeral Lane, heading east between the lake cottages, past the boat launch and privy, up the incline and then down again and then back up to Little Switzerland, the local resort. Passing a cottage, he was startled and lurched sideways away from the noise, as someone unseen started a lawnmower in his or her garden shed. He ran by the unchained Bouvier des Flandres that he always saw, seeming passive if not friendly, taking care to pass on the opposite side of the road and keep aware.

Off of Pickerel, at just over two miles he turned left, up the paved shoulder of Centerline and ran another half-mile or so to the turnoff to Emerald and Sylvan Lakes, where the road turned to dirt and gravel and the surroundings became more enjoyable with the cottages being fewer and the space between greater. Deer flies buzzed around his head and, now and then, one got him on his back or through his running cap on the top of his head. He ran the loop that, in spots, turned to sand near the water, passing a few people who were walking, coming up behind them and coughing or breathing loudly to alert them of his presence, not wanting to startle them. He saw no other runners but spotted running shoe prints, not his or Mara’s, in the sand.

At 6 ½ miles he hit the pavement again and turned right, heading up the first part of what was mostly an uphill run, as Centerline Road became 48th Street. It was another mile, nearly two, and a turn before cresting the hill and coming back to the driveway of the cottage.

He walked down the driveway and, knowing the front door would be locked, walked around the side of the building and took the ivy covered wooden steps up to the balcony.

He could see Mara a short distance out on the water; sitting in the 11-ft aluminum boat he’d bought her that first summer. She’d named it “Candy” after one she’d seen, and become fond of, on a trip they’d taken to the Dominican Republic.

He sat on the wooden bench that was backed against the cedar-sided wall of the cottage. The sweat, from his run, was running off of his body. He leaned forward, letting the drops fall from the brim of his running cap to a gap between deck boards on the balcony beneath him. He counted the drops several times and came up with an average of 180 per minute. He kept his head, his hat, and the drops positioned so that they remained in one spot, filling the gap between boards above a truss that supported them; until he could hear the water, having filled the dry wood and the gap, make a splashing sound. He looked at his shoes, he was wearing his Mexico shoes today, the New Balance 769’s that were durable and supportive but, sometimes, took his toenails. He used Vaseline to prevent blisters and felt fine. His socks were the new, synthetic running socks with no seams. He watched the muscles in his right calf, and then his left, twitch as they always did from the damage in his spine. He knew that when he eventually took off his shoes and socks, he’d see the same twitching in his feet. His running shorts, blacker now, soaked with sweat, clung to his thighs and crotch, his shirt to his belly and arms.

Finally, he lifted his head and looked to the left arm of the bench.

Hanging there, in anticipation of his return from the run, was the black-skulled bracelet she’d made for him. Strung between each carved skull was an uncarved stone of another color and texture that balanced the skulls beautifully. Between the black obsidian skulls she had strung Aquamarine, Amethyst, Amber, Citrine, and Calcite. He took the bracelet from the wooden arm of the bench and pulled it over his left hand to the flesh arm of his body and felt a rush of energy, as if, for just a moment, electricity was running through his wrist, and then it settled.

There was a nearly empty blue plastic glass on the table next to the bench. He took it and smelled it and knew that she’d been drinking already.

He raised his head and looked out at the shimmering lake that was reflecting the morning sun. He could see and hear Mara, out on the water, head bent to her cell phone, talking through her tears.

“Probably to Jade,” he thought.

He could see the game of Mute Swans, white with their black eyes and orange bills, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen; it was seventeen that he counted on the water around her that day. In the background far behind her, he saw a rainbow.

There was no easy way for him to tell me the rest of his story.

“Just tell me,” I said.

Chapter 14 – Mexico Style

“What if I should die?” he asked. “If you die, just die,” came the response.
Peter Matthiessen

Mara, Jade, and Walter each held the same belief about life, that it was short, but they applied that belief in different ways.

For Mara, that recognition did nothing to offset her pain and on as many days as not, she wished that life was even shorter.

She’d say to Walter, “You’ll be okay. You know what this is all about anyway. You know it’s all just an illusion. You know there is no meaning. I can’t do this anymore.”

Walter would tell her that he knew there was a part of her that wanted to die but killing that part didn’t require killing all of her. He’d tell her that he knew she was in pain.

“Just try to hang in there, for me. I believe in you. I believe that someday you will be walking on a beach or a mountain trail, happy and healthy,” he’d say, “I’ll be there with you and we’ll talk about everything you’ve been through and you’ll be happy that you didn’t end it.”

Walter came home one day to find Mara out back on the patio under the corkscrew willow, sitting and talking with a friend. Behind them, under the tree and up against the bedroom wall, was one of her amazing shade gardens filled with miniature magical plants.

Walter stepped out and said, “Hello.”

They looked guilty, as if caught in the act doing something secret and wrong. He went in and changed to more comfortable clothes, expecting to join them for conversation. When he returned, the friend was gone, having gotten up quickly and left in the brief time he was inside. Walter asked Mara what that was all about.

“Nothing,” she said.

They talked into the evening until her medicine finally kicked in and she slept.

For Jade, the recognition of life’s moderation meant that she didn’t want to waste time with unnecessary feelings, and talk, and drama. She wanted to do things, to keep busy, to accomplish. She appreciated quality and wanted fine things around her. She also wanted to be a good person and to do things the right way and, in that system, she knew that the one thing she didn’t want to do, the one thing she could never do, was intentionally, knowingly hurt Mara. She loved Mara with the love that she couldn’t acknowledge for herself. The problem was, the part of her that “felt” could only held in abeyance for so long.

Walter had once come in and found Jade sitting and crying in Mara’s living room. With Sam, the three siblings had been talking about their father and the life he’d had as an orphan behind the iron curtain. Jade couldn’t contain the anguish she felt for her father. As she sat there sobbing, Mara and Sam stood, distant and numb, just watching her. Walter walked to her and put his arms around her.

Walter realized that he had been assisting in life’s temperance, if not outright then through his behaviors; for years he had been trying to kill himself. He believed that his chronic depression was as much a choice as not and that his mind had chosen to kill his body slowly and quietly – until he met Mara. When Walter decided to really live, he realized, in a different way what “Life is short” meant to him. He decided that as often as he could he would be kind. He also decided that if he felt deeply about someone, he would tell them because he knew that, in an instant, he or that person could be gone without the object of his feelings knowing what he felt. He knew, from experience, that the expression of one person’s feelings could markedly change the experience of another person. So, when Walter met Mara and fell in love with her, and then met Jade and fell in love with her, he could only be honest with both of them about what he felt. His commitment, as a companion, was to Mara, but he was also committed to Jade.

Jade was training for a marathon when her father suffered a stroke and returned to his family. She came home to visit him and asked Walter to run with her while she was home, so that she could continue training for the race. While they were running, he asked her what she thought about on her long runs.
“My breathing, I guess,” was her response.

“On my long runs, I mostly think about you,” was what he said inside his head, but not to her.

They were driving from the lot where he’d parked his car near the running trails, and they talked about her old boyfriends, about running, about her father, brother and sister, about her dogs and job. She was used to his expressions of love for her but still bothered by it. He loved her unconditionally. She didn’t understand that he didn’t need anything from her.

“What if Mara heard you say that?” she asked.

“She knows that I love you,” he said.

“WHAT! WHAT! Are you crazy?” Walter had a friend, long before this story, who told him, “The female river runs deep in you.”

That’s important to understand as true in trying to know Walter. Our hero didn’t see it as it happened, but his problems resulted from two dynamics. The more Mara disappeared into the Void, the less she was available to him, and the more she suffered, the more he feared that she would soon die and he couldn’t bear the thought of that pain, that suffering. His feelings for Mara only deepened as she suffered but, to protect himself, he unconsciously pulled parts of himself back and away from her and, in order to balance his soul and stay sane, he placed those feelings somewhere else. Jade became the object of those projections. It made sense, at the start. Jade was someone he would have been with under different circumstances and someone he truly did love. She was safe because when he met her she was in a successful long-term relationship and that coupling looked to be rock solid and was expected to survive. There would be no risk of Jade ever returning, let alone acting, on those feelings.

It was only a few months before Mara departed for Mexico that Jade discovered that her husband was having an intimate relationship with an old classmate who had Friended him on Facebook. The discovery of that betrayal, as well as finding some pornographic pictures on their desktop computer at home, was enough for Jade to question her reality, realize that she needed some space from the person she thought would always be there for her, and buy him a one way airline ticket, drive him to the airport, and ship him back to his mother. Needless to say, Jade was heartbroken as well as stressed. During this period of uncertainty and isolation, feeling somewhat like a fool and off balance, Jade began reaching out to her sister more than she had in years. The sisters began having frequent phone conversations but Jade, more often than Mara, did the dialing. Mara was in her downward spiral, getting closer and closer to the edge, and usually the best she could do was to just listen as her sister poured her heart out, late at night, over the phone. Whatever belief Mara held about the cruelty of life was only further confirmed by hearing Jade’s pain. Mara increased her sedation, numbing herself with the pills and the booze and would often be unconscious by early evening.

Jade’s troubled heart arched, and as it approached the zenith of its pain, she would reach out to her sister and call her late at night. Mara would often be unconscious to the ringing of her phone. Jade’s soul was torn and she couldn’t sleep. Mara’s soul bled so she quieted herself with sleep. Often, when Mara didn’t answer, Jade would dial Walter’s number and he would answer, no matter the time or the circumstances.

“Hi, it’s Jade. Am I bothering you,” her soft voice would come over the airwaves.

“No, Sweetie, you’re not. Are you okay?” he would ask.

“Is Mara okay? I tried calling her but she didn’t answer.”

“She had a rough day but she’s sleeping. How are you doing?” and they would talk for hours.

Walter saw in her what she couldn’t see in herself. He’d tell her that she was beautiful. He’d tell her that she deserved to be loved. He’d tell her that things would all work out for her, that he had faith in her and in life. All he wanted for her was for her to be okay. He started sending her energy whenever thoughts of her drifted up like whisks of smoke from the ground of his mind. Back then, each time he told her he loved her, she cried. She thanked him for caring.

She wanted to know why, “Why won’t he talk? Why did he do this?” Walter would tell her his thoughts. He’d tell her of his experiences and how he thought they might apply to her situation.

“Why would he look at porn but not at me?” she thought, but she knew the answer, she knew how ugly she was.

He told her, “Who knows, you might go through this hard time and come back together and have the best marriage anyone ever had.”

Before Walter and Mara left for Mexico, Jade phoned Walter and told him that she’d been with her counselor, working on her marriage and on herself, and that they needed to talk.

He said, “Okay, go ahead.”

She told Walter that he didn’t love her, that he couldn’t love her, that he didn’t know her. She told him that this was a classic circumstance where a man was attracted to a vulnerable woman was going through a rough time. She told him that, even if he did love her, his telling her was inappropriate. She didn’t want to talk with him anymore.

Weeks later in Playacar, Walter and Mara had rented a house near one owned by the second richest man in Mexico. Each day, after their running, they would set up their chairs on the beach in front of his house. Walter would peal two oranges and share them with Mara. They would each drink one beer, and then stare at the water for hours. They’d spent the winter and early spring reconstructing their bodies and deconstructing their relationship. It was the winter but nearing springtime and while the change of seasons seemed to make little difference to the natural beauty that surrounded them, or to the agouti, pacas, wild cats, squirrels and birds, it did change Walter and Mara’s awareness that their time in this particular paradise would be drawing to a close. Each morning, as the earth revolved and the yellow dwarf that sits at the center of our solar system, it would seemingly rise up over the Caribbean Sea and draw out those who worshiped its power and its glory. The visitors from Canada, Europe, Russia, and the U.S. would line the beach from the southern boundary of the village to where the sand stopped and the sharp coral coastline began.

Walter remembered how his heart almost broke, that first morning, when Mara had agreed to try to run the mile from the rock to the pier and back. On her small frame, she was carrying an extra thirty pounds of weight put on from the daily bottle of wine and the uncounted bottles of vodka she had consumed over the past year. When they’d left the gray north, her blood sugar and pressure had been dangerously high and her cholesterol was out of control. As they moved, Walter watched for any sign that she might be coming into acute distress. She ran, never once looking at him as he jogged along beside her, never stopping, her little arms pumping with the effort, a frightened look on her face, and she made it. After that, she had taken to the running with a passion and before they left the country, she was running longer and farther and more frequently than he. She dropped the weight and began to take a new pride in her body. This extended trip had been Walter’s plan to try to save her and her apparent love of running gave him hope. The running became their shared habit.

Rolling from the small wooden framed bed that they shared, at 5:30 or sometimes 4:30, and running the beach before the rising of the sun and the people, became their habit. Walter would awaken before the alarm, rise and piss, then move to the kitchen and turn on the coffee pot before laying on his sarong on the hall floor and putting his legs up the wall. Mara, hearing his movement, would rise and pee and then step over him on her way to the coffee and then outside for a smoke while the Tortie cat, from next door, stopped by for breakfast. Mara would take off for the beach, through the darkness, while Walter spent fifteen minutes in meditation before following. The path they took would start from the green moss covered rock that lay mostly buried in the sand in front of the house they’d rented, to the pier that split the beach in two at the village, and then back past that starting point and on to the coral walls two miles distant at the southern end of the khaki colored sand and then back again. She ran barefoot on the packed sand near the surf and suffered, but didn’t mind, glass and shell cuts to her feet and toes. Walter ran in shoes, farther up the slope in deep, soft sand that tested his endurance.

They’d pass, on the beach, but not speak.
: 00, start at moss covered rock
: 09, touched pier
: 39, passed Plastic Man
: 42, passed her, she’s beautiful
: 46, at far wall, the sun’s coming up
1: 15, back at the moss covered rock
1: 35, another lap to the pier, other runners out
1: 55, another lap to the pier, done with Fase Uno

As he ran, he’d see plastic glasses, beer bottles, shoes, sunglasses, syringes, condom wrappers, air filters, empty tubes, ropes, broken plastic buckets, bottle caps, sticks, logs, coconuts, straws, shells, rocks, dog turds, sand shovels and buckets, cushions, chair parts, sea weed, and nuts. He’d see her bare footprints, the only ones in the sand at that hour. He’d see his shoe prints on the laps back, a reverse horseshoe; maritime markers out in the water, ropes strung from the shore to anchors in the surf, marking the edge of each resort. Finding his running path was like a golfer reading the lie of the greens.

Some mornings she, or they, would run it twice; on the second run weaving in and out between the flesh obstacles standing unaware in their way, the beach no longer virgin and untouched, now trampled and marked by the tourists. At the end of each run he’d kick off his shoes and they’d wade into the powder blue saltwater that had become their shared refuge. It was even more so that at these moments they didn’t have to speak.

Out over the water, they could see the lights and outline of buildings on Cozumel. Sometimes they ran far enough to run all the way to that island.

As Walter ran, he listened to his body, hearing what it needed, each part talking back, his mind telling each part that he appreciated it, loved it, giving each part encouragement and attention. When his body said it needed a day’s rest, he gave it. She never rested.

She still had her daily fix of alcohol; she replaced the vodka with beer and allowed herself one glass of red wine, and she continued to self-medicate with the plethora of pills that he couldn’t keep track of but she seemed to have found a balance that fit her. It was her occasional missteps, an accidental fire in the kitchen, the slurring of her words, and once or twice screaming at him when she became unintentionally drunk, that kept him concerned that her balance might be just a temporary improvement.

They had their U.S. cell phones, their Mexican cell phones, Skype and Vonage but it was still a challenge to keep in touch with Jade during their time in Mexico. At least weekly, they would walk into the village, sit outside the cafe that had better Internet service, and Mara would make contact with Jade. Walther waited quietly in the background during these talks. It was a difficult time for Jade and Mara’s being gone pulled out one important leg of support, perhaps the most important.

“Do you think there’s a chance you two will get back together?” Mara would ask.

Slowly, “I don’t think so,” Jade would reply.

“This is hard but you’ll find someone else.”

“No one will think I’m attractive,” Jade would say.

Mara would think she said that because of her breasts. Jade said that because in her mind she knew that she had never been attractive.

The girls talked about Jade coming down, because she really needed a break, but she wasn’t sure she could get the time off, even though she had four weeks of vacation time coming to her; she finally decided she could. She had trouble getting a passport and then had it expedited. She had 500,000 frequent flier miles but couldn’t get a good flight. She was going to stay at their rental until Mara told her they’d seen a cockroach and she freaked. Mara gave her computer links to multiple nearby resorts but she had trouble choosing one. She never made the trip but was never far from their thoughts. Mara and Walter sat on the beach and talked about her, ate oranges, drank beer, swam and ran. On one of their frequent walks into town, they had visited a store in which cut stones and coral, and other items for jewelry making were sold. Walter stood in one spot, watching Mara roam around the isles, picking up pieces, inspecting them, and then putting them back. The eye, or the mind, sees what the eye wants to see and, for a moment, Walter thought he saw Mara drop a strand of coral into the Mexican Indian bag she had hanging from her shoulder. Mara had sufficient money as well as a bounty of supplies already and he knew her to be a good and honest person. He chastised himself, thinking he was mistaken. A few days later, on a similar trip, he had the same strange perception and, once again, he shook it off as false.

He asked her, “You didn’t put something in your bag without paying, did you?”

“No,” came her reply, with a laugh.

“I’m sorry. I just had a weird feeling,” he apologized.

It was the third event, which he witnessed, that he could no longer ignore. She took a strand of large turquoise pieces from the wall of a store and rushed, practically ran, from the store.

He followed he and challenged her and said, “Take those back!”

She threw the string of polished stones into the gutter between the sidewalk and the building and walked rapidly away.

Walter, at first, wanted not to believe it. A new problem…a new drama…a new reason not to be with her. Their verbal fights began; arguments about the drinking, the stealing, the pills. He told that he’d been through this before and that, though he loved her, he couldn’t go through this again. He talked to her about getting caught, there, in Mexico. How it might mean prison but would certainly mean deportation, the end of their sojourn, and probably a prohibition from her re-entry into Mexico. She cried. She apologized. She knew it was wrong and didn’t understand why she had done it; it was just an impulse. They made up and he believed her and forgave her. In a new store, the next day, standing right in front of him with her back to him, she took down a bracelet and stuffed it into her pocket. She turned and saw Walter, shocked. She put the bracelet back and they walked away, he in front of her, silent and defeated.

The next day, as he sat on the beach staring out over the water, Walter realized, perhaps for the first time, that as much as he loved Mara and wanted a good life for her, he had to love himself first, and have his own good life. His heart broke yet understood what had just happened.

It was then that he resolved to leave her upon their return to Michigan.

That was the day that all the wild cats sat facing north-by-northeast and Mara put the kettle bell in her backpack to go for a walk in the sand.

Chapter 3 – Walter

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night. Edgar Allan Poe

He walked quickly from his car through the garage, the breezeway, the hall, the kitchen, and with most haste, through the next hall and into his room carrying his load. As he passed through the beaded curtain hanging in the doorframe, the combination of his fear, distraction, and too many things in his arms caused him to drop his umbrella onto the hall floor just outside his door and resulted in an elevation of his anxiety up one more notch. He lowered the balance of his load onto the desk facing the window, got down on his hands and knees, and crawled to the edge of the room, just inside the door and around the wall so that he couldn’t actually see to the left down the hall, nor could he actually see the fallen umbrella that he was trying to retrieve but most importantly, he couldn’t, yet, be seen by anything or anyone whom might be coming out of one of the other rooms down the hall. A trickle of sweat, a dust of perspiration appeared across his face, neck, and forearms. Stretching, straining, he reached his hand into the hall, felt around the carpet, touched something hard yet soft, hooked it with his fingers, and pulled it, as quietly but as quickly as he could, into his room, his level of anxiety nearing the “freak out” point. With great relief, he realized that he’d retrieved the umbrella. He gave it a quick look-over, unsnapped the strap that held it wrapped shut, made certain nothing was stuck to it or had slithered into it, nothing hidden in the folds, nothing attached, then snapped it back and hung it on a hook in the closet.

“The window…is there something at the window? Is there something looking in?” He heard the hiss before It came.

“It’s the wind,” was his first thought. His second thought was, “That’s not the wind.”

By then it was too late to avoid some damage but there was still enough time to survive. That’s what he thought. He started running, out of the house and down the driveway to the street. The one he was worried about rode by on a bicycle. He reached forward, running, to grab the guy on the bike. The move required him to lean forward and stretch out in length. The guy on the bike leaned back and, with one hand, slit his throat from below his Adam’s apple up to his chin. Walter had woken up from the dream, not totally covered in sweat but close. He had felt relieved, given a bit of a laugh and had shaken his head.

“What the hell?” he thought.

He was up at 1:54 a.m. Sunday, and used the upstairs bathroom to piss, sitting that time, and had looked out the window and up at the roof of the garage. There was something on top, sitting there, bigger than a cat, bigger than a raccoon, staring down at him.

“Another dream?” asked his mind.

He had been too tired to go outside and clarify what he had seen and so he just went back to bed, sleeping and unaware of any more dreams or things watching him, until 6:30 a.m. when his alarm went off. It was a day when Walter had agreed to meet me at the East River City High School track for speed work and we were on for 7:30, which would give us enough time to get our laps in before the football players, cross country runners, or any other students needed to use the track. He ground the Midnight Sun dark roast coffee beans and started them brewing before dropping into Mara’s basement for his usual routine, rising back up fifteen minutes later to pour a mug and grab a small bowl of Stoneyfield Organic Plain Nonfat Yogurt with some blueberries and walnut pieces. We liked to do our speed work early and on nearly empty stomachs and he had found that this combination kept him comfortable. It was raining outside, as it had been for several days, but we kept to our schedule through most kinds of weather. Walter had suffered some spinal damage during the years he spent doing the things that he only barely spoke of. Some things he never spoke of, now I’m sure. Anyway, that nerve damage had caused him to lose the dorsal reflex that impacted his right foot and also paralyzed the big toe on that foot. As a consequence, he was never able to wear barefoot shoes, and when going barefoot he always risked the possibility of stubbing that toe, potentially breaking it but at minimum tearing the skin and toenail badly. What he liked to do, was wear his near-barefoot shoes when doing the fast running, so he usually came to the track wearing his Birks and then switching into his Nikes or New Balance, saving his Saucony shoes for actual racing. He was living about ten minutes from the track so he beat me there and was waiting when I arrived.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Hey,” he responded, with a little head lift.

“Let me get loosened up,” I said. “Are you already set?”

He just nodded in the affirmative. I did some active stretching, swinging on one leg and then the other, doing some standing trunk twists and arm rotations followed by twenty-five jumping jacks and a few deep knee bends.

“All set.”

We jogged together, a relaxed four-forty, splashing water as we went along, just to get our blood flowing and then started the stopwatch. From there on, we ran four cycles of a two-twenty flat out, followed by a two-twenty jog, and then switched it up to six cycles of a four-forty flat out, split with a four-forty at a jogging pace. We were soaked to the bone by then.

“You want to do a timed mile?” he asked me.

“I’m not sure that I feel up to it,” I answered.

“How about a mile at an 8 1/2 minute pace?” he wouldn’t give up.

“Someday, you’ll roll that foot over and break your ankle,” I said, giving in.

When we were done, I was exhausted; I don’t know about him. We gave each other a fist bump and he started doing some static stretching in the rain.

“Hills Monday?” he asked.

“Can’t wait,” I said, walking to my car.

That noon, Walter was sitting in Snout & Belly, the hotdog place in East Town where he’d ordered a Tofutti dog, “No Snouts, No Bellies, No Hooves”, and was just finishing his meal. He tried to not eat anything that had once had a face, especially if it was a face he might have known. He had taken his raincoat and hat off and was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and had his elbows on the table with his hands raised to his mouth, holding his food. If someone were close enough to look, they would have seen several thick, short scars across the and backs of both of his hands and one or two lining the skin near his right elbow. His forearms were turned out so that anyone, who wanted to, could see the Nietzsche tattoos that said, “What doesn’t kill you (moving to the left) makes you stronger.” It wasn’t that he wanted anyone to see what was written in his skin, he just didn’t care. To anyone who might have known of Walter’s past, it would have been apparent that the few days he had spent in Vietnam, Bosnia and the Persian Gulf hadn’t killed him yet, but they could also tell from looking at him that the strength of his youth was pretty much gone, although a hard core remained. It was anyone’s guess as to whether he’d tip to the right forearm or the left. “We will all, eventually, tip to the right,” he had told me one day.

In the diner, the television was on above the service counter, and a local news report came on, mentioning The River and catching Walter’s attention. “A week from Friday will be the inaugural ceremony of the new garage for The River. U.S. Secretary of Transportation James Hartwell will be cutting the ribbon and formally opening the structure. Local officials hope to inspire an additional $25,000,000 in federal grants following a closed-door presentation scheduled to take place after the ceremony. The public is welcome to attend the ribbon cutting and can gain access at the main entrance on Jacobs Street, in downtown River City, at 11 a.m.,” announced the reporter. Walter knew that he’d be out of the garage, driving his regular route at that time on that day.

Walter’s mobile phone vibrated in his pocket and he reached for it.

It was Mara calling. “Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m just finishing lunch. You remember, right?”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot,” came her voice.

It seemed that she was forgetting more often. He didn’t know if it was the medication and the booze but he knew that the combination messed with the wiring in her head. It could be that she just had other things on her mind; he didn’t really know what went on in there and she didn’t shed much light on it. Sometimes she would seem to not be paying attention at all, not responding to participating in their conversation and then, weeks or months later, she’d quote something he had said or reference the conversation in some other way.

“They are all different,” he thought, thinking of the women. He had sat there, in the restaurant, surrounded by women, looking at every one of them without consciously thinking about it, filtering out the ones he could imagine himself sucking on or them sucking on him. Tummies, some just little pooches sticking out in the front, probably having their period, others wrapping around the sides and back; nice figures, nice shapes with tummies, cute little butts.

When Walter met Mara, his third wife had just left him. They had been married for about nine years. Her previous husband, and the father of her children, was a good looking private detective who both packed a gun and was still in love with her but he was also a man who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and she’d grown tired of his indiscretions and had left him after the kids graduated from high school. They’d lived about a mile apart and remained occasional lovers until she met Walter. When she and Walter married, her ex called their home crying, professing his love and threatening to kill Walter. Of course he didn’t truly understand who Walter was. When Walter heard the threat, he just smiled.

Sometimes Walter felt that he was a little slow and it was years into it that he realized that she wasn’t happy the day he tried to make love to her and she hopped out of bed and said, “Why would I ever want to make love with someone like you?”

They tried marriage counseling.

Walter said, to the therapist, “I know she loves me.”

The therapist said, “Let’s find out” and, turning to his wife, asked, “Do you love Walter?”

“He’s a good man,” was her response.

“But do you love him?”

“A lot of things would have to change for me to say that.”

“So, you don’t love him?”

“I wouldn’t marry him again.”

She came home one day and gave notice that she had to leave the state, go south, to take care of her parents for a couple of months and suggested that Walter come down for Christmas.

For Christmas, she spent the days with her ex-husband and their kids and said, over the phone, to Walter, “Why don’t you come down for New Years?”

Walter’s response was, “Why don’t we get a divorce?”

To which she replied, “I never thought of that.”

With KK in the passenger seat, he drove the Tahoe into the parking lot, looking for the best place to park to give her a good field of vision, knowing that after he parked and went inside, he’d come out and she’d be gone forever.

They were divorced ten months later, with everything being done over the Internet and through the mail. She came home while Walter was out of town, and took all of the things she wanted from their house. The financial settlement and Walter’s fucked up value system pushed him into bankruptcy but, and I’m just guessing here, it also created the crack in his time based Dreamstate that allowed him to hear the Call.

The more we talked, the more it became clear that Walter knew that he saw everything through smoky glasses, that his whole world, or his perception of the world, was shaded by the pain in his experience and, even with all the things he’d seen and done, his greatest pain seemed to be connected to the women in his life.

His awareness came back to the diner and the television. The reporter was saying, “Record breaking rains with flooding continued across Michigan on Sunday, forcing evacuations and claiming the lives of ten people who drove off washed out roads and were swept away by swollen rivers. In western Michigan, residents around the Lazy River were being warned of possible evacuation. The flooding impacted at least one-third of the community around the Valley. Damage estimates were still being calculated. The cost of repairing public roads and facilities alone is reaching $100 million.”

He gathered up the plastic utensils, paper plate, napkin and foam cup he’d used and carried them over to the trashcan and dropped them in. He was feeling his belly as he went back for his coat and hat, and was aware of his body, his arms and legs beneath his clothes.

“I’m getting hard yet fat at the same time. It must be from running, doing pushups, and practicing yoga, all while eating donuts,” he thought, resolving to cut back on the pastries.

He left the diner, walked steadily through the rain to his car, got in and drove home to Mara’s.

When he got inside, he hit the head and looked in the mirror as he washed his hands, unspoken words floating up from the bed of his mind, “I look better than I am, and I’m not looking too good,” it was becoming his mantra, and then, as if he had no control over his thoughts, “A form, a wrapper, a machine, a tool, a shell, a carrier, a vessel, a cover, a mask, a transporter, a distraction, a deception, a feint, a glove, a decoy, a body, not an illusion because it’s real but misperceived or misunderstood. This is me, breathing. What is this Me? What am I?”

Later that day, Walter had driven Mara to the mall where she wanted to buy some fabric to make a throw for Jade. She had gone into Joann Fabrics and he had decided to sit on a bench inside the mall but not within the store and wait for her to finish her shopping. Walter wanted to tell me what had happened to him that day but he wanted to preface his story with another, so that I might better understand. I think what he really needed was a framework to put things into context so that he could better understand what he had experienced. I imagine it was even more difficult, for him, to try to explain it. I also think that he was beginning to suspect that I thought he was going crazy.

“I knew this guy,” he said, “who was an all-state athlete in high school before he went into the military. In the service, he excelled at everything he did; he took all of the schools that were offered, just to become a better soldier. In addition to the physical training they gave him, he took martial arts lessons off base, studied combat theory, and talked to every combat veteran he could. You could have asked anyone who knew him and they would have told you that he was a world-class soldier, clearly better than the rest.”

He paused for a moment.

We were running on the Kent Trails and a faster group was passing us by.

“He was with a group that took the airfield in Panama City when we went in for Noriega. He was with his squad, so there were eleven other guys with him. They had just taken a position behind a metal airplane hangar, when someone opened up on them with automatic fire. One bullet, just one, ricocheted off of the hangar and killed him. The shooter wasn’t even aiming at him; he was just spraying bullets in his direction. He never even had the chance to fire his own weapon in combat. Out of the 150 or so guys in his company, he was clearly the best and, yet, he was the only one killed that day,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

“There’s a lot of randomness in life,” he said, making his point.

“I hear you,” I said.

“So, I was sitting in the mall, waiting for Mara,” he continued, “and I saw something.”

I just waited.

“You’ll probably laugh, or you won’t understand,” he talked on, “but I saw the Void and it scared the shit out of me.”

I just listened, not really knowing what the fuck he was talking about. “I can’t explain it but it was the Infinite Nothing, a depth that was frightening. It only lasted for a few seconds. It was like looking at a gathering of sand covering a piece of glass or a mirror, and then the sand pulled back and I saw what was hidden; there was nothing looking back at me.”

“So what’s that got to do with the guy who got killed in Panama?” I asked.

“This stuff just happens. We don’t know when it’s coming or who’s going to receive it,” he said, “no matter how much we prepare or anticipate.”

“I get that,” I agreed, “but I’ll have to think about what you saw.”

We kept running, staying pretty quiet for the next hour.

In time I finally came to understand what Walter was doing, without him having to tell me. In the words of Joseph Campbell, he was trying to disentangle himself as kindly and carefully as possible from the commitments he’d made while asleep; there were others depending upon his role in their dream, maybe I was one of them, and his intention was not to cause chaos or shake the boat but rather to get out as quietly as possible even if it took him a little longer than he’d like

Chapter 2 – Bus Driver

IMG_0481What are you doing with all this material, making a bedspread?

Ralph Kramden

When all of this went on, Walter was driving Route 60, his Monday through Wednesday route, which ran from River City out to the campus of Lazy River Valley State College and back.  The college paid the transit company for the run and the students covered the cost with their tuition so there was no bus ticket to punch; everyone who wanted on got on.   Walter’s run number 360 would leave the garage at 7:25 a.m., giving him five minutes to get to his first stop.  They started paying him fifteen minutes before that so that he had time to inspect his ride and get situated before driving.  Management liked the drivers to sign-in another few minutes before that and asked that they be in the Drivers’ Lounge, outside of Dispatch, by that time. Five seconds late and they’d write you up; get written up a three times and you were gone.  So, he usually drifted in just before 7 a.m.  The host of Song Sparrows was always there, in the steel rafters, on time. It was about a fifteen-minute drive from where he slept to the parking garage and a couple of minutes from the garage to the lounge so he left home about 6:25 a.m.  At seventeen bucks an hour, he was making about a third of what he was before he heard the call.  Once there, he’d check the roster and, when it was time, head out into the garage and locate his ride and do his Pretrip inspection.

One ordinary day, he had bus no. 1053, lane 16 – they were listed by bus number and the lane they were parked in, on the roster, but sometimes they got moved or taken by an earlier driver by mistake.    Some buses he liked better than others.  No. 1053 was okay but nothing special, a newer one with no personality but he still treated it with respect.  They’re a lot bigger than an elephant but he pretended that’s what they were just to keep it interesting; it was easier with some than others.  He had told a few other drivers about his mind-game and how he named the elephants so a few of them had started playing the game, too.  Occasionally another driver, usually a female, would come to him with a name and the reason behind it which was usually something taken from the character of the bus or sometimes taken from some incident the bus was involved in. Some buses were smooth, some were quiet, and some would brake well while others were just the opposite.

It’ll probably take me longer to tell you this than it actually took Walter to do but, as he walked up to the front of the bus, he checked it to make sure it was level and there was nothing obviously wrong with the suspension as well as looking for spots or, as he called them, elephant droppings on the floor that might indicate a fluid leak.  The front door would be open and it was always dark as he stepped in, slung his bag behind the driver’s seat and planted his butt.  He made sure the air brake was pulled out and that the doors were released before turning the engine start knob two clicks.  The buses wouldn’t roll by accident unless you really screwed up but he’d seen the videos in safety class where an operator did just that.  The dash lights would come on and he would see that the transmission was in neutral before pressing the start button and firing up the engine.  He typed his driver and run codes into the Avail, flipped the overhead light toggle, and stepped out of the bus to do his walk-around.

He checked the headlights, signal lights, and running lights to make sure they were all working.  He checked the windshield for cracks and chips, pulled the wiper blades away from the glass and ran his fingers along them to make sure they were smooth and attached, looked at the front outside mirrors, making sure they were secure, clean and not cracked, pulled the bike rack and checked both arms before hooking it back up, walked around the driver’s side and opened the air valve door and toggled each of the levers to make sure there was no water in the lines.  He checked the tread on the front tire, its inflation, the rim for cracks or welds, the hub for leaks, the lugs and nuts for wear or looseness, and the well for any hanging cables or lines.  He moved along the length of the body checking for damage or loose panels, patting her side while he walked, whispering, “Good girl.”

He checked the back driver’s-side tires, walked around the rear of the bus and checked the brake lights and back-up lights as well as the Luminator Sign, which, by that time, was showing, “LRVSC Connector/Kickoff”.  Just like they taught him, he did all of this again on the passenger side but added a check of the back passenger door to make sure he could open it from the outside, seeing that it wasn’t stuck from the washing. Next, he opened the fuel door to see that the cap was in place, shut the door and then looked under the bus for anything that might be hanging.  Climbing back in, he did a walk-thru, pulling the signal cord at three specific locations to make sure the stop signal worked, checked the floor for garbage; he pulled up the front seats, which would make space for the wheel-chair riders and checked the attachment cords and signal buttons and then put the seats back down.  He opened the back door from the inside and checked the windows to make sure they were shut but would open in an emergency.  He knew that the front windshield could be kicked out in an emergency.

Back in the driver’s seat, he checked the wipers at three speeds, the wiper fluid, the defrost/heater fan, the driver’s booster fan, the power ceiling vents, reset the odometer to zero, checked the oil and heat gauges. There were two dash mounted fans that he positioned and checked on low and high speed knowing that on that not-so-rare occasion in River City when it rained, the bus windows would fog right up and these fans and a cracked-open window were the quickest way to clear his vision.  In a bus, you drive with your mirrors and if you can’t see them you’re quickly in trouble.  He made sure the right turn horn was on, that the engine was switched to fast idle, and that his roadside lights were selected.  He checked the right side mirrors to make sure it was safe and then powered up the handicap ramp and deployed it and then brought it back in.  He adjusted his seat and floor pedals and then adjusted the outside and inside mirrors to make sure he could see what he wanted to.  He wanted to see high and low, near and far outside, and the back door and the seat behind him in his blind spot on the inside. He checked the inside and outside speakers to make sure they were working. He checked the camera light to confirm that the seven lenses were functioning. He slipped on his driving gloves, made sure the air-brake was engaged and then shifted the transmission into “Drive” and rocked the bus back and forth a few times, checking the brakes; they held. He went through the cycle of buttons on the Avail system, confirming the checks he’d made, and then punched the transfer button on the fare box and it kicked out a ticket with his run and the current time: it had been nine minutes since he started.

He’d been recording everything he’d done on a large yellow Physical Check Card as he went along – anything too major and he would have called Dispatch and either gotten it fixed or been issued another bus. After his run, he would turn in the card along with his time card.

Each day, at about this time Julie walked by; she had the same route but a different run that left fifteen minutes after him.  They had only talked a few times, at that point, and he made an effort not to talk to her anymore.   They waved at each other in the garage, in the lounge, and every time they’d pass on their routes but like I said, they didn’t talk. There was an instant and obvious attraction between them when they first met but I guess he knew too much to do anything about it and she knew he wasn’t a plaything.  Sometimes, though, he would think, “She’s so fine,” and then, “Fuck it.”

He honked the horn and moved forward in his lane wondering if everyone reached a point where they give up; not a point where they surrendered to some higher power or something noble and wise and they were left better off even though nothing externally changed, but a point where they realized that all their hopes, ambitions, and dreams weren’t going to come true.  Maybe it was middle-age crisis.  Maybe it was existential angst.  For Walter, the problem was that crappy feeling had been with him most all of his life, he told me, except for those times, looking back, when he was mentally ill or most asleep.  What a waste.  He had more talent than ambition. They say people kill themselves when they’ve lost all hope.  I guess he wasn’t there yet although, from what I know, he certainly had the thoughts.  Three things kept him going: The hope that someday he’d be happy and things would all make sense in more than an intellectual way; knowing that he wouldn’t do that to his boys, and the realization that through some accident or the process of natural decay this life would be over soon anyway.

At the appointed time, he pulled out of the garage while honking his horn in a warning, and headed over to his starting point where he kneeled the bus, took on his first load and waited for the proper time to move on. I joined that crowd one time.

At his 7:30 a.m. time point, a signal sounded and he used his right hand to raise up the elephant and it beeped while the right front corner lifted.  He always imagined his beast doing a respectful curtsy to the riders.  He looked in the right outside lower mirror to make sure no-one was trying to get on at the last minute, used his left hand to turn the lever and shut the bus doors, pushed the drive button on the automatic transmission, punched the air-brake release with his left palm and it made its trumpeting sound, took his left toe off of the four-way flashers and shifted it to the left-turn signal, looked in both the left outside mirrors to make sure he was clear, looked in the inside mirrors to make sure everyone was seated so he wouldn’t drop someone to the floor as he moved, took his right foot off of the brake and pushed down on the accelerator pedal and pulled 40 feet and 36,000 pounds of bus with 6,000 pounds of passengers out from New Campus.  He maneuvered around the two school buses that were, as usual, parked halfway out in the street as it curved around between the campus, the museum, and the parking ramp where the early morning worker bees were rushing in from the opposite direction to store their cars for the day.

It was left on Opal Street, under the S-136 overpass where the lanes merge in a way that almost always caused confusion for the drivers, up to the train tracks by the health club where he put on his flashers then stopped just over the manhole cover, opened his doors, looked both ways for trains, closed his doors and moved forward, keeping the flashers on until the rear-end cleared the tracks.  He would barely notice the conversations taking place behind him.  Even though he’d given them adequate warning with the four-way flashing lights, the early morning commuters would often narrowly miss rear-ending the bus as he checked for trains. It would piss most of them off also, because there was a traffic light there and it was pretty easy to get stuck for an extra minute or two.  Opal transitioned into River Dr. and there was a stop at the next corner where Leeward Street intersected.  He’d hit the right turn signal that also beeped, switch to the flashers and then pull six to eight inches from the curb, making certain that side mirror didn’t hit a road sign or a passenger, then kneel the bus and open the door as quickly as possible.

Walter made a point to greet everybody, while looking them in their eyes, with a “Good morning!” or “Howdy!” and a smile.

“I’m looking for someone who’s awake,” he said, when I asked him why he looked in his or her eyes.

He said that some of the kids looked like they were ready to cry, and some were cranky with the hour but each of them was a jewel in Indra’s Net whether they knew it or not.

It was a mile-and-a-quarter, five traffic lights, one stop sign, and that one bus stop from New Campus through Leeward to the next time point at River Dr. and Bellfield Road and they gave him four minutes; he and the bus were almost always late but they would, most often, make it up later on.

At Bellfield there was usually a car parked as close as could be to the bus stop without infringing on the no parking zone so he would flash, kneel and stop straight out in his lane making sure to protect his rear and the boarding passengers by keeping the bus close enough to the parked cars to prevent a car from pulling through.

“No dipping and diving,” he would remind himself.

More pissed off commuters stuck behind a bus.  The speed limit was 25 mph and there was almost always a cop around there so he kept it at the limit.  Up the hill, merge with traffic from W. Motion Ave. and go under the S-96 overpass to the next stop and time point at Vellco Street, about two minutes away but they gave him four.  There was a brick pattern on the Finest Realty building, behind the stop, that looked like a person and it sometimes tricked him into slowing for the stop when it was not needed.  If there was a passenger waiting, it was usually that thin professor with the beard or the young guy with the skateboard and book bag.  That stop was just past the light and it was a pull to the right shoulder in pretty busy traffic, same routine, then back out again: two minutes to the light and stop at Dalecollin Blvd. in front of the Family Fare unless there was an infrequent someone standing at the stop at Oakleaf Street.

Still heading west, it was a lesson in being present, what with drivers on cell phones talking, or texting though it was illegal, eating some kind of fast food meal, getting spooked and giving him the finger when the bus came near them while they were distracted.  There was usually someone at Oakcrest Apartments where there was a good pull-off but it’s over a hump in the road at a strong speed and the lollipop’s positioned behind a tree so he had to watch closely from a distance.  From Dalecollin it was a five-minute time allowance to Spinney St. and the right hand turn to the left hand turn and the stop behind the Area Fire Station.  There would usually be a bus headed the other direction coming through right around the same time, assuming they were both on time, and the drivers would slow for each other then give a man nod or a wave.  If things were good, he had a few minutes to wait before he needed to pull out from there.  Some drivers read a book for three minutes at a time.

He just sat and thought, “All these kids learning how not to be.”

He would pull out, go back on to River Dr. with a right turn over the sidewalk making sure to miss the pylon, up to the next light at Pilsner then on to the stop at Crest Bank across from the shopping center and at a light.  The day I rode, there were a couple of cars in front of him so he couldn’t quite make the stop.  He always left enough room between the bus and the nearest car so that he could drive around the car if it broke down or there was some emergency.  He waved at the students at the stop, signaling them to stay where they were; he’d be right there.  From there, the speed limit increased to 55 mph.  He usually had a couple of students standing just behind the yellow line, staring straight ahead through the windshield, acting like they’re surfing, watching what he did.  That day, there was a beep and a flash and a signal came over the Avail telling him that he had a message. There was one light at 18th Avenue that he had to watch closely. I watched him as he watched the walk light on the right until it got blocked by a road sign then looked to the one on the left when it came into view; when either one turned red he had seventeen seconds to make it through the street light before it would tell him to stop.  Sometimes it was a close call at 55 mph.  He said that when the road was slick in winter, sometimes it was safer to hit the flashers and pound the horn and race on through rather than trying to stop and risk dumping the standing passengers and still sliding into a car.

From that light, it was about four miles to the next light where he’d make a turn into the campus.  The course was a gentle downhill for a mile-and-a-half, then steeply up, and then dropped 140 ft. in the next mile-and-a-half where it crossed the Lazy River, then back up to the campus turnoff.  He liked to stay light on the brakes and maintain as much speed as he could, without getting too crazy, through that stretch.  On each run, it was a new decision whether to get in the left lane before or after the big bridge.  He had never felt it to be too slick or frozen but, if there was going to be an incident, he would rather it happened before or after the bridge where there was more room to maneuver and more room for emergency vehicles, so it came down to the amount of traffic around him.  If he pulled over too soon, he could end up becoming a block to the faster cars; too late and he could get crowded out or be forced to move the cars back or over with a lane change. Getting stopped at the light allowed him to check the message: “Missing person. White female 6 feet 2 inches wearing a gray sweatshirt and gray sweatpants and a pink and black jacket.  If she’s on your bus, call in.” He smiled to himself, slightly nodding his head left and right.

“She’s not on my bus,” he thought and erased the message.

He had four minutes to his next time-point but preferred three so that he wouldn’t block traffic on the two-lane campus roads where it was illegal for cars to pass a bus.  He had to do a lane change before the next light and he drove slowly to eat some time, hoping that the light would catch him and/or someone would want off or that someone would be waiting to get on at the stop just past the light.  It was on to Dreamstate Hall, where half of the riders got off.  Many of them thanked him and wished him a good day, perhaps having had time to realize he’d said hello when they boarded.  A few more got on, including one pretty lady who acted more than her age.

“As if she already has it figured out but doesn’t hold it against anyone,” Walter told me, later.

She lit up, as he said she usually did, and said, “Hi, How are you!”

When she came on board the atmosphere changed. She was wearing something classy, made of some fine looking material in a pleasing color.  He said she always dressed that way.  That day, her brunette hair was in curls and she had on a rose colored top and jeans.  Her gaze kind of lingered on Walter before she moved on.

“I’m old enough to be her dad, if not her granddad,” Walter thought to himself, keeping things in perspective.

Next he drove on to Kickoff, the student center and terminal on campus, where the balance of the passengers would get off, the Luminator changed to “Campus Connector/New”, and he had time to take a leak, if he needed to.  It was a rally point, so to speak, for the buses that ran students back and forth in loops to the apartments and dorms, as well as the other connector buses.  With a few minor changes, the drive back was a mere reversal of the drive out.  It was twelve to thirteen miles each way and Walter would make seven runs before handing the bus over to the next driver.

– Keep Going –