The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show - Ariel Gore [32]
“I know you,” she insists. “I know you. I know you.” She’s staring at me, our faces reflected vaguely in the bus window. “I show you. I know you. I snow you. I’ll show you I know you…”
I try to concentrate on my breaths, ignore her. Mental cases don’t usually make me uneasy, but I’m not sure if this one’s random-mental or read-the-paper-mental. Oh, make them blind to me.
I watch through our reflections as we roll out of town and into the suburbs, past the 7-Elevens and the Home Depots, facades of commerce.
“I know you,” the woman whispers out the window. “I’ll show you I know you. I’ll snow you…”
I close my eyes, massage my face lightly in my hands, look forward to telling Barbaro this strange epic dream I’ve had, but I don’t wake up. My fellow travelers are far away now. I open my eyes on the still same bus headed east out of Sacramento. We pass dusty antique shops, abandoned churches, and fruit stands as the road ribbons through the kind of towns all the kids just want out of. Friendless billboards advertise Mother Lode hotels and Gold Rush casinos over the state line.
I’m relieved when the woman who knows me stands up, hugging her bag and muttering, “I’ll show you,” and climbs off the bus in the middle of wind-kissed nowhere.
I think of Tony. Was it just a week ago in Portland when he’d sat on a tall stool in the kitchen of the punk house where we were staying, gesturing dramatically and insisting that this country was on the brink of a civil war? The reds versus the blues, the cities versus the rurals, the bigots versus the queers, the religious literalists versus the mystics? The punks had all nodded into their vegan lasagna.
Tony ran his fingers through his short, loose Afro.
“America is becoming a third world country,” someone said.
“Good riddance to the superpower,” another one chimed in.
And “What kind of world are we living in when the CIA and the New York Times suddenly look like the good guys?”
I listened to them all, wary but not worried. I imagined all the hoboes and the families and the traveling performers of the world huddled together around campfires, keeping the light of humanity burning through it all. A utopian apocalypse. I imagined some sudden sense of tolerant community rippling through the small towns of America, the survivalists coming out to share their canned apricots with strangers. I imagined all the yahoos with their trucks and their guns, shooting aimless into the night, but I imagined all of us sheltered in the basement of a punk house, singing.
Civil war or no, I figured I’d always have my troupe.
“End of the line,” the driver barks.
Oh, right. I’m alone.
Out on the street, I study the old minister’s squiggly map. X marks the spot, but there’s just a greasy diner there. I look both ways before crossing the highway. The smell of a deep fryer, the promise of stale coffee with half-and-half. Dot or no, who can resist a roadside diner at sunrise?
I push open the glass door, hesitate before I make my way to the counter. I sit down on a cracked stool, order orange juice and a cream cheese omelet.
“To go?” the waitress asks. I guess she’s hoping I’ll leave. She’s got stringy brown hair and the worst acne I’ve ever seen on an adult.
“For here,” I tell her.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Strange stranger,” she hums.
The regulars all laugh at me under their mustaches as they sip their endless coffees from brown mugs. An unfamiliar country song on the radio.
“I’m looking for somebody named Dot,” I pipe up when the waitress pushes my giant plate of eggs across the counter.
Blank look on her face.
“Dot’s place up the road,” the guy sitting next to me offers. He smiles, revealing blackened teeth. “Up by the old bus stop.” He gestures with his chin.
I eat my eggs in silence. Burned at the edges, under-cooked pale yellow ooze in the middle. A greasy roadside diner is always a disappointment. I never learn my lesson. I pay the bill and grab a few paper napkins.
Outside, a ragged traveler stands with his hand outstretched, dirt caked in his life line. “Got any change?