“Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart?”
“Have you had another person’s shit on your hands?”
The back of a greyhound at night. Maybe the back of every greyhound. It used to be you could smoke in the back of a greyhound; it’s like a body memory even those born after the ban, the crazies, the stoned, the disenfranchised they go to the back of the bus.
And yeah, sure, I could get angry about the Jesus freaks, I mean the church and every other cult tries to cull the disenfranchised from the herd. But on a greyhound the Jesus freaks earn their position on the back of the bus. They aren’t affiliated, they just have whatever it is that martyrs are made of, that crazy fervor that gets a guy set on fire, hung up on a tree or gallows pole, walking into battle with his palms out and upwards.
“What you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me” the Jesus freak misquotes.
“I’m not cleaning up your shit” the meth head answers.
And who the fuck knows what he’s really talking about. Maybe he was an orderly, maybe a scatologist, maybe just trying to be rude enough to be left alone, or maybe he’s got so fucking spun he’s just hissing the words to some drama playing out in his own head.
And yeah, there’s a me on every greyhound too, paying attention but not to prevent anything or chime in or even run it through the mill of human experience for some platitude on the human condition. It’s a greyhound thing. If I was going to write the story I’d say once the doors swish open with that hydraulic whoosh of air, people just have roles thrust upon him.
The Jesus freak could be an atheist traveling salesman who did so badly on the road he lost his car, sold off his brushes and is taking the bus home. The meth head, some vet, who, yeah, might be all fucked up, but not on meth. You see the have to play this out. It’s the drama of the greyhound not the human condition.
Maybe there are universes in universes and they each have their own rules and you have no choice but to play by them. This isn’t the Empire Builder between Omaha and Cheyenne, or it’s not just the Empire Builder that I’m taking on this part of its cross country route. It’s part of the constellation greyhound and I’ll always be the watcher.
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