The bus was crossing the border between South Carolina and Georgia when Troy decided that eating the brownies his roommate had given him was a bad decision. Time stretched out, an initial wave of pleasant floating slowly overrun by creeping terror. He was stuck in here with these people for at least another hour, till the first station, then would he’d be crammed in with however many more people climbed aboard the next bus. And the one after that.
At first, he buried his face in the book, too afraid to raise his head. The words blurred together, causing him to dumbly study page six of his paperback edition of “Catch 22” (A birthday gift from The Colonel.)
The Colonel, Troy thought. If he could see this…
Troy looked out the window, the constant whir of trees and dots of farmland was a sharp contrast to the frozen time inside this bus. If he was still like this when he got home, The Colonel would see right through him with his x-ray eyes..
Which won’t happen, he reminded himself. Home was two days away. Unless he stayed high forever, everything was going to be perfectly fine. Both thoughts echoed out to either side of his head, angel and devil, “High forever, High Forever” to the right, “Perfectly Fine.. Perfectly fine…” to his left.
Troy looked around to see if anyone was onto him. The bus was half full. It mostly contained business looking types kept to the windows, eyes down on newspapers or dogged paperbacks. Three seats up sat a mother and her two children, who were telling her the plot to the Jungle Book, which had been in theaters for a few weeks. Finally, four rows ahead of him, sat a little man in a worn brown suit.
The man’s head was the same size as his skinny neck. Combined with his dark brown suit, it made him look like a Worm crawling out of the dirt. He clutched a tiny briefcase in his lap and spoke to the passenger next to him, a man with a buzzcut in a short sleeved white shirt. The man with a buzz cut was gnawing on a pencil, but seemed very interested in whatever it was the Worm had to say.
The pencil-chewer felt Troy’s eyes on him. Troy dropped his face towards his book before the man’s head turned, a bead of sweat slipping off his brow and forever discoloring page six.
Troy eventually fell asleep, never daring to look back up at the bus for fear of a sea of judging eyes. His dreams were no less condemning. Riots in the street, protesters against the war joining with protesters against racism, all pushing behind him, a line of state troopers like he’d seen on the news ahead, guns aimed. He tried to turn, to run, to push his way through the crowd, but it was too dense. So many angry faces. A shouted warning from behind and he reversed, facing the line of armored men as the angry mob pushed him, unwilling, towards them.
A lurch forward woke him. The bus, reaching Atlanta.
#
Lunch was just a hotdog and a coke, his appetite and budget both too slim for much else. The meal still helped temper the brownies. Things still felt distant, but not as if from a great height anymore. He sat inside the depot and looked through the sluggish crowd for the Worm.
Troy didn’t know why the man troubled him so. Something about his fixed smile, skull-like, the peculiar over-pleasant look in his eye. A not unheard of manner, especially in the south, but one that felt like a front, a mask for cruel intentions.
He slumped into his seat, feeling the weight of the hot dog in his belly. A roach brushed by his foot and scurried along the row of plastic seats. His eyes absently followed the bug’s journey (a ‘Palmetto Bug,’ that’s what everyone called them back in Carolina). It had almost cleared the row, aiming for a wad of spilled French fries, when a hand slammed down, crushing the bug like a packet of mustard.
The pencil-chewing man from the bus sat at the end of the row.
The man raised his hand, clutching the twitching remnants of the roach. He held it up to the light, appraising it. The man locked eyes with Troy; two quivering, bloodshot moons, then gobbled up the writhing mass like it was a melting candy.
Troy jolted out of his seat, feeling the hotdog trying to escape, and stumbled away from the man, dragging his duffle bag behind him.
#
The palmetto-chewing man was not on board the 7pm bus to Dallas, but the Worm was. Two rows back from the driver, already chatting with a redhead woman holding a baby. Around dusk the baby started to wail, filling the bus with a tired, resentful energy you could feel like humidity, but the cries tapered off before anyone dared speak. The pair’s conversation resumed, too low to make out precise words over the rumble of the road. Troy studied their lips, more brazen in the darkness of night, but the words remained a mystery. The woman started to turn to face him.
Troy shifted his own stare to the right. A lone girl around his age sat jotting notes in a journal by the dim glow of a pocket flashlight. She wore a white blouse with horn rimmed glasses and had wavy hair held back with a green ribbon. The girl also turned her head, locking eyes with him. He looked up to the ceiling, face flushing. He heard her walking down the aisle.
“Eileen Evans Ainswright, and you are?”
“T.. Troy.” He stammered, taking her hand. “Greyson.”
“Pleased to meet you Troy Greyson. Heading to Dallas?” The glasses magnified her eyes, brown with greenish flecks. He was looking at her face instead of responding, and still had not let go of her hand.
He withdrew his side of the handshake, hoping it wasn’t too quick. “No. Um, I’m actually bound for Monterey Bay.”
“Let me guess: The pop festival?”
“No,” He laughed at the idea, him at a rock show. “Going home for the summer.”
“I’m doing the same; home from Agnes Scott to my family in Phoenix. We’re stuck in this tin can for a bit, so I thought I’d see if you’d like some conversation to pass the time?”
He fought the urge to look over at the Worm, instead smiling back. “To tell the truth, yes, I’d like that a lot.” He leaned forward. “I think the long ride was starting to get to me.”
She laughed. “It will drive a body a bit buggy.”
Troy flinched at the last word. She didn’t seem to notice.
They whispered back and forth for the rest of the night. She was a military child too; her Dad was in the air force. She was studying language, with hopes of becoming a code breaker. Both of them were second generation at their schools.
“Small world.” She smiled, her eyes lingering on his face. Troy chuckled. Eileen raised an eyebrow. “What?” He shook his head, she gave him a soft shove, her hand warm against his shirt.
“It’s just…” Troy looked to the ceiling as if the words he was searching for would be written in marker on the bus roof. “I’ve never met a girl like you before.”
“My daddy always told us to get straight to it, no dancing around.” She next spoke in a gruff voice, “‘You gotta look the world right in the eye, Eileen.’ He’d say, ‘And whatever you do, whatever else you take from me, you make sure if you’ve got the world’s eye on you, don’t blink first.’”
They both laughed.
“What does that actually mean?” Troy asked, after a long, comfortable silence. She looked past him, out the window and frowned a little.
“Not sure.” She smiled, and the world brightened. “It sounds good, though.”
“I’ll say.” Their hands both rested on the seat, close enough that sparks jumped between them. The Worm was all but forgotten, until thinking the name made Troy glance over, noting that the two were also still engaged in a long, late chat.
“Aha!” Eileen announced, beaming with self satisfaction.
Troy looked back to her and blushed as she leaned in to whisper. “What’re they gabbing about, is that it?” She had a faint perfume, like lilac. Her breath was hot against his ear. Troy shifted in his seat, Eileen sat upright, facing him but glancing ever so briefly in the direction of the Worm, the mother and child.
He leaned over this time, his chin grazing the edge of her cheek as he whispered back. “I don’t know. He was on the bus from Columbia and the man he was talking to..” The image of the crushed bug made him shudder, which passed over to her like a crowd doing the wave at a football game. “…wasn’t acting right after.” He retreated and locked her with a serious face, which she scrutinized, lower lip tucking under upper teeth for a moment.
“Not much to go on.” She admitted, then her eyes widened. “I have an idea…”
#
They exited the bus separately at the Dallas depot, to minimize awareness of their conspiracy. She spirited off to a payphone to report home. This time he opted for a burger and fries, the queasiness of Atlanta starting to feel like a dream. He had just crumpled the wrapper when he noticed the mother from the bus. She was tucked into a dark corner, blouse open, baby supping at her breast.
Troy looked away and stood, face beet red, retreating to the fresh cool air outside.
He paced in front of the depot, eager to stay on his feet before sitting any longer on a bus. The image lingered: the mother and child. Troy felt like a peeping tom, but that wasn’t it. He closed his eyes and replayed the scene.
There was blood.
The area around the woman’s breast had been pooling red, the child’s hand slipping along it, leaving a slim crimson streak up to her collarbone.
That couldn’t be right. A quick glance at the clock confirmed that it was almost 1:30 in the morning. His mind was toying with him. Why would I ever imagine something like that?
Troy turned to face himself in the glass of the bus depot. Past his own ghostly reflection, he could see the mother and child, now seated in the main lobby. He studied her blouse, looking for any blood stains, any seeping red from whatever lacerations he could swear he’d seen. She caught his glance, pulling her cardigan over her own chest and turning her face from him in furious indignation.
#
The mother and child were absent as the bus boarded for Phoenix.
Eileen sat across the aisle from the Worm and his latest conversation partner. This time the Worm was joined by an older man in a rumpled suit. They were already deep into an animated conversation when the bus began its night ride through the desert.
Troy tried to hold the Worm in sight in the corner of his eye, but the rocking of the bus was hypnotic. His roommate last year, Nelson, had said the easiest way to fall asleep was to tell yourself you needed to stay awake. This was proving only too true. Twice he jerked back to consciousness like he was in High School again, drooling across his desk. The third time he sank under, his last fleeting glance at the profile of Eileen Evans Ainswright, face impassive, chin tucked as she jotted away….
Visions of the war took him through an exhibit of the worst things he’d seen in newspapers or on television. Burning fields and blackened bodies. The smoke cleared and Chet was sitting on a stack of corpses. “Hey big brother, how’s college life?” Chet didn’t look up as he asked this, working something between his fingers. It was a fat cockroach. He spun it between his fingertips like rolling a cigarette, the guts seeping out as the legs wriggled. He licked along the legs and then, tongue still out, looked up and smiled at Troy.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked over to see the mother from the bus depot, shirt open, chest flayed. A dripping cavity where her breast should be that geysered thick, coagulating blood. He stifled a scream, jolting back to consciousness.
The hand was Eileen’s. She had crept up and sat next to him. He glanced ahead. The older man lay slumped against the bus window, the Worm’s head tilted forward, asleep.
“They both went under a while back.” Eileen offered, in a whisper. She was clutching her notebook. He glanced down at it. She shook her head. “Small talk. Life of a salesman, baseball, the weather..” She opened her journal and held it up. “I took it all down, but they’re… two fellas shooting the breeze.” Troy nodded in acceptance. It was easier than whatever idea… “Hold on a second.” Eileen had glanced at her journal and fished out a pen, starting to circle certain words and cross out others.
“What’s..” Troy started. She placed her slender hand on his shoulder to stop him.
“Patterns. It’s…” She shook away an explanation. “This might take me a bit, I work better without distractions..” she glanced up at him with a mischievous glint in her eye. “That means you should look out the window for a bit.” She patted his thigh. He blushed and turned to face the dark, endless void out of the bus window. The occasional signpost was the only indicator of progress; the rocking of the bus and her appraisal coaxed him back under.
This time, he had no dreams.
He woke up with her head resting on his shoulder. Tiny puffs of her hot breath drifted in the still bus air. The sun was above the horizon, sending rivulets of gold through her hair. The notebook was open in her lap. Some words and letters were crossed out, others circled. Arrows pointed between paragraphs, with written words in the margin. Troy struggled to decipher the shorthand cursive by the dim light of dawn, that was when she stirred and took his hand. He closed his eyes and listened to her breath as the bus rumbled on.
#
“It’s not a heap to go on, but there’s some elements that seem to circle back.” They walked side by side through the Phoenix bus depot. “I almost want to say it’s…” She stared off into space, as if distracted by something in the distance, then shook her head and clutched his hand in hers, smiling. “It’s a start.” She said, then stepped away from him, holding his hand until the distance forced their grasp apart. “Let me hit the powder room right quick and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Sitting alone proved difficult. He kept thinking he saw the Worm in the crowd, watching him. Troy turned to look, but the man was never there. Never in the station, always on the bus… He squirmed in his seat, unsure how long she’d been gone. His eyes fixed on the hallway towards the restrooms, ignoring the constant false alarms of Worm sightings.
Finally he walked back and knocked on the ladies’ room door. Nothing. He pushed the door open a crack.
“Hello?” He called out quietly. Then, a little louder: “Eileen, are you here?” Silence. He let himself in, cautiously walking past the stalls. The room was empty.
He exited, now facing the men’s room. A sound, muffled by the door. He pushed the door open. Once in the small room it echoed off the walls; A wet, smacking sound. He paced by the urinals and toward the stalls.
The heels of two brown shoes hung out from the bottom of the last stall. Toes pointed to the ground, heels to the sky. A man on his knees. Troy halted, backed up to the wall, and started sliding left, towards the exit. His shoulder knocked into a towel roller, causing an echoing metal clang.
The stall door swung open. Troy scrambled for the exit, but caught a glimpse despite himself as he passed through the door into the hall. The man on the floor was the older salesman from the bus. His mouth was dripping red chunks, as if he’d been eating raw beef straight from the butcher. His wild eyes fixed on Troy. He could see a pair of a man’s legs seated on the toilet, framing the red-faced man, but from this angle it was impossible to see any more of the other occupant.
Troy backed out into the hall and collided with Eileen, who gasped for a moment, then giggled, steadying herself against him. One look at his clammy face sobered her expression.
#
The notebook sat open between them on the counter of the tiny diner across the street. She showed him a list of words:
Red, Sky, Eyes, Shadow, Wind, Draws, End,
“Doesn’t mean anything to me.” Troy kept glancing across the way, expecting to see the salesman, mouth still dripping ground chuck, emerge from the station and charge at them. Was that real? He’d only just glanced at the man. Whatever act those two men were up to was already far from Kansas, maybe the brownies had just spiced things up on their way out.
“He slipped each of these words into the conversation at least six times.” Eileen pointed at the words, then traced her finger along them before reclaiming Troy’s full attention with her probing eyes. “The odd part is that after a while, the man he was talking to also started using these same words.” She gestured with her pen. “Most of these words were repeated five times each.”
A bus rumbled up to the front of the depot, the 10am to El Cajon. Troy sighed.
“That’s me, I guess.” His hand slid over hers. He smiled despite the madness of the night. He nodded at the notebook “Any spare paper in that thing to give me your phone number?”
“For you? I used a whole napkin.” She handed over a neatly folded paper square, which he carefully tucked into his breast pocket without looking away from her. Eileen’s expression grew serious. “What are you going to do if he’s still riding this one?”
Troy shrugged. “Keep my head down.” The answer didn’t comfort her. “You’re clearly a better snooper than me, anyway.”
An awkward hug that almost, but didn’t quite, become a kiss came next. Then he was back on the bus. He let his eyes drift to the window, to the diner, but she was gone. Probably already in a cab heading home to her folks. The seat next to him creaked as someone took a seat. He froze, picturing the Worm first, then the salesman, the beef-eater, greedily eyeing him up for a feast. A hand touched his shoulder and he spun, only to find Eileen.
“Surprise!”
“Wait, you’re supposed to…”
“I told daddy I’d been invited to a rock and roll festival.” He blinked in complete lack of understanding. “Think you can get me into Monterey Pop, Greyson?”
They rode hand in hand as the sun passed over the bus. By noon, her head was again on his shoulder. Soon after, his own head lulled against the window.
He dreamed of home. The Colonel sat rigid at the dining room table, back to him, haloed by the afternoon sun. Mom sang an old folk song in the kitchen as she washed dishes. A ball game on the radio. He rounded the corner, towards his room. Instead, he walked into the hall towards the restroom at the bus station. The trash can lay overturned, bugs scattered out of it. The ball game continued, but the announcer wasn’t speaking sensibly anymore, the voice announcing “He bats.. He feels.. He scours.. He tears.. He cries, “He.. surrenders..”
Despite himself, he walked over, feet crunching what was turning into a carpet of bugs. The men’s room door swung open long enough to get a glimpse inside. The walls were dripping red, as if freshly painted by tossing the whole can at the wall. He reached to the floor, picked up a crushed roach, placed it in his mouth and began to chew.
“Is this seat taken?” The Worm’s voice had a lilting, effeminate quality to it. A reedy note, wavering and unimposing.
Troy snapped awake. The Worm stood before him in the aisle, unaffected by the sway of the bus. His suit was worn thin at spots, his shirt a sickly yellow. The seat next to Troy was empty. He looked to the end of the bus first, then forward.
“Actually.. My lady friend should be…”
“Oh, the young woman asked to exit the bus some time ago.” The Worm’s voice hinted at sympathy but that didn’t change his mildly amused smile.
“That’s ridiculous.” Troy craned his neck, taking inventory of each row of the very full bus. The man in the brown suit settled next to him, eyes forward. Eileen wasn’t on the bus.
“Something about being homesick, I think… Anyhow: Long ride home for you, yes?” The Worm asked. Troy’s eyes stayed fixed ahead, though the voice was magnetic, like a whirlpool that draws you in… “I reckon you’ve been on the same bus as me since Carolina!”
Troy fought to find enough moisture in his throat to speak. “And where might you be bound for?” He could not look at the Worm.
“Oh, I get around.” The Worm chuckles. “It’s a big ol’ country.”
Troy’s face didn’t turn from the window. A shadow went across the plains from the sun going behind a nearby mountain. He looked up to see the mountain in question. That’s when he saw the planets in the sky. Six or seven of them, floating high in the clouds, moving too fast. One red sphere momentarily blocked the sun.
He turned forward, seeing the other passengers on the bus. The bug eater sat right behind the driver, the mother and child sat at the window seat to the right, a few rows back. More faces he didn’t know, some dressed in clothes that hadn’t been in fashion for years.
He turned back to the window, petrified by the idea of looking into the eyes of the man seated next to him. A station wagon sat on the shoulder of the road, hood open, steam pouring out. A man and woman stood in front of it, arguing. Eileen was seated in the back, face pressed against the window, mouthing words he could not understand. He watched her until she was out of sight, then turned to face the Worm.
The Worm smiled back, unaffected. Troy seized him by his lapels and tackled him to the floor of the bus aisle. The stranger’s face remained beatific and unsurprised.
“You’re not going to get me, you sonovabitch!” flecks of spittle rained down on the stranger, who kept his amused eyes locked on Troy. “You hear me?! You aren’t going to get me too!” The bus rumbled on, not a single head turning to look.
“Oh, I got you a long time back, Troy.”
Troy released him, shaking. His eyes darted up and down the bus, to all the faces on it. Not one would meet his gaze, all looked to the floor with defeat.
A harsh wind shook the bus, like the beginning of a storm. Another shadow passed the sun, this one obscuring it completely, as if the shadow had no end.
He looked through the window and up to the sky in time to see a fleshy orb, covered in a thousand eyes. It floated across the horizon. Each eye a different hue. One of the eyes, rimmed with red, met his gaze.
Troy blinked first.