American Odyssey

I have come to realize something after 66 hours on a Greyhound traveling to New York and watching farewells at dozens of stops along the way: The bus station is where you can properly say goodbye to someone.

Tenderly. Lovingly. Caressingly. With a last lingering touch at the departing gate and without the glare of a security guard telling you to push on.

It’s what farewells used to be at airports until the fallout of Sept. 11 replaced romance with vigilance and left us to fling distant kisses across rope lines and wave goodbye through plexiglass. But a bus station remains open country.

When I flew into New York shortly after 9/11 a year ago, it was on a nearly empty airplane. Sand-filled dump trucks and armed troops flanked my hotel, and usually confident New Yorkers jumped at each siren. Now, I am taking an overland journey expecting to see a revived America as the anniversary nears.

But first what I see is this: When you board that bus in Los Angeles to take the 3,079-mile journey east, the passengers are likely to look a lot like, well, me. Dark skin. Black or deep brown hair. Carrying backpacks or nondesigner suitcases or even plastic grocery bags stuffed with belongings. A number speak another language. Or move easily through a differing culture. Or feel conspicuous in the majority one we have.

But for the most part, bus travelers are people who need to get from here to there and are thankful that a $100 fare will take them across the country. As it turns out, that discount fare can also provide a glimpse of an America that rolls on in the shadow of 9/11, because a bus can be a 55-seat neighborhood where life goes on in the aftermath of terrorism and where a sense of community salves our sense of loss.

*

DAY ONE

The security guard quickly stops me before I can board the bus at the Los Angeles Greyhound station and places my carry-on bag on a table. He makes a cursory check of my bag, partially unzipping the compartment where my computer sits, and runs his finger along its top without ever taking it out. Then he waves me on board.

Security is not tight at bus stations because statistics appear not to warrant it. About 70,000 travelers a day ride Greyhound, and although there have been a few incidents of passenger violence since 9/11, none has been linked to terrorism.

Not that any of this seems to worry anyone. Soon after passengers find a seat, some are already dozing or reading or staring out the window. As we pull out of downtown, there are two dozen people on board as the bus driver recites the rules.

No smoking. No drinking. No playing electronic devices without an earphone. No loud talking.

Later, as other bus drivers take the wheel, I will hear those rules expand. No putting on nail polish or nail polish remover because of the fumes. No stamping out cigarette butts on the outside of the bus during rest stops. And, as one driver stresses repeatedly, “No cussing.”

There is a rhythm to riding a long-distance bus with hours spent on the road and then a quick 10-minute or 15-minute stop to pick up or drop passengers or take a quick smoke. Or a 30-minute break to wolf down fast food. After new passengers find their seats, after the awkward introductions, conversations bloom, until strangers are swapping life stories and photos of their families.

Many people keep to themselves, but a few make an impact the moment they step aboard.

That’s what happens at a small Arizona town when a tiny teenager in denim shorts and black high-tops steps aboard in the late afternoon. She looks to be alone and barely 16, if that. And when she immediately leans back in her seat, her feet just touch the floor. She struggles to unhook the carrier that holds her 2-month-old baby.

The young mother speaks to no one except her child even though other passengers have scrambled to help her stuff a box of toys in one overhead compartment, her bag in another and the baby’s car seat next to someone else’s feet. When people offer small talk, she is polite but taciturn, and her neighbors give up. She only has eyes for her baby--and her Game Boy.

As the baby lies on the seat next to her, the young mother pats his stomach with her left hand while trying to play the game with her right. Eventually, she stops rubbing him altogether and merely coos, keeping her eyes on the tiny screen and using both hands to play her electronic game. After a few minutes, she puts her game down and snuggles her baby. Soon there’s a pattern. Snuggle and play. Play and snuggle.

As night falls and the baby starts crying, the young mother’s voice becomes less assured and more panicky. The person in front of her--a newly married woman--offers a blanket and even a can of formula she has been carrying in her luggage for the nephew she will visit in Oklahoma. The young mother accepts both, but her frustration mounts. She keeps trying to hold her baby and talk to him. She sings, cajoles, feeds him, begs him to sleep and tells him that she loves her baby, that she loves her baby.

It works for a while. But when the baby begins crying even louder, the young mother grows more insistent. Sleeping passengers awaken as the baby wails and the mother’s voice becomes even more strident. Her lullabies now sound desperate, and the mother’s words and her baby’s cries fill the bus until, in the darkness, you hear her outburst of profanity.

Immediately, another voice can be heard and an older woman is suddenly standing in the aisle next to the mother. She has walked from her rear seat and explains that she is a grandmother and offers to take the baby. The mother eagerly hands over her son, and soon the crying stops as the grandmother alternately rocks the baby gently and presses him against her. She turns on the reading light and shows the young mother how to hold her baby and what to say to calm him, and then recounts some of her own clumsy experiences as a new mother. For the first time, you can hear a teenager’s laugh.

In the next seat, the young woman passenger who gave up her blanket joins them and tells the teenage mother to keep it for her son. “I take care of my nephew, and I want one of those some day,” the smiling newlywed says, pointing to the now-sleeping baby.

The weary mother does not smile back. “Maybe you do,” she replies. “Maybe you don’t.”

*

DAY TWO

In the daylight hours, I learn that the grandmother’s name is Bobbie Face, and she is on her way to Decatur, Ala., to see her three grandchildren. The newlywed is 25-year-old Jennifer Weidemann, and she is headed for Oklahoma City to see her parents before moving to Germany with her soldier husband.

The young mother and her baby are no longer with us, having left the bus during a midnight stop at Holbrook, Ariz., and there is a lighter feeling as the thought of the struggling mother and her infant recedes with the miles. In fact, there is a growing sense of family aboard as more people get acquainted and exchange histories.

There is a young Native American couple headed for Oklahoma--”I am an Apache-Kiowa,” he tells me proudly--and a pair of sisters bound for the Carolinas. There is a Swiss student traveling from Las Vegas to Atlanta who listens to ‘80s music on his headphones, and a Spanish-speaking couple taking pictures at each stop. And there is Elizabeth Brady, who boarded the bus in Barstow and is on a trip to Greenville, Miss.

Brady comes from a family of 11 siblings. She says that although her father was raised poor in Mississippi with only a second-grade education, he valued schooling and now his California daughter has earned her own college degrees and works as a counselor for children with behavior problems. She is on her way to help her father blow out the candles for his 90th birthday.

Biographies and resumes and life stories have a way of spilling out over a long-distance journey. Outside Shamrock, Texas, the discussion turns for the first time to the Sept. 11 attacks. And for the first time, voices are raised.

“If an Afghani were to walk on the bus right now, I’d throw him off,” says Bobby Sweeney, an 18-year-old who graduated last June from high school in Columbus, Ohio.

“You’re kidding,” someone says. “I’m dead serious,” he replies and goes on to talk about the need to deal harshly with those who threaten America.

His critic jumps up to argue, accusing him of painting all Afghan people with a brush that should be reserved for the Taliban and its followers. She cautions him about discriminating against people because of their appearance, and then warns him not to be so eager to drop bombs on Afghanistan and other countries when the victims may be innocent civilians, as well.

Sweeney’s father is an ex-Marine. But, as it turns out, Sweeney’s antagonist--the newlywed Weidemann--is not only married to a soldier; she has been one herself. “What I believe is that we have to protect America at all cost,” she says, “but not kill every Afghan citizen.”

The discussion about terrorism and 9/11 is rare on the bus. Some people make it clear they don’t want to talk about it. Others insist their lives remain unchanged despite everything. Still others are trying to forget the horror of Sept. 11. But Bobbie Face, the grandmother with the soothing touch, cannot.

She pulls a piece of paper from her bag and shows it to me. It is a copy of a chain-letter poem sent to her last March from one of her sons with a note reminding her that he loves her. She tells me about another son who was working half a block from the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. He was not hurt physically, she adds, but

That son is her youngest, she says, and he has written his own poetry about 9/11. He has never shown it to her. “I wish he would,” she says, “because he is hurting, and I know I can help him.”

*

DAY THREE

We arrive in New York City under the cover of darkness. It is not yet 6 o’clock on the morning of Sept. 11, and as the unmistakable skyline of the country’s largest city rises before us, most of the Greyhound passengers are asleep.

But I am wide awake, listening for the heartbeat of a city that was once my home--if only for a little while--and is now the rallying cry for so many Americans who have never been here. On this day of remembrance, those passengers who have departed along the way seem to fill the bus with an unmistakable presence, an indefatigable spirit. The travelers reflected what so many Americans are doing in this post-9/11 world. They struggle with ordinary things and routine lives. But they also find solace in strangers and strength in community. They draw hope from one another.

When we have parked for the last time, I find myself standing next to Jobe Momodu and his wife, Kaumba. Momodu is a 41-year-old New York City taxicab driver who emigrated more than a decade ago from his native Gambia in West Africa. He is returning now from visiting his wife’s family in Detroit, where he listened to relatives urging the couple to leave New York. But standing in the bowels of the Port Authority bus terminal waiting for his suitcase, he shakes his head at the thought of moving.

He is now, he says, smiling proudly in the dankness of the underground bus station, an American and a New Yorker. “I am happy,” he says. “This is home for me.”