qualification for driving a bus was not a driver’s license but the ability to write insignificant information in inaccessible spaces on incomprehensible forms.
Jack completed his trip report and his driver’s log and the bus’s mechanical log and all the rest after the passengers had disembarked and the porters had unloaded the baggage and express.
The Houston terminal was a joy to anybody who liked buses. There were always ten or twelve buses parked or moving in or out of the five lanes, having just arrived from somewhere or getting ready to go somewhere. There were always lots of people milling about, waiting, eating, drinking, laughing, crying, sleeping. Missouri Pacific Trailways, which ran up to Texarkana as well as to the Valley along the coast route, used the terminal. So did Texas Red Rocket Motorcoaches, which operated to Galveston and Beaumont, and several other small feeder lines. Greyhound had its own terminal six blocks away.
Jack said hello to a few of the drivers and the baggage agent and got permission finally from the dispatcher to take his bus on to the garage. His work on this day was almost over.
He felt a letdown. He always did when he finished a run. The tension built steadily in him from the time he arrived at the depot in Corpus, checked out the bus after it arrived from the Valley, put aboard his first passengers, moved them along the highway and through the towns until he finally reached Houston. As he approached Houston, the bus always got more loaded with people and express, and the highway became crowded with cars and trucks and other hazards. And then suddenly, like rolling off the edge of a table, it wasover.
Sssssssssss-ttt
went the brakes and off went the people, the express and all of that tension.
In the early years he looked forward to that final thrill of driving a busload of people into that Houston depot. “Thrill” was the right word, too. It was a little-boy thing, like scoring a touchdown in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas or marching in review as a Navy pilot after getting his wings, two things he had done only in his imagination. Sometimes he imagined there was background music playing, like in the John Wayne movie
The High and the Mighty
, as he made the last right turn off Travis into the terminal, caught the signal from the dispatcher as to lane and position and then eased his coach into place for that final stop, the last
ssssssssss-tt.
He had imagined driving the bus into the Houston depot, with and without music, before he actually did it for the first time, and in the beginning reality measured up to what he had imagined. But then after a while it did not.
Sex with Loretta had run along the same lines. He was certain that would not happen with Ava, his Ava. How could that ever be less than he could imagine?
Do other men have thoughts like this about women all of the time?
There was another part to the letdown of finishing his run in Houston that had nothing to do with all that. It was what always lay ahead for him at night there. Which was mostly boring and nothing much.
Jack could not get used to Houston and he had about decided he probably never could. Houston made no sense. It was where the crazy oil millionaires like Glenn McCarthy spent their money on big cars and new hotels and where the roughest of the seamen came to play while their oil tankers and freighters were loaded and unloaded. The only difference between the millionaires and the seamen was how much money they had. “Rough” was the word for Houston. Aman had to be careful going into bars, because Houston people didn’t think very long before they decided killing was all somebody was good for. Bang, bang, you are dead, Mr. Bus Driver. The cops were the same way, particularly when it came to Tamales and Blues. In Corpus, people talked before they fought. In Houston, it was just the opposite. At least that was what Jack was told.
Also Houston was too big, and it was growing even bigger, and too fast.
Jack completed his trip report and his driver’s log and the bus’s mechanical log and all the rest after the passengers had disembarked and the porters had unloaded the baggage and express.
The Houston terminal was a joy to anybody who liked buses. There were always ten or twelve buses parked or moving in or out of the five lanes, having just arrived from somewhere or getting ready to go somewhere. There were always lots of people milling about, waiting, eating, drinking, laughing, crying, sleeping. Missouri Pacific Trailways, which ran up to Texarkana as well as to the Valley along the coast route, used the terminal. So did Texas Red Rocket Motorcoaches, which operated to Galveston and Beaumont, and several other small feeder lines. Greyhound had its own terminal six blocks away.
Jack said hello to a few of the drivers and the baggage agent and got permission finally from the dispatcher to take his bus on to the garage. His work on this day was almost over.
He felt a letdown. He always did when he finished a run. The tension built steadily in him from the time he arrived at the depot in Corpus, checked out the bus after it arrived from the Valley, put aboard his first passengers, moved them along the highway and through the towns until he finally reached Houston. As he approached Houston, the bus always got more loaded with people and express, and the highway became crowded with cars and trucks and other hazards. And then suddenly, like rolling off the edge of a table, it wasover.
Sssssssssss-ttt
went the brakes and off went the people, the express and all of that tension.
In the early years he looked forward to that final thrill of driving a busload of people into that Houston depot. “Thrill” was the right word, too. It was a little-boy thing, like scoring a touchdown in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas or marching in review as a Navy pilot after getting his wings, two things he had done only in his imagination. Sometimes he imagined there was background music playing, like in the John Wayne movie
The High and the Mighty
, as he made the last right turn off Travis into the terminal, caught the signal from the dispatcher as to lane and position and then eased his coach into place for that final stop, the last
ssssssssss-tt.
He had imagined driving the bus into the Houston depot, with and without music, before he actually did it for the first time, and in the beginning reality measured up to what he had imagined. But then after a while it did not.
Sex with Loretta had run along the same lines. He was certain that would not happen with Ava, his Ava. How could that ever be less than he could imagine?
Do other men have thoughts like this about women all of the time?
There was another part to the letdown of finishing his run in Houston that had nothing to do with all that. It was what always lay ahead for him at night there. Which was mostly boring and nothing much.
Jack could not get used to Houston and he had about decided he probably never could. Houston made no sense. It was where the crazy oil millionaires like Glenn McCarthy spent their money on big cars and new hotels and where the roughest of the seamen came to play while their oil tankers and freighters were loaded and unloaded. The only difference between the millionaires and the seamen was how much money they had. “Rough” was the word for Houston. Aman had to be careful going into bars, because Houston people didn’t think very long before they decided killing was all somebody was good for. Bang, bang, you are dead, Mr. Bus Driver. The cops were the same way, particularly when it came to Tamales and Blues. In Corpus, people talked before they fought. In Houston, it was just the opposite. At least that was what Jack was told.
Also Houston was too big, and it was growing even bigger, and too fast.
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