bus stories

I.

I open my eyes.

Where is the light?

There is no light in my room.

Only darkness.

Complete darkness.

I put my hand in front of my face, but I can’t see a thing.

I wiggle my fingers, but can’t see them.

Have I gone blind?

I’m scared.

I’m afraid of the dark.

When I was a little boy, my abuelo taught me to do something very important when I’m afraid.

"Little salt,” he whispered, "if you wake and it's dark, don't be afraid. 

Keep your eyes wide open and say, 'I am salt. I am light. I am made from the ground' three times. 

When you finish saying these words, everything will be okay. 

I promise."

I am salt. I am light. I am made from the ground.

I am salt. I am light. I am made from the ground.

I am salt. I am light. I am made from the ground.

My abuelo was right.

I can see again.

Here is my hand.

Here are my wiggling fingers.

Here I am.

Wow, look at my window.

It’s open to the morning breeze blowing from the fields across my body around my face.

Sunlight sparkles off of a raindrop on a flower of a magnolia leaf on the tree beside our hollowed out school bus.

A tear drop rolls out of my eye, down my cheek, and onto my pillow.

Ah, there is so much beauty in the smallest things in the world.

The curtain mamí sewed for me blows inward and goes back to its place again. 

My window is waving good morning to me.

As the window above my cot in the old, hollowed out school bus we slept in was waving to me, a gentle breeze blew over my feet and face.

“Look at that,” I thought. “The breeze blew all the way across the whole, wide world into my small room to say hello to me.”

I smiled and waved good morning to the breeze, and sat with it for a while.

II.

My name is Salito, which means “Little Salt” in Spanish.

My abuelo gave this name to me.

“Mi nieto,” he said when I was little, “I’ll call you Little Salt because you are our life and our link to the sea.”

He always says things like that.

Most of the time, I don’t what he means, but the sparkle in his eyes and the smile on his face as he speaks makes my heart happy.

Like salt, I’m not much to look at.

My nose is like a pickle, big and knotty, the kind of pickle you buy out of a gallon jar at the corner store.

My ears are like summer squash, the kind of yellow squash my mamí grows in the little garden by our bus, big at the top and small at the bottom.

My hair goes across my forehead in a crooked line.

“A little salt goes a long way to bring flavor to the world,” says my abuelo. “And you go a long way to bring flavor to people’s lives.”

‘Esse quam videri,’ goes the old Latin saying.

‘The essence is more important than the appearance.’

‘What’s inside is more important than what’s outside.’

Yep, that’s me.

Salito.

Little Salt.

Sometimes, in the middle of a long day in the fields and orchards, I close my eyes and imagine I am a tree.

If I were a tree, I’d like to be a peach tree.

I’d share my fruit with everyone.

I told this to my abuelo.

One morning, there was a sheet of notebook paper on my pillow.

Smudges from my abuelo’s hand was upon it.

He had written this poem for me.

If I were a tree,

     I would like to be

          a peach tree

Leaves a peaceful green,

     birds could perch and sing,

          children laugh and swing

               upon my branches

Fruit a joyful red,

     the sun could rest it’s head,

          the hungry could be fed

               upon my peaches

Bark an earthy brown,

     roots deep in the ground,

          the weary could sit down

               beside my trunk

My friend the gentle breeze,

     rustling through my leaves,

          refreshing all in need

               of tender shade

I’d stand strong and tall,

     give myself to all,

          ‘til all my fruit was gone,

               a giving tree

Though I would be bare,

     I would still be there,

          reminding all I care,

               a peachless tree

Spring would come and then

     I would bloom again,

          and be for you my friend,

               your peach tree

III.

Little Salt loved whales. 

He walked beside his abuelo down rows of tomato plants and peach trees, shielded from the sun by his trusty cap with a whale stitched on the front of it, and think, "A blue whale's heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. A beluga whale is called the canary of the sea because it sings so much. A fin whale can make a sound on our side of the Atlantic Ocean and another fin whale on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean can hear it."

The tooth he found at Kiawah Beachwalker Park was a sperm whale's tooth. 

Of all the kinds of whales in the world, the sperm whale was his favorite. 

The first picture he ever drew of a whale, before he visited the public library and checked out every book he could find about whales, before he memorized the field guide to whales, he drew a picture of how he thought a whale should look, and this picture was a picture of a sperm whale.

He picked up the gigantic tooth. 

It was a foot long, shaped like a cone, and made of ivory. 

"This came from the lower jaw of a sperm whale," he thought, "Because they don't have any teeth in their upper jaws." 

He knew that if he could slice the tooth in half, it would show the age of the whale like the rings of a trunk show the age of a tree. 

He couldn't believe his eyes or his luck.

He gently laid the whale tooth beside him on the sand.

He picked up a conch shell with both of his hands. 

"What a wonderful shell," he thought.

The shape and color of the shell amazed him.

The shape was a common shape in nature.

It was formed by graphing the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13..., the Fibonacci numbers, a shape that reveals the golden ratio, phi, a special number approximately equal to 1.618 that appears many times in geometry, art and architecture.

By nature it was a mysterious, wonderful shell.

It's color was a common color in nature, too. 

It was three shades of yellow. 

It's spine was the bright yellow of the sun that very morning. 

It's siphonal  canal was the quiet yellow of the corn he and his abuelo and his mamí shucked in August. 

It's aperture was the deep yellow of sunflowers in a field.

He raised the shell to his tiny, listening ear. 

Someone told him once that if you hold a conch shell to your ear then you can hear the ocean. 

"I wonder if it's true," he thought. 

"I can take it home to our bus and listen tonight and see if I can bring the ocean with me wherever I go. 

If I can, then, in a small way, I can bring whales with me, too."

IV.

The Greyhound bus chugged out of the station in downtown Charleston into the South Carolina night. 

There were 4,000 miles between Charleston and Point Hope. 

"That's about how far blue whales migrate from Mexico to Alaska," thought Little Salt. "If they can make it, maybe I can make it, too."

This first part of the journey would take four days. 

He closed his eyes. 

He felt the tires of the bus thump against the road, listened to the soft snore of a soldier in the seat behind him, and swayed gently from side to side as the driver moved from lane to lane around late night drivers. 

He drifted off to sleep and became a blue whale, the thump of his giant fluke in the deep waters moving him along at 14 miles per hour, the songs from other blue whales from different waters touching his great heart, his giant body swaying from side to side in the Pacific Ocean waters.

He woke to the hand of a frail, old woman on his shoulder. 

"'Scuse me," she whispered, "I hate to wake you up but my ticket says I'm 'sposed to sit here beside you."

"Yes ma'am," said Little Salt. 

He rubbed his eyes with the fists of his hands and looked up into the face of the woman in the soft glow of the bus lights.

There were deep wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and across her forehead.

They didn't seem to be wrinkles of worry that he'd seen form on his mamí and abuelo’s faces as they worked the fields and lived among strangers in small southern towns. 

No, they seemed to be wrinkles of kindness that might have come from years and years of loving and hoping, the kind of wrinkles you get when you cradle a baby in your arms and rock it deep into the night, the kind that come when you study the small, quiet things in the world and wonder why so few people see or hear the beauty they hold.

She tried to keep her eyes open, but they stayed closed a bit longer with each blink, and her head nodded to each passing mile along the highway. 

Her breathing came into rhythm with the wheels of the bus on the road. 

The bus moved around a curve and she slid ever so slightly against little salt’s body. 

His small shoulder sank into her tired, withered breasts and his smooth cheek rested on the folds of skin on her thin, bony neck. 

Her gentle breaths made a soft whistle through her nose, so soft that no one who was not as close to her as little salt could not hear it. 

He not only heard it but also understood the story the whistles told.

- When my chi'ren were yo age, they walked to school 'long a dirt road. 

'Bout haf way dere, a school bus'd pass ‘em by, ev'ry day. 

It'd stir up mo dust'n you evah seen'n yo life and dat dust'd swirl 'round my chi'ren, cling to dey skin, and turn de water in dey eyes to mud. 

"Why won't dat bus stop and pick us up, momma?" dey asked me.

Well, I knew dey'd come a day when I'd haf to sit wid'em at de table and tell'em 'bout de way things was, 'bout how a school bus wit white chi'ren on it couldn't haf black chi'ren on it, too, 'cause dats de laws of men's hearts.

But I know'd dat day hadn't come quite yet. 

I hoped so much in my own heart dat 'fore dat day came, a new day's come when de laws of God's heart'd overcome de laws of men's hearts and dat bus'd stop, op'n it's doors, and welcome my chi'ren on board.

"Don't you all worry 'bout dat bus now, you hear?" I answered my chi'ren. 

"Lissen now, when dat bus passes you by, you stop for a minit and think 'bout dat dust all 'round you. 

Breathe deep and let it come into yo lungs 'till you breathe it out wit yo breath. 

Den take de back a yo hands n'rub'em in you wat'ry eyes 'till de mud comes off on 'em. 

You think 'bout dat dust and dat mud. 

You 'member dat dust is made up'a tiny little dust particles, so small you cain't see 'em 'less dey all together. 

And you 'member dat mud is what we all made of, all of us, folks inside de bus n outside de bus, and one kind'a mud ain't superior to another kind'a mud, it's all just de stuff God made us out of. 

'Member dat, my loves. 'Member dat."

Little Salt listened to her sleeping, listened to the soft whistles of her breathing, and listened to her face.

"A blue whale's heart is as big as a Volkswagon Bug," he thought. 

"It must feel love very deeply and widely, because it's heart is so deep and wide. 

I wonder if the blue whale could love her more than me. 

My heart is just the size of my fist. 

I don't think it can hold as much love as a blue whale's heart. 

I surely feel a deep and wide love for her, though.

Maybe it's because we're both the small, quiet ones who no one sees or hears, in our own ways. 

I hope my heart is as beautiful as her. 

I hope I whistle her same beautiful song.”

He put his tiny hand on top of hers. 

You've heard of the narwhal whale, haven't you? 

Along with the bowhead and beluga whales, it is an Arctic whale, living all it's life in the icy waters of the Arctic ocean. 

It's called the unicorn of the sea because it has a single horn that protrudes up to nine feet out of it's forehead. 

In older days, it's horn was given to the kings and queens of Europe to use as scepters, for many thought there was great power and even magic in it. 

It's not really a horn, though. 

It's a tooth. 

Like a human tooth, it is very, very sensitive. 

If a narwhal tooth breaks, it causes the poor narwhal a sharp and abiding pain. 

When that break happens, an amazing thing happens in the life of narwhals. 

Another narwhal places it's tooth into the broken tooth of the hurting narwhal and that act of kindness assuages the pain.

He hoped his hand might somehow assuage her pain, too.

V.

Taki’s eyes opened to the smell around her.

 

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes with the back of her hand and saw a wiry man with greasy, slicked back hair smelling of body odor and cigarette smoke sitting beside her.

 

The man was directing a woman holding an infant in one arm and the hand of a toddler with her other hand to sit in the seat in front of them.

 

He was also directing a boy and a girl about Taki’s age to sit in the seat beside them.

 

And a teenage girl and boy to sit in the seat behind them.

 

None of them were paying any attention to the man, but he kept on talking as if they couldn’t function without him.

 

“Lissen yere,” he said a bit too loudly. “Git yourselfs settled down now. We got a ways to go, and we don’t need no cryin’, wigglin’, playin’ nor poutin’. Hope we’ll be thar ‘fore nightfall.”

 

The man had one bag, a tattered olive green rucksack that looked as if it had seen action in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, that must have held the traveling goods of the whole family.

 

He tried to stuff it in the luggage bin above their heads, giving it a hard whack with his bony fist as the driver moved toward him. 

“Hey,” said the driver sternly, “That won’t fit in there. Give it here so I can put it in the storage bin below the bus.”

 

“Well god dammit then,” cursed the man, “Least let me git out the bottle for the baby. It belongs to that thar girl. You can see she ain’t old ‘nough to make no milk, so we got to feed it this yere ‘spensive stuff.”

 

The teenaged girl turned bright red, her ears the color of the morning summer sky over the Chukchi Sea, as the man looked away from her and back to the bus driver, who was wrestling the bag back up the aisle to the door.

 

The other passengers had to lean toward the windows as he passed by.

 

Taki wondered if they did this because of the size of the bag or the smell of it, for it had taken on the odor of it’s owners.

 

“Wait one more minute, thar,” commanded the man.

 

The driver ignored him much the same way his family did.

 

“Well shit,” the man sighed as he collapsed beside Taki.

 

“I needed my Bible out from thar,” he whispered. “It’s good luck to hold it when our lives are in the hands o’ somebody like that thar driver,” he winked at her.

 

Within a minute, the man’s head dropped back against the padded seat of the bus and he was asleep.

 

Taki listened carefully and heard a crackling in the man’s lungs and a whoosh click in the man’s heart.

 

“Hmmm,” she thought, “This man has had a hard life. He’s too young for his body to sound like that.”

 

The teenaged boy who was sitting behind her leaned over the seat and put his hand on her shoulder.

 

He pushed until she turned and looked at him.

 

“Hey, you one’nem Meckicans, ain’t you? You speak English or only Meckican?”

 

Taki looked into the boy’s cloudless blue eyes.

 

She was surprised by what she saw there.

 

The boy had heard the words he had asked her, though not in a question.

He had heard them in an accusation.

By a whole community.

 

“Look at them damn Meckicans,” he had heard. “They come here to ‘Merica and take everthin’ from us and don’t give nothin’ back!”

 

Taki held his stare in her earthy brown eyes.

She turned back toward the road in front of them without saying a thing.

VI.

He looked up from the book in his lap as the Greyhound bus squeaked to a stop at the Greenville station. 

The old woman next to him fell asleep on the trip up from Charleston and leaned her head on his shoulder. 

Her face was as wrinkled as the bark of an ancient magnolia tree, and was colored the same beautiful brown as it’s trunk and branches. 

She breathed in, and the air made a soft, whistling sound through her nose. She breathed out, and it made a gentle, flapping sound through her lips. 

“Life is a symphony,” he chuckled to himself, “Of whistles and kazoos.”

“Ma’am,” he whispered. 

She didn’t move.

She kept right on sleeping and snoring. 

“Ma’am,” he said a little louder. 

Still only whistles and kazoos. 

“Ma’am,” he said a little louder still. 

This time he reached out and patted her weathered hand. She opened her tired, brown eyes and smiled a small smile at him. 

“Thanks for a lettin’ me use yo shoulda as my pilla,” she said with a gravelly voice. 

“First time I woked up beside a man in a long time. Hope my snorin’ didn’t bother you none,” she giggled. 

“No ma’am,” he said with a giggle of his own, “It was music to my ears.”

His knees and back snapped and popped as he stood up slowly and smoothed out the wrinkles in his pants and tee shirt. 

“My goodness,” said the old woman, “You make music, too.” 

He placed his hand gently on her bony shoulder. 

“We could start a band called The Human Element,” he laughed. “People would come from all over to hear us whistle, flap, snap and pop. What do you think?”

“Yep, they’d pay us a bundle of money to hear that.”

He pulled on his jacket and waved his hand to her. “Goodbye, my friend,” he said. “Thanks for the song.”

She waved back. “Thank you,” she said. “And do me a favor. Lean on down here and let me tell you somethin’.”

He leaned down and was surprised.

She kissed him on his forehead with a light, tender kiss. 

“That’s the kiss of a guardian angel,” she whispered. “Listen to life, and don’t be afraid.”

He stepped off the bus and onto the street.

VII.

“Cómo estás, Luisa?” Gabby asked the small woman in the window seat of the city bus as she sat down beside her.

“Bien,” Luisa answered. “A little tired. I cleaned a lot of rooms at the motel today. Y tu?”

“Si, bien. Un poco cansado, tambien. I scrambled a lot of eggs at the Scrambled Egg. I can’t wait to put my feet up and rest them. What you doing this evening?”

“I’m going to cook for my family and take my daughter to help me clean the doctor’s office. Then I’ll rest.”

Gabby put her arm around Luisa’s shoulder and hugged her.

“Eres una buena mujer,” she said. I’m glad you’re my friend.

“Y tu, mi Amiga. Y tu.”

Gabby got off the bus in front of her apartment on the west side of the city. 

She and her neighbors didn’t have much money, but they did have a lot of kindness for each other.

‘Sup Gabby. How you doin’?” asked Bryant, who everyone called Big B. He had just come home from his job as a mechanic at the auto shop.

“Hola Big B. Not much. Just glad to be home. How was your day?”

“It was all good. The squeaky wheel got the grease, as they say, today and ev’ry day.”

“One of these days I’m gonna buy a car and the only person I’m gonna let work on it is you.”

“Deal. If you need anything, let me know, okay?”

“Sure thing! Same here.”

“You could come over and cook up some steak and eggs for me, you know.”

“Ugh, anything except that. I’ve cooked enough steak and eggs today...and ev’ry day!”

“Bet. I’m jus’ kiddin’ wit’ cha. Night Gabby. Be safe.”

“Night B. You be safe, too.”

She took her key out of her pocket and opened the door to her apartment. 

It was one room. 

There was a holey sofa that pulled out into a bed with a small table and a lamp beside it. 

Three books, The House on Mango Street, The Old Man and the Sea and Poems for a Brown Eyed Girl, were on a bookshelf made out of a cut board and two concrete blocks against the wall. An ancient transistor radio was in the corner. A painting by Jasper Johns of three American Flags, one on top of the other, smallest to largest, was on the wall. It was a gift from one of her regular customers at The Scrambled Egg.

The room was simple and beautiful, like her.

She picked up the small book of poems, turned on the lamp, sat down on the sofa, stretched her legs in front of her.

She opened the book to the poem An Ode to Feet.

She read,

Her feet 

were calloused and cracked  

like rocks 

in plowed ground, 

like stones 

in turned soil, 

the soil 

she walked over 

barefooted 

as her grandfather 

turned the earth 

with donkey and plow. 

She had 

the feet 

of her grandfather, 

for she had walked 

beside him 

down the long rows 

of beans and corn 

since the time 

she learned 

to toddle. 

He had 

walked 

up and down 

those rows 

until his feet 

were broken and bent 

and made him appear 

to be 

continually 

genuflecting 

to God, 

or to the wealthy land owner, 

or to the land itself. 

Her feet 

would one day 

be broken and bent 

like that.

When her feet 

were in the soil 

it was 

as if 

they were part 

of the land, 

as if 

they held the secrets 

of the earth, 

as if 

they knew the mystery 

of how seed 

and dirt 

and water 

can become 

a bean 

in a pod,

a kernel 

on an ear 

of corn. 

Her heart 

was in her feet, 

her heart 

was in the land, 

her heart 

was the mystery 

itself.

Her feet spoke, 

"Estoy aquí, 

I am here, 

estoy aquí." 

Her feet 

were signs 

to the world - 

"I am 

a human being." 

“Estoy aquí,” she whispered to the world. 

“I am here.”

VIII.

Little Salt and Taki looked out the window of the Grehound Bus together, side by side, cheek to cheek.

The heat and humidity of the Brownsville morning and the air conditioning on the bus caused the windows to fog.

Little Salt pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it as a kind of windshield wiper, moving it back and forth until he and Taki could see the Gulf of Mexico along the coastal road.

“Wow,” whistled Little Salt softly, “Do you think the lost whale is there?”

“Maybe,” whispered Taki. “I hope so.”

People began to stir and stretch and reach for their bags above and around them, but Little Salt and Taki stayed as still and quiet as the leaves on the trees that lined the street beside the bus station.

There are five foundational forces in the universe.

They hold everything together.

They bring order.

Four of them can be explained by the science of physics.

They are the GRAVITATIONAL force, the ELECTROMAGNETIC force, the WEAK force and the STRONG force.

The gravitational force keeps planets in orbit around their suns, our feet firmly planted on the ground, and whales submerged in the deep, blue seas.

The electromagnetic force causes electricity and connection. It underlies the mighty power of lightning and the gentle touch of the human hand.

The weak force brings nuclear energy. It makes stars shine.

The strong force holds quarks inside protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons inside atoms.

The fifth foundational force cannot be explained by physics, though.

It can only be explained by friendship.

It is love.

Taki and Little Salt stepped off the Greyhound bus into the early morning sunlight.

“Let’s go to the water,” said Taki.

She looked at the horizon between the Gulf of Mexico and the Brownsville sky.

“Okay,” whistled Little Salt. “To the water, then.”

They reached out for each other’s hands.

They walked down the road toward the gulf together.

This created that fifth foundational force. 

It keeps hearts in orbit around each other. 

It builds up instead of breaks down. 

It is life itself.

They stepped around and over heavy machinery, steel girders and concrete blocks, tools being used to build a wall that would separate Brownsville from Matamoros, the United States from it’s southern neighbors, human beings from human beings.

As the two children stood hand in hand, they hoped the fifth foundational force was really the strongest of all.