Empty and Full on a Northbound Greyhound

On a journey by plane a decade later. Another place where the intimacy of strangers was wonderful. December 2016, Havana, Cuba.

This is the first installment of Walking the East Coast, a serial memoir. Here’s the PREFACE / TABLE OF CONTENTS in case you want to start there.

The weight of my pack was shocking. So was the emptiness of the Greyhound station in Charleston, West Virginia. Maybe the fact that this was no longer a hypothetical journey had something to do with the way both seemed so prescient—the emptiness and the fullness.

A thirty-year-old divorcée, still reeling from the sudden loss of a cherished friend, I took in the silence. The emptiness was not that of something fully abandoned. There wasn’t that loamy, paradoxical aliveness of a place left to rot, so its falling apart becomes a verb—reclaiming—no growth of what comes to life in the taking back that engenders the beauty specific to rebirth or decay porn. This was a stale, sterile kind of emptiness. Nothing was falling apart; nothing was even all that unclean or out of order. But it seemed nothing new had been added over the two decades since the 1980s, when the station had replaced its 1937 predecessor. That larger-than-life, art deco hub opening up people’s ability to move had been replete with tall neon sign, a “life-in-action” greyhound that appeared to be running, and a central location. This one, tucked back on a not-well-used street, wasn’t much more than a ticket counter and a handful of vending machines.

The bulky bag sitting next to me on the empty bench contained all I might possibly need/want—indefinitely as far as I knew. Hiking boots, a tent, and a sleeping bag kicked it alongside strappy heels and a little red dress. A late ‘90s Nikon film camera; a thermos, a rolled towel, and a day pack rode up top for easy access. And my Dell Inspiron laptop and writing pad, along with three books, two of which would be changed out somewhat regularly, were stuffed in among a rollable mattress cover for hostels and a handful of outfits for diverse occasions.

A trek up the US East Coast? I thought, looking up at the clock with the fat, slow-moving hands and rechecking the time on the ticket I’d purchased. Who does that? What was I thinking?

I was glad when my ride finally rolled up to the curb with a tired-sounding huff. The station’s starkness gentled my reaction to the bus’s interior—a space in replica I would become all too familiar with over the next seven months and then rarely return to after that. The Greyhound has a storied history. From humble beginnings in 1914, a two-mile trek offered by an out-of-work miner, it ballooned quickly, carrying 400 million passengers on intercity bus lines two decades later in 1934. It dispatched workers to munitions factories and shipyards during World War II and was the chosen transportation of the Civil Rights Movement’s Freedom Riders in the ‘60s. There were scandals (skimming drivers trapped in a hotel room) and tragedies (an attack by an angry mob) and various attempts at diversification. Now, as far as many knew, it had succumbed (alongside US public transportation as a whole) to the mass production of cars and the desire for individual ownership. Still, tens of thousands boarded Greyhound buses every day to be transported over our national highway network. And I was about to become one of them.

I made my way toward the back and claimed a seat on a row I hoped would remain empty, not sure what would come next, aside from the destination of this particular bus. I would learn to steer clear of the seats immediately adjacent to the toilets, despite their appealing extra room and, often, double vacancy. I set my pack in the window seat and leaned against it like a bulky copilot come pillow. I wasn't yet sure of the Greyhound etiquette, but I figured, so long as the bus wasn't full, my pack on a seat signaling to newcomers to seek out another row couldn't be argued with.

After my divorce, I’d relocated to Seattle. I’d found roommates who would become friends for life. My sister and her husband were attending school and living in the U-District, enabling me to bask in their friendship and share the milestones and cheer of their apple-cheeked, bright-eyed toddler, who I adored. I’d taken a job peddling wares at Pike Place Market while ostensibly writing on the side but more often exploring the bright, enticing nightlife of downtown Seattle and Capitol Hill, where I lived. Still, I longed to see, to travel, to journey. That my former husband didn’t hear that same drumbeat had been primary among the irreconcilable differences that had led to the dissolution of the marriage. So, even as I savored my fresh start, I was in a holding pattern—waiting for an opportunity or partner to open my possibilities.

It had been a pointed remark from Parker, the model-gorgeous scorpio whose button-pushing love of shaking things up belied her gentleness, if not her fierce loyalty, that had put my waiting in sharp relief. “You know you don’t need a partner to do it, right?” she’d quipped one day. The two of us shared a two-bedroom with a Space Needle view and a lot of our time and scheming, and she no doubt heard about my longings to see the world more often than she may have cared to.

So, when my decision to live out of a backpack for awhile coincided with a wedding invitation back in Charleston, I decided that was as good enough a launching off point as any.

Now, the guy on the bus a few rows ahead of me kept looking back—casual like, in that way of using one’s gaze like a fly fishing lure, tossing it back and leaving it there for just a moment in hopes the target will see the glint of an iris. If he tossed it just right, I'd glance up, and our eyes would lock, reeling me into the conversation he hoped to have. I'd seen the Bible in his hands earlier when the bus had stopped for a break at a gas station, where the only food available not in plastic was a freckled banana, which I'd bought. I didn't fancy hearing what in that old tome he wanted to share. So, I remained strong, averting my eyes as if I hadn't noticed the bait.

My writing pad helped. I could easily get lost jotting notes. The problem was, I could get so lost I’d forget I was ignoring. He almost had me a handful of times. We’d made another stop and piled back on—stops were frequent—before it occurred to me that this was antithetical to my reasons for being out here. Didn’t I want to engage? To learn more about this at once vast and tiny place we all shared? I closed my notebook and smiled at the guy with the Bible.

“Hot out there,” he said, nodding toward the window, through which sunlight was streaming.

“Sure enough is,” I agreed.

“Where you headed?” He wanted to know.

“Here and there,” I said, both because it was true and because it felt nice to say out loud.

He nodded, closed his eyes as if savoring the notion. “That's where it’s at,” he said, drawing out the words with reverence.

I felt a smile tug at the corners of my mouth, warming to his solemnity. “How about you?” I asked. “What's waiting up the road?”

His eyes dropped. “Whole lot.”

For the next hour, he told me about the family he was hoping to put back together, after time he’d spent away. I didn’t press, but it was clear he’d spent that time locked up. I did ask about the niece and nephews and mom he both couldn’t wait to see and was fearful of disappointing. He’d changed, felt at once more and less. They, no doubt, had too. An old friend might have a connection to work, which would be nice, to get back into it again, you know. I shared how I was searching—for myself most likely. I wasn’t sure where I was headed or what I’d find when I got there. But this step toward whatever it was that was calling me felt right.

“I hear that,” he said.

I didn’t know it yet, but this was one of the rare journeys where we remained almost the only passengers aboard, the other handful mostly up front, so our conversation was intimate. The light outside the windows had lavendered while we talked and the Greyhound rumbled slowly northward to deliver us. “I think I’m going to try to get some shut-eye,” I told him. He nodded, and I pulled a long shawl from the pack for warmth, using my sleeping bag as a pillow. (Being one to get cold easily, I’d soon switch that up.) I tucked my legs up on the seat next to me and watched the silhouette of trees dancing by in the twilight.

“The Big Man Upstairs put you in my path,” he said after a moment. In the dim blue of the bus’s night lights, he held up the Bible. “It’s all thanks to him, you know, that I’m going home. And he’s gonna take care of me I think.”

“I'm really glad he's with you, my friend,” I replied. Growing up in northern Utah, I’d been raised by Mormons, who in their love wanted only my salvation—an offering that made me sometimes sorrowful, sometimes angry, for I simply couldn’t want it. I had been trying to escape God for a very long time. So, it was with pleasant surprise that I realized the depth of my sincerity.

“Goodnight,” we both said in turn. “Sleep well.”

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“Empty and Full on a Northbound Greyhound” is the first in a series on a seven-month wander I took back in 2007. I zigzagged from Baltimore (where this bus eventually delivered me) to Vermont and many places in between, finally finishing in Montreal, Canada.

NEXT CHAPTER.