Some Few Words AboutThe One-Way Bus, & What I Have Made Of It
Dear everybody who might could use this letter — and dear nobody in particular, which I have found to be most often the same audience —
I have lived on this stretch of road for fifty-one years come the squash harvest, and in all that time I have had cause to think about the bus exactly twice a week, and lately more. So I am writing it down. My granddaughter Adabel says these days you can put a letter on the everything-screen and any old soul might pick it up, which strikes me as both unlikely and pleasant, so here we are, you and me, on this porch together for a minute.
The bus I mean is the one out of Tinker's Hollow. The mustard-colored one. The one that only goes one way.
Pomeroy Vance drives it some mornings — Pom we call him — and other mornings it is a different Pom, but they all wear a hat that suits the season, which makes me think they take instruction from somebody sensible. In spring it is a straw hat with the brim gone soft from rain. In autumn it is a plaid wool number with a fly-fishing fly hooked through the band. In summer they go bareheaded if the day permits. In winter, well, a fellow does what a fellow must.
The bus pulls out of the Methodist parking lot at a quarter past nine in the morning, regular as biscuits. It runs out past Vester's orchard, past the Henrys' goat lot, past the place where the road used to fork before the fork got straightened out by a county man with a clipboard back in '07. After that — I will not lie to you — I cannot tell you with confidence where it goes. I have asked Pom and Pom has smiled. I have asked the other Pom and the other Pom has also smiled, but a little less, which I took to mean the same thing, only more politely.
A bus that goes one way is — in my long acquaintance with such matters — a comfort. It is not a punishment and it is not a riddle. It is more like a clothesline, which is to say, it is a structure for letting things blow off in a particular direction so they will dry out properly.
People around here used to argue about this. They'd say — well, Marguerite, what about getting back? Because every reasonable contraption gets you back. Cars get you back. Horses get you back, if you remember to feed them. Even a wheelbarrow will get you back so long as you push it in the obliging direction. But a bus that only goes one way is — and this is the part folks will not allow themselves to enjoy — a kind of permission.
It says: you do not have to ring up the morning a second time, the way you came in. You will get home, sure. But by other means. By foot. By thumb. By the kindness of Wendell and his pickup if Wendell is in a Wendell mood. By walking the long way around Vester's orchard where in late August the windfall pears smell like the inside of a candy jar your great-aunt kept on top of the icebox. By any means at all, except the one you came in on.
What folks bring when they go
- a jar of something — jam if it's June, pickled cherries if it's the back end of summer, a pinched dollop of honey wrapped in waxed paper if you are the sentimental sort
- a paperback, dog-eared, not a new one
- fare in folded singles & quarters; Pom will not make change but he accepts the wrong amount with great dignity
- a hat, in case the day turns into a hat-day
- a piece of news worth telling somebody you have not yet met
- (once, my Howell brought a paper sack of biscuits, which is more an outing than a journey, but Pom permitted it because Howell was a permitting kind of fellow)
My Howell rode it one Tuesday in April, 1989. He came back home on Thursday by way of a freight-truck driver named Loyal and a borrowed bicycle and one good stretch of him just walking, because he wanted to. He never could give me a straight account of what he saw out there, and I have come to understand that this is not a failing on his part. The one-way bus does not give you a story you can hand back over the counter. It gives you an afternoon that is yours.
I think about this now, in our present year, with all the news flying around like June bugs hitting a screen door. Everything seems to need a return trip. You go to a place on your screen and you have to get back to where you were. You start a conversation and you have to wrap it up tidy. You begin a thought and the world says, well, what is your conclusion. And I would gently submit to you — gently! the porch is no place for hollering — that some thoughts are one-way thoughts. You ride them out. You step off. You come home by another road, on another day, and you are not the same fellow you were when you started, and that is the point of it.
A bus that only goes one way is not lost. It knows exactly where it is going. It is the rest of us who are confused, because we have forgotten that the morning is allowed to point.
That is all I wished to say. The kettle is whistling and I have a rhubarb situation in the kitchen that will not wait around for poetry.
P.S. — If you happen to ride it, take the seat over the wheel well; the springs in that one have always been my favorite. And do not, under any circumstances, ask Pom what is at the end of the line. He will only smile and offer you a butterscotch. The butterscotch will be excellent. The information will not be forthcoming. Both of these are correct.
P.P.S. — Adabel, sweet pea, if you are the one reading this: the recipe for the chutney is taped inside the cabinet under the good plates. The secret is one cardamom pod and a great deal of patience, both of which are inheritable, and both of which you already have, you just have not noticed yet.
P.P.P.S. — I said earlier I'd had cause to think about the bus twice a week, and then I never did say what the two times were. They are: Sunday after church, and whenever I hear a screen door close softly. Three times if you count right now. Thank you for reading a letter from an old woman. I will think of you as I water the marigolds.