![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonAt the Greyhound station in Bacon the bus north to Terminus is running late while the cops are right on time.
Here I am. The last Saturday in September. I'm standing on the edge of the bus dock, smoking a cigarette and for company there's a couple sitting cross-legged under the last payphone for twenty miles in any direction. He's a young man, shaved head, a duffel bag hugged tight as a teddy bear and a tye-dyed Slipknot shirt. She's a peroxide blonde with hair in a bandana, cuddling a husky with eyes the blue of a Colorado sky in movies where there's a Colorado sky and chewing gum obliviously. One white, one black. One heavy, one thin. Both in need of a smoke.
Knowing it's good luck on the outset of an journey to give alms to fellow travelers in need, I disperse two Spirits Gold and a light for both along with a re-light for my own that had gone out. Which is when Bacon PD squad car rolls right up where my bus was supposed to five minutes ago. Some crew-cut wannabe Marine in a uniform pops out without a word, puts on his sunglasses despite the overcast sky straight out of a childhood flashback sequence and pops open the back door. The brains of the outfit hops out as Officer Sniff Hound of the BPD makes the scene. As he does two more dust on vanilla ice-cream colored squad cars roll up.
Two more of Bacon's finest and another Sniff Hound.
The two Sniff Hounds are drawn to the Burn Couple's Husky. They make a bee-line for it. Questions are asked. Wallets are produced. But no search of a duffel bag or the young lady's camping gear strapped to her back. I go about smoking my cigarette. The dogs make a pass by me and I don't blink and I don't blanche. I travel dry when I travel to my Baby and this ain't my first dance with dogs at the gate. In fact I smile when the dog sniffs my girlfriend's cat, the coffee cake muffins filled with raspberry and blueberry I bought from a bake sale for the Andalusia Town Library some twenty minutes drive from here and the cigarette smoke I blow in their snouts.
The dogs give an all-clear nod and the men on the other end of the leashes bark back their praise to their superiors' wisdom, from there they begin to make their way into the station.
Which is when I pick my backpack up just as something begins to buzz very loudly from inside it. It's a mechanical buzz and you can feel it's hum vibrating through the handle I've grasped it by. It rattles the teeth... or maybe that's just my nerves. The cops though don't seem to notice for the most part. That is at least they don't until the guy from the Burner Couple blurts out in that way young men do. "Dude... why's your backpack humming like that?"
Which is enough to send their blue-eyed husking to barking. Which is enough to grab the attention of the Sniff Hounds and the living uniforms they guide.
"Sir!" one of Bacon's finest shouts with a hand reaching for his gun. "I'm going to need to step away from bag and get on your knees for my safety."
And without even so much as a safe-word set between us I comply.
My feet touch down into the Bacon Greyhound station some sixteen hours earlier. My bus has dropped me off somewhere in the neighborhood of two hours late. I had spent the ride between a young lady who had been riding from LA fresh from prison and the young man who identified his trade only as a 'freelance driver of things needing to be delivered'. Fuel wise I was running on nicotine, a four dollar bottle of water and half a turkey sandwich made fresh somewhere in the Bush administration. I make my way to the parking lot of the next door Checkers. My Baby's waiting for me there parked in her car. Road weary stragglers sleep walk with eyes open past me as if in slow motion while I watch her emerge from the car and when she calls me by my true name the way some around here call Hallelujah to the Sunday blue sky it's enough to make me want to drop on my knees in victorious supplication.
Forward sixteen hours and I'm on knees before the buzzing backpack. Pistols drawn on me. Dogs barking. Burner couple scrambling away just as the payphone they squatted in vigil around begins ringing and hey, look, there's my bus.
"Sir," I patiently explain in that way you do with young men with uniforms or children who happen to be pointing a gun at you that they've forgotten isn't a toy. "It's okay. I'm a writer and the buzzing you hear right now is merely a cheap plot device to gain the attention of people none of us will ever meet."
"What?" The cops barks at me and the first passenger off my bus freezes as he steps off the bus with eyes wide in shock on the scene before him.
"Is it a bomb?" The young lady with the husky asks stuck between fleeing and answering the payphone.
"What is it?" The passenger immured in consternation bellows pointing at me like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
"Sir... answer the fucking question!" Another cop asks taking off his sunglasses and edging towards me the way he was trained to do, at least as a child when watching 80s action flicks on basic cable as a child.
"It's a toothbrush." I tell the cops, the witnesses, the dogs, the guns and those future souls who've long ago abandoned this narrative. "See. Now you made me spoil the surprise some thousand words to soon."
"It's a what?"
"A toothbrush."
"Then why's it humming like a bomb" The cops inching up on me yells.
"Because it's powered by dynamite." I mutter.
"What?" The cop demands with a click of his hammer, a twitch of the safety as the dogs continue
at volume 10 hysterics, as the phone rings, as yet another bus arrives, as a crowd forms at the doors of the bus terminal.
"Because it's an electric toothbrush, Sir." I shout with a boot camp worthy monotone, "Just like the one I had back in the Navy. Sometimes it turns itself on when it bumps into something in my bag. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, sir and will be happy to follow your orders in deactivating it immediately."
The cops look up at each other, the bus brakes to pneumatic hiss, the dogs stop barking and the payphone goes quiet when at last the hammers of their guns are thumbed slowly back.
"Sir," The wannabe marine says, "I'm going to need your permission to search your bag, do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes sir."
The cop inches towards the bag, with a trembling hand he reaches down and unzips it...
... from which a swarm of butterflies bursts into his face.
Seemingly endless in their fluttering multitudes a stream of Milkweeds, Heliconians, Skippers (giant & common), Snouts, Metalmarks, Nymphs, Whites, Sulfurs, Orange-Tips, Parnassians and Monarchs gushed into the bus dock. Within the span of the passengers' screams, the dogs' howling, the cops' open firing into the back-pack.
But it was too late.
I had already dived into the depths of the back-pack while my oppressors were blinded by my butterfly-ninja smoke bomb and grabbing the edge of the bag on the way down to pull its outside inside with me as I seemingly and seamlessly vanish out of existence.
Four hours later as the 7:15 arrived in Terminus, the loading crew in their bright yellow vests and rainy day dispositions were shocked to discover me napping inside the luggage bay of the bus. A moderately bullet riddle back-pack served as my pillow and it was with a stretching yawn that I greeted my return to the light.
Thanking the luggage attendants while they were too stunned to do much more than accept it, I made my way to the MARTA as behind me a pumpkin orange and charcoal patterned Pearly Crescentspot flew up over the wino camps that surrounded us.
Here I am. The last Saturday in September. I'm standing on the edge of the bus dock, smoking a cigarette and for company there's a couple sitting cross-legged under the last payphone for twenty miles in any direction. He's a young man, shaved head, a duffel bag hugged tight as a teddy bear and a tye-dyed Slipknot shirt. She's a peroxide blonde with hair in a bandana, cuddling a husky with eyes the blue of a Colorado sky in movies where there's a Colorado sky and chewing gum obliviously. One white, one black. One heavy, one thin. Both in need of a smoke.
Knowing it's good luck on the outset of an journey to give alms to fellow travelers in need, I disperse two Spirits Gold and a light for both along with a re-light for my own that had gone out. Which is when Bacon PD squad car rolls right up where my bus was supposed to five minutes ago. Some crew-cut wannabe Marine in a uniform pops out without a word, puts on his sunglasses despite the overcast sky straight out of a childhood flashback sequence and pops open the back door. The brains of the outfit hops out as Officer Sniff Hound of the BPD makes the scene. As he does two more dust on vanilla ice-cream colored squad cars roll up.
Two more of Bacon's finest and another Sniff Hound.
The two Sniff Hounds are drawn to the Burn Couple's Husky. They make a bee-line for it. Questions are asked. Wallets are produced. But no search of a duffel bag or the young lady's camping gear strapped to her back. I go about smoking my cigarette. The dogs make a pass by me and I don't blink and I don't blanche. I travel dry when I travel to my Baby and this ain't my first dance with dogs at the gate. In fact I smile when the dog sniffs my girlfriend's cat, the coffee cake muffins filled with raspberry and blueberry I bought from a bake sale for the Andalusia Town Library some twenty minutes drive from here and the cigarette smoke I blow in their snouts.
The dogs give an all-clear nod and the men on the other end of the leashes bark back their praise to their superiors' wisdom, from there they begin to make their way into the station.
Which is when I pick my backpack up just as something begins to buzz very loudly from inside it. It's a mechanical buzz and you can feel it's hum vibrating through the handle I've grasped it by. It rattles the teeth... or maybe that's just my nerves. The cops though don't seem to notice for the most part. That is at least they don't until the guy from the Burner Couple blurts out in that way young men do. "Dude... why's your backpack humming like that?"
Which is enough to send their blue-eyed husking to barking. Which is enough to grab the attention of the Sniff Hounds and the living uniforms they guide.
"Sir!" one of Bacon's finest shouts with a hand reaching for his gun. "I'm going to need to step away from bag and get on your knees for my safety."
And without even so much as a safe-word set between us I comply.
My feet touch down into the Bacon Greyhound station some sixteen hours earlier. My bus has dropped me off somewhere in the neighborhood of two hours late. I had spent the ride between a young lady who had been riding from LA fresh from prison and the young man who identified his trade only as a 'freelance driver of things needing to be delivered'. Fuel wise I was running on nicotine, a four dollar bottle of water and half a turkey sandwich made fresh somewhere in the Bush administration. I make my way to the parking lot of the next door Checkers. My Baby's waiting for me there parked in her car. Road weary stragglers sleep walk with eyes open past me as if in slow motion while I watch her emerge from the car and when she calls me by my true name the way some around here call Hallelujah to the Sunday blue sky it's enough to make me want to drop on my knees in victorious supplication.
Forward sixteen hours and I'm on knees before the buzzing backpack. Pistols drawn on me. Dogs barking. Burner couple scrambling away just as the payphone they squatted in vigil around begins ringing and hey, look, there's my bus.
"Sir," I patiently explain in that way you do with young men with uniforms or children who happen to be pointing a gun at you that they've forgotten isn't a toy. "It's okay. I'm a writer and the buzzing you hear right now is merely a cheap plot device to gain the attention of people none of us will ever meet."
"What?" The cops barks at me and the first passenger off my bus freezes as he steps off the bus with eyes wide in shock on the scene before him.
"Is it a bomb?" The young lady with the husky asks stuck between fleeing and answering the payphone.
"What is it?" The passenger immured in consternation bellows pointing at me like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
"Sir... answer the fucking question!" Another cop asks taking off his sunglasses and edging towards me the way he was trained to do, at least as a child when watching 80s action flicks on basic cable as a child.
"It's a toothbrush." I tell the cops, the witnesses, the dogs, the guns and those future souls who've long ago abandoned this narrative. "See. Now you made me spoil the surprise some thousand words to soon."
"It's a what?"
"A toothbrush."
"Then why's it humming like a bomb" The cops inching up on me yells.
"Because it's powered by dynamite." I mutter.
"What?" The cop demands with a click of his hammer, a twitch of the safety as the dogs continue
at volume 10 hysterics, as the phone rings, as yet another bus arrives, as a crowd forms at the doors of the bus terminal.
"Because it's an electric toothbrush, Sir." I shout with a boot camp worthy monotone, "Just like the one I had back in the Navy. Sometimes it turns itself on when it bumps into something in my bag. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, sir and will be happy to follow your orders in deactivating it immediately."
The cops look up at each other, the bus brakes to pneumatic hiss, the dogs stop barking and the payphone goes quiet when at last the hammers of their guns are thumbed slowly back.
"Sir," The wannabe marine says, "I'm going to need your permission to search your bag, do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes sir."
The cop inches towards the bag, with a trembling hand he reaches down and unzips it...
... from which a swarm of butterflies bursts into his face.
Seemingly endless in their fluttering multitudes a stream of Milkweeds, Heliconians, Skippers (giant & common), Snouts, Metalmarks, Nymphs, Whites, Sulfurs, Orange-Tips, Parnassians and Monarchs gushed into the bus dock. Within the span of the passengers' screams, the dogs' howling, the cops' open firing into the back-pack.
But it was too late.
I had already dived into the depths of the back-pack while my oppressors were blinded by my butterfly-ninja smoke bomb and grabbing the edge of the bag on the way down to pull its outside inside with me as I seemingly and seamlessly vanish out of existence.
Four hours later as the 7:15 arrived in Terminus, the loading crew in their bright yellow vests and rainy day dispositions were shocked to discover me napping inside the luggage bay of the bus. A moderately bullet riddle back-pack served as my pillow and it was with a stretching yawn that I greeted my return to the light.
Thanking the luggage attendants while they were too stunned to do much more than accept it, I made my way to the MARTA as behind me a pumpkin orange and charcoal patterned Pearly Crescentspot flew up over the wino camps that surrounded us.