life on the outside
No trains were running yesterday, but Greyhound said I could get on the 2:40 bus bound for New York City. The Saratoga bus depot is a one-room skank hole. A three-foot high-gloss ceramic statue of a seated greyhound graces one window, a frightening fake tree the other. Man. And you can imagine the cast of characters in there. The key players: An older backwoods looking guy in a tan work jacket. A younger shaved bald kinda lost looking guy, also in a tan work jacket. A large woman in a red jacket, turquoise toque and purple pants. A father and young son duo on their way to Tampa, boor bastards. Two kids waiting out in the car with their mom. And me, fresh out of Yaddo not quite ready for life on the outside.
At 2:40 we learn that the bus will be an hour late. At 3:40, 40 more minutes. We pace around like animals until finally Albany sends up a bus to get The Saratoga Seven, as I now like to think of us. Once on the emergency bus the lost looking tan work coat guy asks me if Port Authority is walking distance to Penn Station. He’s clutching a small sack of books, no other luggage, and I’m thinking: What, did this guy just get out of prison? But I’m thinking it in a fiction writer way, like that would be a good way to describe what this guy looks like. Like he is unused to this world, sent out in brand new ill-fitting clothing and now having a hard time getting to where he wants to go. He wants to go to Long Island. My cousin lives next door to Penn Station. I don’t tell him this, but I do say: You find me at Port Authority; I’ll walk you down to Penn.
So we get to Albany and they’ve got a bus waiting for us, full but for seven seats. We, the Saratoga Seven, board. I’m walking up the isle looking for an empty seat and I’m seeing a lot of big black and brown bald men all wearing new clothes and all holding the same black folder and I’m thinking first America’s draconian drug laws fill up the prisons, and now the Greyhounds. I find a seat in the rear with a skinny girl. Praise the Lord for a skinny girl next to an empty seat. I say: These guys were just released. She says: If they were released they must be fine. She just got into Columbia Law, and that’s her assessment. Christ. I say: Well, they must be in a good mood.
Indeed, it was a very cheerful bus ride. Somewhere in NJ there was smoke break. I saw my boy Saratoga get up to go out with the others. He blended in so well. Of course he just got out of prison. For once my literary imagination was right on the money. But fashion-wise, it was safe to say; he’d been in some other pen. The white boy pen.
We get into Port Authority at 8PM. I find my suitcase and there’s Saratoga waiting for me. Walk down to Penn Station. It’s good to walk, we agreed. Out on the street. Free at last, as it were. He said: Everything’s moving so fast. He’d been sent up for fifteen months on drug charges. Got out yesterday. Out into the post-snowstorm apocalypse. Spent six hours at the Saratoga Springs Greyhound station. Finally got on a homebound bus and finds it full of guys from the inside. I said: They make you? Oh yeah, he said. They give you clothes when you get out, but they don’t fit. Anyone wearing this jacket, he said. I said: I know a lotta guys wear outfits like that, trying to look like they just got out. He said: Longest fifteen months of my life. I bet. Kinda puts my six weeks of insomnia at Yaddo and my one-day snow delay into perspective. So, do you feel reformed? I asked him. Well I’m never doing that again, he said. Meaning drugs I guess. At 8th and 33rd I pointed out Penn Station and sent him on his way.
There are so many morals to this story I don’t know where to begin. Don’t do drugs. Things could be worse. Better late than never. Always talk to strangers. Well, only if you’re a fiction writer. If you can make it TO New York you can make it anywhere. What a way to leave Yaddo. It’s hard, making a new life on the outside. Stay strong kids. Stay in school.
. . . . .
At 2:40 we learn that the bus will be an hour late. At 3:40, 40 more minutes. We pace around like animals until finally Albany sends up a bus to get The Saratoga Seven, as I now like to think of us. Once on the emergency bus the lost looking tan work coat guy asks me if Port Authority is walking distance to Penn Station. He’s clutching a small sack of books, no other luggage, and I’m thinking: What, did this guy just get out of prison? But I’m thinking it in a fiction writer way, like that would be a good way to describe what this guy looks like. Like he is unused to this world, sent out in brand new ill-fitting clothing and now having a hard time getting to where he wants to go. He wants to go to Long Island. My cousin lives next door to Penn Station. I don’t tell him this, but I do say: You find me at Port Authority; I’ll walk you down to Penn.
So we get to Albany and they’ve got a bus waiting for us, full but for seven seats. We, the Saratoga Seven, board. I’m walking up the isle looking for an empty seat and I’m seeing a lot of big black and brown bald men all wearing new clothes and all holding the same black folder and I’m thinking first America’s draconian drug laws fill up the prisons, and now the Greyhounds. I find a seat in the rear with a skinny girl. Praise the Lord for a skinny girl next to an empty seat. I say: These guys were just released. She says: If they were released they must be fine. She just got into Columbia Law, and that’s her assessment. Christ. I say: Well, they must be in a good mood.
Indeed, it was a very cheerful bus ride. Somewhere in NJ there was smoke break. I saw my boy Saratoga get up to go out with the others. He blended in so well. Of course he just got out of prison. For once my literary imagination was right on the money. But fashion-wise, it was safe to say; he’d been in some other pen. The white boy pen.
We get into Port Authority at 8PM. I find my suitcase and there’s Saratoga waiting for me. Walk down to Penn Station. It’s good to walk, we agreed. Out on the street. Free at last, as it were. He said: Everything’s moving so fast. He’d been sent up for fifteen months on drug charges. Got out yesterday. Out into the post-snowstorm apocalypse. Spent six hours at the Saratoga Springs Greyhound station. Finally got on a homebound bus and finds it full of guys from the inside. I said: They make you? Oh yeah, he said. They give you clothes when you get out, but they don’t fit. Anyone wearing this jacket, he said. I said: I know a lotta guys wear outfits like that, trying to look like they just got out. He said: Longest fifteen months of my life. I bet. Kinda puts my six weeks of insomnia at Yaddo and my one-day snow delay into perspective. So, do you feel reformed? I asked him. Well I’m never doing that again, he said. Meaning drugs I guess. At 8th and 33rd I pointed out Penn Station and sent him on his way.
There are so many morals to this story I don’t know where to begin. Don’t do drugs. Things could be worse. Better late than never. Always talk to strangers. Well, only if you’re a fiction writer. If you can make it TO New York you can make it anywhere. What a way to leave Yaddo. It’s hard, making a new life on the outside. Stay strong kids. Stay in school.
. . . . .
Labels: Yaddo
posted by J. R. Carpenter at
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