Freighter of Dregs

The Greyhound bus leaves from Arcata every day at 9:50 from the Intermodal Transit Facility, arguably the most squalid place in town. The Greyhound company always locates their stations in the most deteriorated neighborhoods. If the town is too small to have a real ghetto, Greyhound will nonetheless find a suitably foul corner to put their station in. Right next to the Arcata station is the Food Endeavor. There's always a crowd of ornery indigents camped out around it, with rats darting in and out between their feet, the indigents fighting over spare change and the rats over their crumbs.

I hadn't ridden the bus down to Oakland for many years. I remembered that only the most desperate people took the bus, and I always tried to avoid it. It seemed that every few months a Greyhound flipped over outside of Bohefus, three or four people died and twenty-six were injured. Once a man in Canada sawed off his seat mate's head with a Swiss Army knife. It was very telling, I reckoned, that the Greyhound went strait to West Oakland and only secondarily to San Francisco.

I paid $51 for a one-way, weekday ticket to Oakland, more than I would have paid for gas had I driven down by myself.

Alongside the curb where the bus stopped, a stretch of pavement stained with many a puddle of piss, many a cigarette tar stain and dried loogie, stood a line of people waiting for the 'Hound to appear. Their luggage were overflowing paint-splotched duffel bags, piss-stained bedrolls and in one case simply a tattered garbage bag.

An Indian wore a colorful, woven cap and a white man of perhaps thirty wore dusty Carhartts and shredded skate shoes with a beat-up skateboard, a sleeping bag and a day pack. An old man with a Navy veteran cap chatted about field-dressing gunshot wounds to a younger man with tattoos on his hands who was rolling a cigarette. Someone was smoking a joint, and a young trustafarian was wandering around telling an unsolicited story about eating some mushrooms in the forest and “tripping face.” He was aiming his story generally in the direction of the crowd. Everyone tried to ignore him.

There was a wild-eyed, middle-aged man smoking a cigarette and wearing a dirty, torn hoodie that said “Welcome to My Hood: Bay Area” with skulls and motorcycles on it. His face was grown over in thick stubble. There was a Mexican in a sweat suit with a shaved head and an area code tattooed on his neck. I wanted to ask him what he'd do if the phone company changed his area code.

There was a woman carrying a baby and stringing along two young children. There was a man in a Slayer hat and a shredded hoodie with an anarchy circle-a and patches sewn all over it. There was a guy with bad acne wearing a beanie pulled way down over his eyes. It said “Humboldt” on it with a pot leaf under the “o.” There were at least five “Tap Out” and “Fox Racing” and "Hurley" hats. There was a woman with a lip ring and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth chasing her toddler through the landscaping shrubs, shouting “Come here this instant, Jeffrey. You stop that this instant! Three...two...one...that's it!” She yanked his arm just as the crusty kid began telling her his mushroom story.

The man with the “Welcome to My Hood” hoodie was running around, looking for the motherfucker who had snatched his bed roll.

The inside of the bus smelled strongly of weed as I boarded. I sat next to a seat with vomit stains on it, hoping it would ward off potential seat mates (the scheme worked until the bus was totally full). Panning across my fellow passengers, I concluded that I probably had the fewest felony convictions amongst them all.

As soon as I sat down a conversation started up in the row next to me. One of the interlocutors was the man with the hand tattoos, and the other was an emergency room nurse or technician of some sort. It soon came out that the man with the hand tattoos was a 34-year-old retired Marine named Robert. He was a certified welder in the state of Washington. He drank every night, stayed with friends and relatives in Arcata and lived on a $3000 a month military pension. In the course of relating a story about a fifteen-year-old girl he saw who had huge tits, he also mentioned that he had a daughter somewhere.

Immediately the Marine began to broadcast his war stories to the rest of us. He spoke loudly of the atrocities he'd witnessed overseas, hoping someone cared to overhear. “Somalia was a fucking shithole. A fucking shithole, man,” he told the nurse loudly, shaking his head. “There were bodies laying around everywhere, man. One guy stepped out of a building and shot this 15 year old kid right in the head right in front of us.”

The nurse was suitably impressed, and let out a noise of resignation. Then he asked the Marine where he was going.

“I got this little black girl down south,” the Marine said. He spoke in a laconic, lazy drawl, using the word “motherfucker” frequently.

“Yeah, she's from Harem,” he said, “Harlem, motherfucker.”

“Oh, shit,” said the nurse, “that's the big fuckin' city.”

“She's still got a little bit of ghetto in her, you know” the Marine said, “but she's been civilized and all that. Like, she's got a jacuzzi in the back yard and a big screen teevee, all that shit. I'm staying for a month.” The girlfriend, he said, left for work every morning, where she sorted files for a record company, so he could sit on the couch all day by himself watching sports. At night, all she wanted to do was fuck, he said, like a little rabbit.

The nurse said that the other day he had picked up a “little twenty-four year old bartender.” He'd just strode into the bar, and all these other guys were hitting on her, and he'd just ordered a beer and sat there without talking to her, and before he knew it she came up to him and started hitting on him, and they fucked on Thanksgiving.

“That's how it is, man,” the Marine said.

“One time I was in this bowling alley in Albany,” the nurse said. The Marine gave him a quizzical look. “You know, Albany,” the nurse said. “So you got Oakland, then you got Berkeley, then you got Albany, and they're all connected together. So anyway, I was in this bowling alley in Albany on Mother's Day, and I picked up this one sister at the bar. We ended up going out to the back of my truck...” His voice fell almost to a whisper as he described their act of copulation in the back of the truck. “Weirdest thing I ever did. Well, not the weirdest. I've done some weird shit. Then she asked me if I wanted a forty. I was like, 'Shit, is this your Mother's Day present?'”

Both he and the Marine let out a series of wheezing laughs, the Marine eventually coughing up a ball of phlegm, which he swallowed.

“Heard there's a strip joint around here somewhere,” the Marine said. We were headed south out of Eureka.

“Yeah, it's right up here, right out of town,” said the nurse, pointing out T-Great Razooly's Tip Top Club.

"Heard it varies," the Marine said.

"Yeah, it varies," the nurse said.

They got to talking about gunshot wounds. The Marine wanted to know if the nurse ever saw any of them at the emergency room.

“Yeah, we just got one the other day,” the nurse said, “Some guy had come up and shot this guy at point blank range with a .22 rifle. The bullet went through his--” He stopped to think. “His liver, his diaphram, and his lung, and it missed his spine by, like, two inches.”

“No shit?” the Marine said.

"Yep," the nurse said.

“The other day I was walking down the street, after I had had a few beers at the bar, you know," the Marine said. "I was just about ready to go crash out. It was the end of the night. And I see this big crew of high school boys coming at me. Like, four, five of 'em. And high school boys ain't small.”

“Shore ain't,” the nurse said.

“Anyway, one of 'em asks me for a cigarette, so I'm like 'Sorry, bro,' cause I was flat out,” said the Marine. “And then they starting gettin' up in my face and shit, you know. Like 'you motherfucker, I'm gonna kick your ass,' and this and that, you know. Fucking bullshit.” The Marine's voice rose to an innocent tenor, and he showed the nurse his palms. “I said, 'You know what, bro? You're a kid. If I hit you I'm going to jail.' But anyway, this one motherfucker starts circlin' round behind me and swings at me, and gets me with a ring or something, you know, like, he didn't really connect but his ring got me. So I fucking pull out my knife and grab one of 'em by the collar, and I got my knife right up under his nose, and I says 'You're messing with an ex-Marine with a big fucking knife.' They all ran off after that.” He let out another hoarse laugh.

“Oh, shit,” the nurse croaked solemnly.

The bus stopped in front of the liquor store in Rio Dell to pick up a motley collection of serious madmen in suspenders and snow boots and leather pants. They were lined up in front of a bear statue carved with a chainsaw from a big hunk of redwood, beside which sat a huge stack of empty Taaka Vodka shipping boxes. In the window, Copenhagen snuff was on sale for $4.49 a can, and Rusty the yellow lab was missing. There was an obese woman in a faded hoodie that said “Bad Dogs: Bite Me.” Her male companion wore a hoodie with a crucifix on it flanked by several skulls.

The driver announced that we'd be stopping for ten minutes. Everyone got off to smoke cigarettes in front of the liquor store. When they got back on the bus filled with the smell of hot dogs and fried chicken, the sounds of a toddler screaming, having shat in his diaper, and the sounds of the Marine licking his tattooed fingers.

Outside of Leggett the sun hit the western side of the bus and everyone passed out. The Marine curled up against the window like a raccoon in his den.

When he awoke again he cracked open a can of Joose, the popular malt-liquor soda pop. He opened in surreptitiously behind the seat so that the driver wouldn't see him. He took a few swigs and then belched up the carbon dioxide. The belched Joose fumes drifted under my nostrils.

Then the Marine tried to engage me in a conversation about the book I was reading, “The Catcher in the Rye. ”

“Good book,” he bellowed. “I heard it's banned in somethin' like 33 states. I wrote a big report about it in high school. Yep, I know a lot about that book.”

I said almost nothing. It was the first time I got a good look at his face, though. There was a gaping head wound above his left eye.

We were approaching Willits, where we'd have a layover. I imagined the people of Willits would be horrified at our arrival. They were like a coastal Gaulish village, and we were like a band of roving Vikings. There had hardly been such a high concentration of degenerates in one vessel since the golden age of piracy.

We rolled through the tidy downtown and into a neighborhood at the south end of town distinguished by its lack of aesthetic appeal. We rolled directly into the McDonald's parking lot. I knew there were several nearby Mexican joints that could have provided better meals for the same price, but I figured that this arrangement was part of Greyhound's “only the worst” policy. Either that, or they had a corporate kickback scheme with McDonald's.

Everyone filed out feverishly and lit cigarettes. The obese woman who had been listening to heavy metal at high volume in her earphones started eating Pop Rocks and Mentos. The woman with the screaming toddler was still chasing him around with a cigarette in her mouth, screaming back “Jeffrey, you come here this instant!”

Inside the McDonald's there was a twenty-foot line and a sign on the wall that said “Chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm may be present in foods or beverages sold or served here. Cooked potatoes that have been browned, such as french fries, hash browns and baked potatoes contain acrylamide. Burger buns, biscuits and coffee also contain acrylamide, but generally in lower concentrations than fried potatoes.”

On the way out of Willits we crossed a pass and started following the Russian River downstream. The Marine had something to say about that, too.

“I found a nice little place down there by the river,” he told the nurse. “Nice place to go swimming.”

“Oh?” the nurse said.

“Yep, but that river's contaminated,” he continued. “That's what they say.”

“Oh?” the nurse said.

Then they got to talking about femoral artery wounds. The Marine wanted to know if the nurse had seen any of those in the E.R. He related the story of a bum he knew who got stabbed in the leg with a box cutter recently and whose artery was narrowly missed in the process. “Did you ever get that guy?” he asked.

“Nope, I don't remember that,” the nurse said.

“Them femoral arteries,” the Marine continued. “One time in Somalia I had to reach up into this guys thigh and pull one of those out. No shit. He got hit by a ricochet and the artery retracted. The medic was screaming at me to reach up there and pinch it.”

“Yeah, them femoral arteries are bad,” the nurse said. “You can bleed out fast.”

In Ukiah, we stopped in the outskirts of the Wal Mart to pick up more travelers. There was a man with a handlebar mustache and hand tattoos wearing a full battle dress uniform, camouflage fatigues from head to toe. There were three black guys who gave the driver wilted I.D.s from New York State. One wore a leather jacket, a Yankees cap with the labels still attached, and jeans with skull designs weaved into them and an illegible, ominous slogan embroidered in the ass. One of the black guys had a shaved head, a full beard and a big tattoo on his throat. The third guy had what looked like the scar from a knife wound across his eye.

An old lady came on with her service animal. A drunken woman missing her front teeth came in behind her, telling everyone “God bless you” loudly. She was leading her senile mother along, and placed her in the seat behind mine. Then she started trying to convince the woman with the dog to sit near her. “I'd rather not sit near young children,” the woman with the dog said. “My dog is afraid of them.”

We pulled out and headed south. A conversation about blood transfusions and leukemia broke out in the row behind me. “He was coughing blood,” I heard someone say. “He was dead.” The guy in the fatigues sat next to the Marine, who began talking about himself again. That Marine was a tireless mill of bravado.

At Santa Rosa, there were at least twenty people waiting for the bus. The driver said we'd stay for twelve minutes. The woman with missing teeth staggered out, making a lot of noise and chatting up everyone, who ignored her, until the driver told her to “cool it.” The mothers all hustled out to smoke with their children. The “Welcome to My Hood” guy got out and rolled up his sleeves to reveal faded tattoos fully covering his forearms.

Outside stood a guy with a hospital wristband who screamed that he'd hit a wall going eighty-five miles and hour, and then sat down, cradled his face in his hands, and began to cry. One of the travelers, a short black man, fell over backwards when the driver asked for his ticket. As he struggled to right himself, the driver looked him over suspiciously. Another man wore a hoodie covered with safety pins and a skull-and-crossbones flag flag pinned to his back and three thick chains hanging from his belt and another baseball cap with the labels still attached. This must be some sort of low-class fad, this leaving of labels on hats.

The bus was just about full now. Someone finally had to sit next to me. It turned out to be a skinny little man with a pony tail and halitosis who asked me what I was reading. I politely informed him. Then he put on ear buds, plugged them into his laptop and watched a movie.

In Oakland, I got out behind the drunken woman with no front teeth and her senile mother. The woman chasing Jeffrey dropped her bag, and McDonald's toys exploded across the pavement. I hopped over them.

At the side of the bus, I collected my bag. It was covered in motor oil stains. Then I wandered into West Oakland, past a screaming woman with a baby and a man berating her.

FINIS.

A Selection of Band Names in the Heavy Metal Section of Rasputin Music, Berkeley

Acid Bath
Abscess
Aborted
Abomination
Abrogation
Agony Scene
The Agonist
Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Agenda of Swine
After the Burial
Acid Drinkers
Amoral
Altar of Plagues
All Shall Perish
Alestorm
Archgoat
Anvil Chorus
Antagonist
Angel Witch
Angel Corpse
Anal Vomit
Anal Cunt
Anathema
Anaal Nathrakh
Armed for Apocalypse
Arch Enemy
Attacker
Athiest
As You Drown
Asunder
Asphix
As I Lay Dying
As Eden Burns
Asbestosdeath
As Blood Runs Black
Artillery
Avenger
Avenger of Blood
At the Throne of Judgment
Autopsy Torment
At War
Atomic Aggressor
Atrocity
Azathoth
Azaghal
Behold the Arctopus
Behemoth
Belphegor
Beneath the Massacre
Bestial Holocaust
Bile
Black Anvil
Black Breath
Black Funeral
Black Flames
Black Tusk
Black Tide
Bleeding Fist
Blasphemy
Blasphemopagler
Blitzkrieg
Blind Fury
Bloodbath
Blood Ceremony
Bloodbound
Blood Duster
Blood Feast
Blood Horse
Blood Red Throne
Blood Stain Child
Blood Tsunami
Blut Aus Nord
Body of Scars
Bonded by Blood
Borknagar
Bonfire
The Boy Will Drown
Braindrill
Brimstone
Brother Von Doom
Bulldozer
Bullet
Brutality
Brutal Truth
Burial Hordes
Burning the Masses
Burning Human
Burning Skies
Burst
Cacophony
Cadaver
Carcass
Carnage
Carnal Forge
Carnal Grief
Carnivore
Catacombs
Catastrophic
Cattle Decapitation
Cauldron
Celestial Bloodshed
Cemetery
Cephalic Carnage
Chainsaw
Choir of Carnage
Chthonic
Christ Agony
Chronical Diarrhoea
Circle of Death Children
Claustrofobia
Coffins
Conspiracy
Corrosion of Conformity
Coroner
Corpus Mortale
Cretin
Cremation
Crematory
Crematorium
Cripple Bastards
Cradle of Filth
Crowbar
Crucifist
Cryptic Slaughter
Culted
Cryptopsy
Cycle of Pain
Cynic
Daath
Dark Moor
Dark Funeral
Dark Throne
Darkseed
Dark Sanctuary
Dark Fortress
Dark Heart
Darkness
Darkness Dynamite
Daylight Dies
Deadbird
Dawn of Demise
Dead Child
Dead Congregation
Dead to This World
Dead Breath
Death
Deathrow
Death Angel
Decapitated
Deceased
Decrepit Birth
Deicide
Debauchery
Defiance
Dekapitator
Deeds of Flesh
Demise
Demolition Hammer
Deranged
Destruction
Desaster
Destroyers
Destroyer Destroyer
Destroyer 666
Devastator
Diabolical Masquerade
Devil Driver
Disavowed
Disarray
Disgorge
Disincarnate
Dissection
Dismember
Disembowelment
Doctor Butcher
Dominance
Dominion
Doom
Draconian
Drawn & Quartered
Dreaming Death
Dream Death
Driller Killer
Drudkh
Dying Fetus
Edge of Sanity
Ektomorf
Elegy
Embalmer
Enslaved
Embryonic Devourment
Embrace the End
The End
Endless Blizzard
Enfold Darkness
Entombed
Engorged
Eviscerated
Execration
Exhumed
Exmortus
Eyehategod
Facebreaker
Fairytale Abuse
Fatalist
Father Befouled
Fatal Force
Fear My Thoughts
Fear of Eternity
Fear Factory
Fell Silent
Fleshgod Apacalypse
F.K.U.
Flesh
Flotsam & Jetsam
Flatline
Fleshcrawl
Flesh Consumed
Forbidden
The Fractured Dimension
Forgotten Tomb
The Forsaken
Frost
Frostbite
Fueled by Fire
Funeral
The Funeral Pyre
Frightmare
Funerot
Future's End
Gates of Slumber
Ghoul
Gnaw Their Tongues
Goatlord
Goatsnake
Goat Whore
Goblin Cock
God Dethroned
God Flesh
Gorefest
Gorgasm
Gorguts
Grave
Graveland
Gravehill
Grave Temple
Gravedigger
Graves at Sea
Graves of Valor
Grief
Graveworm
Grief of War
Hammer Fall
Hackneyed
Hemlock
Hail of Bullets
Hammerlord
Hammer of Misfortune
Hatchet
Hate
Hate Eternal
Hatesphere
Havoc
Hearse
Headhunter
Heathen
Hell Fueled
Hell Within
Hellhammer
Hellsaw
Hell Torment
Horde
Horde of Hell
Iced Earth
Ignominious Incarceration
Illdisposed
Immolation
Impaled
Impaled Nazarene
Impending Doom
Inevitable End
Infected Malignity
In Flames
Infernal Legion
Inquisition
Insomnium
Into the Moat
Iron Thrones
Jesus Fucking Christ
Khlyst
Kingdom of Sorrow
Kill What I Adore
Knights of the Abyss
Krabathon
Landmine Marathon
Lake of Tears
Last Felony
Lechery
Lecherous Nocturne
Legion of the Damned
Leprosy
Life of Agony
Limb from Limb
Light Yourself on Fire
Liturgy
Lord Belial
Lord Gore
Lost Soul
Living Death
Lurker of Chalice
Macabre
Made Out of Babies
Made of Hate
Madder Mortem
Malevolent Creation
Malignancy
Malefice
Massemdrd
Man Must Die
Martyr
Masochist
Mayhem
Massacre
Merciless
Merciless Death
Metalium
Miseration
Misery Index
Molotov Solution
Monstrosity
Morbid Angel
Morbid Scream
Morgoth
Mortician
Mortification
Municipal Waste
Mutilator
My Dying Bride
My Own Grave
Nailbomb
Napalm Death
Narcosis
Nasty Savage
Necrodeath
Necronoclast
Necrohomicon
Nefarion
Necrophagist
Necrophagia
Necrophobia
Neurosis
Nevermore
Nihilist
Nocturnal Fear
Nunslaughter
Nuclear Assault
Nux Vomica
Obituary
Obsession
Obliteration
Obsessed
Odius Mortem
Omen
Old
Old Dead Tree
Onslaught
Orange Goblin
Orphaned Land
Overcast
Overkill
Pain Principle
Pain of Salvation
Paria
Path of Possession
Path to Destruction
Pentagram
Persuader
Perversor
Pest
Pestilential Shadows
Pestilence
Phobia
Pig Destroyer
Pitch Black Forecast
Poison Black Portal
Porkfarm
Possessed
Power Quest
Profanatica
Prostitute Disfigurement
Primal Fear
Psychotic Waltz
Psycroptic
Pungent Stench
Pyorrhoea
Rage
Razor
Rebellion
Repulsion
Ravage
Relentless
Regurgitation
Rigor Mortis
Riot
Ripping Corpse
Rotting Christ
Rotten Sound
The Rotted
Ruins
Rumple Stiltskin Grinder
Sacrilege
Sacrificial Slaughter
Sacred Reich
Sadistik Exekution
Salt the Wound
Satan
Savage
Scar Symmetry
Seance
Sea of Treachery
Sentenced
Septic Flesh
Severe Torture
Serpent Throne
Severed Savior
Shape of Despair
Sickening Horror
Sinister
Sinner
Skinless
Skeleton Witch
Skin Lab
Slayer
Slaughter
Sodom
Slough Feg
Soilent Green
Speed/Kill/Hate
Squash Bowels
Steel Assassin
Stormcrow
Stormlord
Submission
Suffocation
Suffokate
Suicidal Winds
Suicide Silence
Svartsot
Sworn Enemy
Sword
Tarantula Hawk
Taunted
Terrorizer
Theatre of Tragedy
Those Who Lie Beneath
Those Who Bring the Torture
Threat Signal
Thor
Thorr's Hammer
Thorns
Three Inches of Blood
Three Mile Scream
Through the Eyes of the Dead
Torture Killer
Toxic Holocaust
Total Fucking Destruction
Toxik
Trail of Tears
Tribulation
Trigger the Bloodshed
Unholy
Tyrant
Trollrock
Ulcerate
Unleashed
Usurper
Unmerciful
Vehemence
Vale of Pnath
Vektor
Vengence
Venom
Villians
The Very End
Victimizers
Vile
Violent Force
Vio-lence
Visceral Bleeding
Vital Remains
Virus
The Vision Bleak
Vomitory
War
Warbringer
Warhammer
Warfare
Warlock
Watch them Die
Weakling
Weedeater
Wehrmacht
Wiplash
Within the Ruins
Winds of Plague
Wino
With Blood Comes Cleansing
With Dead Hands Rising
Witch
Witchcraft
Withered
Witchmaster
Witchkiller
Woe of Tyrants
Wrath of the Weak
Wretched
Zombie Death Stench