December, 2002

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california
** Part Four **

Ten miles out of town we stopped for gas. This did not look good. I scanned the parking lot for pickup trucks with gun racks, but the place was deserted except for us. Maybe a little too deserted. Did the people inside all get rides to work? My plan was to stay on the bus, but the longer I waited the more it seemed like I'd be better off with more than one exit. I finally stepped off feeling like an extra in Raid on Entebbe and crossed the hundred yards to the truck stop.

There were two people inside, both nervous. One kept glancing at his watch, or was that my imagination? I bought a box of Little Debbie powdered sugar donuts, figuring at least they'd help me pretend I wasn't hungry for awhile. They were on sale. As I was paying I saw out of the corner of my eye that a car was pulling into the parking lot between me and the bus. Without looking to see who it might be, I bolted out the other door, away from the car, and was around the back of the building in a flash. I thought I could head directly to the bus from that side of the building, maybe before they even knew I was outside, but as I picked up speed to put this plan into action I ran right into someone coming around the other way from the parking lot. We collided and went down in a tangle, somehow a not displeasing tangle. Before I had my bearings again I knew it was Cheyenne.

"Take this," she said. She shoved something into my hand which I didn't get a chance to look at because she was also kissing me on the mouth. "Thanks," she said, and ran back around the corner. I jumped up and ran after her just in time to see her car speed off in the wrong direction. I looked in my hand. It was a watch. A man's watch. Gold. I turned it over. Engraved on the back was "First Boston Corporation Quarter Century Club: 1925-1950." What had I heard about a watch lately? I couldn't remember. I put it in my pocket and went back to the bus.

As I passed the Frenchman he smiled and winked. "Nice looking girl," he said.

I sat down and thought about Boston. I hated Boston. For me Boston was New England, and New England was the Kennedys and William F. Buckley Jr. It was too damn many schools and not enough workers. Yeah, there was a working class in Boston, a big one, but that wasn't part of the stereotype I had. The streets weren't straight. You couldn't find your way around without ending up at Harvard. I didn't hate education, I wrote for a living, but I had no use for attitude, and that's what Boston was all about in my mind.

The watch didn't give me too many clues. I figured that the guy who owned it was probably dead, or at least he was no spring chicken if he went to work for that outfit in 1925. And if he wasn't dead what was Cheyenne doing with his watch? What happened during that 25 years? Prohibition. The Depression. World War II. Nice time to be alive. What happened in Boston back then? Cocktails. Yachts. Snooty accents and garden parties. Course, First Boston Corporation sounded pretty big. It was a nice watch. Might've been in more cities than just Boston, but I thought I'd assume Boston for the time being. And dear departed Edmund would have fit right in at Kennebunkport.

So I had a watch from Boston and a stiff I hoped was from Boston so I could hate him even more. Not a very convincing connection. On the other hand, he had been riding on that bus and that bus was passing through Casper, Wyoming, so there was at least the possibility of a connection. And Pippi Longstocking said he was on his way to kill somebody. Maybe he wanted to kill Cheyenne's Dad. That didn't take a big stretch of the imagination, who wouldn't want to? But what were the chances of me walking straight into the bar Quasimodo was headed for before he checked out?

And what about Cheyenne? After she gave me the watch she sped off away from Casper. What did that mean? Had I accidentally liberated her from her old man? Was that what that kiss meant? I'd like to find out more about what that kiss meant. It seemed like a lot of people knew where the bus stopped for gas, but how had she even known I was on the bus? I had the feeling there were channels of communication I wasn't seeing.

I decided to assume that the bartender, and therefore Cheyenne, had known that a stranger in town on his way to California meant a passenger on the Greyhound. Casper must have been a regular stop after all. But I had been told that it was a stop initiated by the passengers. Who told me? It was that old fop sitting across the aisle from me. Mr. Passport Prodigy. Why would he want me to think Casper was a special stop if it wasn't? So I wouldn't guess that Casper was where the little dead bastard was headed? And if he didn't want me to know, then that meant he knew, which tied him in more than just a voyeuristic way with Dead Ed.

It was beginning to look more likely that there was a connection between the diseased (yeah, it's the wrong word, but you didn't know him like I did) and Casper.

Now what about the watch? Cheyenne had found me and given it to me in a big hurry, which I guessed meant that she couldn't let herself be found with it. It also probably meant that she thought she would be found. Why me? Presumably she trusted me because I had defied her Daddy, which suggested that he was the one she took the watch from, or at least he'd be the one looking for it. And he wouldn't suspect me because I was gone already when she disappeared. No, he would suspect me because I'd been the one who gave him the most trouble that day. And he knew I was on this bus. And it was a long way to California.

Part One  ** Part Two  **  Part Three