There is a story about how my dad left Butternut Wisconsin and found his way to Milwaukee, the gist of it was that he got run out of town by his parents. I think I heard the story once, but it didn’t ring completely true, and the details elude me. Nobody really knows, and it's too late to ask, but I thought it might be fun to speculate how things ended for him in rural Northern Wisconsin ……
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The black Ford idled at the curb with its lights out. Only a cigarette glowed from the back seat, its light ebbing with each draw; then fading as the boy exhaled blue smoke out the narrow opened slit of window. He looked toward the station and could see through the windows people milling about inside. A man and woman holding gloved hands walked past the rumbling car. The man wore a smart black hat and looked all the proper businessman, wearing a dark overcoat down past his knees and swinging a tan suitcase from his arm. The boy could see the woman's small feet and a few inches of leg before it disappeared under her long tan jacket, her free hand clutching a white scarf tight to her throat. They hurried to the entrance with the look of folks not accustomed to cold. The boy took stock of his own self then; worn dungarees and a wool plaid shirt, muddy work boots, a denim work jacket frayed and dirtied to a degree that harsh washing had little positive effect. Beside him on the bench seat was an old battered suitcase held together by heavy strings supplementing a failing hasp. He imagined a life with fancy clothes and holding a pretty girl's hand.
The old man in the driver's seat, the boy’s father, checked his watch and heaved a sigh that tailed off into a grunt, a sound of disapproval that the boy in the backseat well understood. The old woman next to him sat worrying a handkerchief between gnarled fingers, her sight flicked to her husband then quickly out the window to the station. Her eyes were reddened by past shed tears and lack of sleep, and she kept her head down. The boy heard them talk last night in garbled whispers through thin walls. He imagined them both on their backs in the big four post bed staring up at the cracked ceiling. She’d plead his case, he was pretty sure of that, but the old man's mind had been made up. “I’ve had it Irene, it was the last straw,” was what he imagined hearing before the old man stomped out of the bedroom and down the stairs to his bottle.
The old man glanced in the rearview and saw The boy's gaze fixed to his own. “What time is it, how much longer we gotta sit here,” the boy asked. ”I can go inside and wait, ain't no reason you need to sit out here.” He flicked the cigarette out the window and cranked it closed, dulling the hum of the engine and outside noise. He could hear their raspy breath from the front seat over the whir of the heater. He knew his old man wanted to see him on that bus, to make sure this bad penny didn’t turn up again, and wouldn’t be satisfied till he saw taillights heading down the road. ‘Ain’t nothing to worry about,’ he almost said it out loud, but held himself. Let them wonder every time the wind blew the limbs of that old oak tree into the shutters with a slap that it weren’t him leaning a ladder against the siding and sneaking in through an unlocked.
“Ten of,” the old man said, “should be any time now.” And right then the old sedan filled with the yellowed sweep of dirty headlights as the Greyhound pulled in behind and turned sharp into the station lot. “That’d be it,” he said. His father opened the driver's side door and stepped out and stretched the kinks that settled from too long not moving. The boy sighed, got out and closed his own door. He crossed over to the passenger side and the window rolled down. “You be good for Harry now, and don’t make no trouble there, he’s your older brother so you gotta mind him, make sure,” his mother handed a paper sack out to the boy, bread slathered in butter that she made early that morning when sleep would not come. The boy reached in for an awkward hug and his cheek came away wet, which he wiped off with the back of his sleeve.
He walked side by side with the old man, suitcase in one hand and the paper sack stuffed in the pocket of his coat. At the bus his father reached into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a thin worn billfold, took two bills out and handed them to the boy. “One of them give to Harry, and one you keep for yourself. Harry’ll meet you at the station.” The boy looked down at the crumpled money in his hand, then stuffed them in his own pocket, and climbed the steps into the Greyhound. “It’s for the best,” the old man said from the street. The words came out sounding more like a poorly disguised question. The boy turned his head and nodded, then found his way towards an empty row at the rear and settled into a seat. He wasn’t sad to leave, maybe though the way he was leaving. The businessman and woman were a few rows up, her head resting on his shoulder, his head tilted and resting on hers, the way he imagined new lovers do. He thought about what it would be like if that were his shoulder that pretty girl was leaning against, and massaged that thought till the steady rumble of the open highway soothed him into a deep dreamless sleep.
