Once upon a pea soup night
in the frosty autumn of Nebraska, the wind-chill screamed the name of Omaha through tweed sport coats and Styrofoam coffee
cups. The bus station was a lion’s den, with the roars and snores of slumbering hobos. Residue from their dreams spilled
out on whiskey breath to land on a contemptuous lapel.
Air wheezed
like a dinosaur death rattle from the archaic shocks of an arriving Cruiser. The gambler emerged squinting under the florescent
attack. He tilted his brim a little lower and buttoned his Hawaiian shirt against the frost. Shambling through the double
doors, he lit up a smoke and scanned the room for a seat.
Prehistoric
Zagnuts shared a soot covered, mechanized coffin with a forgotten Abba Zabba and a pulverized sack of Famous
Amos. An oval of glass freshly exhumed by the rub of a skirt hem, provided a mirror for her spit curl adjustment. Scraping
the last remnants of rouge from a vacant lipstick container she applied the gloss to her lips. She tightened the elastic of
her sock garters and turned to survey the tramp filled tenement for an empty bench.
Obsidian
shoe polish permanently ingrained into fingertip prints, he pulled a greasy curl from his eyes and tucked it behind an ear.
A pine shoeshine box slumbered at his feet, while the dusty brush drooped and the snap rag drooled with neglect. He whistled
a tune through his teeth into his hat and leaned against the closed gate of the ticket window. Cold coffee was losing the
battle against the fatigue of indolence. Conceding, he probed the room with blood shot orbs for an uninhabited plank.
One unoccupied
pew stood beckoning in the middle of the quiescent vagrant vortex. They all three noticed the splintered sanctuary and each
other at the exact same moment.
A Nebraskan stand off ensued…
Tensing his
fingers around his smothering stogie, Slick Macoy tensed the goose bumped muscles of his unadorned calves, poised to pounce.
With a calculated
pull of bourbon from her paisley flask, Doodles LaRue quietly sized up her competition.
Drawing "Jethro",
(his trusty jar) out of the shine box like Excalibar from the stone, Smitty ‘Spitshine’ Delacroix took a much needed beer break.
They all
sprang into action simultaneously. The gap was closed rapidly and it was anyone’s race, inches away from the bench
they were all stopped short. Mouths agape in amazement they stared down upon a small, well-dressed tin duck on a bicycle.
He slowly
rode his bike in a perfect circle, a colorfully stripped propeller spinning on the tip of his pointy red hat. A washboard,
ukulele, aluminum gut bucket and three tickets for the next bus to San Francisco were spread out in front of his hypnotic
sphere.
They were
no longer lost. Destiny had found these three wayward vagabonds and thrust them together, but to what end?
None can tell…well not yet anyway.