William looked at the time displayed on the cell phone. It would take a while to get all the way there. He thought about Bobby and how he had said he would be there to pick him up at the zoo at six o’clock, but he guessed Arnie would tell him not to now. Bobby was probably in trouble, too. He was another one who never stopped talking. Now William needed to go where he was told. He looked at it like another adventure, like the contest at the big farm. Maybe Arnie would let him take the train back to the airport one more time before they moved to the beach. They were moving to the beach because now Arnie had money. Arnie was really happy about that. William knew he’d helped Arnie and his friend make a lot of money at the big farm. Even with what happened to some of the birds, it was worth it to make Arnie happy, and money always made Arnie happy. William just wished his brother had the ability to hold on to some of it. He was bad with numbers. William was good with numbers and that’s why they made a good team. That’s what Arnie said, anyway. Maybe now that Arnie had a lot of money, he would stay happy longer—maybe forever. William wanted to believe that, but it didn’t sound that way on the phone. It hadn’t lasted very long at all.
William counted the slats in the bench and then moved on to the linoleum tiles on the floor. Six hundred and forty-eight. He moved his eyes up the wall, counting the painted cement blocks until he caught a glimpse of something that didn’t belong. He fixated on the top left corner of the ceiling—a light brown pile of what looked like clay and grass constructed over time on one of the steel girders. As soon as he noticed it, he recognized it for what it was and began to scan the station for its owner. It didn’t take long. The small speckled barn swallow had been perched on another steel beam, returning William’s curious stare. William smiled. He wondered how long the small bird had been watching him—sizing him up—timing his movements—evaluating the threat. The clay mound was the swallow’s nest—its home. And although William couldn’t see them from the bench, he knew it was full of fledglings, hence their mother’s watchful eye. William slowly reached into his rucksack and pulled out the last pack of Lance crackers Arnie had packed for him. He had told Arnie several times that he didn’t like them. But he never listened. He was always talking instead. Eventually, William had stopped protesting and pretended to eat them by throwing them away in outside trash cans Arnie would never see. Now William peeled open the cellophane, pulled out one of the unnaturally orange peanut butter–filled squares, and crushed it in his hand, letting the bits and crumbs scatter on the bench beside him. He whistled a soft, low-pitched sound that mimicked the sound of a barn swallow perfectly. He could do all kinds of bird calls. He’d memorized the sound of nearly every bird indigenous to the state. The swallow chirped back and twitched its head. William smiled again and then stood up cautiously to make his way to the other side of the station. He crossed twenty-eight floor tiles and took a seat on another bench opposite where he’d been. He sat, watched, and waited. It took less than a minute for the swallow to swoop down to the cracker crumbs and peck away and digest its family’s dinner. Every few seconds in between filling its beak, it glanced over at William, who had begun to crumble another cracker on the second bench. He nodded at the mother bird right before it flew up, circled the ceiling a few times, and landed in the makeshift nest. William imagined the bird nodding back at him with some kind of unspoken appreciation. He knew that wasn’t the case. He knew the birds didn’t have the same kind of brain capacity humans did. He wasn’t an idiot. But he liked to think it anyway. He was helping a family in need live through another night and it made him feel good.
A line of buses began to pull forward and William took his eyes off the now frantically circling bird to look for bus number 422. It was the second one back from the doors to the station. He stood, picked up his rucksack, and gave a silent goodbye to the swallow. He pulled the plastic card Arnie had given him from the front pocket of his bag, hoisted the rucksack onto his shoulder, and waited in front of the bus door until the driver finally opened it up. William stepped into the bus and held the card up to a man with a thick black beard and handlebar mustache behind the wheel. William liked the man’s facial hair. It looked cool. It reminded him of a chimney sweep. He’d read about them in a book once and pictured them looking just like this man driving bus 422. The driver pointed to a scanner and William held his card under the red light until it beeped. The driver looked at a screen William couldn’t see behind the scanner. “Thank you,” William said.
“You’re welcome,” the driver with the cool mustache said, and looked past William out into the empty station. “You riding alone, kid?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your parents aren’t with you?”
“My parents are dead. They died in a car accident. I live with my brother, but he’s rich now and we’re moving to the beach.”
The driver’s expression never changed from the blank look of a city worker who’d heard it all. “Oh, yeah?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” William said, as if he’d just given directions to a Waffle House and not a recap of his tragic family history. The driver stared at William, trying to gauge how old he was, but decided that it didn’t matter. “You know this bus doesn’t go to the beach, right?”
“Of course I do.”
The driver took a second but finally dismissed him. “Okay, kid. Go have a seat.”
“Thank you,” William said for a second time. He put the plastic bus pass away and counted down four rows and over two seats before sitting down next to a window, hoping to see the barn swallow again. He couldn’t. He settled into the high-backed seat, put on his seatbelt, and sat his rucksack in his lap. He took out a set of small earbuds that came with his new phone and stuck them in his ears just to block out the ambient sound around him. He pulled a ragged paperback book out of his rucksack—Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was one of his favorites. It had belonged to his dad. His dad loved pulp fiction novels. They used to search thrift shops and bookstores for them all the time before he died. Stories about Tarzan and Doc Savage were his dad’s favorites. They were William’s favorites, too. He’d read this particular book so many times the spine was beginning to give way and pages were starting to fall out. He was careful as he flipped to the playing card he was using as a bookmark and began to read.
The bus driver continued to watch William in the large rearview mirror in between scanning in a few other travelers and tearing some paper tickets. Once the six other people taking this trip boarded the bus, the driver got up from his captain’s chair and walked four rows back to William’s seat. “Excuse me, son.”
William took out one of the headphones but didn’t look up. “Yes, sir?”
“You know this bus doesn’t go directly to your destination, right? You’ll need to change buses in Columbus.”
William looked straight ahead, directly into the back of the seat in front of him. “Bus four twenty-two goes one hundred and eight miles to Columbus, Georgia, and then bus forty-nine leaves at six ten and goes another eighty-nine miles to Black Mountain. It’s going to take four hours and eighteen minutes by bus, but only two hours and twelve minutes if we were traveling by train. But no trains go there. I wish they did. I won’t fall asleep and miss my stop, sir.”