Friends in Defiance

Byron and Sheff met when they were kids and became fast friends. Neither was much interested in taking life seriously, so time together and apart was mainly spent goofing around. One day many years later, they got fed up with their dead-end jobs and decided to become criminals. To celebrate the decision, they married their girlfriends, Nancy and Nicole, in a dual eloping situation in Las Vegas. It was the best time they'd ever had up until that point. Being in their early thirties, they certainly weren't kids anymore, but Byron and Sheff were ready to finally start their lives.

The lifelong pals took time in devising their modus operandi and struck upon the notion to rob big rig trucks in the western part of the country. The plan would first involve faking an auto accident on some near-empty stretch of desert highway. A semi truck, they reasoned, would be forced to stop and the driver would get out to inspect the scene, giving Byron and Sheff ample opportunity to sneak into the truck and drive off. Later, they'd sell off the cargo and tractor unit parts on the black market for big cash, live off the bounty for a bit, and then repeat the process when needed. "Lots of semi trucks on the road," they'd often say to each other, which confused the other members of their friends' game nights.

Byron had a cousin named Kurt who drove eighteen-wheelers for various big box companies, so they started bending Cousin Kurt's ear on topics such as security measures and mean worth of typical cargo loads. With a cold beer in his hand and a colder look in his eyes, Kurt told them that most drivers wouldn't think twice about putting a bullet between their teeth before getting out from behind the steering wheel. This unwelcome information set the boys back a few weeks and made them keep their investment manager jobs at Merrill Lynch a little longer.

After thinking on it a bit, Byron had an idea that they would use clever disguises to catch their targets off guard, maybe dress as circus performers or famous movie monsters. This led to an argument over which random pairings of fictional creatures would win in a fight, but both Byron and Sheff agreed that it was a good idea to cover their faces. However, they would need a way to get the driver out of the truck, and Sheff decided that the best secret weapons for a robbery would be actual weapons, like firearms.

Byron abhorred guns, so Sheff set off to procure a couple of revolvers, one real and one fake, from an underground character named Joey Pistola. Even though he was the more comfortable of the two with the idea, Sheff prayed that they'd never have to use them, except maybe to knock out somebody by hitting them on the back of their head with the butt. Joey Pistola came through immediately on the real gun, though the fake one took a few days longer to find. This gave Byron and Sheff a few days to make their own masks, which was the second most fun time they'd ever had up until that point. And by the following weekend, they were ready to try out their plan.

Byron and Sheff agreed that the best location for their hijacking, a term they loathed, would be the New Mexico/Arizona border so that they could easily evade state police from one state into another. Federal officers would be a trickier problem, one that they kept pledging to solve at a later time, though they never did. They devised a cover story for their wives, telling Nancy and Nicole that they were selected to adjudicate an investing competition in Gallup, which was close to their actual destination of Defiance, NM.

However, much of the plan's inertia was drained by the long plane ride, frustrating car rental process, and an argument over their bill from a diner they'd stopped at for lunch. Exhausted, Byron and Sheff saw the truth clearly, that they hadn't thought of all the many roadblocks involved in their plan, like how to drive a semi truck. They hadn't really even cleared some of the roadblocks they'd checked off. For instance, Byron came clean that he didn't have any black market connections to whom they could sell the stolen loot. And for his part, Sheff had exaggerated his thirst to knock somebody out with the butt of a gun, admitting that he'd also elected for a fake revolver. Only his was a rubber one, making it even more fake than Byron's fake gun.

They decided to call off the plan, but took the rest of the weekend to hang out and check out New Mexico. They goofed around, as they always had before turning to lives of crime, and had a fantastic time. At one point, they even stumbled upon a competitive investing function taking place in a small event hall at a Ramada Inn. It was more Podunk than they'd imagined it would be when they'd invented the idea in order to lie to their wives, but Byron and Sheff were surprised to find that they were more interested in watching it than they thought they'd be. They sat down with a couple of cold beers and chuckled through a few events, not as giggly adjudicators from out of town, but as friends, lifelong friends with their long lives still ahead of them.

The Detour

The bus driver shouted to us over his shoulder, asking me and the other passengers if we'd be okay with him taking a slight detour. This wasn't my normal route, so I politely laughed it off. Public employees are constant teasers and this line about detouring seemed like a standard bus driver joke, one that he could easily get away with once or twice a day without too much fear of it getting old.

Assuming this was the case, I went back to listening to a podcast I had downloaded to my phone. It was a show about great moments in rock music history. On this particular week, the hosts were discussing the five month period when Robert Smith left The Cure and became a backup singer for Prince on the Lovesexy tour, right up until Smith came up with the song cycle that became 1989's Disintegration.

However, soon after I had positioned my earbuds, I noticed several other passengers on the bus begin to shift uncomfortably in their seats and exchange meaningful glances with one another. The driver then flew by the next two stops without letting anybody get on or off. He really was taking us on a detour and I didn't want to find out where it would lead. Also, my destination, the stop near Whistler's Pub, was only a mile or so away and bar trivia would be starting soon.

I removed my earbuds and began to devise an escape from the rogue bus. I was sitting in the back section of the bus, which was elevated a bit from the front and middle sections. However, there was a rear exit in the second part that I thought I might be able to pry open once the driver was forced to stop at an intersection or for general traffic.

I slowly began to stand up, but an older man seated next to me grabbed one of my shoulders. He looked at me intently.

"You don't wanna do that, son," he said. His eyes were shiny, wet with concern. "Most of us have gone through this shit before. It's better if you just stay put and ride it out."

"It's okay," I said as I stood up into a crouched position. I placed my hand on his knee to comfort him. "I used to have a car."

I said this because a shared knowledge of the road connected me to the bus driver in a way the other passengers wouldn't understand. It clearly confused the man, but I didn't have time to explain my logic. I carefully made my way past him and a few others that were nervously shaking their heads at me. However, closer to the front part of the rear section, most people chose to hold blank expressions. They stared straight ahead as though nothing strange was happening.

"That's good," I whispered to them. "Stay cool. I'll warn the others." I didn't know what others I was referring to, but I figured this would keep them calm long enough for me to remove myself from the situation.

Finally, I descended down the two steps to reach the bus's midsection, right next to the rear exit. Still crouched, I reached out and placed my hand near the rubber-clad break between the exit doors, ready for when the bus would be forced to stop or slow to a crawl.

"Nuh-uh!" the bus driver shouted.

I couldn't see it from my position, but the driver must have swerved the bus pretty severely at that moment. The sudden careen launched me face-first into a metal guide pole and my nose exploded with pain as it slammed against the rail.
 
Almost immediately after my collision, I felt the bus itself crash into something. The impact stopped the bus's momentum cold, but I had already fallen backward into the main aisle by that point, away from the door. I was also way too busy screaming loudly and cupping my very-likely broken nose. The pain was excruciating.

Many of the other passengers began crying out dismissive and vulgar phrases after the crash. I believe one or two were directed at the driver, but the bulk of the insults were hurled in my direction, saying that I should have stayed in my seat. One woman seemed confused and loudly asked me if I could let her off at the next stop.

Most of the passengers, however, stayed on topic about my attempted escape, the one that had seemed to enrage the bus driver so.

"But this is America!" I yelled, mainly thinking that patriotism would cut through the rest of the chatter, but also because it was true. The event was happening in America. However, I could just as easily have yelled out "Disintegration is The Cure's best album!" and gotten pretty much the same response, which was a sudden and awkward silence from the bus's occupants.

It stayed quiet for about three seconds, then I felt the bus floor quake as the driver ran up the main aisle in my direction. My eyes were still closed because of my very-likely broken nose, but I could feel the driver begin whipping me with his jacket. The polyester thrashed my body as I tried to protect my face. My shirt had rode up a bit during my fall and the lashes especially stung my exposed belly. Worst of all, the jacket's metal zipper struck me every fourth or fifth rotation.

Once the attack finally subsided, I peered out from between my fingers, which hovered over my eyes and bludgeoned nose. The driver was standing above me, breathing heavily. His sweaty, demanding pose almost looked heroic, except for the jacket sleeve wrapped around his hand and the stack of bus schedule pamphlets clenched in his mouth.

He leaned down, grabbed me by my sport coat lapel, and dragged me to my feet. He slowly opened his mouth and the pamphlets fell to the bus floor.

"Get off my plane!" he said. I immediately recognized this quote being from the hit film Air Force One, starring Harrison Ford, even though I had never actually seen it myself. Before I could ask him why he had said it to me, the driver threw me up against the exit doors, which flew open as my body met them. I landed with a crumpled thud on the sidewalk and rejoined the day.

From my new position on the side of the road, I could then see the scene outside. Our crazy bus driver had plunged into another city bus that had apparently been idling at one of its stop. This other bus's passengers were filing out as their driver kept them calm. He looked very normal. However, none of them rushed to my aid or even seemed to have noticed my midair expulsion from the bus that had crashed into theirs.

I looked up to the crazy bus as the exit doors closed again. Through the tinted windows, I could see that my former fellow passengers had returned their gazes straight ahead. Nobody said a word or waved goodbye to me as their doomed vessel backed away from the wreckage and began to pull away.

I stood up and, still cradling my nose and careful to not fall over or faint, walked toward the crowd of people from the other bus. The others were craning their necks to watch the crazy bus as it sped away. I heard a few people try to raise questions about why the other bus was leaving without addressing the accident and where was it going now. I decided to give them a taste of the carnage and removed my hands from my nose to expose my serious injury.

"I was on that bus," I said. "Look at what happened to me."

A few people squinted at my face and shrugged.

"What are you talking about?" a goofy kid in board shorts asked me.

I crinkled my face a few times and discovered that my nose wasn't as bashed as I had assumed after all. I was relieved for my general appearance, though I was embarrassed to attract unnecessary attention from a second crowd that day.

"Well, I was on that bus," I repeated as I walked off, realizing that I was now only a block away from my intended stop. I entered the pub and took my normal seat at the bar, but didn't participate in the trivia. The noise was unsettling, so I left early. I took a taxi home.

I watched the news carefully that night, all the way through the last weather report, but I didn't see any items about the runaway bus or a roadside collision. Online, none of the social media sites mentioned it either. The next day brought nothing more in the way of information, nor did any of the days that followed. I probably should have stopped looking, but I never really did.

I bought a copy of Air Force One and fell asleep many nights while watching it.

It's years later now and I have to wonder if any of it ever happened at all. I'm not one for conspiracies or ghost stories, but I can't help but feel haunted by the experience. If it happened, everyone there accepted the moment so readily. Everyone but me. I have to wonder why.

Just a slight detour.

I have since that day purposefully broken my nose. I spent too much time regretting that it didn't happen when it was supposed to. I know the instinct was crazy and the result is certainly not a concrete piece of evidence that the event ever took place, but I love my ugly nose.

It's a crooked line in the sand, a gentle hand on my shoulder to comfort my many doubts.