American Bus Ride, Part 2: Amarillo by Afternoon

I am a bit sad to have only spent a few days in New Mexico, but with the thought of the trip ahead, I feel alive inside. 

Tucumcari, NM. We stop here for 20 minutes. I buy coffee and two protein bars and walk around parking-lot land. The first time I had diverted my attention from the window, I was scared that I would miss things. That I would miss the state of New Mexico. We pass fields of green, the first big swaths of green I have seen out here. Green on one side of the highway, emaciated yellow on the other. The distant mountains to the north vanish at some point. Rolling hills. A little stream in the red clay soil under the highway that cows drink from. Distant plateaus, startlingly flat. 

Texas—miles of wind farms. Signs advertising seventy two ounce steaks. Signs facing the opposite direction reminding cars that weed is legal in twenty miles, thirty miles, forty miles… signs for getting out of trouble when you get in trouble for weed. Texas flags. Don’t mess with Texas. Drive safely—it’s the Texas way. Our next stop is Amarillo, so I play Amarillo by Morning by George Strait, Amarillo by Emmylou Harris, trying to procure an audioscape to align with each stretch of changing geography, but it’s too early, we’re still seventy miles away from Amarillo when we cross the Texas border. I quickly get sick of cowboy playlists. 

Amarillo, TX — the bus driver tells us we have about an hour here while he cleans and refuels. It’s the perfect opportunity to walk around, I think. The lack of pedestrians and sidewalks is noticeable, but I think maybe I will reach an avenue that’s less barren. I had seen on the map that it is no small city. But each street is as empty as the last. I begin to wonder what kind of place this was back when people wrote songs about it. A car honks at me. A man on the street who I somehow hadn’t seen until after I passed him asks for cigarettes. I go back to the avenue with more traffic. At the crosswalk, a man in a car turning onto the avenue slows down and motions with his hands for me to cross. 

“Hey pretty baby,” he says, “where you going?” He turns onto the avenue and drives in the opposite direction as I’m walking, apparently satisfied with my lack of an answer. Within a few minutes, a pickup truck slows down as I’m about to cross another street. 

“Where you going,” this second man says, “can I give you a ride?” 

“No thank you,” I say politely. 

“C’mon, lemme give you a ride,” he persists. 

“No thanks,” I reject his offer again, surprising myself with how calm I sound, in spite of my fear. He pulls into the crosswalk, turns onto the avenue in the same direction as I’m walking, trailing me now. 

“Are you sure?” he says. “How am I supposed to meet a pretty girl?” Not like this, I think.

Luckily, in my series of rejections, the third time's the charm. But his persistence, in a place so empty, unnerves me. The half conviction that my large sunglasses and baggy clothes are an opaque, genderless shield feels like a terrible delusion. I go back to the Greyhound station as fast as possible and read a Wikipedia article about Amarillo.

After Amarillo, we drive through endless miles of seeming nothingness interspersed with glimpses of a few houses in Northern Texas. That rectangle that, on a map, looks like a mere blink of an eye, but when driving, seems to last forever. When we pass the “Welcome to Oklahoma” sign, the guy across the aisle from me says to the driver, wouldn’t it be funny if everyone all at once lit up joints.

I can’t hear what you’re saying, the driver says through the plastic barricade. 

We stop at a Taco Bell for dinner a few hours before Oklahoma City. A guy from the bus who only speaks Spanish is trying to ask me something. When he asks if I speak Spanish, I said “un poquito,” which is my first mistake, since I really should say “un poquitititito…. ” etcetera. I can’t understand what he’s saying, so he starts typing into a translation app. When I get my food, he’s sitting at the next table over with a man and a woman; he motions for me to sit with them, at the remaining empty seat. Like a middle schooler being invited to sit at the cool kid’s table, I abandon my original post and sit with them, feeling a sense of camaraderie with my fellow passengers despite the language barrier. 

As we reboard the bus, the guy invites me to sit with them. Through a prolonged conversation mediated through a shitty translation app, I learn that he’s thirty, divorced, and has an eight-year-old son. He says it’s hard to date in the U.S., that people don’t like foreigners. He says the people here are less friendly to each other. He offers me chicken nuggets and a sip of his soda. He tells me I’m pretty but have a malgenio de cara, it looks like I’m always angry. My brain hurts from saying no entiendo too many times. I tell him I’m going back to my original seat when we stop in Oklahoma City—I’m tired and want to sleep.

Oklahoma City, OK. We have to get off the bus for them to clean it. It’s night at this point, long past the hours of venturing off on my own, so I pace back and forth until we reboard. 

Tulsa, OK — It is strange to see tall buildings again, and even two people out on the street, simply enjoying the night. 

Joplin, MO — This is where the driver starts yelling at a man for having too many bags, that he has to pay for the extra bags on the Greyhound app, but the man can’t figure out how to do it. I just told you how to do it! she shouts. He’s not a native English speaker. She says she’ll have to leave without him if he doesn’t purchase extra bags on the app, but finally concedes to let him on under the condition that he buys the extra bags by the time we get to St. Louis. I sleep intermittently throughout the night, having gotten lucky with my front-row seat.

Springfield, MO — I sleep through it.

St Louis, MO — We arrive at around 7 in the morning. As the sky begins to lighten, I watch the emptier parts of the highway give way to signs of a big city. Here is where I have decided to get out and spend a night before getting on a bus to New York; the approximate halfway point between Albuquerque and New York.