Greyhound was cheaper than the plane. But that wasn't it. The bus didn't ask your name. Try and get on a plane without giving your name. They'd call the cops. Detain you. So he took the bus. He got a ticket to San Francisco and headed west away from it all. Wife, child, job, parents and the people who wanted to kill him.
The good thing was he was warned. He'd be dead by now, he thought. Wrong place wrong time.
He sat next to college students and run away teens. He sat next to an angry old woman who muttered under her breath for six hours straight. He sat next to a con just out of federal prison.
The country slipped past, the mid west opening clean and organized and functional beside him. He fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke there was a child sleeping in his arms. He tried to look around for a parent without disturbing the child. No one looked likely. He fell asleep again and woke to find the child sitting next to him.
``Where's your mom?''
``She left.''
``Left?''
``She can't take care of me no more. She left.''
She was about three. Not pretty. Small grey eyes, a yellow crusted nose. She smelled bad.
No one on the bus remembered the child's mother. The driver just shrugged.
``We crossed the state line twenty minutes ago,'' he said, ``The kid was with you when we crossed the state line.''
Night was coming on.
They got off the bus at Cheyenne. He bought a two hundred dollar car. They drove on. He ran out of money in Spokane. They lived in the car a week before he found a job. They lived in the car another two weeks before he got a pay check.
The girl stayed with him twelve years. Spokane to Salt Lake to Klamath Falls to Redding to Winnemucca, Reno, Flagstaff, Albuquerque -
Then she was gone. Just like that. Never came home.
She left a note. ``Your not my dad I can't live with you no more.'' He wept.
In the emptiness she left behind he hired a tracking service to find his long ago family. They gave him a number, but when he dialed a woman said wrong number and hung up.
Who knows.
He taught auto shop at a junior college, he owned a house and had money in the bank. He was an Elk.
Trying out for a quiz show was a joke. Appearing on national TV was not. He realized this when people recognized him in the grocery store.
He began to live in fear again. He knew that most of the people who had wanted him dead were now dead themselves, but still he was afraid.
He did not move on though. He stayed where he was in case the girl came home.