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Rom drops Dawn off at the downtown San Andreas bus station already past her bedtime and the bus leaves late; it's after eleven when she boards and settles down for the long overnight to Los Angeles. The seat a relief after the sullen anger of the dusky station. She unfastens her sandals, folds her legs next to her. The bus lurches and accelerates through city streets, through the crime-ridden flats of Southshore, through the industrial towns and suburbs, over the hill where windmills stand broken and stilled, and onto Highway 5; a straight shot down the valley with nothing to interrupt the flow.

Outside, the country of late summer, pesticide-scorched between the rows of broccoli, potatoes, corn, hidden by the dark; the glare of headlights approaching and sliding away. She props her forehead against the rough headrest in front of her and almost sleeps, waking nowhere, a rest stop west of the road to Patterson and Turlock, a wide spot below the new compound on the hill; twenty-foot-high fences, their tops bent to hold the prisoners in.

A man waits at the tiny station--a bench, a street light, a schedule on a pole. Brown field dust and black exhaust dust and yellow pollen coat the bench he sits on. The bus door gasps open. The valley air is hot with summer even at night, crickets pulsing in rhythm. Insects, a cloud of buzz and motion at the streetlight. The man boards, shows a pass to the driver, swings his pack with a practiced up-chuck to the overhead rack, then folds his too-long body into the seat across the aisle from her. She sees him seeing her: a hippie woman in white cotton with long, light-brown braids beginning to gray. He shuts his eyes. The bus sighs and shuts out the summer night.

Now she can't sleep. Packing that afternoon, she'd imagined the bus a closed capsule of cool, conditioned air. She'd imagined serenely passing through the lush San Joaquin valley; time to reflect on Chrissie and the kids away from Rom's histrionic bullshit about passion and obsession when really it's the same old male shit, a younger woman. She hasn't let Rom touch her in months.

The bus is half full. In the back near the bathroom, two bearded bikers with too many DUIs to drive to L.A. drink beer from bags. College girls travel home for the weekend, midriffed and partying. The baby in the seat behind her snivels a singsong whine; his mother thwaps him to make him shut up and the whine becomes a wail.

She's making a southerly dash to help Chrissie, her trouble-magnet sister, deal with her fucked-up husband's overdose. An acrid scent of vomit and flatulence seeps up the narrow bus aisle. A cold stream of conditioned air blows from the sealed window. She digs for her sweater, settles in.

~

Highway 5 parallels the California aqueduct, flat ribbons of water moving south. In daylight, these fields are slow rolls of land, burnt butterscotch humps interspersed with black, controlled burn. She sees none of this, only the pale reflection of her face, the reflections of other passengers' faces. Inside the bus, the lights are a dim bluish glow on the ceiling, small runner lights in the aisle well, small pinpoints of light on each seat. Outside, the highway is black between the cars and trucks. She dozes again.

When she wakes, the young man across the aisle is eager gazed, his smile too bright, "Hey!" as though he knows her. He needs to talk.

"Hello." She keeps her mouth unsmiling. Showing your teeth is a sign of reception.

"Want a neighbor?" he says. "Share your seat?"

"No."

"Don't want to chat a while?"

He's a boy really, in skin too old for his age. "Humph," she says.

"I'm good at talking to strangers," he says. "I give good talk."

"I don't."

"I'm Don, Donald Brian Elmore," he stretches a white hand across the aisle. "Named for Uncle Don, never met the bastard. He lives in Texas, works on off-shore oil rigs in the Gulf. Have you ever noticed how all death row convicts have names like mine? Not to creep you out or anything."

"Well, you are." She doesn't have a beautiful voice. It's harsh, low and nasal. "I'm Dawn, too. Dawn Marie." The bus lights flicker off and on.

"How serendipitous," he says.

She smiles but doesn't show her teeth.

The bus pulls into a rest stop. "Fifteen minutes!" the driver announces. Dawn fastens her sandals and, taking her backpack, gets out of the bus not waiting to see if Don follows. In the parking lot, rows of cars and trucks; their inhabitants sleeping behind steering wheels under white blue streetlights.

Sweaters in the bus, short sleeves and sweat outside even in the night. She prefers night fog, the bay seven blocks from their little house, shabby but it's theirs. Rom home alone. "Resolve it, Rom," she told him. "You have to decide, me or Julie. Figure it out. This is not my bullshit, it's yours."

~

The women's bathroom, a reprieve from the stale bus air, a bank of anonymous stalls in too-bright light. Graffiti on the stall walls; undecipherable tags and the usual Jesus saves. Stephi likes to suck. Scratched into the paint at eye level when she sits on the toilet:

B Rod hurts me!!! 3NPX111 4/19 Hel

She leans forward, one finger traces the indentations. She flushes and pulls and zips. At the sink, she washes her hands; dirt swirls down the drain. She dries them on her cotton travel skirt rather than press the clouded chrome button, and walks outside.

"Cherry?" Don holds up a bag.

"Thank you."

They climb back into the bus and he sits next to her this time. The cherry is perfect, crisp, juicy, flavorful. She spits the pit into her hand, unsure of where to put it.

He says, "I ride the bus a lot." The bus lurches forward and pulls back onto the highway. "It's always interesting to talk to strangers. So, no car? Train too pricey? You can tell me, you'll never see me again."

She hadn't considered the train. The bus costs $29 one way, the plane $79. She'll drive back up with Chrissie; $50 means a lot considering how broke they are these days.

"Got any kids?" Don asks.

"Nathan. My son, he's seventeen. He's an amazing artist. I bet you're an artist," she says. "You look talented."

"Smart lady. Flirting with me?"

"No. I'm old enough to be your mother. Big sister maybe."

"You an artist, too?"

"I paint," she says. "My husband paints, too. We all do."

"Nice home in the hills, I bet," he says. "Bet you have a stone fireplace, a view. Paintings on the walls." He pulls his sleeves over his wrists.

"We have paintings on the walls," she says.

"I write poems. I'll write one for you."

~

She's not used to all nighters. Her eyes ache. The bus's jolting. We're all on a ship, a one-way ship, the road's the ocean… Wakes with a start.

"So why are you going to L.A.?" she asks.

"I'm getting off at Coalinga Junction, I'll take the bus the other way," he says.

"Where are you going?"

"Wherever, the first bus out of there. Red Bluff, Redding."

"What, are you doing a performance piece?"

"What's that?" he says.

"Are you just riding randomly?"

"A three-month SeeAmerica bus pass is cheaper than three months rent. Should be sleeping, I've got six hours tonight, eight if I'm lucky."

"Then don't talk to me."

"I like night travel even if I'm going somewhere." But he shuts his eyes.

~

Coalinga Junction, past four a.m., a half-hour rest stop. They pull off the highway, past lit gas stations, Taco Bell, McDonald's, Jack in the Box. A sign: 24/7 ALVIN'S - VIDEO GAMES - SPORTING GOODS - GROCERIES--AMMO--SNACKS. A couple of blocks in, the driver pulls into a lot outside Burger King and parks alongside four other empty buses, engines running.

"Remember your bus number," the driver announces.

"We all liquor up here," Don says.

"I don't drink."

"Hungry? Last stop 'til your destination."

"Yours too?"

"I don't ride to the end of the line."

The dark sky is clouded with smog. The two bikers and three teenaged girls head with Don across a partially paved road toward the Circle K, come back with paper bags holding tall cans of beer, blackberry brandy for the girls.

~

Sitting at a table in the rest area outside Burger King, eyes watering from fatigue and smog, lungs tight. San Joaquin Valley, the third most polluted region in the United States, source of the nation's fruits and vegetables. She stretches her arms and shoulders then opens her backpack and takes out her water bottle, saves $1.25. Eats her cheese and avocado sandwich, saves another two dollars and her arteries. When did they stop being broke and start being poor?

He sits at a table near her and sips a Bud and eats cherries and scans discarded newspapers: the Sacramento and Fresno Bees, the SF Chronicle, LA Times, San Andreas Herald, Oakland Tribune, Manteca Auto Mart. He pulls a pen from his pack.

~

In the restroom, the first stall is graffiti-free, and the second one and the third. Behind the fourth swinging metal door she finds another message in pencil:

3NPX111 Help me, pleze find us, brown torus going south

The bus honks. The bus driver nods in her direction before she boards.

"This bus is stopping at Buttonwillow. You can change there."

"No. This bus goes to L.A." she says.

"Not anymore it don't." The small back of the bus propped open to expose black innards in the glare of the parking lot lights. "Radiator leak. Don't want it overheating on the Grapevine. We're getting met there, you'll be at your destination with a thirty minute delay."

"Beautiful Buttonwillow, butt hole of the valley. Finally reaching our oblivion. Or is that too obvious?" Don says behind her.

"Obvious?" she says.

"Symbolism. The end of the line."

"I'll be stuck in Buttonwillow?"

"I'll stay on 'til then, catch something there."

He boards, she follows, gestures to the seat next to him. "May I?"

"Madame."

"Why don't you go somewhere?"

"Where?"

"How long have you been doing this?'

"Five weeks, up and down the state. Went to Arizona once. Turned around, came back. It's all the same everywhere, Burger King or McDonald's and for a special treat, did I forget Carl's Junior?"

"I think you should go home."

"No," he says. "There are some families you don't go home to."

He shakes his head. "This SeeAmerica pass?" he says. "Lasts another month. I'll sleep on the bus, wait 'til the semester starts again."

"I didn't think you were a student," she says.

"Fresno State, business admin and philosophy but I can't get past junior year--they keep changing the graduation requirements--couple of classes with bogus teachers, my girlfriend fucked my advisor, that shit. Maybe I'll go back anyway."

My husband might be fucking his girlfriend. She doesn't say it. She says, "Most people say go back to school, but you won't do it 'til you're ready. Go somewhere with the rest of your money, get a job, hang out on the beach, watch the ocean."

He shrugs. "I never go to the end of the line. I don't like the big bus stations."

She says, "There's graffiti in all the bathrooms up and down this highway, some woman, she writes these things, help. The license number. It's bad."

"Katie Berman."

"You know who she is?"

"Pile of clothes and bones on the side of the road last month."

A flash of paranoia. Was it him? "Oh my God, how do you know?" Looks for escape--trapped in the bus with a serial killer. Outside, only dark forms of olive trees.

"I watch the news. Trucker and his slave girl."

"Oh. No. We totaled our TV." The tip of her finger where she touched the scratched-in letters. She looks at him sideways. His profile menaces. She stares at the aisle. I do not know this man.

"Sad?" Don says. "Relationship troubles?"

"Oh, no." In a lifetime commitment, things happen. Men have their ups and downs. You don't tell strangers, though.

"You'll never see me again."

"My sister." She tells him: day after tomorrow she'll bring Chrissie and Jessi and Marissa home with her to San Andreas, shaky ground. They'll ride up in Chrissie's '89 Accord, Joads on the road, kids and yapping Welsh Corgi-mix, luggage on the roof rack.

"I try to repel trouble, the opposite of Chrissie," she says. "Walk through it but not let it affect me. She's a disaster but she's my sister, so what are you going to do?"

"Nobody says you have to clean up her mess."

"They're my nieces; it's not just Chrissie." They'll all stay in the bungalow, squished in the second bedroom, Nathan on the couch in the living room. Sharing the bathroom. Chrissie, noise and chaos, leaking sex and zest on Rom. Dawn wants this buffer: all-Chrissie all the time; Rom, big horn dog, mooching around after her, his tongue lolling, and she won't have to deal with him; herself and Rom in the stucco house, overly weathered porch and no money to fix it, staring at each other; Rom crying in the night over Julie, running the water in the bathroom so she won't hear.

She looks down, shudders at the red slashes beneath Don's sweater sleeves. "Why did you do that?"

He doesn't hesitate. "Tamara. She walked into a burning building to save the cat. Into a burning building. You're supposed to walk out of. Not run, walk; exit signs; don't panic. So I sliced the shit out of myself with the neck of a broken beer bottle. I was pretty drunk."

He's a hurting boy.

"You shouldn't drink. My parents were alcoholics; I never knew about it. You need help, not just riding the buses."

"More than you bargained for?" Don says. "It's good for artists; performance art. Helps me write my poetry."

"No."

"I wrote you a poem," he says. He touches her sleeve. Not menacing; young and lost. He reads from a torn page from the Manteca Auto Mart:

You are the satisfying itch
on the back of a dog's head
when he didn't even know
his ears
were where this vague restless dissatisfaction lay,
Dreaming of fields and words and running.

Her eyes are shut, head back against the seat, a broad smile. Rom's hand on her neck.

He says, "I'm crazy about you."

"No, you're just crazy." She opens her eyes, raises her head. "But your poem is beautiful." The satisfying itch.

Twenty-two years with Rom. The bus brakes suddenly, changes lanes. Their shoulders jostle.

~

Buttonwillow. They stand next to the new bus, savior. In a few years it could be Nathan riding the buses with nowhere to get off. She could be like Rom, drown in passion and salvation, follow the stranger, wander away, leaving. Her heart hurts. It's not up to Rom to decide. I have to decide, too. Her stomach flops with the truth of it.

She turns to Don, smells his stale breath in his nose, she grips him by the arms. "Stay on to the end, there's the ocean there. In Santa Monica, there's a café, The Rose, they have readings. You can make lattés and read your poems. How much money do you have? Get out of the valley."

"I never go to the cities."

"Go."

He looks at her, fierce bird.

"You don't have any money." She gets her wallet out of her backpack. "Here." She folds bills in his hand. "Go to Venice. Stay on the bus. Stay," she says, like to a dog. "Get to the water." He looks at his hand. Holding the money. Dreaming of fields and words and running?

"Then you take my pass," he says. "Go home. Fuck your sister, let her solve her own problems."

And let me solve mine. She says, "I can't take that."

"Then I'm tossing it."

The bus honks for Los Angeles.

"I'll take the pass."

He bows, Nathan's ironic bow, hands her the bus pass, hands her the poem, boards the bus carrying away her story, and the doors fold shut.

At the bank of pay phones, a half empty can in a brown bag. She makes the call to Chrissie, hearing her own harsh voice speaking words that don't sound as bad as she imagined and then makes the call to Rom.

"I'm on my way back. Chrissie's not coming, I told her not to. I want to talk about Julie."

She sips her bottle of water, her backpack at her feet; holds the SeeAmerica pass, holds the poem; watches the sky lighten. Toes getting dirty in the dust.

~

Dawn travels North, she keeps her eyes closed. As Don's bus enters L.A, she knows, as the country turns to city, it crosses the aqueduct of water flowing from the northern mountains through the long valley to millions of homes. Don will press his face against the window to see this. In a few hours, children will use the water to brush their teeth, noisy and spitting; businessmen will shower and shave; Santa Monica women, fresh from their morning runs along the promenade, will rinse and absolve the grime, pollution, sweat. Waves crash against the beaches. Then the bus moves past the aqueduct and into the city. Don looks back toward the brightening sky.

Dawn. In a few hours she'll be home.