When you’re in prison, time passes slowly whenever you bother to think about it.  But when you simply use it as a schedule - breakfast at six, work at eight, count at four – instead of a measure of hours, you can find the hours have turned into days and the days into weeks faster than you’d imagine.  A regular schedule helps with that, especially if it is one which keeps you busy enough.

On the other hand, when you travel by bus time passes slower than when you’re in “the hole” sleeping on a paper-thin mattress on a cold concrete floor.  I think that’s because when you’re serving your prison sentence, the “destination” seems so far away that you lose all sense of it.  When you’re down to a month or less left, this changes, but the routine helps to minimize the angst.  But on the bus, the destination is clearly mapped out, and you can’t help but watch and wait for it.  Every second is measured out like drips from a leaky faucet. 

I spent the first few hours of the bus trip trying to get comfortable.  As we were still in the general area of the prison, it didn’t seem all that different to me.  I tried to soften my anxiety by listening to the portable walkman-style radio which had kept me company throughout my incarceration.  I could get most of the same stations, so if I closed my eyes I could almost pretend I was still in my bunk…except the seat was slightly more comfortable.  The bus was nearly empty except for myself and the other two inmates, and aside from pleasantries we were keeping to ourselves.  The stops in this part of Pennsylvania were shirt and quiet, with one or two people getting on or off.  DuBois was the first semi-important bus station we’d be reaching, where the regional bus line we were riding would hook up with another (Greyhound “licenses” certain routes to other companies, so you can go all over the place using the Greyhound system without actually riding in a true Greyhound bus).  When we reached it, the landscape was depressingly familiar; the station seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, deep in the woods, just like McKean had been.  I didn’t really feel free yet.

This was also the location of our first transfer, so I grabbed my blue overnight bag and walked out into the cold March air.  The six passengers and I shuffled our way into the bus station, where we waited for our connection.  The two inmates made their way to the vending machines, but I made do with the water fountain and some of the Peanut M&Ms I’d brought along.  With two hours to kill in Pittsburgh later that night, I figured I’d grab something there.  If their grill was open, great, but if not I knew there would be vending machines with snacks and sandwiches at the very least.

As you might expect, the connection at DuBois arrived late, and was held up even a bit longer because of another connecting bus which had not yet arrived.  This type of consideration for late passengers is something you only see on the regional lines.  With Greyhound proper, the bus will simply leave; if your connection arrived late, tough.  I wasn’t concerned when it came to my schedule, because if we arrived in Pittsburgh later than expected, it simply meant a shorter layover before my transfer.  As we pulled out of DuBois around 8pm, I settled in and tried to catch a nap when I could.

The problem with that strategy, aside from how foreign the environment seemed after all those months in prison, was that this bus route included minor stops every twenty minutes or so.  That meant that by the time things on the bus calmed down, we’d pull in somewhere else and stop.  Each stop would include fidgety children, confused passengers, and a cadre of cigarette smokers who would beg the driver to let them hop off and light one up.  Then, when the bus would start again, inevitably some jackass would drop their empty beverage bottle on the floor.  The bottle would roll back and forth along the floor of the bus, bumping your feet, until the driver would turn on all the lights and threaten to pull over unless the “guilty party” would pick it up.  Obviously whoever picked up the bottle was rarely the one who dropped it, but it mattered little.  Suffice to say that I’d gotten no real rest by the time we pulled into Pittsburgh, more than half an hour behind schedule.

Unfortunately for me, the grill was already closed in the bus station, so I bought some chips and a bottle of water in the vending machine and started figuring out where my connecting bus would depart from.  This is one of the tricks I had learned from my time riding Greyhound while working for AmeriFleet: don’t sit around waiting for your bus to be announced; find out what gate it is going to load at, and stand there immediately.  Because the bus system involves so many lines, so many passengers, and so many tickets, nobody knows how many people are supposed to be on any bus at any particular time.  A ticket for a 2pm bus can actually be used on any bus going to that same location, so if you miss a connection you simply get on the next bus.  If there is a major change in your itinerary because of this, you can ask for the ticket agent to re-ticket you (so you have a hard copy of where you are going and what changes you need to make), but often most passengers just get on the bus and worry about it later.

With all that uncertainty and all that confusion, it is not infrequent to be told that the bus you want to get on has no room.  The station agents will talk to the bus driver, find out how many seats they have, and only allow that many people on the bus.  The front seats are supposed to be reserved for bus employees (for security reasons), but sometimes a driver will allow a passenger to sit there.  And likewise, if there’s a stop less than 30 minutes down the road, and the driver has some passengers getting off there, he might allow passengers to stand in the aisle between stops…the catch being that if somebody wants to board at that stop, the driver has the same problem all over again.  So while it makes for a much more tiring journey, especially on your feet (unless you have a large suitcase to sit on), you do yourself a favor moving to the gate right away (unless you have a layover of over 2 hours; in that case, when there are under two hours left, you move to the gate).  As insane as this might sound, if you’re on a schedule that you really want to keep, it is the only way…and usually you’ll find someone else is already waiting at the same gate for the same bus, so you won’t be starting the line, you’ll be joining it.  Since I had it drilled into my head that I either had to arrive at the halfway house on schedule, or have proof of why I was late, I couldn’t afford to take any chances.

This time urgency is really unique to long-distance inmate travelers.  For inmates with less distance to cover, the opposite is true; they have ways of taking advantage of the layovers.  If you’re going to New York, for example, the bus route takes you a round-about way.  So if you are able to arrange it through letters or pay-phone calls, many inmates would have relatives, friends, or significant others meet them along the way.  If you traveled by car, you could make the trip in much less time, which then allowed you to enjoy some food – or stop by a motel for some physical contact – before you arrived at your final bus destination.  Officially this was the same as escape; the inmates were legally bound not to leave the bus or the bus stations…and supposedly some BOP personnel were known to check arriving busses to see if inmates were disembarking when they were supposed to.  But to the criminal mind, those risks were small compared to the instant gratification of the steak or burger or intimate encounter.  For me, though, this was not an option.  I had too far to go, too many miles to cover, and I had no interest in doing ANYTHING which could endanger my status.  Some inmates might say that was overly-cautious, and others would say I simply had no balls, but to me it was long-term thinking.  There would be time for everything I wanted to experience, but my job now was to get to the halfway house in one piece, and preferably on time.

I managed to get some sleep after we left Pittsburgh, where I said goodbye to the other two inmates (they headed off in a different direction).  I rested an hour or two anyway, as there were no stops until Columbus.  But once the bus pulled in there, despite it being almost 4am, I had to stay awake.  The driver had us all get off the bus for a while, even though we’d be leaving on the same bus again.  I thought about calling Heather, but with more than three hours to kill during a layover in Dayton, that seemed to be a better plan…it would be a more reasonable hour then as well.  Instead I shuffled around until I collapsed back in my seat.  We left, and pulled into Dayton, Ohio only a few minutes behind schedule.  I was exhausted, punchy, and hungry, but otherwise I’d survived the trip without any major damage.

The little grill in the bus station was opening at 6am, so I blew eight dollars and had some real eggs and toast and a carton of juice.  There was even a place to sit while I ate, which I considered a minor miracle.  Then I made my way into the main bus terminal area, in search of a payphone.  But I’d forgotten about the time difference (Ohio is still in the eastern time zone, while Texas is in the central time zone), so by the time I called Heather had already left for work.  Shit!  I didn’t have her work phone number with me, so I figured I’d just have to wait until my layover in Nashville or Memphis to get in touch with her.  Typical bad luck and bad planning on my part!

I was lucky that once we left Dayton, despite layovers in Cincinnati and Louisville, I was able to stay on the bus uninterrupted until Nashville.  We arrived there a bit late, so I got back on the bus as quickly as possible, figuring to call Heather from Memphis.  At every available stop I’d buy one or two bottles of water, and a granola bar or some other vended food item, so between those and ¾ of my big bag of peanut M&Ms I was keeping any real hunger at bay.  Finally we pulled into Nashville, and I stumbled off the bus and into the station, which was a madhouse of noisy activity.  First things first; I needed to hear a friendly, loving voice in the worst way.  So I called Heather, and she and I finally made contact on the phone.

Unfortunately for me, her voice didn’t sound quite so friendly.  In fact it was very cold…until I asked her what was wrong, which is when she went off like a grenade.  As I explained earlier, I had asked Barbara to send me my blue overnight bag and a set of clothes to the prison (along with my drivers license and Social Security card, which had since gone missing).  Everything else that was in the bag she had tossed into a box and mailed off to Heather.  That included my portable CD players and some CD’s I’d listened to on the train ride from Dallas to New York a few years earlier, extra clothes, books, my watch, and miscellaneous junk.  I hadn’t bothered cleaning out the bag before my trip to prison…I didn’t know what was in there, and it didn’t really matter.  This was my only overnight bag, and it was the same one I’d used when travelling on the road for AmeriFleet, and when going back and forth from my apartment in Arlington to Heather’s in Dallas (a drive of 30 miles or so).

So, when I say it didn’t matter what else was in the bag, I mean it didn’t matter to me.  It seemed to matter quite a bit to Heather, who had received the package only a few days before.  And despite more than 30 months alone in prison, she’d decided to get very angry and jealous over some of the contents, regardless of their innocent placement there.  And she chose this phone call, my first time speaking to her since the day before leaving prison (they cut off your phone access the day before, so you can’t arrange anything you’re not supposed to), to start an argument.

“What the hell were these things doing in your bag, huh?  Maybe you don’t love me.  Have you been lying to me all along?”

I had no idea what she was talking about…especially since I had no idea what had been in the bag.

“Barbara sent me everything that was in there.  What the hell were condoms doing in your bag?  Were you fucking somebody behind my back?”

I was shaking my head in disbelief.  It felt like I had stepped into a Twilight Zone episode.  Here I was, in a packed bus station, on a payphone which was hard to hear on, surrounded by loudspeaker announcements, screaming children, and grumpy travelers, and I’d suddenly found myself in an argument with a crazy person.

“Well, Heather, I don’t see how I could have been cheating on you when I’ve been in prison since 2003!  But if you’re talking about the Trojans that were in my bag, I’d think it was obvious that they were the ones *we* used to use, which I carried in my overnight bag when I’d come to spend the weekend.  Remember?  Aren’t they the right brand and the right style that we used to use?”

“Okay, well, then, what about your wedding ring, huh?  Why is your wedding ring in here?  Huh?”

She was referring to the ring from my marriage to Mara…Mara, my first wife, who I’d been divorced to since 2002, and who had committed suicide while I was in prison.  I couldn’t believe that Heather was acting jealous towards a dead woman.  So I tried to remain calm, and explained quietly that the ring was on my old keychain (not the one with my keys to the apartment, but the one with old keys like the one to the house in Dallas I once rented but hadn’t lived in for a long time, plus some miscellaneous keys which I didn’t even know what they were for)…and that the reason it was on there was that I’d had it resized twice during our marriage, and then when I lost weight I didn’t bother resizing it a third time, instead carrying it on the chain until my weight stabilized.  By the time that happened, we were divorced, and since that wasn’t my primary keychain I don’t think I even remembered it was there.  (As a matter of fact, I found myself surprised that I had any idea what she was talking about…but I did).

“Well I just don't understand this.  I mean, what if you’re lying to me?  What if you lied to me all along, and you really love someone else?  How do I know I can trust you?”

This was the woman I had written to EVERY DAY while I was away, a minimum of ten pages per day.  I didn’t know what was going on, or why it was happening; I had to assume she was just nervous that we wouldn’t be able to recapture the relationship we’d enjoyed before; maybe she was feeling insecure, I don’t know.  All I did know was that I had to end this call before my head exploded or before I went completely insane.  So I did the only thing I could do, given the circumstances.  I ended it abruptly.

“I don’t know what’s the matter Heather, but I can’t handle this right now.  I’ve been riding on a bus for 36 hours with almost no sleep, and I still have move than 12 more hours to go.  I love you and I will call you when I’m in Dallas.  Goodbye.”

And I hung up.

I could end this chapter right here, and normally I would, but I don’t think it is fair to Heather.  So allow me to jump ahead and out of sequence for a moment.  While I was in prison, I had my wonderful and supportive friend Lisa monitor my email address on Yahoo for me.  She’d check it every week or two, to see if anyone was trying to get in touch with me that didn’t have my prison mailing address, and to keep the address active so I could use it when I got home.  Once or twice Lisa printed out email messages and sent them to me, and a few times she sent emails to people in my email address book, asking them to write me.  Anyway, with no other way to reach me, Heather sent an apology email to that address the following day (after missing my next attempt at calling her).  The apology was rather forceful and blunt – at least as blunt as my abrupt end to our phone call – and I still have it.  Here is what she wrote in the email, under the subject line Attention anyone and everyone!!!! I am sorry I was a BITCH!:

Douglas,

If you are able to read this or if Linda? is able to read this, I know she checks your email sometimes, I want you and everyone to know that I am sorry I was such a Bitch to you on the phone! I was being very insensitive and I over reacted!  Can you imagine!!!!! I love you so much and I can't wait for you to come home and be able to see you again at last! I was just terrible accusing you or as you so nicely put it, inferring, and asking why your wedding ring was in the stuff Barbara sent! You have never given me any reason to be suspicious of anything like that! I am on my pseudo-period and while that is NO excuse, I hope you and the universe will take that in to consideration and forgive me! This morning I waited to wash my hair until 7am and then you called at 7:02!!! I put the cordless by the tub but it hadn't been charged and I guess didn't ring! I started sobbing when I heard that I had missed your call! I didn't get a chance to tell you again how stupid and sorry I was! What if you are in Hutchins thinking that I deliberately did not answer the phone and I don't love you anymore?!!!  I hope you are not thinking that! I worry that you are because that is what I WOULD BE THINKING! You and I are TOO much alike in that aspect!! You' re my best friend and my soul mate and I want to share the rest of my life or lives w/ you!  Maybe Linda can get a carrier pigeon and attach this note to it & it would get to you and then you would know how I feel! I had to write this because everyone at work is sick of me obsessing and crying at different points in the day and do not want to talk to me about it anymore!  I love you and wish you could be home now!!! Ok! Maybe not now.now! I still need to shave my legs!! and [[other personal grooming items, removed for Heather’s sake]]!

I 'm a JERK! Love, Heather

She really is the sweetest thing, and the day I met Heather remains the most wonderful day of my life.  I love her BECAUSE she can be this way sometimes, not in spite of it.  Yes, I am a bit odd in that regard…but we’re a perfect match.  She truly is my soul mate.  I love to tease her about this phone call now, and the email apology.  It’s just Heather being Heather, which is all I ever wanted her to be.