Not your typical day on the bus.

bus driving on an empty road

Dear Lori & Anthony,

Lori, you remain further along in your reading than I am. Thank you for taking the time to discuss and explore the plot – something I don’t think has been a focus in previous letters – but which is necessary to move us forward in our literary undertaking. Since my last letter, I have discovered that I was entirely wrong regarding Jackie, who apparently exists and is a real person within the confines of this novel. Though, I still reserve the right to question whether she would recognize herself in Homer’s and Madge’s memories.

And yet, while I appreciate your letter, as I progress deeper into M3D, I care increasingly less about these characters or what happens to them. Perhaps that will change again, but in this present moment, I am much more interested in the writing. I would feel worse about this, except I believe the writing was also Young’s central preoccupation.

I have taken many trips on Greyhound buses in my life (because I hate driving) and can attest to the authenticity of Young’s descriptions. I am as intrigued by our time on the bus as I was exploring the sea-blackened house. Young has a talent for immersing us in her settings. Her descriptions of the bus moving through the windswept and rain-soaked terrain of middle America – “through great pools of oily and many-colored rain which had drowned the gulched dirt road, water running under the rusted wheels, water spraying the bus-windows with livid fountains” – are cinematic. They are our view from the windows of the warm and dry bus, where we sit amongst fellow travelers. And it is here that Young performs a deft sleight of hand in chapter 7, re-positioning her readers like game pieces on a board.

The paragraphs preceding the passage I quote below are of the bus driver ranting aloud about old Doc. We see through the bus driver’s eyes and are immersed in his thoughts and memories for eight pages. Then, Young shifts us. The paragraph beginning with the words “No head lights…” is a transition, during which she begins to pull the camera back. We are taken out of the bus driver’s head but remain within his point of view. While we are more intimately acquainted with all the key players, Young reminds us that these men and women, the old driver and his passengers, are strangers. The driver and we, along with him, eavesdrop on the conversation between the girl and boy seated a few rows back. It isn’t until the girl identifies the boy as Homer and we realize she is Madge that we are entirely removed from the driver’s point of view and find ourselves back with the newlyweds.

“No head lights, none following the old bus-driver, none which he could see through his misted mirror, for what he saw was a warped star, no steering wheel turning like a wheel of blackbirds turning like a wheel of stars turning with the turning sun or moon, no wheels, no tires, no flat tires, no skid chain, no motor, no license plates for his old chariot now. No windshield, no motor. But that was just it – he did not need a car. He did not have to have his tires retreaded now or his motor fixed or his carburetor changed or his gasoline checked.”

“I’m hungry. My stomach is roaring,” the boy said. “We can stop at Josh’s All Night Spot when we get to town. There will still be a light burning for some old trucker on the road going the other way. Josh’s Night Spot will still be open because it always is. I want a hamburger.”

“You know I’ll never set foot inside that drinking joint where those poolroom sharks and card players and wild women foregather waiting for the dawn,” the girl said, “those old river rats all staring at me as if I killed my father. You, Homer Capehorn, what do you take me for? You know that’s where your girl hangs out.”

“I do not know. I never saw her there.”

“Don’t pretend innocence now that you are a married man…”

There’s a scene in Blood Meridian where Cormac McCarthy pulls off a similar trick, and this ability to see/place not only one’s characters but one’s readers in three-dimensional space seems unusual and extraordinary to me.

I remain here for the ride,

Tara