It was a drag to have six hours to kill the next day before my bus left for Oaxaca.  The AC had kept clanging all night long.  I’d just laid there for hours, eventually falling asleep as a telenovela played on the TV, the sound turned all the way down.  My head was full of anxious, restless thoughts.  I hadn’t worked for years now.  My only accommodation in the world was a cloth camper in my mother’s backyard, and yet here I was, studying runes in Mexico as if my life depended on it.  Maybe it did?  I didn’t know anymore what was real, especially in the wave of the pandemic.  Things were shaky before then.  By now reality was shot.

Funnily enough, the rune I picked that morning was Fehu, the rune of prosperity.  Where would that come from, I wandered.  The sky?  No.  Only rain was falling from the sky and I had six hours to kill in it.  I took a few pictures of Fehu on the counter and then packed my bags.  After checking out of my room, I sat in the lobby for an hour.  When the rain let up a little, I made my way towards the bus station, back through the same construction site and muddy few acres of torn-up street.

When I got to the terminal, there was still too much time to kill.  I got a newspaper and read about all the local accidents and fatalities.  Two bodies lay beside a truck that had crashed into a divider.  A man had either fallen or been pushed from a bridge.  Was that all?  There had to be more.  Only a tribute to a slain actor?  Where was all the graphic violence?  Wasn’t this a Mexican newspaper?

There was a Subway sandwich shop in one wing of the terminal.  I went over and got a footlong tuna sandwich, and sat chewing it as slowly as possible.  There were still three hours to kill.  I put some of the sandwich away for later.  It seemed like the best of the trip was behind me now.  Most days I felt the same way about my life.  I went and checked the gate.

When we finally boarded, I was way in the back of the bus on the right-hand side.  It was going to be a thirteen-hour trip.  Right away, some movies started playing, one about a dead drag queen, the next one, the Pixar movie Trolls, which was just unbearable.  When it finally finished, I sat in the darkness in relief and leaned my head against the window.  The arthritis was back in my right elbow, making it swell up like a golf ball. 

We stopped once at a travel center on the road.  All I got was some juice and cookies.  Now no one was next to me, so I bent over sideways, with my legs tucked up on the seat.  A few times we pulled over at immigration stops and all the lights came on.  The police wanted to see our passports. 

The bus arrived in Oaxaca at seven-thirty in the morning.  There was a decision to make.  Veracruz was eight hours away, but would be another overnight bus.  Puebla was about five hours and there were buses all day long.  I decided to just do that.  The trip was drawing to a close and I needed to be careful not to ruin it now.  From Puebla, it would just be a few more hours to Mexico City.  Perhaps, I’d visit Cuernavaca as well, but that was it.  It’s always good to go while the going is still good.