ON THANKSGIVING DAY of 1977, my father took a Greyhound bus from Minneapolis back to Chicago after spending a week in the Twin Cities settling his own father’s affairs. My mother and I had gone along for the funeral, although I was too young to remember, then taken the car back home. At five o’clock that morning he locked up the house where he’d grown up and took a cab downtown to the bus station, where he made breakfast of a Mars bar and a bottle of Coca-Cola.
The station was packed to capacity even in the predawn—holiday travelers who’d booked at the last minute after the more civilized departures had already filled up. My dad had booked the early trip on purpose, hoping to avoid a crowd. Half the terminal was asleep on their bags or each other’s shoulders; most of the rest nibbled on snacks or sat with glazed eyes and magazines open on their laps. A few parents contended noisily with irate kids, and of course there was one bright-eyed, cheery family sharing juice boxes and playing patty-cake. Every bus terminal in America had at least one. A few chairs were occupied by people he assumed were homeless; it was Thanksgiving and the staff couldn’t bring themselves to boot them out in the cold. But when the bus boarded, my dad was surprised to see one of them get up and climb on board.
Dad claimed an aisle seat near the rear. As the bus filled up, the man he’d pegged for a vagrant came and took the seat across the aisle. He was in a green army jacket and my dad realized that was the thing: he’d seen a lot of homeless vets.
The full story can be found in Fiction Number 59. Please follow the subscribe link for information on ordering.
Chris Wiberg is a Chicago-based writer and editor. His work has appeared in Ninth Letter, The North Atlantic Review, Folio, and Crab Orchard Review. He has taught creative writing at the University of Illinois, where he earned his MFA, and at the University of Chicago Graham School. He has recently completed a novel about the comic book industry of the 1980s and ’90s.