With no phones and no money. Marilyn concluded that the end of the road was near. She was now at a make or break juncture in life where all the options to choose from where full of difficulty. She monitored the health of Erica and wasn’t so pleased with her speed to recover on. the third day when the child could finally play around the house.
” I swear I had my doubts on that nurse and I would have sued her arse for suppressing my prescription.” She whispered to herself and felt a sense of calm that her phone had not gone in vain. She and her daughter had been surviving on the last cents from the phone sales but she had been wise enough to save fifty dollars for bus fare if the need to travel finally arrived. As it seemed, it was the most likely outcome. The school didn’t even bother to mail back, since Erica was owing them fees Thus there was no need of further throwing their mails in the mud. They didn’t care if she missed school or not as even if she didn’t, they were possibly going to send her packing. The light was finally out as the electric meter was spent off it’s last kilowatts. The gas burner was already burning slow with minimal velocity and it signaled that the cylinder was about to be left with nothing but wind. everything was finishing except her problems which seemed to grow from frying pan to fire. Passing the night in such a cold room was going to be fatal for Erica who wasn’t yet healed off the pneumonia that plagued her.
” Baby guess what.” She said and got up. After all she wasn’t doing anything but sit all day with an ass that could fetch her money.
” Let’s get going okay
” What mum.” Said little child who seemed very engulfed with her doll baby and teddy bears.
” We are going to Bear Creek. And we are going now.” Said Marilyn and headed straight into her room.
” What’s going on in Bear creek?” Asked the little child without any form of excitement in her tone.
” A lot. A lot my little angel. Probably there would be a room where you can watch Cartoon back there. Wouldn’t that be fun.” She said as she opened her box and began to pack only the necessary clothes she needed for the stay. She couldn’t tell how long she was going to stay yet if things went as planned and she became what she had travelled to become, then she was going to stay there for a long time.
” I miss watching Barney and hid friends and mickey to and Donald duck. I miss them very much.” Said the little child with a smile on her face.
” Lets go baby.” She said and got into the living room.
” Now ? Like right now mom?” She asked her mom in surprise.” Yes like right now my dear. It’s still very early , just past one O clock. I have no doubt we would catch the bus just in time.” She said and lifted Erica clear off the ground. She had loosed weight from the constant fevers of the past days and her mother could tell. She gazed at around to be make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything. ” Baby is there a particular toy you will like to take?” She asked the child in soft tone as she caressed her hair.
” No.” She simply said and kept on playing with the ones in her hands while her mother walked out of the room. She locked the door and was compelled to halt by her not the weight of the bags she was carrying but by the downpour of memories, the house had birthed. She took one more look at it, inhaled deeply and walked away.
” Hey Taxi. Yes please I’m going to the Carolina bus station.” She said to a cabman that had pulled over.
” Sure get in. I will take eight dollars for that.” Said the Cabman with a smile. As luggage were handy, she quickly hopped into the back seat and sat down to feel comfortable. It was much warmer than her house and even the reaction of her daughter had said it all. She turned her gaze around in a one eighty and finally smiled heartily before getting back to play with her toys.
” I’m glad you aren’t travelling direct to Bear Creek today.” Said the Cabman with a smile on his face.
” My god. I came across you that day right?” She asked with a smile.
” Yes you did mam. You had to be new in town to ask for such a ride. It’s a metropolis apart and would require you go by bus.” Said the man as he drove away. He was young and she could tell he wasn’t more than thirty. He was Caucasian and had a pleasant smile when he spoke.
” Well you will be damned. Some colleague of yours took me.” She said and smiled to wade off the seriousness.
” Are you kidding me. No cab driver would travel out so far. The cost of gas wouldn’t just add. They most likely would return without a passenger as well. Isn’t that just awful.” He said with absence of a smile on his face. He couldn’t even fathom himself going that length for any price at all.
” What if I paid them off. You aren’t thinking in that direction.” Said Marilyn as suited the hair of her Little girl.
” Well truth be told, anyone who can pay off the money for chartering a cabman to bear creek, can as well afford to pay for a chopper.” He said and chuckled softly.
” Well I didn’t pay her a fortune. She was just being nice.” Said Marilyn and wondered the point of the whole discuss. She felt she had better this to think about and chose to end the discussion.
” Oh I see. Renee right. I should have known that she was going to do something like that.” He said in questionable whisper.
” Excuse me sir.” ” Did she do anything wrong?” Marilyn stuttered and for the first time, took her back of the warm sofa.
” No no never mind. These are internal issues.” He said and nodded with a scowl that didn’t age well with the thoughts of Marilyn. She kept mum for the rest of the journey and eventually alighted from the bus after paying off the cabman. It was almost as if only one bus was meant to travel to Bear creek as she found familiar people from the last trip. She could see old Papa Cass but she couldn’t see the fat woman who had sat by her side in the last trip. Unlike the last trip, it was apparent that to her that she was in luck as the whole passengers wore a smiling face when she had showed. No doubt she was the last person needed for the journey to be incepted. She paid her bus fare and located the last seat available which was the one beside Papa Cass. She knew she was on for one hell of an interactive ride.
” I know you. The lady from the bus back in the days.” He said to her and the car hadn’t even started to move yet. He made seem as if she hadn’t seen her an eon. ” But was he really talking to me?” She opined and turned her gaze towards the back of the seat only to find all the customers there were males.
” Good day sir. We meet again.” She said to Papa Cass who kept on gazing blankly at the little girl on her mother’s lap. Erica whose head was rested on her mother’s head just lay still looking at the old man. She didn’t smile back and neither did she wade him off. He reminded her of a cartoon character which tried hard to pinpoint.
” Yes we meet again. I never knew you had a daughter. She’s so beautiful and reminds me of my own daughter back when I was young.”
” Oh damn it Papa Cass. Your stories never finish do they?” Said a young man from the front row and it caused a stint of laughter in the car.
” It don’t. It’s okay for you all little kids to think I make up this story but when you live for eighty three years on this globe you will see that I have a thousand more stories to tell. ” Said the old man as he made a funny face to make Erica smile. She wasn’t having enough of it.
” Eighty? Papa Cass they say you aren’t even sixty yet. They say you look old only because you had committed so much mischief in your hay days.” Said the same fellow from the front seat and it caused everyone to laugh excluding Marilyn and Erica who didn’t even know what was going on.
” Damn you all with the laughs. If I hadn’t committed those mischief in my hay days I would have been dead of depression. It’s those memories that keep me going till this day of my life.” He said in jovial manner that was full of life. One thing she had noticed was the fact that the old man never got offended in as much as they had tried to piss up.
” Do you stay here or do you stay in Bear Creek? She asked him with a smile on her face.
” I stay everywhere. I’m a child of the world and the world is my home.” He said and wagged his head in sideways manner to crank up the little child who wouldn’t just bulge.
” Oh that’s great. It’s nice seeing you again papa Cass.” She said and smile at him before facing her front to think of her own problems. He nodded slowly in a bright beam and took his gaze off. Erica.
” Papa Cass. You seem rather to silent for the man we know you to be. What has happened? ” The same young man asked.
” Reflections! I’m thinking of the days past when i was young and hard my family by my side.” He said with a smile on his face and hummed silently. The glee on his face seemed to have faded away and what ever it was that he reflected upon, it didn’t go down well with him.
” Are you sad?” Asked a tone of surprise. Even Marilyn didn’t believe that such a person could interact with so much empathy.
” Oh the little one talks. So you talk my child.” He said in bedazzlement.
” Yes I talk. You looked sad.” Said Erica whose head was partially buried in her mother’s bosom.
” Erica let grandpa be.” Said her mum in a whisper. She was embarrassed that her daughter wouldn’t let the old man be.
” Well who wouldn’t be ? I have a little one just like you. I use to carry her about and I was so fond of her. I used to have an old camaro vehicle and I had to sell it off to pay her tuition fees when she was nine. It’s sad how she doesn’t even pick my calls these days. It’s really sad.” Said Papa Cass and sulked emotionally while he took his face to the window.
” My goodness sir. That’s so sad. It’s a mean thing to treat your parents so bad in their old age. Your daughter has done badly.’ said Marilyn and waved her head slowly in apology.
” Kids should never take sides with a single parent and refute the other. She claimed I left her mother and got another wife. She wouldn’t agree that her mother who was an army personel was a deadbeat wife.” Said Papa Cass and his faced seemed to brighten.
” My goodness. You really score all the time Old man, you really do.” Said the young dude who couldn’t help himself from laughing. Ask he laughed, so did other passengers in the bus even the driver, joined him on the laugh.
” It’s okay to laugh so hard till you see for your self what I’m talking about. When I was dating this beauty, and was all smiles and merry. Soon as I married her when my damn hard earned pipe money. She changed and became vicious. Well you all know how this army women are made. Thick and studded. That’s show she was made to. I didn’t know she had so much power in her till we had a fight at a bar in the late seventies” said old man went blank. Sadly everyone wanted to hear what had happened In the seventies that made him to agree that she had so much power in her hand. Everyone including Erica who gazed at him in a manner a child would gaze at a mannequin. For that short while, she was convinced she was interacting with one as he didn’t seem to look lifeless anymore.
” Mummy is he dead?” The little child asked and showed some aspect of emotion for the first time in many days. It caused the passengers to laugh even harder than ever and the tremors of their laughter seemed to have worked out fine in bringing him back to limelight.
” Shush. Baby please keep quiet. His alive. “Marilyn whispered and applied her palms to her daughters mouth. ” Yes I recall what had caused the fight. Just jealousy and nothing short of that.” He said after continuing to speak like nothing had happened.
” Tell us what she did to you. Tell us how she spanked the living devil out of your bums papa cass.” Said the youth who was very much invested in the olds man narrative. ” Young man, its not a beating like it wasn’t a fight. I put on a good fight and dealt with her to. It’s just that the armies take this things to make them strong and furious” said Papa Cass with smile on his face. It caused Marilyn to wonder how such a man could take so much humiliation from kids young enough to be his grandchildren.
” Tell us. I heard that she used to beat you to stupor. I heard it with my own ears.” Another man from the flank said. He had just dropped the bible he had been reading and it was time to enjoy his journey. Marilyn immediately recognized him to be the young man who sat at the back of the old man during the last trip.
” You Ernesto can never travel without not talking. Some people talk on the trips like twice or once a month. You always talk in every trip. Go away.” Said Papa Cass with a humorous tenor.
” Damn it Papa Cass. No one enjoys your existence better than me. Even that daughter of yours is totally dumb to leave you out here in the cold when she could be getting all the laughs her sad life can’t give her.” Said Ernesto, the young dude.
” Nice one Ernesto. I love that. She’s a damn child but look at me. Old like the skies themselves but still make my money. The Bear Creek pension board always gives us a cheque on each Friday. They know we are old can’t work for food no more. Not everyone worked in the civil service. I also paid my taxes as a plumber and look, the government rewards me in my old age. Every now and then. A company calls me to ask some questions on my expertise on the pipe and drainage system. They pay me good for my knowledge. I don’t miss my daughter neither do I miss her mother. I always have company.” He said and brought his gaze back at little Erica. His words had compelled Marilyn to really address his grooming. He was looking very clean in well ironed shirts and trousers. He had his cowboys heart and wore a muffler over his horse skin leather jacket.
” Damn it old man. Old men like you are the reasons our brothers don’t get employed by the government anymore. You refuse to die and keep swallowing all the budget for the youths like us.” Said the over zealous youth in the front seat and yet again everyone gave their fair share of laugh including Papa Cass.
” And I why would I want to keep living in this old man’s body. Haven’t you Heard of reincarnation. It happens when your wife is pregnant and I die, then get reborn by your wife and become your son.” Said Papa Cass in a humorous manner that caused everyone to laugh except for Erica who didn’t understand the complexity the discuss.
” Damn that. I will have to divorce my wife if she does that to mean.” The youth laughed hard till he was stamping his leg on the cars floor. Marilyn could only wonder what it was that was always taking him to and from the city. She was glad that he was in the bus and his narrative helped her think less of the heavy burden that awaited her.
” Well tell us about the fight old man. Don’t try to hide it my wife belly. Tell us how that run away mother of your daughter whooped your arse.” Said Ernesto, causing Marilyn to wonder what he had been reading in the bible.
” Well why not. It’s all the past and you all want to hear a story but are to scared to take on adventures what telling. It’s so sad how you all cling on to life like we won’t all leave someday. When I was young I did many crazy things because I knew these days would come. I have no regrets so grab your popcorn while I tell you the story of how I lost my first two tooth when I was just twenty seven. And yes it was that fateful fight with the dead beat wife.” Said Papa Cass and chuckled lightly while there was deliberations on what he had said. Subconscious guilt had caused most of the youths to take his words to heart.
” It was a cold winter night even though the snows weren’t dropping. But hey, it’s was damn cold and it caused lovers to stick together. While together my wife wouldn’t lick ice cream or eat pizza like normal wives did. She wanted whiskey and she wanted it more than the Peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well not because it was a cold night but because she was just a drunkard who did an Oscar winning job in hiding away her true colors from me. This was the same lady that would stop me from drinking alcohol or smoking a blunt. She always said things about how we would have kids that looked up to us as role models and blah blah. I never knew she was doing nothing but being a pretentious wench.” Said Papa Cass and waved his head slowly as he gazed blankly at the back of the chair that hung adjacent to him.
” Man you really got a cold tongue. How did you loose two teeth in your adult hood and grew them back.” Said Ernesto as he cackled like a hyena. He was having the time of his life with his idol and he wasn’t holding back from showing it.
” Don’t be dumb Ernesto, all this teeth in my mouth are synthetic you can’t expect an old man to have such good dentition at this age. If you do, then you are a dumb one.” ” To cut a long story short. I obeyed her command and agreed to take her out the bar. Now let my looks in the present don’t cause you all to think I always used to look like some orangutan. Damn it I use to be finer than Leonardo di Caprio. It made it difficult…”
” You still got the Charming look sir.” Said Marilyn in a bid to make him feel even more elated.
” Thank you. Thank you very much my child. Now this a lady with a big future.” He cackled softly from her words, took a deep breath and began to speak again.
” As the ladies didn’t know what my wife was, a retarded soldier. They kept throwing passes at me and I found it difficult not to smile back. My wife didn’t like it . She said nothing but began drinking too fast. I should have known that problem was brewing but I failed to coordinate. Soon my wife had drank several litters of whiskey and still managed to smile at me like nothing was wrong. Perhaps she was being tolerant or something of that nature. She soon excused her self and headed into the ladies to ease her self. As soon as she left I coordinated my Romeo tricks and instantly got the number of three girls. Yes I was that good…”
” Papa Casa!!! The octogenarian with the sauce. When you die, I have no doubt I will kill my self to follow you to wherever part of hell you will be thrown to.” Said Ernesto as he cackled like some alien.
” Damn you man . When I die, I’m coming back to live in your wife’s womb as your son.” Said the old fellow and chuckled softly before continuing with his story. Marilyn could tell from the window that a great deal of journey had been covered and she didn’t even notice, thanks to the old man.
” With three numbers save in the vault of my pocket, any of you youngsters would have opted to call it a day but not like a jolly fellow like me. There was one last lady I wanted to get so bad and I had to take the risk. Hey you all. My narratives are delicious to the hearing because I take those risk you won’t take. I pity your wistful lives in the old age. That being said, I got up and headed straight for the lady who sat alone drinking her fine wine. I was using my knowledge of experience to denote just how much time my wife spent in the bathroom when she was drunk and I could perfectly say I had some more seconds at my finger tips to pull the kill. But ladies are demons and she wouldn’t bulge quick enough. Give me the number I kept asking in a whisper but the lady just kept on puffing her cigarettes like she was dumb. I called It a day and began to head to my seat where me and my wife had sat. At that moment my wife was just entering into the hall and I was just about to take my seat. She wouldn’t have suspected if I had claimed I went to ask for the bill, but just before she could dawn on me. The unsuspecting young woman who I had been trying to woe came to my table and dropped a paper in my hands before quickly walking out of the hall. She wrote and I quote …”
” Oh nooo . Damn you old man not now. Tell us what she wrote. Get back here, said the invested dude at the front as he turned a three sixty to catch a first hand view of the old man who was hung gazing at blankness of air. He was fighting hard to get in tone with his flow and unlike before, it didn’t seem to come easily till everyone was wary.
” Ten dollars that she wrote him her number and asked him to call her.” Said the invested youth and raised his hands.
” Well isn’t that the most likely outcome of things. What else would ask for in the paper ? Money perhaps? Damn you. There’s no warger in this option.” Said another youth who had cackled almost as hard as the youth in the front. “You never know man, you never know.” Said the invested youth and turned his around to keep watching the road as he travelled.
” If I recall, the dumb lady wrote and I quote. ” Hey Cass. I see you are with the woman tonight. Please give the bartender my five dollar bill. I Will see you when next we meet alone.” She wrote and I wasn’t even mad.
” My goodness I could have staked big on that!” The youth from the flanks while the invested youth made a sign of the cross in respect to the money he would have Lost.
” Why would I be mad? She even knew my name and It was fulfilling enough. I quickly tried to vault the lullaby in my pocket but felt the palms of my wife clutching over my wrist. My god I have never seen a grip so strong all my life and I’m going to die soon and still hasn’t seen one yet.” He said and cackled softly while holding his right wrist as if he could still feel the pain.
” I knew problem had come when she got my hands up and twisted my wrist so bad till that Ill-fated piece of paper fell to the desk. She quickly took a hold of it began to peer at it. Her drunkenness had almost made her call it bluff until she was prompted by some devil to read it all over again. This time around ending it with a wrecking slap on my poor jaw. It was the first time she had raised her hands on me in Violence. I wasn’t going to let it pass. I struck back with the speed of light and it caught her by the jaw. Man I now know I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t a risk. It was a mistake.” Said Papa Cass and cackled from the thrill of his own narrative.
” Damn man. I can imagine what she did to you. All the whiskey and intense regimen. All the vexation for the terrorism in the east, all admonished on your head.” Said Earnesto and made a serious face.
” Yes all of it and many more shades of bad things, thrown on my head in rage. We had an exchange of jabs with me constantly striking the air, while she got a clean record on my head, kidney and places too low to mention. I found myself on the floor at the mercies of other customers who felt she was doing too much to stop me from living the dreams. The bartender just wanted his money as soon as I was up. He didn’t mind that i was bleeding from the mouth, nose and maybe my teeth cause the two on the front may have taking a dozen hit in those short seconds of brawl. Man, I felt like I had been bludgeon by a grizzly. This is a woman that won’t go on top whenever we…” Said paper Cass and abruptly kept mum when he caught the glaring gaze of Erica. Marilyn was just glad he noticed as she smiled with a grin.
” Damn those kind of females laying their hands on a jolly fellow. The lord is not pleased.” Said Ernesto as cackled softly.
” Well two days later. We had another fight and it was all it took for those two teeth to fall. You will think it was the end of the marriage huh ? Well I still spent seventeen years of my life with the deadbeat martial and we had a daughter together. It all came to an end when I caught her cheating with her senior officer right on my bed. Man that hurt me so much and sued for a divorce which she turned down. She begged me to forgive her but I told her to confess all her sins first from the ones I know and those I don’t know. She fell for it and told me a damn erotica story of her escapades and guess what guys.”
” What ? What , what ?” A dozen guys asked in gusto.
” It ended up that she had slept with five other guys. I ran away and here I am.” He said and cackled very loudly till he began to cough out. Everyone joined him in the laugh except Marilyn who had the question of paternity on her tongue.