The Red, White, and Blue Bus

The Red, White, and Blue Bus

James Magorian

From The Hideout of the Sigmund Freud Gang, Lincoln, Nebraska: Black Oak Press, 1987

The wind becomes a memory

as I step onto the bus.

I stuff my birth certificate

into the meter,

and the bus driver

grinds through the gears.

The bus belches across

the intersection.

At desperate corners

others enter the bus.

Coins dance merrily

into the meter – the altar

at the front of the temple.

In the beginning

the Great Dispatcher

created the bus

and the route.

And the route was

without schedules,

and void; and darkness

was upon the face

of business mergers.

And the spirit

of the Great Dispatcher

moved slowly with

the heavy traffic.

And the Great Dispatcher

said, Let there be

bus tokens: and there

were bus tokens.

The bus screeches around

a sharp curve on the

Christopher Columbus

Expressway and almost

slides off the edge

of the route.

The Norsemen are not

mentioned in the bus

company records.

The bus rattles past

wattle-and-daub huts

and rusty cannons.

The bus speeds past

some conquistadors

standing on a street

corner in Santa Fe

in rusty armor

reading a road map

by the green glare

of a neon light.

The bus splashes through

the Chickahominy River.

Pocahontas and Powhatan

sit on the shore reading

the London Company charter.

Captain John Smith struts

down the aisle of the bus;

Gabriel Archer tries

to trip him.

One side of the bus scrapes

against Plymouth Rock;

William Bradford prays

to the Great Dispatcher.

Samoset and Squanto

stand in a cornfield

and watch the wheels

of the bus

crush Indian villages.

The bus passes a witch

being burned at the stake.

Cotton Mather sits beside

the fire roasting

a marshmallow.

The Puritans have

a lien on the bus.

“I know not what route

others may take,

but as for me,

give me political power

or give me a transfer ticket,”

inveighs Patrick Henry.

Paul Revere passes the bus

in his Cadillac convertible.

John Hancock sits

in the back seat, his

arm around a barrel

of smuggled molasses.

“Changing lanes without

signaling is tyranny,”

screams James Otis as he

squirms in his straitjacket.

The bus passes Major Pitcairn

and his soldiers hitchhiking

toward Lexington along Highway 2.

The Massachusetts militia rush

to the windows and toss

flags at the Redcoats.

The British scramble onto

their coughing, rattling

double-decker bus

and head back to Boston.

“This bus is, and of right

ought to be, free,” hollers

Richard Henry Lee as he

drops his money into

the grinning meter.

“I only regret that I

have but one life

to lose for my bus,”

Nathan Hale calmly

states as the British

wrap a battery cable

around his neck.

“Don’t change buses in the

middle of a dream,” cautions

a Continental soldier, but

Benedict Arnold takes a folded

transfer ticket from his

snuffbox and hands it

to General Clinton.

The headlights click on.

The bus grunts and groans

through the valley

of the shadow of death.

The engine runneth over;

our heads are anointed

with diesel oil.

Surely goodness and mercy

shall follow us

all the way

to the next stop.

The bus driver looks at

his rear-view mirror

and pulls out into the

traffic when he can see

the whites of their eyes.

Not everyone is allowed

on the bus. Most must

walk behind it: these

are the times that

try men’s soles.

Captain Daniel Shays

fires his musket

at the bus.

“The bus company needs

a new charter,” suggests

Alexander Hamilton.

Fifty-five passengers

get off the bus

in Philadelphia

waving law books

and ballpoint pens.

“I smell a rat,” mumbles

Patrick Henry as he

watches from the back

of the bus.

Alexander Hamilton,

James Madison,

and John Jay

write dirty jokes on

the backs of seats.

Their book, The Bus

Company Papers, has

been on the bestseller

list for thirty weeks.

“We the passengers of the bus,

in order to form a more

perfect route, establish fares,

insure our baggage, provide

for the seating arrangement,

promote better schedules,

and secure the blessings

of substitute drivers

to ourselves and our posterity,

do ordain and establish

ourselves as the Great

Dispatcher’s favorite passengers.”

“It is our true policy

to steer clear

of permanent routes,”

cautions cherry-tree George.

We wait at a stop sign

for a herd of buffalo

to pass; Indian arrows

bounce off the roof.

No Indians are allowed

on the bus.

The Indians, however, have

virtual representation.

The driver stares

straight ahead.

He holds these

stops to be self-evident:

all men are created

passengers.

Sacajawea offers to guide

the bus through the city park.

Lewis and Clark laugh

and scatter beer cans

on the artificial grass.

Cursed are they which

do hunger and thirst

after righteousness:

for they are on

the wrong bus.

Zebulon Pike looks out

the back window of the bus

at the shining mountains

and smiles: he has just

been made chairman

of the history department.

Blessed are the pure

in greed: for they

shall see

a substitute driver.

“Our bus, right or wrong,”

yells Stephen Decatur.

The bus rolls on through

neon eternities

with charity toward none

and malice for all.

“We should consider any attempt

on the part of other buses

to extend their schedules

to any portion of our route

as dangerous to our own

ambitious patterns of greed,”

warns James Monroe.

The bus company

is auctioned off

every four years.

Henrv Clay hands

a sack of votes

to John Quincy Adams.

The bus rolls through

South Pass and glides

toward the Green River.

Jedediah Smith kneels

on the rocky shore

skinning a beaver

and a Blackfoot Indian;

he hands the pelts

through a bus window

to General William Ashley.

“Our bus: it must be

preserved,” shouts

Andy Jackson.

“The bus, next to our

automobiles, most dear,”

replies John C. Calhoun.

Cursed are the meek

for they shall be destroyed

by the schedule.

The bus rumbles

past Walden Pond

without stopping.

“John Marshall has made

his schedule,” mutters

Andy Jackson, “now let

him enforce it!”

“I think Jackson is

a son of a bitch,”

replies John Marshall.

“He doesn’t know what

is best for the bus.”

The bus passes Bronson Alcott

walking along the highway

with pots and pans

strung over his shoulder.

Alcott hurls a rotten

apple at the bus.

Ralph Waldo Emerson,

President of the Over-Soul

Construction Company,

sits in the front

of the bus reading

a comic book.

Joseph Smith is shoved

off the bus at Nauvoo.

Brigham Young puts Smith’s

sacred book into a metal

supermarket cart

and begins hitchhiking

toward the Great Salt Lake.

Swing low, sweet chariot,

comin’ for to carry me home.

Swing low, sweet chariot,

comin’ for to carry me home.

I looked over the route

and what did I see,

comin’ for to carry me home.

A band of businessmen

comin’ after me,

comin’ for to carry me home.

Paul Morphy gets off

the bus at New Orleans

with a folded chessboard

under one arm.

Banjo music hides

in the grinding roar

of the bus engine.

See dem buses

round de bend,

doo-dah, doo-dah!

The bus leaps over the curb

onto the summer grass

of a suburban lawn.

Walt Whitman staggers

down the aisle

looking for a seat.

“The route and the bus,

now and forever,

one and inseparable,”

whispers Daniel Webster.

The bus driver smiles:

he knows he was sent

by the Great Dispatcher

to redeem the route.

Horace Mann hovers over

the other passengers

handing out books.

John Dewey gathers up

all the books and tosses

them out the bus windows.

The bus rolls through

the traffic light’s red glare

and slogans bursting in air

giving 90% proof through

the hydrogen bomb night

that the myth was still there;

Oh, say, does this bus stop

at Millard Fillmore Street?

For I say unto you, that

except your righteousness

exceed the righteousness

of the pedestrians,

ye shall in no case

enter into the kingdom

of the Great Dispatcher.

Ye are the light

of the world.

A city that is

set on a hill

cannot be hid.

“Fifty-four forty or fight!”

screams James K. Polk

“Who is James K. Polk?”

asks Henry Clay.

“It is the fulfillment of our

manifest destiny to overspread

the route allotted

by the Great Dispatcher

for the free development

of our schedules,”

bellows John L. O’Sullivan.

Edgar Allan Poe jumps off

the bus in Baltimore

shouting, “The raven should

be the official symbol

of the bus company!

Its picture should be

placed on all flags

and bus tokens!”

The bus rolls through

a small Kansas town.

A fifty-foot statue

of Franklin Pierce

stands in the center

of the town square.

Herman Melville is asleep

in a luggage rack above

a row of seats, dreaming

about good and evil

and the frantic pursuit

of a great white bus.

The bus rolls past trees

heavy with Spanish moss

and past huge houses

with thick-pillared porticoes.

The universe cannot

endure permanently

half pedestrian

and half passenger.

Abraham Lincoln gets

on at the memorial

and moves all Negroes

to the front of the bus.

Jefferson Davis secedes

from the swaying bus

at the John Brown Institute

of Military Theology.

Harriet Beecher Stowe hands

Davis an autographed copy

of Uncle Tom’s Suburban Home

as he steps off the bus.

Robert E. Lee attaches

a large Confederate flag

to the top of the bus;

Ulysses S. Grant throws

whiskey bottles at the flag.

“I have a feeling that

this bus, under the Great

Dispatcher, shall have

a new fare increase,

and that schedules

of the passengers,

by the passengers,

for the passengers,

shall not perish

from the route,”

mumbles the shyster

lawyer from Illinois.

The bus stops in Petersburg

so that the passengers

can buy chrome-plated

souvenir cannon balls.

Don’t give up the bus!

Damn the pedestrians,

full speed ahead.

The bus rolls past

miles of cemeteries;

the passengers stand

and loudly sing

the national anthem.

A sweating Chinese

coolie drives

a golden spike

into the side

of the bus.

Charles Crocker lights

a thick black cigar

and offers to take

over the bus company;

he hands the bus driver

a large bag containing

Crédit Mobilier stock.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

passes the bus

in his ferryboat.

“The pedestrians

be damned,” shouts

the Commodore.

James Naismith nails

a bushel basket

to the side of the bus

and casually throws

a soccer ball into it.

The passengers begin

to cheer wildly.

The bus rolls past

Hannibal, Missouri.

Mark Twain is

painting a fence.

Twain throws a can

of paint at the bus.

The passengers are

surprised – they had

always thought that

Twain was with them

on the bus, but he

never really was.

The bus rolls past

sod houses; Frank Lloyd

Wright jumps from

the bus to examine them.

He stumbles over a myth

and falls into a pile

of buffalo chips.

Sing a song of gunfire,

a bottle full of rye,

four-and-twenty treaties

helping Indians die.

When the rye was opened,

the Indians began to sing,

now wasn’t that a dainty

dish to set before

the General.

Little Phil Sheridan

has lost his Indians

and doesn’t know

where to find them.

Leave them alone,

and they’ll come home,

dragging their dead

behind them.

When in the course

of human events,

it becomes necessary

for one people to

destroy another,

historical markers

should be created.

Over hill, over dale

Goldilocks and the 7th

Cavalry ride the dusty

trail and those Indian

heads go rolling along.

For it’s Hi! Hi! Hee!

with lovely artillery

and where’er you go

you will always know

that those Indian heads

go rolling along.

Four score and an eternity

ago, our fathers brought

forth on this bus route

fancy shovels dedicated

to the proposition that

all Indians are created

potentially dead.

Custer, Custer,

quite contrary,

how does your

reputation grow?

Indian bells and

howitzer shells,

and pretty medals

all in a row.

Chief Crazy Horse pounds

a peace pipe against the bus,

“The Great Dispatcher is my

shepherd, I shall not live.

He makes me lie down in

a shallow grave. He leads

me to oily water. He steals

my soul. He leads me into

the paths of bullets

for his paranoia’s sake.

I walk through the valley

of the shadow of Generals

Crook, Terry, and Gibbon

and hear the bus-stop signs

rattling in the wind.

The beat me with their

rods and staffs. They

preparest a treaty before

me in the presence of

insurance agents with

white buck shoes. They

anoint my head with

kerosene. My blood overflows.

Surely the 7th Cavalry

will follow me all the days

of my life, and I shall

dwell in the lice of His

reservations forever. Amen.

Georgie Custer sat on

a wall, Georgie Custer

had a great fall;

all the Great Dispatcher’s

horses and all the Great

Dispatcher’s men couldn’t

put Georgie back

together again.

“The meaning of our bus

rests in its relationship

to other buses,” advises

William James. “If they work,

our schedules are good.”

George Inness opens his

paint-by-numbers set

and begins to paint

a picture of the bus.

“The schedule is the opium

of the passengers,” shouts

Karl Marx from his seat

behind the bus driver.

Cyrus McCormick carefully

hitches a huge reaper

to the back of the bus.

John Deere quickly

unfastens the hitch

when McCormick’s

back is turned.

Buffalo Bill fires

his rifle from a bus

window into a herd

of dairy cattle.

There’s no business

like show business.

The bus stops for a moment

on a fish-stained pier so

Emma Lazarus can photograph

the Statue of Avarice

standing in the harbor.

Give me your wops, your spies,

your kikes and dagos,

your passengers foolishly

yearning to be free,

the wretched busloads

of your teeming shore,

send these, the victims, to me,

I lift my billfold

beside the bank door.

Jay Gould and Jim Fisk sit

in the back of the bus

talking to Hernando Cortez

about the beauty of gold.

All that glitters are

the eyes of Horace Greeley.

Oh, give me a bus

where the buffalo roamed,

where the deer

and antelope played;

where seldom is heard

a three-syllable word

and the schedules are

praised all day.

The bus speeds past

a small public library.

Andrew Carnegie tosses

a handful of money

out the bus window

in the direction

of the library.

John D. Rockefeller is

drilling an oil well

on the library lawn.

The bus enters

Amherst, Massachusetts.

Emily Dickinson hides

in a garden and whispers,

“I never saw a bus,

I never saw the schedule,

yet I know how the route looks,

and what a token must be.

I never spoke with

the Great Dispatcher,

nor visited the bus depot,

yet certain am I of the spot

as if I had a road map.”

Henry Adams stands in the shadows

of a cathedral and curses

the speed and route of the bus.

He is eloquently bitter

because he was never elected

president of the bus company.

Blessed are the routemakers

for they shall be called the

children of the Great Dispatcher.

Winslow Homer slams

a croquet ball

across a wide lawn

and then flings his

mallet at the bus.

Well, come along, passengers,

and listen to my tale,

I’ll tell you about

my engine troubles

on the old Chisholm route.

Com a ti-yi yip-pee

yip-pee ya, yip-pee yay,

com a ti-yi yip-pee

yay ay ay.

“What this bus needs

is the free coinage

of love

at the traditional

ratio of 16 to 1,”

yells an embattled farmer,

hitting the side

of the bus

with his hoe.

The bus approaches

Haymarket Square.

John Altgeld sits

on a bench

waiting for the bus.

The bus does not

stop for him.

“You shall not press

down on the brow

of passengers this

crown of thorns;

you shall not

crucify buskind

upon a cross of gold,”

cries William Jennings

Bryan as he gets off

the bus and steps

into the Platte River.

The bus rolls across

the Brooklyn Bridge.

The passengers are

reading ragged copies

of the New York World.

William Randolph Hearst

tries to push Joseph

Pulitzer off the bus.

“You may shift gears

when ready, driver,”

commands medal-mad

Commodore Dewey.

Emilio Aguinaldo

and his followers

are chained to

the back of the bus.

It is easier for a bus

to go through the eye

of a needle, than

for a poor man

to enter the business office

of the Great Dispatcher.

One wheel of the bus

is stuck in a tar baby.

Joel Chandler Harris

rolls on de groun’ en

laughs en laughs twel

he can’t laugh no mo.

“I think that I shall

never see a poem as

lovely as a bus,”

chants Joyce Kilmer.

Our Great Dispatcher

which art in escrow,

hallowed be thy game.

Thy bus terminal come,

thy will be done

in Pittsburgh

as it is in Chicago.

Give us this day

our daily schedule

and forgive us

our routes as we

forgive other routes.

And lead us not into

transportation strikes,

but deliver us

from fare increases:

for thine is the bus

terminal and the power,

and the glory,

forever. Amen.

Teddy Roosevelt gets

on the bus

at McKinley Street

speaking softly

and carrying

a big lie.

O bus, O bus,

the Great Dispatcher

shed his grace on thee,

and crowned thy hood

with tourist stickers

from sea to poisoned sea.

“The world must be made

safe for our bus,”

shouts Woodrow Wilson.

“What this bus needs is

a good five-cent myth,”

cries Tom Marshall.

The bus rolls across

the Henry Ford Bridge

over the Styx River.

A bus is a bus is a bus.

Something there is that

doesn’t love a bus.

“There is no right

to strike against

the bus company

by anybody, anywhere,

anytime,” coughs

Calvin Coolidge.

Verily I say unto you,

inasmuch as ye have

done it unto one of the

least of these my

passengers, ye have

done it unto me.

The bus smiles its way

into Paterson, New Jersey.

William Carlos Williams

is pushing a red wheelbarrow

down dark streets toward

a crowded hospital.

The bus hits a white chicken

knocking it into the gutter.

And whosoever shall compel

thee to go a mile,

go with him twain,

putting it down on

your expense account.

“Every day, and in every

way, our schedule is becoming

better and better,”

 yelps Émile Coué.

What’s good for business

is good for the bus.

Albert Fall stuffs another

bribe into his pocket.

Warren Harding slumps

down in his seat,

a symphony of scandals

echoes in his ears.

Knute Rockne diagrams

a football play on

the floor of the bus

with a piece of chalk.

Red Grange gallops down

the aisle and steps

on Rockne’s hand.

Cheerleaders tumble

down the aisle.

The bus crosses the

twenty-yard line

and heads

for the goal line.

Charles Lindbergh sits

in the back of the bus

building a model airplane.

Billy Mitchell holds

a tube of glue for him.

Orville Wright gets

off the bus at Omaha

to tour SAC headquarters.

If the Great Dispatcher

had wanted passengers

to fly, he would have

given them wings.

The bus moves slowly

past Yankee Stadium.

Babe Ruth stands in front

of a television camera

doing a shaving commercial.

Joe DiMaggio hits Ruth

with a baseball bat.

Lou Gehrig tears open

a package of bubblegum

and looks at the card.

It is a picture of

Rutherford B. Hayes.

General Douglas MacArthur

gets on the bus at West Point;

a small gold eagle on his

cap glitters in the sun.

The bus driver races the bus

west along old wagon trails.

On the bus driver’s cap is

a gold passenger pigeon.

Fight the good fight

of schedules, lay

hold on the eternal

route, whereunto thou

hast professed

a good traffic signal

before many passengers.

Senator Graft begins

his campaign speech,

“A subsidy for my route

is right and natural,

the just functioning

and fulfillment of the

divine economic system;

a subsidy for anyone

else’s route is an

encouragement to sloth

and indolence, and most

certainly against the laws

of the Great Dispatcher.”

Repent ye: for the last

bus stop is at hand.

But I say unto you, that

ye resist not evil: but

whosoever shall smite

thee on thy right fender,

turn to him the other also.

The bus company insurance

policy will cover it.

“All I know is what I

read in the bus schedules,”

pompously drawls

cactus-clown Will Rogers.

“No bus should ever be

on any route. It should

be of the route, belonging

to it, so route and bus

could live together each

the happier for the other,”

prays Frank Lloyd Wright.

Anton Dvořák sits in

a highway cafe.

The New World Symphony

blares from a juke box.

The bus streaks past

without stopping.

“The only thing we

have to fear is

a Republican detour,”

encourages FDR

as he and Fala

dance in the aisle.

From the Halls of Montezuma

to the shores of Tiffany’s,

we shop our country’s bargains

in the air, on land and sea.

Senator Joe McCarthy

rages up and down

the aisle waving

a list of names

of “Reds” working

for the bus company

and of people unfit

to be passengers.

The bus is fortunate

to have enemies,

real or imagined.

Generals from the Pentagon

with notches cut

into the handles

of their six-shooters

parade in the aisle

and praise each other.

O little town of East St. Louis,

how fast we see thee burn;

above the deep and dreamless

sleep the squad cars

go flashing by.

Mechanical birds wade

the unwater of dead lakes.

Hark, the herald angels

fan, glory to the Gross

National Product.

We hold these uranium atoms

to be self-evident; that all

men are doomed at Hiroshima,

that they are endowed

by their Equations with

certain chain reactions

that are final.

My Great Dispatcher,

My Great Dispatcher,

why hast thou forsaken me?

I swing from the buzzer

cord, my opposable thumbs

calling for my future.

The bus driver hears

the ring

and the next corner

freezes in his mind.

Time is merely the hunger

for possession;

the bus schedules

exist only

in the minds

of passengers.

I stumble to the back

door and ring

the buzzer again,

but the bus keeps going.

The door remains closed.

I push open the emergency

door and leap into the black

exhaust fume sky.

I lie cradled

in the soft cool

grass of dawn.

The bus turns the corner

of memory and is gone.