The Big Bamboo Read Online Free PDF Page B

next seat.
    Mark sat up and stretched. “How long was I out?”
    “Two hours.”
    Mark’s watch said four A.M. They passed a barbershop and went through a blinking yellow light.
    “Where are we?”
    “Kansas,” said Ford. “Wamego.”
    Mark yawned and ran a hand through uncombed hair. “Can these towns get any smaller?”
    Yes.
    There’d been a transfer in St. Louis, but then back roads again. Higginsville, Salina, Russell, Hays. And what was with all the junctions? Ellsworth Junction, Quinter Junction, Grand Junction, Junction City.
    Twenty hours since leaving Zanesville. Stripped their lives to a duffel bag each. Stuffed the rest in plastic garbage sacks and left them on the porch for Salvation Army. Got the deposit from the landlord and bought $99 one-way tickets to L.A.
    Mark was alert now as the bus picked up speed in the emptiness between towns. He got out a homemade sandwich. “I’ll never travel by bus again.” Tuna, soggy.
    “I kind of like it,” said Ford. “See things you never do otherwise. Gives me ideas.”
    “You been writing?”
    Ford jotted something in a composition book. “It’s quiet at night. Just the bus sound. I’ve gotten a lot done.”
    The book rested in Ford’s lap on top of a zippered cloth bag full of spare pens and rubber-banded packs of typewritten pages and more notebooks crammed with tiny print. One of the pockets bulged with the odd receipts and napkins Ford had used when a book wasn’t handy.
    “Why’d you get rid of your typewriter?” asked Mark.
    “Too much hassle to take. I’ll buy one in a pawnshop when we get there.”
    Mark turned to the window. “I’d like to paint.”
    Ford jotted something. “Then do it.”
    “Don’t know how. I think I’d be bad at it.”
    Sunrise in Colorado. Sunset in Utah. In between, vast, lifeless panoramas that adjusted the young men’s scale of things. And the other passengers, who put it in perspective. The bandanna guy who sat down behind them in Aurora and asked if they had anything to get high. The screaming child who locked himself in the restroom outside Beaver and forced the driver to pull over. The gaunt man in a personal aroma envelope of sour wine.
    Hour fifty-two. Ford’s neck was starting to hurt, but hope came in a welcome sign with a golden bear. The California line. Interstate 15, making good time. Mark watched the Mojave go by. Ford wrote. Baker and Barstow.
    “You’re lucky you have a dream,” said Mark. “Wish I had one.”
    “I’m not fooling myself. The odds are astronomical.”
    “The way you work so hard? No, you’re definitely going to make it.”
    “I’d do it anyway. The best life is when your dreams come true. The second best is when they don’t, but you never stop chasing.”
    “I’ve always wanted to take up an instrument,” said Mark. “Except I’m not crazy about music. Is that important?”
    Ford gazed out the window. “This is the way they all came.”
    “Who?”
    “The dreamers.” Ford closed his book and stuck it in the zippered bag. “Free ranch land, then Sutter’s Mill and the gold rush. And when the gold ran out, they struck oil.”
    “Talk about your luck.”
    “Finally, Hollywood. An entire generation fantasizing about being discovered at a soda fountain in Schwab’s.”
    “I heard that story wasn’t true.”
    “It’s not. But kids from small towns all over America still kept arriving by bus with a single beat-up suitcase, not knowing what they were going to do next. We’re on the same journey.”
    “Look. The skyline.”
    “I feel like I’m in the forties.”
    “I thought there’d be more buildings.”
    “The city’s spread out.”
    The bus headed into the sprawl. The going became slow, red light after red, countless stops dropping off passengers. The road began grading up. “The Hollywood sign!”
    They finally arrived at the Cahuenga Boulevard stop. The driver yanked two duffel bags from the luggage compartment and set them on two gold stars in