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The Hound

Welcome to the Greyhound Chartered Chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Hi, I'm Tom, and I'm an alcoholic. I've been clean and sober ever since my pint of gin fell out of my pocket and slid all the way down the aisle and rested like a sacrificial offering at the bus driver's feet.

The CEO of our fine, sturdy coach was not amused. It seems federal regulations prohibiting consumption, sales, possession or transportment of any and all alcoholic beverages had been violated right under his nose. Before I had the chance to mourn the loss of my one and only solace on the dreary, endless ride through the Great State of Texas, I was forced to eat a half-smoked cigarette I'd been saving to disguise my breath, because our dedicated driver pulled his sturdy coach over to the soft shoulder of the highway....and every eyeball on the bus was glaring in my direction.

It appeared, from the angle of the projectile, that it was down to a traditionally garbed Hindu woman cradling an infant, and to myself, a disheveled, goateed drifter with an earring. I knew I was the prime suspect. The Hindu woman wore an expression of bemused confusion, and I pretended to be awakening from a long, comfortable sleep. My only chance was to play it dumb and never, ever, no matter what they did to me, confess.

The sophisticated interrogation began:

"Now I'm only gonna say this once. I want the god-damned hippie queer with the ear-rang or the dirty godless foreign bitch with the illegitimate rug rat to come forward and claim responsibility for his or her crime."

The Hindu woman continued to look confused, and I continued to yawn, and stretch, and rub my eyes like some bad child actor in a worse B-movie. I scolded myself for overdoing it: "Just play it cool, kiddo. They can't prove anything --can they?" My paranoid thoughts ran to a squad of cops from the crime lab in Dallas dusting the bottle for prints, and all 83 eyes --one guy had an eye patch-- shifted from me to her and back to me.

"All right. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. If the culprit is willing to come forward and honor him- or herself by fessin' up to this heinous crime, I will consider exercising the more lenient of my two applicable punishment options." Silence. Now I'm really freakin'... he's not gonna tell us... he's waiting for me to ask, "What are the two applicable punishment options?"-- and then he'd have me. I've got to know, but I don't want to incriminate myself any further. Silence. Finally, the Eye Patch who was sitting right up front, and was therefore ruled out as a suspect, asked the question for me.

It seems I'll either be handed over to the local authorities and the driver, acting in his capacity as the enforcer of a federal regulation, will see that I am prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law: six months in the Abilene county jail and a $10,000 fine; or I'll be unceremoniously tossed off the bus right here in the middle of nowhere, have to walk 9 miles to the next Greyhound location and wait 12 hours for the next bus, with three cigarettes, no money and no gin.

Hmmmm.......walk 9 miles and wait 12 hours, or 6 months in a hick jail.

"Okay! Okay! I confess, the bottle's mine! I just wanted to say, in considering which punishment option to enforce, that my mother was an alcoholic, my father was an alcoholic, my father's father before him was an alcoholic, and I was just doing my best to uphold a long-standing family tradition. Furthermore," --and I was really getting into it now-- "I'd like to apologize: first, to God; to my country; to you, sir; to all these fine people on the bus; and, finally, to the Great State of Texas. With that, sir, I humbly throw myself at the mercy of your most compassionate discretion. Thank you!"

It must have been the part about the Great State of Texas that won him over, because before I was ejected he handed me back my pint of gin and said,"Son, I'd advise you to watch out for rattlers, get a haircut and be sure to get rid of that bottle before you attempt to board another Greyhound coach. Good luck!"

*	Okay.....things were looking up. I finished the gin in one hit and threw the bottle as far off the road as I could, zipped up my jacket and lit one of my last three smokes, very much dreading the 9-mile hike......but before I'd taken my first three steps a god damned sheriff's car pulls up.

Shit! Now what? Did he see me throw the bottle? Shit. I straightened up, ate my cigarette for my breath and approached the car. "Yes sir, Sheriff," I began, "what can I do for you?"

"What you all doin' out here this time a'night?" he demanded.

"Well you see sir there was this nice old Hindu lady with an infant and it was either her or me and even though I'm innocent God's honest truth I took the rap 'cause I couldn't see having that poor old Hindu woman and her baby just walkin' out here in the cold." With that, I shrugged my shoulders and gave him a most ridiculous smile.

"Are you all tryin' to tell me," he drawled accusingly, "that Buford threw you all off the bus?"

"Yes, sir," I lamented. " I'm 'fraid so,"

The Sheriff looked me over briefly.

"Well hell, son, git in. I'll give you all a lift over to the station."

(Now I'm thinking, he'd damn sure better be talkin' about the bus station.)

It was to my great relief that he didn't ask any questions on the way. He was perfectly content to sing along with Hank Williams:

"Your cheatin' heart
will make you blue.
You'll cry and cry....."

....anyway, we somehow managed to get to the bus station before Buford's coach. The Sheriff wished me luck and drove off. Everybody's wishing me luck tonight. If I'd had any luck I wouldn't be riding the 'Hound in the first place.

*	Now you can imagine the thrill I got when old Buford the bus driver saw my face, and I, in turn, saw his. He looked like he'd swallowed a hand grenade and just realized what he'd done. I said, "Heeeeeyyyy, Buford!" He turned white as a ghost. "I finished that bottle! I'm clean --whaddaya say?"

He didn't say anything. He just took my ticket and drove the bus, never once looking in the rear view mirror. I decided then and there that when I changed buses in Tallahassee, I wouldn't make that mad dash for the liquor store. So, you see, I've been clean and sober now for over 500 miles...and if I can do it, so can you. And remember:

KEEP COMING BACK -- IT WORKS!

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