America at Last – Part 16

New Orleans – San Antonio: 601 miles

Pulling out of Lafayette bus station, I thought about the way this game teaches you patience, or reminds you how to use it. There’s a lot of hanging around. Not really sticking to the schedule. The whole thing is refreshingly human. We wait for people. We wait for connecting buses. Staff and passengers alike show almost unlimited forbearance.

Greyhound have put on an additional service. Our driver, a bouffant Texan called Emmett, explains that this is the first time he’s driven this route. He doesn’t know the way and is following the bus in front – the view ahead is filled with its spattered white rear-end.

This is our longest single journey yet and the longest on our trip at 601 miles, mainly following Interstate 10 west. San Antonio is a fourteen hour drive. Since leaving New Orleans we have passed mile upon mile of water and lush green swampland. We weren’t sure whether it was flooding or the natural state of this territory.

This is Cajun country. Lafayette is at the centre of a culture that spills across eastern Texas and this part of Louisiana. A year before, at the WOMAD festival, we’d been entranced by the music of Cedric Watson. We sat in a bar-cum-workshop as his fiddle and accordion took us on a tour of the place where he grew up. It turned out he is the contemporary flag-carrier for Cajun. We’d hoped to hear some more in New Orleans, but Lafayette is where it’s really at.

The sunlight continued to sparkle on myriad pools and lakes either side of the road. I thought about the flooded farms and towns we’d passed en route from Memphis a few days ago and the rate at which the Mississippi was rising. Good luck with those levees, N’ Awlins.

Our little convoy rolled on under a flawless blue sky, but thunderstorms were forecast down in Houston. Emmett missed a turning for Baton Rouge and we ended up crossing the same bridge over the Mississippi three times. I don’t know what happened with the other bus. I guess we lost it. We pulled into an empty cinder car park below the bridge on the wrong side of the river while Emmett called in on his phone. On the approach into Baton Rouge, passengers shouted directions until we saw the Greyhound sign by the road and hollered him to turn in.

No one blamed Emmett. He was just trying to do his job. Natasha and I smiled every time he spoke, in the way some Americans smile when we speak.

The day became the journey. We chatted to each other as we watched America slide by and engaged in a little people-watching at stops. There seemed to be more colour here – on the roads, at the truck-stops – just more to feed the senses. Maybe it’s the light. Whatever, it gives the feeling of being alive unlike similar journeys back home.

I leaned back in the seat and took in my immediate surroundings. Our bus looked as though it had put in some miles. The plastic trim around the windows was held on with ill-fitting self-tapping screws like the kind you’d buy in your local DIY superstore. Whoever had fitted them had obviously given it their best shot then given up. The air-con blew cool against the glass from where I rested my hand, chilling my fingers. A few feet away, the Perspex screen around the driver rattled with every rumble and bump. The whole vehicle had a well-used feel to it – the endurance of these buses and their crews is something else.

Emmett showed us the limit of his patience at a short smoke-break. Some folks were a bit slow coming back from the shop and you could feel his frustration. In fairness, he asked if everyone was back on-board before pulling away. As we swung out, there was a shout from the rear seats and heads turned to where a man was running across the forecourt after us. Emmett didn’t stop. A couple of voices from the rear pleaded the man's case, but Emmett drawled back that he would have to catch the next bus. He should have been on time.

Maybe four hours on from Baton Rouge, we caught sight of Houston’s steel and glass towers on the horizon. Impressive thunder clouds were building up ahead and looked like they would dump their load as we rode in. Sure enough, the sky darkened on the approach to the city and large drops began to fall heavily onto the windows. Soon Emmett had the wipers on full speed as night fell early on the Freeway.

We swung under concrete bridges and between sheer walls of glass, finishing in a kind of spiral as we pulled into the bus station. This was our two hour opportunity to stretch, eat and use the facilities. We hadn’t seen anything on the way in from the Interstate to make us want to venture outside the waiting room.

The next stage on was with Americanos Bus Lines. The bus was packed. We squeezed in a couple of rows back from the door, almost opposite the Mexican woman who was driving. It was night as we rolled out of Houston. Within a few minutes the TV screen lit above us and soon we were watching the movie “Holmes and Watson”, dubbed into Spanish with Spanish sub-titles for the hard of hearing. And you’d have had to have been profoundly deaf not to hear.

For a while, we tried to talk. We were dog-tired and didn’t have an awful lot to say, which was just as well. I looked out of the window for a while, but there wasn’t much to see other than a pissed-off man with a beard. In the end, I looked up and watched a garbage film in a language I didn’t understand. When I looked to the side of me, Natasha had given up pretending to be asleep and was doing the same. Time began to drag – it was becoming an endurance test.

The credits finally rolled and the screen went dark. Praise the Lord. We squeezed each other’s hands and gently leant our heads together to try to get some sleep.

"Call now! Toll-free on eight-hundred...."

The nerve-shattering sound of a radio commercial in mid-flight blasted through the bus like a nail-bomb. What felt like the longest bus journey since, well, New York to Roanoke extended itself indefinitely before us. San Antonio felt a long, long way by road – which I suppose it is.

We made a refuelling halt, crossing the Interstate on a looping overbridge and heading a few miles into the night to a remote truckstop, where we hung around the shop and drank coffee just for comfort. Other passengers wandered the forecourt making phone calls. A truck-driver leant casually against a gas pump smoking a cigarette as he called home.

In another hour we were in San Antone. Familiar-looking anonymous streets passed, but I was really too tired to look. We recovered our cases from the hold and dropped thankfully into a cab, which took us to the Travel Lodge a few blocks away.

The hotel was a functional concrete scar, chosen for location and cost. Reception was a small dark office in the corner of the car park. We were just grateful to find it staffed after midnight. The receptionist smiled a toothy smile and brightly checked us in. She almost saved the evening. The door to our room was up on an external balcony. We decided to risk the lift, dragged our cases to the door, unlocked it and walked in. The place was probably top of the list for refurbishing, but it had everything we needed.

Last one in turn out the light.