WRONG WAY, DONE RIGHT

The man’s weathered and sunburned face was apparent as he entered the depot, immediately identifying him as a working man; the steel-toed boots and coveralls marked him as an oilfield hand.

He crossed the lobby with the stiffened gait of a much older man, a lifelong laborer who had aged him before his time. He leaned against the ticket counter and pulled a crumpled stack of bills from his shirt pocket with hands which were, themselves, crumpled by countless wrenches and hammers and pipes.

He was a familiar sight.

Roughnecks and roustabouts were just about the only human freight traveling the buses that pulled in and out of the Duncan, Oklahoma, bus station in 1982. The oil field was booming and there were ample jobs paying high wages to those able bodies who could make it to the site.

I’d been working at the bus station for a year and knew by heart the routes running between Duncan and the many points along the production circuit. One week, the action might be in Borger; the next, Levelland or El Campo. Hobbs, Perryton, Lufkin, Andrews, Pampa. Towns that meant everything to these nomads and little else to the rest of the world.

It was my job to get these anonymous people from one anonymous town to the next. Once there, they’d earn enough in a matter of weeks to keep their families in groceries – or themselves in beer – for months. In six months, the more budget-minded workers could put back enough cash to cover their needs for the year.

The man in front of me didn’t speak much English, and I spoke only a little Spanish, but we were able to establish that he needed to get to Chickasha, Okla., just 30 miles north of Duncan. He was meeting with a work truck that would take a crew out to a site where even buses didn’t go. He had to be there by 10:30 a.m. or he’d miss his ride.

“No problema,” I told him. “El autobus llegara a las diez y quince, mas o menos. No te preocupes.”

Relieved and smiling, he settled onto the faded wooden bench opposite the counter and stowed his duffel under the seat behind his feet.

Four buses a day came through the station: two in the morning and two in the evening. In the morning, the first bus was northbound; the second bus southbound. In the evening, the schedule was reversed, with the first bus headed south and the second one north.

During the school year, I worked evenings only. But it was summer now, and I was working all day. By myself.

My passenger needed to catch the 9:20 a.m. bus – the first bus – to get to Chickasha and meet up with his crew. The southbound bus would pull in just 20 minutes later, at 9:40 a.m. It was the only time of day the Duncan Bus Station could accurately be described as a “busy” place.

When the 9:20 bus pulled in, my passenger rose from his seat with a questioning look on his face, worldlessly asking me if it was his bus.

Already out of my evening-schedule comfort zone and further distracted by the morning-schedule hubbub, I mentally succumbed to my more familiar routine: First bus south, second bus north. He’s going to Chickasha. Chickasha is north.

I gave him a sit-down-and-relax gesture and pointed to the clock.

“Veinte minutos.”

Not comforted by my assurances, he gave me another quizzical look.

“Estas seguro?”

“Si.” I was sure.

Ten minutes later, his bus left the station.

As I watched his bus pull away, leaving a trail of dust and diesel exhaust behind, my stomach suddenly tightened and a buzz of fear filled my head.

It was morning. Not evening.

Oh, dear God.

I went inside to tell him. But he knew it before I could say it. And I have never forgotten the look of hurt and panic in his eyes. But then the look of pain was replaced by something deeper and sadder. I was only 17 and didn’t know much about things, but I know now what his expression was saying.

It was resignation. It was well-practiced acceptance that yet another load of hard luck had been dumped on a life which had already seen more than its fair share. It was the look of someone who was all too familiar with putting together a contingency plan on the fly. He was probably already mentally scrolling through his backup employment options, rearranging payments in his head, and cataloguing the things he could pawn or sell.

While I knew of nothing of those types of things at that time, I did know I had to do something.

The 9:40 rolled in two torturous minutes late, but I was able to turn it around quickly. I ran back inside, took the phone off the hook, grabbed ten bucks from the register, and pointed to the man to follow me outside. He grabbed his gear and walked out with me. I locked the door to the depot and then pointed at my car.

“Let’s go,” I said, no longer able to access the part of my brain where my four years of high school Spanish instruction resided. I pointed at the car again and then at myself.

“I’ll take you.”

I truly can’t imagine what was going through the man’s head at that moment. It was clear he understood my offer, but I can’t begin to know what calculus he applied to reach his decision. I can only guess he figured things couldn’t get any worse, because after pausing only a second he nodded his consent.

The time was 9:55 a.m. Driving the posted speed limits, Chickasha was a good 35 or 40 minutes away. And I still had to put gas in the car.

I drove to the nearest convenience store, threw the ten-dollar bill at the clerk, and gassed up the car. By the time we cleared the city limits, it was 10:05.

We did not speak, in any language, for the duration of our trip. But I’m sure if his English had been better he would have said, “Damn, kid. Are you going to run every red light?”

“Si.”

I blew through the tiny speed trap towns of Marlow and Rush Springs and their 25 mph speed limits at nothing less than 60 mph. On the highway, where the speed limit then was still 55 mph, the speedometer of my mom’s 1970 Ford van was buried, somewhere past 85 mph.

Through some miracle, I found the bus station without even asking directions. I still don’t know how that happened. We pulled up just as a crowd of guys were piling into a dented king cab pickup. I skidded to a stop as close as I could to the truck and my passenger jumped out of my car and into the bed of the truck.

He found a spot to sit among his fellow sunburned and weathered travelers and then looked up at me and waved. It wasn’t so much a “Thank you” as it was a “You did good.”

I got back to town and re-opened the station for the remainder of my shift, hoping – as only a teenage employee can – that my boss wouldn’t find out about my absence or the blunder which had precipitated it. But he of course did find out and called me at home later that night. I was certain he would fire me and was choking back tears as I explained what happened.

But instead of firing me, he gave me some advice that I abide by to this very day.

He said, “Lee, you made a mistake with the guy and his bus. An honest mistake. But when you didn’t tell me about it and tried to fix things all by yourself, you made a second mistake. And that’s the one I’m not happy about.”

He continued.

“When you have a problem and then tell your boss about it, you then have someone to help you solve that problem. But when you don’t tell your boss, you now have two problems and you’re still all by yourself. Which situation do you think is better? Just remember, you’re not always going to have a good option and a bad option to choose from. Sometimes, all you have is a bad option and a not-as-bad option.”

He went on to say that, had I called him as soon as I discovered my mistake, he would have come down and driven the guy himself while I continued at my post. Which makes sense and probably would have gotten the passenger there sooner and more safely. And it still makes my stomach hurt to think of how close I came to wrecking that guy’s job opportunity.

But, all told, between the photo finish at the Chickasha Bus Station and the life lesson from a great boss that followed, I can’t help but think nearly sending that man the wrong way definitely turned out the right way.

© 2014 Lee B. Weaver