BLACK MARKET LIT
About Bill Vernon.
Translating Virgil
"Translating Virgil" is one of 110 biographically inspired stories from BILL VERNON's childhood so he thinks of them as pieces of a memoir. However, though they are factual, they are also fictionalized. He structures them to be dramatic and suggestive and revealing of personal as well as more generalized truths. He also invents appropriate dialogue, changes names to protect the people who might sue him otherwise, sometimes confuses times, characters present in the personal events, and even places. Frankly, his memory, which is the horse he rides around on, sags badly in the middle. Also, he plays Uncle Sam in Dayton, Ohio's annual spring festival called A World A'Fair.
Robert did the algebra problems first, then dove into Virgil's Aeneid. Reading a dead language, looking up old words and the endings of words sparked his imagination. Empty classroom desks surrounded him, city traffic roared at the windows, but his mind was in that ancient world so completely, he traveled way beyond the first line, "I sing of arms and the man." Then the bell rang and he checked his watch. Only 20 minutes until his bus left. Panic! He grabbed his notebooks and texts and hurried outside.
His normal route wouldn't work. Shoppers would be out, clogging his way. The station was 13 blocks away, but cutting around downtown could get him there.
He left Ludlow Street after three blocks, went west to Wilkinson, rushed north on it, and the first pangs hit. All day he'd ignored messages from his stomach, but now his muscles tightened so painfully, he ran. To ask to use a restroom would be embarrassing, especially at the nearest building, the YWCA, a place for women. There was the old Post Office. Wouldn't it have a public restroom?
He raced across the street, ran up the steps, and went inside. The cavernous place was dark except at the windows selling stamps. He could see no restroom anywhere. He ran back out.
Thumping down those steps triggered it. Right there at Wilkinson and Third, among four other pedestrians. He felt the mess and smelled himself. He had no money to buy new trousers and no time anyway with his bus due to leave. He was 25 miles from home and stuck. Tears gushed out. He growled and wiped his eyes on his shirt sleeves.
The light changed. He hurried across the street ahead of the people around him, passed several people coming toward him, and though all seemed unaware of his predicament, he was ashamed, sweating, and worried. He dashed on ahead to the bus station. It was just moderately crowded. The wall clock said his bus left in six minutes. He tore up the curving marble staircase two steps at a time, entered the Men's Room--Empty!--hurried into a stall, closed the metal door, and set his books on the toilet's water tank. He'd just have to clean up as well as he could.
He took off his shoes and laid them on top of his books. He took off trousers and underpants, though doing so was awkward, cracking his elbows on the metal stall and fouling his socks. Unable to imagine putting the socks back on, he laid them across the rim of the toilet to throw away if he had a chance. Otherwise he'd leave them here. He cleaned his underpants as well as he could with toilet paper.
Robert turned his trousers inside out, cleaned them off with toilet paper, gritted his teeth, pulled the trousers on, put on his shoes without tying them, hurried from the stall to a wash bowl, and rinsed out his underpants. He wrung them out and rinsed off his hands and arms, all the time checking the doorway, afraid somebody would come in. He ran back into the stall because the room had hot air blowers, not paper towels. With the toilet paper he dried his arms and hands, took off his trousers and shoes, wiped off his lower legs, then the insides of the trousers again.
The loudspeakers announced the last call for his bus.
He cringed, put on the wet underpants, the trousers, and shoes, grabbed his books, rushed out, dropping his socks in a trash can on the way, hurried down the stairs and through the swinging doors to Berth 6. His bus was already backing out. He ran to it and slapped the door. The bus stopped and the doors hissed open.
Robert stepped inside but didn't use the next step. He was afraid to stand closer where the driver might smell him. Robert fished the ticket from his shirt pocket, leaned and reached forward until the driver took it. Then Robert stepped up and turned down the aisle, passing the driver as quickly as possible.
The bus continued backing up. It was not well lit, but Robert could see at least one person occupying one of the two seats on both sides of the aisle near the front. Beyond them he could see other heads above the seats. God, he couldn't sit next to someone. The bus jerked to a stop, then jerked again starting forward so he had to grab a seat for balance. Robert staggered farther in, looking for a place to sit alone.
The very last seat was empty. Against the rear wall, it spanned the entire width of the bus. A double seat in front of it was empty too. Finally some luck! Robert bent forward over the empty double seat, stepped sideways into the space between it and the last seat, and sat, leaving an empty seat on his left next to a window and his books on the seat to his right, opposite the aisle, to discourage anyone from sitting there. He glanced out the window. The bus was turning south on Main, also Route 48, the road home.
Robert leaned back and imagined the route. Seldom did anyone get on the bus along the city streets, yet it had happened. If people boarded and came all the way back here, he'd just have to keep them at a distance somehow. He prayed that didn't happen.
He felt the air moving and heard the blowers buzzing. Good. Circulating air would thin out the odor. No heads were turning his way in the other seats. So far, everyone seemed unaware of him. The bus sped up as the distance between traffic lights widened. The tires sang their everything's normal song, stopping intermittently to let people off, the usuals who lived beyond the city trolley lines, several in Centerville and Ridgeville.
Robert's shame clung to him with the stench. How could he have let this happen near the end of his second year in high school? Knowing he was vulnerable away from home, alone, he'd carefully prepared for emergencies. Like losing a ticket, he always carried an extra ticket in his wallet as well as enough change to buy one. He wore a watch so he wouldn't be late. He took along umbrellas and extra clothing when necessary. He'd learned to be careful. Today, though, he'd idiotically put himself into a position where he could not control himself any better than a one-year-old. How could he explain that to his mother and brothers? If he made it home undetected in public, he'd still have to face them.
When the bus drove into his hometown, he gathered his books and slowly started up the darkened aisle. The seats were half empty now. Almost all the locals were gone. A couple more would get off in Mason, six miles ahead. The remaining passengers were bound for Cincinnati and points farther south. As the bus approached South West Street, the last intersection in Lebanon, he asked the driver to let him off there. The bus stopped, Robert said thanks, jumped out, and relieved at his success so far, walked uncomfortably the three blocks home.
Outside the house he checked the basement windows. His brothers were in the den watching TV. Through the picture window, he could see his mother in the kitchen preparing dinner. He opened the front door as quietly as possible, but she heard and turned toward him. "Get ready to eat."
Robert hurried on. "Okay."
He ran upstairs into the bathroom, started the water in the tub, went to his bedroom and with clean clothing and a black shopping bag returned to the bathroom. His brothers hadn't appeared. Yet. He locked the door, stuffed his dirty clothes in the bag, sat in the shallow water, scrubbed himself, rinsed off, drained the tub, dried himself, wiped off the tub, then dressed. The clean clothes smelled like fresh morning air.
Robert rushed past his mother into the basement, emptied the bag except for his underpants into the washer, added detergent, and started the machine. He carried the underpants in the bag to the 50-gallon drum in the backyard, threw them in, added a few newspapers and rags, poured in some gasoline, lit it and watched the evidence burn into ashes. The stain would never have come out of those white underpants, and Mom wouldn't notice them missing.
He sighed. The ordeal was over. The public and his family hadn't discovered him. No one knew what had happened. Only the memory was left, but evading that would be impossible. It would be a warning and lesson he'd never forget nor tell anyone about.