Keno

Journal entry - May 1977

My wife and I were waiting in the San Francisco bus station for our ride to LA, which was announced to be an hour late. A nearby driver remarked the bus company had forgotten to notify the driver.

Outside the Continental terminal, a bus for Sparks and Reno was finishing its boarding ritual when an old man weakly called out to my wife and I. Turning, I saw his right arm was bent against his stomach in a way suggesting its use had been lost long ago. With his left arm he steadied himself on an aluminum cane—it was topped with a brace that wrapped around his forearm. 

[Still in my twenties,] aluminum canes struck me as indicating an anticipation of, or resignation to, permanent injury, looking as if as if they’d last a thousand dreadful years. They’d so obviously outlast their owners that to me they were a symbol of ageless suffering, futile struggle. 

The old man’s ancient, wrinkled gray suitcoat and trousers hung limply on his sagging frame, outlining his slow movement as if to cloak him in his own exhausted shadow.

His right leg dragged, toe turned inward, as he approached.

He asked in a hoarse voice, “Is that the Sparks bus?”

I said that it was, and that I’d have the driver wait for him. By the time I returned, he’d managed another 10 feet. He asked me to help him to the bus, explaining his request by admitting he was “a little lame.” I took his crooked arm.

As we shuffled along I said, “Planning on doing a little gambling?’

“Keno,” he replied in his incredibly hoarse voice, “I play Keno.”

“What’s that? A card game?”

We moved slowly forward in silence. I wondered if he was going to reply.

Then: “They shoot dice with a vacuum.”

His lungs seemed to be disintegrating with each syllable he uttered.

“You can win thousands of dollars in Keno,” he continued. “You can win twenty-five thousand dollars at one time.”

Someone held the bus terminal door for us as we exited to the departure area; we were halfway. 

As we approached the rear of the bus he stopped and half-turned to me, as if to indicate his body.

“This is what war does to you.”

“You were in the war?”

With his good arm, cane hanging from it, he twisted his tattered lapel to display a tiny triangular pin: Veteran of Foreign War.

“I’m seventy-three years old.”

I was surprised. There was a touch of color in his thin gray mustache and hair, though his skin was soft and puffy.

“You were in World War One?”

“World War One.”

“Where did you serve?”

“In France. I served in France.”

We eventually reached the front of the bus, and started to cross in front of it. The driver, who’d been waiting near the door, then saw that the old man was leaning on me.

“He has to get on the bus alone!” he said to me as if the old man wasn’t there.

“If he can’t get on alone he can’t go. Federal law prohibits it!”

From his threadbare jacket the old man withdrew his bus ticket, offering it to the driver.

“Don’t give it to me now! When you’re on the bus, then I’ll take it.”

The driver looked at me: “And you can’t help him unless you’re his attendant and ride with him.”

Under my breath I asked, “Can you get up there”?

“I can do it,” he replied, just as softly.

The driver was still complaining loudly as the old man struggled to pull himself up the steps, one at a time, with the left half of his body.

The driver announced to everyone, “He’s got to be able to get on and get off himself! Otherwise he could sue us!”

The driver’s voice kept getting louder, but passengers on the bus were reaching out to help the old man. Someone held his aluminum cane.

The driver shouted, “That guy will kill forty people!” His features echoed the disgust in his voice.

The old man struggled at the top step: the edge of his right shoe was caught under the lip of the step. Twice he pulled up, wavered, and swung back down. I thought he was going to fall and braced to catch him.

The third time he pulled up, his toe cleared the step. Slowly, he started down the aisle. Many outstretched hands reached out in support; I lost sight of him. 

The driver was still telling the world about federal regulations as I headed back to the terminal waiting room. And I hoped, for a foolish moment, that Keno was the old man’s lucky game.