Larry

Larry has driven the same Greyhound bus from his home in Portland, Maine to Boston, Massachusetts for about 30 years. He is exactly who should be the first Mainer you meet. He scowls about "Massholes" and boasts about Freeport fisherman-- "the real heavy drinking fishermen," he tells me, with crumbs stuck in his mustache from his white bread, cheese and bologne sandwich. He doesn't notice the crumbs, of course. It's probably only me who can see them anyway.

I sat next to Larry on an overturned plastic crate in the aisle of his greyhound bus. Just as the bus was set to pull out of the station in Boston, an older lady began banging on the glass door and asked if there were any more seats. Larry said there weren't. The woman started getting hysterical, almost crying, claiming she needed to see her sister-in-law. Larry, kicking the crate as he spoke into the microphone, asked if anyone on the bus would mind "getting the best view of the trip" for a free, one-way ticket.

I raised my hand without thinking. A few people started clapping before realizing that it was weird and stopped. So this is how Larry tells me about the drunk fisherman and how they all set out in their boats one night after a friend hadn't come in after a storm warning. And how the Yarmouth Clam Festival's clam stands sell the worst clams he's ever eaten, about the blind man a couple rows back who can tell you the city the bus is passing through according to the vibrations from the road. He tells me I should go skydiving and about his friend, a construction worker who fell out of his harness less than a minute before he realized he wasn't hooked in. He tells me that's how he believes in God.

When we get to Portland I shake his hand. The woman grabs her bag from the bottom of the bus and doesn't look at me but I don't really care anyway because I'm too excited to get to Harpswell.