Richard Post, foggy from a whiskey hangover, entered the Greyhound bus terminal at Court Street and Gilbert Avenue in Cincinnati. He took a seat on a worn bench, awaiting the 9:00 p.m. departure of a bus to Chicago, the first leg of the journey to his parents' home near San Diego, a place he'd avoided for two years. Was he like Thomas Hardy's native, to return at this time? To the heath of his youth ... the abode of his growth from infant to ... to ... whatever he was when he'd left for the University of California campus at Berkeley. What was he now ... a disillusioned drunk ... a broke one too! Yeah, broke all right, financially and morally. He cringed, thinking about his parents' reaction when he walked through the door in his present condition.

     That morning, in a seedy bar, one of many in the city's highest crime area, Richard had sat in disbelief as he watched, on the TV above the bar, the unfolding of the terrorist attacks on the first of the World Trade Center towers. Later he saw the second tower hit, followed by the Pentagon. Hours later, he was still confused about the whole unrealistic sight. A crumpled Cincinnati Enquirer was on the floor in front of his bench, a bold-cap extra telling of the attacks. He picked it up to read on the bus ... he should try and catch up with what was happening in the world ... that place outside of the cocoon of booze, introspection, despair, and confusion in which he'd been fetal positioned since he'd fled Berkeley.

     His eyes were half closed, yet he could see the various degrees of humanity spread around the dim waiting area. Booze often dulled his vision, but he had retained a sharp focus on what was around him ... probably his innate drive for survival. Having hung out in bars across the country, he'd learned to be both aware and wary of whoever was near him. His sense of observation, despite swilling gallons of booze, was one of his greatest assets. He had stored a wealth of impressions of people in the passing parade ... an understanding of their maneuvers, foibles, and motives sandwiched under his layers of liquor-saturated brain cells.

     Through the hazy light of the terminal, he noted a soldier going home on leave, an elderly woman knitting a garment of large proportions, and, according to the sign on his sample case, a traveling salesman of promotional trinkets. Next was a prostitute, whose skimpy skirt barely covered her upper thighs when she sat, legs apart, with a bonus of plump breasts on display from a lowcut blouse. The presentation was completed with liberal applications of eye shadow, rouge, and garish lipstick. Three seats away sat a mother with a three-year-old and a wee one at the fountain of her naked breast. Richard loved the dichotomy. Both showed the products of intercourse ... one with sweet children, the other, a hardened shell of old-before-its-time womanhood from illicit sex with too many users and abusers. Like a coin, he mused — two- sided, a head and a tail — like his life to date, some good and some bad ... yeah ... mostly tails.

     Had he really drawn a figurative line in the sand of his life's wasteland over the last two years? He was hazy about which day ... which week it had been when he had finally found himself lying with the pigs, eating what they did ... like the younger son in Luke's Gospel. Why was he going back to that house with the super-Marine father and the worrying mother? He had a momentary flash of self-justification ... to ease their worries he'd sent them a half-dozen postcards over at least the last year, maybe longer, after leaving Berkeley. He knew he'd not done it out of concern for their feelings, but to keep them from putting out an all-points bulletin for him. Every card he scrawled said he was all right, working itinerant jobs so he could see the country and broaden himself before settling down into a job. "Not to worry folks, I love you, be home one day soon," he'd lied over and over.

     The "broadening" he euphemized in his terse writings was actually more of a cover for reaching the nadir of his existence with nowhere to go or turn. And like a drowning man he was

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