The Trinity by David LaBounty

often-goofy world. In the Navy, you are required to have a home of record, typically your parents’ home or a relative’s. Chris no longer has a home. He is truly a child of the Navy, and home is wherever he is required to hang his seabag.
    In this instance, home will soon be Scotland.
    He remembers the cluster of hotels near the shopping mall a few miles away and starts walking along the busy road. Many drivers strain their necks to see the unusual looking young man.
    He checks into a room for the night, blankly staring at the television for most of the evening, not sure how to spend the next two weeks.
    When the morning comes, he checks out of the hotel and has the clerk call him yet another cab. This time he finds a Greyhound bus terminal. He purchases a ticket for New York. His flight to Scotland will connect through La Guardia, so he would just as soon hang out for two weeks in a place other than Detroit, and New York is a city he has wanted to visit after hearing his friend Mahler talk incessantly about Woody Allen and all things New Yorkish. He will try to find his friend, who is probably still on leave, before reporting to San Diego.
    What would be twelve hours in a car is nearly twenty in a bus. The bus stops at every town and city of size, with a parade of bizarre people coming and going, some carrying no luggage at all, and some their life’s possessions stuffed into wrinkled and bulging trash bags.
    Again, Chris is traveling, and his glances into the various towns and the landscape of the Ohio Turnpike and onto the rolling hills and low mountains of Pennsylvania provide a welcome relief from the thought of no longer having a home.    
    Many passengers come and go on his journey; many have occupied the seat next to him. Many try to talk to him, especially because of the uniform, asking him where he’s going, where he’s been, and where he’s from.
    Chris answers in one- and two-word responses; he is not in the mood for elaboration or conversation.
    The parade of people coming and going off the bus is somewhat illuminating for Chris. Though he didn’t grow up wealthy, his needs were met and he lived in comfort. On the bus, some carry trash bags for luggage, some have nicer luggage, some have dirty clothes, and some have clean clothes and dirty hands and dirty faces.
    Ultimately, the bus arrives in New York mid-morning, two days before Christmas, and deposits Chris in the Port Authority terminal in lower Manhattan. The vastness of the bus station pales in comparison to the vastness of the city outside. Chris can do nothing at first but stare straight up at all the buildings framing the sky.
    Then he turns his attention to the sidewalks, the streets, surging with cars and buses and trucks and people, an overwhelming wave of hurried people.
    He is scared, more scared than he ever was in boot camp.
    But he is excited. This is the world he longed to see. He feels years removed from high school classrooms and life in front of television screens.
    He wanders, staring at the people and the streetlights and all the Christmas decorations in the storefronts. The sight of Christmas at first warms him, but then makes him feel sad. Christmas was never particularly special in his household. His mother would drag him and his brother to his grandparents’ house, but as they got older, it was mainly a day for sleeping in and exchanging a gift with their mother.
    Even on Christmas, their father never ventured from the basement, and Chris could hear the noise of the television from late in the morning till very late at night.
    He decides to try to find his friend Mahler, and knowing he lives on Staten Island, he tries to make his way there.
    He tries to catch a taxi, but a taxi is hard to come by in New York at Christmastime.
    But because of his uniform and the scared and pathetic look on his face, a cab driver eventually stops and picks him up. He takes Chris through the financial district and drops him off at the terminal