Free Alice At Heart by Deborah Smith

then at the hoards of people and honking cars, the jigsaw puzzle of one-way streets and wide boulevards, the smell of gasoline and sardine-packed humanity, the endless, bone-dry pavement. Atlanta was a beached whale, and I was not going to set so much as one webbed foot into its rotting maw.
    “I want to buy another ticket and stay on this bus, please,” I said to the driver. “I’ll go as far as this bus goes.”
    He was a thickset, fatherly black man who didn’t appear unkind, just busy. He stared at me with a puzzled look. “This bus terminates in Macon. That’s only another hundred miles. “
    I got out a map I’d bought. Macon was perhaps halfway to the sea. It made a medium dot near the center of the state, while Atlanta was a large, starred dot in the state’s upper third, like the off-center eye of a cyclops. I could deal with Macon.
    “Sir, can I at least change buses there and go on to the coast?”
    “Sure. Change buses, change direction, or change your mind.” He smiled.
    Too late for any of the latter, I feared.
    I traveled on.
    When we arrived in Macon, he set my boxes on the sidewalk at the bus station, and I looked around worriedly. Macon was much smaller than Atlanta, but still a city. I crept into the station, studied the schedules and routes, and discovered a horrible problem. No buses ran to Sainte’s Point. Of course I knew Sainte’s Point was an island, unreachable by vehicles other than boats, but I’d expected to arrive right across from it, at least, and knew I could swim the rest of the way if need be. On the map, it was a sliver of green across from the coastal town of Bellemeade. Bellemeade was merely a pinpoint tucked into a coastline so frayed with coves, saltwater marshes, river deltas, and inlets it resembled a ragged apron hem. Judging by my thumbnail assessment of map distances, the next larger town-dot, where a bus would deposit me for certain, was twenty miles inland. I imagined vast stretches of farmland and pine forest and alligator-infested swamp between there and Bellemeade.
    I panicked. My bus driver spotted me sitting on a bench inside the station with my map crumpled in my hands and asked me gently if I was all right. I was too embarrassed to admit my dilemma. Of course, I would never simply pick up a phone and call Lilith for help. Not that she needed a phone, considering her mind-invading talents. I’m not meant to go the island , I told myself. This is a sign .
    “Sir, can you tell me how to get to some kind of inexpensive lodgings around here? And how to call a cab to get me there?”
    The driver sighed. “Miss, haven’t you ever been anywhere, before?”
    I shook my head. “Only this far.”
    “You’re some kind of angel who’s been dropped here to explore, aren’t you? I saw a show about your kind on TV. I think it was on Oprah. Or maybe Montel. You got a look about you. Not quite of this world.”
    I dropped my gaze and hid dismay. Not an angel. Maybe an angelfish .
    He gave my stricken silence a gentle grunt. “I’ll drop you off at a good motel myself, soon as I get this bus ready to head back to Atlanta.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Thank you ,” he countered, apropos of nothing. When I looked at him curiously, he said, “You must be an angel. You make me think of music and the ocean. And I like those things.”
    I looked away and said nothing. I’ve become a shameless survivor, feigning angelhood when I am, in fact, just a lost soul who refuses to call Lilith Bonavendier to come and get me.
    I have decided to go no farther than Macon.
    So I’m reading the local newspaper, trying to work up my courage to apply for a job at a pet store, and making lists of apartments located near ponds, lakes, or even small creeks. I eat the motel’s vending machine crackers and cans of vegetable shortening I buy at a convenience store next door, run by a kind family of Mexican origin. I speak to them in fluent Spanish—languages come to me as easily as