Trailways

Trailways is the bus service that connects Barkley Cove to Greenville and gives Kya Clark a way beyond the marsh without her boat. Its role is both practical and evidentiary: the bus carries Kya on a rare journey away from home, then figures in the prosecution’s attempt to place her near the scene of Chase Andrews’s death. In court, the service’s routes and schedules make a possible journey conceivable, while testimony about the passengers keeps that possibility uncertain.

Service and Setting

Barkley Cove is separated from the wider world by marsh and sea, with a single-lane highway as its only land connection. Trailways operates buses along this link; its stop stands on Main Street, close enough to the waterfront that the bus blocks the ocean when it pulls in. The service offers more than a ride between towns: for a person living in the marsh, it is a means of leaving without navigating the waterways or relying on a private boat.

The bus stop is part of the village’s visible public life. Shopkeepers and townspeople can see who waits there, and the arrival of a bus draws attention in a place where Kya is already watched and discussed. Trailways therefore connects Barkley Cove to other destinations while also placing departures and returns in view of the community she has spent much of her life avoiding.

Kya’s Journey to Greenville

On October 28, 1969, Kya keeps her promise to say goodbye to Jumpin’ before setting out. At the town wharf, fishermen and shrimpers stop their work to watch her tie up. She carries a faded cardboard suitcase that she has retrieved from her mother’s old closet, and a knapsack containing books, ham, biscuits, and a little cash. Most of her royalty money is buried in a tin can near the lagoon. Her brown skirt, white blouse, and flats make her look, for once, unremarkable among the people staring at her.

At the Trailways stop, Kya waits beneath the bus sign. When the bus arrives, she buys a ticket to Greenville and asks about return dates and times; the driver gives her a printed schedule and stows her suitcase. She boards holding tightly to the knapsack. The departure is presented as a concrete break from the town’s scrutiny: before she has much time to think, the bus has carried her out of Barkley Cove.

Kya returns two days later, stepping off the Trailways bus at 1:16 in the afternoon. More villagers are about, watching and whispering as she retrieves her suitcase. She crosses the street to the wharf, boards her boat, and motors home. She intends to tell Jumpin’ she has returned, as promised, but other boats are waiting for fuel at his wharf. She postpones the visit until the next day, eager to get back to the gulls. Her outward and return journeys thus place the same bus service at opposite thresholds: departure from the town and a quick return to the marsh.

Evidence in the Murder Trial

At Kya’s trial, Trailways testimony becomes part of the dispute over whether she could have traveled from Greenville to Barkley Cove on the night Chase died and returned in time. The driver, testifying under the name Mr. Larry Price, says he drives Trailways buses on varying routes in North Carolina. He confirms that a passenger could travel from Greenville to Barkley Cove and back on the same night. He also says that he drove the bus from Greenville toward Barkley Cove on the night of Chase’s death and that none of its passengers looked like Kya Clark.

Under questioning from Eric Chastain, the driver confirms an earlier description he gave the sheriff: one passenger was a skinny young white man, about five feet ten, whose trousers hung loosely. The passenger wore a bulky blue cap, kept his head down, and did not look at anyone. The testimony does not identify that passenger as Kya. It leaves open the possibility raised by the questioning—that a tall woman might have been disguised as a man—without converting the possibility into a confirmed fact.

Another piece of testimony concerns Kya’s earlier trip. Sarah, who can see the stop from the Piggly Wiggly cash register, confirms that she saw Kya waiting there at 2:30 p.m. on October 28. Sarah remembers the barefoot child who had come into the market for years and, in private, recalls giving her small amounts of extra change from her own purse. Her recollection links the adult defendant’s visible presence at the bus stop to a longer, less public history of need and discreet kindness. The testimony establishes that Sarah saw Kya waiting; it does not, in the supplied exchange, establish that Sarah saw her board.

Schedule, Possibility, and Uncertainty

The prosecution’s proposed itinerary depends on a specific sequence of Trailways connections. As presented in court by Tom Milton, it alleges that Kya left the Three Mountains Motel late at night, walked to the bus station, and took the 11:50 p.m. bus from Greenville to Barkley Cove. The bus was supposedly late, arriving at 1:40 a.m.; from there, the alleged journey continued on foot to the wharf, by boat toward the cove near the fire tower, and on foot up the tower. The prosecution’s account then requires the trip to be reversed so Kya could catch the bus back to Greenville.

Tom calculates that the alleged actions would take at least one hour and seven minutes, even without accounting for time spent waiting for Chase, while the return bus departed only fifty minutes after Kya would have arrived in Barkley Cove. Ed Jackson concedes that the timing would be tight but suggests that she could have jogged and saved time. Trailways thus supplies the schedule around which the competing accounts turn: the service makes same-night travel possible, yet the prosecution’s own sequence appears to leave less time than its alleged trip requires.

The bus’s narrative importance lies in this distinction between access and proof. Kya’s documented October journey shows that she can use Trailways to reach Greenville and return; the driver’s account establishes that the route can operate in both directions on the relevant night. Neither fact, alone, settles who was on a particular bus or whether the proposed journey could have been completed as alleged. Trailways becomes a test of the case’s timing, a public route whose timetable can be examined but whose passengers remain partly concealed.