Last Bus to Wisdom

by Ivan Doig

  But then Mrs. Schneider looked out at some Palookaville the bus was passing through and exclaimed, “Can you believe it, we’re almost to the Dells,” and that bubble popped. I came to with a start, realizing I hadn’t had them write in the autograph book, and they chorused that they’d fix that in a hurry.

  “A memory book,” Mrs. Schneider said wistfully as I handed her the album and pen. “Why, I haven’t seen one of these since our children had theirs.” I watched over her shoulder, a growing lump in my throat, as she penned in a neat hand:

  When twilight drops a curtain

  and pins it with a star,

  Remember that you have a friend

  Though she may wander far.

  He took a lot more time with his, a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he wrote and wrote. When his wife told him for heaven’s sakes hurry up, he shushed her with “Never you mind, this is man talk between me and Donal,” using my name with exquisite courtesy. When he passed the book back to me, along with a knowing grin, I saw he had composed:

  Here’s to the girlfriends,

  you’ll have them in numbers,

  you’ll have them in plenty,

  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

  11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

  The Wisconsin Dells stop was so brief I didn’t get off, merely pressed my nose against the window as the Schneiders waved to me and were met by their family. Whatever dells were, I goggled at what appeared to be a lake turned into an amusement park, with a fleet of landing craft like my father’s at Omaha Beach, except these advertised on their sides WISCONSIN DUCKS—FUN! ADVENTURE! ON LAND AND WATER! That was not even the most thrilling thing, though, as rising over the water like a railroad that had decided to jump the lake was a swooping roller-coaster track—sure as anything, the “ride” operated by the Schneiders’ son. Oh, how I ached to stay there, just once in my life be a member of that world of pleasure. For as the bus pulled out, I knew in my heart of hearts nothing like that awaited me in some hard-to-spell town with not a thing going for it except the Indian explanation that it was where ghosts lived. Dead, in other words.

  8.

  MILWAUKEE. The last hazardous stop I had to get through appeared to me endlessly gray and runny, drizzle streaking the bus window, as though the church steeples every block or two poked leaks in the clouds. Either a very religious place or one in serious need of saving from its sins, this big city looked old and set in its ways, streets of stores alike from neighborhood to neighborhood even when the spelling on the windows was different kinds of foreign.

  Humped up trying to see out to the blurred brick buildings set tight against one another, I was as bleary as the weather. Ever since Wisconsin Dells, I kept going over my all too adventurous day, the close calls with the badly dressed master criminal and the wild ride to catch up with the bus in St. Paul—luck on my side but only barely until the Schneiders came along to stick up for me when I most needed it—my imagination darting back and forth to what could have happened instead of what did. Life is a zigzag journey, Letty’s inscription predicted, and how astute that was turning out to be.

  Yet, already those experiences, bad and good, seemed farther past than they were. In some way that I could not quite wrap my mind around, distance messed up time, the miles accumulating since I climbed on the dog bus in Great Falls putting me unfathomably farther away from my life up till then than simply the count of hours could show. I had to think for a bit to realize that by now it was Sunday, and that Gram had gone into the hospital for her do-or-die operation. That thought swelled my imagination almost to bursting, my head crowded with doctors and nurses and nuns clustered around one familiar frail form, talking their hospital talk in tones as hushed as any in the gloomy Milwaukee churches the Greyhound was nosing past.

  Determined as I was not to cry, my eyes were as blurry as the watery bus window by the time the driver called out the announcement about the depot’s conveniences and so forth.

  Jumpy at having to change buses at what was bound to be another overwhelmingly busy terminal, I scrambled out directly behind the driver and seized my suitcase as soon as he heaved it out of the baggage compartment. I headed straight down the long bank of swinging doors with arrivals and departures posted beside them, not veering an inch toward the waiting room newsstand and its lure of Mounds bars.

  Way down at the end of the doorways, past ST. LOUIS and KANSAS CITY and even BEMIDJI, I finally spotted a sign like a string of letters in alphabet soup.

  SHEBOYGAN MANITOWOC WAUSAU EAU CLAIRE

  The bus was sitting there empty, no driver in sight. I checked the posted departure time and saw that I had plenty of leeway to go use the nearby convenience, so as a precaution in I went, hugging my suitcase to me. It was there, washing my hands afterward, that the red lettering on the machine on the wall registered on me.

  MAXIMUM PROTECTION

  That drew my interest. Keeping a death grip on my suitcase, I went over to see what was being dispensed that qualified as so surefire against jeopardy of whatever kind. In smaller print but still in blazing red letters above the coin slot was the explanation, more or less.

  TUFFY PROPHYLACTICS

  THE STRONGEST CONDOM COMING AND GOING

  Well, that indicated to me, in an inexact schoolyard way, the vicinity of what these were for. But only that? The further wording touting how stout and reliable a Tuffy was included the word sheath. That in turn brought to mind one of the poems Miss Ciardi had made us memorize by the dozens in the sixth grade. Noble Cyrano sheathed his knife / And spared the foul assassin’s life. I had something sharp to sheath, too, did I ever.

  After all, people carried good luck charms for a reason—because they brought luck—which I had not been able to do with the practically knife-edged arrowhead stashed in the suitcase. If I could just somehow have it in my pocket without getting jabbed like crazy every time I sat down, maybe it would work more like a lucky piece was supposed to. In short, protection was what I needed, and here it was, promised for twenty-five cents.

  Risking one of my few remaining coins, I turned the knob on the machine. Into the trough at the bottom dropped a round packet disappointingly small.

  And when I unwrapped it, the so-called sheath seemed all too thin. Huh. I thought by reputation these things were made of rubber. Instead, the material was sort of like fishskin, and while stretchy, didn’t strike me as terribly strong. When I dug the arrowhead out of the suitcase and compared lengths, though, the condom thinger looked just about right.

  For all I knew, maybe more than one at a time was needed in this matter of protection, like putting on extra socks in zero weather. I had a last couple of quarters left and inserted them one after the other into the Tuffy dispenser, drawing quite a look from a guy at the nearest urinal. Then over in a corner at the sink counter, working carefully, carefully, with a little toilet paper padding to help out, I managed to tug the triple layer of condoms over the arrowhead. Definitely sheathed, it fit in my pocket as not much bigger than an ordinary charm like a rabbit’s foot, and finally felt like a lucky piece should, ready and waiting.

  • • •

  BACK OUT in the boarding area, the driver showed up at the still-empty bus at the same time I did. Burly and black-mustached and still settling his company crush hat on his head, he looked me over enough that I was afraid he’d heard about me, the entire Greyhound fleet alerted about the stray whom trouble followed like a black cat’s shadow. But he only remarked, “Early bird, aren’t you,” and stuck the antiquated suitcase safely in the baggage compartment. I went up the steps right at his heels, and for quite some time we were the only ones on the bus, me securing a window seat partway down the aisle but away from the bumpy ride over the back tires, and him behind the steering wheel dealing with paperwork.

  At last a few others dribbled aboard, but to my puzzlement, not as many as at any point of the trip since passengers
dwindled away into the void of North Dakota. Was Manitowoc such a ghost town no one wanted to go there? Soon enough I’d know, wouldn’t I. If the Greyhound ever got itself in gear, which I was starting to doubt.

  I was about to ask the driver if he was ever going to start us rolling, when I heard him say to himself, “Hoo boy, here they are,” and he climbed off in a hurry to punch tickets and handle baggage. I turned to the window to see what was happening, and gasped.

  A disorderly line of kids, snaking from side to side like one of those Chinese dragons in a parade, was pouring out of the depot, each with a suitcase in hand. There was an absolute mob of them, and worse than that, entirely boys, and even worse yet, the worst I could imagine, they all were about my age and there were more than enough redheads among them to confuse anyone. I knew it! Redheaded thinking it surely was, but this clearly was a disaster in the making. Just like I had tried to tell Gram, there was no conceivable way Aunt Kitty and Uncle Dutch could pick me out, confronted with red mopheads everywhere they looked.

  The whole pack of them stormed onto the bus laughing and shoving and talking at the top of their voices as I sat dismally watching the pandemonium. A couple of fretful adults were in charge, or trying to be, but they were no match for the stampede. The kids swarmed as they pleased through the aisles, claiming seats and instantly trading. The bus filled up, and the next thing I knew, three boys descended on where I was sitting, one of them flopping down next to me and the others straight across the aisle.

  As sharp-featured as if he’d been whittled, my new seatmate had a natural nose for poking into other people’s business, eyeing me with none too friendly curiosity. “What’ja do, get on the bus early?”

  “Sort of. Yesterday.”

  “Yeah? Where ya from, then?”

  I told him, his snoopy pair of chums listening in. If the new bus riders were impressed by my distant point of departure, they had a funny way of showing it. “Monta-a-a-na,” they bleated like sheep. “Know any cowboys? Like Hopalong Assidy?” They snickered roundly at the idea.

  What to do? Lay it on them about the past two years of hanging around the bunkhouse with the Double W riders every chance I got, sometimes even being permitted when I caught Gram and Sparrowhead both in the right mood to saddle up and help move cows and calves to a new pasture, riding right next to cowboys not of the phony movie ten-gallon-hat-on-a-half-pint-head Hopalong Cassidy variety but as genuine as they come, as shown by their imaginative cussing?

  These kids, not a freckle from the outdoors on their milk-white faces, did not seem like a promising audience for any of that. For once, I figured I’d better tone matters down.

  “Well, sure, I couldn’t help but know plenty of them, could I,” I said offhandedly. “My grandmother’s the cook on the biggest ranch in Montana, see, and the whole crew, cowboys and all, eats together at a table as long as this bus.” That did stretch the matter a little, but not unreasonably so, I thought.

  “Huh. Sounds like basement supper at church,” my seatmate mouthed off. “Jeez, you must have wore a hole in your butt, on here that long,” one of the others came up with.

  “Uh-huh, it’s cracked a little, too,” I shot back, making them laugh in spite of themselves, and matters relaxed somewhat.

  The way kids will do, we gingerly got around to names. The one sitting next to me was Kurt, with a K, he informed me, as though that made him something special and not just a victim of poor spelling. The duo across the aisle weren’t named much better, Gus and Mannie. They looked like brothers but didn’t act like it, Gus nervous as a pullet and Mannie the kind who would stare you in the eye while he took your lunch. Kurt was the leader, I could tell. Leaders always sat by themselves, or in this case by the seatfiller I happened to be. I wished I had drawn the set of boys directly behind us, who were quietly reading comic books.

  Still trying to figure out this many punks my age being transported somewhere in one clump, I couldn’t help but ask. “Is this a school trip?”

  “Where’ja get that?” Kurt looked at me like I was crazy. “School’s out. We’re goin’ to camp.”

  “Sleep outside like that?” Why on earth would anyone with a home and a bed, as these milksops surely had, camp for the night on the cold ground? “What for?”

  “Outside, nothin’,” the big talker who spelled his name with a K turned up his nose at that. “We’re goin’ to Camp Winnebago. It has cabins and everythin’.”

  Hope flickered in me for the first time since this horde speckled with redheads showed up. If they were not all to pour off at the Manitowoc depot in a sea of confusion, maybe the aunt and uncle who had never seen me would have a chance of finding me after all. Cautiously I asked, “H-how do you get there? To Camp Winnegabo, I mean.”

  “How do you think?” Kurt sneered. He crossed his eyes at me like one moron talking to another, while Gus and Mannie rolled theirs. “What goes down the road like sixty but always turns around to chase its tail?”

  “Bus.” I exhaled the answer, relieved at the thought that the driver would dump this bunch off at some mosquito patch that called itself a camp—before or after Manitowoc, I didn’t care which.

  “Give that man a dicky bird.” With that, Kurt pinched the back of my wrist black-and-blue.

  “OW! Hey, quit!” Trying to shake the sting out of my hand, I at least had the consolation that Kurt was groaning as he rubbed his ribs and complained, “Oof, you gave me a real whack,” which, in all justice, my elbow automatically had done when he pinched the bejesus out of me. Somehow it seemed to make him think better of me.

  “So, Don”—I had prudently trimmed mine to that in the exchange of names, seeing as theirs were as short as bullets—“where you goin,’ anyhow?” he asked almost civilly.

  But when I told him, he snickered, while across the aisle Gus, or was it Mannie, jeered, “Ooh, old Manitowocee, couldn’t make it to Milwaukee.”

  Swallowing hard, I changed the subject. “What do you do when you get to dumb camp?”

  “All kinds of stuff!” They were only too glad to tick off activities to me. “Swimmin’! Makin’ things with leather! Tug-o’-war! Archery!”

  It was Gus, the fidgety pullet one, who interrupted the litany with “Don’t forget singin’,” causing Mannie next to him to hoot out, “The campfire ditty!” and before you could say Do re mi, all three of them were laughing like loons and raucously chorusing:

  Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,

  Mutilated monkey meat.

  Dirty little birdie feet.

  Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts,

  And me without my spoon.

  That was impressive, I had to grant, as did the harried grown-up who came rushing down the aisle and told them to quit showing off. As one, they snickered at his retreating back. The candy company should have put the three of them on the Snickers bar, like the Smith Brothers on cough drop boxes.

  I didn’t have much time for that kind of thinking, however, as they turned their attention back to me, the Mannie one looking particularly hungry for a crack at me.

  “So,” I blurted the first thing that came to mind, “you guys shoot bows and arrows, like Indians. That’s pretty good.”

  “You bet your butt it is.” Unable to resist showing off, Kurt drew back archer-style with an imaginary twang, the other two loyally clucking their tongues to provide the thwock of arrow hitting target.

  Oh, the temptation that brought on. To see the look on their faces when I coolly announced that when it came to things like arrows, I just happened to have a lucky arrowhead older than Columbus right there in my possession. The only hitch was, if they clamored to see it I’d have to show it in its wrapping of Tuffies, and I sensed that was not such a good idea. I hated to miss the chance to be superior about the archery matter, but maybe I had something better up my sleeve.

  “How about guns?
”

  My question silenced them for a full several seconds.

  Mannie was the first to recover and break out a sneer. “What, cap pistols? Little-kid games ain’t for us.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I responded, innocent as the devil filing his fingernails, as a Gram saying best put it. “Remington single-shot .22s. Like I use, at the ranch.”

  “Yeah?” Kurt sat up and a little away from me. “Use on what?”

  “Magpies.”

  “Yeah? What’s those?”

  “Birds. Big black-and-white ones that would just as soon peck your eyes out as look at you.” He flinched back as I spread my hands in a sudden gesture. “With tails about yay long. Don’t you have those here?”

  “Naw, I don’t think so.” He looked across uncertainly at Gus and Mannie, who were shaking their heads in slack-jawed ignorance of one of the most common birds in Creation. Talk about having a wire down; if any of these three had a brain that worked, it would be lonesome.

  “Then how do you make any money?” I pressed my advantage, Kurt still leaning away as if his ass might get shot off from my direction. “See, there’s a bounty on magpies, on account of they eat the eyeballs right out of calves and lambs and things, and”—I had a moment of inspiration—“they really do gobble gopher guts.” At that, my audience was agog, if slightly green around the gills.

  “So what you do,” I continued in expert style, “after you shoot them, you cut off their legs with your jackknife and turn those in for the bounty. Fifty cents, just like that.” I snapped my fingers like a shot, if a person imagined a little. “They’re pretty easy to shoot, I got seventeen so far this year,” I concluded, as if dead magpies were notches on my gun belt.

  By now I was being looked at as if I was either a gunslinging hero of the eleven-year-old set or the biggest liar on the face of the earth. But it was totally true that Wendell Williamson, tightwad that he was, ponied up for dirty little birdy feet, magpies being the hated nuisance they were on ranches, after Gram vouched that my father had taught me how to shoot the .22 and she swore I was responsible enough to hunt along the creek willows without endangering the cattle.