Last Bus to Wisdom

by Ivan Doig

  Face squinched out of shape to stretch the eyelid down and cheek skin up to cover the empty eye socket, he looked different from his WANTED picture, for sure. More like a sideshow freak winking gruesomely.

  Words failed me as he said out of the twisted corner of his mouth, “Ready to git, Donny.”

  Talk about walking like Winnetou and Manitou in the tracks of braves through all time—I was overawed at the amount of guts it took to bring out that grotesque wound for the world to see. I could not help staring, and no doubt people would. But chances were the only resemblance anyone could take away would be to a beached, one-eyed pirate in Treasure Island.

  I barely got out, “Didn’t know you could do that with your peeper.”

  “All kinds advantages to have glass in your head, ja,” he said tartly. “Hurry, let’s buy tickets before somebody sees Killer Boy Dillinger under my hat.”

  • • •

  AT THE TICKET COUNTER, the clerk idly doing a crossword puzzle took in my suitcase and Herman’s duffel with a bored glance as we stepped up. The missing eye didn’t faze him a bit. “You boys for the special?”

  I answered with a question. “How do you mean?”

  “The special,” the clerk recited as if it were common knowledge. “Last bus to Wisdom.”

  The last?

  That makes a person think. As in, last chance ever? Or something like dead last, some kind of bus especially for unswift customers who missed out on the real thing?

  I still was trying to digest the meaning, Herman now squinched up in thought as well as one-eyed nearsightedness, when the clerk put down his puzzle and pencil and took fresh account of the two of us and our ratty luggage. “Or am I seeing things, and you aren’t that sort?”

  “Uhm, sure, that’s where we want to go. To Wisdom, you bet.”

  “Then let’s see the color of your money, gentlemen.” As Herman dug out the fare, which may have been special but still took nearly all of what we had left, the clerk spun on his stool and called to an arthritic-looking man dabbing away at paperwork in the cubbyhole office behind the counter. “Two more, Hoppy.”

  “The merrier,” the man croaked, clapping on a battered-looking Greyhound driver’s hat and strapping on the holster for his ticket punch. “Makes a full house, Joe. Any other ’boes are gonna have to hoof it.” Rounding the counter with a hitch in his gait about like Louie Slewfoot’s, he jerked his head for us to follow him. “Let’s git to gitting,” he said, instantly winning Herman over.

  • • •

  AS WE TRAILED the gimpy driver past departure gate after departure gate to the loading bay at the very end of the depot platform, I was more than curious to see what was up with this special bus. As we neared, it became evident this was not one of the sleek modern fleet, but a stubby early model that had seen more than its share of miles—even the galloping greyhound on its side looked like time was catching up with it, its coat of silver dimming to dusky gray—and plainly was brought out only as a spare. That description probably fit the aged driver hopscotching along ahead of us as well, Herman and I realized with a glance at each other.

  What really caught our attention, though, was the horde waiting to board. It was all men. If we thought the Butte waiting-room crowd were tough lookers, they were an Easter parade compared with this ill-assorted batch of customers, lounging around on bedrolls that looked none too clean and smoking crimped roll-your-own cigarettes, giving every appearance of having come straight off freight train boxcars. Most of them wore the cheap dark gray work shirts known as Texas tuxes, which didn’t show dirt, but even so, the wearers appeared to be badly in need of a wash day.

  The driver halted under the overhang of the depot just out of earshot of the mob and gave us a dubious look.

  “Free advice, worth what it costs, but maybe you gents ought to find some other way to git to Wisdom. ’Gainst regulations, but I can sneak you a refund.” He inclined his head toward the squat old bus. “This is what’s called the hay wagon, unnerstand. These scissorbills aim to hire on in haying, down there in the Big Hole.”

  “Yeah, well,” I spoke right up, Herman backing me with vigorous nods, “that’s us, too. Haymakers.”

  “I dunno.” The driver looked us over even more skeptically. “Nothing personal, but one of you seems sort of young and the other one pretty much along in years, to keep up with fellas like these.”

  To my surprise, Herman now said a piece. “Not to worry. Ourselfs, we are from Tough Creek, where we sleep on the roof of the last house.”

  Whatever western he had that from, it was enough to make the driver croak out a laugh and stump off toward the bus. “Join the fun, then. Let’s go.”

  I didn’t, though, holding Herman back by his sleeve, too. A vision had come to me from the funnies, unsought but vividly there, of PeeWee the dim-witted little bum and his shabby pals mooching along in Just Trampin’, from the looks of it about like these hard-boiled excuses for humanity we were about to join. The question quavered out of me.

  “W-wait. Are all of them—bums?”

  Quick as I said that, the driver turned to us in a sort of crowhop. “You got that all wrong, sonny,” he schooled me, “bums don’t ride buses. Tramps, now, they maybe might if somebody was to give them the money,” he furthered my education. “Been known to happen. But these fellas”—our gaze followed his to the waiting men—“are hoboes, whole different thing. They ain’t your total down-and-outers, more like hard-luck cases. Got to hand it to them, they travel around looking for work. Seasonal, like. Apple glommers, almond knockers, sugar beeters”—Herman’s expression skewed even more as he tried to follow the driver’s tally—“what hoboes do is follow the crops. Haymakers, about now, tough a job as any,” he added pointedly, with another skeptical look at the pair of us. “You better unnerstand, living rough like they do, hoboes by nature are a hard lot. Have to be. For them, it’s root, hog, or die.”

  He paused to make sure the lesson was sinking in on us. “That refund is still ready and waiting.”

  Herman must have given that the quickest think in history, for I immediately felt his bolstering hand in the middle of my back, making our decision. I spoke it, in our biggest leap of fate or faith yet. “Nothing doing. We’re going with on the what’s-it. The special.”

  Shrugging as if our blind determination was water off his back, the driver crowfooted away toward the waiting bus. “Hop on.”

  22.

  THE LAST TWO seats were way at the back of the bus, which meant the entire hobo contingent had a chance to look us over from stem to stern as we wove up the aisle. Stepping aboard right after us, from tossing my suitcase and Herman’s duffel into the baggage compartment with a collection of bedrolls and what looked to me like bundles of belongings but for some reason were called bindles, the driver sang out, “Okey-doke, final call. Last bus to W-I-S-D-O-M, for those of you who know the alphabet.”

  “We’re all scholars of the Braille sort,” a man taller and brawnier than the rest called out.

  “I bet you’ve put the touch on many a thing all right, Highpockets,” retorted the driver, counting heads to make sure the total matched the number of tickets he had punched. “Talk about faces a person can’t forget even if he tries. Druv the majority of you scissorbills at this same time last year, if I don’t miss my guess.”

  “That’s us, Hoppy, last but nowhere near least,” a scrawny old fellow with a cracked voice was heard from next. “Had a chance to take drivin’ lessons since then, have ye?”

  The driver snorted and made as if to fling his cap at the offender. “I have druv longer than you been off your ma’s hind tit.”

  “That makes you older than the pharaoh’s dick, don’t it, Hop,” the fellow plenty far along in years himself cracked back, to hoots of encouragement and cries of “Lay it to him, Skeeter.” Of course, I was following this like a puppy lapping milk, until Her
man tugged my ear to bring me close enough for a whispered “Phoo. Rough tongues. Don’t listen too much.”

  “Let’s can the mutual admiration and get this crate goin’,” the one called Highpockets spoke with authority. “Else the best kips are gonna be taken at the Big Hole Riviera.”

  “Birds like you can always roost in the diamond willows,” the driver responded crossly. Nonethless he dragged himself into place behind the steering wheel, managed to find the clutch and brake pedal with his feet, fiddled around some on the dashboard, and eventually ground the starter—it growled so much like the DeSoto back in Manitowoc that Herman and I couldn’t help trading amused glances—until it eventually caught, and the bus bucked its way out of the depot driveway as if hiccuping.

  Hoppy mastered the gearshift somewhat better on the downhill run from the Butte business district and away, I could now hope, from the nightmarish orphanage. Herman was breathing easier, too, as the bus hit the highway, with the splash of MOST WANTED posters receding behind him. The tortured side of his face missing its eye relaxed a little, even.

  • • •

  PRETTY QUICK we had something new to worry about as Highpockets, who by all indications was some sort of topkick of the hoboes, made his way to the rear and squatted in the aisle by us. Up close, he showed more wear and tear than at first appearance, what Gram called weary lines at the corners of his hooded eyes. Some time back, his nose apparently had been rearranged by a fist, and he bore a sizable quarter-moon scar at the corner of his mouth. But I would not want to have been the other guy in the fight, strong as his unrelenting gaze was and the rest of him more than enough to back it up. Cordial but direct, he asked, “You fellows going calling on the near and dear, down in the Hole? Or what?”

  Or what required some answering on this bus, all right, as it bucketed along making exhaust noise as if it needed a new muffler, or maybe any muffler. Catching on to the situation if not the conversation level, Herman intuitively sealed his lips in favor of mine.

  “Huh-uh, we’re going haying like everybody else,” I launched into. “See, I’m a stacker team driver, and my grandpa here is a sort of a roustabout, good at lots of stuff. But you need to excuse his not talking”—the story built as fast as I could get it out of my mouth—“he’s straight from the old country and doesn’t savvy English very much. He’s over here taking care of me because”—I had to swallow hard to move from invention to the real answer about near and dear relatives—“my parents passed away, and we’re all each other has.” That at least was the truth of the moment, although Gram was due a major mental apology for substituting Herman for her in the larger picture of life.

  Highpockets heard me out with scarcely a blink, his scrutiny all the more unnerving for that. More than a few of the other hoboes were swung around in their seats, taking all this in. Like them, Highpockets had on a shapeless old hat that signified rough living and outdoor labor, more than likely the mark of being a true hobo. Sitting back on his haunches, he skeptically eyed our fresh Stetsons and my fancy rodeo shirt. “You trying to tell me you and Gramps are on your uppers?”

  Fortunately I had enough bunkhouse lingo to answer, “We’re not broke, but we can see it from here.” All the honesty I could summon seemed to be called for. “What it is, we got robbed blind. Back on the dog bus, the one from Billings.” Herman, who had gone stiff as a coffin lid at my designation of him as grandpa, unbent enough to bob his head in confirmation of “robbed blind.” I plunged on. “A sonofabitching phony preacher gyppo”—my vocabulary gleaned from the Double W riders fit right in with this audience, it seemed—“picked Gramps’s pocket and wiped us clean, so that’s why we’re on here with you.” I made myself shut up, praying that was just enough and not too much or too little.

  It at least worked with Highpockets, who relaxed and bounced on his haunches a bit, glancing around at the other listening hoboes. “Their bad luck to run into a fingersmith, pulling the old sky pilot dodge, eh, boys? Seen that one put over on many a pilgrim.” He slapped my knee, startling the daylights out of me, and gave Herman that round O sign of forefinger touching the tip of the thumb, the rest of the fingers up, which means OK. Herman smiled weakly in return. “Stealing isn’t our style,” Highpockets was saying, his gunsight gaze sweeping around to take in the whole set of rough-and-ready men, “at least from each other.” Unfolding to his full height, nearly scraping the ceiling of the bus, he gestured around. “You’re gonna be with us, better howdy up with the boys.”

  Right then the bus jolted off the highway, slewing somewhat too fast onto a gravel road headed south. Highpockets grabbed a seatback to keep his balance, laughing. “Hold on to your stovepipes,” he advised about our Stetsons, “here comes the real haywagon ride.” Another of the hoboes yelped to the driver, “Kick ’er in the ribs and let ’er buck, Hoppy!”

  “I’ll do the driving, you do the sitting with your thumb up your butt, how about,” the driver hollered back, wrestling the steering wheel as the shuddering bus adjusted to the gravel surface, more or less. Which had suddenly narrowed to what my father the construction catskinner would have scoffed at as a goat trail, so much so that Herman and I now were peering almost straight down the steep bank of a fast-flowing river on our side. I gulped, and Herman narrowed his good eye in concern. I know it wasn’t possible for the rear tires to be traveling on thin air over the water, but that’s how it seemed.

  Unconcerned about the Greyhound flirting with the fishes, Highpockets got back to introductions up and down the aisle. The Jersey Mosquito. Oscar the Swede. Midnight Frankie. Snuffy. Overland Pete. Shakespeare, who looked to me like any ordinary human being.

  “Then there’s Fingy.” Highpockets pointed to a squat swarthy man who gave Herman a comradely wink and waved a hand short of two fingers.

  The roster of the last bus to Wisdom went on pretty much like that. Bughouse Louie. Pooch. Peerless Peterson. The California Kid, who was the most gray-haired of the bunch. So many others of the sort that I was having trouble keeping track, and Herman looked swamped from the first by the roll call of nicknames.

  No sooner had Highpockets finished than the scrawny one with shoulder blades jutting high as his neck, the Jersey Mosquito known familiarly as Skeeter, leaned into the aisle and addressed me. “That’s us, to the last jot and tittle. Now, who be ye?”

  At least I had no trouble figuring this out, although I had a pang at forsaking Red Chief.

  “I’m Snag.” My jack-o’-lantern smile showed off the jagged reason. “And him here,” I indicated Herman, “is One Eye,” no explanation needed there, either.

  “Good enough for me.” Highpockets credited us both and flashed that OK sign again. “Welcome to the Johnson family,” he left us with, and worked his way seatback by seatback up front to where he sat, the aisle a lot like the deck of a rolling ship as the bus galloped along on the unpaved road.

  To my relief and no doubt Herman’s, the other hoboes took his lead, everyone settling in for the ride, which may have looked short on the map but wound along the twisty river, which would head one direction and then another, with timbered mountains hemming it in so close it was hard to see the sky. I began to wonder about this route that hardly seemed to rate being marked in red on a map. Why were there no towns? Or ranches? A forest ranger station, even. Out there in back-road nowhere, I grew more jittery as every riverbend curve threatened the Greyhound’s groaning springs and Hoppy’s straining grapple with the steering wheel, the water always right down there waiting for a bus to capsize upside down.

  Soon enough, I had something else to worry about. When a swerve around a pothole the size of a washtub swayed Herman halfway into my seat, he glanced around to make sure no one was watching, then took me by the ear again, this time with a harder pinch. His whisper was all that much sharper, too. “Why am I Grossvater all the sudden?”

  Uh oh. I didn’t have to understand German to know he was put out about
being designated grandfather.

  “It’s to cover our tracks,” I sped into rapid-fire explanation as low as I could whisper. “See, this way, if anybody ever picks up our trail and starts nosing around, you’re not on the spot for being my great-uncle, like they’re looking for, you’re just my grandpa in the natural order of things.” Herman’s deep frown did not move a muscle. Casting around for anything that might thaw him, I invoked the Apache method or what I hoped might be. “I bet Winnetou did this all the time, scrubbing out his trail with a batch of sagebrush or something, so his enemy couldn’t run him down. That’s all we’re doing, you being the grossfather is just our, uh, scrub brush, sort of.”

  Herman did not buy my interpretation entirely, his grip on my ear not letting up. “Your eye-dea, this Wisdom bus is.” He cast a dubious look around at our fellow passengers. “Now look who we are with, one step from bums.”

  “Two,” I said, wincing from his hold on me. “Tramps are in between, remember.”

  He still didn’t relent. “What is this Johnsons family?”

  I took a guess. “Maybe it means all the hoboes, sort of like a tribe?” This time I harked back to Crow Fair. “Like the Indians we saw in the camp there, but without tepees or braids or moccasins—”

  “No fancy-dancing, I betcha, either,” he said, pretty sarcastic for him.

  “Herman, listen,” I persevered, ear pinch or no ear pinch, “like it or not, we have to stick with these guys. Think about it, okay?” I managed to flash the hobo sign for that. “You can tell by looking they aren’t ever going to turn you in, are they. They’ve got their own reasons to avoid the cops.”

  Wrinkled in concentration, Herman followed my logic around all the corners he could, finally shaking his head. “If you say so, Donny. I don’t got a better eye-dea.” He pressed against his seatback as if bracing himself. “Let’s go be hoboes, Gramps will live and learn.”