Last Bus to Wisdom

by Ivan Doig

  • • •

  I KNEW IT. The arrest-happy little meanie was out to get us, was going to get us. Our life together, our lives separately, was going to fizzle into separation and incarceration, nightmare coming true.

  Herman did his best to face down the challenge, looking squarely at the sheriff with his good eye. “Fritz, is the right name. Scotty’s grandpa, I am.”

  “You sure sound like it, Scotch as all get out,” the sheriff said cynically.

  “Rasmussen, I’d bet my boots you’re harboring a runaway,” he crowed to Rags, who took that in mutely. “And maybe worse. Seems to me I’ve laid eyes on this mug before—how about you, Mallory?” the preening lawman spoke over his shoulder to the local deputy.

  Herman’s clasp of me held firmer than ever as Harv started forward to our aid, but Highpockets stopped him.

  “You better think twice about this, Johnny Law,” he warned, stepping in beside Herman and me. The scar at the corner of his mouth was white with anger. “These fellas are with us, they’re not causing you any trouble. You can’t breeze in here from bare-ass nowhere and start picking us off just because you feel like it. Take a look around you. This isn’t some goddamn freight yard and you’re the yard bull.” Behind him, Skeeter and Peerless and Fingy and Midnight Frankie and Shakespeare and Pooch ranged around us in support.

  “Oh, can’t I breeze in here, like you say, and make an arrest?” The sheriff smirked and fingered his star as a pointed reminder. “Who’s wearing the badge around here?”

  That was the wrong thing to do. Something like a spell came over the hoboes, if a general sense of fury can be called that. I could see it in their eyes, the pent-up rage and hate from years of railyard bulls and Palookaville hick dicks beating them and throwing them into jail and kicking them out of town, the badge of authority the mark of adversity in their lives, Pooch a living reminder among them of the billy clubs of the law.

  As the sheriff turned and strutted toward Harv, after warning Herman and me not to move, Highpockets murmured without moving his lips, “Skeeter, pass the toothpicks.” Discreetly the old hobo drifted off to the shop where Herman sharpened things.

  “C’mon, Harv, let’s arrange some free board and room in lovely Wolf Point for you,” the sheriff busied up. “Get in the patrol car. Front seat. Leave room in the back for other customers.” He glanced back to check on Herman and me. I kept looking to Rags, still standing easy to one side, keeping Jones under control. If things were a matter of timing like he said, wasn’t it about time to rein in this busybody lawman who was ready to cart Herman and me off to our doom along with Harv?

  Meanwhile Harv folded his arms on his chest. “No.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The sheriff cocked a look up at the much taller man.

  “Just what it sounds like. No.”

  “If you do the crime,” the sheriff erupted, “you’re supposed to do the time! That’s practically in the Bible! Now get in the patrol car!”

  “Still no,” Harv declared, not budging. “Not until we work this out. That jurisdiction you talk about so much—it maybe’s slipped your mind I busted out of jail in Wolf Point, and that’s not in your county, the way I see it.”

  The Glasgow sheriff scowled. “You’re turning into a regular jailhouse lawyer, are you, all the experience you’re building up behind bars.” He poked his hat higher on his head to try to look taller as he faced Harv. “All right, let’s get down to the pussy purr here. I’m taking you in for violating my custody, not once but twice when I packed you over there to the Wolf Point stony lonesome. Like I’m gonna do again, damn it.”

  Listening hard, the deputy sheriff from Wisdom appeared uneasy but didn’t say anything. Harv did, though.

  “Carl, I’ll go with you, on a couple of conditions. First one is, you leave these other two fellows alone. You don’t have to play bloodhound where you don’t belong.” The sheriff started to shake his head, but Harv lifted a warning hand. “Hear me out on the rest of this. I serve my sentence, how much was that again—?”

  “Forty-five days,” the sheriff answered peevishly.

  “That’s way to hell and gone too much for fightin’ in a bar,” Peerless objected, while others in the hobo circle whistled in disbelief.

  “And they’re brothers!” I could not hold that in any longer. “I heard them both say so, and I’ve got their names in my autograph book to prove it!”

  “Step-brothers, damn it. Don’t make it worse than it is,” Sheriff Kinnick snapped, glowering at me. “But that don’t matter,” he plodded on, glaring around at his restive audience as Highpockets coldly mocked, “Of course not. You just didn’t have anything better to do than track your own kin down across half the state.”

  “Like I was saying,” Harv put the rest of his proposition, “I serve my sentence, but in your jail there in Glasgow. That way,” he said, as if it made all the sense in the world, and to me it did, “Letty can visit me when she gets off work at the supper club and I won’t need to bust out all the time.”

  “Nothing doing,” the sheriff turned the proposition down flat, still a stickler or worse. “The foreign geezer and the loose kid ought to be hauled in for investigation, they’re suspicious characters if I ever saw any, and that’s that.” He brushed his hands together as if we did not count for much, his real ire directed at Harv’s other stipulation. “Wolf Point is where you broke jail, that’s where you’re going back in, period and end of sentence.”

  Harv shook his head that minimal way of his, enough and no more. “Carl, I’m sick of you yanking me around just to prove you can, and you shouldn’t be arresting these other two for no good cause, either.” He looked unflinchingly at the smaller man, the doll-like face turning red under his gaze. “As to packing me back to Wolf Point, they’d be happy not to have me back in that two-bit slammer of theirs, it’d save them a lot of trouble. Jugging me in Glasgow instead of booting me to the far end of the state isn’t that much to ask, and you know it.”

  In my eyes and Herman’s, fully as stalwart as any hero who ever faced a six-shooter, Harv stayed set as stone in front of his step-brother. “If you won’t do that for me, Carl, you’ll have to shoot me to take me.”

  “You stubborn fool,” the sheriff raged against being defied, dropping his hand to his holster. “That can be arranged, too, according to this pistol.”

  • • •

  THE MOMENT SEARED into me, I can feel it yet. Was this how shootouts happened in the Old West? Some dumb pistoleer goes for his gun and, next thing, there is bloodshed everywhere? Both of us tense as sentinels, Herman and I could see it happening, clear as a bang-bang page out of Karl May. Except that Herman in a swift move rewrote that ending, thrusting me aside to safety and crying out, “No need for shooting! I will go with sheriff!”

  “No, you won’t,” Highpocket’s voice cut into the scene, the other hoboes fanning out around him and us as he spoke. “Harv has his reason to be hauled off with this little jaybird, but you don’t need to.” His words were backed up by the pitchforks Skeeter had distributed upon his return from the blacksmith shop, tines gleaming fresh from the grindstone.

  The sheriff stared in disbelief at the cordon of grim men, weapons at the ready. “If that’s the way you want it,” he unsteadily tried to bluster, “getting a helping of lead for obstructing justice—”

  “Whoa.”

  The word soft as a coax in a horse’s ear came from Rags. “Let’s sort the situation out a little bit.” He ambled around to the far side of the confrontation. “Mallory, if I was you, I’d be looking the other direction during this.”

  “I was thinking that myself,” the deputy sheriff said, moving off with his back turned to the situation created by the furious Glasgow sheriff.

  “Jonesie, keep an eye on this with me,” Rags resumed, still softly conversational. “Somebody’s got to be witnesses if this
buck-fever sheriff cuts loose on innocent men on their way to pitch some hay, don’t you think?”

  “I’m seeing the same thing ahead you are,” the foreman agreed, sending the sheriff a look that meant it. “Manslaughter, if not murder, way beyond the performance of duty.”

  “Doesn’t look good, does it,” Rags suggested at large. Then said to the sheriff, as if calming him, “Maybe you ought to consider Harv’s offer a little more. Sounds like a fair deal to me.”

  Scanning around furiously at man after man armed with a shiny pitchfork, the sheriff held his pose, his hand twitching over his gun butt.

  “Carl, none of us are any use to you dead,” Harv put in on him with surprising gentleness. The frustrated lawman cast one last look around at the united bunch of us, then slowly let his gun hand fall to his side.

  Breathing hard, he faced Harv, who still was standing there waiting him out. “All right, you win. Glasgow and Letty it is, loverboy. I’ve got to put up with you under the same roof just like when we was kids, do I,” he complained, as if he’d been sentenced to his own jail. Trying to fluff himself up, he turned to the waiting deputy and made another swipe of the hand at Herman and me. “On second thought, these other two yayhoos aren’t my worry. Harv, grab your stuff and we’ll head for Glasgow,” he said, as if it had been his own idea all along.

  First shaking hands all around with the crew, Harv went to fetch his bedroll from the bunkhouse while Skeeter collected the pitchforks and Highpockets kept an eye on things, and in a daze I realized Herman and I were free again.

  Almost. Behind us, Rags proved that he had a boss voice when he wanted to. “Now, let’s sort you two out. Find out what kind of desperadoes I’ve let on the place. Come on up to the house.”

  • • •

  LEADING US into his office, Rags seated himself at a desk big as a dining room table and motioned us to sit down across from him. Perched there, I couldn’t help but sneak peeks around the room, as I’d bet Herman was doing, too. On all the walls were framed photographs of Rags riding twisty broncs, and championship awards, the kind of marks of fame I had hoped to see on Aunt Kate’s walls when I was under the impression she was Kate Smith. This was worlds better, leaving me open-mouthed as I gazed around the collection. Also, from right there at the heart of Rags Rasmussen’s ranch empire, I could see the daybooks arranged as neatly as you would expect from the most scrupulous bronc rider in the world, and fine old furniture which put the Double W’s to shame. One item I recognized from having read about the Pilgrims was a sinner’s bench, a straight-backed hardwood church pew that must have been a rare antique. On it sat one of those hand-carved signs sold at the craft booths outside rodeo arenas, with the wording WHY IS TEMPTATION ALWAYS THE TASTIEST THING ON THE MENU? Well, nobody said Rags lacked a sense of humor.

  Pretty quick, though, I snapped to, into full realization that big desks like the one separating us from Rags Rasmussen was where ranch bosses wrote out checks when they fired someone. Herman had that same awareness, I could tell from his spooked expression.

  Looking as if he’d rather be in a saddle somewhere, Rags turned first to Herman. “Fritz, as I guess I better get used to calling you until further notice,” he said, as if grading his behavior in the presence of a pistoleer, “you could have got your cozies shot off, you know, making that move when that peewee sheriff was itching for his gun.”

  “I did not think of myself,” Herman answered simply. “I taked a leap of fate.”

  Rags digested that, long enough that our seats were growing as hard as that sinner’s bench. Then he sat up a bit and sighed. “Better to be lucky than smart, I suppose. All right, tell me the rest of it, why fate had to plunk the two of you down on my ranch out of all the places in the Big Hole.”

  Between us, Herman and I owned up to everything, with Rags listening hard.

  When we finally ran out of confessions, he rubbed his jaw longer than usual before saying that sneaking into America to get away from Hitler probably was the kind of infraction that would die away with time, and any choreboy who made Jones happy was worth keeping. That took care of Herman but left the matter of me, quivering inside as I waited.

  “A kid kicking around on a ranch is a tricky proposition,” Rags came right to the point, looking at me the frank, open way he’d done when it was the two of us in the stall with Queen, the crucial listener this time Herman. “I know firsthand—I was one, and I could be a champion nuisance sometimes.” That description gripped me so squarely I couldn’t even swallow.

  “But that comes with ranch life, I suppose”—Rags looked around the office as if reminding himself he was sitting in the owner’s seat of the Diamond Buckle—“sorting out which nuisances to put up with or not.” He straightened up while I slumped to my fate. “What I started to tell you back there in the barn, before all the commotion,” I heard him say, as if we were taking this ride into the unknown together, “is I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for you to stay on here with Gramps, if he’ll be responsible for you. If he can stand the nuisance, I suppose I can,” he said half humorously, then studied me soberly. “That’s if you make up your mind to stay on here.”

  Fate or not, my mind leaped, in one direction and then the other. My choice was wide open now, Herman or Gram, heart against conscience, if it is ever that evenly divided. I heard my decision the same instant the two of them did.

  “I—I want to stay.”

  I shall see the two of them forever in that moment, Herman looking like he was trying to catch his breath, Rags awarding himself a little grin before turning serious again.

  “Since you’re gonna stick around with us,” he started, as if just making talk with me, “that opens up something else.” He grimaced toward the kitchen, where Mrs. Costello had the radio blaring away and was making a racket with pots and pans as she clattered together the semblance of a meal. “A cook, did you say your sainted granny is?”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As ever, through sixteen books and fifty years of marriage, Carol Doig has been my incomparable companion, cheerleader, and keen-eyed first reader. As I say every time a book is born in this household, I couldn’t have done it without you, darling.

  This novel and I have had the great good fortune to enlist the skills and enthusiastic backing of our longtime Montana friend, Marcella Sherfy Walter. Marcella worked research magic in reconstituting 1951 Manitowoc, Greyhound bus travel of the era, historic features of Crow Fair, and many other details that enrich a work of the imagination such as this. She’s also served as a first-rate commentator on the manuscript-in-progress, saving me from errors large and small many a time.

  Katharina Maloof wonderfully fulfilled the big job of keeping me straight, insofar as an author intent on lingual mischief can be steered, on the capricious lingo of Herman the German. John Maloof was a terrific bonus as an early reader, encouraging me with his own boyhood experience of being put on a bus to he knew not what.

  Once again, Ann McCartney, trusted friend and eagle-eyed reader, lent her savvy to the manuscript. The further priceless loan was from her treasure trove of National Geographics, so Donny could peruse faraway places where people wore surprisingly little.

  The marvelous poet and friend Linda Bierds kept a straight face and helpful mien as I tried out some of the verses for Donny’s autograph book—I am still sky-high that my line about memory, “Roses in the snow of long ago,” met with her approval.

  Ann and Marshall Nelson, fresh from the Pendleton Roundup, lavished rodeo material on me, which went a long way toward Rags Rasmussen’s immortal ride of Buzzard Head.

  I’m indebted to my college classmate and friend ever since, Kay Pride, for telling me about her joyous childhood adventure of turning breakfast toast into outlines of countries under the fond tutelage of her geography teacher grandfather. It sounded to me like one of the talents Herman the German had to have.

  My fe
llow enthusiast for lingo and sayings, John W. Grubbs, provided the slang gem “I slipped on a banana peeling and hit the ceiling,” which cried out to be part of a comedic inscription in Donny’s autograph book.

  How fortunate to have as a friend Tony Angell, an expert on all things avian through his art, to teach me the eagle screech.

  And what a bonus of luck to have a tried-and-true wordmaster, my writing buddy David Laskin, as an enthusiastic early reader.

  Once again, a manuscript does not become a finished tome without the skills and wiles of my blessed team of makers of books: Becky Saletan, Liz Darhansoff, and Michelle Koufopoulos.

  A few words and confessions about the settings of this novel:

  While I have striven to evoke the city of Manitowoc and the town of Wisdom as they might have appeared to a youngster more than sixty years ago, I have taken liberties whenever needed for plot purposes. Similarly, my version of Crow Fair is largely imaginary, and I apologize for the story’s necessity that the great gathering coincide with the Fourth of July, when in actuality Crow Fair takes place the third weekend in August. I can’t resist adding that my own experience at such a gathering dates back to the mid-1950s, when my family and I, residents of the Blackfeet Reservation in season sheepherding for three years, never missed attending “North American Indian Days” in Browning. Some memories take deep root.

  At the time of this story, 1951, the small Blackfeet Reservation community of Heart Butte had no high school and hence no Heart Butte Warriors team of famous basketball proficiency as I portrayed. But since then, Heart Butte has attained a high school and the Warriors have twice been Class C state basketball champions, an example of life copying art that can only make an author grin.

  While Highpockets, the Jersey Mosquito, and the other haymaking hoboes are creations of my imagination, their tradition of following the crops derives from the magisterial study of transient harvest workers in American society, Hoboes: Bindlestiffs, Fruit Tramps, and the Harvesting of the West by Mark Wyman.