The Wayward Bus

by John Steinbeck

  “That will do,” said Ernest Horton. “I’ve got a dollar bill or so. You owe me nine dollars.” He took one of the tens and gave Mr. Pritchard a dollar.

  “What are they?” Mrs. Pritchard asked. She picked one up but her husband snatched it out of her hand. “No you don’t,” he said mysteriously.

  “But what are they?”

  “That’s for me to know,” said Mr. Pritchard playfully. “You’ll find out quick enough.”

  “Oh, a surprise?”

  “That’s right. Little girls better keep their noses out of what doesn’t concern them.” Mr. Pritchard always called his wife “lit tle girl” when he was playful, and automatically she fell into his mood.

  “When do iddle girls see pretty present?”

  “You’ll find out,” he said, and he stuffed the flat packages in his side pocket. He wanted to come in limping when he got the chance. He had a variation on the trick. He would pretend that his foot was so sore that he couldn’t take off his shoe and sock himself. He would get his wife to take off the sock for him. What a kick that would be to watch her face! She’d nearly die when she saw that sore foot on him.

  “What is it, Elliott?” she asked a little peevishly.

  “You’ll find out, just keep your pretty hair on, little girl.”

  “Say,” he went on to Ernest, “I just thought up a new wrinkle. Tell you about it later.”

  Ernest said, “Yup, that’s what makes the world tick. You get a new wrinkle and you’re fixed. You don’t want to go radical. Just a wrinkle, like they call it in Hollywood, a switcheroo. That’s with a story. You take a picture that’s made dough and you work a switcheroo—not too much, just enough, and you’ve got something then.”

  “That makes sense,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Yes, sir, that makes good sense.”

  “It’s funny about new wrinkles,” said Ernest. He sat down on a stool and crossed his legs. “Funny how you get a wrong idea. Now, I’ve got a kind of an invention and I figured I could sit back and count my money, but I was wrong. You see, there’s lot of fellows like me traveling around living out of a suitcase. Well, maybe there’s a convention or you’ve got a date that’s pretty fancy. You’d like to have a tuxedo. Well, it takes a lot of room to pack a tuxedo and maybe you only use it twice on a whole trip. Well, that’s when I got this idea. Suppose, I said, you’ve got a nice dark business suit—dark blue or almost black or oxford—and suppose you got little silk slipcovers like little lapels and silk stripes that just snap on the pants. In the afternoon you’ve got a nice dark suit and you slip on the silk covers to the lapels and snap on the strips and you’ve got a tuxedo. I even figured out a little bag to carry them in.”2

  “Say!” cried Mr. Pritchard, “that’s a wonderful idea! Say, why I’ve got to take up room in my suitcase right now for a tuxedo. I’d like to get in on a thing like that. If you get up a patent and put on a campaign, a big national advertising campaign, why, you might maybe get a big movie star to endorse it—”

  Ernest held up his hand. “That’s just the way I figured,” he said. “And I was wrong and you’re wrong. I drew it all out on paper and just how it would go on and how the trousers leg would have little tiny silk loops for the hooks for the stripes to go on, and then I had a friend who travels for a big clothes manufacturer”—Ernest chuckled—“he put me right mighty quick. ‘You’d get every tailor and every big manufacturer right on your neck,’ he said. ‘They sell tuxedos anywhere from fifty to a hundred and fifty bucks and you come along with ideas to take that business away with a ten-dollar gadget. Why, they’d run you right out of the country,’ he said.”

  Mr. Pritchard nodded gravely. “Yes, I can see the point. They have to protect themselves and their stockholders.”

  “He didn’t make it sound too hopeful,” said Ernest. “I figured I’d just sit and count the profits. I figured that a fellow, say, traveling by air—he’s got the weight limitations. He’s got the right to save room in his suitcase. It’d be like two suits for the weight of one. And then I figured maybe the jewelry companies might take it up. Set of studs and cuff links and my lapels and stripes all in a nice package. I haven’t got around to that yet. Haven’t asked anybody. Might still be something in it.”

  “You and I ought to get together for a good talk,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Have you got it patented?”

  “Well, no. I didn’t want to go to the expense until I could see if anybody was interested.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Pritchard. “I guess maybe you’re right. Patent attorneys and all, they cost quite a bit of money. Maybe you’re right.” Then he changed the subject. “What time can we get started?” he asked Juan.

  “Well, the Greyhound gets in around ten. They bring regular freight and some passengers. We should get started at ten-thirty. That’s the schedule. Can I get you folks anything else? Some more coffee?”

  “Some more coffee,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  Juan brought it to him and looked out the window at the bus with its wheels turning over in the air. Mr. Pritchard looked at his watch.

  “We’ve still got an hour,” he said.

  A tall, stooped old man came around the side of the building. The man who had slept in Pimples’ bed. He opened the door to the lunchroom, came in, and sat down on a stool. He had his head bent permanently forward on the arthritic stalk of his neck so that the tip of his nose pointed straight at the ground. He was well over sixty, and his eyebrows overhung his eyes like those of a Skye terrier. His long, deeply channeled upper lip was raised over his teeth like the little trunk of a tapir. The point over his middle teeth seemed to be almost prehensile. His eyes were yellowish gold, so that he looked fierce.

  “I don’t like it,” he said without preliminaries. “I didn’t like it yesterday when you broke down, and I like it even less today.”

  “I’ve got the rear end fixed,” said Juan. “Turning over right now.”

  “I think I’ll cancel and go on back to San Ysidro on the Greyhound,” said the man.

  “Well, you can do that.”

  “I’ve got a feeling,” said the man. “I just don’t like it. Something’s trying to give me a warning. I’ve had ’em before a couple of times. I didn’t pay any mind to them once and I got into trouble.”

  “The bus is all right,” said Juan, his voice rising a little in exasperation.

  “I’m not talking about the bus,” said the man. “I live in this county, native of it. The ground’s full of water. San Ysidro River will be up. You know how the San Ysidro rises. Right under Pico Blanco it comes down that Lone Pine Canyon and makes a big loop. Ground gets full of water and every drop runs right off into the San Ysidro. She’ll be raging right now.”

  Mrs. Pritchard began to look alarmed. “Do you think there’s danger?” she asked.

  “Now, dear,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “I’ve got a feeling,” said the man. “The old road used to go around that loop of the river and never cross it. Come thirty years ago Mr. Trask got himself made roadmaster of this county. The old road wasn’t good enough for him. He put in two bridges and saved what? Twelve miles, that’s what he saved. It cost the county twenty-seven thousand dollars. Mr. Trask was a crook.”

  He turned his stiff neck and surveyed the Pritchards. “A crook. Just about to indict him for another job when he died, three years ago. Died a rich man. Got two boys in the University of California right now living on the taxpayers’ money.” He stopped and his upper lip waggled from side to side over his long yellow teeth. “If those bridges get any real strain on them they’ll go out. The concrete isn’t stout enough. I’ll just cancel and go back to San Ysidro.”

  “The river was all right day before yesterday,” said Juan. “Hardly any water in it.”

  “You don’t know the San Ysidro River. She can get up in a couple of hours. I’ve seen her half a mile wide and covered with dead cows and chickenhouses. No, once I get this kind of feeling I won’t go. I’m not superstitious, either.”
/>   “You think the bus might go through the bridge?”

  “I don’t say what I think. I know Trask was a crook. Left an estate of thirty-six thousand five-hundred dollars. His boys are up at college spending it right now.”

  Juan came out from behind the counter and went to the wall phone. “Hello,” he said. “Give me Breed’s Service Station out on the San Juan road. I don’t know the number.” He waited a while and then he said, “Hello. Say, this is Chicoy down at the Corners. How’s the river? Oh, yeah? Well, is the bridge all right? Yeah. Well, O.K., I’ll see you pretty soon.” Juan hung up. “The river is up pretty high,” he explained. “They say the bridge is all right.”

  “That river can rise a foot an hour when Pine Canyon dumps a cloudburst into it. Time you get there the bridge might be gone.”

  Juan turned a little impatiently to him. “What do you want me to do? Not go?”

  “You do just as you like. I only want to cancel and get back to San Ysidro. I’m not going to fool around with this kind of nonsense. Once I had a feeling like this and I didn’t pay attention and I broke both legs. No, sir, I got that feeling when you broke down yesterday.”

  “Well, consider yourself canceled,” said Juan.

  “That’s what I want, mister! You’re not an old-timer here. You don’t know what I know about Trask. Salary of fifteen hundred a year and he leaves thirty-six thousand five-hundred, and a clear title to a hundred and sixty acres of land. Tell me!”

  Juan said, “Well, I’ll see you get on the Greyhound.”

  “Well, I’m not telling you anything about Trask, I’m just telling you what happened. You figure it out for yourself. Thirty-six thousand five-hundred dollars.”

  Ernest Horton asked, “Suppose the bridge is out?”

  “Then we won’t go across it,” said Juan.

  “Then what’ll we do? Turn around and come back?”

  “Sure,” said Juan. “We’ll either do that or jump it.”

  The stooped man smiled about the room in triumph. “You see?” he said. “You’ll come back here and there’ll be no bus here for San Ysidro. You’ll sit around here for how long? Months? Wait for them to build a new bridge? You know who the new roadmaster is? A college boy. Just out of college. All books and no practice. Oh, he can draw a bridge, but can he build one? We’ll see.”

  Suddenly Juan laughed. “Fine,” he said. “The old bridge isn’t washed out yet and already you’re having trouble with the new one that isn’t built.”

  The man turned his aching neck sideways. “Are you getting lippy?” he demanded.

  For a moment a dark red light seemed to glow in Juan’s black eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll get you on the Greyhound, don’t you worry. I wouldn’t want you on this run.”

  “Well, you can’t kick me off, you’re a common carrier.”

  “O.K.,” said Juan wearily. “Sometimes I wonder why I keep the bus. Maybe I won’t much longer. Just a headache. You’ve got a feeling! Nuts!”

  Bernice had been following this conversation very closely. “I don’t believe in these things,” she said, “but they say it’s the dry season down in Mexico. It’s like autumn. Summer’s when it rains.”

  “Mother,” said Mildred, “Mr. Chicoy knows Mexico. He was born there.”

  “Oh, were you? Well, it’s the dry season, isn’t it?”

  “Some places,” said Juan. “I guess it is where you’ll be going. Other places there isn’t any dry season.”

  Mr. Pritchard cleared his throat. “We’re going to Mexico City and to Puebla and then to Cuernavaca and Tasco, and we may take the trip to Acapulco3 and we’ll go to the volcano4 if it’s all right.”

  “You’ll be all right,” said Juan.

  “You know those places?” Mr. Pritchard demanded.

  “Sure.”

  “How are the hotels?” Mr. Pritchard asked. “You know how the travel agencies are—everything is wonderful. How are they really?”

  “Wonderful,” Juan said, smiling now. “They’re great. Breakfast in bed every morning.”

  “I didn’t mean to cause trouble this morning,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “Sure, it’s all right.” He leaned his arms on the counter and spoke confidentially. “I get fed up a little sometimes. I drive that damn bus back and forth and back and forth. Sometime I’d like to take and just head for the hills. I read about a ferryboat captain in New York who just headed out to sea one day and they never heard from him again. Maybe he sunk and maybe he’s tied up on an island some place. I understand that man.”

  A great red truck with a trailer slowed down on the highway outside. The driver looked in. Juan moved his hand rapidly from side to side. The truck went into second gear, gathered speed, and went away.

  “I thought he was coming in,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “He likes raspberry pie,” said Juan. “He always stops when we got some. I just told him we haven’t got any.”

  Mildred was looking at Juan, fascinated. There was something in this dark man with his strange warm eyes that moved her. She felt drawn to him. She wanted to attract his attention, his special attention, to herself. She had thrown back her shoulders so that her breasts were lifted.

  “Why did you leave Mexico?” she asked, and she took off her glasses so that when he answered he would see her without them. She leaned on the table, and put her forefinger to the corner of her left eye, and pulled the skin and eyelid backward. This changed the focus of her eye. She could see his face more clearly that way. It also gave her eyes a long and languorous shape, and her eyes were beautiful.

  “I don’t know why I left,” Juan said to her. His warm eyes seemed to surround her and to caress her. Mildred felt a little weak and sirupy in the pit of her stomach. “I’ll have to stop this,” she thought. “This is crazy.” A quick and sexual picture had formed in her mind.

  Juan said, “People down there, unless they’re rich, have to work too hard and for too little money. I guess that’s the main reason I left.”

  “You speak very good English,” Bernice Pritchard said as though it were a compliment.

  “Why not? My mother was Irish. I got both languages at once.”

  “Well, are you a Mexican citizen?” Mr. Pritchard asked.

  “I guess so,” said Juan. “I never did anything about it.”

  “It’s a good idea to take out your first papers,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “What for?”

  “It’s a good idea.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference to the government,” said Juan. “They can tax me and draft me.”

  “It’s still a pretty good idea,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  Juan’s eyes were playing with Mildred, touching her breasts and sliding down over her hips. He saw her sigh and arch her back a little, and deep in Juan an imp of hatred stirred. Not strongly because there wasn’t much of it in him, but the Indian blood was there, and in the dark past lay the hatred for the ojos claros, the light eyes, the blonds. It was a hatred and a fear of a complexion. The light-eyed people who had for centuries taken the best land, the best horses, the best women. Juan felt the stirring like a little heat lightning, and he felt a glow of pleasure knowing that he could take this girl and twist her and outrage her if he wanted to. He could disturb her and seduce her mentally, and physically too, and then throw her away. The cruelty stirred and he let it mount in him. His voice grew softer and more rich. He spoke directly into Mildred’s violet eyes.

  “My country,” he said, “even if I don’t live there, it is in my heart.” He laughed inside at this, but Mildred did not laugh. She leaned forward a little and pulled back the corners of both eyes so that she could see his face more clearly.

  “I remember things,” said Juan. “In the square of my town there were public letter-writers who did all the business for the people who couldn’t read or write. They were good men. They had to be. The country people would know if they weren’t. They know many things, those people of the hills. And I r
emember one morning when I was a little boy I was sitting on a bench. There was a fiesta in this town in honor of a saint. The church was full of flowers and there were candy stands and a ferris-wheel and a little merry-go-round. And all night the people shot off skyrockets to the saint. In the park an Indian came to the letter-writer and said, ‘I want you to write a letter to my patron. I will tell you what to say and you will put it in good and beautiful form so he will not find me discourteous.’ ‘Is it a long letter?’ the man asked. ‘I don’t know,’ said the Indian. ‘That will be one peso,’ said the man. And the little Indian paid him, and he said, ‘I want you to say to my patron that I cannot go back to my town and my fields for I have seen great beauty and I must stay behind. Tell him I am sorry and I do not wish to give him pain, nor my friends, either, but I could not go back. I am different and my friends would not know me. I would be unhappy in the field and restless. And because I would be different my friends would reject me and hate me. I have seen the stars. Tell him that. And tell him to give my chair to my friend brother and my pig with the two little ones to the old woman who sat with me in fever. My pots to my brother-in-law, and tell the patron to go with God, with loveliness. Tell him that.’ ”

  Juan paused and saw that Mildred’s lips were open a little, and he saw that she was taking his story as an allegory for herself.

  “What had happened to him?” she asked.

  “Why, he had seen the merry-go-round,” said Juan. “He couldn’t leave it. He slept beside it, and pretty soon his money was gone and he was starving, and then the owner let him turn the crank that ran the merry-go-round and fed him. He couldn’t ever leave. He loved the merry-go-round. Maybe he’s still there.” Juan had become foreign in the telling. A trifle of accent had come into his speech.

  Mildred sighed deeply. Mr. Pritchard said, “Let me get this straight. He gave away his land and all his property and he never went home because he saw a merry-go-round?”

  “He didn’t even own his land,” said Juan. “Little Indians never own their land. But he gave away everything else he had.”