The Wayward Bus

by John Steinbeck

  Camille picked up her suitcase and scuttled out of the door. She didn’t want to sit with any of the men. She was tired. Quickly her mind had gone over the possibilities. Mildred Pritchard was unattached and already Mildred didn’t like her. But the girl who had quit was out there in the bus. Camille hurried out the door and climbed in. As quickly as they could, Ernest Horton and Mr. Pritchard followed, but Camille was in the bus. Norma sat quite still. Her eyes were hostile and her nose red and shiny. Norma was very much frightened at what she had done.

  Camille said, “Would you mind if I sit with you, honey?”

  Norma turned her head stiffly and regarded the blonde. “There’s plenty of seats,” she said.

  “Would you mind? I’ll tell you why later.”

  “Suit your own convenience,” said Norma grandly. She could tell that this girl was expensively dressed. It didn’t make sense. People didn’t want to sit with Norma. But there was a reason. Maybe a mysterious reason. Norma knew her movies. Things like this could turn into nine reels of pure delight. She moved over near the window and made room.

  “How far are you going?” Norma asked.

  “To L.A.”

  “Why, I’m going there too! Do you live there?”

  “Off and on,” said Camille. She noticed that the men who had come piling out of the lunchroom had seen her sit down with Norma. Their drive slowed down. There was going to be no competition. They clustered around the rear end of the bus to have the bags put in the luggage compartment.

  Juan lingered at the lunchroom door with Alice looking through the screen at him. “Take it easy,” he said. “Had a god-damn mess all morning. Try to get it cleared up before I get home.”

  A sharpness came on Alice’s face. She was about to answer.

  Juan went on, “Or one of these days I won’t get home.”

  Her breath caught. “I just don’t feel good,” she whined.

  “Well, start feeling good, then, and don’t run it into the ground. Nobody likes sick people very long. Nobody. Get that straight.” His eyes were not looking at her but around her and through her, and panic came over Alice. Juan turned away and walked toward the bus.

  Alice leaned her elbows on the cross piece of the screen door. Big soft tears filled her eyes. “I’m fat,” she said quietly, “and I’m old. Oh, Jesus, I’m old!” The tears ran into her nose. She snorted them back. She said, “You can get young girls, but what can I get? Nothing. An old slob.” She sniffled quietly behind the screen.

  Mr. Pritchard would have liked to have sat behind the blonde to watch her, but Mrs. Pritchard took a seat near the front and he had to sit down beside her. Mildred sat alone on the other side and behind them. Pimples climbed on and he got the seat Mr. Pritchard wanted, and Ernest Horton sat with him.

  Juan noticed with dismay that Van Brunt took the seat directly behind the driver’s seat. Juan was nervous. He hadn’t had much sleep and some kind of hell had been popping since early morning. He got the bags neatly stacked in the rear trunk, pulled the canvas cover down, and closed the door of the trunk. He waved his hand at Alice leaning inside the screen door. He knew from her posture that she was crying and he intended that she should. She’d got out of hand. He wondered why he stayed with her. Just pure laziness, he guessed. He didn’t want to go through the emotional turmoil of leaving her. In spite of himself he’d worry about her and it was too much trouble. He’d need another woman right away and that took a lot of talking and arguing and persuading. It was different just to lay a girl but he would need a woman around, and that was the difference. You got used to one and it was less trouble. Besides Alice was the only woman he had ever found outside of Mexico who could cook beans. A funny thing. Every little Indian in Mexico could cook beans properly and no one up here except Alice—just enough juice, just the right flavor of the bean without another flavor mixed up with it. Here they put tomatoes and chili and garlic and such things in the beans, and a bean should be cooked for itself, with itself, alone. Juan chuckled. “Because she can cook beans,” he said to himself.

  But there was another reason too. She loved him. She really did. And he knew it. And you can’t leave a thing like that. It’s a structure and it has an architecture, and you can’t leave it without tearing off a piece of yourself. So if you want to remain whole you stay no matter how much you may dislike staying. Juan was not a man who fooled himself very much.

  He was almost to the bus when he turned back and walked quickly to the screen door. “Take care of yourself,” he said. His eyes were warm. “Get a slug of liquor for that tooth.” He turned away and walked back to the bus. She’d be drunker than a skunk when he got back, but maybe that would blow out her tubes and she’d feel better. He would sleep in Norma’s bed if Alice passed out. He couldn’t stand the smell of her when she was drunk. She had an acid, bitter smell.

  Juan glanced up at the sky. The air was still but up high a wind was blowing, bringing legions of new clouds over the mountains, and these clouds were flat and they were joining together and moving in on one another as they hurried across the sky. The big oaks still dripped water from the morning rain and the geranium leaves held shining drops in the centers. There was a hush on the land and a great activity.

  Much as he hated to give Van Brunt any credit, Juan was afraid it was going to rain some more, and soon. He climbed up the steps of the bus. Van Brunt caught him before he even sat down.

  “Know where that wind’s coming from? Southwest. Know where those clouds are coming from? Southwest. You know where our rain comes from?” he demanded triumphantly. “Southwest.”

  “O.K., and we’re all gonna die sometime,” said Juan. “Some of us pretty horribly. You might get run over by a tractor. Ever seen a man run over by a tractor?”

  “How do you figure that?” Van Brunt demanded.

  “Let it rain,” said Juan.

  “I don’t own a tractor,” said Van Brunt. “I got four pair of the best horses in this state. How do you figure that tractor?”

  Juan stepped on the starter. It had a high, thin, scratchy sound, but almost immediately his motor started and it sounded good. It sounded smooth and nice. Juan turned in his seat.

  “Kit,” he called, “keep listening to that rear end.”

  “O.K.,” said Pimples. He felt good about Juan’s confidence.

  Juan waved his hand to Alice and closed the bus door with his lever. He couldn’t see what she was doing through the screen. She would let him get out of sight before she brought out a bottle. He hoped she wouldn’t get into any trouble.

  Juan drove around the front of the lunchroom and turned right into the black-top road that led to San Juan de la Cruz. It wasn’t a very wide road but it was fairly smooth and the crown had a high arch so that it shed the water nicely. The valley and the hills were splashed with gouts of sunlight, and they were fenced with the moving shadows of clouds rushing across the sky. The sun spots and the shadows were somber gray, threatening and sad.

  “Sweetheart” bumped along at forty. She was a good bus and the rear end sounded good too.

  “I never liked tractors,” said Mr. Van Brunt.

  “I don’t either,” Juan agreed. He felt fine all of a sudden.

  Van Brunt couldn’t let it alone. Juan had succeeded beyond his hopes. Van Brunt turned his head sideways on his stiff neck. “Say, you’re not one of these fortunetellers or anything like that?”

  “No,” said Juan.

  “Because I don’t believe any stuff like that,” said Van Brunt.

  “Neither do I,” said Juan.

  “I wouldn’t have a tractor on the place.”

  Juan was about to say “I had a brother who was kicked to death by a horse,” but he thought, “Aw, nuts, the guy’s a push-over. I wonder what he’s scared of.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The highway to San Juan de la Cruz was a black-top road. In the twenties hundreds of miles of concrete highway had been laid down in California, and people had sat back and said, “Th
ere, that’s permanent. That will last as long as the Roman roads and longer, because no grass can grow up through the concrete to break it.” But it wasn’t so. The rubber-shod trucks, the pounding automobiles, beat the concrete, and after a while the life went out of it and it began to crumble. Then a side broke off and a hole crushed through and a crack developed and a little ice in the winter spread the crack, so the resisting concrete could not stand the beating of rubber and broke down.

  Then the county maintenance crews poured tar in the cracks to keep the water out, and that didn’t work, and finally they capped the roads with an asphalt and gravel mixture. That did survive, because it offered no stern face to the pounding tires. It gave a little and came back a little. It softened in the summer and hardened in the winter. And gradually all the roads were capped with shining black that looked silver in the distance.

  The San Juan road ran straight for a long way through level fields, and the fields were not fenced because cattle didn’t wander any more. The land was too valuable for grazing. The fields were open to the highway. They terminated in ditches beside the road. And in the ditches the wild mustard grew rankly and the wild turnip with its little purple flowers. The ditches were lined with blue lupines. The poppies were tightly rolled, for the open flowers had been beaten off by the rain.

  The road ran straight toward the little foothills of the first range—rounded, woman-like hills, soft and sexual as flesh. And the green clinging grass had the bloom of young skin. The hills were rich and lovely with water, and along the smooth and beautiful road “Sweetheart” rolled. Her washed and shining sides reflected in the water of the ditches. The little tokens swung against the windshield—the tiny boxing gloves, the baby’s shoe. The Virgin of Guadalupe on her crescent moon on top of the instrument board looked benignly back at the passengers.

  There was no rough or ill sound from the rear end, just the curious whine of the transmission. Juan settled back in his seat prepared to enjoy the trip. He had a big mirror in front of him so that he could watch the passengers, and he had a long mirror out the window in which he could see the road behind. The road was deserted. Only a few cars passed, and none came from the direction of San Juan. At first this puzzled him unconsciously, and then he began to worry actively. Perhaps the bridge was out. Well, if it was he would have to come back. He’d take the whole crowd of passengers into San Ysidro and turn them loose there. If the bridge was out, there would be no bus line until it was in again. He noticed in his mirror that Ernest Horton had got his sample case open and was showing Pimples some kind of gadget that whirled and flashed and disappeared. And he noticed that Norma and the blonde had their heads together and were talking. He increased his speed a little.

  He didn’t think he was going to do anything about the blonde. There wasn’t any possible way to get at her. And Juan was old enough not to suffer from something that was out of possibility. Given the opportunity there wasn’t any question about what he would do. He had felt a wrench in the pit of his stomach when he first saw the blonde.

  Norma had been stiff with Camille so far. She was so frozen up it took her some time to thaw. But Camille needed Norma as a kind of a shield, and they had their destination in common.

  “I’ve never been in L.A. or Hollywood,” Norma confided softly so that Ernest could not hear. “I won’t know where to go or anything.”

  “What are you going to do?” Camille asked.

  “Get a job, I guess. Waitress or something. I’d like to get in pictures.”

  Camille’s mouth tightened in a smile. “You get a job wait ressing first,” she said. “Pictures are a very tough racket.”

  “Are you an actress?” Norma asked. “You look like you might be an actress.”

  “No,” said Camille. “I work for dentists. I’m a dental nurse.”

  “Well, do you live in a hotel, or a room, or a house?”

  “I don’t have any place to live,” said Camille. “I used to have an apartment with a girl friend before I went to Chicago to work.”

  Norma’s eyes grew eager. “I’ve got a little money put away,” she said. “Maybe we could get an apartment together. Say, if I got a job in a restaurant it wouldn’t cost hardly anything for food. I could bring stuff home.” A hunger was growing in Norma’s eyes. “Why, maybe sharing the rent it wouldn’t be much. I could make good tips, maybe.”

  Camille felt a warmth for the girl. She looked at the red nose and the dull complexion, the small pale eyes. “We’ll see how it goes,” she said.

  Norma leaned close. “I know your hair’s natural,” she said. “But maybe you could show me how to kind of touch mine up. My hair’s mousy. Just mousy.”

  Camille laughed. “You’d be surprised if you knew what color my hair is,” she said. “Hold still a minute.” She studied Norma’s face, trying to visualize what cold cream and powder and mascara could do for her, and she thought of the hair shining and waved, and the eyes made a little larger with eyeshadow, and the mouth reshaped with lipstick. Camille hadn’t any illusions about beauty. Loraine was a washed-out little rat without make-up but Loraine did all right. It would be fun and company to make this girl over and to give her some confidence. It might even be better than Loraine.

  “Let’s think about it,” she said. “This is pretty country. I’d like to live in the country some time.” A picture had projected itself on her mind, the pattern of what would happen. She would fix Norma up. She could be kind of pretty if she was careful. And then Norma would meet a boy and naturally she’d bring him home to show him off and the boy would make passes at Camille and Norma would hate her. That’s the way it would happen. That’s the way it had happened. But what the hell! It would be fun before it happened. And maybe she could anticipate it and never be in when Norma brought a boy home.

  She felt warm and friendly. “Let’s think about it,” she said.

  On the highway ahead Juan saw a crushed jackrabbit. Lots of people liked to run over things like that, but Juan didn’t. He moved his steering wheel so that the flattened carcass passed between the wheels and there was no crunching under the tires. He had the bus at forty-five. The big highway busses sometimes went sixty miles an hour, but Juan had plenty of time. The road was straight for another two miles before it began wandering into the soft foothills. Juan took one hand off the wheel and stretched.

  Mildred Pritchard felt the telegraph poles whipping by as little blows on her eyes. She had her glasses on again. She watched Juan’s face in the mirror. She could see little more than a profile from her angle. She noticed that he raised his head to look back at the blonde every minute or so, and she felt a bitter anger. She was confused about what had happened that morning. No one knew, of course, unless Juan Chicoy had guessed. She was still a little swollen and itchy from the thing. A sentence kept repeating itself in her mind. She’s not a blonde and she’s not a nurse and her name is not Camille Oaks. The sentence went on, over and over. And then she chuckled at herself inwardly. “I’m trying to destroy her,” she thought. “I’m doing a stupid thing. Why not admit I’m jealous? I’m jealous. All right. Does admitting it make me any less jealous? No, it does not. But she forced my father to make a fool of himself. All right. Do I care whether my father is a fool? No, I do not—if I’m not with him. I don’t want people to think I’m his daughter, that’s all. No, that’s not true either. I don’t want to go to Mexico with him. I can hear everything he’ll say.” She was uncomfortable and the movement of the bus was not helping. “Basketball,” she thought, “that’s the stuff.” She flexed the muscles of her thighs and thought about the engineering student with the crew-cut hair. She pictured her affair with him.

  Mr. Pritchard was bored and tired. He could be very irritating when he was bored. He twitched. “This looks like rich country,” he said to his wife. “California raises most of the vegetables for the United States, you know.”

  Mrs. Pritchard could hear herself talking after she got home. “Then we drove through miles and miles
of green fields with poppies and lupines, just like a garden. There was a blond girl got on at a funny little place and the men made fools of themselves, even Elliott. I joshed him about it for a week afterward.” She’d write it in a letter. “And I’m pretty sure the poor little painted thing was just as nice and sweet as could be. She said she was a nurse, but I think she was probably an actress—little parts, you know. There are so many of them in Hollywood. Thirty-eight thousand listed. They’ve got a big casting agency. Thirty-eight thousand.” Her head nodded a little. Bernice was sleepy and hungry. “I wonder what adventures we’ll have now,” she thought.

  When his wife slipped into her daydream Mr. Pritchard knew it. He had been married to her long enough to know when she wasn’t listening to him, and ordinarily he went right on talking. He often clarified his thinking about business or politics by telling his thoughts to Bernice when she wasn’t listening. He had a trained memory for figures and for bits of information. He knew approximately how many tons of sugar beets were produced in the Salinas valley. He had read it and retained it in spite of the fact that he had no use whatever for the information. He felt that such information was good to know and he had never questioned its value or why it might be good to know. But now he had no inclination toward knowledge. A powerful influence was battering at him from the rear of the bus. He wanted to turn around and look at the blonde. He wanted to sit where he could watch her. Horton and Pimples were behind him. He couldn’t just sit opposite and look at her.

  Mrs. Pritchard asked, “How old do you think she is?” And the question shocked him because he had been wondering the same thing.

  “How old who is?” he asked.

  “The young woman. The blond young woman.”

  “Oh, her. How should I know?” His answer was so rough that his wife looked a little bewildered and hurt. He saw it and tried to cover his mistake. “Little girls know more about little girls,” he said. “You could tell better than I could.”