The Wayward Bus

by John Steinbeck

  Thus Juan as a child had loved her very deeply and had trusted her, and his father had told him that she was the one set aside especially to watch over Mexicans. When he saw German or Gringo children in the streets he knew that his Virgin didn’t give a damn about them because they were not Mexicans.

  When you add to this the fact that Juan did not believe in her with his mind and did with every sense, you have his attitude toward Our Lady of Guadalupe.

  The bus slithered along the muddy road, moving very slowly and leaving deep ruts behind. Juan flicked his eyes to the Virgin and he said in his mind, “You know that I have not been happy and also that out of a sense of duty that is not natural to me I have stayed in the traps that have been set for me. And now I am about to put a decision in your hands. I cannot take the responsibility for running away from my wife and my little business. When I was younger I could have done it, but I am soft now and weak in my decisions. And I am putting this in your hands. I am on this road not of my own volition. I have been forced here by the wills of these people who do not care anything for me or for my safety or happiness, but only for their own plans. I think they have not even seen me. I’m an engine to get them where they are going. I offered to take them back. You heard me. So I am leaving it to you, and I will know your will. If the bus mires down so that ordinary work will let me get it out and proceed, I will get it out. If ordinary precaution will keep the bus safe and on the road, I will take that precaution. But if you, in your wisdom, wish to give me a sign by dropping the bus into the mud up to the axles, or sliding it off the road into a ditch where I couldn’t do anything about it, I will know you approve of what I want to do. Then I will walk away. Then these people can take care of themselves. I will walk away and disappear. I will never go back to Alice. I will take off my old life like a suit of underwear. It is up to you.”

  He nodded and smiled at the Virgin, and she had the little smile on her face too. She knew what was going to happen, but, of course, there was no way of finding that out. He couldn’t run away without sanction. He had to have the approval of the Virgin. It was directly up to her. If she felt strongly about his going back to Alice, she would smooth the road and get the bus through, and he would know that he was set for life with what he had.

  He breathed high in his lungs with excitement and his eyes shone. Mildred could see his face in the rear-view mirror. She wondered what terrible joy there was in his mind to make his face light up. This was a man, she thought, a man of complete manness. This was the kind of a man that a pure woman would want to have because he wouldn’t even want to be part woman. He would be content with his own sex. He wouldn’t ever try to understand women and that would be a relief. He would just take what he wanted from them. Her disgust for herself passed, and she felt pretty good again.

  Her mother was writing another letter in her mind. “There we were on that muddy road, miles from any place. And even the driver didn’t know the road. Well, just anything could happen. Anything. There wasn’t a house in sight and the rain was starting.”

  The rain was starting. Not like the gusts and spurts of the morning, but a heavy, driving, drumming, businesslike rain that delivered so many gallons an hour in a given area. And there was no wind. This was downpour, pure, straight rainfall. The bus hissed and splashed over the level road, and Juan, when he turned the front wheels a little, could feel the rear end slide.

  “You got any chains?” Van Brunt called.

  “No,” said Juan happily. “Haven’t been able to get chains since before the war.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to make it,” said Van Brunt. “You’re all right on the level but you’ve got to start going uphill pretty soon.” He motioned to the east and the mountains toward which they were crawling. “The river cuts right up against a bluff,” he shouted to the other passengers. “The road goes up over that bluff. I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

  To Pimples it had been a morning of conflicts and stresses. There weren’t many relaxed moments in his life anyway, but this day had been particularly tearing. His body burned with excitements. Pimples was loaded with the concupiscent juices of adolescence. His waking and his sleeping hours were preoccupied with the one goal. But so variable was the reaction to the single stimulus that he found himself one moment as lustful as a puppy on a curtain, the next floundering in thick and idealistic sentiment, and the next howling with self-condemnation. He felt then that he was alone, that he, alone, was the great sinner of the world. He looked with fawning adoration at the self-control of Juan and other men he knew.

  Since she had come into his sight all of his body and his brain yearned toward Camille, and his yearning went from lustful pictures of himself and her to visions of himself married to her and settled down with her. One moment he felt almost forward enough to just out and out ask her, and the next, her glance in his direction forced a quivering embarrassment on him.

  Again he had tried to get a seat where he could watch her without being noticed, and again he had failed. He could see the back of her head, but he could see Norma’s profile. So it was that only at this late time did Pimples notice the change in Norma and, noticing, he drew a deep breath. She was not the same. He knew that it was only make-up, for he could see the eyebrow pencil and the lipstick from where he sat, but that wasn’t what sent his blood coursing hotly in his stomach. She was changed. There was a conscious girlness about her that had not been there before, and Pimples’ wild juices whispered to him. If, as he really knew deep in his heart, he couldn’t have Camille, he might maybe get Norma. He wasn’t as frightened of her as he was of the goddess Camille. Unconsciously he began to make plans for trapping Norma, overwhelming her. A new pustule was forming right in front of his left ear. Automatically he scratched it, and the angry red of his tainted flesh spread outward on his cheek. He looked secretly at the fingernail that had done the business and put it in his pocket and cleaned it. He had made his cheek bleed. He took out his handkerchief and held it to his face.

  Mr. Pritchard was worried about getting through and making his connection. There was a gnawing in him that would not let him rest or relax. He had tried to laugh it off to himself. He had used all the ordinary methods for throwing out unpleasant thoughts, and they didn’t work.

  Ernest Horton had said Mr. Pritchard’s plan was blackmail, and Ernest had almost indicated that he thought Elliott Pritchard would steal his slipcover for a dark suit if he wasn’t watched. This had at first outraged Mr. Pritchard—a man of his reputation and standing. And then he had thought, “Yes, I have standing and reputation in my own community, but here I have nothing. I am alone. This man thinks I am a crook. I can’t send him to Charlie Johnson so he can get an idea of how wrong he is.” This bothered Mr. Pritchard very much. Ernest had gone even further. He had indicated that he thought Mr. Pritchard was the kind of man who would go to an apartment with blondes. He had never done that in his life. He had to prove to Ernest Horton that his judgment had been wrong. But how could he do it?

  Mr. Pritchard’s arm was over the back of the seat, and Ernest was sitting alone in the seat behind him. The engine of the bus, traveling in second gear, was loud, and the old body vibrated noisily. There was only one way—to offer Ernest Horton something, something open and honest, so that he would see that Mr. Pritchard was not a crook.

  A vague thought came back to him. He turned in his seat. “I was interested in what you said about what your company does with ideas that come in.”

  Ernest looked at him with amusement. The guy wanted something. He suspected the old boy wanted to get in on a party or two. Ernest’s boss was that way. He wanted conferences at night and always ended up in a whorehouse and was always surprised at how he got there.

  “We’ve got a very nice relationship,” Ernest said.

  “This idea is nothing much that I had,” Mr. Pritchard said. “It’s just something that came to me. You can have it if you want it and if it’ll do you any good.”

  E
rnest waited without comment.

  “You take cuff links,” Mr. Pritchard said. “Now, I always wear French cuffs and cuff links, and once you get the links in —well, you’ve got to take them out before you can take off the shirt. And if you want to push up your sleeves to wash your hands you’ve got to take out the cuff links. It’s easy to put in cuff links before you put on the shirt, but you can’t get your hands through. When you’ve got the shirt on it’s hard to get the cuff links in. See what I mean?”

  “There’s that kind that clicks together,” Ernest said.

  “Yes, but they aren’t popular. You’re always mislaying or losing part.”

  The bus stopped. Juan put the car in low gear and moved quickly on. There was a jar as he hit a hole and a second jar as the rear wheels went through it, and the bus moved slowly on. The rain drummed heavily on the roof. The windshield wiper squeaked on the glass.

  Mr. Pritchard leaned back farther in his seat and pulled up his sleeve so that his plain gold cuff links showed. “Now, suppose,” he said, “instead of links or a bar, there was a spring. When you put the cuff on over your hand the spring would give and you could push the cuff up your arm to wash, and then the spring would go right back into place.” He watched Ernest’s face closely.

  Ernest’s eyes were half closed in thought. “But how would it look? It would have to be a steel spring or it wouldn’t last.”

  Mr. Pritchard said eagerly, “I thought that through. On the cheaper ones you could gold-plate the spring or silver-plate it. But on the expensive ones, like pure gold or platinum—the quality ones—why, instead of a bar it’s a tube, and when the cuff is at your wrist, why, the little spring has disappeared right into the tube.”

  Ernest nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, sir. Sounds pretty good.”

  “You can have it,” said Mr. Pritchard. “It’s yours to make anything you want out of it.”

  Ernest said, “My company goes in for a different kind of novelties, but maybe—maybe I could talk them into it. The best-selling things in the world—for men, that is—are razors or razor gadgets, pens and pencils, and personal jewelry. The fellow that don’t write five lines a year will buy a tricky fountain pen for fifteen dollars any day. And jewelry? Yes, sir, it might work out. What would you want out of it if they thought it was a good idea?”

  “Nothing,” Mr. Pritchard said. “Absolutely nothing. It’s yours. I like to help an up-and-coming young fellow.” He was beginning to feel good again. But suppose the thing worked out, this idea he’d cooked up. Suppose it made a million dollars. Suppose—but he had said it and his word was good. His word was his bond. If Ernest wanted to show appreciation, that was up to him. “I don’t want a single thing,” he repeated.

  “Well, that’s mighty nice of you.” Ernest took a notebook from his pocket, made an entry, and tore out the page. “Of course, in a thing like that I’d have to get an assignment,” he said. “If you’ve got a moment while you’re in Hollywood, maybe you could give me a call and we’ll talk some business. We might be able to do business.” His left eye drooped a little as he said it, and then his eyes turned and rested a moment on Mrs. Pritchard. He passed the slip to Mr. Pritchard and said, “Aloha Arms, Hempstead 3255, apartment 12B.”

  Mr. Pritchard colored a little, took out his wallet and put the paper in it, and he pushed the paper down in the back of the slot. He didn’t really need to keep it. He could throw it away the first chance he got, for his memory was good. It would be years before he would forget that phone number. The system had clicked in his head, his old system. Three and two are five and repeat. And Hempstead. Hemp is rope. Yellow hemp, and you can’t use anything instead of hemp. He used hundreds of memory tricks like that. Yellow hemp, blond hemp. His fingers itched to throw the paper away. Sometimes Bernice looked in his wallet for some change. He told her to. But he felt danger in his stomach—the miserable feeling of having been called a thief.

  He said to his wife, “You feel all right, little girl?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think I fought it off. I just said to myself, ‘I won’t let it come. I won’t let it interfere with my darling’s vacation.’ ”

  “I’m glad,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “And, dear,” she went on, “how do you men get such ideas?”

  “Oh, they just come to you,” he said. “That new shirt with the small buttonholes is the cause of this one. I got caught in it a few days ago and nearly had to call for help.”

  She smiled. “I think you’re very nice,” she said. And he reached over and put his hand on her knee and squeezed her leg. She slapped his hand playfully and in a moment he took it away.

  Norma had her head turned so that her mouth was close to Camille’s ear. She spoke as softly as she could because she knew that Pimples was trying to listen. She was conscious of his gaze, and in a way she was gratified. She had never been so confident in her life as she was now.

  “I haven’t really got any family, like you’d call a family,” she said. She was tumbling herself out in front of Camille. She was explaining and pouring out her life. She wanted Camille to know all about her, the way she was before this morning and the way she was now, and that would make Camille her family and would tie this beautiful and sure creature to her.

  “When you’re alone you do such funny things,” she said. “I used to lie to people. I’d pretend things to myself. I would—well, do things like the things I was pretending were true. You know what I’d do? I’d picture like a certain movie star was—well, was my husband.”

  It had jumped out. She hadn’t intended to go so far. She blushed. She shouldn’t have told that. It was kind of like letting Mr. Gable down. But she inspected this and found it wasn’t so. She didn’t feel quite the same about Mr. Gable as she had. Her feeling had moved on to Camille. It was a shock to realize it. She wondered if she were being inconstant.

  “It’s when you don’t have any family and no friends,” she explained. “I guess you just make them up if you haven’t got them. But now, well, if we could get an apartment I wouldn’t have to make up anything.”

  Camille turned her face away so she couldn’t see the nakedness in Norma’s eyes, the complete defenselessness. “Oh, brother!” Camille thought. “What have I let myself in for now? I’ve got a baby. I’ve gone and got caught in something. How did this happen? I’m going to have to make her over and live her life and in a little while it’ll probably bore the hell out of me and I’ll be in too deep to get out of it. If Loraine’s shucked off that advertising man and we can go back together, what am I going to do with this? How did it start? How the hell did I get into it?”

  She turned to Norma. “Listen, honey,” she said crisply. “I didn’t say we could do it. I said we’d have to see how it worked out. There’s a lot you don’t know about me. For one thing, I’m engaged to be married, and my boy friend, he thinks it might be pretty soon. So you see, if he wants to now, why I couldn’t go along with you.”

  Camille saw the despair come into Norma’s eyes, like a cold horror, and the sagging of her cheeks and mouth and how the muscles of her shoulders and arms collapsed. Camille said to herself, “I can get a room in the next town and hide out till she gets lost. I can run out on her. I can—oh, Jesus, how did I let myself in for this? I’m too tired. I need a hot bath.”

  Aloud she said, “Don’t take it so hard, honey. Maybe he isn’t ready. Maybe—oh, look, honey, maybe it will work out. Maybe it will. Really. We’ll just see how it goes.”

  Norma compressed her lips tightly and squinted her eyes. Her head jiggled with the vibration of the bus. Camille didn’t want to look at her. After a time Norma got herself under control. She said quietly, “Maybe you’re ashamed of me, and I wouldn’t blame you. I can only be a waitress, but if you’d show me I could maybe get to be a dental nurse like you. I’d study nights and I’d work as a waitress in the daytime. But I’d do it, and then you wouldn’t have to be ashamed of me. It wouldn’t be so hard with you to help me
.”

  Camille felt a rolling wave of nausea in her stomach. “Oh, God Almighty! Now I’m really trapped. What do I say? Tell her another lie? Would it be better to tell this girl exactly what I do for a living? Or would that make it worse? That might shock her so she wouldn’t want me for a friend. Maybe that’d be the best thing. No, it would be best just to lose her in a crowd, I guess.”

  Norma was saying, “I’d like to have what you’d call a profession that had some dignity to it, like you.”

  Camille said in despair, “Look, honey, I’m awful tired. I’m too tired to think. I’ve been traveling for days. I’m too worn out to think about anything. Let’s just let it lay for a while. We’ll just see how it goes then.”

  “I’m sorry,” Norma said. “I got excited and I forgot. I won’t talk about it any more. We’ll just see how it goes, huh?”

  “Yes, we’ll see how it goes,” said Camille.

  The bus jerked to a stop. They were coming near to the foothills now and the green billows of land were dimly visible through the rain. Juan half stood up to look down at the roadbed. There was a hole in the road, a hole full of water, no telling how deep. It might drop the bus clear out of sight. He glanced quickly at the Virgin. “Shall I take a chance?” he said under his breath. His front wheels were on the edge of the pool. He grinned, put the bus in reverse, and backed up twenty feet.