The Wayward Bus

by John Steinbeck

  She looked at her fingers. “It’s funny,” she said. “I’m what you’d call an intellectual girl. I read things. I’m not a virgin. I know thousands of case histories, but I can’t make the advances.” She smiled quickly and warmly. “Can’t you force me a little?”

  His arms stretched out and she fell into place beside him in the straw.

  “You won’t hurry me?”

  “We’ve got all day,” he said.

  “Will you despise me or laugh at me?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Well, I do, whether I want to or not.”

  “You talk too much,” he said. “You just talk too much.”

  “I know it and it goes on all the time. Will you take me away? Maybe to Mexico?”

  “No,” said Juan. “Let’s see if you can shut up for a little while.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Pimples took the keys from the ignition lock on the instrument board and went to the rear of the bus. He unlocked the padlock which defended the luggage and threw up the lid. The smell of pies came sweetly to his nose. Mr. Pritchard looked in over his shoulder. The luggage was stacked tightly in the compartment.

  “I guess I’ll have to take it all out to get those tarps,” said Pimples, and he began to pull at the wedged suitcases.

  “Wait,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Let me lift and you pull and we can leave them all in.” He stood on the bumper and strained upward at the bottom suitcase while Pimples yanked at the heavy fold of canvas. Pimples worked it from side to side and gradually it came free from under the luggage.

  “Maybe we’d better get a couple of pies while we got it open,” Pimples said. “There’s raspberry and lemon cream and raisin and caramel custard cream. A piece of caramel custard cream would go pretty good now.”

  “Later,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Let’s get my wife settled first.” He took one side of the heavy cloth and Pimples the other and they proceeded toward the cliff with its caves.

  It was a fairly common formation. The side of the little hill had dropped away in some old time, leaving a smooth surface of soft limestone. Gradually wind and rain cut under from below, while the top of the cliff was held in place by topsoil and grass roots. And over the ages several caves were formed under the overhanging cliff. Here a coyote littered her pups, and here, in the old days when there were such things, a grizzly bear came to sleep. And in the higher caves the owls sat during the day.

  Three deep, dark caves developed at the bottom of the cliff and a few small ones higher up. All the cave entrances were now protected from the rain by the high overhang of the cliff itself. The caves were not entirely the inventions of nature, for bands of Indians hunting antelopes had rested here and lived here, and had even fought forgotten battles here. Later it became a stopping place for white men riding through the country, and the men had enlarged the caves and built their fires under the overhang.

  The smoke stains on the sandstone were old and some fairly new, and the floors of the caves were comparatively dry, for this little hill, one side of which had dropped away, did not receive the drainage from other, higher hills. A few initials had been scratched on the sandstone cliff, but the surface was so soft that they soon became illegible. Only the large, weathering word “Repent” was still clear. The wandering preacher had let himself down with a rope to put up that great word in black paint, and he had gone away rejoicing at how he was spreading God’s word in a sinful world.

  Mr. Pritchard, carrying his end of the tarpaulin, looked up at the word “Repent.” “Somebody went to a lot of trouble,” he said, “a lot of trouble.” And he wondered who had financed such a venture. Some missionary, he thought.

  He and Pimples dropped the tarpaulin under the cliff ’s overhang while they went to inspect the caves. The shallow holes were nearly alike, about five feet high and eight or nine feet wide and ten or twelve feet deep. Mr. Pritchard chose the cave the farthest toward the right because it seemed to be drier and because it was a little darker inside. He thought the darkness would be good for his wife’s coming headache. Pimples helped him spread the tarpaulin.

  “I wish we could get some pine boughs or some straw to put underneath the canvas,” Mr. Pritchard said.

  “Grass is too wet,” said Pimples, “and there ain’t a pine tree in fifty miles.”

  Mr. Pritchard rubbed the canvas with the butt of his hand to see whether the cloth was dirty. “She can lie on my overcoat,” he said, “and she can put her fur coat over her.”

  Ernest and Van Brunt came in to look at the cave.

  “We could stay here for weeks if we had anything to eat,” Ernest said.

  “Well, we may be quite a time at that,” said Van Brunt. “If that bus driver isn’t back by tomorrow morning I’m going to walk in. I’ve had about all the nonsense I can take.”

  Pimples said, “I can break out a couple of pies if you folks want.”

  “That might be a good idea,” said Ernest.

  “What kind you like?” Pimples asked.

  “Oh, any kind.”

  “The caramel custard cream is nice. It’s got graham crackers instead of crust.”

  “That’ll be fine,” said Ernest.

  Mr. Pritchard went back to the bus for his wife. He was feeling ashamed about his anger of a little time ago. He had the hard knot in his stomach he got when things were not going well, a fistlike knot. Charlie Johnson said he must have an ulcer, and Charlie was pretty funny about it. He said no one under twenty-five thousand dollars a year got an ulcer. It was a symptom of a bank account, Charlie said. And unconsciously Mr. Pritchard was a little proud of the pain in his stomach.

  When he climbed into the bus, Mrs. Pritchard’s eyes were closed.

  “We’ve got your little bed all fixed,” Mr. Pritchard said.

  Her eyes opened and she stared wildly about.

  “Oh!”

  “Were you asleep?” he said. “I shouldn’t have wakened you. I’m sorry.”

  “No, dear. It’s all right. I was just dozing.”

  He helped her to her feet. “You can lie on my overcoat and put your little fur coat over you.”

  She smiled weakly at his tone.

  He helped her down the steps. “I’m sorry I was rude, little girl,” he said.

  “It’s all right. You’re just tired. I know you didn’t mean it.”

  “Well, I’m going to buy you a great big dinner in Hollywood to make up for it, maybe at Romanoff ’s,1 with champagne. Would you like that?”

  “You can’t be trusted with money,” she said playfully. “It’s all forgotten now. You were just tired.”—“Dear Ellen, we had the nicest dinner at Romanoff ’s and you’ll never guess who was at the next table.”—“Why, it’s hardly raining at all,” she said.

  “No, and I want my little girl to get some sleep so she’ll be well and strong.”

  “Are you sure it’s not damp and there aren’t any snakes?”

  “No, we looked around.”

  “And no spiders?”

  “Well, there weren’t any spider webs.”

  “But how about big, hairy tarantulas? They don’t have webs.”

  “We can look around some more,” he said. “The walls are smooth. There’s no place for them to hide.” He conducted her to the little cave. “See how nice? And you can lie with your head up this way so you can look out if you want to.”

  He spread his coat and she sat down on it.

  “Now, lie down and I’ll cover you up.”

  She was very docile.

  “How’s my girl’s head?”

  “Well, it’s not as bad as I was afraid it would be.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “You get a little nap. Are you comfy?”

  She made a little moan of comfort.

  “If you want anything just call out. I’ll be near.”

  Pimples came to the cave entrance. His mouth was full and he carried a pie tin in his hand. “You like to have a piece of pie, ma’am?”

 
; Mrs. Pritchard raised her head and then she shivered and put her head down. “No, thank you,” she said. “It was nice of you to think of me, but I couldn’t eat pie.”—“Elliott just treated me like a queen, Ellen. How many people can say that after they’ve been married twenty-three years? I just feel lucky all the time.”

  Mr. Pritchard looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and there was a small smile on her lips. He felt the sudden lonely sorrow that came so often. He remembered, really remembered, the first time it had happened. He had been five when his little sister was born, and suddenly there were doors closed against him and he couldn’t go into the nursery and he couldn’t touch the baby and the feeling came on him that he was always a little dirty and noisy and unworthy and his mother was always busy. And then the cold loneliness had fallen on him, the cold loneliness that still came to him sometimes, that came to him now. The little smile meant that Bernice had retired from the world into her own room, and he couldn’t follow her.

  He took his gold nail pick from his pocket and opened it and cleaned his nails as he walked away. He saw Ernest Horton sitting against the cliff on the other side of the overhang. The high cave was over his head. Ernest was sitting on some newspapers and as Mr. Pritchard approached he slipped a double sheet of paper from under him and held it out.

  “Most useful things in the world,” he said. “You can do anything with them except read them.”

  Mr. Pritchard chuckled, took the paper, and sat down on it beside Ernest. “If you read it in the paper it isn’t true,” he said, quoting Charlie Johnson. “Well, here we are. Two days ago I was in a suite in the Hotel Oakland and now we’re in a cave. It just shows, you can’t make plans.”

  He stared at the bus. Through the window he could see that Pimples was in there with the two girls and they were eating pie. He felt a strong urge to join them. He could eat a piece of pie.

  Ernest said, “Everything goes to show something. I have to laugh sometimes. You know, we’re supposed to be a mechanical people. Everybody drives a car and has an icebox and a radio. I suppose people really think they are mechanical minded, but let a little dirt get in the carburetor and—well, a car has to stand there until a mechanic comes and takes out the screen. Let a light go off, and an electrician has to come and put in a new fuse. Let an elevator stop, and there’s a panic.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Americans are pretty mechanical people all in all. Our ancestors did pretty well for themselves.”

  “Sure, they did. So could we if we had to. Can you set the timer on your car?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Go further,” said Ernest. “Suppose you had to stay out here two weeks. Could you keep from starving to death? Or would you get pneumonia and die?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Pritchard, “you see, people specialize now.”

  “Could you kill a cow?” Ernest insisted. “Could you cut it up and cook it?”2

  Mr. Pritchard found that he was getting impatient with this young man. “There’s a kind of cynicism running around the country,” he said sharply. “It seems to me young people have lost their faith in America. Our ancestors had faith.”

  “They had to eat,” Ernest said. “They didn’t have time for faith. People don’t work much any more. They’ve got time for faith.”

  “But they haven’t any faith,” Mr. Pritchard cried. “What’s got into them?”

  “I wonder,” Ernest said. “I’ve even tried to figure it out. My old man had two faiths. One was that honesty got rewarded some way or other. He thought that if a man was honest he somehow got along, and he thought if a man worked hard and saved he could pile up a little money and feel safe. Teapot Dome and a lot of stuff like that fixed him on the first,3 and nineteen-thirty fixed him on the other.4 He found out that the most admired people weren’t honest at all. And he died wondering, a kind of an awful wondering, because the two things he believed in didn’t work out—honesty and thrift. It kind of struck me that nobody has put anything in place of those two.”

  Mr. Pritchard shook this out of his head. “You can’t be thrifty because of taxes,” he said. “There was a time when a man could build up an estate, but now he can’t. Taxes take it all. You’re just working for the government. I tell you, it knocks initiative on the head. No one has any ambition any more.”

  “It don’t make a lot of difference who you work for if you believe in it,” said Ernest. “The government or anybody else.”

  Mr. Pritchard interrupted him. “The returning soldiers,” he said, “they’re the ones I’m worrying about. They don’t want to settle down and go to work. They think the government owes them a living for life and we can’t afford it.”

  Ernest’s forehead was beaded with perspiration now, and there was a white line around his mouth and a sick look in his eyes. “I was in it,” he said softly. “No, no, don’t worry. I’m not going to tell you about it. I wouldn’t do that. I don’t want to.”

  Mr. Pritchard said, “Of course, I’ve got the greatest respect for our soldiers, and I think they should have a voice.”

  Ernest’s fingers crept to his lapel buttonhole. “Sure,” he said, “sure, I know.” He spoke as though he addressed a child. “I read in the papers about our best men. They must be our best men ’cause they got the biggest jobs. I read what they say and do, and I’ve got a lot of friends that you might call bums, and there’s awful little difference between them. I’ve heard some of the bums get off stuff that sounded even better than the stuff that the Secretary of State5 gets off—Oh, what the hell!” He laughed. “I’ve got an invention, and it’s a rubber drum that you beat with a sponge. It’s for the drunks that want to play traps in the orchestra. I’m going to take a little walk.”

  “You’re nervous,” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “Yeah, I’m nervous,” Ernest said. “Everybody’s nervous. And I’ll tell you something. If we’ve got to fight somebody again, you know what’s the most awful thing? I’ll go too. That’s the most awful thing.” And he got up and walked away, back in the direction from which the bus had come.

  His head was down and his hands were in his pockets and his feet beat against the gravel of the road and he was holding his mouth very tight and he couldn’t stop. “I’m nervous,” he said, “I’m just nervous. That’s all it is.”

  Mr. Pritchard stared after him and then he lowered his eyes to his hands and got out his nail file again and cleaned his nails. Mr. Pritchard was shaken and he didn’t know why. With all Mr. Pritchard’s pessimism about government interference with business, there was always in the back of his mind a great hope-fulness. Somewhere there was a man like Coolidge or like Hoover, 6 who would come along and take the government out of the hands of these fools in the administration, and then everything would be all right. The strikes would stop7 and everybody would make money and be happy. It was just around the corner. Mr. Pritchard believed it. He had no idea that the world had changed. It has just made a few mistakes and the right man would come along—say, Bob Taft8—and everything would get on an even keel again and these damned experiments would stop.

  But this young man bothered him because this was a bright young man, and he had a feeling of hopelessness. Although he hadn’t said it, Mr. Pritchard knew that Ernest Horton wouldn’t even vote for Bob Taft if he were nominated. And Mr. Pritchard, like most of his associates, believed in miracles, but he was deeply shaken. Horton hadn’t attacked Mr. Pritchard directly but—now, about the carburetor. Mr. Pritchard let his mind create the shape of a carburetor. Could he take it apart? Vaguely he knew that there was a little float in a carburetor, and in his mind he could see the brass screen and the gaskets.

  But he had more important things to think about, he told himself. Horton had said “if the lights went out”—and Mr. Pritchard tried to think where the fuse boxes were in his house, and he didn’t know. Horton had been attacking him. Horton didn’t like him. Suppose they were stranded as the young man had said.

  Mr. Pr
itchard closed his eyes and he was standing in the aisle of the bus. “Don’t worry,” he said to the other passengers, “I’m going to take care of everything. I haven’t built a big business organization without some ability, you know. Let’s reason this out,” he said. “We need food first. There’s some cows in that field back there.” And Horton had said he didn’t know how to kill a cow. Well, he’d show him. Probably Horton didn’t know there was a pistol in the compartment on the instrument board. But Mr. Pritchard knew.

  Mr. Pritchard took out the pistol. He got out of the bus and walked away toward the field and climbed a fence. He held the big black pistol in his hand. Mr. Pritchard had been to a great many movies. His mind unconsciously made a dissolve. He didn’t see himself kill the cow or cut it up, but he saw himself come to the overhang again with a great slab of red meat. “There’s food for you,” he said. “Now for a fire.” And again he dissolved, and the fire was leaping and a big piece of meat hung on a stick over the blaze.

  And Camille said, “But what about that animal? It belongs to someone.”

  Mr. Pritchard answered, “Expediency knows no law. The law of survival comes first. Nobody could expect me to let you people starve.”

  And suddenly he dissolved again and he shook his head and opened his eyes. “Stay off that,” he whispered to himself. “Keep away from that.” Where had he seen her? If he could just talk to her a little while he ought to be able to place it. He knew he wasn’t wrong because her face had given him a clutching sensation in his chest. He must not only have seen her, but something must have happened. He looked toward the bus. Pimples and the two girls were still inside.

  He got to his feet and brushed the seat of his trousers as though the paper had not protected him from dust. The rain was only misting a little now, and in the west there were patches of blue sky. Everything was going to be all right. He walked over to the bus and climbed the steps. Van Brunt was stretched out on the seat at the rear which went across the width of the bus. Van Brunt seemed to be asleep. Pimples and the girls were talking softly so that they wouldn’t disturb him.