Last Bus to Wisdom (23 page)

I'd wanted to know the blood-and-guts truth about him being a soldier, had I. That would do. “H-how come you weren't killed there?”

“The shovel is sometimes better friend than the rifle,” he said simply. “Learned to dig such foxholes, I did, could have given fox a lesson.” He paused to frame the rest of that story. “Here is a strange thing soldiers go through. The more of my comrades died on Höhe Toter Mann, the more it saved my life. My outfit, I think you call it?”—I nodded—“Second Company, lost so many men we was moved to rear guard duty. Behind the lines, we had chance to survive the war.” His face took on an odd expression, as if skipping past a lot to say,
And here you see me, in America
.

“Yeah, well, good,” I spoke my relief that he had been in a separate war from my father. Now I could be curious about things less likely to bring the whole summer crashing down. “My dad was a private first class—what about you?”

“Private no class, my soldiering was more like,” he told me, memory turning toward mischief now. “Not what you might call hero. Mostly, behind the lines I was chicken hunter.”

“Uhm, Herman, that sounds awful close to chicken thief.”

“In peacetime, ja. In war, is different. When rations are short, you must, what is the word, when cattles go here and there to eat grass?”

“Forage?”

“Sounds better than ‘thief,' don't it,” he went right past that issue without stopping. “Same eye-dea, though. Go find what you need to survive. ‘Sharp eyes and light fingers' was the saying. When night came, so did chance for hunting. You must understand, Donny”—he could see I still was trying to sort this out from chicken thievery—“we was being fed a pannikin of soup like water and slice of bread per man, day's only meal, before armistice came. Starvation ration, too bad it don't rhyme better.” He looked contemplatively at his private garden of vegetables under glass. “I grew up on little farm at Emden, cows lived downstairs from us and chickens loose outside, so I understanded where food could be rustled.”

We heard the DeSoto jouncing up the bumpy driveway. “Tell you what, podner,” Herman suggested rightly, even if it was not what I wanted to hear, “go help the Kate with the groceries, hah? Keep her off the warpath for once.”

•   •   •

I
WENT THROUGH
that day of Aunt Kate's bossy supervision—
here, honeybunch, help me with this; there, sweetums,
do this for me
—with Herman's words outlasting anything she had to say.
Sharp eyes and light fingers
; there is no switch you can reach in your brain to turn something like that off. It fit with me, for if I hadn't been what he called a hunter, the black arrowhead still would be on the hall table at the Double W instead of within the touch of my fingers in the security of my pocket. Even after a suppertime so tense I wondered whether one of them might throw the sauerkraut at the other, and another march to bed when I was wide awake, a tantalizing possibility kept coming to mind, like an echo that went on and on:
Go find what you need to survive.

When I went to bed, my eyes not only wouldn't close in favor of sleep, they barely blinked. Put yourself in my place, doomed to screeching bedsprings and attic confinement for the rest of the summer and no mad money to see a great movie like
Tomahawk
or do anything else that was halfway interesting, and see if your mind doesn't become a fever field of imagination and you don't turn into an eleven-year-old desperado. I ignored the plaque on the wall that preached getting down on my knees and praying as the one-and-only answer, and instead saw through the house, to put it that way, to the sewing room. Where Aunt Kate kept her purse and maybe significantly more. Those quarters that jingled all the way home from the canasta party had to live somewhere.

•   •   •

I
T IS TOO MUCH
to say I waited for the cover of night the way Herman had poised himself behind the lines to go out into the dark of war to forage, but I did make myself hold back, tingling to go and do it, until long after everything in this battling household went quiet.

Finally swinging out of bed, I hurried into my clothes, Tuffy-wrapped arrowhead in my pocket for luck, and slipped into the moccasins. Cracked the door open, listening for any sound downstairs. There was none whatsoever except that nighttime not-quite-stillness of a house holding people deep asleep. Quiet as a shadow I crept down and into the sewing room. I didn't know what I was going to say if I got caught at this. Something would have to come. It usually did.

Almost the instant I entered the small darkened room, I blundered into the cot, barking my shin on the metal frame and causing a thump that seemed to me loud as thunder.

Sucking in my breath against the hurt, I froze in place for what seemed an eternity, until I convinced myself the sleepers had not heard. Burning up as I was to get this done, but not daring to put on the lights in the room, I waited until my eyes adjusted to the dark and the furnishings in the room took form, if barely. What I was after had to be somewhere in here. Aunt Kate's purse hung next to the door as always, but I knew better than to risk going into it. Tightfisted as she was, she would keep track of every cent she was carrying. No, in any household I knew anything about, there was a Mason jar where loose change, the chickenfeed, was emptied when people cleared out their pockets or purses of too much small silver. Normally kept in a kitchen cabinet or on a bedroom dresser, but from what I had seen, not in this case, undoubtedly to keep even the smallest coins out of Herman's reach. That stash must be, ought to be,
had
to be in here in the vicinity of her purse, something like hunter instinct insisted in me.

I cautiously hobbled over to where the sewing machine was located. If I was right, a Singer model this fancy might have a small light beneath the arm of the machine to shine down on close work. My blind search ultimately fumbled onto a toggle that switched on a small bulb above the needle and router, perfect for my purpose. In its glow I could pick out objects shelved around the room, stacks and stacks of cloth and pattern books and such. But nothing like a jar holding the loose change of canasta winnings.

Doubt was eating away at my courage pretty fast—maybe I was loco to even try this and ought to sneak back upstairs to bed. Instead, Manitou or some similar spirit of the miraculous guided my hand into my pants pocket, where I squeezed the arrowhead for all the luck it might have. That steadied me enough to take another look around the room. My last hope, and it did not appear to be much of one, was a standard low cabinet next to the sewing machine, designed to hold thread and attachments. Quietly as possible I pulled out drawer after drawer, encountering a world of spools of thread and gizmos for making buttonholes and ruffles and so on, until finally I reached a drawer that jingled when I opened it.

I dipped my fingers into the discovery, very much like a pirate sifting gold doubloons in a treasure chest. This was it, coins inches deep and loose and rattling to the touch, nickels, dimes, and quarters, quarters, quarters, some in bank wrap rolls. My heart rate and breathing both quickened like crazy. There was so much accumulated small silver, a dozen or so quarters and the rest in chickenfeed would scarcely make a dent in it.

Biting my lip in concentration, I sorted out onto the platform of the sewing machine in the pool of light about the same proportion of quarters and dimes and nickels to make the drawer's holdings seem as even as ever. There. I had it knocked, my rightful five dollars of the hard-won canasta pot. I was wrapping my withdrawal, as I saw it, in my hanky and about to pocket it for the journey through the dark back up to the attic, when the voice came:

“Are you done, you little thief?”

She was practically filling the doorway, in a nightdress as tentlike as the muumuu and wearing those fuzzy slippers that were noiseless on the living room rug. At first my tongue did fail me as I stared at a greatly irate Aunt Kate and she at me, an outpouring of words no problem for her. “I was on my way to the bathroom when I noticed this funny little glow from in here. It's not like me to leave the sewing machine on like that, is it. And what do I find, Mister Smarty Pants, but you stealing for all you're worth.”

I didn't know anything to do but fight back. “Why is this stealing when I won the pot in the canasta game just as much as you did, remember? I bet Minnie Zettel got her share every time the two of you won. So why can't I?”

“I went over that with you in the car—”

“And you told me you and Herman were headed for the poorhouse, but looky here, you have money you just throw in a drawer.”

“—will you listen, please.” She was growing loud now. “You need to get used to not having your own way all the time. I hate to say it,” but it was out of her mouth as fast as it could come, “Dorie has spoiled you something serious, letting you behave like a bunkhouse roughneck or worse.”

That infuriated me, not least for her picking on Gram while she was fighting for her life in the hospital. “Gram's done the best she can, and I am, too, here. But you treat me like I'm a bum you took in. If I had that money you threw in the garbage, none of this would've happened.”

“That is no excuse for stealing,” she said loftily, advancing on me with her hand out for the hanky-wrapped coins.

“I don't think it's stealing,” I cried, “when you won't give me anything and I'm only taking my five bucks of what we won as partners. Why, isn't it stealing, just as much, for you to keep it all for yourself?”

“Donny,” she warned, all her face including the chins set in the kind of scowl as if she were battling with Herman over toast, “you are getting into dangerous territory and had better mind your manners, or—”

“The boy is right. Why do you have to be money pincher so much it is ridiculous?”

The figure in the doorway now was Herman, in pajama bottoms and undershirt.

Aunt Kate lost no time in turning the furious scowl on him. “Brinker, this does not concern you.”

“Pah. Why do you talk so silly? You like being wrong?” A thrill went through me when he didn't back down, one hunter of what was needed to survive coming to the aid of another, if I wanted to get fancy about it. “I live here, Donny lives here, and as far as anybody in whole wide world knows, he is my grandnephew, too.” I couldn't sort out the tangle in the middle of that sentence, but it didn't seem to matter as Herman kept at her. “You talk big to him about behavior, but you should fix up your own while he is our guest.”

Aunt Kate had to work her mouth a few times to get the words out, but inevitably she managed, double-barreled. “That is enough out of both of you. We will sort this out in the morning. Donny, put that money back and go to bed. As for you, Brinker, keep your opinions to yourself if you're going to share my bed.”

Neither of us wanting to fight her all night when she showed no sign of being reasonable, we complied. Herman waited at the doorway and put his hand on my shoulder as I trudged to the stairs, saying low enough that Aunt Kate couldn't hear as she fussed around with the sewing machine and the change drawer, “Don't let silly woman throwing a fit get you down, podner.”

•   •   •

I
T DID, THOUGH.
The next couple of days were a grind, with me sulking in my attic version of the stony lonesome or spending every minute I could out in the greenhouse with Herman.

Saturday came, after those days of Aunt Kate and I being as cautious as scalded cats around each other, and I could hardly wait to go with Herman again on his “medicine” run for a change of scenery, not to mention atmosphere. This morning, she was more than fully occupying her chair in the kitchen as usual but fully dressed for going out. Herman was nowhere around, but that was not out of the ordinary after their customary breakfast battle. In any case, Hippo Butt, as I now thought of her, actually smiled at me, a little sadly it seemed, as I fixed my bowl of soupy cereal, and naturally I wondered what was up.

I found out when she cleared her throat and said almost as musically as ever:

“Donny, I have something to tell you. After breakfast, pack your things. I'm sending you home.”

Home? There was no such thing. Didn't she know that? Why else was I here? I stared at her in incomprehension, but her set expression and careful tone of voice did not change. “Hurry and eat and get your things, so we don't miss your bus.”

“You can't just send me back!” My shock and horror came out in a cry. “With Gram laid up, they'll put me somewhere! An orphanage!”

“Now, now.” She puffed herself up to full Kate Smith dimensions as she looked at me, then away. “This hurts me as much as it does you,” which was something people said when that wasn't the case at all. “After the sewing room incident, I wrote to your grandmother saying I have to send you back, without telling her that was the reason, so you're spared that. I didn't tell you before now because I didn't want you to be upset.”

Talk about a coward's way out. She did the deed by letter instead of telephone so there could be no argument on Gram's part. And to keep clear of that starchy nun Carma Jean asking where her sense of charity was. And “upset”? How about overturned and kicked while I was down?

“But, but, it's like you're sending me to jail, when you're supposed to let me be here all summer.” Life had flipped so badly I was desperately arguing for Wisconsin.

She had the decency to flinch when I flung that charge at her, but she also dodged. “Donny, dear, it won't be as bad as you think. We have to believe that your grandmother will recuperate just fine and be able to take care of you again, don't we. But in the meantime, there are foster homes that take in children for a while.” I knew those to be little more than a bus drop stop on the way to the orphanage. “To make sure, I went to the county welfare authorities here and got a list of such places in Great Falls. It's all there in the letter I sent. Your grandmother will only have to fill out a form or two, and you'll have a temporary home until she gets well.”