Last Bus to Wisdom (8 page)

Like they say at Fort Peck, keep your pecker dry

Carl Kinnick, Sheriff,

Hill County, Montana

“Gee, that's a good one,” I managed to more or less thank him. “Can I get his, too?”

The sheriff laughed meanly. “What do you say to that, Harv? I bet you're not used to writing your John Hancock except to bounce checks.” Entertained, he passed the autograph book to the handcuffed prisoner.

With great concentration, the arrested man went to work at writing. It took him a long time, even considering the contorted way he had to hold the pen and book. “What in hell-all are you writing, the Bible?” the sheriff derided.

Finally the prisoner thrust his manacled hands across to give me the finished product, only to have it intercepted, the sheriff growling, “Not so fast. Let me see that.”

Reading it with a pinched look, the sheriff at first couldn't seem to believe his eyes, saying to himself, “Huh. Huh.” Finishing, he burst out: “Harv, you're hopeless! That's schoolhouse mush if I ever saw any.”

Unperturbed, Harv stated, “Letty is worth every word of it.”

Sourly the sheriff passed the opened album for me to take in the painstakingly shaped words.

Holy wow, I thought to myself, that pretty well described Letty, except for the pink stitching.

The sheriff was still expressing disgust with his prisoner. “Where'd you pick up that list of schoolkid stuff, loverboy?”

“Belowdecks on a troop carrier headed for the Guam invasion,” Harv countered, with a level gaze at his captor.

Somewhere amid their back-and-forth and my thrilled admiration of his construction on the page, I finally fully took in the signature beneath.

Harvey Kinnick, serving time in this life.

I blurted, “Y-you've got the same last name?”

“We're brothers,” the prisoner specified. “Aren't we, Carl.”

The sheriff folded his arms on his chest in practically a pout. “
Step
-brothers.”

T
HE PAIR
of them got off at Wolf Point, a town so scrimpy it was no surprise that it could not hold Harv the jailbreaker. “Don't do anything I wouldn't do, button,” the sheriff left me with. I thought to myself, as I have ever since, that left a large margin for error, given the behavior of certain adults.

Wolf Point seemed to be the cutoff between what is generally thought of as Montana and the notion of North Dakota, farms sprinkled across a big square of land. By now passengers had dwindled drastically—there wasn't much of anywhere to pick someone up until the supper stop at Williston, a couple of hours away—and I managed to gather only the autographs and inscriptions of a Rural Electrification troubleshooter and two elderly Dakota couples retired from wheat farming and moved to town, so much alike right down to the crow's-feet wrinkles of their prairie squints that they could have been twins married to twins. Maybe inspiration flattens out along with the countryside, because they all tended to come up with sentiments along the lines of
Remember me early, remember me late, remember me at the Golden Gate.
But every page filled went toward my goal of a world-famous collection.

At the Williston depot, for once the driver beat me in getting off, handing over the paperwork to the next driver at the bottom of the bus steps. As I scooted for the restroom, I overheard him say to the new man, “Carrying a stray,” and the response, “I'll keep an eye on him.”

That exchange made my guts tighten. Was that what I was, a stray? Like a motherless calf? That was not the kind of fame I wanted, and unfair besides. I had Gram yet, and like it or not, the unknown great-aunt and -uncle ahead in Wisconsin. It was only between here and there that I was unclaimed, I tried telling myself.

But I was further unsettled when the lunchroom's supper offerings did not include chicken-fried steak or anything remotely like it, only stuff such as macaroni and cheese or meatloaf that wasn't any kind of a treat, anytime. In direct violation of Gram's orders, feeling guilty but fed, I had a chocolate milkshake and a piece of cherry pie, à la mode. Maybe Minnesota, on tomorrow's stretch of the trip, would feed better.

The bus added a dozen or so passengers in Williston, but I was too played out by the full day to go up and down the aisle with the autograph book. Instead, I settled in for the night, which took a long time coming in horizontal North Dakota. First thing, making sure no one was watching, I took out my wallet and put it down the front of my pants, another of Gram's strict orders. It felt funny there in my shorts, but nobody was going to get it while I slept. Then I remembered the Green Stamps, of inestimable or at least unknown worth, and stuck those down there to safety, too.

Bundling my jacket for a pillow, I made myself as close to comfortable as I could and thought back on the day while waiting for sleep to come. Oh man, was Gram ever right that the dog bus gets all kinds. The soldiers going to meet their fate in Korea. The nun and the sheepherder, both of whom I had miraculously escaped. That hibernating Indian. Heavenly Letty. The cantankerous little sheriff and his gallant prisoner. And that didn't even count the digestive woman back at the start of the trip. They all filled in the dizzying span of my thoughts like a private version of
Believe It or Not!
And wherever life took them from here on, most of them had left a bit of their existence in my memory book. A condensed chapter of themselves, maybe, to put it in Pleasantville terms. I had much to digest, in more ways than one, as I lay back in the seat.

•   •   •

W
ITH THE SUN
glinting in the panel window my jacket pillow was crammed against, I woke up confused about where I was. Blinking and squinting, I wrestled myself upright until it all began to become familiar, the ranks of seats around me, some with heads showing and some not, the road hum of the bus tires, the countryside—greener than it had been the day before—flying past at a steady clip.

“Uh, sir?” I called to the latest driver, still foggy. “Where are we?”

“Minnie Soda,” he responded in a mock accent. “Meal stop coming up in Bemidji.”

What language was that? Actually, my stomach didn't care. It was ready for one of Gram's prescriptions that I could obey to the letter—stuff myself with a big breakfast.

•   •   •

H
E MUST HAVE
singled me out there by myself at a side table as I wolfed down bacon and eggs and hotcakes. The man in the ill-fitting suit, who has haunted me to this day.

As misfortune would have it, my classy western shirt caught a dribble of maple syrup from a forkful of hotcake, and stayed sticky no matter how I wiped at it. Not wanting to draw flies for the rest of the trip, I checked around the depot for the bus driver and spotted him in conversation with the ticket agent. Finishing off my breakfast as fast as I could, I scurried over to ask if I could please have my suitcase long enough to change shirts. That drew me a look, evidently my reputation among bus drivers as a stray not helping any, but he took pity on me and out we went to the luggage compartment. “Better hurry, freckles, I have to keep to the schedule,” he warned as I hustled to the restroom with the suitcase.

In there, a lathered guy was shaving over a sink and a couple of others were washing up, and there was what I thought was only the usual traffic to the toilet stalls, so I didn't feel too much out of place opening the wicker suitcase on the washbasin counter and stripping off my snap-button shirt and whipping on a plain one. Tucking the syruped shirt away in the suitcase, I did the same with the batch of Green Stamps, a nuisance to carry around. Then I had to dash for the bus, but the driver was waiting patiently by the luggage compartment, and I wasn't even the last passenger. Behind me was the man, who must have been in a toilet stall while I was busy at my suitcase.

I desposited myself in my same seat, feeling restored and ready for whatever the day brought. I thought.

“Hello there, cowboy. Mind some company?” The man, whom I had not really been aware of until right then, paused beside the aisle seat next to me, looking around as if I were the prize among the assortment of passengers.

“I guess not.” For a moment I was surprised, but then realized he must have noticed my bronc rider shirt, as Gram called it, before I changed. He appeared to be good enough company himself, smiling as if we shared a joke about something, even though he did remind me a little of Wendell Williamson in the way he more than filled his clothes. Wearing a violet tie and pigeon-gray suit—I figured he must have put on weight since buying it and I sympathized, always outgrowing clothes myself—he evidently was fresh from the barbershop, with a haircut that all but shined. Easing into the seat next to mine, he settled back casually as the bus pulled out and did not say anything until we left Bemidji behind and were freewheeling toward Minneapolis, some hours away. But then it started.

Crossing his arms on his chest with a tired exhalation, he tipped his head my direction. “Man alive, I'll be glad to get home. How about you?”

“Me, too,” I answered generally, for I would be glad beyond measure to have Wisconsin over and done with, and the return part of my round-trip ticket delivering me back to Gram and whatever home turned out to be, if that could only happen.

“Life on the road. Not for sissies.” He shook his head, with that smile as if we both got the joke. “You're starting pretty young, to be a traveler.”

“Twelve going on thirteen,” I stretched things a little, and for once my voice didn't break.

He maybe showed a tic of doubt at that, but didn't question it. Himself, he was going gray, matching the tight-fitting suit. He had a broad, good-natured face, like those cartoons of the man in the moon, although, as Gram would have said, he must have kept it in the pantry; his complexion was sort of doughy, as if he needed to be outdoors more. “I'm all admiration,” he said with that confiding shake of his head. “Me, I'm on the go all the time for a living, and anybody who can do it for pleasure gets my vote.”

I must have given him a funny look, although I tried not to. The only thing about my trip that had anything to do with pleasure was phony Pleasantville, so I steered the conversation back to him. “What do you do to keep the sheriff away?”

“Eh?” He glanced at me as if I'd jabbed him in the ribs.

“See, that's what my father always says when he wants to know what a person does for a living.”

“Sure, sure,” he laughed. Gazing around as if to make sure no one heard but me, even though I couldn't see anyone paying any attention to us—the driver in particular had no time to eye us in the rearview mirror, Minnesota crawling with traffic in comparison with North Dakota—he lowered his voice as if letting me in on a secret. “I sell headbolt heaters, the Minnesota key chain. Bet you don't know what those are.”

I thrust out my hand so quickly to take the bet he batted his eyes in surprise. “You take a bolt out of the engine block and stick the headbolt thinger in there and plug it in all night and you can start your car when it's colder than a brass monkey's balls,” I couldn't help showing off and getting in some cussing practice.

“You're something else, aren't you.” He tugged at his tie as he appraised me. “Where've you been anyway, donkey school?”

Mystified, I furrowed a look at him.

“You know, where they teach you to be a wiseass?” He nudged me, smiling like a good fellow to show he was just kidding.

“Oh man, that's a good one,” I exclaimed, wishing I had it in the autograph book. If only the sleeping Indian had been this talkative! Taken with the back-and-forth, I said in the spirit of things, “I skipped wiseass school, see, for a dude ranch. Out west.”

“That so?” Still with a sort of a grin, he prodded: “Saddled up Old Paint, did you, to go with that cowboy shirt I saw?”

The idea seemed to entertain him, so I expanded it for him. “Sure thing. I won it in the roping contest. That and the jackpot.” I was having so much fun, I threw that in as if it were prize money in a regular rodeo; Gram had been teasing about people thinking I was a bronc rider, but twirling a lasso didn't seem beyond me. I built it up a touch more: “The other dudes couldn't build a loop worth diddly-squat, so yeah, I hit the jackpot.” I couldn't help grinning at the slick double meaning. Carried away even further, I confided, “And there was another prize, too, even better.”

“You don't say. The grand prize to boot?” he said in a kidding voice, although I could tell he was impressed.

To keep him that way, it was on the tip of my tongue to airily say the prize was nothing less than an arrowhead blacker than anything and older than Columbus. But something made me hold that in, for the time being. Instead I resorted to:

“You pretty close to guessed it. Beaded moccasins.”

“Indian booties?” That had him eyeing me as if to make sure I was on the level. “How are those any big deal?”

“They were made a long time ago for the best Blackfoot fancy-dancer there ever was, that's how.” I didn't need to fumble for a name. “Red Chief, he was called.” My enthusiasm built with every detail that flashed to mind. “See, when there was this big powwow about to happen with Indians coming from everywhere, the tribe gathered all its beads on a blanket, and the best moccasin maker chose the prettiest ones and spent day and night sewing the design.” Expert of a kind that I was from donning the soft leather slippers for so many middle-of-the-night calls of nature, I lovingly described their blue and white prancing figures that seemed to lighten a person's step, like wearing kid gloves on the feet.

“They're real beauties,” I assured my blinking listener, “and when the guy, Red Chief I mean, put them on for the fancy-dancing contest against all the other tribes, he won everything. And so, after that the moccasins were called ‘big medicine'—that's Indian for ‘magic,' see—and nobody else in the tribe could even touch them but that one fancy-dancer.

“When he got old and died, though”—my tone hushed just enough to draw my audience of one in closer—“the tribe was going to sell them to a museum back east, but the dude ranch owner heard about it and traded a bunch of horses to the Blackfeet for them.” For all I knew, this part approached the truth. Admittedly in very roundabout fashion, but the fact was that my grandmother, the sharp-trading fry cook there in the reservation town of Browning, had bargained someone out of the impressive moccasins somehow.

I had to really reach for the next portion, but I got there. “When the dude rancher tried them on, they had shrunk up real bad and didn't fit him, so he made them the grand prize for the roping contest. They're just right for me,” I finished modestly.

My seatmate's jaw kept dropping until I reached the end, then as if coming to, he studied my feet. “I'm surprised you don't have them on, show them off some.”

“Uh-uh, they're way too valuable,” I fielded that, “I have to keep them tucked away in my suitcase. I'll only wear them at home, around the house.”

“A fortune on your tootsies, huh? I tell you, some guys have all the luck.”

Good-natured about it, though, he drew back as if to make room for his admiration of me, topping it off with “Look at you, just getting started in life and you've got it knocked,” and I went still as death.

•   •   •

H
OW CAN A WORD,
a saying, do that? Make your skin prickle, as memory comes to the surface?

Innocent as it sounded, the utterance from this complete stranger echoed in me until my ears rang. Gram was more used to this sort of thing, the sound of someone speaking from past the grave. Past a white cross on the side of Highway 89, in this instance. How many times had I heard it, waiting with my mother in a kitchen table card game of pitch or a round of dominoes or some such while my father scouted for work, for the next construction camp that needed a hot-shot catskinner, and in he would come at last, smiling like the spring sun as he reported, “They're hiring at Tiber Dam,” or the Greenfield irrigation project it might be, or the reservoirs capturing creeks out of the Rockies, Rainbow and Pishkun and those. Each time his voice making the words wink that certain way: “We've got it knocked.” Wherever it came from—World War Two? the Depression?—for me the expression indeed meant something solid we were about to tap into, wages for my folks after a lean winter and a firmer place to live than wherever we had fetched up when the ground froze hard enough to resist a bulldozer blade. It entered me deeper than mere words generally go, as Gram's sayings did with her, to the point where I perfectly well knew, even though I wasn't there, that starting out on that trip to take possession of the bulldozer that would set them—us—up in life for once and for all, Bud Cameron and his wife Peg declared in one voice or the other that they had it knocked. Until they didn't.