The Wayward Bus (6 page)

Below the Virgin was a kind of converted glove box, and in it were a Smith & Wesson 45-caliber revolver, a roll of bandage, a bottle of iodine, a vial of lavender smelling salts, and an unopened pint of whisky. With this equipment Juan felt fairly confident that he could meet most situations.

The front bumpers of the bus had once borne the inscription, still barely readable,
“el Gran Poder de Jesus,”
“the great power of Jesus.” But that had been painted on by a former owner. Now the simple word “Sweetheart” was boldly lettered on front and rear bumpers. And the bus was known as “Sweetheart” to all who knew her. Now she was immobilized, her rear wheels off, her end sticking up in the air and resting on a four-by-four set between two sawhorses.

Juan Chicoy had the new ring and pinion gears and he was rolling them carefully together. “Hold the light close,” he said to Pimples, and he turned the pinion in the ring all the way around. “I remember once I put a new ring on an old pinion and she went out right away.”

“Busted tooth sure makes a noise,” said Pimples. “It sounds like it's coming through the floor at you. What do you suppose knocked that tooth out?”

Juan held the ring gear up sideways and in front of the light turned the pinion slowly, inspecting the fit of tooth against tooth as he went. “I don't know,” he said. “There's lots nobody knows about metal and about engines too. Take Ford.
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He'll make a hundred cars and two or three of them will be no damn good. It's not just one thing that's bad, the whole car's bad. The springs and the motor and the water pump and the fan and the carburetor. It just breaks down little by little and there don't nobody know what makes them. And you'll take another car right off the line, you'd say it was just exactly the same as the others, but it's not. It's got something the others haven't got. It's got more power. It's almost like a guy with a lot of guts. It won't bust down no matter what you do.”

“I had one of them,” said Pimples. “Model A. I sold her. Bet she's still running. Had her three years and never spent a dime on her.”

Juan laid his ring gear and pinion on the step of the bus and picked up the old ring from the ground. With his finger he traced the raw place where the tooth had broken out. “Metal's funny stuff,” he said. “Sometimes it seems to get tired. You know, down in Mexico where I came from they used to have two or three butcher knives. They'd use one and stick the others in the ground. ‘It rests the blade,' they said. I don't know if it's true, but I know those knives would take a shaving edge. I guess nobody knows about metal, even the people that make it. Let's get this pinion on the shaft. Here, hold the light back here.”

Juan put his little platform behind the bus and he lay on it on his back and scooted himself under with his feet. “Hold the light a little more to the left. No, higher. There. Now shove me my toolbox, will you?”

Juan's hands worked busily and a little oil dropped down on his cheek. He rubbed it off with the back of his hand. “This is a mean job,” he said.

Pimples peered underneath the bus at him. “Maybe I could hook the light over that nut,” he said.

“Oh, you'd just have to move it in a minute,” said Juan.

Pimples said, “I sure hope you get her going today. I'd like to sleep in my own bed tonight. You don't get no rest in a chair.”

Juan chuckled. “Did you ever see madder people in your life when we had to come back after that tooth broke out? You'd think I did it on purpose. They were so mad they gave Alice hell about the pie. I guess they thought she made it. When people are traveling they don't like anything to interrupt them.”

“Well, they got our beds,” Pimples observed. “I don't see what they got to squawk about. You and me and Alice and Norma were the ones slept in chairs. And them Pritchards was the worst. I don't mean Mildred, the girl, but her old man and old lady. They figure they've been getting gypped someway. He tells me a hundred times how he's a president or something and he's going to make somebody suffer for this. Outrage, he says it was. And him and his wife had your bed. Where'd Mildred sleep?” Pimples' eyes glowed a little.

“On the davenport, I guess,” said Juan. “Or maybe with her father and mother. That fellow from the trick company got Norma's room.”

“I kinda liked that guy,” Pimples said. “He didn't say nothing much. He said he'd just as soon set up. He didn't say what line he was in. But them Pritchards made up for it, all except Mildred. You know where they're going, Mr. Chicoy? They're going on a trip down to Mexico. Mildred's been studying Spanish in college. She's going to interpret for them.”

Juan drove a key pin into the shaft and pounded it gently into place. He pulled himself from under the bus. “Let's get that rear-end assembly now.”

Light was creeping up the sky and over the mountains. The colorless dawn of grays and blacks moved in so that white and blue things were silver and red and dark green things were black. The new leaves on the big oaks were black and white, and the mountain rims were sharp. Lumpish, heavy clouds that rolled in the sky like dumplings were beginning to take on a faint rose-pink color on their eastern edges.

Suddenly the lights in the lunchroom sprang on and the geranium border around the building leaped into being. Juan glanced toward the lights. “Alice is up,” he said. “Won't be long till the coffee's ready. Come on, let's move the rear end in now.”

The two men worked together well. Each understood what was to be done. Each did his piece. Pimples lay on his back too, tightening the housing nuts, and in the teamwork a good feeling came to him.

Juan strained a tight forearm against a nut and his wrench slipped and he took skin and flesh off his knuckle. The blood ran thick and black out of his greasy hand. He put the knuckle in his mouth and sucked it and made a line of grease around his mouth.

“Hurt it bad?” Pimples asked.

“No, it's good luck, I guess. You can't finish a job without blood. That's what my old man used to say.” He sucked the blood again and already the flow was lessening.

The warmth and pinkness of the dawn sneaked in about them so that the electric light seemed to lose some of its brilliance.

“I wonder how many will come in on the Greyhound,” Pimples asked idly. And then a strong thought came to him out of the good feeling for Mr. Chicoy. It was a thought so sharp that it almost hurt him. “Mr. Chicoy,” he began uncertainly, and his tone was fawning, craven, begging.

Juan stopped turning the nut and waited for the request for a day off, for a raise, for something. There was going to be a request. That was inherent in the tone, and to Juan it was trouble. Trouble always started this way.

Pimples was silent. He couldn't get the words.

“What do you want?” Juan asked guardedly.

“Mr. Chicoy, could we fix it—I mean—could you fix it so you don't call me Pimples any more?”

Juan took his wrench from the nut and turned his head sideways. The two were lying on their backs, their faces toward each other. Juan saw the craters of old scars and the coming eruptions and one prime, tight, yellow-headed pustule about to burst on the cheek. As he looked, Juan's eyes softened. He knew. It came on him suddenly, and he wondered why he had not known before.

“What's your name?” he asked roughly.

“Ed,” said Pimples. “Ed Carson, distant relative of Kit Carson.
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Before I got these in grammar school, why, they used to call me Kit.” His voice was studied and calm, but his chest rose and fell heavily and the air whistled in his nostrils.

Juan looked away from him and back at the bulbous lump of the rear-end housing. “O.K.,” he said, “let's get the jacks underneath.” He rolled out from under the bus. “Get the oil in there now.”

Pimples went quickly into the garage and brought out the pressure gun, trailing the air hose behind him. He turned the pet cock and the compressed air hissed into the gun behind the oil. The gun clicked as he filled the housing with the oil until a little ran thickly out. He screwed in the plug.

Juan said, “Kit, wipe your hands and see if Alice has got any coffee ready, will you?”

Pimples went toward the lunchroom. Near the door where one of the great oaks stood there was a patch of near darkness. He stood there for a moment, holding his breath. He was shaking all over in a kind of a chill.

CHAPTER 3

When the rim of the sun cleared the mountains to the east, Juan Chicoy stood up from the ground and brushed the dirt from the legs and seat of his overalls. The sun flashed on the windows of the lunchroom and lay warm on the green grass that edged the garage. It blazed on the poppies in the flat fields and on the great islands of blue lupines.

Juan Chicoy went to the entrance door of the bus. He reached in, turned the ignition key, and pushed down the starter with the heel of his hand. For a while the starter whined rustily, and then the engine caught and roared for a moment until Juan throttled it down. He pushed down the clutch with his hand, put the gear in compound low, and let up the clutch. The rear wheels turned slowly in the air and Juan went around to the rear to listen to the action of the gears, to try to hear any uneven matching of the assembly.

Pimples was washing his hands in a flat pan of gasoline in the garage. The sun warmed a brown leaf left by the past year and blown into a corner of the garage doorframe. After a while a little night-laden fly crawled heavily out from under the leaf and stood in the clear sun. Its wings were muddily iridescent and it was sluggish with night cold. The fly rubbed its wings with its legs and then it rubbed its legs together and then it rubbed its face with its forelegs while the sun, slanting under the great puffed clouds, warmed its juices. Suddenly the fly took off, circled twice, fluttered under the oaks and crashed against the screen door of the lunch room, fell on its back and buzzed against the ground, upside down for a second. Then it righted itself and flew up and took its position on the frame beside the lunchroom door.

Alice Chicoy, haggard from the night of sitting up, came to the door and looked out toward the bus. The screen door opened only a few inches, but the fly flung himself through the opening. Alice saw him come through and whacked at him with the dish towel she carried in her hand. The fly buzzed crazily for a moment and then settled under the edge of the counter. Alice watched the rear wheels of the bus idly turning in the air and then she went in back of the counter and turned off the steam valve of the coffee urn.

The brown fluid in the glass pipe on the side of the urn looked thin and pale. She ran her towel over the counter and in doing so noticed that the big white coconut cake in its transparent plastic cover was ragged on one edge with a “V” cut out of it. She took a knife from the silver tray, lifted the cover, trimmed the cake's edge, and put the crumbs in her mouth. And just before the cover went back into place the fly lunged under the edge and flung himself on the coconut filling. He clung under a slight overhang so that he was not visible from above, and he dug and struggled hungrily into the sweet filling. He had a high, huge mountain of cake and he was very happy.

Pimples came in, smelling of gasoline and grease, and he took his place on one of the round stools. “Well, we got that done,” he said.

“You and who else?” Alice asked satirically.

“Well, of course, Mr. Chicoy done the expert work. I'd like to have a cup of coffee and a piece of cake.”

“You been in that cake already, before I got up.” She brushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand. “You can't cover up,” she said.

“Well, charge it to me,” said Pimples. “I'm paying for my feed, ain't I?”

“What do you want to eat all that sweet stuff for?” Alice said. “You're at the candy tray all day long. You don't get hardly any pay. All goes for sweet stuff. I bet that's what makes all them pimples. Why don't you lay off for a while?”

Pimples looked shyly down at his hands. The nails were rimmed with black where the gasoline had not reached. “It's rich in food energy,” he said. “Fellow's going to work, he needs food energy. Take about three o'clock in the afternoon when you get a let-down. Why, you need something rich in food energy.”

“It's rich in lead in the pants,” Alice observed. “You need food energy about as much as I need a—” and she left it in the air. Alice was a very profane woman but she never said the words, she only led up to them. She drew a cup of coffee from the spout—a thick, flat-bottom cup with no saucer—spurted in some milk and slipped the cup across the counter.

Pimples, looking hazily at the Coca-Cola girl who swung provocatively over the juke box, put in four spoonfuls of sugar and stirred the coffee around and around with the spoon straight up.

“I like to have a piece of cake,” he repeated patiently.

“Well, it's your funeral. You're going to have a can on you like a balloon.”

Pimples looked at Alice's well-formed behind and then quickly away. Alice took the knife from behind the counter and cut a wedge of coconut cake. The cliff of cake toppled on the fly and pressed him down. Alice shoveled the cake onto a saucer and slid it along the counter. Pimples went at it with his coffee spoon.

“Those folks didn't get up yet?” he asked.

“No, but I heard them stirring around. One of them must have used up all the hot water. I haven't got a bit in the lunchroom.”

“That must be Mildred,” said Pimples.

“Huh?”

“The girl. Maybe she took a bath.”

Alice looked at him levelly. “You get to your food energy and keep your mind where it belongs,” she said sharply.