Last Bus to Wisdom (4 page)

The senator's elegant citation was even more fitting than he could have known, because along with the autograph book, Gram had given me my very own ballpoint pen—not the plain old type then that was an ink stick with a cap on the end, but a fancy new retractable kind called a Kwik-Klik. It wrote in a purplish hue that seemed to me the absolute best color for an autograph collection, and I made sure to have people use it when composing their ditties rather than just any old writing instrument. Of course, there were exceptions—Wendell Williamson was represented in that deathly black Quink fountain pen stuff—but page to page, the creamy paper showed off the same pleasing ink, like a real book.

And then and there, the way a big idea sometimes will grow from a germ of habit, it dawned on me that a dog bus full of passengers, as captive as I was, presented a chance to fill a good many more of those pages with purplish inscriptions.

Sitting up as if I'd had a poke in the ribs, I snuck a look toward the back of the bus for likely candidates. The soldiers were talking up a storm, joking and laughing. The tourists yakked on across the aisles. A number of passengers were napping. The only ones not occupied, so to speak, were the nun and the sheepherder.

Mustering my courage, I stacked my jacket to save my seat and started down the aisle, swaying when the bus did. Saying “Excuse me” a dozen times, I made my way past pair after pair of aisle-sitting conversationalists. As if reading my mind, the sheepherder dragged himself upright and lopsidedly grinned at me as if he were thirsty for company. But just as I reached his vicinity, the bus rocked around a curve and I lurched into the empty seat behind him, like a pinball into a slot.

The big soldier who had been sitting by himself raised a bushy eyebrow at my abrupt arrival beside him. “Hi,” I piped up as I recovered, the top of my head barely reaching the shoulder patch of his uniform.

“What's doing, buddy?” he wondered.

My voice high, I hurriedly told him, displaying the autograph book. His eyebrow stayed parked way up there, but he sort of smiled and broke into my explanation.

“Loud and clear, troop. If there's a section in there for Uncle Sam's groundpounders, you've got them up the yanger here.” Holding out a hand that swallowed mine, he introduced himself. “Turk Turco.” The soldiers across the aisle sent me two-fingered salutes and chipped in their names, Gordon in the near seat and Mickey by the window.

“Mine's Donny,” I said to keep things simple. “Where you guys going?”

The one called Gordon snickered. “Sending us east to go west, that's the army for you. We catch the train at Havre. Then it's Fort Lewis, good old Fort Screw Us, out by Seattle. And after that it's”—he drew out the next word like it was sticky—“Ko-re-a.”

“Where we'll get our asses shot off,” Mickey said glumly.

Turk sharply leaned over, just about obliterating me. “Lay off that, will you, numb nuts. You're scaring the kid. Not to mention me.”

The thought that the Korean War, which like any American youngster of 1951 I'd grasped only from
G.I. Joe
comic books and radio reports, could claim the lives of people I'd met face-to-face, had never occurred to me. It struck with lightning force now. Glancing guiltily around at the three soldiers in their pressed khakis, I almost wished I had lit in with the mussy sheepherder, who could be heard carrying on a muttered conversation with himself in front of us.

“I'm just saying,” Mickey stayed insistent. “Think about it, there's Chinese up the wazoo over there”—I was fairly sure that amounted to the same as up the yanger and could not be good—“must be a million of the bastards, then there's us.”

“And the whole sonofabitching rest of the army,” Turk pointed out. “C'mon, troop, this is no time to come down with a case of nervous in the service.”

Mickey was not to be swayed. “I wish to Christ they were shipping us to some base in Germany where we wouldn't get our asses shot off, is all.”

That startled me. The Chinese were an enemy I had not quite caught up with, but Germans still were the bad guys from the last war, as far as I was concerned. Fiends all the way up to Hitler, and down to the enemy soldiers my family had a personal reason to hate forever.

“Yeah, right, Mick.” Gordon rolled his eyes about Germany for me. “Over there where you could put on your jockstrap spats and wow the fräuleins.”

“Go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, Gordo.”

I was starting to realize what a long way I had to go to be accomplished in cussing.

Snickering again, Gordon maintained that if anybody's ass was going to get shot off, it could not possibly be his. “Mine's gonna be the size of a prune, from the pucker factor.” All three soldiers roared at that, and while I didn't entirely get it, I joined in as best I could.

When the laughter died down, I figured maybe I ought to contribute something. “My daddy was in the war,” I announced brightly. “The last one. He was on one of those boat kind of things at Omaha Beach.”

“A landing craft?” Turk whistled through his teeth, looking at me a different way. “Out the far end!” he exclaimed, which took me a moment to savvy as soldier talk for outstanding and then some. “D-Day was hairy. Came back in one piece, did he? Listen up, Mick.”

I didn't have the heart to tell them the truth about that. “He always, uh, says he's in pretty good shape for the shape he's in.”

Gordon leaned across the aisle. “So what's your old man do?”

“He's a”—it's amazing what a habit something like this gets to be—“crop duster.”

“No crap?” Gordon sounded envious. “Grainfield flyboy, is he. Then how come you have to travel by dog? Why doesn't he just give you a lift in his airplane?”

“It's too far. See, I'm going to visit my rich aunt and uncle. They live back east. In Decatur, Illinois.”

“Never heard of the place. What's there?”

“The Cat plant.” That drew three blank looks. “Where they make bulldozers and graders and stuff like that.” I was developing a feel for the perimeter of story that could be got away with. A detail or two expanded the bounds to a surprisng extent, it seemed like.

So, there it went, again. Out of my mouth something unexpected, not strictly true but harmlessly made up. Storying, maybe it could be called. For I still say it was not so much that I was turning into an inveterate liar around strangers, I simply was overflowing with invention. The best way I can explain it is that I was turned loose from myself. Turned loose, not by choice, from the expected behavior of being “a good kid,” which I was always a little restless about anyway. “You're being a storier,” Gram would warn whenever I got carried away spinning a tale about one thing or another. Now, with no check on my enthusiasm when it started playing tricks upstairs in me—the long bus trip seemed to invite daydreaming, mine merely done out loud—I was surprising myself with the creations I could come up with. I mean, what is imagination but mental mischief of a kind, and why can't a youngster, particularly one out on his own, protectively occupy himself with invention of that sort before maturity works him over? One thing for sure, the soldiers on their way to their own mind-stretching version of life ahead did not doubt my manufactured one in the least.

Shoulders shaking with laughter, Mickey forcefully nudged Gordon. “If it was the cat house, you'd know all about it, huh, Gordo?”

Gordon turning the air blue in response, Turk nudged me for the autograph book. “Somebody's got to go first.” I instructed him in the mystery of the Kwik-Klik, and with it in hand, he balanced the book on his knee and wrote for a good long time. When he was through, I passed things across to Gordon, who looked over Turk's entry with a mocking expression but didn't say anything before writing his own.

Mickey balked when the autograph collection reached him. “I don't know about this happy horseshit of writing in here. What am I supposed to say?”

“Pretend it's your coloring book,” Gordon wisecracked. But Turk took right in on the reluctant penman. “Get with the program, troop. If the kid's good enough to give a damn about us, the least we can do is put some ink on the page for him.”

Without looking up, Mickey did so, and after laboring through, passed the autograph book and pen across to me. Gratefully thanking the three of them up, down, and sideways, I retreated to my own seat to catch my breath.

•   •   •

G
IDDY WITH SUCCESS,
I read the soldiers' inscriptions over and over, the pages as distinct from each other as handwriting could possibly be.

Life is like a deck of cards.

When you are in love it's
s.

Before you are married it's
s.

After you are married it's
s.

When you are dead it's
s.

May your long suits be hearts and diamonds.

Alvin “Turk” Turco, Pfc.

TIME FLIES LIKE AN ARROW,

WHY I'VE NEVER UNDERSTOOD.

FRUIT FLIES LIKE A BANANA,

NOW THAT SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD.

Gordon Jones

General Nuisance, U.S. Army

Mickey O'Fallon is my name

America is my nation

Butte, Montana, is my home

Korea is my destination.

Like the Turk one had said,
Out the far end!
Three fresh pages of inscriptions, just like that. Now, though, I faced a dilemma. Stretch my luck and go back for Kwik-Klik tidbits from other passengers, or quit while I was ahead? The bus was belting along through nondescript country with nothing much to show for itself except a brushy creek and flat buttes, so Havre or any place else was not in the picture for a while yet, and I had time if I wanted to brave the gauntlet of strangers again. But if I wasn't mistaken, the nun had looked about ready to pounce as I hustled past to stop me from keeping company with the swearing soldiers. Was it worth it to risk falling into her clutches, or for that matter, end up with some talky tourist bunch like the ladies' club on the Chevy bus?