Last Bus to Wisdom (45 page)

“Hee hee, stick with me and I'll have you boys livin' on the plush,” Skeeter took all due credit. He judiciously handed a fistful of money to me instead of Herman, slumped against the back of the pickup cab singing softly to himself in German. “Here be your and his share, Snag.”

For a long wonderful moment I clutched the winnings in triumph. Then, grinning back at the moon over the Promised Land that was the Big Hole, I stuck the folded bills down the front of my pants for safety.

•   •   •

T
HE CREW
hit the bunkhouse still high as kites, but mostly from exuberance rather than what they had poured into themselves at the Watering Hole. The chilly ride in the back of the pickup had even sobered up Herman appreciably, so much so that he made it to his bunk without my help. He sank onto it, rubbing his head with both hands as if to get things operating fully in there. “Big night, hah?” he said thickly, blinking at me as I proudly patted the wad of cash pouched down there in my underwear. “How much did we winned?”

“Enough to get married on,” Harv's serene answer took care of that, from where he was already fixing up an envelope to mail his windfall to Letty. The rest of the crew all were in the crapper at once, oddly enough. It sounded like some kind of hobo palaver going on in there, maybe something mysteriously connected to Skeeter's ability to generate a jackpot. Pretty quick, Highpockets could be heard checking with the bunch one by one—“You for it?”—and the answering “Yeahs!” and “Yups!”

They filed into the bunk room like men with a mission, Highpockets in the lead, the others crowding behind him with a mix of expressions, from Skeeter's crinkled countenance to Shakespeare looking wise to Pooch wearing an anxious attempt at a grin.

“The Johnson family has had a little powwow,” Highpockets announced as the hoboes gathered around us. “One Eye, we're hoping you can stick with us after haying. Wheat country next, threshing out in Washington.” His gaze shifted to me. “Snag is welcome to come along, too, if that's in the cards.”

Herman was unable to say anything for some seconds. “Honored, I am,” he finally got out. “Good eye-dea, for me.” He struggled even more for the next words. “The boy”—he swallowed so hard that it brought an awful lump to my throat, too—“has somebody to go to.”

“Any way you two work it out,” Highpockets left it at and turned away. “Let's hit the sack, boys. Jones will be on a tear in the morning to make us earn those wages.”

•   •   •

N
OW
H
ERMAN
and I adjourned to the crapper. He put a steadying hand on the sink and studied his somewhat haggard reflection in the mirror, my drained one alongside his.

“Donny, it is for best if I go with them. When haying is over, no more sickles, and I am
ptttht
here.”

“I know.”

“Will miss you like everything.”

“Me, too. I mean, I—I'll miss you, too.” It took all I could do to stay dry-eyed and keep my voice from breaking. “Walk tall, podner.”

“You do same,” he managed. Tall over me, he looked down at me, the miraculous glass eye and the good one blinking with the same emotion as mine. “We were good pair on the loose, Red Chief.”

•   •   •

A
MID THE SETTLED
snores and nose-whistlings of the sleeping crew, I lay sleepless for a long, long time, as haunted as I'd been by that damnable plaque in Aunt Kate's attic. This time by life, not death. For the first time since the Double W cookhouse I whined, only to myself, but the silent kind is as mournful as the other. The miles upon miles of my summer, the immense Greyhound journey right down to the last bus to Wisdom, were simply leaving me torn in two, between Herman and Gram. She and Letty seemed like, what, mirages, distant and beckoning, but Herman had been my indispensable partner, from the depths of the Manitowoc stay to the ups and downs of the open road.

Imagination failed me as I tried to conceive of life without him, or his without me. How can you ever forget someone you will think of every time you eat a piece of toast? Or whenever you touch a map, your fingers bringing memory of red routes once followed to adventure of whatever kind? Or even catching the wink of an eye, sparkling as glass, from someone you are devoted to?

As bereft as I was for myself, I was just as afraid for what waited ahead for him, on the move with the hoboes and on the run at the same time, always with the threat of some yard bull or hick dick matching him up with a
MOST WANTED
poster, and without me and my tall tales there to rescue him.

As for counting on luck to help us out of our divided fate, phooey and you-know-what. In my misery I felt I might as well throw the black arrowhead into the Big Hole River. The cheerful sentiments in the autograph book seemed sickly against the true messages of life. Loco things happened without rhyme or reason, and that was that. The most hard-hearted set of words in the language, and the only ones that seemed to count in the end. Overwhelmed with these bleak thoughts, I gradually drowsed off, clinging to what I would possess forever, the time of dog bus enchantment when Herman the German pointed a finger west and said, “Thataway.”

I
N
THE
B
IG
H
OLE,
there was something to the saying that when it rains, it pours, because sometime later that night, the heavens opened up, one of those sudden summer storms that flash through with crackles of lightning and rolls of thunder half drowned out by the downpour drumming on the roof. And the next morning came the deluge of the other sort, events cascading on the Diamond Buckle ranch as if the clouds had brought in every reckoning waiting to happen.

It began at breakfast, where black coffee was the main course as hangovers were nursed. I was groggy myself from the restless night of rainbursts and so much on my mind. Along the table, Skeeter had the shakes so bad he used both hands to lift his coffee cup, but still was grinning like the wisest monkey in the tree. Highpockets managed to look as capable as ever except for bloodshot eyes. The rest of the crew was in states of morning-after between those extremes. Except, that is, for Herman, who appeared not much the worse for wear, an advantage he had by always looking somewhat hard-used. Meanwhile Mrs. Costello made a nuisance of herself by nagging about the lack of enthusiasm for the runny fried eggs and undercooked side pork, until Jones snapped at her that the crew wasn't in a mood for hen leavings and pig squeals this morning, and she stomped back to the kitchen.

Despite the aftereffects, the triumphant night in Wisdom cast a good mood felt by everyone but Jones, grumpy over being rained out of haying. “Looks like the bunch of you have the day off,” he conceded with a sniff at the weather, “mostly.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Highpockets was on the case at once.

Jones jerked a thumb at the empty chair next to his. “Smiley is no longer employed at the Diamond Buckle.” That sank into me as almost too good to be true, my jubilant reaction mirrored on the faces around the table.

“So,” Jones said, “I need a volunteer to be choreboy until I can drive to Butte and scare up a new one. The rest of you, sure, you can pitch horseshoes or lay around and scratch your nuts or whatever you want to do with the day, but somebody's got to step up and do the chores.”

Peerless lawyered that immediately. “That would include getting a milk pail under Waltzing Matilda?”

“She's a cow,” Jones tried to circle past that, “so she needs tending to like the others.”

“I'm not milking any crazy cow,” Peerless stated his principle.

Grinning, Fingy waved a hand lacking enough fingers to squeeze a teat. “I'm out.”

Harv silently shook his head an inch or so.

“I'm allergic to titted critters,” Skeeter announced, drawing a volley of hooty speculations about how far that allergy extended and when it had set in.

So it went, man by man, around the long table, no one willing to risk limb if not life in taking on the treacherous dairy cow. “Damn it,” Jones seethed, “all in hell I'm asking is for some one of you to pitch a little hay to the horses, slop the hogs, gather the eggs—”

“—and milk an animal you won't go anywhere near yourself,” Peerless inserted with a smirk.

“Now, listen here,” Jones tried to shift ground from that accusation, “it's only for a couple of days. It won't hurt—I mean, embarrass—any of you to be choreboy that long.”

He looked pleadingly at the one last figure that gave him any hope. “Pockets, can't you talk them into—?”

Highpockets was as firm as the others. “The boys are in their rights. We hired on to put up hay. Nothing else.”

Whether it was that or inspiration circling until I could catch up with it, I suddenly realized: Wide open for the taking, the job of choreboy would not end with haying. Before the chance was lost, I crept my foot over to Herman's nearest one and pressed down hard on the toe of his shoe, causing him to jerk straight upright. Now that I had his attention, I cut a significant look toward Smiley's empty chair. He followed my gaze and after a squint or two, my thinking.

Clearing his throat as if he had been saving up for this announcement, Herman spoke out. “Nothing to worry. I am champ milker. Famous in old country.”

“You are? I mean, are you.” Jones turned to me, as he so often did when it came to figuring out Herman.

“Yeah, well, if Gramps says he can do a thing,” I put the best face on it I could, “he generally pretty much can.”

The foreman took one more look at Herman, sitting there with a grin skewed up toward his glass eye. “O-kay,” he dragged the word out, “let's see how they do it in the old country. He can even yodel if he wants. Snag, go get the milk pails for him.”

Need I say, the breakfast table was abandoned in a hurry and the barn gained a full audience to watch Herman take on Waltzing Matilda.

•   •   •

D
AIRY
COWS
NORMALLY
plod willingly to their stanchions, ready to stick their necks into captivity in exchange for being relieved of their milk. The other two cows did so, nice and docile, when Herman and I herded them in to the milking area, while the angular brown-and-white Guernsey lived up to her name by dancing sideways and snorting a shot of snot toward us and the stanchion. Bawling like she was being butchered, Waltzing Matilda then backed into a corner and rubbed a stub of horn on the barn wall as if trying to sharpen it.

“So-o-o, bossy.” Herman approached her using the handle of a pitchfork to prod her out of the corner. I crept along right behind him, wishing he had the sharp end of the pitchfork at the ready. Giving another snort, Waltzing Matilda plowed past the two of us as we jumped back and, as if it were her own idea, plugged along to the waiting stanchion.

“There, see, that's half the battle!” Jones called from the safety of half the barn away, where he and the rest of the crew were clustered to watch.

“Stand back,” Herman warned me as he sidled in to shut the stanchion on the cow's bowed neck. I thought I was, but still had to leap away when Waltzing Matilda shifted hind feet, flashing a kick that would have taken out a person's kneecap.

“Jeezus,” Peerless cried, “watch yourselves, fellas. That critter's a killer.”

Herman and I would not have disagreed with that as we huddled to consider our next move. “Any eye-dea?” he started to ask, interrupted by Waltzing Matilda loudly breaking wind and then letting loose as if to empty her bowels to the last degree. In dismay, we both stared at the switching tail now coated with manure, perfectly capable of swatting a person hunched on a milking stool.

“Puh,” said Herman. “Maybe Smiley was right, a dose of lead is best answer to this creature.”

“We have to do something about that tail.” I was thinking hard, warily watching the crap-covered pendulum. “How about if we—” I outlined the only scheme that had popped to mind.

“Worth every bit of try,” Herman agreed, both of us aware of Jones prowling impatiently back and forth in front of the other spectators. “You go git the tool, I git the other. Bunny-quick.”

I ran to the blacksmith shop and grabbed the longest tong off the forge, about two feet in length. While I was at that, Herman ducked into the tack room of the barn where saddles and such were kept, and came back with a pigging string, such as was used to tie up the legs of calves during branding.

Our audience craned their necks in curiosity, their mutterings and whispers not exactly a full vote of confidence. “No betting,” Highpockets decreed, to the evident disappointment of Skeeter.

I made sure with Herman: “Ready?”

“Betsa bootsies,” he sounded like he was calling up confidence from wherever he could get it. “If sailors know anything, it is knots.”

Standing carefully to one side, I grappled the tongs in and caught the hairy end of the cow's filthy tail, tugging the whole thing snug against the nearest rear leg. That brought out a fresh green splurt of manure as expected, but I was out of range. Herman moved in and swiftly tied the tail tight and firm to the joint of the leg. Waltzing Matilda did not know what to make of this and kicked. Which yanked her tail hard enough to make her bawl at top volume.

“Quick!” I cried, but Herman already was sliding the milking stool into place and in no time milk was streaming into the bucket like hail hitting. There is the old braggart joke about milking a cow so fast she would faint away, and while Waltzing Matilda showed no sign of swooning, Herman was working those teats at incredible speed, his hands flying up and down as the level of milk in the bucket rose perceptibly. The angriest Guernsey on the planet attempted a few more tugs of leg and tail, only to bawl in frustration. Either out of confusion or an inkling of sense, she did not crap like Niagara anymore.

When Herman had stripped the teats to the last drops and set the frothing and nearly full milk pail safely away, our defeated adversary started to try a kick and thought better of it. Herman gingerly reached in from the side and undid the pigging string. Eyeing him as best she could from the stanchion, Waltzing Matilda now switched her tail, but neither kicked nor unloosed manure. I swear the cow got the idea.

And Jones surely did.

•   •   •

“O
NE
E
YE,
I want to see you after you get that milk up to the house,” the determined foreman headed us off as we were leaving the barn and everyone else had dispersed. Me, he provided, “You're on your own for the day, laddie buck, find something to do to keep yourself out of trouble.”

At loose ends, I drifted across the ranch yard, habit directing me to the bunkhouse while my mind sped to every here and there. In contrast, the hoboes had an enviable talent for taking time off, and the crew was a hundred percent at leisure. Sunning themselves in chairs propped against the bunkhouse, Shakesepeare was working a crossword puzzle and Harv was deep in a
Police Gazette.
At the horseshoe pit, the others were trying to solve Midnight Frankie's evident ability to win at any game of chance ever invented, without success according to the clangs of his ringers and their echoes of frustration. I went and sat on the steps, waiting.

It did not take long. Herman emerged from the boss house and headed straight for me, the shift of his eyes as he neared telling me he wanted to talk in private.

That meant conferring in the crapper again. With our reflections registering us in the silvered mirror, Herman horse-laughed as he described Mrs. Costello nearly fainting away at receiving a milk bucket without Waltzing Matilda's splatter on it.

Then his words slowed, half proud, half cautious. “I am choreboy for good, Jones telled me. More wages, a little.” He held his thumb and first finger apart just barely.

“I was hoping,” was as much as I could say.

“Is what we wanted, hah? I hole up in Big Hole.”

“I'll come see you sometimes,” I blurted.

He drew a breath through his teeth as if the next words hurt, and they did. “Not a good eye-dea, Donny. There is trouble in that for us both. Your Gram might get too much curious about how I am here. And I can not have the Kate know my whereabouts.” He paused before making himself say the rest. “So, Fritz Schneider of the Diamond Buckle and Wisdom town I am from now, someone you met on your travelings but must only remember, not come see. Savvy?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

“Many times have I said you are some good boy. Never more than now.” His eyes damp, matching mine, he looked off past me. “I must make sorry to Highpockets about not going with them.”

“Yeah, you'd better go do that.” Still neither of us moved, and to break the awkward silence, I asked, “Where'd you learn to milk like that?”

He managed to smile. “Telled you the cows lived downstairs in Emden.”

I laughed, a little. With neither of us finding anything more to say, Herman stirred himself. “Now I must see to chickens and hogs, big new responsibilties.”

“I'll feed the horses for you,” I volunteered, wanting something to do besides letting our separation eat my guts out.

•   •   •

T
HE BARN
was as quiet as it ever got, the workhorses standing idle in their stalls, straw on the floor absorbing the shifting of their hooves except for a whispery rustle. I was welcomed with some snorts and a neigh or two as I picked up the pitchfork, shiny as new from Herman's sharpening of everything that would hold an edge, and climbed to the haymow to fork alfalfa into the manger in front of each horse. That chore done, I shinnied down and played favorites as I felt entitled with Queen and Brandy, after the distances we had covered together, stacker path upon stacker path, and treated them to a half pan of oats apiece. As they munched there in the stall, I stroked the gray expanse of Queen's neck and shoulder, reluctant to start yet another good-bye. Smartly the big mare flicked an ear. Laying my head against her in full confusion of emotions, I clung there with my cheek to the warm smooth hide, unable to do more than sob, “Queen, what am I gonna do?”

“I'm curious to hear how she answers that.”

I jerked away from Queen's side, startled out of my wits by the tall figure shadowed in the doorway from the horse corral. At first I thought it must be Harv, at that size, but no. The unmistakable saunter and lanky presence told me even before the easygoing drawl. “Anything wrong we can fix with something besides spit and iodine?”

“Rags!” As he materialized out of the shadowed end of the barn, I saw he was in regular ranch wear except for the conspicuous belt buckle. In everyday getup or not, he carried himself like a champion, and I had to gulp hard to speak up adequately as he moseyed toward me. “Sorry, I—I didn't know you were here, didn't see your car.”

“Aw, that weather last night will teach me about having a convertible,” he said ruefully while he came and joined me in the stall. “It was raining like a cow taking a whiz on a flat rock when I pulled in from the Billings fair, so I stuck the Caddy in the equipment shed.” He patted his way along Queen's side, softly chanting, “Steady, hoss, stand still, old girl,” until he was alongside me and could reach up and fondly tug at her mane. “A horse and a half, isn't she. Seems like she just naturally lives up to her name. Pretty good listener, too, I gather.” He looked down at me with a long-jawed grin, but his eyes a lot more serious than that. “Maybe I ought to lend an ear, too—Snag, do I remember you go by?”