“Hello, buddy. Don’t I wish the dining room would stick with hotcakes and eggs for breakfast.” Busying himself with a tray of instruments to explore my throat, he maintained a soothing manner, observing that swallowing a fishbone was not a good way to start the day but at least I was not scalded or mauled.
Ready, he patted the operating table that I couldn’t help looking at without thinking of Gram. “Hop up here, friend, and open wide so I can have a look.”
“Uhm,” I jerked back to reality, “it’s no use.” The doctor stopped short at picking up a tongue depressor so he could go to work down my gullet. “I mean, I didn’t swallow a fishbone or anything.”
Accustomed as he must have been to all kinds of odd cases, he nonetheless scrutinized me with a puzzled frown. “Then what’s your problem, hmm? Nothing broken, I hope?”
“Yeah, that’s it! Me,” I seized my opening. “Flat broke.”
“Are you telling me,” his tone turned as starchy as his medical coat, “you came in here to ask for—”
“Eleven dollars and forty cents, is all.” I made it sound as reasonable as possible.
That brought me a stare nearly strong enough in itself to throw me out of the office. “Starting kind of young, aren’t you?” he said along with it, more sternly yet. “At bumming?”
“No, no, this isn’t that!” I protested, my voice taking off toward the high country. Prepared as I thought I was in asking for the money as nicely as I could, I fell apart at being thought some kind of a moocher.
“What it is,” I sort of whimpered out, “I know Mae and Joe.” Shakily I pointed to the nameplate on his desk identifying him as PAUL SCHNEIDER, M.D., his gaze following my gesture uncomprehendingly. “Your mom and dad?” I provided as if he needed reminding of the fact.
He still looked so baffled that I yanked out the Bible in desperation. “See, I’ll swear on it.” I clapped a hand over the chintzy paper cover. “We were friends right away fast. They were awful good to me, took my side against the dumb bus driver and everything, so I thought maybe you would be, too, at least a little bit, and really, all I need is eleven dollars and—”
“Whoa, slow down.” A strapping guy as big as both of his parents put together, Dr. Schneider bent way down with his hands on his knees as if I needed closer examination. “The folks? Where do they come into this?”
“On the dog bus. Just before the rollycoaster.” Herman’s lucky mention of the Greyhound driver community and seeing the sights, tra la la, popped the happily traveling Schneiders from that itch spot in my mind, along with their vital mention of a son who fixes up people who fall into hot pools or get mauled by grizzlies in Yellowstone. None of what I’d tried to say so far enlightened the doctor son nearly enough, I could tell, but desperation sometimes grows into inspiration. “Here, look, they wrote in my memory book.”
To some extent, amusement replaced bafflement in his expression, I was relieved to see. “You’re a regular traveling library, aren’t you,” he kidded—at least I took it as kidding. Carefully grasping the autograph album, he studied the pair of inscriptions while rubbing a hand through his iron-gray bristle of hair. “That sounds like the old man, all right. And that mother of mine—” He silently read over the neatly composed lines, as did I, my eyes moist.
I won’t say her contribution to poetry ranks up there with Longfellow, but I still think Mae Schneider’s tidy verse is beautiful.
When twilight drops a curtain
and pins it with a star,
Remember that you have a friend
Though she may wander far.
After that, again bending close to listen when I told of getting robbed on the last Greyhound by the sonofabitching phony preacher, whom I barely restrained myself from calling that and more, the doctor frowned as if still working on his diagnosis. “Then where’s this uncle of yours? Why isn’t he here with you?”
“Uhm, he’s sort of, you know”—I twirled my forefinger at my temple—“from the war. Scared of people in uniform. Like rangers. Or your nurse, even. What do they call it, ‘nervous in the service’?”
He mm-hmmed the way someone does to acknowledge they’ve heard what you’ve said, whether or not they believe it. “Why eleven dollars and forty cents?”
“Bus fare. Like my uncle says, we’re just trying to get someplace south of the moon and north of Hell.”
“Your uncle has a strange sense of geography,” he was half laughing. Turning serious again, he parked his hands in the side pockets of his office coat the way doctors do when they’re about to deliver the news, good or bad.
“I’ve had some dillies come in here, but you beat all.” I swallowed real hard at that. Then that twitch of a smile showed up on him again. “Nellie,” he called out to the front desk. “I’ve invented a new cure. Bring me a ten and a five from the cash drawer, please.”
Looking at me curiously, the nurse swished in, handed him the money, gave me another look, and left. Dr. Schneider started to pass me the ten-dollar bill and fiver, but then hesitated, giving me a heart flutter. “If you’re so confounded broke, what are you eating on?”