“W-wait. Are all of them—bums?”
Quick as I said that, the driver turned to us in a sort of crowhop. “You got that all wrong, sonny,” he schooled me, “bums don’t ride buses. Tramps, now, they maybe might if somebody was to give them the money,” he furthered my education. “Been known to happen. But these fellas”—our gaze followed his to the waiting men—“are hoboes, whole different thing. They ain’t your total down-and-outers, more like hard-luck cases. Got to hand it to them, they travel around looking for work. Seasonal, like. Apple glommers, almond knockers, sugar beeters”—Herman’s expression skewed even more as he tried to follow the driver’s tally—“what hoboes do is follow the crops. Haymakers, about now, tough a job as any,” he added pointedly, with another skeptical look at the pair of us. “You better unnerstand, living rough like they do, hoboes by nature are a hard lot. Have to be. For them, it’s root, hog, or die.”
He paused to make sure the lesson was sinking in on us. “That refund is still ready and waiting.”
Herman must have given that the quickest think in history, for I immediately felt his bolstering hand in the middle of my back, making our decision. I spoke it, in our biggest leap of fate or faith yet. “Nothing doing. We’re going with on the what’s-it. The special.”
Shrugging as if our blind determination was water off his back, the driver crowfooted away toward the waiting bus. “Hop on.”
22.
THE LAST TWO seats were way at the back of the bus, which meant the entire hobo contingent had a chance to look us over from stem to stern as we wove up the aisle. Stepping aboard right after us, from tossing my suitcase and Herman’s duffel into the baggage compartment with a collection of bedrolls and what looked to me like bundles of belongings but for some reason were called bindles, the driver sang out, “Okey-doke, final call. Last bus to W-I-S-D-O-M, for those of you who know the alphabet.”
“We’re all scholars of the Braille sort,” a man taller and brawnier than the rest called out.
“I bet you’ve put the touch on many a thing all right, Highpockets,” retorted the driver, counting heads to make sure the total matched the number of tickets he had punched. “Talk about faces a person can’t forget even if he tries. Druv the majority of you scissorbills at this same time last year, if I don’t miss my guess.”
“That’s us, Hoppy, last but nowhere near least,” a scrawny old fellow with a cracked voice was heard from next. “Had a chance to take drivin’ lessons since then, have ye?”
The driver snorted and made as if to fling his cap at the offender. “I have druv longer than you been off your ma’s hind tit.”
“That makes you older than the pharaoh’s dick, don’t it, Hop,” the fellow plenty far along in years himself cracked back, to hoots of encouragement and cries of “Lay it to him, Skeeter.” Of course, I was following this like a puppy lapping milk, until Herman tugged my ear to bring me close enough for a whispered “Phoo. Rough tongues. Don’t listen too much.”
“Let’s can the mutual admiration and get this crate goin’,” the one called Highpockets spoke with authority. “Else the best kips are gonna be taken at the Big Hole Riviera.”
“Birds like you can always roost in the diamond willows,” the driver responded crossly. Nonethless he dragged himself into place behind the steering wheel, managed to find the clutch and brake pedal with his feet, fiddled around some on the dashboard, and eventually ground the starter—it growled so much like the DeSoto back in Manitowoc that Herman and I couldn’t help trading amused glances—until it eventually caught, and the bus bucked its way out of the depot driveway as if hiccuping.
Hoppy mastered the gearshift somewhat better on the downhill run from the Butte business district and away, I could now hope, from the nightmarish orphanage. Herman was breathing easier, too, as the bus hit the highway, with the splash of MOST WANTED posters receding behind him. The tortured side of his face missing its eye relaxed a little, even.
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