PRETTY QUICK we had something new to worry about as Highpockets, who by all indications was some sort of topkick of the hoboes, made his way to the rear and squatted in the aisle by us. Up close, he showed more wear and tear than at first appearance, what Gram called weary lines at the corners of his hooded eyes. Some time back, his nose apparently had been rearranged by a fist, and he bore a sizable quarter-moon scar at the corner of his mouth. But I would not want to have been the other guy in the fight, strong as his unrelenting gaze was and the rest of him more than enough to back it up. Cordial but direct, he asked, “You fellows going calling on the near and dear, down in the Hole? Or what?”
Or what required some answering on this bus, all right, as it bucketed along making exhaust noise as if it needed a new muffler, or maybe any muffler. Catching on to the situation if not the conversation level, Herman intuitively sealed his lips in favor of mine.
“Huh-uh, we’re going haying like everybody else,” I launched into. “See, I’m a stacker team driver, and my grandpa here is a sort of a roustabout, good at lots of stuff. But you need to excuse his not talking”—the story built as fast as I could get it out of my mouth—“he’s straight from the old country and doesn’t savvy English very much. He’s over here taking care of me because”—I had to swallow hard to move from invention to the real answer about near and dear relatives—“my parents passed away, and we’re all each other has.” That at least was the truth of the moment, although Gram was due a major mental apology for substituting Herman for her in the larger picture of life.
Highpockets heard me out with scarcely a blink, his scrutiny all the more unnerving for that. More than a few of the other hoboes were swung around in their seats, taking all this in. Like them, Highpockets had on a shapeless old hat that signified rough living and outdoor labor, more than likely the mark of being a true hobo. Sitting back on his haunches, he skeptically eyed our fresh Stetsons and my fancy rodeo shirt. “You trying to tell me you and Gramps are on your uppers?”
Fortunately I had enough bunkhouse lingo to answer, “We’re not broke, but we can see it from here.” All the honesty I could summon seemed to be called for. “What it is, we got robbed blind. Back on the dog bus, the one from Billings.” Herman, who had gone stiff as a coffin lid at my designation of him as grandpa, unbent enough to bob his head in confirmation of “robbed blind.” I plunged on. “A sonofabitching phony preacher gyppo”—my vocabulary gleaned from the Double W riders fit right in with this audience, it seemed—“picked Gramps’s pocket and wiped us clean, so that’s why we’re on here with you.” I made myself shut up, praying that was just enough and not too much or too little.
It at least worked with Highpockets, who relaxed and bounced on his haunches a bit, glancing around at the other listening hoboes. “Their bad luck to run into a fingersmith, pulling the old sky pilot dodge, eh, boys? Seen that one put over on many a pilgrim.” He slapped my knee, startling the daylights out of me, and gave Herman that round O sign of forefinger touching the tip of the thumb, the rest of the fingers up, which means OK. Herman smiled weakly in return. “Stealing isn’t our style,” Highpockets was saying, his gunsight gaze sweeping around to take in the whole set of rough-and-ready men, “at least from each other.” Unfolding to his full height, nearly scraping the ceiling of the bus, he gestured around. “You’re gonna be with us, better howdy up with the boys.”
Right then the bus jolted off the highway, slewing somewhat too fast onto a gravel road headed south. Highpockets grabbed a seatback to keep his balance, laughing. “Hold on to your stovepipes,” he advised about our Stetsons, “here comes the real haywagon ride.” Another of the hoboes yelped to the driver, “Kick ’er in the ribs and let ’er buck, Hoppy!”
“I’ll do the driving, you do the sitting with your thumb up your butt, how about,” the driver hollered back, wrestling the steering wheel as the shuddering bus adjusted to the gravel surface, more or less. Which had suddenly narrowed to what my father the construction catskinner would have scoffed at as a goat trail, so much so that Herman and I now were peering almost straight down the steep bank of a fast-flowing river on our side. I gulped, and Herman narrowed his good eye in concern. I know it wasn’t possible for the rear tires to be traveling on thin air over the water, but that’s how it seemed.
Unconcerned about the Greyhound flirting with the fishes, Highpockets got back to introductions up and down the aisle. The Jersey Mosquito. Oscar the Swede. Midnight Frankie. Snuffy. Overland Pete. Shakespeare, who looked to me like any ordinary human being.
“Then there’s Fingy.” Highpockets pointed to a squat swarthy man who gave Herman a comradely wink and waved a hand short of two fingers.
The roster of the last bus to Wisdom went on pretty much like that. Bughouse Louie. Pooch. Peerless Peterson. The California Kid, who was the most gray-haired of the bunch. So many others of the sort that I was having trouble keeping track, and Herman looked swamped from the first by the roll call of nicknames.
No sooner had Highpockets finished than the scrawny one with shoulder blades jutting high as his neck, the Jersey Mosquito known familiarly as Skeeter, leaned into the aisle and addressed me. “That’s us, to the last jot and tittle. Now, who be ye?”