The whole busload roared approval of that description, which no doubt went straight into hobo lingo. Relieved, I sat back, surreptitiously stroking the medicine pouch beneath my shirt, thanking the arrowhead for the luck of encountering Mae and Joe and the generous doctor and their fortunate name, while Herman accepted accolades for the tale with a grin halfway back to Germany.
Things settled down then, the passengers trading gripes about railroad bulls who patrolled the switchyards like it was a sin to climb onto a perfectly inviting empty boxcar, and countless other indignities the Johnson family had to suffer. I started to relax somewhat, deciding maybe the bus was not going to topple into the river and drown us just yet, although I did not quit stroking the arrowhead every little while to ward that off. But then, as I kept catching snatches of conversation as the Jersey Mosquito yakkety-yakked with Fingy while Overland Pete swapped observations on humanity with Oscar the Swede, a certain feeling came over me. It was unmistakable, and it had me clasping what lay half forgotten in my coat pocket as if it were a precious rediscovery. I had hit the jackpot, I realized. An entire busload of all kinds, here for the taking with a Kwik-Klik.
Excitedly I nudged Herman, drawing a grunt and an inquisitive look. “You know what?” I said close to his ear, resisting the urge to grab it as he had grabbed mine. “I need to get these guys in the autograph book. Nobody else has names anything like them.”
“Except maybe racehorses,” he spiked that with a guttural laugh. “Ja, fill your book with odd Johnsons.” He yawned, the Wild Irish Rose perhaps having its effect. “Busy day. While you are gitting them to write, I am going to catch winks.”
I still don’t know how he could do it, popping off to sleep like that aboard a bus snorting its exhaust and rattling like crazy on the washboard road, but there he went, soundly slumbering by the time I had my pen and album ready and intentions sorted out.
I had brains enough to start with Highpockets, and staggered my way down the aisle to his front seat as the bus bucked along. Ordinarily nothing seemed to surprise him, but this did. He eyed the white album none too trustfully as I squatted by him and reeled off my request known by heart. “If I was to dab something in for you,” he questioned, “how would you want it signed?”
“Just with, you know, your moniker.” Then I got inspired. “How about Highpockets, on the last bus to Wisdom.”
“Fair enough.” He took the Kwik-Klik and, as I had hoped, made a little music on the page.
There’s a land somewhere
so pretty and fair,
with rivers of milk and shores of jelly,
where every man has a millionaire belly.
“There you go, the hobo anthem, verse number about a hundred and fifty probably.” He loosened up into almost a smile as he shifted the album back to me.
“It’s nice. I like it.” Now I had to try Bughouse Louie sitting next to him, who had been feigning disinterest all the while Highpockets was writng. First, though, I needed my curiosity satisfied. “Can I ask you something?” I stuck with Highpockets. “How come you and the other ho—haymakers wait to take the last bus?”
“I might ask you and One Eye the same,” he said mildly, but still giving my heart a flutter as the MOST WANTED poster loomed into the picture. “But I won’t.”
He leaned back, his big frame squashing the seatback cushion, and with the practiced eye of a lifetime traveler, scanned the hard-used and unmaintained interior of the bus, which in that respect matched its exterior. “Not exactly soft, swift, and smooth, is it, going by dog in the last of the pack.” The bus shuddered across the metal rails of a stock crossing in answer. “But the reason we hold off,” he resumed, “to catch this old crate on its last run is because that puts us past the green hay, when ranchers who never learn any better start mowing too soon and try to stack the cut before it dries like it ought to. Haying is tough enough without the stuff being heavy and slippery.” He glanced at me to see if I knew that, which I did.
“Uh-huh, real smart,” I confirmed, thinking past that seasonal maneuver to the larger matter of Wisdom and the Big Hole and the reputation as a valley of prosperity. “But don’t any of you ever, ah, hole up there? I mean, stick around in jobs besides haying?”
Highpockets emphatically shook his head. “Hoboes don’t stick,” he put it in simplest terms. “We’re not barnacles.”
Bughouse Louie backed that with a smile that displayed gums instead of teeth. “I sure ain’t.”
Their point fully made, I thanked the one for honoring my album and was about to ask the other to do the same when I was flatly turned down. “Can’t possibly,” Bughouse Louie cramped a hand to show me. “Got the arthritics.”