The bus lurched into immediate motion, as if my fanny hitting the cushion was the signal to go, and I settled into eating my candy bar and sneaking looks sideways at my traveling companion. He was dressed not all that different from me, in blue jeans and a western shirt with snap buttons. All resemblance ended there, though. His buckskin face could have posed for the one on nickels, and then there were those braids. I envied him his straw cowboy hat, beat-up and curled almost over on itself at the brim and darkly sweat-stained from what I would have bet was life on one of the small ranches scattered around on the reservation, riding Appaloosa horses and hunting antelope and dancing at powwows and a million other things that beat anything I had been through at the Double W.
Mind your manners no matter what, so people won’t think you were born in a barn, I could all but hear Gram reciting in my ear, and so I politely turned away to the window to wait until we were out of town and freewheeling toward the reservation before striking up a conversation about him being an Indian and my second name or nickname or whatever it was being Red Chief. That ought to get the palaver going. Then when obsidian arrowheads became the topic, should I tell him, just sort of casually, that I had one in my suitcase? For all I knew, possessing such a rarity maybe made a person special in the tribe. Possibly I was already a sort of honorary chieftain and didn’t know it, from whatever sacred quality—to me, that meant pretty much the same as magic—a glistening dark treasure like that carried.
Yet there was another consideration, wasn’t there. While I was surer than sure that Wendell Williamson did not deserve an arrowhead older than Columbus, what about the Indians from that time on? What if my braided seatmate were to tell me the black arrowhead was a lucky piece that they worshipped, and there was a whole long story about how tough life had been for Indians ever since it was lost? I’d feel bad about having it. I decided I’d better play it safe at first and start with his autograph.
Finally the bus labored out of the last of Havre and we were rolling ahead on the open prairie. Expectantly I turned toward my braided seat partner for conversation to be initiated, by me if not him.
The straw cowboy hat was pulled down over his eyes. Oh no! Phooey and the other word, too! He was sound asleep.
I was stymied. Talk about manners and Gram’s commandment. I couldn’t very well poke a total stranger in the ribs and tell him, “Hey, wake up, I want to palaver with you.” That was born-in-a-barn behavior, for sure. However, if I accidentally on purpose disturbed his slumber, that was a different matter, right?
Retrieving another Mounds from a coat pocket, I noisily unwrapped it, crumpling the wrapper as loudly as possible while I munched away. No result on the sleeper.
I coughed huskily. He still didn’t stir. Not even working myself into a fake coughing fit penetrated his snooze.
I squirmed in my seat, jiggled the armrest between us, made such a wriggling nuisance that I bothered myself. Sleeping Bull, as I now thought of him, never noticed. The man could have dozed through a cavalry charge.
Well, okay, Red Chief, you’d better figure this out some, I told myself. After all, the prize sleeper was not the only autograph book candidate and possible conversation partner on the packed dog bus, by far. If I wanted Indians, a small tribe of them was scattered up and down the aisle, entire families with little kids in their go-to-town clothes and cowboy-hatted lone men sitting poker-faced but awake, all of them as buckskin-colored as the one parked next to me. Then at the back of the bus, a white-bibbed workgang, off to some oil field where a gusher had been struck according to their talk, was having a good time, several of them playing cards on a coat spread across a couple of laps, others looking on and making smart remarks. From snatches I could hear, there wasn’t any doubt I could pick up the finer points of cussing and discussing from them just as I’d done with my buddies the soldiers, last seen shouldering their duffel bags to head in the direction of Korea, poor guys. A new gold mine of names and all that came with them was right there up the aisle waiting, if I could only reach it.
I gauged my seatmate, who seemed to have expanded in his sleep. Getting by him posed a challenge, but I figured if I stretched myself just about to splitting, I could lift a leg over him into the aisle and the other leg necessarily would follow.
Here goes nothing fom nowhere, another of Gram’s old standards, got me perilously up and with one leg spraddled over his round midriff, as if mounting a horse from the wrong side, when the fact struck me. Moron, there aren’t any empty seats. I’d have to stay standing as I went along the aisle. Already I saw in the rearview mirror that the driver had his eye on me.
Defeated, I dropped back in my seat, silently cussing to the limits of my ability. To console myself, I ate my last Mounds. Maybe my luck would change at the next stop, I told myself. Surely the bus would let some passengers off in Chinook. In the meantime, punch-drunk on candy, I must have caught the sleeping sickness from my hibernating seatmate, as my eyelids grew heavy and the rhythm of the bus wheels on the flat open road lulled me off into a nap—only until something happened, I drowsily promised myself.
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