“A fortune on your tootsies, huh? I tell you, some guys have all the luck.”
Good-natured about it, though, he drew back as if to make room for his admiration of me, topping it off with “Look at you, just getting started in life and you’ve got it knocked,” and I went still as death.
? ? ?
HOW CAN A WORD, a saying, do that? Make your skin prickle, as memory comes to the surface?
Innocent as it sounded, the utterance from this complete stranger echoed in me until my ears rang. Gram was more used to this sort of thing, the sound of someone speaking from past the grave. Past a white cross on the side of Highway 89, in this instance. How many times had I heard it, waiting with my mother in a kitchen table card game of pitch or a round of dominoes or some such while my father scouted for work, for the next construction camp that needed a hot-shot catskinner, and in he would come at last, smiling like the spring sun as he reported, “They’re hiring at Tiber Dam,” or the Greenfield irrigation project it might be, or the reservoirs capturing creeks out of the Rockies, Rainbow and Pishkun and those. Each time his voice making the words wink that certain way: “We’ve got it knocked.” Wherever it came from—World War Two? the Depression?—for me the expression indeed meant something solid we were about to tap into, wages for my folks after a lean winter and a firmer place to live than wherever we had fetched up when the ground froze hard enough to resist a bulldozer blade. It entered me deeper than mere words generally go, as Gram’s sayings did with her, to the point where I perfectly well knew, even though I wasn’t there, that starting out on that trip to take possession of the bulldozer that would set them—us—up in life for once and for all, Bud Cameron and his wife Peg declared in one voice or the other that they had it knocked. Until they didn’t.
? ? ?
BRISKLY MY TEMPORARY companion prodded me out of the spell, tugging at his suit cuffs as he asked, “Where’s home that you’re gonna parade around in those fancy moccasins?”
“Chicago.” The rest came to me from somewhere, natural as drawing breath. “My father’s a policeman there.”
“You don’t say,” he said again, with a couple of blinks as if he had something in his eye. “A harness bull, is he?”
“Huh?”
“You know, a cop on the beat?”
“Huh-uh. Detective. He solves murders.”
He studied me as if really sizing me up now. “That what you’re going to be? A flatfoot?” He winked to signal we both knew the lingo, didn’t we.
“Nope. A rodeo announcer. ‘Now coming out of chute four, Rags Rasmussen, saddle bronc champeen of the world, on a steed called Bombs Away,’” I gave him a rapid-fire sample. My parents never missed a Gros Ventre rodeo, and given all the hours I had sat through bareback and saddle bronc riding, the announcer’s microphone spiel was virtually second nature to me.
“Whew.” My seatmate gave that little shake of his head again as if I were really something. “Whatever it is, you seem to know the ropes.”
If I knew any, it was that it was time to quit fooling around. He wasn’t as good at making up things as I was, whatever that was about. Maybe he was embarrassed about being a headbolt heater salesman and not able to afford to dress better than he did. In any case, I didn’t have time for bulloney from him, I needed to get going with the autograph book. In several seats not far behind us was a group of women all wearing hats with various floral designs, and from what I was able to overhear of their chatter they were a garden club who called themselves the Gardenias, and were out for fun, which seemed to consist of staying at a lakeside lodge with a flower garden. I didn’t want to miss out on the bunch of them, so I produced the album to deal with my seatmate first and then scoot down the aisle to those hats bursting with blossoms.
He registered surprise at seeing the book open to an inviting page, and the Kwik-Klik seemed to throw him, too. “Tell you what, maybe later.” He wiggled his hand as if it needed warming up.
“Okay, then. Let me past, please.”
“Hey, don’t rush off,” he protested, showing no sign of moving. “How often do I get to visit with a jackpot roper?” he said with a palsy-walsy smile.
“Yeah, but—” I explained what a golden chance the bus was for building up my collection and the only way to do it was, well, to get out there in the aisle and do it. I made ready to squeeze by him, but he still hadn’t budged and he was as much of a blockade to try to climb over as the plump Indian.
I don’t know what would have happened if the bus hadn’t started slowing way down, for a reason that caught me by surprise. And one that made him change his mind in an instant about keeping me for company.