“Not a bit. Where in heaven’s sake is it, somewhere far? Back east?”
The other somewheres of my trip—Pleasantville, Decatur, Chicago—the map dots of my imagination, my protection against the unknown that awaited me in one last bus depot where I was to give myself over to strangers, glimmered for a wistful moment and passed into simple memory. These two honest old faces could not be storied to, nor did I want to, hard truth the destination I had to face now.
“No, no, it’s in Wisconsin, honest, see.” Producing the autograph book from my jacket pocket, I showed them the precious piece of paper with the Manitowoc address and phone number. And more than that, I told them the whole story, Gram’s scary operation and my parents killed by the drunk driver and the summer ahead of me in the hands of relatives who might as well be ghosts for all I knew about them, and the dog bus proving out Gram’s prediction that it gets all kinds, like the huffy little sheriff who thought I was a runaway and the slick convict who almost made off with my suitcase—it spilled out of me in a flood, although I did hold back being soundly kissed by a vagabond waitress with Leticia stitched on her breast.
“Whew,” Mr. Schneider whistled when I finally ran down, “you’re a trouper for not letting anything throw you,” and Mrs. Schneider added a flurry of tsks, but the good kind that marveled at all I had been through. They put their heads together and figured out where Manitowoc must be from my ticket that showed I’d have to change buses in Milwaukee and ride for only a couple hours beyond that, which indicated that the place must be on Lake Michigan. That made them fret somewhat less. As Mr. Schneider put it, the town didn’t sound like it was off at the rear end of nowhere.
Time flew in their company, comfortable as they were with a boy from having raised three of their own, and I felt next thing to adopted as our chatter continued across the miles. I could just see their prosperous farm, with a few horses still on the place for old times’ sake, and no Power Wagon or Sparrowhead to ruin a summer. The saving grace of an uncorked imagination such as mine was that it always carried me away, as Gram all too well knew, waking dreams that I could more than halfway believe in if life would only correct itself in the direction of good luck instead of bad for her and me. I knew with everything in me Joe Schneider would have given me a chance to harness up a team of workhorses and prove myself in the fine fields of Illinois instead of running me off like an underage hobo, and Mae Schneider would never be a tightwad about kitchen matters. In my trance during the valuable time with this sage old couple—wizened must have had something to do with wisdom, mustn’t it?—I could hardly bear not to ask if they needed a teamster and a cook.
But then Mrs. Schneider looked out at some Palookaville the bus was passing through and exclaimed, “Can you believe it, we’re almost to the Dells,” and that bubble popped. I came to with a start, realizing I hadn’t had them write in the autograph book, and they chorused that they’d fix that in a hurry.
“A memory book,” Mrs. Schneider said wistfully as I handed her the album and pen. “Why, I haven’t seen one of these since our children had theirs.” I watched over her shoulder, a growing lump in my throat, as she penned in a neat hand:
When twilight drops a curtain
and pins it with a star,
Remember that you have a friend
Though she may wander far.
He took a lot more time with his, a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he wrote and wrote. When his wife told him for heaven’s sakes hurry up, he shushed her with “Never you mind, this is man talk between me and Donal,” using my name with exquisite courtesy. When he passed the book back to me, along with a knowing grin, I saw he had composed:
Here’s to the girlfriends,
you’ll have them in numbers,
you’ll have them in plenty,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
The Wisconsin Dells stop was so brief I didn’t get off, merely pressed my nose against the window as the Schneiders waved to me and were met by their family. Whatever dells were, I goggled at what appeared to be a lake turned into an amusement park, with a fleet of landing craft like my father’s at Omaha Beach, except these advertised on their sides WISCONSIN DUCKS—FUN! ADVENTURE! ON LAND AND WATER! That was not even the most thrilling thing, though, as rising over the water like a railroad that had decided to jump the lake was a swooping roller-coaster track—sure as anything, the “ride” operated by the Schneiders’ son. Oh, how I ached to stay there, just once in my life be a member of that world of pleasure. For as the bus pulled out, I knew in my heart of hearts nothing like that awaited me in some hard-to-spell town with not a thing going for it except the Indian explanation that it was where ghosts lived. Dead, in other words.
8.