“‘BUGGERED.’ BAD LANGUAGE.”
Herman wore an upset expression not entirely due to the South Dakota version of bus depot breakfast as he read over what, unbeknownst to either of us in the literary dark back then, would turn out to be as famous a set of words as I could ever hope to coax into the autograph book.
“He must have meant ‘boogered,’ don’t you think?” I stuck up for my fellow long-distance writer. “Sort of snotted up like with a bad cold, maybe?”
Herman opened his mouth, but chose not to enlighten me. By then I was already on to the next thing that threw me, that signature, the strange name which sort of quacked its way around in the alphabet. “I thought from what the lady said he was John Louie de Something.”
Herman gave it that salute. “The French.”
By then we were in the linoleum-floored cafe section of the otherwise dead Greyhound depot in Aberdeen, the breakfast stop before the long remainder of South Dakota ahead. To my disappointment, the fully named Jean-Louis de Kerouac and his Sweet Adeline had vanished. If I had to guess, to an accommodation more horizontal than a bus seat.
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I DID NOT THINK anything much out of the ordinary in bus depot experience when our none-too-appetizing meal arrived. My stack of hotcakes was burned to a crisp around the edges, and the ham and eggs must have come from tough pigs and pygmy chickens. Nonetheless I tied into the victuals, because food is food. Herman at his, though, turned out to be what Gram would have called a pecky eater, and then some.
That is, when his order of scrambled eggs and toast arrived, he ate the somewhat runny eggs in regular enough fashion, but then I noticed him nibbling away and nibbling away at an overdone piece of toast. More accurately, taking bites tinier than nibbles, whatever those might be, which was quite a sight with his chisel-like teeth.
While this peculiar performance across the table did not cause me to throw a fit as it so regularly did Aunt Kate at Manitowoc breakfast times, I do have to say such behavior was sort of disturbing, hard to watch and harder not to.
Herman kept at it, turning the toast this way and that to take those squirrelly little bites, discarding crust onto the edge of his plate, until finally putting down what was left of the slice and sitting back in apparent satisfaction. Figuring it was none of my business if a person wanted to eat a piece of toast like it was bird food, I worked away at my singed hotcakes without saying anything.
He wasn’t letting me off that easy. “So, Donny, look,” he prompted, indicating the remains of his meal. “Where is it, do you think?”
What kind of nutty question was that? Giving him a funny look, I pointed my fork at the limp remainder of toast, so chewed over it had ended up vaguely like the outline of a discarded boot, nibbled-out instep between heel and toe and all. “What, are your peepers going bad?” I spouted off, not the best thing I could have said to someone with a glass eye. “I mean, what you were chewing on is right there in your plate, if it was a snake it’d bite you.”
“Hah-uh. Think bigger.” When I didn’t catch on, he hinted: “Gee-oh-graphy.”
Still perplexed, I peered harder at the crustless gob of toast. Then it dawned on me, not vague at all when a person really looked.
“Italy?”
Herman slapped the table in triumph. “Smart boy. You got it, first try.”
Where Aunt Kate thought his way with toast was disgusting, I was totally impressed. “Out the far end, Herman! Can you do other countries?”
“Everything in the book,” he claimed grandly. “On ship and in army, you pass time best you can, so I learned world of toast.” He grinned about wide enough to fit a piece of it in. “Winned lots of bets that I could not do Australia or somewheres, too.”
Add that to playing a tune with a spoon on his glass eye and chicken-hunting behind the lines at places like Dead Man’s Hill and surviving the Witch of November in the Straits of Mackinac and recognizing any beer at first taste and stocking up on Indian lore from Gitche Gumee to Winnetou, and I realized I was in the company of someone whose surprises just did not stop coming. This was a treat of a kind I could never have dreamed of, but also a challenge. Life with Herman was a size larger than I was used to, like clothing I was supposed to grow into.
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