The Wayward Bus (15 page)

“I ain't exactly a midget,” said Louie. He picked up her suitcase and walked quickly out to the loading platform. He climbed into the bus and put the suitcase down in front of the seat that was right behind his seat. He could watch the girl in his mirror and he could talk to her some when they got rolling. He came out of the bus and saw the punk and another swamper putting the crate of pies on top of the bus.

“Careful of that stuff,” Louie said loudly. “You bastards dropped one last week and I got the beef.”

“I never dropped nothing,” said the punk.

“The hell you didn't,” said Louie. “You watch your step.” He went through the swinging doors to the waiting room.

“What's eating him?” the other swamper asked.

“Oh, I sort of jammed him up,” said the punk. “The nigger found a wallet and I seen it, so they figured they got to turn it in. It was a big roll of jack too. They're both sore at me 'cause I seen it. Louie and that nigger was gonna split them up a coupla half centuries and I guess I jammed it for 'em. Course they had to turn it in when they seen I saw 'em.”

“I could use some of that,” said the swamper.

“Who couldn't,” said the punk.

“I can take me a century and I can go out and I can get very nice stuff for that there.” They went on for a time with ritual talk.

In the waiting room there was a little burst of activity. The crowd for the southbound bus was beginning to collect. Edgar was busy behind the counter, but not too busy to keep his eye on the girl. “A pig,” he said under his breath. It was a new word to him. From now on he would use it. He glanced at the little fingernail on his left hand. It would be long before he would have as good a one as Louie's. But why kid himself? He couldn't make time like Louie anyway. He always ended up by going down the line.

There was a last-minute flurry of customers at the candy counter, at the peanut vending machines, at the gum dispensers. A Chinaman bought copies of
Time
and
Newsweek
³
and rolled them carefully together and put them in his black broadcloth overcoat pocket. An old lady restlessly turned over magazines on the newsstand without any intention of buying one. Two Hindus with gleaming white turbans and shining black curly beards stood side by side at the ticket window. They glanced fiercely about as they tried to make themselves understood.

Louie stood by the entrance to the loading platform and glanced continually at the girl. He noticed that every man in the room was doing the same thing. All of them were watching her secretly, and they didn't want to get caught at it. He turned and looked through the swinging glass doors and saw that the punk and the swamper had got the crate of pies safely on top of the bus and the tarpaulin pulled down over it. The light in the waiting room dimmed to dusk. A cloud must have covered the sun. And then the light rose again as though controlled by a rheostat. The big bell over the glass doors clamored. Louie looked at his watch and went through the door to his big bus. And the passengers in the waiting room got up and shuffled toward the door.

Edgar was still trying to make out where the Hindus wanted to go. “The god-damned rag heads,” he said to himself. “Why'nt they learn English before they start running around?”

Louie climbed into the high seat enclosed by a stainless steel bar and glanced at the tickets as the passengers got on. The Chinaman in the dark coat went directly to the back seat, took off his coat, and laid the
Time
and
Newsweek
in his lap. The old lady clambered breathlessly up the step and sat down in the seat directly behind Louie.

He said, “I'm sorry, ma'am, that seat's taken.”

“What do you mean, taken?” she said belligerently. “There aren't any reserved seats.”

“That seat's taken, ma'am,” Louie repeated. “Don't you see the suitcase beside it?” He hated old women. They frightened him. There was a smell about them that gave him the willies. They were fierce and they had no pride. They never gave a damn about making a scene. They got what they wanted. Louie's grandmother had been a tyrant. She had got whatever she wanted by being fierce. From the corners of his eyes he saw the girl on the lower step of the bus, waiting behind the Hindus to get in. He was pushed into a spot. Suddenly he was angry.

“Ma'am,” he said, “I'm the boss on my bus. There's plenty of good seats. Now will you move back?”

The old woman set her chin and scowled at him. She switched her behind a little, settling into the seat. “You've got that girl in this seat, that's what you've got,” she said. “I've got a mind to report you to the management.”

Louie blew up. “All right, ma'am. You just get out and report me. The company's got lots of passengers, but it hasn't got many good drivers.” He saw that the girl was listening, and he felt pretty good about it.

The old woman saw that he was angry. “I'm going to report you,” she said.

“Well, report me then. You can get off the bus,” Louie said loudly, “but you're not going to sit in that seat. The passenger in that seat got a doctor's order.”

It was an out, and the old woman took it. “Why didn't you say so?” she said. “I'm not unreasonable. But I'm still going to report you for discourtesy.”

“All right, ma'am,” Louie said wearily. “That I'm used to.”

The old woman moved back one seat.

“Going to hang out her big ear and catch me off base,” Louie thought. “Well, let her. We got more passengers than drivers.” The girl was beside him now, holding out her ticket. Involuntarily Louie said, “You only going as far as the Corners?”

“I know, I've got to change,” said the girl. She smiled at his tone of disappointment.

“That's your seat right there,” he said. He watched the mirror while she sat down and crossed her legs and pulled down her skirt and put her purse beside her. She straightened her shoulders and fixed the collar of her suit.

She knew Louie was watching every move. It had always been that way with her. She knew she was different from other girls, but she didn't quite know how. In some ways it was nice always to get the best seat, to have your lunches bought for you, to have a hand on your arm crossing the street. Men couldn't keep their hands off her. But there was always the trouble. She had to argue or cajole or insult or fight her way out. All men wanted the same thing from her, and that was just the way it was. She took it for granted and it was true.

When she'd been young she'd suffered from it. There had been a sense of guilt and of nastiness. But now she was older she just accepted it and developed her techniques. Sometimes she gave in and sometimes she got money or clothes. She knew most of the approaches. She could probably have foretold everything Louie would do or say in the next half hour. By anticipating, she could sometimes stave off unpleasantness. Older men wanted to help her, put her in school or on the stage. Some young men wanted to marry her or protect her. And a few, a very few, openly and honestly simply wanted to go to bed with her and told her so.

These were the easiest because she could say yes or no and get it over with. What she hated most about her gift, or her failing, was the fighting that went on. Men fought each other viciously when she was about. They fought like terriers, and she sometimes wished that women could like her, but they didn't. And she was intelligent. She knew why, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. What she really wanted was a nice house in a nice town, two children, and a stairway to stand on. She would be nicely dressed and people would be coming to dinner. She'd have a husband, of course, but she couldn't see him in her picture because the advertising in the women's magazines from which her dream came never included a man. Just a lovely woman in nice clothes coming down the stairs and guests in the dining room and candles and a dark wood dining table and clean children to kiss good night. That's what she really wanted. And she knew as well as anything that that was not what she would ever get.

There was a great deal of sadness in her. She wondered about other women. Were they different in bed than she was? She knew from watching that men didn't react to most women the way they did to her. Her sexual impulses were not terribly strong nor very constant, but she didn't know about other women. They never discussed this kind of thing with her. They didn't like her. Once the young doctor to whom she had gone to try to have the pain of her periods relaxed had made a pass at her, and when she had talked him out of that he had told her, “You just put it out in the air. I don't know how, but you do it. Some women are like that,” he said. “Thank God there aren't many of them or a man would go nuts.”

She tried wearing severe clothes, but that didn't help much. She couldn't keep an ordinary job. She learned to type, but offices went to pieces when she was hired. And now she had a racket. It paid well and it didn't get her in much trouble. She took off her clothes at stags.
⁴
A regular agency handled her. She didn't understand stags or what satisfaction the men got out of them, but there they were, and she made fifty dollars for taking off her clothes and that was better than having them torn off in an office. She'd even read up on nymphomania, enough, anyway, to know that she didn't have it. She almost wished she had. Sometimes she thought she'd just go into a house and make a pile of dough and retire to the country—that, or marry an elderly man she could control. It would be the easiest way. Young men who were attractive to her had a way of turning nasty. They always suspected her of cheating them. They either sulked or tried to beat her up or they got furious and threw her out.

She'd tried being kept and that was the way it ended. But an old man with some money—that might be the way. And she would be good to him. She'd really make it worth his money and his time. She had only two girl friends, and both of them were house girls. They seemed to be the only kind who weren't jealous of her and who didn't resent her. But one was out of the country now. She didn't know where. She followed troops somewhere. And the other was living with an advertising man and didn't want her around.

That was Loraine. They had had an apartment together. Loraine didn't care much about men; still, she didn't go for women. But then Loraine got caught short with this advertising man and asked her to move out. Loraine explained everything when she told her not to come around.

Loraine was working in a house and this advertising man fell for her. Well, Loraine had got gonorrhea, and before she even had a symptom she gave it to this advertising man. He was a nervous type and he blew his top and lost his job and came bellyaching to Loraine. She felt responsible in a way so she took him in and fed him while they both got cured. That was before the new treatment,
⁵
and it had been pretty rough.

And then this advertising man went on a sleeping-pill pitch. She'd find him passed out and he was pretty vague, and his temper was bad unless he had his pills, and he took more and more of them. Twice Loraine had to have him pumped out.

Loraine was a really good girl and things were hard because she couldn't work in the house until she was cleared up. She didn't want to infect anybody she knew, and still she had to have money for doctor's bills and rent and food. She had to work the streets in Glendale to make it, and she wasn't feeling good herself. And then, with everything else, the advertising man turned jealous and didn't want her to work at all in spite of the fact that he didn't have a job. It would be nice if the whole thing had blown over by now and she and Loraine could have the apartment together. They had been a good pair together. They had had fun, good, quiet fun.

There had been a whole series of conventions in Chicago and she had saved some money from the stags. She was taking busses back to Los Angeles to save money. She wanted to live quietly a while. She hadn't heard from Loraine for a long time. The last letter said this advertising man was reading her mail so not to write.

The last passengers were coming through the doors and getting into the bus.

Louie had his legs crossed. He was a little timid with this girl. “I see you're going to L.A.,” he said. “Do you live there?”

“Part of the time.”

“I like to try and figure people out,” he said. “A guy like me sees so many people.”

The motor of the bus breathed softly. The old woman was glaring at Louie. He could see her in the mirror. She would probably write a letter to the company.

“Well,” Louie said to himself, “the hell with the company.” He could always get a job. The company didn't pay much attention to old ladies' letters anyway. He glanced back down the bus. It looked like the two Hindus were holding hands. The Chinaman had both
Time
and
Newsweek
open on his lap and he was comparing stories. His head swung from one magazine to the other, and a puzzled wrinkle marked his nose between his brows. The dispatcher waved at Louie.

Louie swung the lever that closed the door. He eased his gear into compound-reverse and crept out of the concrete slip, then swung delicately and wide so that his front fender cleared the north wall by a part of an inch. He swung wide again in compound-low and cleared the other side of the alley by a fraction of an inch. At the entrance to the street from the alley he stopped and saw that the street was clear for him. He turned the bus and it took him over to the other side of the street. Louie was a good driver with a perfect record. The bus moved down the main street of San Ysidro and came to the outskirts and to the open highway.

The sky and the sun were washed and clean. The colors were sharp. The ditches ran full of water; and in some places, where the ditches were clogged, the water extended out onto the highway. The bus hit this water with a great swish, and Louie could feel the tug at the wheel. The grass was matted down from the force of the rain, but now the warmth of the sun was putting strength into the rich grass and it was beginning to rise up again on the high places.