Last Bus to Wisdom (43 page)

The familiar hum of distance, the suppressed ring at the other end, which always went on for a long time at the Columbus Hospital pavilion ward, until some busy nun set aside a bedpan or some other ministration for the nuisance of the phone, as I imagined it. Then Sister Carma Jean, who by now was getting used to my calls, briskly told me Gram would be there in a minute.

When Gram promptly came on and sounded like her old self in declaring she'd been waiting for me to call so she could share the nicest conceivable surprise with me, she skipped right past my hello to go right to her news. “I'm up and around and helping in the kitchen. Between you and me, nuns are terrible cooks.”

“Jeez, Gram,” my voice topped out in relief, “that's really terrif—”

“That's not the surprise, though,” she busted right in as if the other news wouldn't keep. “You'll never guess who I've heard from.” She could not have been more right about that. “Letty. She called me from Glasgow in her new job there.”

I was boggled by that, the entire picture of the lipstick-implanted bus encounter scrambled in my head. “What happened to Havre?”

“A boss who pinched her bottom one time too many. Like once. Donny, why in heaven's name didn't you tell me in one of your letters you met up with her on the dog bus?”

“Uhm, I had a lot I was trying to get in the letters”—utterly true—“and must have missed out on that somehow.”

“She thinks the world of you, anyway. Said you were real good company riding the bus together.” My pride started to swell at that, but Gram was not nearly done spilling the surprise. “She's working at the Glasgow Supper Club now. Here's even better news. She can get me on as night cook.”

“In
Glasgow
?” I asked dumbly. “Just like that?”

“Didn't I say so?” she retorted, as if I'd better wash out my ears. More of me than that needed clearing to hold what she said next.

“I know it's different country over there for us and we'd rather be on a ranch”—her voice turned honestly dubious for a moment—“but we'll have to tough through it. Letty and I have things worked out. There's an apartment right by hers. When you get home from Aunt Kate's for school, we'll be together under one roof. Doesn't that beat all?”

Yes
,
no
, and
maybe
fought over that in me. There it was, imagination more or less come true, Letty embossed into our patchy family as niftily as the name on her blouse. And even better yet, maybe Harv, too, except he was a wanted man there in the jurisdiction of that snotty little sheriff. By and large, Gram's report was the jackpot of my wishes, but also a king hell dilemma. The best I could manage into the receiver was, “That's—that's really some news.”

“You sound like the air has been knocked out of you,” Gram said, perfectly pleased. “I can't wait to see you again—you'll have so much to tell me about your adventures back east there, won't you.” Not if I could help it. “Donny? I think it'd be only fair if I let your Aunt Kate know how peachy the summer is working out, thanks to you being there with her and Dutch, don't you? Call her to the phone, pretty please.”

“She's, uh, taking a bath,” panic spoke for me. “She does that every night before bed. Boy, is she ever clean.”

“I guess you'll have to tell her for me,” Gram resumed. “Anyway, when the doctor turns me loose for good any day now and Letty helps me get established in that apartment and you can come home whenever you want, I'd like the great Kate to know how much your stay there has meant.”

“Oh yeah, she'll know.”

•   •   •

I
PAID
the merc clerk for the phone call and traipsed the darkened street of Wisdom back to the Watering Hole, weighed down with feelings that did not match up. Unspeakably relieved and glad though I was that Gram was herself again, nonetheless that emotion was shot through with remorse, already halfway to longing, for all I would be abandoning at the Diamond Buckle ranch and the Big Hole. The honest-to-goodness genuine job as haystack teamster. The bunkhouse hoboes who, in their coarse generous way, had taken me into the Johnson family right there on the last bus to Wisdom and ever since. The prestige of being a ranch hand for Rags Rasmussen, a source of pride I knew I would carry with me all my life.

Against those hard-won rewards, I now was free almost any time to go and be with Gram and Letty as well, a dream ready to come true. But only if I paid up with either deceit or confession about my time on the loose. Did I dare to simply show up in Glasgow, shiny as the silver greyhound forever fleet on the side of the bus, and start spinning extravagant tales about how terrific my summer in Manitowoc had been? That felt treacherous. The truth had a nasty habit of coming out. At least sometimes.

Before any of that, however, dead ahead through the swinging doors of Wisdom's sole saloon was the matter of Herman. It was only fair to let him know I'd have to leave him sooner than later, wasn't it? Hadn't he brought it up himself, back there in the bunkhouse? So why was part of me wrestling so hard against telling him, at least yet?

•   •   •

T
HE ATMOSPHERE
in the Watering Hole had turned very beery in my absence, the crew doing its best to drink the place dry in record time. Babs was behind in clearing away empty glasses as she filled fresh ones and scooted them along the bar to the hobo lineup laughing uproariously at some limerick Shakespeare had just composed. I was surprised to see two empties in front of Herman already, plus the one becoming that way in a hurry as he drank with lip-smacking gusto. Elbow to elbow with him there at the quieter end of the bar, Pooch was working on his latest golden schoonerful in his dim, deliberate way.

“Scotty!” Herman let out, as if we hadn't seen each other for ages. “Welcome back to Watering Hole, such a place. How is the
Grossmutter
?”

“Up and around,” I hedged.

“Good, good. What a woman she is. Time for Crushed Orange, hah, to celebrate her recupery.”

At his arm-waving signal, Babs worked her way along the bar to us and produced a bottle of Orange Crush for me, along with the announcement:

“Make way, boys, you got company. Here comes the Tumbling T crew.”

Just as rowdy and ready for moonhowling as our bunch, the newcomers swarmed in and established themselves along the other end of the bar, brandishing their paychecks. There was no mistaking who was the Big Ole of this contingent of hoboes turned haymakers. The Tumbling T's leader was nearly Highpockets's height, but could not have been built more differently, with what's called a cracker butt, nothing back there as if that share of the anatomy had gone onto the front in his hanging belly. He turned out to be a boxcar acquaintance of the Jersey Mosquito, who called out to the Tumbling T's main man, “Deacon! You old sidewinder, c'mon over here and pretend you're social.”

“Still pestering the world same as ever, are you, Skeeter.” Deacon barked a laugh as he joined him. Quick as anything, he spotted the Diamond Buckle hatband on Skeeter's battered headgear. “But what's this?” His laugh became nastier. “You let the rancher slap his brand on you these days? What's next, holding hands and sing-alongs on the old rancheria?”

Overhearing, Highpockets said with cold control, “Rasmussen just likes to show off that world championship he won the hard way. I'd say he's entitled.”

“If it don't bother you to have the boss's loop around your brain,” Deacon responded with a slick smile, “it's no nevermind to me. Where's your hospitality, Skeeter, I could use a drink.”

While that touchy reunion of sorts was going on, I sipped at my pop, pretty much matching Herman's and Pooch's downings of beer, while conscience worked me over from one direction and then another. I felt I couldn't hold Gram's news to myself, even though I hated to let it out, either. But driven to it at a more or less decisive moment, I mustered myself as much as I was able. “Herm—I mean, Gramps—I need to talk to you about something.”

“Has to wait, please,” he said, somewhere in another world as he hoisted his glass for an appreciative sip. “Pooch and me, we got big thoughts to think. Don't we, podner.”

“Damn straight,” Pooch said mechanically.

“Yeah, but I really need to tell you—”

“Saturday night is to howl,” Herman formulated as if it had come from Longfellow. “And lucky us, here we are, south of the moon, hah?”

He shut me down with such a fond grin—for me, for the decorated saloon so much like the Schooner, for the company of our hobo pals—that I did not have the heart to tear him away. There are times when mercy cancels anything else.

•   •   •

A
S HE AND
P
OOCH
lapsed back into their mute pleasure of imbibing, I tried to clear my head by seeing what else Saturday night in the Watering Hole had to offer, and it was then that I began to catch the drift of the Jersey Mosquito's earnest jawboning of the Tumbling T boss hobo.

“Haven't seen you since we was in that boxcar on the Ma and Pa”—the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad in hobo nomenclature—“and that Baltimore yard bull came callin' with a billy club in one hand and handcuffs in the other. I swear, Deac, never saw a man bail out the other side of a boxcar as fast as you. Left me to deal with that railroad dick by my lonesome, you sonofagun.”

“Survival of the fastest,” Deacon stated his philosophy smugly. The two of them batted boasts and put-downs back and forth like that until Skeeter sprung the trap I realized he had been baiting all along.

“I'm telling ye, Deacon, I know you think you're a helluva drinkin' man. But we got a fella who puts you to shame when it comes to lickin' a glass. Our man here can take the least leetle sip of anythin' captured in a bottle and tell you just exactly what it is.”

“Skeets, you're so full of it your eyes are turning brown,” Deacon dismissed that boast with a laugh.

“By the grace of whatever ain't unholy, I swear it's true, Deac,” Skeeter persisted. “Seen him do it with my own two eyes.” Sensing a chance to hold forth, Peerless had moved in and backed that with “I'm a witness to that my own self. Damnedest stunt since Jesus turned ditchwater into muscatel.”

His interest piqued now in spite of himself, the Tumbling T haymaker peered along the bar at our crew carrying on in Saturday night fashion. “Where's this miracle of nature you're bragging up?”

“Sittin' right there, answerin' to the name of One Eye.” Skeeter pointed a skeletal finger toward Herman.

Deacon followed that up with a dubious look, then the even more skeptical inquiry to Herman. “So you're this hipper-dipper sipper who can identify every beer this side of horse piss, huh?”

Herman drew himself up with pride. “Is true.”

“Tell ye what we're gonna do, Deac,” Skeeter followed right on the heels of that, “if you got any guts left in that stewpot belly of yours. We'll bet that our fella here can have a swig of any of these”—the sweep of his arm indicated the line of beer spigots half the length of the bar—“let's say, oh, half a dozen just to make it sporting, and tell you like that”—a snap of his fingers like a starter's gun going off—“whatevery by God one is, without him knowing aforehand.”

Deacon took another look at Herman, who gave him back a vague horsy grin and drained his glass as if in challenge, and it all of a sudden occurred to me just how many glasses he'd emptied. “Hey, though, he's already had—” I tried to warn Skeeter, but Deacon overrode me with the shrewd conclusion, “Beer gets to be plain old beer the more you drink of it. What do you think, boys? Shall we call this windjammer's bluff?”

That brought cries of “Hell, yeah!” and “I'm in!” from the Tumbling T crew.

“This suit you okay?” Highpockets shouldered in to make sure with Herman.

“Ja, betsa bootsies,” said Herman with a wink at me, which I found alarmingly woozy. “Suits me to a T Tumbler!” he ambitiously tried a joke.

“Babs, set him up six of the Montana brews, shot glasses only,” Deacon directed. “We don't want him swilling the stuff long enough to get familiar with it. The Muskeeter here claims he only needs a first swig anyway.”

“STOP WITH EVERYTHING!”

Herman had resoundingly slapped a hand on the bar in a manner that indeed did slam the proceedings to a halt. Gesturing in rather grand fashion at the long line of beer spigots as everyone watched wide-eyed, he elucidated, “Not all of these wild woolly brewings am I acquainted with. Samples first, please, bar maiden.”

Immediately Deacon was suspiciously accusing Skeeter and Highpockets of trying to pull a fast one by having our man wet his whistle too familiarly before the real taste test, while they hotly argued back that the man was new to Montana and it was essential to the bet for him to learn Babs's stock first so he'd have comparisons to go on. I could not deny the logic—even Pooch delivered “Damn straight” in recognition of it—but was leery of how much more beer Herman was taking aboard before the drinks that counted. I did not even know enough then to have the bigger worry, that in the era when almost every Montana city had its own brewery, the brewers almost to a man were of German origin, leading to a certain sameness of product. It had been nearly thirty years since Herman was testing steins of beer in Munich; did his sense of taste have that much memory of the Germanic tricks of the trade, such as they were?

We were about to find out, because Deacon and his side grudgingly gave in, and Babs, smiling to herself at all the fresh commerce, set up half a dozen shot glasses. As she named off each beer, I as our chosen representative in this—Highpockets was firm that Herman savvied me better than anyone else and we wanted no monkey business in making the individual beers known to him—wrote each on a cash register slip and put it facedown under the respective brew. Highlander, out of Missoula. Kessler from Helena. Great Falls Select. The beer from Butte, baldly named Butte Beer. Billings Yellowstone Brew. Anaconda Avalanche Ale.