The Wayward Bus (7 page)

“I never said nothing. Hey, there's a fly in this cake!”

Alice stiffened. “You had a fly in your soup yesterday. I think you carry flies in your pocket.”

“No, look here. He's still kicking.”

Alice came near. “Kill him,” she cried. “Squash him! You want him to get loose?” She picked up a fork from behind the counter and mashed the fly and cake crumbs together and scraped the whole thing into the garbage can.

“How about my cake?” Pimples asked.

“You'll get another piece of cake. I don't know why you always get flies. Nobody else does.”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Pimples said softly.

“Huh?”

“I said I was—”

“I heard what you said.” She was unrested and nervous. “You watch your mouth or you'll go out of here so fast you'll think you're on fire. I don't care if you are a mechanic. To me you're just a punk. A pimple-faced punk.” Pimples had withered. His chin had settled lower and lower against his chest as her anger rose. And he didn't know that she was making him the depos itary of a number of things.

“I didn't say nothing,” he said. “Can't a guy even make a joke?”

Alice had reached a point where she had either to go on into a crazy, hysterical rage that tore the living daylights out of herself and everyone else around her, or she had to begin to taper off quickly, for she could feel the uncontrollable pressure rising in her chest and throat. In a second she appraised the situation. Things were tight. The bus had to get out. Juan had not rested either. The people who were using the beds would hear her rage and come out and Juan might hit her. He had once. Not hard, but accurately, and timed so perfectly that she imagined he had nearly killed her. And then the black fear that was always on the edge of her mind—Juan might leave her. He had left other women. How many she didn't know because he'd never spoken of it, but a man of his attractiveness must have left other women. All of this happened in a split second. Alice decided on no rage. She forced the pressure down in her chest. Woodenly she raised the plastic cake cover and cut an oversized wedge and put it on a saucer and she carried this down the counter and set it in front of Pimples.

“Everybody's nervous,” she said.

Pimples looked up from his fingernails. He saw how the little lines of age were sneaking down her neck, and he noticed the thickness of her upper eyelids. He saw that her hands had lost the tightness of skin of young girls. He was very sorry for her. Unblessed with beauty as he was, he thought that youth was the only thing in the world worth having and that one who had lost youth was already dead. He had won a great victory this morning, and now when he saw the weakness and indecision in Alice he pressed for a second victory.

“Mr. Chicoy says he ain't going to call me Pimples no more,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Well, I asked him not. My name's Edward. They used to call me Kit in school on account my last name's Carson.”

“Is Juan calling you Kit?”

“Uh-huh.”

Alice didn't really understand what it was about, and behind her in the bedroom there was movement, footsteps between the rugs and a little low talking. Now that she was aware of the strangers, Pimples became closer to her because he was not quite a stranger. “I'll see how it goes,” she said.

The sun had been shining in through the front windows and the door, making five bright splashes on the wall, illuminating the Grape-Nuts packages and the pyramids of oranges behind the counter. And now the bright squares dimmed and went out. There was a roll of thunder, and without warning the rain began. It whisked down on the roof.

Pimples went to the door and looked out. The rain sheeted down, obscuring the country, splashing high on the cement road. There was a steely look to the wet light. Pimples saw Juan Chicoy inside the bus for shelter. The back wheels were still turning around slowly. As he watched, Juan leaped to the ground and made a run for the lunchroom. Pimples held the door open for him and he bolted through, but even in the little run his overalls were dark with water and his shoes squidged sloppily on the floor.

“God Almighty,” he said, “that's a real cloudburst.”

The gray wall of water obscured the hills and there was a dark, metallic light with it. The heads of the lupines bent down, heavy with water. The petals of the poppies were beaten off and lay on the ground like gold coins. The already wet ground could absorb no more water, and little rivulets started immediately for the low places. The cloudburst roared on the roof of the lunchroom at Rebel Corners.

Juan Chicoy had taken one of the tables by the lunchroom window and he drank well-creamed coffee and chewed a doughnut and looked out at the downpour. Norma came in and began to wash the few dishes on the stainless steel sink behind the counter.

“Bring me another cup of coffee, will you?” Juan asked.

She came listlessly around the end of the counter. The cup was too full. A little stream of coffee dripped off the bottom of it. Juan pulled out a paper napkin and folded it as a blotter for the wet cup.

“Didn't get much rest, did you?” he asked.

Norma was drawn, and her dress was wrinkled. You could see now that she would be an old-looking woman long before she was old. Her skin was muddy and her thin hands were splotched. Many, many things gave Norma the hives.

“Didn't get any sleep at all,” she said. “I tried the floor but I couldn't sleep.”

“Well, we'll see it doesn't happen again,” said Juan. “I should have got a car to take them into San Ysidro.”

“Giving them our beds!” Alice said derisively. “Now, where did you get that idea? Where else do you suppose they could have got the owners' beds? They don't have to work today. They could just as well of sat up.”

“Slipped up on me, I guess,” said Juan.

“You don't care if your wife sleeps in a chair,” Alice said. “You'd give away her bed any time.” Again Alice could feel rage rising in her and it frightened her. She didn't want it to rise. She knew it would spoil things, and she was afraid of it, but there it was, rising and boiling in her.

A sheet of rain whisked over the roof like a heavy broom and left silence as it moved on, and almost immediately another flat of rain took its place. The drip and gurgle of water from the roof eaves and from the drains was loud again. Juan had been looking reflectively at the floor, a small smile tightening his mouth against the white band of the scar on his lip. And this was another thing Alice was frightened of. He had set her out to observe her. She knew that. All relations and all situations to Alice were person-to-person things in which she and the other were huge and all others were removed from the world. There was no shading. When she talked to Juan, there were only the two of them. When she picked at Norma, the whole world disappeared, leaving only Norma and her in a gray universe of cloud.

But Juan, now, he could shut everything out and look at each thing in relation to the other. Things of various sizes and importance. He could see and judge and consider and enjoy. Juan could enjoy people. Alice could only love, like, dislike, and hate. She saw and felt no shading whatever.

Now she tucked her loosening hair back. Once a month she used a rinse on her hair which was guaranteed to give it the mysterious and glamorous glints that capture and keep men in slavery. Juan's eyes were distant and amused. This was a matter of horror to Alice. She knew he was seeing her, not as an angry woman who darkened the world, but as one of thousands of angry women to be studied, inspected, and, yes, even enjoyed. This was the cold, lonely horror to her. Juan blotted out the universe to her and she sensed that she blotted out nothing to him. He could see not only around her but through her to something else. The remembered terror of the one time he had hit her lay not in the blow—she had been hit before, and far from hating it had taken excitement and exuberance from it—but Juan had hit her as he would a bug. He hadn't cared about it much. He hadn't even been very angry, just irritated. And he had hit a noisy thing to shut it up. Alice had only been trying to attract his attention in one of the few ways she knew. She was trying to do the same thing now, and she knew from the changed focus in his eye that he had slipped away from her.

“I try to make a nice little home for us; nice, and with a carpet and a velveteen suite, and you got to give it away to strangers.” Her voice was losing its certainty. “And you let your own wife sit up in a chair all night.”

Juan looked up slowly. “Norma,” he said, “bring me another cup of coffee, will you? Plenty of cream.”

Alice braced herself for the rage she knew was coming, and then Juan looked slowly toward her. His dark eyes were amused and warm, the focus changed again, and he was looking at her and she knew that he saw her.

“It didn't hurt you any,” he said. “Make you appreciate the bed tonight.”

Her breath caught. A hot wave flooded over her. Rage was transmuted to hot desire. She smiled at him vacantly and licked her lips. “You bastard,” she said very softly. And she took a huge, shuddering sigh of air. “Want some eggs?” she asked.

“Yeah. Two in the water, about four minutes.”

“I know how you like them,” she said. “Bacon on the side?”

“No. A piece of toast and a couple of doughnuts.”

Alice went behind the counter. “I wish they'd come out of there,” she said. “I'd like to use my own bathroom.”

“They're stirring around,” said Juan. “They'll be out in a little.”

And they were stirring. There were footsteps in the bedroom. A door inside opened and a woman's voice said sharply, “Well, I think you could knock!” And a man replied, “I'm sorry, ma'am. The only other way was to go out the window.”

Another man's voice with a brittle singsong of authority said, “Always a good idea to knock, my friend. Hurt your foot?”

“Yes.”

The door at the end of the counter opened and a small man came out into the lunchroom. He was dressed in a double-breasted suit; his shirt was of that light brown color worn by traveling men and known as a thousand-miler because it does not show dirt. His suit was a neutral pepper-and-salt for the same reason, and he wore a knitted dark green tie. His face was sharp, like a puppy's face, and his eyes were bright and questioning, like a puppy's eyes. A small, carefully trimmed mustache rode his upper lip like a caterpillar, and when he talked it seemed to hump its back. His teeth were white and even except for the two front uppers, and these were glittering gold. He had a brushed look about him, as though he had cleaned the lint from his suit with his hairbrush; and his shirt had the strained appearance that comes from washing the collar in the hand basin and patting it flat on the dresser top to dry. There was a kind of shy confidence in his manner and a wincing quality in his face, as though he protected himself from insult with studied techniques.

“Morning, folks,” he said. “I just wondered where you all slept. And I'll bet you sat up all night.”

“Well, we did,” Alice said sourly.

“It's all right,” said Juan. “We'll get to bed early tonight.”

“Get the bus fixed? Think we'll make it in this rain?”

“Oh, sure,” said Juan.

The man limped around the end of the counter and sat painfully down at one of the little tables. Norma brought a glass of water and a handful of silver wrapped in a paper napkin.

“Eggs?”

“Fried, with their eyes open, crisp bacon, and buttered toast. Buttered—get it? Hardest thing in the world is to get buttered toast. Now you butter that toast, plenty of butter, and let it melt in so there's no yellow lumps showing and you'll get yourself a nice tip.” He lifted his foot shod in a perforated and decorated brown oxford and looked at it and grunted with pain.

“Sprain your ankle?” Juan asked.

The door at the end of the counter opened and a medium-sized man came out. He looked like Truman
¹
and like the vice-presidents of companies and like certified public accountants. His glasses were squared off at the corners. His suit was gray and correct, and there was a little gray in his face too. He was a businessman, dressed like one, looked like one. In his lapel buttonhole there was a lodge pin so tiny that from four feet away you couldn't see what it was at all. His vest was unbuttoned one notch at the bottom. Indeed, this bottom button was not intended to be buttoned. A fine gold watch and key chain crossed this vest and ducked in and out of a buttonhole on the way.

He said, “Mrs. Pritchard will have scrambled eggs, moist if they're fresh, toast and marmalade. And Miss Pritchard only wants orange juice and coffee. I'll have Grape-Nuts and cream, eggs turned over and well done—don't let the yolk be running—dry toast and Boston coffee—that's half milk. You can bring it all in on a tray.”

Alice looked up with fury. “You better come out here,” she said. “We haven't got tray service.”

Mr. Pritchard looked at her coldly. “We got held up here,” he said. “I've already lost one day of my vacation. It isn't my fault that the bus broke down. Now the least you can do is to bring that breakfast in. My wife isn't feeling so good. I'm not used to sitting on a stool and Mrs. Pritchard isn't either.”

Alice lowered her head like an angry milk-cow. “Look, I want to go to the toilet and wash my face and you're holding up my bathroom.”

Mr. Pritchard touched his glasses nervously. “Oh, I see.” He turned his head toward Juan and the light reflected from his glasses so that there were two mirrors with no eyes behind them. His hand whipped his watch chain out of his vest pocket. He opened a little gold nail file and ran the point quickly under each nail. He looked about and a little shudder of uncertainty came over him. Mr. Pritchard was a businessman, president of a medium-sized corporation. He was never alone. His business was conducted by groups of men who worked alike, thought alike, and even looked alike. His lunches were with men like himself who joined together in clubs so that no foreign element or idea could enter. His religious life was again his lodge and his church, both of which were screened and protected. One night a week he played poker with men so exactly like himself that the game was fairly even, and from this fact his group was convinced that they were very fine poker players. Wherever he went he was not one man but a unit in a corporation, a unit in a club, in a lodge, in a church, in a political party. His thoughts and ideas were never subjected to criticism since he willingly associated only with people like himself. He read a newspaper written by and for his group. The books that came into his house were chosen by a committee which deleted material that might irritate him. He hated foreign countries and foreigners because it was difficult to find his counterpart in them. He did not want to stand out from his group. He would like to have risen to the top of it and be admired by it; but it would not occur to him to leave it. At occasional stags where naked girls danced on the tables and sat in great glasses of wine, Mr. Pritchard howled with laughter and drank the wine, but five hundred Mr. Pritchards were there with him.