The Wayward Bus

by John Steinbeck

  “Why? I don’t know. Well, with that make-up and the hair tint it’s hard to tell. I just wondered. Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, I guess.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” said Mr. Pritchard. He looked out the window at the approaching foothills. His palms were a little damp and the magnet drew at him from the rear of the bus. He wanted to look around. “I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Pritchard. “But I’m interested in that young Horton. He’s young, and he’s got lots of get-up, and he’s got ideas. He really caught my fancy. You know, I might find a place for a man like that in the organization.” This was business.

  Bernice too could draw a magic circle around herself, with motherhood, or say, menstruation, a subject like that, and no man could or would try to get in. Business was her husband’s magic circle. She had no right to go near him when it was business. She had no knowledge nor interest in business. It was his privacy and she respected it.

  “He seems a nice young man,” she said. “His grammar and his background—”

  “My God, Bernice!” he cried irritably. “Business isn’t background and grammar. It’s what you can produce. Business is the most democratic thing in the world. It’s what you can do that counts.”

  He was trying to remember what the blonde’s lips looked like. He believed that full-lipped women were voluptuous. “I’d like to have a little talk with Horton before he gets away,” Mr. Pritchard said.

  Bernice knew that he was restless.

  “Why don’t you talk to him now?” she suggested.

  “Oh, I don’t know. He’s sitting with that boy.”

  “Well, I’m sure that boy will move if you ask him nicely.” She was convinced that anyone would do anything if nicely asked. And in her case she was right. She claimed and got the most outrageous favors from strangers simply by asking nicely. She would ask a bellboy to carry her bags four blocks to the station because it was too close, really, to get a cab, and then thank him nicely and give him a dime.

  Now she knew she was helping her husband to do something he wanted to do. What it was she didn’t quite know. She wanted to get back to writing the imaginary letter about their trip. “El liott is so interested in everything. He had long talks with everyone. I guess that’s why he’s so successful. He takes such an interest. And he’s so thoughtful. There was a boy with big pimples and Elliott didn’t want to disturb him, but I told him just to ask nicely. People do love nice manners.”

  Mr. Pritchard was cleaning his nails again with the gold appliance he wore on his watch chain.

  Pimples’ eyes were on the back of Camille’s head. But first when he had sat down he made sure that he couldn’t see her legs under the seat, not even her ankles. Now and then she turned to look out of the window, and he could see her profile, the long, darkened eyelashes which curled upward, the straight, powdered nose, nostrils a little coated with tobacco smoke and the dust of traveling. Her upper lip curved upward to a sharp line before it pillowed out in its heavy red petal, and Pimples could see the downy hair on her upper lip. For some reason this aroused him agonizingly. When her head was turned straight ahead he could see one of her ears where the hair parted a little and exposed it. He could see the heavy lobe and the crease behind her ear where it fitted so close to her head. The edge of her ear was fluted. As he stared at the ear she almost seemed to be conscious of his look, for she raised her chin and shook her head from side to side so that the part in her hair fell together and concealed the ear. She got a comb from her purse because the backward shake had uncovered the deep forceps scars along her jaw. Now Pimples saw the ugly scars for the first time. He had to lean sideways to see them, and a stab of pain entered his chest. He felt a deep and unreasoning sorrow, but the sorrow was sexual too. He imagined himself holding her head in his arms and stroking the poor scars with his finger. He swallowed several times.

  Camille was saying softly to Norma, “Then there’s this Wee Kirk i’ the Heather.1 I guess that’s the prettiest cemetery in the world. You know, you have to get a ticket to get in. I like just to walk around in there. It’s so beautiful and the organ plays nearly all the time and you find people buried there that you’ve seen in pictures. I always said I’d like to be buried there.”

  “I don’t like to talk about things like that,” said Norma. “It’s bad luck.”

  Pimples had been vaguely discussing the Army with Ernest Horton. “They say you can learn a trade and travel all over. I don’t know. I’m taking a course in radar engineering.2 It starts next week by mail. I guess radar is going to be pretty hot stuff. But you can get a real good course in radar in the Army.”

  Ernest said, “I don’t know how it would be in peacetime. You can have it when there’s a war.”

  “Did you get to do some real fighting?”

  “I didn’t ask for it but I got it.”

  “Where were you?” Pimples asked.

  “All over hell,” said Ernest.

  “Maybe I could get a good line and get in selling, like you,” Pimples suggested.

  “Oh, that’s just plain starvation till you get your contacts,” Ernest said. “It took me five years to build up my contacts and then I got drafted. I’m just getting back on my feet now. You can’t just step into it and you’ve got to work at it. It doesn’t look like work but it is. If I was to start over again I’d learn a trade so I could have a home. Pretty nice to have a wife and a couple of kids.” Ernest always said this. When he was drunk he believed it. He didn’t want a home. He loved moving around and seeing different people. He would run away from a home immediately. Once he had been married, and the second day he had walked out, leaving a thoroughly frightened and angry wife, and he never saw her again, nor wrote to her. But he saw her picture once. She was picked up for marrying five men and drawing Army allotments from each one. What a dame. A real hustler. Ernest almost admired her. There was hustling that paid dividends.

  “Why don’t you go back to school?” he asked Pimples.

  “I don’t want no fancy stuff,” said Pimples. “Them college boys are just a bunch of nances.3 I want a man’s life.”

  Camille had leaned close to Norma and was whispering in her ear. The two girls were shaking with laughter. The bus surged around the bend and entered the hill country. The road cut between high banks, and the soil of the cuts was dark and dripping with water. Little goldy-backed ferns clung to the gravel and dripped with rain. Juan put his right hand on the wheel and let his elbows hang free. There would be fifteen minutes of twisting hill road now with no straight stretches at all. He glanced in his rear-view mirror at the blonde. Her eyes were puckered with laughter and she’d covered her mouth with spread fingers the way little girls do.

  Mr. Pritchard, going back, was not careful, and when the bus took a curve he was flung sideways. He clutched at the seatback, missed it, and fell sprawling on Camille’s lap. His right hand reaching to break his fall whipped her short skirt up and his arm went between her knees. Her skirt was slightly torn. She helped him disengage himself and she pulled down her skirt. Mr. Pritchard was blushing violently.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s all right.”

  “But I’ve torn your skirt.”

  “I can mend it.”

  “But I must pay to have it mended.”

  “I’ll just patch it up myself. It isn’t bad.” She looked at his face and knew that he was prolonging the affair as much as he could. “He’ll want to know what address to send the money to,” she thought.

  Mrs. Pritchard called, “Elliott, are you trying to sit in that lady’s lap?”

  Even Juan laughed then. Everyone laughed. And suddenly the bus was not full of strangers. Some chemical association was formed. Norma laughed hysterically. All the tension of the morning came out in her laughter.

  Mr. Pritchard said, “I must say, you take it very well. I didn’t come back here to sit in your lap. I wanted to have a few words with this gentleman. Son,” he said to Pim
ples, “would you mind moving for just a little while. I have some business I’d like to talk over with Mr.—I don’t think I heard your name.”

  “Horton,” said Ernest, “Ernest Horton.”

  Mr. Pritchard had a whole series of tactics for getting on with people. He never forgot the name of a man richer or more powerful than he, and he never knew the name of a man less powerful. He had found that to make a man mention his own name would put that man at a slight disadvantage. For a man to speak his own name made him a little naked and unprotected.

  Camille was looking at her torn skirt and talking softly to Norma. “I always wanted to live on a hill,” she said. “I love hills. I love to walk in hills.”

  “It’s all right after you’re rich and famous,” Norma said firmly. “I know people in pictures that every chance they get, why, they go hunting and fishing and wear old clothes and smoke a pipe.”

  Camille was bringing Norma out. She had never in her whole life felt so excited and free. She could say anything she wanted. She giggled a little.

  “It’s nicer to wear old dirty clothes if you’ve got a closet full of nice fresh clean ones,” she said. “Old clothes are the only kind I’ve got and I’m god-damned sick of it.” She glanced at Camille to see how she’d react to such candor.

  Camille nodded. “You aren’t kidding, sister.” Something very strong and sympathetic was growing up between these two. Mr. Pritchard tried to hear the conversation but he couldn’t.

  The ditches beside the highway ran full with water descending toward the valley. The heavy clouds were massing for a new attack.

  “It’s coming on to rain,” Van Brunt said happily.

  Juan grunted. “I had a brother-in-law kicked to death by a horse,” he observed.

  “Couldn’t have used any sense,” said Van Brunt. “Horse kicks a man, it’s usually the man’s fault.”

  “Killed him anyway,” said Juan, and he settled into silence.

  The bus was nearing the top of the grade and the turns were becoming tighter all the time.

  “I was very much interested in our little talk this morning, Mr. Horton. It’s a pleasure to talk with a man with some get-up and go. I’m always on the look-out for men like that for my organization.”

  “Thanks,” said Ernest.

  “We’re having trouble right now with these returning veterans,” said Mr. Pritchard. “Good men, you understand. And I think everything should be done for them—everything. But they’ve been out of the run. They’re rusty. In business you’ve got to keep up every minute. A man that has kept up is twice as valuable as a man that has been out of the mill, so to speak.” He looked at Ernest for approval. Instead he saw a kind of hard, satiric look come into Ernest’s eyes.

  “I see your point,” Ernest said. “I was four years in the Army.”

  “Oh!” said Mr. Pritchard. “Oh, yes—you’re not wearing your discharge button, I see.”

  “I’ve got a job,” Ernest said.

  Mr. Pritchard fumbled with his thoughts. He had made a bad mistake. He wondered what the thing was in Ernest’s lapel button. It looked familiar. He should know. “Well, they’re a fine bunch of boys,” he said, “and I only hope we can put in an administration that will take care of them.”

  “Like after the last war?” Ernest asked. It was a double brush, and Mr. Pritchard began to wonder if he’d been right about Horton. There was a kind of a brutality about Horton. He had a kind of swagger and a headlong quality so many ex-soldiers had. The doctors said they would get over it just as soon as they lived a good normal life for a while. They were out of line. Something would have to be done.

  “I’m the first one to come to the defense of our veterans,” Mr. Pritchard said. He wished to God he could get off the subject. Ernest was looking at him with a slightly crooked smile that he was beginning to recognize in applicants for jobs. “I just thought I’d like to interview a man with your get-up and go,” Mr. Pritchard said uneasily. “When I get back from my vacation I’d be very glad to have you call on me. We can always make room for a man who’s got it.”

  “Well, sir,” said Ernest, “I get very sick of running around the country all the time. I often thought I’d like to have a home and a wife and a couple of kids. That’s the real way to live. Come home at night and lock the whole world outside, and a boy and a girl, maybe. This sleeping in hotels isn’t living.”

  Mr. Pritchard nodded. “You’re four-square right,” he said, and he was very much relieved. “I’m just the right man to say that to. Twenty-one years married and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “You’ve been lucky,” said Ernest. “Your wife’s a fine-looking woman.”

  “And she’s a fine woman,” said Mr. Pritchard. “The most thoughtful person in the world. I often wonder what I’d do without her.”

  “I was married once,” said Ernest. “My wife died.” His face was sad.

  “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Pritchard. “And this may sound silly. Time does heal wounds. And maybe some day—well, I wouldn’t give up hope.”

  “Oh, I don’t.”

  “I didn’t mean to pry into your affairs,” said Mr. Pritchard, “but I’ve been thinking about your idea for those lapel slipcovers for a dark suit to convert into a tuxedo. If you’re not tied up with anyone I thought we might—well, talk about doing a little business.”

  “Well,” said Ernest, “it’s like I told you. Clothes manufacturers won’t want something that will rule out some of their business. I just don’t see the angle right now.”

  Mr. Pritchard said, “I forget whether you said you had applied for a patent.”

  “Well, no. I told you. I just registered the idea.”

  “How do you mean, registered?”

  “Well, I wrote out a description and made some drawings and put it in an envelope and mailed it to myself, registered mail. That proves when I did it because that envelope is sealed.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Pritchard, and he wondered whether such a method would have any standing in court. He didn’t know. But it was always better to take the inventor in on a percentage. Only the really big fellows could afford to lift an invention whole. The big fellows could afford a long fight. They figured it was cheaper than cutting in an inventor and the figures proved they were right. But Mr. Pritchard’s firm wasn’t big enough and, besides, he always thought that generosity paid off.

  “I’ve got an idea or two that might work out,” he said. “Course, it’ll take some organization. Now, suppose you and I could make a deal. This is just a supposition, you understand. I’d handle the organization and we would take a percentage of profit after expenses.”

  “But they don’t want it,” Ernest said. “I’ve asked around.” Mr. Pritchard laid a hand on Ernest’s knee. He had a hollow feeling that he ought to shut up, but he remembered the satiric look in Ernest’s eyes and he wanted Ernest to admire him and to like him. He couldn’t shut up.

  “Suppose we formed a company and we protected the idea?” he said. “Patent it, I mean. Now we organize to manufacture this product, a national advertising campaign—”

  “Just a moment,” Ernest broke in.

  But Mr. Pritchard was carried away. “Now suppose these layouts just happened to fall into the hands of, say, oh, Hart, Schaffner and Marx4 or some big manufacturer like that, or maybe the association. They’d get ahold of it by accident, of course. Well, maybe they’d like to buy us out.”

  Ernest began to look interested. “Buy the patent?”

  “Buy not only the patent but the whole company.”

  “But if they bought the patent then they could kill it,” Ernest said.

  Mr. Pritchard’s eyes were slitted and his pupils shone through his glasses and a little smile lay on the corners of his mouth. For the first time since she had got off the bus from San Ysidro he had forgotten Camille. “Look ahead a little further,” he said. “When we sell and dissolve the company we only pay a capital gain tax on the profits.”


  “That’s smart,” said Ernest excitedly. “Yes, sir, that’s very smart. That’s blackmail and a very high-class blackmail. Yes, sir, nobody could touch us.”

  The smile vanished from Mr. Pritchard’s mouth. “What do you mean, blackmail? We would intend to go ahead and manufacture. We could even order machinery.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Ernest. “It’s very high class. It’s all wrapped up. You’re a smart man.”

  Mr. Pritchard said, “I hope you don’t think it’s dishonest. I’ve been in business thirty-five years and I’ve climbed to the head of my company. I can be proud of my record.”

  “I’m not criticizing you,” Ernest said. “I think you’ve got a very sound idea there. I’m for it, only—”

  “Only what?” said Mr. Pritchard.

  “I’m kind of low on dough,” said Ernest, “and I’m gonna need a quick buck. Oh, well, I can borrow it, I guess.”

  “What do you need money for? Maybe I could advance—”

  “No,” said Ernest, “I’ll get it myself.”

  “Is it some new wrinkle you figured out?” Mr. Pritchard asked.

  “Yes,” said Ernest. “I gotta get this idea into the patent office by carrier pigeon.”

  “You don’t think for one minute—”

  “Of course not,” said Ernest. “Certainly not. But I’m gonna be happier when that envelope gets to Washington alone.”

  Mr. Pritchard leaned back in his seat and smiled. The highway whirled and twisted ahead, and between two great abutments was the pass into the next valley.

  “You’ll be all right, son. I think we can do business. I don’t want you to think I’d take advantage though. My record speaks for itself.”

  “Oh, I don’t,” said Ernest. “I don’t.” He looked secretly at Mr. Pritchard. “It’s just that I’ve got a couple of very luscious dames in L.A. and I don’t want to get in that apartment and forget everything.” He saw the reaction he wanted.

  “I’m going to be two days in Hollywood,” Mr. Pritchard said. “Maybe we could talk a little business.”

  “Like in these dames’ apartment?”