Last Bus to Wisdom Read Online Free PDF

equivalent of an army tank? I stood there, mouth open but no words adequate. There went my dream of being stacker driver, in a cloud of exhaust. I was always being told I was big for my age, but I couldn’t even have reached the clutch of the dumb Power Wagon.
    â€œCutting back on workhorses, don’t you see,” Wendell was saying, back to fiddling with the papers on the desk. “Time to send the nags to the glue factory.”
    That did that in. If charity was supposed to begin at home, somehow the spirit missed the Double W by a country mile. Apprentice cusser that I was, I secretly used up my swearing vocabulary on Wendell Williamson in my defeated retreat down the hallway. I can’t account for what happened next except that I was so mad I could hardly see straight. Without even thinking, as I passed the show-off table and its wonders for the last time, I angrily snatched the black arrowhead and thrust it as deep in my jeans pocket as it would go.
    Gram watched in concern as I came back into the cook shack like a whipped pup. “Donny, are you crying? What happened? Didn’t the fool write in your book for you?”
    â€œGot something in my eye,” I alibied. Luckily the veterinarian’s pickup pulled up outside and honked. In a last flurry, Gram gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Off you go,” her voice broke. “Be a good boy on the dog bus, won’t you.”

3.
    A ND HERE I WAS , stepping up into what I thought of as the real bus, with GREYHOUND—THE FLEET WAY TO TRAVEL in red letters on its side and, to prove it, the silver streamlined dog of the breed emblematically running flat-out as if it couldn’t wait to get there. Maybe not, but I had two days and a night ahead of me before climbing off at the depot in farthest Wisconsin, and that felt to me like the interminable start of the eternity of summer ahead.
    At the top of the steps I stopped short, not sure where to sit. The seats in long rows were easily four times as many as in the Rocky Mountain Stage Line sedan, the roomy high-backed sets on each side of the aisle making my ride from Gros Ventre squashed between the mailbag and the bulky woman seem like three in a bed with room for two, as Gram would have said. This was a vehicle for a crowd, and it already was more than half full. Way toward the back as though it was their given place sat some soldiers, two together on one side of the aisle and their much more sizable companion, who needed the space, in the set of seats across from them. Slumped in front of them was a bleary, rumpled guy in ranch clothes, by every sign a sheepherder on a spree, who appeared to have been too busy drinking to shave for a week or so. Across from him, like a good example placed to even him out, rested a nun in that black headgear outlined in white, her round glasses firm on her set face. Then toward the middle were scattered leathery older couples who I could tell were going home to farms or ranches or little towns along the way, and some vacationers dressed to the teeth in a way you sure don’t see these days, coats and ties on the men and color-coordinated outfits for the women. One and all, the already-seated passengers were strangers to me, some a lot stranger than others from the looks of them, which didn’t help in making up my mind. Much more traveled than I ever hoped to be, Gram had forewarned, “The dog bus gets all kinds, so you just have to plow right in and stake out a place for yourself.” Yeah, but where?
    Now I noticed the dark-haired woman nearest me, with her name sewn in red on her crisp blouse in waitress fashion, although I couldn’t quite read it. Wearing big ugly black-rimmed glasses that made her look like a raccoon, she took short quick drags on a cigarette while reading a movie magazine folded over. She was sitting alone, but her coat was piled in the seat beside her, not exactly a friendly signal. Robbed of that