Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig Read Free Book Online

it’s”—he drew out the next word like it was sticky—“Ko-re-a.”
    â€œWhere we’ll get our asses shot off,” Mickey said glumly.
    Turk sharply leaned over, just about obliterating me. “Lay off that, will you, numb nuts. You’re scaring the kid. Not to mention me.”
    The thought that the Korean War, which like any American youngster of 1951 I’d grasped only from
G.I. Joe
comic books and radio reports, could claim the lives of people I’d met face-to-face, had never occurred to me. It struck with lightning force now. Glancing guiltily around at the three soldiers in their pressed khakis, I almost wished I had lit in with the mussy sheepherder, who could be heard carrying on a muttered conversation with himself in front of us.
    â€œI’m just saying,” Mickey stayed insistent. “Think about it, there’s Chinese up the wazoo over there”—I was fairly sure that amounted to the same as up the yanger and could not be good—“must be a million of the bastards, then there’s us.”
    â€œAnd the whole sonofabitching rest of the army,” Turk pointed out. “C’mon, troop, this is no time to come down with a case of nervous in the service.”
    Mickey was not to be swayed. “I wish to Christ they were shipping us to some base in Germany where we wouldn’t get our asses shot off, is all.”
    That startled me. The Chinese were an enemy I had not quite caught up with, but Germans still were the bad guys from the last war, as far as I was concerned. Fiends all the way up to Hitler, and down to the enemy soldiers my family had a personal reason to hate forever.
    â€œYeah, right, Mick.” Gordon rolled his eyes about Germany for me. “Over there where you could put on your jockstrap spats and wow the fräuleins.”
    â€œGo take a flying fuck at a rolling donut, Gordo.”
    I was starting to realize what a long way I had to go to be accomplished in cussing.
    Snickering again, Gordon maintained that if anybody’s ass was going to get shot off, it could not possibly be his. “Mine’s gonna be the size of a prune, from the pucker factor.” All three soldiers roared at that, and while I didn’t entirely get it, I joined in as best I could.
    When the laughter died down, I figured maybe I ought to contribute something. “My daddy was in the war,” I announced brightly. “The last one. He was on one of those boat kind of things at Omaha Beach.”
    â€œA landing craft?” Turk whistled through his teeth, looking at me a different way. “Out the far end!” he exclaimed, which took me a moment to savvy as soldier talk for outstanding and then some. “D-Day was hairy. Came back in one piece, did he? Listen up, Mick.”
    I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth about that. “He always, uh, says he’s in pretty good shape for the shape he’s in.”
    Gordon leaned across the aisle. “So what’s your old man do?”
    â€œHe’s a”—it’s amazing what a habit something like this gets to be—“crop duster.”
    â€œNo crap?” Gordon sounded envious. “Grainfield flyboy, is he. Then how come you have to travel by dog? Why doesn’t he just give you a lift in his airplane?”
    â€œIt’s too far. See, I’m going to visit my rich aunt and uncle. They live back east. In Decatur, Illinois.”
    â€œNever heard of the place. What’s there?”
    â€œThe Cat plant.” That drew three blank looks. “Where they make bulldozers and graders and stuff like that.” I was developing a feel for the perimeter of story that could be got away with. A detail or two expanded the bounds to a surprisng extent, it seemed like.
    So, there it went, again. Out of my mouth something unexpected, not strictly true but harmlessly made up. Storying, maybe it could be called. For I still