The Wayward Bus by John Steinbeck, Gary Scharnhorst Read Free Book Online Page B

through the floor at you. What do you suppose knocked that tooth out?”
    Juan held the ring gear up sideways and in front of the light turned the pinion slowly, inspecting the fit of tooth against tooth as he went. “I don’t know,” he said. “There’s lots nobody knows about metal and about engines too. Take Ford. 5 He’ll make a hundred cars and two or three of them will be no damn good. It’s not just one thing that’s bad, the whole car’s bad. The springs and the motor and the water pump and the fan and the carburetor. It just breaks down little by little and there don’t nobody know what makes them. And you’ll take another car right off the line, you’d say it was just exactly the same as the others, but it’s not. It’s got something the others haven’t got. It’s got more power. It’s almost like a guy with a lot of guts. It won’t bust down no matter what you do.”
    â€œI had one of them,” said Pimples. “Model A. I sold her. Bet she’s still running. Had her three years and never spent a dime on her.”
    Juan laid his ring gear and pinion on the step of the bus and picked up the old ring from the ground. With his finger he traced the raw place where the tooth had broken out. “Metal’s funny stuff,” he said. “Sometimes it seems to get tired. You know, down in Mexico where I came from they used to have two or three butcher knives. They’d use one and stick the others in the ground. ‘It rests the blade,’ they said. I don’t know if it’s true, but I know those knives would take a shaving edge. I guess nobody knows about metal, even the people that make it. Let’s get this pinion on the shaft. Here, hold the light back here.”
    Juan put his little platform behind the bus and he lay on it on his back and scooted himself under with his feet. “Hold the light a little more to the left. No, higher. There. Now shove me my toolbox, will you?”
    Juan’s hands worked busily and a little oil dropped down on his cheek. He rubbed it off with the back of his hand. “This is a mean job,” he said.
    Pimples peered underneath the bus at him. “Maybe I could hook the light over that nut,” he said.
    â€œOh, you’d just have to move it in a minute,” said Juan.
    Pimples said, “I sure hope you get her going today. I’d like to sleep in my own bed tonight. You don’t get no rest in a chair.”
    Juan chuckled. “Did you ever see madder people in your life when we had to come back after that tooth broke out? You’d think I did it on purpose. They were so mad they gave Alice hell about the pie. I guess they thought she made it. When people are traveling they don’t like anything to interrupt them.”
    â€œWell, they got our beds,” Pimples observed. “I don’t see what they got to squawk about. You and me and Alice and Norma were the ones slept in chairs. And them Pritchards was the worst. I don’t mean Mildred, the girl, but her old man and old lady. They figure they’ve been getting gypped someway. He tells me a hundred times how he’s a president or something and he’s going to make somebody suffer for this. Outrage, he says it was. And him and his wife had your bed. Where’d Mildred sleep?” Pimples’ eyes glowed a little.
    â€œOn the davenport, I guess,” said Juan. “Or maybe with her father and mother. That fellow from the trick company got Norma’s room.”
    â€œI kinda liked that guy,” Pimples said. “He didn’t say nothing much. He said he’d just as soon set up. He didn’t say what line he was in. But them Pritchards made up for it, all except Mildred. You know where they’re going, Mr. Chicoy? They’re going on a trip down to Mexico. Mildred’s been studying Spanish in college. She’s going to interpret for