T. Boyle - Drop City

It was a bus. A school bus. And Norm, sleepless Norm, fueled on amphetamine and black coffee, was at the wheel, the suede cowboy hat pulled down to the level of the black broken frames of his glasses and Premstar perched in his lap like a ventriloquist's dummy. The gears ground with a shriek, the massive face of the thing swung into the yard and beat the mud into submission and the rain sculpted the two long streaming banks of windows in a smooth wrap. There was the wheeze of the air brakes, a heavy dependable sloshing, and then the bus was idling there before them, as if all they had to do was pick up their schoolbags and lunchboxes and climb aboard.

The door folded in on itself with a sigh, and Premstar, the former Miss Watsonville, with her high tight breasts and perfect legs, was stepping down from the platform, an uncertain smile puckering her lips. She was wearing white lipstick, blue eyeshadow and a pair of big blunt high-heeled boots that crept up over her knees. Marco watched, riveted, as she stepped daintily into the mud, brushed the hair out of her face, and glanced up at him. “We got a school bus,” she said in a breathy little puff of a voice, and she might have been describing a trip to the grocery for toilet paper, “-me and Norm.”

Norm pulled the hand brake and came down the steps behind her, the bus idling with a stuttering grab and release, the smell of diesel infesting the air. The rain spattered his hat and his fringed jacket, the drops dark as blood against the honey-colored suede. His eyes were tired. The rain made him wince. “Go ahead,” he said, waving an arm, “take a look. It's a ninety-one-passenger 1963 Crown, is what it is, the kind of thing you could get if you were real lucky and real smart on a straight-up trade for a slightly dented, almost-like-new 1970 VW van, if you know what I mean.”

Alfredo was standing there in the rain now too, and Reba beside him; Star came up and slipped an arm round Marco's waist. They were all grinning, even as Premstar ascended the back steps and Norm slouched on by them, his shoulders slumped and his head dropped down between them like a bowling ball. “But I don't want to shut it off, that's the thing,” he said, “because it was a real hassle getting it started-the cat that sold it to me said it was a little quirky, especially on cold mornings.”

“Cold mornings?” Alfredo said. “This is the _afternoon,__ and if it's anything less than maybe sixty-five out right now, then we need a new weatherman.”

“Yeah, well, this is a good machine, heavy duty, no more than like a hundred twenty thousand miles on it and it could go three times that, easy, so what I'm saying is I haven't slept in two days and I've done my part, more than done my part, and I think somebody-like Bill, for instance-should be looking to the tune-up or whatever, and the rest of you people should be loading your shit aboard, because time and the river and the county board of supervisors wait for no man.” He mounted the back steps and put an arm round Premstar. “Or chick, for that matter. But I've had it, I'm wiped, and somebody's going to have to build a rack or something all around the roof, for storage, and we're going to need rope and bungee cords and like that. And food, I mean, bins of just the basic stuff, dried beans and flour and whatnot, from the coop down in Guerneville.”

He paused, patted down his overalls and dug a money clip from the inside pocket. “Here,” he said, peeling off a hundred-dollar bill and holding it out over the steps so that the rain darkened it till it was like a piece of wet cardboard, like play money, “you take it, Reba, okay? For food?” And then he pulled open the screen door and edged his way in, Premstar tucked neatly under one arm.

The next five days were gypsy days, that's what Marco and Star were calling them, their little joke, no time for sweet wine or beer or dope or meditating with your back up against the big yellow knuckle of rock in the middle of the field, no time for sleep even-the caravan was moving on, fold up your tents, untether the goats and snatch the legs right out from under the chickens. If anyone had entertained any doubts about Norm Sender's seriousness of purpose, the bus erased them. There it was, massive and incontrovertible, dominating the mud-slick yard like some dream of mechanical ascendancy, and all day, every day, from dawn till the last declining stretched-out hours, people were swarming all over it with tools, bedding, food, records, supplies.

The previous owner-one of Norm's old high school buddies who'd evolved into a ponytailed psychologist in Mill Valley-had installed a potbellied stove, an unfinished counter and sink, and eight fold-down slabs of plywood that served as bunks. He'd had a dream, the psychologist, of outfitting the thing as a camper so he could take some of his patients from the state mental hospital on overnight outings, but the dream had never been realized for the reason that so many dreams have to die: lack of funds. He'd left the first half dozen rows of seats intact, and they'd each seat three adults abreast and sleep at least one, and all the way in the back, across from the stove, there was a crude plywood compartment with a stainless steel toilet in it. According to Premstar, who gave up the information in a sidelong whisper when Norm was out of earshot, the psychologist had got the bus cheap after a collision with a heating oil truck in which three kindergartners had been burned to death. The accident had left the frame knocked out of alignment, though the psychologist had tried to set it right with the help of another old high school buddy who owned a welding shop, and that was something they were just going to have to live with-the thing always felt as if it were veering sideways when it was bearing straight down the middle of the road. And no matter what anybody did by way of sprays and lacquers and air fresheners, a smell of incinerated vinyl-and maybe worse-haunted the interior.

When Jiminy saw the bus that first night, even as the rain was folding itself back into the mist and a derelict moon crept up over the trees, he drifted barefoot through the mud and embraced the cold metal of the hood as if it were living tissue. “Magic bus,” he murmured, and then he began chanting it under his breath, “Magic bus, magic bus, hey, hey, magic bus.” Marco was holding a flashlight for Mendocino Bill, who was peering into the engine compartment with a wrench in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, and Alfredo, for lack of anything better to do, was supervising. Reba had hung a Coleman lantern from one of the hooks inside, and the women were in there, five or six of them-Star included-adjusting things, running a sponge over the seats and a mop over the floor, already seeing to the division of space.

“You know what we can do?” Jiminy said, his cheek pressed to the front fender. “We can paint it. Like Kesey, like the Pranksters. Mandalas, peace signs, weird faces, and fish-fish all over it, like Peter Max fish, blowing bubbles. And porpoises. That kind of thing. We'll freak them out from here to fucking Nome.”

Mendocino Bill made an affirmative noise in the back of his throat, but it wasn't particularly enthusiastic-here was another adolescent fantasy, and what was wrong with WASHO UNIFIED skirting both sides of the bus in black bold adamantine letters?

“I don't want to tell you what to do,” Alfredo put in, “but we have to cross the Canadian border here-like twice-and the last thing you want is a freak parade, you know what I mean?” He jumped down from the bench Bill had propped himself up on and gave Jiminy a look. “Like you, for instance, _Jiminy__-that's how we know you, but what's your real name? I mean, like on your draft card?”

Jiminy looked down at his feet. “Paul Atkins.”

“Paul Atkins? Yeah, well, that's what they're going to want to know at the border, and you better have a draft card to show them too. And maybe a birth certificate on top of it. What are you, 4-F?”