“Because she’s a temperamental lady, this bus, she won’t work for just anyone. I got her for cheap because she wouldn’t start anymore, not for anyone. Well I had a seat and talked to her for a bit, turned the key, and she worked like a charm.”
“Mother tried to dive her once,” Yanuva told us in a very low voice.
“You don’t have to whisper about it Yanuva, I don’t mind,” said Bill, though he had stopped smiling for the first time since we had met him.
“Well Mom didn’t like the way Dad kept the bus to himself, wouldn’t let anyone else dive it. She thought father was being silly and wouldn’t let up until he told her she could try.”
“A very stubborn woman, my ex-wife,” commented Bill ruefully. “I tried to tell her that something bad would happen but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Did something happen?” I asked.
“I should say so,” said Yanuva sighing. “The engine threw a piston, the diver’s seat collapsed under her, and the two front tires went flat and that just because she tried to turn the key in the ignition.”
“It didn’t take long for her to divorce me after that,” admitted Bill. “It took us a long time to pull her out of the wreckage of the seat, and when we did, well, she never acted the same towards me again. She always was head strong. A real lady though, disappointed her parents horribly when she married me.”
“How did you meet her?” I asked, because it seemed like the logical thing to ask, what with the way the conversation was going.
“I was working at a horse ranch that her parents bought. Her Mother and Father have tons of money; they buy just about anything they take a fancy to. Well, she loved horses and was about the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, so I got to talking with her. You know how it is; it wasn’t long before we were engaged. Her parents had a fit when they found out, tried to do anything to stop us from getting married but we were both young and stubborn as hell. So they told me that first I had to learn to act like a civilized person. I think they thought that would scare me off if nothing else would. So they shoved all of this etiquette and grammar stuff down my throat, made me stop wearing cowboy boots and jeans, and weren’t even satisfied at that. Then they got into business and I had to learn about dividends and trust funds. Took about a year but they finally admitted that I knew enough not to be an embarrassment so me and her got hitched.”
I guessed that the teaching he had received about proper English hadn’t entirely stuck because he switched easily between amazingly good English and the most hick sounding talk I had ever heard. Of course that was back in the early days of me ridding the bus, I would hear much worse but I didn’t know that yet. There was no limit to the interesting people who rode Widow Maker every night. But there is a limit to my time and space before I have to run to get to school and hand this in. Suffice to say, it’s been a fun school year, and I would appreciate if you wouldn’t tell my parents that I’ve been riding the bus this whole time because they’ll kill me. I told them that I was sleeping over at Yanuva’s house.
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