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| John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus (2006 Penguin Classics edition) |
I recently re-read Steinbeck’s The Wayward Bus, having first read it in my teens. If it didn’t occur to me back then, I
certainly got from my second go-round that Steinbeck really understood what
makes people tick. By making audible the
internal dialogue of the characters, the reader comes to pity, loathe, and rarely,
admire them in their relatable humanity.
Juan and Alice Chicoy run an establishment at Rebel Corners,
some forty miles south of San Ysidro in southern California, that is parts gas
station, restaurant and bus depot. While
Alice mans the lunchroom counter, Juan works as auto mechanic and, between the
hours of ten-thirty and and four, drives passengers south to the Mexican town
of San Juan de la Cruz, and back north again in his ramshackle bus nicknamed
“Sweetheart”. Juan, part Irish and
Mexican, was born and raised in Mexico and is best described as being a man’s
man. He does not suffer fools gladly and
it is safe to say that he considers women, in one fashion or the other, to be
fools. We know Alice has been struck
by Juan at least once and that he threatens to leave her when he starts to feel
trapped. Because his life has been
difficult, he is intolerant of Alice’s self-pity and he blames her for his lack
of freedom. Alice despises her life which is split between the monotony of
waiting on ungrateful customers all day and the anxiety that comes from the
fear of incurring Juan’s wrath, or worse, his abandonment.
A recurring theme in the works of John Steinbeck is the
physical need for security versus the spiritual longing for freedom. These warring impulses are evident in the
characters that inhabit The Wayward Bus. As
the story opens, Juan and his hired hand, a hormone-besieged, acne-scarred
teenager who craves acceptance from any quarter and who Juan, unhappily for the
boy, calls “Pimples”, awake before daybreak to make last minute repairs on
Sweetheart, which had broken down the day before stranding its southbound passengers
at Rebels Corner. Among the passengers are a Mr. and Mrs. Pritchard and their
college-age daughter, Mildred. The
Pritchards are fairly well-off and they are all about appearances; what others
think about them is of paramount importance.
Like Juan and Alice, Mildred feels trapped by her shallow and unworldly parents
and yearns for the day when she can get a job and get away from them. It is perhaps for this reason that Mildred
feels an attraction for Juan, or perhaps it is just because he is the type of
person that her parents would look down on for his lack of social sophistication. While Juan and his charges eat breakfast
waiting for departure time, he notices Mildred flirting with him and, being an
opportunist when it comes to the ladies, flirts back. Deep down, however, he
realizes that what appeals to him more than anything is not the desire for
sexual union with the girl, but the fact that he could hurt and abuse her just
as her light-skinned ancestors had always done to his Indian people. While a
tad naïve, Mildred is a bright and perceptive young woman and when she sees the
cruelness in Juan’s eyes, she backs off.
Not long after Juan and Pimples had made repairs on the bus
and gone inside to the lunchroom, it begins to rain heavily and Juan is
concerned with flooding on his route as it is the rainy season and recent rains
have already saturated the ground. At
this point Van Brunt makes his appearance in the lunchroom. Much to Alice’s dismay, the marooned bus
passengers had spent the previous night in the living quarters of the Chicoys
and their help, Pimples and Norma. The
elderly Van Brunt had been given Pimples’ bed. Far from being grateful, the
cantankerous and provocative Van Brunt immediately confronts Juan about the
wisdom of making the trip south; he is a local and fears that due to high water
and lack of structural integrity, the bus may not make it over the San Ysidro
bridge, if the bridge is even still standing.
Juan considers, and far from the first time, getting rid of the bus as
customers like Van Brunt make it not worth the trouble. Juan pointedly tells
Van Brunt that the bus will be going with him or without him-it’s his choice.
Norma is the most recent of a long line of girls hired to
help Alice in the lunchroom. She is a plain girl who spends most of her days
daydreaming of marrying movie stars, her current obsession is Clark Gable. Alice is mostly unkind to Norma, who has
recently become aware that Alice has been snooping through her personal
belongings. Although her youthfulness
causes her to yearn for a free and adventurous existence, Norma is essentially
a realist, and so has stayed at Rebels Corner in spite of these trespasses
because she feels a sense of security there.
But the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back comes in the form
of one Ernest Horton, a passenger who has spent the night in Norma’s room. Ernest is a war veteran and travelling
salesman who sells gimmicks and gag items.
He is one of the few characters in The
Wayward Bus that does not yearn for freedom as his itinerant lifestyle
gives him a sufficient amount of it. While the war and his life on the road
have given him a healthy dose of cynicism, Ernest is nonetheless a
compassionate person and so takes an immediate dislike to Alice when he sees
how she treats Norma. While in Norma’s
room packing his wares case, Norma comes in and shows interest in his
autographed movie star photos. As he is
showing them to her, Alice barges in and accuses the pair of being up to no
good. Norma is embarrassed and furious
and as soon as Alice and Ernest leave the room, in an uncharacteristically bold
move, she packs her things intending to board Sweetheart on its southbound
journey.
In the meantime the Greyhound bus from the north has delivered
to Rebels Corner a girl that effortlessly oozes sex appeal and all the men,
young and old, begin to fall all over themselves to get her attention. We never know her real name, just what she
has told them it is for self-preservation-Camille Oaks. The men, with the exception of Juan, make
fools of themselves in an effort to turn the striking blonde’s head, but none
do as her profession of party girl at stag parties has made her jaded and
guarded. It is not that Juan did not
notice such a sexually provocative girl, it is just that he was unsure if she
was accessible and so decides to bide his time and see how it goes. The freedom
that “Camille” seeks is from herself and the genetic curse of attracting men
wherever she goes. She is on her way to L.A. for a new start and she finds
herself exhausted and weary of constantly defending herself from the unending
onslaught of unwelcome advances from men, and the attendant alienation of
women. By necessity Camille is a quick
study in human behavior and befriends Norma because of her usefulness as a
“shield” between herself and the males.
When the appointed time comes, Juan boards Sweetheart
leaving Alice behind to get drunk and agonize over whether he will return to
her. On board are a motley crew of human souls. It is uncertain if they will
even make it to their destinations, in a literal or figurative sense, and what
their adventures will be along the way. Even if some of these characters are
unlikable, even despicable at times, it was though I knew them, or at least
somebody like them. I would recommend
that you take the trip with them. I was glad I did again.
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it."
- John Steinbeck
