Showing the Bus
This is an excerpt from my next book, The Failed Redemption of Dirty Dog Dietrich.
Dirty Dog turned his face and stuck
his tongue out at Diego. When Diego didn’t respond, Dirty Dog picked up his
pace to a slow jog. “Come on, you slow pokes!” Dirty Dog yelled as he turned
his head to look at Audra and Diego. “My bus is gonna surprise you.” The noise of the carnival with the laughter
and voices of squealing children diminished with each step toward a parking
area that had RVs, trailers, trucks and cars.
“I wish I could dump my anger as
quickly as your brother does,” Diego said.
“Me too,” Audra said. “Both of us
wallow in our self-pity pools too long for our own good.”
Audra and Diego walked by the
baseball fields and across the street. They looked ahead but didn’t see a
school bus. Dirty Dog poked his head out from the side of a large and shiny
Airstream trailer. “It’s over here!” Dirty Dog yelled, waving for them to
follow him.
Audra and Diego walked around the
corner of the Airstream trailer. Dirty Dog stood in the open doorway of a long
yellow school bus. “They made us park way over here on account of they didn’t
want the kids getting hurt with the electric cords and shit.”
Audra counted ten windows behind
the driver’s seat. “Wow. That’s way bigger than I expected,” she whispered to
Diego.
“Come on in.” Dirty Dog said. His
eyes twinkled with glee. He stepped backwards, watching Audra lift her foot up
to the first step. “I took out the seats, except for the two rows in front.
That’s so I can give people rides.”
“Give people rides?” Audra asked.
“Rides to where?”
“Well you know,” Dirty Dog
stammered. “I mean in case people need a ride to the next town where we’ll set
up the carnival.” A scowl jumped onto his face. “Jeeze! Audra. You could’ve
figured that out by yourself.”
Diego had walked to the back of the
bus where Dirty Dog had bolted down two twin size beds along the driver’s side
of the bus. “OK mister architect. You gotta help me figure out how to get to
the bed in the back.”
Diego grinned. “You take one foot
in front of the other and walk.”
“Ok smarty pants. You know what I
mean. I gotta make rooms I can rent. And I’ve got to get back to my own bed
without going through this guy’s room,” he said pointing to the first bed.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a tape
measure handy, would you?” Diego asked.
“I sure do,” Dirty Dog said as he
walked to the front of the bus and pulled out a bright red tool box from behind
the driver’s seat. He opened it and pulled out two tape measures. “Do you need
the big one? Or will this twelve footer work?”
“Hand me the big one,” Diego said
as he put his hand out to get it.
Diego measured the interior width.
“You’ve only got seven and half feet.” He handed the end of the tape to Dirty
dog. “Go stand and hold it at the back of the last seat.” Diego walked the tape
measure to the back of the bus. “You’ve got about twenty foot to work with.”
Dirty Dog’s eyebrows shot up. “Hot
dang! I can squeeze three beds in here.”
Audra sat in the driver’s seat and put
her hands on the steering wheel, pretending she was driving. “What was in this
spot?” she asked pointing to a hole in the dashboard.
“Some guy came by the other day and
I showed him my bus,” Dirty Dog said. “He liked it but said I needed a CBL to
drive it. So when I got some free time, I got a ride to that big truck stop in
Albuquerque and looked at the CB radios. But I couldn’t find any that had an
L.”
Audra rolled her eyes. “I don’t
think he meant that you need a CB radio.”
Dirty Dog pointed to the hole in
the dashboard. “He did. He told me that when he saw that I didn’t have a CB
radio.”
“Are you sure he didn’t say CDL?”
Audra asked as she folded her arms over her chest.
Dirty Dog followed suit and crossed
his arms. “What do you mean, Audra”
“The guy probably thought that you
were going to need a Commercial Driver’s License. That’s what CDL means. You
would need one if you were going to use this to transport people.”
“Well, hell, I’m a people,” Dirty
Dog said. “And I’m transporting myself.”
“But you aren’t doing that for
money,” Diego said. “The bus is your personal vehicle. It’s not going to be
used as a commercial vehicle.”
The volume of Dirty Dog’s voice
shot up. “The hell it ain’t! The lawyer said that I could rent the beds in my
bus to the other carneys if I kept it quiet. It is MY commercial vehicle.”
“Calm down,” Audra said. “It is
your bus, but the lawyer didn’t mean that you can charge people to drive them
places in your bus.”
“Are you jiving us?” Diego asked,
“Or are you really that stu…” Diego stopped mid-word. “Or don’t you understand
that a commercial vehicle is one that transports people or goods for money.”
Angry wrinkles and a fattened
bottom lip emerged onto Dirty Dog’s face as his shoulders rose. “There ya go
again, mister I got a college education, using them fancy words to make me look
stupid. I heard what you wanted to say. You were gonna call me stupid.”
Diego put up his hands. “I’m sorry
Dirty Dog. I am not calling you stupid. I’m just getting frustrated.”
“That don’t give you no right to
take it out on me. I’m doing what I can.” He let his shoulders drop. He looked
directly at Audra. “Why can’t you just be happy for me, once in a while.
Jeeze!”
Dirty Dog’s head slumped down onto
his chest. His hands hung by his sides as he lumbered to the back of the bus
and faced the bed. He got down on his knees and pulled out an old brown leather
accordion style briefcase from under the bed. He sat on the bed and placed the briefcase
on his lap. He took a long deep breath through his nostrils and let it out
slowly as if he were blowing away his disappointment. He pulled the top of the
briefcase apart to open it. He looked inside, moving his head from side to
side, allowing his eyes to scan the contents. He pulled out a yellow notepad
and took another deep breath as he flipped the first few pages. He looked up at
his sister. “Well maybe this will make you happy for me,” he said. He put the old briefcase down on the floor and
then straightened himself up. “That used to be Uncle Roy’s briefcase,” he said
with a tinge of sadness. “I remember Uncle Roy reading some poetry to me when I
was in junior high. He encouraged me to write poems. He always liked what I
wrote and sometimes he would laugh at my funny ones so hard that tears would
come out of his eyes.”
“Is that one of his poems that you
and Uncle Roy wrote?” Audra asked.
“Nah. Last night I saw an old white
haired man with a couple of little kids waiting to get on the rides. He reminded
me of Uncle Roy.” Dirty Dog said as he looked down at the briefcase. “When I
got off work, I came in here and pulled out his old briefcase. I started
thinking about him and wondering if he’d like my bus. And then I wrote up a
rental agreement for when I get a renter.” Dirty Dog’s face lit up. “But I did
it the way he’d like. I did it like a poem. Ya wanna hear it? It’s called,
It’s My Bus
Let me be
perfectly clear.
The only reason
you are here
Is ‘cus I let you
sleep in My bus.
And you can’t tell
me not to cuss.
Cus this is My
bus.
I can drink beer
or wine.
So don’t you start
to whine
When I start to
yell and cuss.
Cus I’m living my
life on My bus.
You gotta clean up
your own damn mess
Or I’ll kick you
ass and you’ll need a new address
Why? ‘Cus this is
My bus
So don’t start no
fuckin fuss
And do illegal
shit on My bus
Cus you ain’t
gonna cause the cops to come
And lock me up
like I’m some bum.
Be nice and clean
and don’t be mean
and we’ll get
along just fine
on this bus that’s
all Mine.
Dirty Dog beamed. “Ain’t that a
good poem? I worked hard on it all night to make it rhyme. I know Uncle Roy
would’ve loved it.” He narrowed his eyes at Diego. “You gotta admit, mister I
went to college and can write big words, that it has a cadence, too. See. I
know a few big fancy words like you.” Dirty Dog gave Diego a toothy smile. “See.
Even that rhymes.”
“That is a good poem,” Diego said. “As
you say, it makes my nipples hard listening to you read it.”
“Really?” Dirty Dog’s eyebrows
stood up making happy wrinkles on his forehead.
“I mean it,” Diego said as he sat
down on the bed next to Dirty Dog. “It’s good. You tell the reader that this
bus is yours and you are the boss. You make it perfectly clear that you can say
what you want and do what you want. And you expect whoever is living here to
keep the place clean and not get into legal trouble.”
“Are you really going to use that poem
as a rental agreement?” Audra asked.
“Hell yeah, Audra. Why not? I’m
gonna get some nice fancy paper and one of them cal, Hold on a minute,” Dirty
Dog said holding up his index finger and closing his eyes. “Oh yeah. Calligraphy
pens. And then I’m gonna put two lines at the bottom.”
Diego put his left hand on his
chin. “Two lines?”
“Yeah. One line for me to sign and
one line for the renter. And them I ‘m gonna tape it on the ceiling above his
head so he’ll never forget that this is my bus.”
Audra shook her head and pushed her
hair off her shoulder. She bit her upper lip, narrowed her eyes and then asked,
“If you are going to use that as your renter’s agreement, do you really have to
use the F word?”
Dirty Dog pulled his shoulders
back, stood up straight and gave Audra a big toothy grin. “I’ll be renting to fucking
carneys, Audra. Get fucking real. They’d be fucking confused if I didn’t use fucking
carney talk.”
The muscles in Audra’s neck
tightened as her shoulders went up. She gritted her teeth. “Fffff fine then.
Write it your own fucking way.” She burst out laughing and so did Dirty Dog and
Diego.
