Last Bus To Wisdom: A Novel

Herman is a middle-aged, one-eyed retired sailor who takes Donal under his wing when Donal’s great aunt and Herman’s partner, Kate, attempts to send Donal back to Montana before Gram is physically able to care for him. Donal hears initially that Herman is Kate’s second husband. As the narrative unfolds, Donal learns that Herman—whom Gram refers to as Dutch—is in fact Deutsch, or German. As a soldier drafted into the German army, Herman survived World War I. When the Nazis come to power, Herman sailed to the US, jumped ship, and worked shoveling coal in Great Lakes ore ships. When a storm on Lake Michigan, snaps his ship in half, Herman lost an eye and his best friend, Fritz, who was swept away during the storm. Fritz’s wife, Kate, approached Herman in the hospital and proposed that he move in with her. While she takes Herman’s last name, the two never married.

Herman loves novels about the American West written in German by the Austrian author Karl May. He constantly talks to Donal about cowboy life in Montana. When Kate attempts to send Donal back to Montana, Herman decides to leave her and go with him, hoping to experience the Wild West. Like Donal, Herman has a series of names. Called Dutch by his Great Lakes coworkers, he becomes One Eye to other hay harvesters, Herman the German to Donal, and Fritz Schneider to the ranch foreman.

In the narrative, Herman functions both as a guardian and trusted adult Donal can depend on, but also a companion with an adventurous spirit and a desire to liberate himself from the mundanity and control of his life with Kate.

Aunt Kate, also called Kitty, is Gram’s estranged sister, the only person Gram can turn to when she must find a temporary caregiver for Donal. Donal notes that Kate is a large woman, something he dwells on. She lost her first husband, Fritz, in the 1947 storm and summarily approached Herman, his best friend, to take Fritz’s place. The two constantly bicker, with Aunt Kate controlling every aspect of their home life. Donal feels surprised to learn that Aunt Kate previously worked as a waitress.

Doig portrays Aunt Kate as a manipulative, self-serving individual who is totally unprepared to deal with unfiltered Donal. She perceives herself as unduly put upon by his presence. When he confronts her about having confiscated all the money he helped her win at canasta, she decides to ship Donal back to Montana, even though her sister is not yet capable of caring for him or herself. When she discovers that Herman has left her, she turns him into the FBI as an “enemy alien,” as he previously entered the US without authorization.

Gram is Donal’s maternal grandmother. When Donal’s mother died in a car accident, Gram immediately assumed the care of her grandson. For several years, she has worked as the cook for Wendell Williamson’s ranch kitchen, preparing three meals a day, 365 days a year. Donal describes her as a very slight woman, so much so that he cannot imagine anything doctors can remove from her during her planned surgery. While Gram has only a third-grade education, she is extremely perceptive. She holds a low opinion of Wendell, ultimately finding a different job as a cook when she recovers enough to return to work. Though she dotes on Donal, she has high expectations for him. For instance, when he finds a rare obsidian arrowhead on the ranch, she makes Donal hand it over to Wendell as a vestige of his property.

Though Gram appears only in a few chapters, she is ever-present in Donal’s thoughts. He recalls her wisdom and her cautions as he continually encounters new challenges. Once Donal lands at a suitable place where he wants to remain, he finds himself torn between staying on Rag’s Diamond Buckle Ranch or moving to Glasgow, Montana, to resume living with Gram. The resolution of his quandary comes in the last sentence of the novel, when Rags asks Donal if Gram is a ranch cook.

A tall, well-coordinated, and supremely confident person, Rags is a world champion cowboy. Long before Donal ever meets him or sees him ride, Rags is Donal’s personal hero. Always attired with a Stetson hat and his championship belt buckle, Rags is a favorite of women around the rodeo, called “buckle bunnies.” Self-effacing, Rags proves his worth to Donal by taking the time to write a personal note in Donal’s memory book. As striking as he is outside the rodeo arena, he conquers seemingly unrideable saddle broncs during competition. Donal admits to wishing he was Rags, then pretends he is a rodeo announcer, extolling Rags’s achievements.

In the waning chapters of the novel, Donal and Herman discover that Rags has purchased the Diamond Buckle Ranch in the Big Hole area of Montana. They manage to get jobs on the ranch and become personally acquainted with Rags. When two county sheriffs come to the ranch seeking someone who escaped from prison and end up threatening to arrest and to shed the blood of several ranch hands, Rags calms the situation. In the final scene of the novel, he offers permanent ranch jobs to Donal, Herman, and Gram.

As an extroverted person, Donal engages individuals he meets without reluctance. Riding for 72 hours on a Greyhound bus gives him ample opportunity to interact with many other passengers and engage with their unique quirks and qualities. In addition to the talkative busybody who monopolizes the entire first leg of his journey, Donal encounters Leticia, the waitress relocating to Havre, where she hopes her outlaw boyfriend, Harv Kinnick, will find her. As the narrative reveals, Harv soon ends up on the bus in handcuffs, arrested by his stepbrother, Sheriff Carl Kinnick. Harv and his brother both reemerge in the narrative when Harv escapes jail again and Carl tracks him to the ranch where Donal and Herman work.

Donal meets a kind, elderly couple, the Schneiders, who introduce him to the idea of vacations—simply taking the bus for pleasure. He later recalls that they have a son, a doctor who works at Yellowstone, whom Donal finds in a moment of need and asks for help. Donal also encounters three soldiers reporting for assignment to Korea. They share a poignant exchange with Donal, whose father was seriously injured on D-Day at Omaha Beach.

Donal also engages with untrustworthy, unscrupulous individuals on the bus. On his first excursion, a pale fellow wearing a tight suit blocks Donal in his seat, engaging him in enough conversation to realize that Donal has certain valuables in his suitcase. When the man pulls Donal’s bag out of the storage unit of the Greyhound, Donal manages to yell for the bus driver to stop the thief. The driver recognizes from the man’s appearance that he has been newly released from prison. On the journey back west, Donal and Herman sit across from a thin, well-dressed, seemingly innocuous older man who identifies himself as a retired preacher. On his way to visit his daughter, he says he leaves Bibles in hotel rooms along the way. When he asks the two about their religious faith, Donal and Herman feign sleepiness. Getting off the bus the next morning at Yellowstone, they discover the man was a con artist who stole all their money as they slept.

The most historically consequential stranger Donal meets on the bus, however, is the author Jack Kerouac. One of the transformative figures of American literature in the mid-20th century, Kerouac is best known for his novel, On the Road, to which Last Bus to Wisdom bears intentional similarities. Doig describes Kerouac as writing madly throughout the night as his girlfriend sleeps beside him. He proclaims to the curious Donal that he cannot escape his persistent literary muse. In describing Kerouac, Doig describes himself.