Last Bus To Wisdom: A Novel

As he rides to his aunt’s house in their old DeSoto, Donal thinks about all the benefits of being the great nephew of Kate Smith. Though the house is modest, it is a two-story, dwarfing the cook shack where he lives with Gram. His aunt tells him to drop his dirty clothes down the clothes chute.

Aunt Kate boasts about the supper she has prepared, sauerkraut and wieners, a dish his grandmother looks down on. When he hears Kate Smith sing on the radio, Donal thinks it is his aunt and feels surprised to see her eating rather than singing. He asks her if she is Kate Smith, a comparison that Herman says she has received before. For her part, Aunt Kate believes that Donal is developmentally delayed. She feels amazed to hear he is a straight-A student. Donal narrates, “She looking down at me looking up, we gazed at each other in something like mutual incomprehension” (128).

After supper, they show Donal to his room, which is actually the attic. There is a wall hanging above his bed containing a child’s prayer about what should happen if he dies in his sleep. As he drifts off to sleep, Herman enters and excitedly begins to talk about the Indigenous nations of the West.