“You don’t get paid,” Little Tib said practically.
“We get our draws, and I use that—both of them together—for whatever we need, and if he kept his and I kept mine, he would have more than me. You be quiet now—we’re coming to the road.”
They stood there a long time. Occasionally a car or a truck went by. Little Tib began to wonder if Mr. Parker and Nitty were holding out their thumbs. He remembered seeing people holding out their thumbs when he and his parents were moving from the old place. He thought of what Nitty had said about praying and began to pray himself, thinking about God and asking that the next car stop.
For a long time no more cars stopped. Little Tib thought about a cattle truck stopping and told God he would ride with the cattle. He thought about a garbage truck stopping and told God he would ride on top of the garbage. Then he heard something old coming down the road. It rattled, and the engine made a strange, high-pitched noise an engine should not make. “Looks like a old school bus,” Nitty said. “But look at those pictures on the side.”
“It’s stopping,” Mr. Parker said, and then Little Tib could hear the sound the doors made opening.
A new voice, high for a man’s voice and talking fast, said, “You seek to go this way? You may come in. All are welcome in the temple of Deva.”
Mr. Parker got in, and Nitty lifted Little Tib up the steps. The doors closed behind them. There was a peculiar smell in the air.
“You have a small boy. That is well. The god is most fond of small children and the aged. Small boys and girls have innocence. Old persons have tranquillity and wisdom. These are the things that are pleasing to the god. We should strive without effort to retain innocence, and to attain tranquillity and wisdom as soon as we can.”
Nitty said, “Right on.”
“He is a handsome boy.” Little Tib felt the driver’s breath, warm and sweet, on his face, and something dangling struck him lightly on the chest. He caught it, and found that it was a piece of wood with three crossbars, suspended from a thong. “Ah,” the new voice said, “you have discovered my amulet.”
“George can’t see,” Mr. Parker explained. “You’ll have to excuse him.”
“I am aware of this, having observed it earlier, but perhaps it is painful for him to hear it spoken of. And now I must go forward again before the police come to inquire why I have stopped. There are no seats—I have removed all the seats but this one. It is better that people take seats on the floor before Deva. But you may stand behind me if you wish. Is that agreeable?”
“We’ll be happy to stand,” Mr. Parker said.
The bus lurched into motion. Little Tib held on to Nitty with one hand and on to a pole he found with the other.
“We are in motion again. That is fitting. It would be most fitting if we might move always, never stopping. I had thought to build my temple on a boat—a boat moves always because of the rocking of the waves. I may still do this.”
“Are you going through Martinsburg?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the driver said. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am Dr. Prithivi.”
Mr. Parker shook hands with Dr. Prithivi, and Little Tib felt the bus swerve from its lane. Mr. Parker yelled, and when the bus was straight again, he introduced Nitty and Little Tib.
“If you’re a doctor,” Nitty said, “you could maybe look at George sometime. He hasn’t been well.”
“I am not this sort of doctor,” Dr. Prithivi explained. “Rather instead I am a doctor for the soul. I am a doctor of divinity of the University of Bombay. If someone is sick a physician should be summoned. Should they be evil they should summon me.”
Nitty said, “Usually the family don’t do that because they’re so glad to see them finally making some money.”
Dr. Prithivi laughed, a little high laugh like music. It seemed to Little Tib that it went skipping around the roof of the old bus, playing on a whistle. “But we are all evil,” Dr. Prithivi said, “and so few of us make money. How do you explain that? That is the joke. I am a doctor for evil, and everyone in the world should be calling me, even myself, all the time. But I cannot come. ‘Office hours nine to five,’ that is what my sign should say. No house calls. But instead I bring my house, the house of the god, to everyone. Here I collect my fares, and I tell all who come to step to the back of my bus.”
“We didn’t know you had to pay,” Little Tib said. He was worried because Nitty had told him that he and Mr. Parker had no money in their accounts.
“No one must pay—that is the beauty. Those who desire to buy near diesel for the god may imprint their cards here, but all is voluntary and other things we accept too.”
“Sure is dark back there,” Nitty said.
“Let me show you. You see we are approaching a roadside park? So well is the universe regulated. There we will stop and recreate ourselves, and I will show you the god before proceeding again.”
Little Tib felt the bus swerve with breathtaking suddenness. During the last year that they had lived at the old place, he had ridden a bus to school. He remembered how hot it had been, and how ordinary it had seemed after the first week; now he was dreaming of riding this strange-smelling old bus in the dark, but soon he would wake and be on that other bus again; then, when the doors opened, he would run through the hot, bright sunshine to the school.
The doors opened, clattering and grinding. “Let us go out,” Dr. Prithivi said. “Let us recreate ourselves and see what is to be seen here.”
“It’s a lookout point,” Mr. Parker told him. “You can see parts of seven counties from here.”
Little Tib felt himself lifted down the steps. There were other people around; he could hear their voices, though they were not close.
“It is so very beautiful,” Dr. Prithivi said. “We have also beautiful mountains in India—‘the Himalayas,’ they are called. This fine view makes me think of them. When I was just a little boy, my father rented a house for summer in
