Jan Burke - Liar

His eyes narrowed. “Did I get a payoff when they were married, you mean? Hell, no, and I didn’t want any, even though I was the one that always took care of Arthur, gave up everything for him. DeMonts wouldn’t believe it, so I got together with Gwenie’s lawyer and signed an agreement saying I’d never get a penny of Papa DeMont’s money.”

“So Arthur never loaned you money?”

“His own,” he admitted grudgingly, then added, “by that I mean he loaned me money from his own business. That gardening business. DeMonts never could believe that Arthur made a little bit of his own money.”

“How well do you know Horace DeMont, Gwendolyn’s uncle?” I asked.

“That old good-for-nothing?” Gerald scoffed. “I know all I need to know. He thinks he’s better than anyone on God’s green earth, but the truth is, he lost every nickel he owned speculating on the stock market, and for a time he was as much a vagabond as any Spanning ever was. In fact, Travis, your grandfather met him on the road, and that’s how we came to the sugar beet farm, because even though old Horace was complaining, my daddy could tell there was plenty of work to be had.”

“Horace DeMont was a vagabond?” I said in disbelief.

Gerald laughed. “Oh, yes. Him and that brat of his, Robert. In fact, one day when he was looking down his big nose at us, I told Bobby that my daddy had once seen him giving testimony at the Sally Ann in Chicago. He denied that he was ever any mission stiff. But later, when people started romanticizing about what it was like to ride on Old Dirty Face he bragged he had done it, like he was Jack Kerouac himself, to which I said, ”Yeah, except Bobby wasn’t a hobo, just an old moll buzzer.“ That made him mad as fire.”

“Speak English!” Deeny interrupted.

“Oh, sorry honey, I just fall into that way of talking whenever I think about those years on the road. Well, here’s how it is: There are hoboes, and there are tramps and there are bums. A hobo is a working stiff-he’s a migrant worker, that’s all. His labor built this country much as anybody else’s. You don’t believe it, go pick fruit for a summer, or herd cattle or dig ditches or lay rails. Hoboes did all that. That’s what we Spannings did when we were riding rails-we looked for work, went wherever we could find it.

“Now, a tramp is just a fellow who doesn’t believe in working if he can avoid it, but he keeps moving. It’s a kind of philosophical thing with some of them, I supposed you’d say. Sometimes they call them scenery bums. That’s not the same thing I mean when I call a man a bum, though.

“A bum is a man who stays in the city, usually down on skid row. He’s not working, he’s not moving, he’s on the bum.

“Now, the categories aren’t so neat, and any man may take a turn at being one or another of those fellows, mostly depending on how fond he is of old redeye.”

“Redeye?” Travis asked.

“Whiskey.”

“And Sally Ann?”

“Salvation Army. A mission stiff is a man who spends a lot of time getting saved so that he can get free flops and food.”

“Old Dirty Face?” I asked.

He smiled. “A freight train.”

“And what’s a moll buzzer?” Deeny asked.

“Guy that mooches off women. That’s what old Bobby did, and his old man, Horace-why, he probably taught him all he knew. Then they got in some kind of trouble over it out in Boise back in the summer of ‘40 and the town clowns threw Bobby in the jail. Now, most fellows would see that as part of the deal and not fuss over it. But I think the charges must have been something out of the ordinary vag charges, because old Horace cried to his daddy about it.”

“What are town clowns and vag charges?” Deeny asked.

“Oh, sorry, honey. Town clowns are police. And vag charges are vagrancy charges. But they treated old Bobby like he was some kind of yegg, and as much as I don’t like him, I don’t think he was ever a yegg.”

“Which is?” she asked, not hiding her irritation.

“Well, I mentioned hoboes and tramps and bums, but there was another class of people out there, and they spelled trouble for everybody else-the yeggs. Those were the real hardened criminals-safecrackers and gangs of thieves and killers and people who did things I’d just as soon not mention. Horrible things. They were out there riding the rails, running from the law, raising the devil. They were really more dangerous to the hobo than just about anybody, but a lot of the local cops didn’t see any difference between a yegg and a hobo, so they treated us all the same.

“Anyway, Horace cried to his daddy and Papa DeMont bailed Bobby out. He brought them home and read Bobby up one side and down the other. Told him to haul himself up by the ass pockets and act like a man.

“I guess somewhere in all that Bobby heard what he needed to hear- but more likely he just had the jam scared out of him when he got arrested. But for whatever reason, Bobby got all respectable after that. Even fought in the war. And I hear tell that old Horace is still alive, but he must just be living on his meanness. Doug, his oldest boy, he died awhile back. I don’t know if Bobby’s still around or not.”

“You must have been fairly young when Bobby was arrested,” I said. “How do you remember that?”

“Oh, well, first off, because Papa DeMont liked my dad-Travis’s grandfather. And because my daddy knew his way around that part of the country, Papa DeMont sent him up there, along with Zeke Brennan-”

“Zeke Brennan?” Travis said. “He must have been young, too.”

Gerald laughed. “I’m talking about Ezekiel Brennan, Senior. He was the father of your daddy’s lawyer. Old Zeke didn’t drive, but your grandfather did. So they were going up there with the bail money and bring the two of them back. School just got out for the summer, and my dad took me with him. Papa DeMont let my dad take one of his cars, and that was my first ride in an automobile over any great distance. A big old Bentley. That was some car. I suppose that’s mainly why the trip stayed in my mind. And Papa DeMont didn’t usually lose his temper with people, so it was something to see him so mad at the two of them.”

There were a few other photos in the album, but not many. Most were of Arthur and Gerald together. A few were pictures of the sugar beet factory, apparently taken not long before it closed down.

“How long did you work there?” I asked.

“Oh, let’s see. We first came out here in 1938, when I was just about to start school. It was after the girls died; your grandmother decided she never wanted to live where it was cold again, and she found work in a cafe in the off-season, so she stayed here. Your granddad wanted me to get an education.”

“Were you able to go to school?” Travis asked.

“Oh, yes, for a time. And some of my schooling was on the road. Whenever work at the factory got a little slow, my father would take me with him and we’d go rambling, hire out wherever we could. I met some amazing fellows in those days. At the time, during the Depression, there were some highly educated men riding the rails. And the road itself will teach all kinds of lessons you won’t get in a classroom-some good, some bad. Anyway, we never left for very long at a stretch, because he didn’t like being away from your grandmother. I did go to school here pretty regular up until your grandparents died. Then it was up to me to take care of your daddy, and Papa DeMont always made sure I had work on his place after that.”

“What do you do for a living now, Uncle Gerald?”

“Oh, a long time ago, your father loaned me some money to start my own business,” he said. “I buy old houses, fix ‘em up and sell them. I’ve done well for myself, and I paid your daddy back. He wasn’t going to let me, but I did. I think he felt like I took good care of him, so…” His eyes clouded up, and he left the sentence unfinished.