Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Starting up again, are you?”

“Oh, I ain’t dead yet.”

With him jawing at me and Hosey looking first at me and then at the hole, I had to do something. I picked up a spike and went around behind. Of course, pitch dark as it was and wet as it was what you could see was nothing at all. But I lit a match, and it spluttered out but the flash was enough to give me the lay of the land. The chest had been set on top of a little rise, but behind it the ground fell away into bushes and grass, and it was a little gully, just a crease in the dirt, maybe a foot wide and six or eight inches deep. It looked like something must have crawled in there to get out of the rain, but what to do about it I didn’t quite know, and fact of the matter, if it hadn’t been for the razz I’d just taken, I probably wouldn’t have done anything. But I kneeled down and lit another match. Then the ground gave way, and before I could get up I felt it coming toward me, whatever it was. I heard a squeal, grabbed, stood up with him, and then went running around with him to the fire. Sure enough, he was just what my ears had told me he’d be: a little piney woods rooter, as they call the wild pigs in the South, maybe three or four weeks old, kicking and squealing and biting. “Hosey!”

“Yes, Jack.”

“Reach in my right-hand pants pocket, get the shiv in there, take it out, and open it.”

“O.K.”

“Hand it to me.”

“Here it is.”

“Stand clear. I’m going to stick him.”

I’d never stuck a pig in my life, but there’s plenty of things you can do if you get hungry enough. I jabbed the knife into his throat, then held him by one hind foot and went over to the track with him, so we wouldn’t have the blood so near. I had no more feeling about it then than if I was emptying a bottle. When he seemed to be bled I went over to the other shed, where there was a stream of water running off the lid, and washed him. I took the cup off my canteen and set it there to fill. Then I went back to the fire. I’d never cleaned a pig either but I figured it would work like a fish. I spread out a newspaper, split him down the belly, took out the gut, wrapped it up, all except the liver, and threw it on the other side of the track. Then I washed him some more. Then I took the knife and cut the skin, bristles and all, off the four legs. I went over to the other box, felt around, and found a fork, one they use to fork ballast with. I laid it over the fire, so the tines made a grill. I laid the meat on it. Brother, was it a smell, when that shoat began to broil! “Jack.”

“Yeah, Hosey?”

“It’ll cook better if we section those hams up, so we got smaller pieces.”

“Right.”

We turned all the pieces twice, and when they were nearly done, Hosey began to talk: “Buck, our supper’s about ready now, but before you get any of it, I’m holding a kangaroo court on you right now, and this is what you’ve got to do: First, you’ve got to say you’re sorry, to me and Jack both, for the bughouse way you’ve been carrying on here, that’s beat anything I ever hear tell of, I think my whole life. Second, you’re going to apologize special to Jack here, because he’s the one that’s done everything for you and that you’ve got to thank for being here where it’s warm with something to eat on the fire, instead of being left in that ditch, to die. And third, you’re going to say please.”

“Go to hell!”

“Can’t you smell that pork?”

“You heard me.”

“Don’t you want to live at all?”

“God damn it, have I got to—”

“Hosey.”

“Yeah, Jack?”

“Feed him.”

Hosey took the meat off the fire and I took Buck by the back of the neck and sat him up straight. It was the first I had any idea what he even looked like. Except he was so beat up, he was kind of a handsome kid, twenty four or five, with light hair and blue eyes and maybe three days’ growth of beard. He blinked at the pork, smelled it, then turned to me: “You ever shake hands with a damn fool?”

“No, but I wouldn’t mind.”

His face lit up with a friendly smile, nothing like a hobo at all, and he held out his hand. “I been watching you, Jack, and I’ll say please, but it’s because I ought to and want to, not because I got to.”

“O.K., Buck.”

“You hear me, Hosey?”

“O.K., so you say it.”

I remembered my cup and went over to it. It was nearly full but I thought it would be a good idea to have something else catching water while the rain was coming down, so I opened the other chest and felt around inside for a can or something. Then my hand touched glass and there was a clink. I caught it and held it up to the light and it was a bottle, maybe two thirds full, but with no label on it. I took the cork out and smelled it and it was white mule, good old Georgia moonshine. I slipped it in my pocket, went back, offered the cup, and they had a drink. There was still some water left and I hooked the cup on the inside of the bucket so it was resting on coals. “Even if we got no coffee some hot water would go pretty good.”

“Say, that’s a hunch.”

“O.K., Jack.”

When the water began to smoke I took it off, Then, after I pulled the cork with my teeth, I spiked it with the mountain dew. I stuck the bottle back in my pocket, put the cork in, and tasted what was in the cup. It was raw, but it hit the spot. “Boys, try this, see what you think.”

“Hosey, Hosey, the guy ain’t human!”

“What is it?... Holy smoke!”

So we sat there, and sipped and talked and laughed and felt good and weren’t coffee grounds any more, but men.

You got three musketeers, and maybe it’s a beautiful friendship, but it’s a cinch to be a gabfest all the time, with one and two talking about three, two and three talking about one, and one and three talking about two. Through all the hunger and dirt and sickness and cold that we had the next few months, I’d say the part of us that could still think was trying as much to understand the other two as it was to do something about the spot we were in. But mainly it was Hosey trying to understand me and Buck, and me and Buck trying to understand Hosey. Hosey would talk and talk and talk to me about Buck, and how he’d never learn the ways of the road, and just kept lousing things up for right guys that were willing to live and let live and didn’t want any trouble. Like the way Buck always acted with the bulls. He never could let them call it like they were paid to call it, and shut up and figure it was all in a day’s ride. He had to cuss at them like he had at me that night, and a couple of times he landed in jail. It was pretty tough waiting for him till his five days were up, once in the Baptist mission there on the Esplanade in New Orleans, and another time at a lousy jungle on the riverbank at Alexandria, but I couldn’t quite get sore at him for it, even so. He yelled what I felt, and I didn’t ever mean to feel different, or come around to the idea there was justice in it, I didn’t care how often I had to wait. But to Hosey, it was a stab in the back to two pals, and you’d think we had a date with Clark Gable out there in Hollywood, at a certain time on a certain day, the way he beefed and bawled and bellyached. He said Buck would never be a real hobo, that was the long and the short and the size of it, and the way he told it, you’d think real hobos were some kind of an order, like Odd Fellows or Masons or Elks, but exclusive.

And me and Buck, when it was Hosey’s turn to scavenge up something to eat, would talk about him, and this real hobo idea, and Buck could hand you a laugh the way he’d take that malarkey off: “The real hobo don’t ever get in trouble with the railroad bulls, because if he ever got his arm high enough for a sock it would fly over the telegraph wires, on account the mulligan don’t have enough vitamins in it to keep the bone from coming apart at the elbow.” And: “The real hobo never steals his grub, on account if he tried to sneak up on anything he’d stink so bad there’d be a hurry call for the department of health, and after the exterminator squad got done he’d amaze hisself one day by waking up to find he was a bedbug.” And: “The real hobo always leaves the jungle like he found it, in shipshape for the next fellow, same as a tumblebug always leaves the manure like he found it, in shipshape for the next tumblebug, so he can show the world he is a real tumblebug and not no goddam cockroach... Jack.”