Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Yeah, Jack, that’s what I want to hear. But how?”

“I’m going to take it.”

“The grub?”

“You’re goddam right.”

“You think you’re doing it alone?”

“Then we’ll both do it.”

“Jack, we got it coming to us.”

“All right, then we got it coming to us. But I’m going to eat, whether we got it coming to us or not. Now if you want to come in—”

“Jack, shake just once and shut up.”

We sat out there till the traffic didn’t run any more, and you could hear birds warbling, and talked about how we were going to do it. By that time we knew where the grub was and how to get it and a whole lot of things nice people don’t know, but guys on the road do. The only difference was, would we or wouldn’t we? From now on we knew we would.

To do it right, what we were figuring on, took three, because we’d be all day and all night getting a meal, if two guys had to spot a place, watch their chance, steal the grub, and then have to mooch a can to cook it in and wood to cook it with. We had to have two stealing and one mooching, and that meant on the jungle end of it we had to have Hosey, but we had one sweet time selling him. We argued for two days about it. But there we were, still washing dishes and stacking and shoving ice and barrels around this dump in Phoenix, and nowhere to go but out, soon as three guys showed up that they liked better. And there were those trucks going by all the time, full of CCC guys yelling at us, and I think that was what finally got Hosey. Anyway, out of a clear sky one afternoon, sitting by the side of the road, he said O.K., and then knocked us over by really getting in it, and telling us what we had to do if we were going to get away with it, and he had it down so pat you couldn’t help wondering if he wasn’t kind of a postgraduate recruit. The main thing, he said, was to keep it small, so to begin with the cops didn’t take any interest in the job even if it was reported. The next thing was to confine it to food, because three guys filling their bellies was one thing, but three crooks really stealing would be something else. The next thing, he said, was to get the lay of every job before we pulled it, so we’d be in and out and gone before they even knew we’d been there. The last thing was: Don’t be too proud to run.

All that was about the way Buck and I had figured it, but we still thought Hosey ought to be in charge of the mooch department, and fires and cans. He thought so too. So around sundown he started for the Salt River, where we were going to do our cooking, and Buck and I slid out to the west end of town, where we were going to do our stealing. Under our shirts, when we said goodbye to the restaurant man and his wife, were a couple of gunny sacks we neglected to mention to them.

Out Van Buren Street is a bunch of motor courts and hotels, and not far from them two or three cafés for tourists, and not far from them some stores. As to whether we’d raid the restaurant pantries or the stores we hadn’t quite made up our mind, and we were going to be guided mainly by how things looked when we got there. And we no sooner walked up the street than we knew what the answer would be: one of the stores. And why it suited us was that it had no second floor or bedrooms of any kind connected with it. It looked like when they closed it they left it, and we’d have it to ourselves if we could get in there. If there was a burglar alarm we meant to run, but at the same time it didn’t scare us a whole lot. We’d heard plenty of burglar alarms, the time we’d been on the road, and if anything was ever done about any of them it wasn’t while we were there. So that danger we disregarded and had a walk around the block and checked on the little dirt road in back, that ran past all the stores for the delivery of stuff, and marked our place by counting the back doors. In the back window were bars running across, and at the side of the back door what looked like an iron grill, folded up. That was O.K. We figured on stuff like that, and were ready for it. Then we went off to take it easy so we wouldn’t be dead on our feet when the time came to go in there. We didn’t at any time hang around, or stop and take long ganders, or attract attention in any way. We walked fast, with good long steps, like we were headed somewhere, and when we came to a corner we turned it sharp, like we knew where we were going and meant to get there. Just the same, by dark we had it all, and found a place we could stand and watch.

By eight o’clock lights began going out in the motor courts, by nine our place was dark, by ten the restaurants were closing, and all you could hear was radios in the bars. “O.K., Buck, it’s time.”

“It’s now if we’re going to.”

“I’ll take your spike.” We had remembered those railroad spikes the first night, what we’d been able to do with them, and got ourselves one. We figured it was as good as a jimmy.

We slid down Van Buren and then into the cross street, to take a flash at the alley. We didn’t see anything. Then I stood by the alley and he went back to Van Buren. He looked up and down, lifted his hat, smoothed his hair, began walking back and forth like he was waiting for a bus. The hat meant all clear. I went down the alley, turned in back of the store, got out my spike. By now the iron lattice was in place, with two padlocks holding it, top and bottom, and I meant to break them, if I could. But first I had a look at the bars on the window, and felt them with my thumb. You could hardly believe it, but all that was holding them was screws. I mean, the end of each bar had been flattened and an eye punched in it, and the screw driven in through that. On my jackknife was a screw driver, small but stubby and strong. I opened it up and shoved it against one of the screws. It turned. In about five minutes I had the three lower bars off. I tried the window. It was locked. I jammed the spike between the sashes and shoved. Something cracked inside. I raised the window and stepped in. My bowels were fluttering and I wondered if the lights would snap on and a face behind a gun tell me to put them up and keep them up. Then somewhere in the distance a bell began ringing. It stopped. I got myself under control and looked around.

It was just a little store, with canned stuff, open crates with vegetables and fruit, and packages of stuff like crackers. I could see well enough, by the light from the street, so I got out my sack, where it was folded against my stomach, and went to work. The first thing that was wanted, what Buck and Hosey talked so much about, was chicken. They wanted the boiled chicken that comes in a wedge-shape can, and I began hunting for it. I was in the place altogether, Buck told me later, exactly twenty-five minutes, by a clock on Van Buren Street. But if I tell it like I remember it, I was in there twenty-five years, with the lights going dim every so often where they were executing somebody back of the little green door, feet tramping over my head, where the trusties were marching in from the farm, and me there in my dark little cell with bars over the window, getting a little stir-happy by now on account of the time I’d served. After ten or fifteen years I thought to hell with chicken, drop something in the sack and get out. I grabbed cans of beans, mock turtle soup, even beets, on top of raw potatoes, oranges, bread, soap, anything. Then all of a sudden it was like a football game, with the first quarter nearly up, the flutters gone, and my mind clicking. My hands began reaching for exactly what I ought to have, I took three chickens in cans, then peas, carrots, and corn. I took pears, for dessert. I found the icebox and dropped butter in. I took a quart of milk and another of cream. There were special shelves with shoe polish, fly swatter, and stuff like that. I looked for razor blades, found a whole box, dropped that in. My thumb snagged a beer opener. I dropped that in, began looking for beer, found it, dropped a dozen cans in. I found instant coffee, condensed milk, and a sack of sugar, and dropped them in. I found a sack of salt and dropped that in, and a can of pepper.