Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

I went out and tried my luck on the wheels. I bought a dollar’s worth of ten-cent chips at a cut-rate place, and tried a few passes, red against the black. I won. Then I moved over to the numbers, and bet the first twelve against the second and third. I won some more. I raised the ante, and began making support bets, little gambles that didn’t add up to much if I lost, but meant a whole lot if I won. I mean, on the first twelve I’d put fifty cents. Then on the first four I’d put twenty-five cents. Then on number one I’d put ten cents. Then if the ball fell in any number higher than twelve I was out eighty-five cents clean on the whole spin. But if it fell in any number below twelve I cashed a dollar for my fifty-cent bet, and made fifteen cents. If it fell in the first four I made $2.25 more. If it fell on number one I made $3.50 more. Since then I’ve seen plenty of gambling, and done a little, and have nothing to say against the system I figured out that night. Any betting’s a gamble, but I’ll say this for support betting: It’s offensive, and if you win you take home something. Hedge betting’s defensive, just a way of stringing it out longer. I didn’t have too much luck for a while, just a dribble now and then, but then I landed with number one, and felt the tide come in. I quit after three straight losses, and left with thirty dollars or so.

It felt good to be able to look up Buck and Hosey, where they were laying kindling, and tell them the truth, and invite them to a room in the motel. Hosey, he hated to cough up, but so long as it was my money he had to. We slept, and then in the morning Buck and I hopped a bus to Boulder Dam, or Hoover Dam they call it now, that was building then, to get a job. They weren’t hiring, but said come back next week.

So we went back to our motel and cinched our belts, and tried to make our money last by laying on the bed, so as not to get hungry. Then Hosey wanted to move, on account of the guy in the next room to him, who he said had a gun, and kept shifting it around, from the bureau drawer to his trunk to his suitcase, so it got on his nerves. Buck and I didn’t quite attach the importance to it that Hosey did, and fact of the matter we wouldn’t have paid any attention to it at all, if I hadn’t picked up another day on the parking lot, and when things were slack, slipped across to the filling station next door to use the toilet. The manager was fixing a flat, and part of the time he was outside the toilet window with it, beating on the tire with a hammer. Following him around was a kid that seemed to work there, who as well as I could figure out had been transferred to another station of the chain, and wanted tips on how to act. The place he was going seemed to be the “flagship” as the manager called it, the main station, and the kid was a little nervous about what to do. The manager told him how to get there, by following Highway 91 and watching for the sign, and some more stuff that I remembered later. Then I heard the kid say: “When do they open?”

“Seven a.m., same as here.”

“And close nine?”

“No, ten.”

“Gee, that’s bad.”

“No, you’ll like it. They split it up so the week you’re on early, you’re off before dinner, and when you’re on late, you don’t come in till after lunch.”

“Funny, though. There’s no business after nine.”

“The chief, he don’t bank in Nevada. So every night, after they close, the station managers turn our cash in there, at the flagship. It’s put away, and then in the morning it’s sent over to Barstow, California. Which is why the place closes one hour later. All guys expecting their wife to bring suit for divorce have a strange enthusiasm for keeping their funds in some other state.”

At the motel, I lay there in the dark and listened to people snore, and kept telling myself to forget what I’d heard. I kept telling myself to put it out of my mind I might ever try anything real with Buck, or Hosey, or anybody. I kept telling myself to get rid of any idea I could do it alone. And all the time I kept thinking of those station managers, driving in late with their little canvas sacks. I kept thinking about Mojave and the bullets, and wondering why, if I had to play shooting gallery, I didn’t do it for dough. I guess that was what got me, more than anything else. I began going over it, Hosey’s idea that stealing grub was O.K., something the judge would go easy on if we ever got caught. Who said he would? Who said he wouldn’t send us up for ten years, to show the law was meant to be obeyed? It came to me, we weren’t talking about any judge. We were talking about ourselves. What we really meant was: Everybody’s entitled to eat, and if they have to steal to do it, then O.K., so long as there’s no other way. But anything more than that, regular stealing, that we weren’t equal to, to figure the right and the wrong of it. But the way my head kept pounding, I knew I didn’t care.

In Buck’s room, next to mine, the door opened and footsteps went down the hall. Then the screen door squeaked. Pretty soon I caught the smell of a cigarette. I got up, put on some clothes, and went outside. Buck was squatting on the ground, in pants, coat, undershirt, and shoes, smoking, and staring at the lights of the town. I sat down too. “Kind of restless, boy?”

“Jack, what do we do it for? Tramp. Steal. Rat.”

“I don’t know.”

“Why, stead of catching the goddam freight, don’t we let the freight catch us? You know any good reason we should roll away from those wheels?”

“Tell me something, Buck. This guy with the gun—?”

“... Hosey’s friend?”

“Where does he keep it? If you know?”

“In his room. Different places. Mostly places he lets Hosey see, so Hosey don’t get any idea he might go in and begin feeling around. Anyhow, that’s how I dope it.”

“Could you find it?”

“Couldn’t you? What locks are there in this dump?”

“You sure he doesn’t carry the gun, Buck?”

“I think not. Why?”

I told him what I’d heard in the filling station. “I figured, for a while at least, we could take care of things by getting ourselves a little dough.”

“I’d call that a little risky.”

“O.K., but I’ve noticed something.”

“Which is?”

“It’s a wide-open town, same like Kansas City, only more so. On account of Boulder Dam the girls have flocked here.”

“Listen, Jack, I’m listening, but—”

“Yeah, but how long?”

“Then O.K.”

He stretched out and began to talk the gloomiest kind of way about women and how he’s no good any more and never will be, and I calmed him down a little by owning up I was in exactly the same shape. But, I said, what we needed was rest and grub and water on our skins once a day and maybe now and then a couple of jokes. He said to hell with this idea we were just going to steal a little bit, and I said: “Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” That was it, Buck said. After a while we heard something, and when we looked there was Hosey. “Couldn’t seem to sleep.”

“... Oh. Neither could we.”

“Hot.”

“Yeah, Hosey, sure is.”

“I heard what you guys was saying. I couldn’t help hearing. All I got to say is: You got the right idea.”

“You mean—?”

“Count me in.”

Next morning Buck slipped in, while I was shaving. “Well? Jack, what do we say on letting Hosey in?”

“I guess it’s off.”

“... I’m not so sure.”

“Him? I wouldn’t trust him— Listen, Buck, it’s not that I don’t think he likes us, or that he wouldn’t give all the right answers if we asked him how he felt about us, or whatever. It’s just that I don’t think he’s got anything left any more. Hell, I think they could break him with the smell of coffee. You don’t go to war with a bunch of goddam cripples.”