Joe Lansdale - All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

“Who hasn’t?” Mrs. Carson said. “It’s just the bad times aren’t always the same kind of bad times for everybody.”

24

We slept good that night knowing we weren’t liars anymore, but we still got up early. I found some paper and a pencil in the kitchen and wrote a thank-you note to Mrs. Carson, and then we left quietly.

It was still dark when we started down the road. Mrs. Carson had given us some supplies, and we had those in big nice canvas bags slung over our shoulders. The bags were a little heavy, but as we ate what was in them, they would grow lighter. Not everything in them was food. There was a flashlight with spare batteries, some matches, and a few other odds and ends.

By the time the sun was up good, we were well out of town, and Jane, now wearing something nice, easily walked out to the edge of the road and caught us a ride by looking charming.

It was something she felt bad about in a way, as it didn’t live up to her idea of women and equality. She had given me the lecture on it as we walked. I thought it made sense, though I wasn’t sure I understood everything there was to know about it, and I’m not sure she did either.

The ride was another truck. Jane sat up front again and Tony and me sat in the back. The driver was a young man this time, and the truck wasn’t filled with pigs. It had short sideboards.

Tony was silent for a long time; then he said, “I liked it back there.”

“You didn’t have to leave. You want, we’ll stop the driver and walk back with you.”

“I just said I liked it there. I didn’t say go back. Mrs. Carson was nice.”

“Very nice.”

“But I wouldn’t be with you two if I went back,” he said.

“We could come back,” I said.

“Sometimes people say they’ll do something and they don’t,” Tony said. “They mean it, but they don’t do it.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said. “But I’ll make you a promise. I won’t never leave you unless you want to be left. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “Yeah. I do.”

“Good.”

Tony didn’t say any more about it, and I watched through the rear window as Jane did her magic with the driver. I wondered what lie she was telling this time.

We rode with him almost to the Red River. Then we walked across a bridge, which in that spot wasn’t over much of a river at all. After we had been walking on the other side of the bridge for a while, it started to grow dark. There didn’t seem to be any good place to stop along the road, so we went off it, to where some trees grew along the river.

As we walked, I got out the flashlight and shone it on the ground in case of water moccasins, which don’t like being surprised and are fairly ill-tempered. We hadn’t gone far when we saw a campfire in the woods and we could hear people singing.

“What do you think?” Jane said.

“Hobo camp,” I said. “It could be a place to rest and maybe share some food, and it could be a place to get our heads stove in.”

“They sound cheerful,” Jane said.

“Maybe they sing cheerful songs in hell,” I said. “You can’t tell by that.”

Hoboes were all over these days. Thousands of them. Riding the rails and walking along them. Drifting in and out of towns like tumbleweeds blown by the wind. Men, and sometimes women and children. All of them without work, without homes, and without hope. Shuffling about, mostly in worn-out clothes and toeless shoes. Bumming meals from homes along the way, picking through trash and hunting rabbits, sometimes cats and dogs, with nothing more than a heavy stick. Looking for anything to eat. All they had to look forward to was whatever was around the next bend in the road. Mama fed a few from our back door before things got so bad we couldn’t feed ourselves. For a while there, they came in droves. When they knew Oklahoma was completely played out, and the people they was begging from was near as bad off as they was, they moved on.

I had always felt sorry for them. Right now, we was just like them. Homeless. No family. And hungry.

“I think we should check it out,” Jane said.

“And I’ll say what I said again. You don’t know who’s out there, or what kind of people they are.”

It was no use. Jane had already started toward the fire.

We went through a little group of trees and there was a clearing. In the clearing was a fire, and on the fire was a pot, and around the fire was a bunch of hoboes. That made me think there was probably a train track nearby where they could jump on and off.

As we walked up, the singing stopped. Standing close to the fire was a big man with a worn-out jacket and baggy pants and shoes with soles that weren’t fully attached. It wasn’t really a cold night, but there was something that drew us to them. I suppose that fire seemed cheerful, and we needed all the cheer we could get.

There were four others there. A woman in pants, like Jane—who had gotten a fresh pair from Mrs. Carson—and she had on a big baggy shirt. She was missing some teeth and her hair was cut short. Two of the others looked enough like each other to be brothers, and might have been. There was one other. He was dressed in a suit with a very nice fedora and brand-new two-tone shoes. He was full-faced but kind of handsome in a hangdog manner. I reckon he was thirty or so.

“Hello the fire,” I said. I knew from hearing Daddy talk that this was the way you greeted a camp. You let them know you was out there, so as someone with a gun wouldn’t part your hair with a bullet or bend a log over your noggin.

“Hello yourself,” said the big man. “Come on in.”

There were logs and broken-down trees around the fire, and the folks there were either standing around or sitting on those. We sat down on one of the broken-down trees.

“Can you contribute?” said the big man.

“Beg pardon?” I said.

“Something to add to the pot,” he said. “It’s right skinny. We got some potatoes boiling in the water, some salt and pepper, and there’s even most of an apple in there.”

“We do have some things,” I said. “How about a can or two of beans, and one of canned hash?”

“Excellent,” said the big man. “I’m Jimbo, and the lady here we call Boxcar Bertha, and them two boys that look so much alike are brothers. I don’t remember their names.”

One of them said, “I’m Sam, he’s Joe.”

The big man turned to the well-dressed man, said, “This here fella, he brought us the potatoes. What’s your name, sir?”

“Floyd,” he said.

“He just come up.”

“Mighty nice suit you got on, mister,” Jane said.

“Thanks,” he said. “Maybe not the place for it, but it’s what I had on when I had to leave abruptly.”

“Leave where?” Jane said.

“A town. By train. I caught it and rode it and got off up the way. I’ll catch it out tomorrow.”

“Where’s it go?” I asked.

“Fort Worth, Texas. I’ll get off there because I have to see someone lives there.”

“You look to me to be a man that has another line of work besides catching trains,” Jane said.

“You might say that,” he said, but he didn’t offer what line of work it was. Everyone had gone quiet when Jane had spoken, so I figured it was a rule of the road not to pry unless someone offered you information. I couldn’t say that for a fact, not being an experienced hobo and all, but it struck me that way.

“If you kids will take a few dollars and go into town, there’s a honky-tonk I passed,” said Floyd. “I think they make sandwiches and such. If you go there and knock at the back, I bet they’ll let you buy some sandwiches, even if you’re too young to go through the front door.”

“Actually, I look young for my age,” Jane said. “But I’m twenty-one.”