The Moth (18 page)

“What are you getting ready to do to me?”

“Up with him!”

“Let’s go!”

I lifted him under the arms from behind, the other guy by locking fingers under his knees, and we swung him along, me shambling backward. When we got to the chest we set him down and I opened the lid again and spread out my papers, that I had dropped inside, so he could keep warm. Then I climbed in, reached over, got my grip under his arms again, and lifted. At last, then, we eased him down on something dry. So he’d be out of the wet I climbed out and we dropped the lid on him. He screamed and yelled like some kind of he-devil inside a bass drum, and called us every name there was. At last we tumbled to it that he thought we were going off and leave him there to die. I said: “Well, what do we do now?”

“Search me. I run into him this afternoon in the jungle there by the water tank and he was pretty far gone then, what with that raw place he had on his foot, but I talked to him and finally got it through his head that no real hobo would let a thing like that get him down, and at last I pumped enough guts in him to get him aboard the train. Then on the coal gond he got off a lot of wild talk about how his folks have a store in Sandusky and he graduated from high school and run a power shovel on a road job in Denver and then got laid off last winter and never was tooken on again, until I got sick of it. I said: ‘Well, for the love of Pete, you and who else? You think you got it all to yourself? You think so, eh?’”

But when I heard some bumping in there, and then the lid was shoved up and he stuck his head out, I was a little on his side, because if there was one thing I wouldn’t accept it was the idea of being a professional hobo. So I thought a minute, and then I said: “I got an idea.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Feel the end of this box.”

“O.K., I got it.”

“The way
I
figure it, the lid and front and back and bottom of this thing are nailed to the ends, not the ends to them. That means, if we got inside there, and braced ourselves against the back, with our feet against the front—”

“Right!”

So that’s how we did it, this guy that had helped me at one end, me at the other. We kicked with our heels hard against the boards in front, and in between we shoved. Pretty soon they began to give, slammed down in the mud, so at last, even with one guy lying against the back, there’d still be room for the other two to sit facing each other at each end, out of the wet, but at the same time with fresh air, so it wouldn’t be like any coffin, which I suppose it was, more or less, if you were shoved in there all alone. I sung out to watch the nails that were sticking up, and then I raised up beside Mr. Grievous, where he was still standing in the middle. “Now, my young friend, I’ve had about all out of you I’m going to take. There’s some kind of a bed for you here, and if you keep still and do what you’re told you can keep warm and even get yourself a little sleep. After that, when we get some light on the subject, we’ll see what can be done about your foot, and maybe get you to Dalton. Until then, if you don’t want a bunch of fives in the kisser suppose you lie down and shut up and give other people some peace. And while you’re making up your mind—”

I let him have it, not hard but hard enough, high on the chest. He went down and started crying. “Stop that.”

We eased down the lid, the other guy and I, put our backs to the ends, and sat there. It was a God-awful place to spend the night, but at least we could stretch our legs and pull papers over them, and we were out of the wet. “What’s your name, fellow?”

“Hosey.”

It’s only now, writing it, that I’ve tumbled his name was really Hosea. At the time, it seemed like Hosey, so I’ll let it stand. “Mine’s Jack. What’s his?”

“He said call him Buck.”

“Pleasant dreams, guys.”

“Same, Jack.”

“Go to hell, you bastards!”

But the cold was knifing in and my back ached, and I thought if I couldn’t stretch out I’d crack up too and maybe not last. “You asleep, Hosey?”

“What do you think?”

“There’s another tool chest up there.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

We went out, shivering where the rain beat down on us, and I took my spike, and we pried the staple out of the other box pretty quick. But when we lifted the lid it was all full of shovels. “Shall we throw them out, Jack?”

“We and who else?”

“One hell of a job.”

“Let’s go back.”

We dropped the lid again but something fell over inside with a clatter. “Raise her up again, Hosey. We better have a look.” What it was, was a couple of buckets that had been used for cement, and then stacked one inside of each other. We went back to the other box and sat some more, but then something in my head began talking to me about those buckets. So I got busy. I went out, stumbled along, and pretty soon came to my box of spikes. I grabbed three or four in each hand and came back. Then, keeping out of the wet as well as I could, I felt for the end of the nearest board we had kicked off the front, held a spike there. I beat on it to drive it in. I drove more thumb than spike, and my hand was all cut and bruised next day from the mislicks, but I got it in an inch or two, until with my finger tips I could feel a crack. I left that first spike sticking up, took another spike and drove it in the same way, along the fine of the crack. I used spikes like a rail-splitter uses wedges, and when I started in with the third spike the board cracked like a shot two or three times. Then I jumped out there in the rain, grabbed the two-inch strip that was splitting away, and pulled. It came clear. I started in on the next two-inch strip. “What you doing, Jack?”

“Breaking wood for a fire.”

“In this rain?”

“In those buckets it’ll burn.”

“That’s right. By punching holes in them—”

“We got a brazier.”

He helped, then, splitting up one board while I worked on another, until we had six or eight two-inch strips drying under the lid. We took them over to the track. Then one at a time we put them under the rail, heaved up till they broke, then did it over again, until we had three or four armfuls of wood in pieces maybe a foot long. Then we punched holes in the buckets the same way we had split the boards, using one spike for a punch and the other for a hammer. Then we stuffed one with paper and wood, put the other one on top, and lit it. Then we had the one pretty thing we had seen that night: orange light through the holes. Then there was the sound of wood steaming, then a loud crack, then another and another. Hosey looked at me, then took off some kind of a thing that was supposed to be a hat. He was a tall, thin guy, maybe thirty, maybe forty, maybe fifty, with those queer, bright eyes old hobos have, that at first look friendly, till you see it’s the friendliness of a scavenger dog. But I took off my hat too and we warmed our hands.

“... There’s a snake under this goddam box! It’s crawling through that knothole!”

“Buck! After all Jack’s done for you I’d—”

“Hosey, he’s right. There
is
a snake down there, and the main purpose of the fire, of course, is to tempt and entice and decoy the snake, so he’ll raise up through the knothole, and then Buck can bite off his head, accomplishing the double objective of getting something to eat and obtaining snake oil to put on his foot and—”

I was making it up as I went along, but Hosey kind of grinned, and I might have run on quite a while, I don’t know. But just to give it some routine, I put my finger down the knothole. And when something touched it that was cold and soft and wet, I yelled. “Well, ain’t you the funny son of a bitch. Get yourself a kazoo, why don’t you, and play tunes at it, and then when he sticks his head up
you
bite his head off and squeeze his ribs for oil—come on, Jack, why don’t you laugh?”

“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.

Y
OU 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.