Me and Billy (4 page)

“You slid out of the second floor? You might of killed yourself.”

“I reckon I blame near did. I started crashing down through that lilac like a sack of meal. So I let go of my face and started grabbing at the bush. That slowed me
down some, but that’s when I got scratched up. How bad does it look?”

“I don’t expect you’ll die from it, but you ought to clean yourself up before you frighten somebody,” I said.

“I figure that lilac came out of it worse than I did. I must of smashed it all to smithereens. I kind of lay there on the ground in sort of a daze. I could hear the kids up there shouting, ‘Billy died and fell out the window, Billy died and fell out the window.’ They were mighty disappointed they didn’t see me pass away.”

“You really slid out the window, Billy?”

“I swear it, Possum. I saw my chance, and I took it.” He pulled the tail of his shirt out, wiped off his face, and looked at the shirt under a streetlight. “It doesn’t look like I’m bleeding anymore.”

That was Billy. I had to admire him. He’d take a chance on anything. But still, I knew I better keep a watch on him.

We were coming into a more cheerful place. There were some restaurants here, saloons, a couple of theaters, some three-story brick houses. It must have been three, four o’clock at night, as close as I could figure, but a lot of the saloons were still open. We’d never been anywhere near a saloon before, but we’d heard about them from reading Cook’s
Graphic
—which his widow woman gave to him each week. Haunts of the Devil, the
Graphic
said they were. We were curious, and we stopped to look in one.

It looked kind of nice in there—not what you’d call homey, but cheerful. A couple of men were leaning up against the bar chatting, another one was asleep with his head down on a table, two women in short skirts and long stockings were at another table drinking beer, and an old guy sat at the piano, smoking a cigar, but not playing anything. It was near to daytime and pretty quiet.

“I wish we had some money so we could go in there,” Billy said.

“Me, too. Although maybe we ought to keep moving. Maybe Deacon’s got the cops out after us now.”

“I want to look for just another minute,” Billy said. “I wonder what those girls are all dressed up for.”

“I think they must have been in a show.” I’d never seen a show, but I’d read about shows in the
Graphic.
“I wonder what kind of show it was.”

But before we could talk about it, one of the men at the bar raised up his beer mug, swallowed off the last of it, slapped the other men on the back, and came marching out. He was wearing a big black hat with a wide brim, an old blue jacket with a button missing, and dark brown boots, pretty worn but polished up good. He came swaggering out toward us, and we stepped back to let him come through the door. Then, just as he was in front of us, Billy grabbed at his jacket sleeve. “’Scuse me, sir, but we’re hungry as can be and haven’t got any money.”

The man stopped and looked us up and down. “What’re two kids like you doing out on the town at four o’clock in the morning? Where do you belong?”

I wished Billy hadn’t done it. It made me nervous. I could see where we needed money, but I figured we oughtn’t to be attracting attention to ourselves just yet.

But there was no stopping Billy. “Sir, Pa died last year and Ma’s too sick and can’t get out of bed. We’re awful hungry.”

He stood looking at us for a moment. “Pa’s dead and Ma’s sick, eh? Better get yourself a new story, son—that one was wore out when Washington was president. Everybody’s sick to death of it. Now, if you told me your pa was in jail and your ma was too drunk to get out of bed, I might have bought it, although that one’s pretty frayed around the edges, too. No, you got to get yourself a story with a little more interest to it. Like you came in from your pa’s farm to sell the pig, only the pig got away from you and you don’t dare go home until you raise the price of a pig. Something along those lines.”

“All right,” Billy said. “What if I said I was an orphan from Deacon Smith’s Home and escaped by pretending to be dying and slid out of a second-story window into a lilac bush?”

The man laughed. “That’s stretching it some, but it’s better.” He slapped Billy on the shoulder. “What about your pal—he slide out of a window, too?”

“Naw, Possum wouldn’t do that. He’s not as wild as me. He slipped out when I pretended to be dying and slung a ladder up against the wall. We escaped over the ladder. Deacon came near to catching us. He wasn’t but twenty feet behind us when we jumped off the wall.”

“Where’d you get all them scratches?” the man said.

“I told you,” Billy said. “I slid out of a window into a lilac bush.”

“Got in a fight, that’s clear enough.”

“How much you gonna give us?” Billy said.

“How about a nickel apiece.”

“Not enough,” Billy said. “How ’bout a dime?”

The man laughed. “Oh, all right,” he said. He took out of his trousers pocket a small purse held closed with a drawstring, pulled it open, took out two dimes, closed the purse, and slipped it back into his trousers pocket. “Here,” he said. “But you better think of something more believable than sliding into a lilac bush. That’s pushing it too hard.” Then he turned and crossed the street, whistling “Little Brown Jug” to himself.

“He had a lot of money in that purse,” Billy said. “Do you reckon he’s a gambler?”

“I hope we don’t have to beg,” I said. “I don’t want to do that. We’ll only attract attention to ourselves. We got to find jobs.”

Billy wasn’t listening. “I think we ought to follow that fella.”

“What for?” I said.

“Just to see where he goes. He’s got a lot of money.”

I gave Billy a look. “Now, Billy. No steal—”

“I didn’t say I was going to steal anything, did I?”

“You didn’t say it, but that’s what you were thinking.”

“No I wasn’t,” Billy said. “I wasn’t thinking about stealing at all. Maybe he’ll give us a job.”

“Billy,” I said. “I’ve known you too long. I’ll go along with stealing if we’re starving to death and can’t come up with anything else. But you got to promise we won’t steal anything until I agree to it.”

He looked at me, kind of wrinkling up his brow, which made the scratches on his face wriggle. “I never could figure out what you got against stealing, Possum.”

“Going to jail is what I’ve got against stealing. What’s the point of escaping from the Home if we end up in jail?”

“We won’t go to jail,” Billy said.

“All the same, you got to promise.”

He looked down and then up and away. “All right,” he said finally.

“You promise?”

“Blame it, Possum, what’s wrong with stealing?”

“You got to promise.”

He looked down again. “Oh, all right. I promise. But I’m not going to stand around starving to death if there’s a dollar bill sticking out of somebody’s pocket.”

“We won’t starve to death,” I said.

“How do you know? Maybe we will.”

“How do you know we won’t go to jail?”

He couldn’t answer that one, so he said, “Well, anyway, I think we ought to follow that fella. Maybe he knows of someplace we can buy some food with our dimes. I could eat a horse.”

That made sense. He seemed like a friendly fella. “OK,” I said. “Maybe he knows where we can get a job sweeping out a stable or something.”

The sky was beginning to lighten a bit—at least the darkness was getting thinner—and we could see the man ambling along toward the end of the block. He turned the corner and disappeared. We trotted after him. At the corner we stopped and looked around.

He was standing beside a little wagon with a sort of house built onto it. A
van
, you might call it. There was a door in the back with a step below, a window with geraniums in a box under it in the side, and probably the same on the side we couldn’t see. I knew they were geraniums, because Deacon’s sister raised them, and I’d watered them often enough.

Now the fella opened the door, took off his hat, and tossed it through the door. Next he tossed his jacket in. Then he sat down on the step, pulled off his boots, and threw them one by one in over his shoulder. Finally he pulled off his trousers and, wearing his
underwear and shirt, climbed into the van and shut the door.

“What’s he doing undressing in the middle of the street?” Billy said.

“Probably not much room inside,” I said.

“Come on; let’s go see.”

I didn’t trust Billy—he was up to something. But I was mighty curious about that van. I never saw anything like it before. Never even heard of one—they never had anything about it in the
Graphic.
Probably the fella was already asleep, considering what time it was. Maybe in the morning he’d give us a job, and we could travel around with him in the van.

So we slipped along the street until we came up behind it. Billy put his ear against the door. “He’s snoring to beat the band,” he whispered. “I wonder where the horse for it is?”

“In a stable somewheres, I reckon,” I said. “I wonder what it looks like inside.”

“Let’s peek in.”

I knew we shouldn’t, but I was blame curious. “Let’s not get caught.” We went around to the side, and I stood up on my tiptoes. But the window was blocked with a curtain. I slipped around to the front of the van. There was a seat hitched to the house, where the driver sat, but no window there. I went to the other side and stood on tiptoe again.

This time I could see in. The sky had got lighter, and I could see that fella laying face-up on a little cot,
his mouth wide open, snoring. It was easy to see why he’d got undressed in the street, for the place was packed with boxes, suitcases, crates, and sacks. He was in some kind of business, that was clear. He wasn’t much of a hand for neatness, though.

I was trying to get a look at the boxes and crates to see what was in them, when the rear door started to ease open all by itself, an inch at a time. For a minute I stood there frozen, and then I realized it was that blame Billy. His promise hadn’t lasted ten minutes.

The door was now open a good six inches. A hand suddenly appeared and began moving from side to side like the head of a snake. Then it found what it was looking for—that fella’s pants. What was I ever going to do with Billy?

I jumped away from the window, and, moving as quiet as I could, slipped toward the back of the van. But I had hardly taken three steps when there came a shout from inside the van: “I gotcha, kid.”

My heart began to thump so loud I could hear it, and I came near to running away and leaving Billy to get out of it the best way he could. I could see the fella kneeling at the door amongst the boxes and crates. He’d got his hand clamped around Billy’s hand. Billy’s hand was clenched around the pants, so he couldn’t let them go. “I figured it,” the fella said, taking a quick look at me as I came around the corner. “I knew you kids was bound to be up to something. I didn’t have no intention of going to sleep.”

“I wasn’t trying to steal,” Billy said.

“You wasn’t trying to steal?” the fella roared, shaking Billy’s hand so hard the pants flapped. “Are you trying to tell me your hand slipped into my van all by itself, without you knowing anything about it?”

“I made a mistake,” Billy said. “I didn’t mean to pick up those pants. I was just feeling around to see if there was a place in here we could sleep. I didn’t touch those pants until you squeezed my hand around them.”

“Ha, ha,” the fella said. “Don’t make me laugh; my side hurts.”

He looked at me. “And I suppose you was looking in the window by mistake, too.”

“Don’t blame me,” I said. “I told him not to steal.”

“Sure,” he said. “And the sun don’t come up in the morning unlessen the president says it may.” He raised up, stepped out of the van, and swung Billy around so he was sitting on the little step. He jerked his head in my direction. “You come over here and sit beside your pal, where I can keep an eye on both of you at once.”

I still had a chance to run, and it would have served Billy right if I did. But I didn’t; instead I marched over and sat down on the little step next to him. The fella yanked the pants away from Billy and began climbing into them, keeping himself where he could grab ahold of at least one us if we started to make a break for it.

“Blame you, Billy,” I said in a low voice. “You promised.”

“I couldn’t help myself, Possum. Sometimes I just got to do something wrong.”

“I would of thought running away from the Home was enough to hold you for a while.”

“I’d of thought that, too,” he said. “But it wasn’t. This feeling just came over me, and I had to go after that purse.”

By now the fella had put his pants on and was buckling his belt. “Now then,” he said. “Who are you, and what’re you doing wandering around town at five o’clock in the morning? And don’t give me any song and dance about sliding down a lilac bush.”

I looked at Billy and he looked at me. We both knew I’d have to talk us out of it, for Billy’d told too many lies. I looked back at the fella. “What he told you was true. He’s always doing things like that. He’s kind of wild. We grew up together. He’s been like that since he was little.”

The fella scratched his head. “Maybe I should take you back to this here orphan home and see if they recognize you.”

“No, no,” I said, mighty scared. “Please don’t. Deacon Smith’ll beat the tar out of us and put us on bread and water for a month.”

He squinted at me. “You mean this here orphan home is real?”

“I swear to it. We’ve been there all our lives. We decided we couldn’t stand it anymore and escaped. Billy wasn’t supposed to slide out the window like that. He saw his chance, and he took it.”

“Billy,” he said. “You got a last name?”

“Foster. Leastwise, that’s what the Deacon’s got on the books.”

He looked at me. “What’s your name?”

I knew what was coming. It always happened with new people, and I hated it. “Possum.”

“That’s your real name?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Possum what?”

“Just Possum. That’s all the name they ever gave me.” I wished he’d drop it.