No Promises in the Wind (14 page)

The streak that had spurred me to show off by offering to pay for Charley's supper again came to the fore. I didn't like Charley much, I didn't ever expect to see him again, but I somehow had to let him know that I had a wallet too, that I carried big money around with me—just like any gangster-hired flunkie who couldn't keep his mouth shut. I said, “Well, if it's change for a twenty you want, I've got it here.” I took out a ten dollar bill, a five, and five singles.

Charley was impressed. “Say, you're doin' all right, little brother.” He gave me his twenty with a flourish, took my bills, and left one of them as a tip for the waitress. It amounted to something like fifty percent of the bill. I think she was surprised.

Joey and I left Charley outside the cafe shortly afterward and began to look for a house where we might find a bed for the night. A deep uneasiness began to grow inside me; I noticed that Joey looked grave too. I suddenly wondered if I could offer a twenty dollar bill in payment for a fifty cent bed for the night—which was as much as we could afford to pay.

Joey apparently knew what I was thinking. “I have five singles and three quarters,” he said shortly. We had been living so far on the nickels and dimes Joey had collected on the carnival grounds for his singing. I could see he was irritated with me, and I didn't blame him.

In a rundown section of town we found a place where a family would rent a bed for fifty cents. Joey paid for it the next morning, and when we found a cheap cafe farther on, he paid for our breakfast too.

We traveled by foot most of the day, getting only a short ride or two between towns. The weather was getting slightly colder; one man who gave us a lift told us that the northern cold was reaching down into parts of Texas. I glanced at Joey's worn-out shoes and remembered something that had been on my mind when we left the warmth of Louisiana; before we reached snow country, I had to see to it that Joey had warm overshoes. When we got into the town where our driver set us down, I looked around until I found a shoe shop.

It was a dingy little place, partly a cobbler's shop with a few boxes of shoes lined up on one wall. The man who waited on us was a lean, sour-looking character, and there was a kind of smelly, vile air about the shop. However, I was eager to get the overshoes, and because they cost a dollar and a half, I felt that this was a good chance to get my twenty dollar bill changed.

The man gave me a mean look when I handed the bill to him. “This the smallest you got?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “In fact, it's
all
I've got.”

He looked at the bill, folding it together and then smoothing it out. “Where'd you steal this?” he asked curtly.

“I didn't steal it. I've been working for a carnival down in Baton Rouge. This is the money I saved in four weeks.”

“Likely story. I aint' seen a kid with this much money on him in two years.” He leaned forward suddenly and barked in my face. “Come clear now, where'd you steal this?”

“I've told you I didn't steal it. But if you don't want to do business with me, give me my money and I'll buy overshoes somewhere else.”

“Oh, no, you won't.” He drew the bill back, then held it up to the light, peering at it from all angles. When a gray rabbitlike man shuffled past the door, the shopkeeper called to him. “Hey, sheriff, come in here a minute.”

The man looked dazed. “What you sayin', Alf? What you want with me?”

“I'm tellin' you to come in. What's the matter—you only been elected sheriff so lately you don't recognize your title?”

The man shook his head, frowning as he stood in the doorway. The shopkeeper walked over to him. “Now, sheriff, you've had a lot of experience—I want you to tell me something'. This here is a counterfeit bill, ain't it? Look at it careful and tell me. Come on now, it's counterfeit, ain't it?”

The little gray man swallowed. He glanced at us and back at the man in front of him. “I reckon, if you say so, Alf. I reckon—”

“Not if I say so—I want your word, sheriff. Right here before these kids. This is a counterfeit bill, ain't it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'd say it's counterfeit, Alf. Looks to me like a counterfeit.”

“All right. That's all I wanted to know. Thank you, sheriff. You can get on down to the jail now. I may have some customers for you before long.”

The man shuffled off, and the shoeman turned to us. “Now, you kids listen to me—one yip out of you and I'll have you turned in for most any misdemeanor I can think of. I can have this young one shut up in a detention home, and you, my friend, you can loll in the county jail for a while and see how you like it. Now, I'm givin' you a chance. You can take the overshoes. I'll do that much for you, but I'm keepin' the bill. I might just turn it in to the government—let 'em go to work trackin' down the counterfeiters. So take your choice—git out with the overshoes or yip just once and see what happens to you.”

We were helpless and I knew it. He could tell almost any lie about us; he could trump up any one of a half dozen stories to get us into trouble, and he could produce a half dozen little rabbit-men who would let themselves be bullied into becoming his accomplices.

I had never wanted to strike another person so much in my life, but I realized that here was real danger. Here was a liar and a thief who had us at his mercy, and he knew it. We picked up the box containing the overshoes and walked out. Joey's face was white; I expect mine was too. I glanced back just once, and the man was looking at us with half closed eyes and a hateful little smile on his mouth.

We got out of town as quickly as possible; we got out without saying a word to one another. Once out on the highway I glanced at Joey and saw tears all over his face. I was miserable as we walked down the highway together.

Finally I said, “It's my fault, Joey. I had to impress a small-time gangster that I had money in my wallet. We could have paid for your overshoes with dollar bills and the old man wouldn't have got any big ideas. I'm a stupid fool—there's no doubt about it. I ought to be kicked from here to Omaha.”

Joey grinned as he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I'm not goin' to kick you while I'm wearin' my twenty dollar overshoes, little brother,” he said, mimicking Charley's patronizing tone.

We felt somewhat better because we were able to laugh. I knew it was pointless to dwell on our loss; I tried to get my mind on other things, but the shoeman's meanness and sheer gall would flash back in my mind in spite of myself. Sometimes I clenched my fists and could almost feel the impact of my knuckles against his ugly face.

In spite of our loss we weren't as poor as we had been at times that year. We still had Emily's cookies and the bag of pecans, and Joey had over four dollars in his pockets. A few months earlier we would have felt wealthy with those assets.

Late in the afternoon, after a ten mile lift in a farmer's truck and what must have been a five-mile walk on our own, we had a bit of luck in finding a place to sleep. It was a country school-house, and a thin curl of smoke from the chimney told me that a fire had been banked in the stove for the night. I figured if we could get inside we'd have a warm place to rest until morning.

To our surprise the door wasn't locked. The latch was broken, and there had been no attempt made to bar entrance. Once inside we could understand the lack of concern over a lock; there just wasn't anything of value to be taken. There were fifteen or twenty desks, a few of them broken down, all of them ink-covered and scratched. There was an ancient globe, a few dull-looking textbooks, and a stretch of blackboard on which someone, probably a teacher, had written, “Reduce to the lowest common denominator,” but whatever was to have been reduced was erased. That written command somehow amused me, sourly and unhappily. I didn't quite know why.

The schoolroom didn't look like much. I could imagine how kids hated being there. We poked around for a while, but there wasn't much to see; besides, we were dead tired, and so we pulled a couple of desks up to the big stove and stretched our legs out toward the warmth. We took out four of Emily's cookies and handful of pecans for our supper, and while we ate, we talked about one thing and another, both of us avoiding the painful subject of our humiliation in the shoe shop. Then as darkness filled the room, we wrapped ourselves in the blanket Emily had given us and made the dusty floor our bed for the night.

We slept heavily in spite of anger and worry. I woke up when the first light of morning began drifting in and got up quietly to stand at one of the grimy windows. I looked out at the morning for a long time, trying to think straight.

I tried to make plans as I stood there. With Joey's money we could eat a little for a few days; with luck we could catch a few long rides during the day and find a few warm spots where we could rest at night. It surely wouldn't be too long until we'd reach Nebraska, and Nebraska meant Lonnie and Lonnie meant comfort and protection. Even as that thought came to me, however, I realized that Joey and I could not knock at Lonnie's door some morning and say, “Here we are. Be a father to us.” I was not quite that childish. Somehow we had to show him that we were able to get along, that our need for him was only a need for friendship. In the back of my mind, though, I knew that it was the need of two kids who were fearful of a black abyss which they might have to face alone.

Joey stirred restlessly in half-wakeful sleep. “Will we have any breakfast, Josh?” he asked.

I couldn't answer for a moment; then I called to him, telling him we'd better be getting on our way, that maybe we'd find something to eat farther down the road.

We had breakfast in the next little town. I made Joey eat an egg and toast and drink a cup of hot cocoa. I had only cocoa after I'd convinced Joey that I wasn't hungry. A guy who could help bring about the loss of twenty dollars as I had done, could simply pull his belt a little tighter.

We walked long distances during the next few weeks, getting a lift now and then, usually in some farmer's truck. Occasionally we got a fifty-mile ride, and on two or three red-letter days we were treated to a hot dog or a chocolate bar by some kindly driver. We found places to sleep—a hallway in the business section of a town, a rail-road depot, a haystack on a mild night; a few times some families let us have a bed for a quarter, but as Joey's money dwindled, we saved every cent for food which was more important than a bed.

As the winds grew harsher and the snow deeper, I worried about Joey. The bitter February weather we encountered as we moved into Kansas was a threat to anyone as undernourished and over-tired as we were. Surprisingly enough, however, Joey's health was better than mine. I developed a deep cough that grew worse with each day, and it was Joey who spent his last dime to buy cough medicine for me; it was Joey who begged at kitchen doors and brought food to me at times when my legs refused to go any farther.

The business of keeping alive became harder each day. We kept our spirits up by reminding ourselves that we were getting nearer and nearer to Lonnie; that was true, but we were paying a steep price for the fulfillment of our goal.

We
got to Nebraska the last week in February, exhausted, penniless, and hungry. Joey tried to pick up a few coins by singing and accompanying his songs on the banjo, but icy winds made his fingers numb and the problems of people in general made them hurry past him without paying much attention to the plea that promoted his singing. He did get one windfall, though in the gift of some beef bones from a kindly butcher who heard Joey's songs and helped him in the kind of coin a butcher could afford.

It was a precious gift, and we eagerly hunted one of the shabbiest houses we could locate—we tended to seek out people as shabby as we were—and we had the good fortune to meet an old man who agreed to boil the bones on his cookstove for a share of the soup. He was a gentle old man, very quiet and sometimes seeming a little dazed. He asked us no questions, but he frowned when I had a particularly hard coughing spell; later he picked up the broken shoes, which I had taken off to dry in front of the fire, and he spent a long time fitting cardboard soles inside them. When we were leaving, he gave me a pair of heavy gray socks and in the quavering voice of aged people, warned me about keeping my feet dry.

We asked directions many times, and every day we moved a little farther toward Omaha. I was burning with fever as we trudged on, but I didn't let Joey know about that or about how much my lungs hurt. I suppose he just thought that I was mean when I snapped at him or ignored his questions. I should have told him how sick I was, but I didn't.

We stopped one noon at a tar-paper shack near the rail-road tracks, and Joey asked the woman who came to the door if she could give us something to eat. I said nothing, but as I looked at her, it occurred to me that her face was burning with fever too. Her eyes were red and watery, and there were bright red fever spots on. her cheeks. She was terribly thin and feeble-looking; I almost knew that we had chosen the wrong place to beg.

The woman screamed at Joey as if he had committed some crime in asking for something to keep us alive. “What would you have me do?” she asked in a high, wild sort of voice. “Would you have me hand out food to every tramp when my own children have just one meal a day? Do you think I can stretch the little I have to feed tramp-children and see my own starve tomorrow?”

It was dreadful to watch her, to listen to her. The feverish brightness in her eyes made her look like a madwoman. Then as we stood there, not knowing what to say or do, she began to sob in the awful hysterical way Florinda had sobbed on the night of the fire.