Oh, Play That Thing

  I jumped first.

  —Howyeh, lads.

  I turned my back and felt their heat on this cold day, closing in on me.

  Saoirse jumped. They stopped. And saw Miss O’Shea.

  —Good Lord almighty.

  —That child new?

  —Baked today, I said. —Where are we?

  I helped her down. She resented the need, but pressed herself to my hands.

  —You’re in Rifle, Colorado.

  —That’s what we’ll call him, I said as her feet found the ground.

  I could feel the Parabellum under her dress.

  —What?

  —Rifle, I said.

  —We will not, she said.

  We strolled right past them. I held Saoirse’s hand.

  —See yis, lads.

  —Slán libh*—Fuckin’ hell, I said. —This air is on the fresh side.

  We called him Séamus Louis but Rifle was my name for him. And we didn’t live in a house. She made sure we didn’t.

  We were alone when we ran out of Chicago. We’d no idea which way we were headed; we’d just grabbed the first freight train slow enough to catch. There were miles of tracks, dozens of locomotives, dragging endless boxcars. We ran alongside, me and Miss, Saoirse on my back. The bullet was still in my shoulder. But I’d done this before; I’d done it for years. Miss O’Shea was new and her boots weren’t built for the loose ground under them.

  —Grab the front, I shouted.

  She ran, and grabbed, held tight and stiff, and I watched and admired as she lifted herself onto the car. I grabbed one-handed. She leaned out and took a hold of Saoirse, and we landed in a heap, safe from the gaping door. My shoulder hit the boxcar floor; I tried not to scream.

  We were alone.

  And that was how it was for months, or how it seemed, a year. But then we saw, and began to know that we weren’t out there alone. The boxcars filled, men alone, fathers with sons, gangs of kids, girls trying to look like boys, boys trying to be men. There was once – we’d jumped aboard in darkness and slept into a shaking day – we turned on a long curve, and saw them, in boxcars ahead of us and behind, clinging to the roofs, hundreds, maybe thousands of men, travelling with us.

  The first time we saw a family standing on the embankment, starting to run, ready to jump and help each other jump, we both gasped, me and Miss. We knew why we were running and now, finally, after months, we knew something else.

  —Jesus Christ.

  The wife was a kid herself. He was a bit older, ten years younger than me, but thinness had made a well-worn man of him; the dust and dirt made him look like slowly running stone. There were two kids, in clothes made of burlap sacks. And their mother’s skirt was burlap too. He jumped. I put out my hand. He glared. He sat at the door with his back to us. She ran beside him, and handed him a child. She fell back and grabbed the other. She was fast and angry. He caught the kid. She grabbed his other arm. We sat back, gave them the open door. They ignored it. They sat away, didn’t look at the passing country. They didn’t talk. The kids didn’t squabble or roll. Then I saw it, another child at her breast, grey rags in her grey rags. No bundles, food. No shoes or boots. I was back in Dublin, on the move across America.

  We knew now that this was history. This wasn’t our story, and I knew that I’d missed my American chance. We knew we wouldn’t be hunted, and we knew that there was no point in stopping or speeding up. We’d been passed. It wasn’t our story but we were looking at ourselves. I watched the bundle at the breast. I watched our own bundle at Miss O’Shea’s breast. I watched the man look at his children. He stared at them, at each one, hard, measuring the effort and luck needed to keep them alive. Desperation held his face. Saoirse found my hand and held it. I squeezed, and smiled at her. We looked out at the dirt.

  We followed the weather. Rise and shine, you sons of bitches. We learnt where the work was. Get your ass out and dig them ditches. We weighed apples, washed dishes. A week, two, a day, an hour. It ain’t near daybreak but it’s half past two. A month, the season – we stayed, and went. I don’t want you but the boss man do. We walked after the sun – potatoes in Idaho.

  —God, they’re useless; look it.

  Berries and apples in Oregon. We stayed out of the cities.

  —That’s where they’ll be looking, she said.

  She didn’t want to go back.

  —If they’re looking, I said.

  —You don’t have to be looking to be looking.

  We stayed alone, apart, until that wasn’t possible any more. The boxcars filled, the roadsides; millions were moving, on the tramp. Hoovervilles, the hobo jungles, grew wherever there was water and the chance of a left-alone night. A couple of tents at first, then more, then tin and canvas, slats of wood; they spread along banks and roads, took wasteland, the spaces between use – thousands of people; they stopped moving, just for now. A night, a week, a breather, a death, birth, arrest, and on. They talked about food, the men and women we joined at the fires. They’d talk about their farms and dust.

  —Boys, we was tractored out.

  —Dusted out.

  —Well, hell, I got kicked out.

  They laughed, drily, talked about the banks and landowners. And, as the numbers grew and the fire became fires, they talked about destinations, the jobs waiting and just missed, the routes they’d take and had already taken.

  A different day, we were heading west in a full boxcar, a hot day full of cinders and scorching steam. We stopped at a siding, for a freight speeding east. We heard and watched it pass, and the same men clung to the roofs and blinds. Were they coming back or starting? We waved. They waved. We looked at each other and quietly laughed.

  They talked about food, about what they’d eaten once and what they’d eat again. The future and past were one – grits, bacon, biscuits, gravy. Only the present got in the way, as we waited for the bits and miserable pieces in the pot to become a stew. We’d bring an onion, our admission, our walk-up to the fire and pot, or hard bread, or an old chicken Miss O’Shea had shot when no one was looking, whatever we could get to buy our arse-room at the fire.

  We listened but we kept our mouths well shut.

  We watched hundreds of men move on a rumour. They were up and bundled, waiting on the dirt embankment for the steam whistle, ready to cross states because the latest arrival had sat among them with news of a job – pears ready for picking, a pipeline ditch that needed digging. The jungle was quickly deserted, just us left, and empty tin and wood shacks, a broken shaving mirror stuck into a tree trunk, an oul’ lad too tired and ancient to go. The next morning we’d wake and the camp would be full again, more moving men, women, kids, fresh off the last freight, following their own rumours, running from the failure of their up-to-now. We tried to cross America alone; we tried to ignore the stories.

  We stayed out of California.

  —Too many cities and built-up places, she said.

  —So what?

  —They’ll be waiting.

  I doubted that, but I was happy. We were a handsome family, and we survived. We kept ourselves clean. We’re in the money, we’re in the money. The dust and sand couldn’t hide our glow.

  Séamus Louis Smart. He grew as America shrank. Young Rifle O’Glick. He threw back his head and poured the red and grey and the yellow dust into his mouth. And the big belly on him – it looked like starvation, but we knew better. He was eating the place, state by state.

  —MACUSHLA, MACUSHLA—

  Saoirse sang at the one-street diner doors. And, soon enough, Rifle was with her.

  —YOUR S’EET VOIT IT CALLING—

  People stopped and smiled and found a penny deep down in worn pockets. They didn’t throw; they bent right down and left the pennies at their feet.

  The colours went before the money did. The blues, the reds, the yellows dropped off good dresses and hats; people faded into the country. They still stopped – they couldn’t help it, even though Rifle kept growing as they watched –
but nothing came out with their hands, or the hands stayed in the pockets. They’d nothing left to give.

  —CALLING ME SOFT-LEEEE—

  And then they didn’t stop.

  —AGAIN AND A—

  GAIN.

  They wouldn’t search for money that wasn’t there, or stoke the terror that it wouldn’t be there again. And the diner screen doors pulled away from hinges and fell to the dust, and the dust banked on the sills, and there was no one there to sing to. Whole towns were empty and crumbling. Even the wrecking yards, so busy at the start, full of men crawling under dead cars, searching for parts to bring their own to life – they were still full but dead and ownerless. Until men climbed the wire and built homes there from the parts. Until they, too, moved on.

  We’d sit at a boxcar door as the train crawled through some town – the slow warning clang warning no one – and we’d know: there was no point in jumping. There wasn’t enough out there. It was all sinking under the dust.

  We sang and kept going, and we tried to catch up. We’d land in a town before the lights went finally out. A week, a season. I’d stand on the kerb and, now and again, a man would slow down and lean out his window.

  —Drive a tractor?

  —Yeah.

  —Dollar day, take it, leave it.

  —Any work for my family?

  —What you got?

  —Wife, two kids.

  —What age on the young’ns?

  —Five and thirteen.

  I remember being shocked as I listened to my voice give their ages. So shocked, I didn’t see that I was alone again, or hear what the driver said before he took his head back inside and went. But I remember where I was.

  Ransom, Kansas.

  They came out from behind a dry-goods store, boarded-up, not worth breaking into – Miss O’Shea, Saoirse, the Rifle. They saw my face—

  —WE’RE IN THE MONEY, WE’RE IN THE MONEY—

  and stopped. I smiled, but they’d seen me.

  There’d been the radios at first, through open doors and windows, behind diner counters; and the nickel phonographs, before the windows and the diners closed and stayed closed. The skies are sunny. The songs got into the shoulders – Let’s spend it, lend it, send it – rolling along. Customers shook heads, tapped feet against rails, happy to fork out for a stranger’s bread and meatball. My ears hung out for Louis. He was out there – All aboard for Pittsboig, Harrisboig, oh, all the boigs – then gone for a while, and back. Hobo, you can’t ride this train. He’d been to Europe, I read in a barber shop somewhere.

  —Not paying you to read, bub.

  The cunt wasn’t paying me at all. Two hours sweeping for a haircut, that was the deal. Rifle’s head was free.

  —Known his head was that big, I’d’ve made you pay cash money. Got yourself a name, sonny?

  —Yare.

  —Well?

  —What?

  Pride swept the floor for me.

  —What is it?

  —Séamus Louis Rifle O’Glick.

  —What kind o’ name is that?

  —Better than yours, said Rifle.

  That’s the boy, I said to myself and I flicked my son’s hair away from the other tufts. I chose a lock, bent down and took it. I put in my last good pocket. Rifle caught me at it, and he laughed.

  As the times got harder, the songs got cornier. And we loved them.

  —WE’RE IN THE MONEY—

  We’d nothing and nowhere, but Miss O’Shea saved us before we knew we needed saving. We took to theft; we went right back to crime.

  —There’s them that can afford to be robbed, she said. —And it’s no sin.

  —Yes, Miss.

  The gun stayed under her dress. The fires at night were full of the deeds of Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby-Face Nelson but they were dead, and they didn’t have a family in tow when they shot up the banks and ran. So we stuck to the small-time, the grab- and-leg-it stuff I’d learnt as a kid and could teach to my own.

  —Take the first corner you come to, I told Rifle and Saoirse.

  —Always.

  —Listen to your father.

  —But always know where it’ll lead you. Do your homework first. The bollix—

  —Henry.

  —The man running after you knows the town. It’s his town, so you make sure that you know it too.

  —Better.

  —That’s right, Saoirse. Better.

  —Bollix.

  —Good man. And stay out of the towns with no corners.

  —Like this one?

  —Exactly.

  —Maybe we shouldn’t be involving them at all, said Miss O’Shea one night, in a barn full of nothing but old smells and mice.

  A nice widow had told us we could stay there as long as we wanted, after she’d looked down and seen Rifle staring up at her, then up and seen his daddy.

  —Maybe it’s not right, said Miss O’Shea.

  —I’d agree with you, I said, —if it was five years ago. But there’s not much else we can teach them now.

  We’d tried, but even the schools were closing down. We’d knocked on a one-room school door on a day soon after Christmas. The dust was frozen in sharp drifts that cracked the soles of our boots; we still had good boots – we always had good boots. We’d decided to stay in Cheapwater for the rest of the winter; we’d keep clean and manage – we had the widow’s barn, and the two kids to support us.

  —Maybe I’ll go for the teaching again, she said, as we waited for the door to open and welcome our children.

  We stood there and began to understand the darkness inside, the hollowness of my knock. The school year had ended on the 1st of January, the widow told us; the school wouldn’t open again till the fall.

  —Sure glad my own young’ns got out before that state of thinking became normal.

  There were twenty-five thousand teachers looking for new work. We met some of them, in boxcars, using their leather bags as pillows. Dishwashers wanted – only college graduates need apply.

  So we gave up thoughts of teaching and staying still; we got stuck into the life of small-time family crime. It was straightforward and easily remembered. Running away shocked me at first – I used to go much faster. But we were all fit, and hungry enough to want, and brave enough to step over the want and grab. The challenge was in the geography. Disappearing quickly was a doddle in the city, but a much bigger problem in a two-street town that hadn’t seen new money in years, where goods were missed before they went. But we managed; clothes off lines, pies off windowsills – women did leave pies out there to cool, until that stopped too – cans off counters, chickens, ducks, piglets where we could find them, potatoes out of the guarded ground, anything that seemed worth the risk. And soon – we’re in the money – everything seemed worth the risk.

  —WE’RE IN THE MONEY—

  Then they saw my face. On a street in Ransom. And they stopped singing. Rifle broke away from the women and walked right up to me. He opened his mouth wide.

  And he bit me.

  I didn’t feel it.

  —What’s wrong? she said.

  She had a chicken under her dress, dead but not ready to give up yet. It was shaking away under there.

  —I don’t know, I said.

  —Time, I said, later, as I felt her there, staying awake beside me.

  —Time?

  —Yeah.

  A chicken, but no pot. We’d dug a hole, stuffed the fucker with mud, and built a fire over the hole. It had eventually cooked grand but the smell of stolen chicken had slithered its way all over Ransom and the state of fuckin’ Kansas.

  —What about time? she said.

  —It’s flying.

  —God almighty.

  —What?

  —I’m nearly fifty, Henry Smart. Do you hear me whingeing?

  —It’s not that.

  —What then?

  —I’m living the way I was when I was a kid. Exactly the way I was when I was a kid. When we – met.

/>   —It’s not the same.

  —It is the same. It’s the same. The exact same.

  —You have us.

  —I know. But—

  —What?

  —Nothing. I love you. I’m happy. I love you. And the pair over there. But.

  —Victor.

  —I had him too.

  —And then you didn’t.

  —He died on me.

  I heard her breath.

  —It happens when you live like this, I said.

  I felt her nod, her hair against my face.

  —And know what?

  She didn’t answer.

  —Everyone’s living like this. Or else they will be.

  Her hair was gone. She was looking at me.

  —What do you want to do? she said.

  —I don’t know, I said. —But we should try to be ready.

  —How? For what?

  —You’ve noticed, I said. —You have. The whole place is dying. You’ve seen it.

  —Yes.

  —When me and Victor ran into a shop, we always knew there’d be something to rob. Here, though. Christ.

  —So, she said. —What’ll we do, Henry?

  —Go back?

  —Back where?

  —Chicago?

  —Stupid.

  —New York.

  —Stupid.

  —For fuck sake.

  —Home, she said.

  —Jesus, I don’t know.

  —Yes, she said. —You do.

  —If it’s bad here, it’ll be worse there.

  —Well, she said. —I’m going to sleep. We’ll think of something in the morning.

  And she did.

  She sat up, out of the bedroll. I felt the quick draught.

  —Times are bad, she told us. —And we’re going to make them better.

  And she meant it; her eyes had that look. They were the brightest things in America that day, and the maddest.

  —We’re going to free this place, Henry, she said, as we hopped the first freight out of town.

  I believed her.

  She jumped first, landed, and put her hand out. Saoirse didn’t need her help; she was a woman now, almost, as tall as her ma, as beautiful. She hopped onto the car in a move that looked effortless and probably was. It was a cold morning, still night-cold; my breath ran ahead of me. I picked up Rifle. He jumped onto the blind behind the boxcar. His foot slid on the frozen engine steam, and now I watched him fall.