A Walk On The Wild Side

  ‘It sayz all that, sis?’

  ‘It also sayz Laughable Fools with Dirty Feet Keep Off All Trains Not In Motion, Laughable Fool. It says your best bet is to do what you see the smart people do. So crawl your weak-minded ass after mine and do what I do. Don’t do nothing you don’t see me do first. And don’t call me sis. Call me brother.’

  ‘You reckon yourself one of the smart folks ’n me just a big ignoramus?’ Dove considered the preposterous notion.

  Brother raised a cautioning finger. ‘I got a jacket. You got no jacket. I got a shirt. You got no shirt. I got shoes. You got no shoes but we’re both up against a knife and fork. I ate last night and I ate this morning and you haven’t eaten since God knows when. Now who’s the smartest, me or you?’

  The raggedy line shuffled one raggedy inch.

  ‘You’re so smart it’s a pure pity,’ Dove decided – ‘Just tell me this much – they got liverpuddin’ in that kitchen ahead or not?’

  ‘They not only got liverpuddin’ friend. They got candied yams, Virginia ham ’n possum pie.’

  ‘Yankee vittles is a mite rich for my blood,’ Dove was forced to decline. Brother glanced up to see who was being kidded now.

  But Dove’s jaw hung so long, so mournfully from cheeks so cavernous, the hair bothering his eyes had been so long uncut and the eyes themselves so darkly shadowed, it was hard to believe anyone could kid in that condition.

  ‘You should of stayed in the hospital till they cut your hair,’ she advised him.

  ‘I bet if you taken off that hat you could stand a trim your own self.’ Dove answered. He felt a friendly hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Ah’ll bet y’all from the Big Bend Country, haint yo’?’ Dove tossed the hair back out of his eyes to see if it were someone he knew, forgetting for the moment that he didn’t know anybody. A Marine sergeant was studying him smilingly.

  ‘Me? No sir,’ Dove corrected him with pride, ‘I’m from Rio Grande country.’

  ‘Taylor ’n Halsted, pleased to meet you both,’ the terrier introduced herself so assertively that the uniform had to talk over the fedora in order to recruit Dove.

  ‘How’d you like three square meals a day, Red? A chance to see the tropics, chase Sandino, defend your country, get two pairs of shoes and a pension shortly after?’ He gave Dove a wink so broad that Dove winked back just as broadly – ‘and how those South American girls go for that uniform.’

  ‘It sounds like a right good position, mister’ – Dove decided. ‘I especially like that part about defendin’ my country. But first I got to git me a small bait of vittles.’

  ‘I think you’ll make a fine soldier, son,’ the sergeant was confident – ‘You got no physical deefect have you?’

  ‘Take another look at that squint, Colonel,’ the disguised girl recommended.

  ‘A squint aint no deefect,’ the sergeant explained authoritatively, ‘—it’s more what we term a “impedimunt.” We’ll get Red specs to correct his. Spanish women like soldiers with glasses.’

  ‘Look at them choppers.’

  Without being asked, Dove opened his mouth and the sergeant put a big dirty thumb flat down on his tongue.

  ‘In six months the clown won’t have a tooth in his head,’ the girl seemed certain. ‘Jungle-rot will get him.’

  ‘Well, we don’t want him to bite Sandino,’ the sergeant already excused Dove from one detail.

  ‘I have one loose awready anyhow,’ Dove managed to tell simply by removing the thumb temporarily, between two of his own fingers – ‘it waggles’ – and replaced the thumb hoping the sergeant would waggle it a bit for him.

  ‘Let the army dentist do that.’ The sergeant took his fist out of Dove’s face. ‘You’re going to make one hell of a Marine. Wouldn’t be surprised if you caught Sandino yourself. You can close your mouth now.’

  He took out a small notebook and a pencil. ‘Tell me, you got any other deefects, son?’

  Dove reddened. That was when you couldn’t read or write. ‘I reckon that in time that might be corrected too,’ he answered evasively because of those standing about.

  ‘Nothing serious, is it?’ He gave Dove a nudge – ‘Nothin’ you picked up from town girls?’

  The sarge had girls on his mind alright.

  ‘The second spell he took after supper last night he foamed a bit – Would that be anything serious?’ Dove’s friend asked blandly.

  ‘He takes fits?’ The Marine grew anxious. He didn’t want to lose a rookie but he didn’t want to hook a lemon.

  ‘I never throwed a fit in my whole derned life,’ Dove defended himself stoutly. ‘Pay no heed whatsoever to my brother here, captain – jest jealous cause I out-growed him. I aint even inclined toward spells.’

  ‘Good lad,’ the sergeant congratulated him, ‘Tex, you’re a real stand-up kid. Tell me this – routine question – nothing personal – if an enemy capable of rape had you trapped with your sister and mother and one of you had to be left behind, which one of you would you choose it to be?’

  ‘How about them señoritas?’ Brother gave Dove a nudge that almost knocked him down.

  ‘Will you stay out of this?’ the sergeant turned on the girl.

  ‘I got neither mother nor sister, captain,’ Dove found the safest answer.

  ‘Suppose you had.’

  ‘Sister would have to go,’ he heard a terrier-whisper.

  ‘Sister would have to go,’ Dove repeated hopefully.

  ‘I told you stay out of this,’ the sergeant menaced the fedora and turned back to Dove – ‘Put it this way. Your outfit of one hundred men is surrounded by bloodthirsty Nicaraguan bandits but you can save them all by sacrificing your own life. Which would come first with you? The lives of the ninety-nine others or your own?’

  Dove needed no help on that.

  ‘My own, naturally.’ He beamed.

  Dove was a little sorry to see the sergeant shake his head and move off.

  ‘Wasn’t that the right answer?’ Dove wanted to know.

  ‘It was the right answer alright,’ she reassured him. ‘How do you feel, Red?’

  ‘Fairly fainty,’ Dove confessed. The odor of hot soup was swinging his stomach like a bell.

  ‘Now what did I tell you just before, Red?’

  ‘I ferget, friend.’

  ‘I told you don’t do nothin’ you don’t see me doing. Did you see me asking Uncle Whiskers for a new suit? Did you see me showing him my choppers? Did you see me standing still to get measured for a rifle?’

  ‘Nobody asked you,’ Dove recalled.

  ‘You could still call him back – and spend the rest of your life doin’ close-order drill down in the banana country instead of riding passenger trains and sleeping in the shade. I won’t stop you.’

  Somebody handed Dove something steaming in a bowl just then and all notion of soldiering fled upward with the steam.

  When he had finished the bowl he looked up to see his friend’s hardly touched. The girl pushed it to him.

  ‘Thanks, sis.’ She gave him a look. ‘I mean brother,’ he corrected himself.

  ‘You’ll thank me for keeping you out of barracks one day too.’

  A haunted-looking cracker in a grease-stained apron put a tab of paper between them already so thumb-smirched Dove thought he wanted their prints.

  ‘Give me a couple phonies, boys,’ he advised them.

  ‘We didn’t have it in mind to give you good ones,’ the girl told him.

  ‘We got to keep track of how many feeds we put out,’ the hant apologized. ‘Citizens got a right to know how their money is being spent.’

  ‘My ignorant brother here went back three times for seconds – What will the citizens say about that?’

  ‘Directly y’all finish eatin’,’ the cracker invited them both, ‘you might step outside and lend me a hand with a spot of kindling – takes kindlin’ to cook y’all cawnbread y’know.’

  ‘He has it in mind for us to chop down a tree,’ she explai
ned to Dove.

  ‘A mighty mannerable feller, and I don’t mind work,’ Dove added, anxious lest he miss a chance to do some.

  ‘I don’t mind a spot of light labor myself,’ she admitted.

  A circle of half a dozen vagrants sitting cross-legged about a sack of charity beans looked like a spot sufficiently light. With a pan and a bucket between them, Dove and the little ’bo trickled beans through their fingers. Bugs, stones, old crockery, weeds and beer-corks were for the bucket and beans were for the pan. Since it was their own supper they were preparing, they trickled with some care. Dove found a chipped agate and pocketed it like a blue treasure.

  ‘Everybody got to eat. Everybody got to die,’ a white-haired Greek sitting cross-legged told them like it was big news.

  A wisp of a creature beside Dove squeaked happily right in his ear – ‘I’m the littlest guy here,’ n the oldest. Wouldn’t be surprised if I was the smartest too. I know I’m the sassiest.’

  Dove’s eyes followed his friend’s hands. Such a careful way with the smallest pebble, yet so much quicker than his own.

  ‘I once growed the biggest crop of these yet seen in Northern Michigan,’ a florid-faced fellow in a frayed sheepskin boasted. ‘Fact is, it was the biggest crop in that part of the state that year if not in the entire state. Done it without help, too. Cooked my own meals. Done my own laundry. Put up my own preserves. Didn’t have no wife. Didn’t need none. Didn’t have a hired hand. Didn’t want one. Biggest cooperative farm in the state, likely biggest in the country, right next door to mine. Fifty able-bodied men workin’ night ’n day with tractors ’n every farm instrument known to modern man. Four professors to study their soil. All I had was a old-fashioned plow my grandpappy made out of a pine tree he felled hisself, and iron he’d worked out of ore he dug hisself. I turned out a crop near to double of theirs – a mite better than double, truth to tell. Didn’t have a hired hand neither. Didn’t need none. Didn’t have a wife. Didn’t want none.’

  ‘I reckon the sun didn’t hinder none,’ Dove observed.

  As soon as one sack was finished, the hant dumped a sack of black-eyed peas, and for some reason this lightened everyone’s spirits, almost as though he had brought in a sack of cherries and told them to eat all they wanted.

  Once he came in with a basket of tomatoes and offered them around. Everyone took one or two except Dove. ‘I wouldn’t eat love apples,’ he warned his friend, ‘it’s a poison fruit.’

  The careful afternoon trickled through their fingers with less and less care. The big room darkened and dampened, walking wounded came and went. Dove’s thick thigh pressed his friend’s slender one and he felt the pressure lightly returned. Their fingers touched one moment in the sack.

  ‘You think these times are hard?’ the Michigan farmer was asking. ‘Why compared to times I’ve seen, these are absolutely flush. If you just look at it right, we’re right spang in the middle of the biggest boom this country ever seen. Look at us settin’ here stuffin’ ourselves to bustin’ on cornbread ’n beans!’

  ‘That’s right,’ Dove agreed, ‘we eat so much it keeps us skinny just carryin’ it around.’

  ‘Why,’ the farmer went on, ‘when I was a boy in Northern Michigan we didn’t know there was anything else to eat on earth but skim milk ’n wild onions. Drunk branch water ’n et sheep sorrel ’n counted ourselves more fortunate than most. Mother run a highly successful boarding house on them two victuals in fact – biggest boarding house that part of the state. Never seed a toilet till I was seventeen year old. I’d heard of backhouses but never seed one. Never seen a well pump. Full grown man afore I tasted ice cream.’

  ‘My own folks lived mostly on pawpaws,’ Dove agreed. ‘It were mighty hard sleddin’ when the pawpaws didn’t hit and the wind died down.’

  ‘I’ll never forget the winter of 1917,’ the farmer went right on. ‘The snow was deeper than the world. Wolves killed my goats, hawks got the chickens, night-riders burned my barn an’ mother run off with a preacher. Made me of half a mind to quit farming and go to work.’

  The encircling faces looked like so many tin plates on a shelf. They gave off a faint odor, as of disinfectant with smoke in it. The locked-in and the locked-out lived between the smoke of small wood fires and the odor of jail house disinfectant in 1931.

  ‘I’m the oldest ’n the littlest,’ the happy mouse introduced himself eagerly to each newcomer. ‘I’m the sassiest too. Wouldn’t be surprised if I were the randiest. How come I be first in everything?’

  ‘You’re last in pickin’ beans,’ Dove told him.

  ‘But I was the first to vote for Hoover,’ the old man snapped more now like a youthful rat than an ageing mouse – ‘’n the first to admit I was wrong.’

  ‘Hoover is a great man,’ the Michigan farmer was certain – ‘but he’s too far ahead of his time. The whole Republican Party is ahead of its time.’

  ‘I lived through Hoover myself,’ somebody agreed. ‘It give me real strength. Now I can live through anything.’

  The kitchen-hant came blowing a whistle. All hands quit on the second’s split. Dove stepped over the sack gingerly.

  By the time he got to the mess hall the hant had put on a greasy beany just to direct traffic. Mexicans to the right, Negroes to the left. But Dove he directed straight ahead, to where the white Americans ate at the longest board of all.

  ‘Pappy wouldn’t approve this kind of carrying-on,’ Dove realized, ‘mixin’ Cath’lics ’n Protestants this way.’

  ‘Where’s the Reb table?’ his friend came asking.

  ‘Take the elevator, Yankee,’ the hant instructed her.

  Dove got a slab of cornbread in molasses and a stack of beans piled so neatly they appeared to have been counted one by one. When he considered how many he had picked he felt that, percentage-wise, he was getting a bad count.

  ‘Everyone always gets more than me,’ he complained, and the girl pushed her plate before him again.

  ‘Why you so good to me?’ Dove asked.

  ‘Because I want you to be good to me,’ she told him so frankly that he felt he must be doing her a favor and cleaned up every crumb.

  ‘Everybody got to eat,’ somebody lamented, ‘everybody got to die.’

  Dove had hardly finished his third helping when they heard the Man to Houston whistle. ‘Let’s scram out of here before that fool makes us chop down that tree,’ the girl urged him – ‘Put that stuff in your pocket, Red.’

  Dove shoved the cornbread into his jeans and they ran for it.

  Most of the cars were empties and came clattering past too fast to chance. They waited, flat on their stomachs on the under embankment until the ore cars, whose ladders hung lower, began sliding by.

  Dove counted them coming. ‘It’s plumb mass-dark and they’re travelin’ fast,’ he warned her.

  ‘It’s the last one to Houston before tomorrow night,’ she answered. ‘You comin’?’

  Straddling the car, Dove saw its sides were merely chutes slanting straight to the rails. She piled past him and over with a victor’s cry and he caught her wrist as she felt no floor. She pulled him powerfully over but his free hand caught the iron edge and held.

  Just held. Then froze like floorless death itself on the iron.

  He could not pull her up. He could not let her go. Her double-grip on his wrist, pulling the ribs out of his side, informed him if she were going he was coming with her. The wheels glinted green lightning in the black, he heard pebbles clicking against her shoes in the roar. His right hand no longer held the iron: the iron held the hand.

  Her little stricken face, lighted briefly, tried to tell him some last something. Dove caught her overall strap in his big buck teeth and hauled, neck backstraining till she got her fingers onto the side and drew herself onto the edge. He steadied her though his arm trembled to the shoulder.

  She was caked with coal-dust, fright had hollowed her eyes. When the train slowed to go into a hole for a passenger train he helped her
down. ‘It sayz keep off all trains not in motion,’ he reminded her. Her trembling turned weakly to laughter then.

  They rested their backs on the lee side of a heap of coke. There she let her laughter turn to sobbing.

  ‘What’s the matter, friend?’

  ‘Run,’ the girl told him, struggling to her feet. Dove put an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Where you think you’re going?’ He pulled her back down.

  ‘Run.’

  ‘Mebbe you better just cry,’ he suggested.

  She found that so easy that she kept it up too long, like a child.

  ‘What you chokin’ yourself up for?’ Dove finally asked.

  ‘Lost my jacket,’ she remembered.

  ‘If you’d been wearin’ the jacket—’

  ‘I know’ – she assured him that she knew where she’d be if she’d been wearing something he could not have gripped.

  Her breath began drawing slower, soot and sleep sealed her eyes.

  Her face in sleep looked furtive yet innocent, like one already punished for a crime she hasn’t grown up to commit. When she was old enough to commit it she’d find it.

  Her hand on his own pressed his in sleep. He let his hand fall between her knees then moved it up till it cupped her and rested there.

  She stirred and he took it away.

  ‘Keep it right there,’ she told him, ‘I owe you that much.’

  Lanterns and flashlights passed and repassed down the rails, building shadows on the box car doors. Railroad crews didn’t care how many climbed aboard once the engineer had given his warning toot; but it made them look bad to have the strays lounging the cars like tourists when a train wasn’t moving.

  ‘The name is Kitty Twist,’ the girl told Dove, ‘—not my real handle of course. It’s just what they took to callin’ me in The Home. I’m seventeen almost eighteen ’n I’ve run from five homes. I’ll keep on runnin’ till I’m eighteen. Then I’ll marry a good pickpocket and settle down.’

  ‘I better look this man over,’ Dove told her uneasily, and wandered down the track, inspecting the cars from grab-iron to stirrup-ladder. When he was satisfied he whistled for her, helped her into the car he had picked, and shut the door. One beam shone, dancing slenderly whenever the long car trembled after shunting.