All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky Read online

  “If you kids will take a few dollars and go into town, there’s a honky-tonk I passed,” said Floyd. “I think they make sandwiches and such. If you go there and knock at the back, I bet they’ll let you buy some sandwiches, even if you’re too young to go through the front door.”

  “Actually, I look young for my age,” Jane said. “But I’m twenty-one.”

  I thought: Here we go again.

  “You are, are you?” Floyd said. “Well, ma’am, I won’t argue with you about it, but they might. I was you, I’d go to the back door. Here’s a bill. Take it and get enough sandwiches for everyone. Get some fat ones with lots of meat, even if you got to pay extra.”

  Jane went over and took the bill. I saw her hesitate as she pulled it from his fingers. She said, “Would you like one of us to stay here?”

  “No,” said Floyd. “I trust you. Just hurry. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk up there and whatever time it takes to get the food. So half an hour, a little more, you ought to have it, and the stew ought to be boiled out then. We can have stew and sandwiches. You might get some Coca-Colas, and if they’ll let you, get a few extra big tin cups for us to dip and eat the stew with. They might have some to sell.”

  “Okay,” Jane said.

  Floyd smiled at her. I saw Jane look at him for a long moment. She never looked at me like that.

  “All of you can go together if you like,” Floyd said. “Just go quick and let’s eat.”

  “All right,” she said. “We’ll be right back.”

  I didn’t want to leave our goods there, but I didn’t want to pick them up and take them with us like we were going to run off or didn’t trust the hoboes, which I didn’t. But I gave them the cans of food I had promised, and Jimbo had already taken a can opener to them before we had gone outside the glow of the fire and started off through the woods toward the road that led into town.

  25

  “Do you think we got enough money to buy all that stuff?” I said.

  Jane looked at me and smiled. “Boys, take a peek.”

  She pulled the bill from her pocket and stretched it out between her hands and held it so there was moonlight on it.

  It was a hundred-dollar bill.

  “Holy cow,” Tony said.

  “And when he took it out of his pocket, there was a wad of bills. All I saw were hundreds.”

  “What’s a guy with that kind of money and those kind of clothes doing in a hobo camp?” I said.

  “Good question,” Jane said. “But I’m hungry, and I will not look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  It was like Floyd had said. About a fifteen-minute walk and we were on the edge of town. I could see the real town nestled in shadows about a hundred yards up the road. There were a few houses and there were lights on in the houses, but there was no one on the street. I figured it was probably about six-thirty or so, but as I said before, I didn’t have Daddy’s knack for telling time almost to the minute. But the day was done and people had turned into their homes and were getting ready for supper.

  Out here on the fringe were the joints. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place I wanted to be, but I was hungry and we had a hundred-dollar bill.

  At the first joint we come to, we went around to the back. The back door was open and there was hillbilly music coming out of the place, and though there were lights on in there, they were dim. I could hear men talking and women laughing and the clack of pool balls slamming together.

  We stood at the back door awhile, but we only saw a few people inside, seated in the center of the place and up near the front.

  After a few minutes, Jane said, “Well, hell, I’m going in.”

  And she went. We went after her.

  When we were inside, we were finally noticed. A man with a worn hat that might be white in the daylight, or might once have been white, said, “Well, if they aren’t running them a primer school here now.”

  “Kiss my ass,” Jane said.

  “Whoa,” said the man in the hat to a man swigging from a bottle of beer. “She’s got a mouth on her.”

  The man with the beer said, “Yeah, she does. She talks tough for someone so small.”

  “I’m tall enough,” Jane said.

  A woman big enough to go bear hunting with a switch came over and looked at us. She was pale, and her hair was like a bird’s nest.

  She said, “You kids ain’t supposed to be in here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, trying to jump ahead of Jane starting some kind of wild lie. “We was asked by a man to buy some sandwiches and some cups, if you got them.”

  “Cups?” she said.

  “For dipping stew,” Tony said.

  “Ah, you’re down there in the ’bo camp, ain’t you?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am, we are,” I said.

  “You wanting a handout?” she said. “I can’t give no handout. You know how many hoboes come up here looking for a touch? I can’t do it. I’d be out of business, broke in a week there’s so many.”

  “We don’t want a handout,” Jane said. “We said ‘buy.’ We got money.”

  She pulled the hundred-dollar bill out of her pocket and took it in both hands and popped it a little like it was a rubber band.

  The big woman looked at the bill. “That’s money, all right. You ain’t supposed to be in here, you know. But where you ought to be and where you are, that’s two different things.”

  She had grown considerably more friendly.

  We went over and sat on some stools at the bar. Jane told her what we wanted.

  She went in the rear of the place, yelling at a colored man back there about what to make. We could see them through the open double doors. He was at a counter near a stove and he was slicing bread. He didn’t like her tone, and he said something back, and then they argued back and forth for a few minutes.

  While that was going on, I turned on my stool and saw that the man with the almost-white hat was watching us while he chalked up a pool cue.

  “I don’t think you should have told him to kiss your ass,” I said.

  “He’ll get over it,” Jane said.

  The big woman came back to the counter and leaned on it with her elbows, said, “Don’t pay no mind to me and Calvin. That’s the way we talk.”

  “Calvin?” Jane said.

  “My cook. We always argue. He’s been with me ten years. He can cook better than a New York chef, and he works cheaper.”

  “That’s the truth,” Calvin said from the kitchen.

  “I got to ask,” Jane said. “How much the sandwiches going to cost?”

  “You want quite a few. Twenty dollars.”

  “For twelve sandwiches?” Jane said. “What are they made out of? What beef slices cost that much? Are they from the Minotaur?”

  “The what?” the big woman said.

  “Nothing,” Jane said. “Isn’t that kind of expensive? Twenty dollars seems like a lot. You can buy sandwiches for a quarter a piece, cheaper sometimes.”

  “You wanted cups too.”

  “Still,” Jane said.

  “These are expensive times,” said the big woman.

  “These are poor times,” Jane said. “Haven’t you heard? There’s a depression.”

  “You look like you’re doing all right,” said the big woman.

  “I won’t be after I buy these sandwiches.”

  “I’m throwing in two tin cups,” the big woman said.

  “You ought to throw in a whole set of dishes and a maid for that price,” Jane said. “Heck, you ought to throw in Calvin.”

  “We don’t do that anymore,” Calvin called from the back.

  “Oh, no offense meant,” Jane said.

  “That’s all right, girl,” he said, coming to the counter wiping his hands on a towel. “I knew what you meant. Them sandwiches and cups is all for about eight dollars, and you know it, Magnolia.”

  The big woman, Magnolia, looked at him like he’d just told someone she was actually a Presbyterian ministe
r on holiday.

  “You don’t run my business,” Magnolia said to Calvin.

  “Yeah, but I’ve made enough sandwiches to know what they go for,” he said, “and they don’t go for that much for that many.”

  He tossed the towel over his shoulder and went back into the kitchen.

  “All right, then,” Magnolia said. “Here’s the deal, take it or leave it. Twelve fifty.”

  “That the sandwiches and five tin cups?” Jane asked.

  “That’s the sandwiches, four tin cups, and my best wishes,” Magnolia said.

  “That sounds almost fair,” Jane said, giving Magnolia the hundred-dollar bill.

  26

  With our sandwiches and our change from the hundred and our four tin cups, we started back toward the hobo camp. I was carrying the bag of sandwiches, Jane was carrying the bag with Coca-Colas in it. Jane hadn’t made the drinks part of the deal, so we paid for those separate, but the price on those had been fair. Everyone knew exactly what a Coca-Cola cost.

  Tony had the four cups tied together with a string, and he was carrying those.

  We hadn’t gone too far when I said, “Those men from the joint. They’re following us.”

  It was the one with the hat and the one that was drinking the beer. They were walking kind of fast, and were right behind us. We crossed the road and headed for where the woods grew up, and they crossed the road with us.

  I heard a snick, and when I looked back, the one with the hat had a knife open. The moonlight caught on it, and in that moment, that four-inch blade looked as big to me as a machete.

  “We’re going to need the rest of that money,” said the man with the knife.

  The other man said, “Yeah, and we’ll take them sandwiches too.”

  “Really,” Jane said, turning, looking at them. “You’re so low you’d rob three kids of their money, and even take their sandwiches?”

  “You forgot to mention the cups and the Coca-Colas,” said the man with the hat.

  I stepped in front of Jane. “You go on back where you come from. You might have a knife, but you still got a fight coming.”

  “I’ll cut you from gut to gill,” said the man with the knife.

  “Oh, you boys don’t want to do that,” said a voice.

  We turned, and there was Floyd coming up from the woods, walking fast.

  “This ain’t your trouble,” said the man with the hat.

  “Sure it is,” said Floyd. “Couple of those sandwiches are mine.”

  “Oh, well, we didn’t know that,” said the other man.

  “So, if I hadn’t come up, you was going to take them from the kids, but now a grown man comes up, you got another line of talk?”

  “I don’t know,” said the man with the hat and the knife. “Maybe I’m talking too soon. I got the knife.”

  “Fella,” said Floyd, “you’d have been better off to have brought yourself a peppermint stick. They’re a whole sight easier to eat.”

  That took the hat-wearing man by surprise.

  While he was thinking it over, Floyd said, “You know, as much as I’d like to knock your heads together, I’m hungry and don’t want to take the time.” He pushed back his coat and reached around to the small of his back and pulled out a little revolver. “Just put the knife away and go on back to being drunk and stupid. My figuring is that’s what you do best.”

  “Whoa,” said the man with the hat. “We ain’t looking for that kind of trouble.”

  “What kind you looking for?” Floyd said. “I can come up with all kinds of trouble. What kind do you need?”

  “No kind.”

  “Yeah,” Floyd said, holding the gun down to his side. “You don’t want trouble, then I think you ought not to go fishing for it. You might catch something.”

  The man in the hat folded up the knife and put it in his pocket. “We’ll go on back,” he said.

  “That’s a sensible idea,” Floyd said. “You kids think that’s sensible?”

  “I know I do,” Jane said.

  Tony and I agreed.

  The two men didn’t say anything else. They just turned and walked back toward the honky-tonk.

  “How come you come along?” Jane said, when the men were up the road a piece.

  “I didn’t want to go up and get the food myself,” Floyd said, “which is why I sent you, but I got to thinking. You kids with all that money, and this not exactly being the general store. Figured I might ought to come up and make sure things was all right, since you going was my fault.”

  “Was it because you actually thought we might run off with your money?” Jane asked.

  “Nope,” Floyd said. “Easy come, easy go.”

  “Maybe you was worried just a little bit?” Jane said.

  “All right,” Floyd said. “Just a little bit.”

  27

  Back in camp, we ate the sandwiches and the stew. We gave our spare cup to Boxcar Bertha, and she gave us all some pieces of peppermint that looked as if they might have been sucked on before and had lint on them.

  We ate them anyway.

  We sang songs and talked, and Jimbo told ghost stories about headless men, and haints that came out of brick walls when you passed and grabbed you and took you with them inside the wall and mixed up your insides and turned your feet around so that when you was put back, you had to walk backwards.

  I don’t know I believe in ghosts, but I sure like stories about them. The ones Jimbo told, or maybe it was the way he told them, made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up like hog bristles. That night I dreamed me and Jane and Tony were walking along in the dark next to a long and very tall brick wall. We walked and then we heard something. We turned to look, and it was Bad Tiger and Timmy, stepping right out of the bricks. They grabbed us and pulled us into the wall. I woke up panting, and it took me a good while to get back to sleep. I didn’t dream about the wall or Bad Tiger and Timmy anymore, but I sure remembered the dream when I woke up.

  Next morning, except for us and Floyd, everyone else stayed in camp. Bertha had a later train to catch, and I don’t know what the others had plans to do, or if they had plans at all. They didn’t strike me as folks with someplace to be at any certain time.

  We packed out of there, and as we walked toward the trainyard, Jane stepped along beside Floyd. She said, “Thanks for helping us last night. That was something.”

  “It wasn’t anything. They brought a knife to a gunfight.”

  “Would you have used that gun?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “But would you?”

  “If I had to.”

  “Have you used it before?” she asked.

  “You might be a mite too curious. What are you, a cat?”

  “I just like to know things,” she said. “I’m going to be a reporter.”

  “Girls do that?”

  “I don’t know about girls,” Jane said, “but women do. And if they don’t, I’m going to do it anyway.”

  “I bet you will,” Floyd said.

  Pretty soon we could see some cars parked along the street. Across the way, we could see train tracks and the railyard. On some of the tracks were a few boxcars, none of them hooked to engines.

  All of a sudden, Floyd pulled us up behind one of the cars.

  “I’m going to take a guess here,” he said, “and figure ain’t none of you kids caught a train before.”

  “That’s a good guess,” I said.

  “Well now,” Floyd said. “First thing you got to watch for is the bulls.”

  “Bulls?” Jane said. “You mean like cattle?”

  “No. I mean the train bulls. They’re like cops for the trainyard. They can be mighty mean. They don’t want you on those trains, and they might just snap a nightstick upside your head. I know a fella got hit and didn’t never get over it. He sometimes thinks I’m his grandma.”

  “Really?” Tony asked.

  “Yeah,” Floyd said, “when he don’t think I’m a little red h
en. It was quite a lick. What you got to do is get up there close, not get seen, and not be up there too soon. You get close when the train slows down. It don’t stop here, it just slows down, and that’s perfect for a ride.”

  “If the train bulls don’t get you,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Floyd said, “and if you don’t fall between the cars and get run over and lose a leg or an arm or get mashed altogether. And if someone isn’t already in the boxcar that’s got a bad attitude.”

  “We can ride with you, can’t we?” Jane asked.

  “If we manage to get on the same car,” Floyd said. “But that might not happen. You get what you get in this kind of business.”

  “I still say you’re well dressed for a train jumper,” Jane said.

  We heard the train coming from a distance. It blew its whistle.

  Jane moved forward. Floyd caught her by the shoulder. “Not yet. Too soon, a bull might see you.”

  “I don’t see any bulls,” Jane said.

  “That don’t mean they ain’t there,” Floyd said.

  “Then why catch the train here?” Jane asked.

  “Because this is where it slows down to make the curve. Out there,” Floyd said, waving a hand toward where the tracks disappeared into some woods, “it’s running top speed, or a good speed, anyway. This is the spot. Now, I’m going to point you to the train that goes to Fort Worth, but after that, it’s every man for himself. And woman. I didn’t take you kids in to raise.”

  “We’re perfectly fine at raising ourselves,” Jane said. Then she added: “Of course, any tips that might get us on the train without being killed are very much appreciated.”

  Floyd grinned.

  “All right, tell you what. I’m going to get you on that train. I’ll do that much.”

  “Thanks, mister,” Tony said.

  “Don’t thank me now,” Floyd said. “You ain’t on the train yet.”

  Soon as I saw the train my stomach started to flutter. Thinking about jumping on a train is one thing, but actually doing it while it’s moving, slowing down or not, is another thing altogether.

  We started running. Down near the station, coming out from behind a parked boxcar, we saw a man dressed in black. He had on a black cap, and he had a nightstick in his hand. I don’t know if it was a uniform or if he just liked to dress that way.