“Where’s it go?” I asked.
“Fort Worth, Texas. I’ll get off there because I have to see someone lives there.”
“You look to me to be a man that has another line of work besides catching trains,” Jane said.
“You might say that,” he said, but he didn’t offer what line of work it was. Everyone had gone quiet when Jane had spoken, so I figured it was a rule of the road not to pry unless someone offered you information. I couldn’t say that for a fact, not being an experienced hobo and all, but it struck me that way.
“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.”