“It’s all right. I don’t mind. I’m going to bed.”
“Did you shine your shoes?”
“No’m, I was going to, but — I fell down.”
“Well, I’ll shine them. You keep quiet after supper, and then we’ll see.”
“It’s all right. I don’t want to go.”
“Why, Burwell! You know you want to go.”
“I do not! I’m going to bed!”
He had overplayed it, and he knew it. At his insistent shout his father, who had been eyeing him narrowly for some time, suddenly spoke: “Burwell.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s this about the party?”
“Nothing.”
“When you get through supper you’re to shine your shoes. You’re to bathe and dress. When you’re ready, come to me, and we’ll get some collodion on that face so it’ll have a beauty suitable to the festivities. Then you’re going to the party.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bathed, shined, dressed, and patched, he started out, but he was in no hurry to get there. He was troubled, and he fingered the birthday present in his pocket most uneasily. How to explain his absence from his job wasn’t what bothered him. He already had a plan that would take care of it handsomely. He was at an age when it would be sufficient to say, “Yah, were you kidded! Did you bite! Yah!” and this would settle anything. But somehow he didn’t like it. He didn’t know it, but what ailed him was that he had already tasted triumph, or anyhow some sort of triumph, and what he craved now was humility, the sweet sacrifice of love: the sensation of being unselfish, and noble, and wan about the eyes.
He loitered outside the billiard hall watching the mysterious business of white balls clicking against red; scuffled past the picture show, examining all the posters; dillied and dallied, but after a while he had it. He would put the first plan into effect almost as soon as he got there, but he would combine it with another plan, to be uncorked later. After Marjorie had had an hour of moping brokenheartedly trying to be gay with her guests, he would call her aside and tell her the truth, or what at the moment seemed to be the truth. He had worked for Red. He had helped him on the truck; had helped him for two weeks, as a matter of fact; and all because he knew that tonight would be her birthday, and he wanted to give her something out of his own money, and — well, here it is. Then she would know she had cruelly misjudged him, and they would sit there in the shadows, happy, but in a soft dreamy way, since she would be aware at last of his lofty nature.
So it was quite dark when he got there and the party was in full swing out in the backyard. The yard had been strung with lanterns, and as he slipped back of the house he could see them all out there dancing on the clipped grass, to the radio. He paused in the shadows and looked for Marjorie. She wasn’t there. He kept looking and looking, and then a sound caught his ear, so close he jumped. He turned, and found himself looking in the dining-room window. In front of it on a small table, not three feet from him, was the big cake, with Marjorie’s name on it, the unlit candles spaced around its edge, with one in the middle.
And approaching that cake, in the dark room, was Marjorie. She got to it, picked up the knife, hesitated. Then he felt creepy at the enormity of the thing she was about to do. She was cutting the cake that was to be carried out before the guests as the grand surprise of the evening.
He was numb with shocked astonishment as he saw the knife go in twice, saw Marjorie pick up the wedge of cake in her hands and hurry out of the room. He was still staring at the mutilated cake when he heard a step, saw her run out of the front of the house, flit down the lawn to the pillar of the driveway, and wait. Then shame, panic, fear, and love shot through him in one terrible stab. He crept to the edge of the porch. He slipped the present under the rail. He ran blindly to the street, into the night.
From the distance, up the street; came the bell of the icecream truck.
Dead Man
I
He felt the train check, knew what it meant. In a moment, from up toward the engine, came the chant of the railroad detective: “Rise and shine, boys, rise and shine.” The hoboes began dropping off. He could hear them out there in the dark, cursing as the train went by. That was what they always did on these freights: let the hoboes climb on in the yards, making no effort to dislodge them there; for that would have meant a foolish game of hide-and-seek between two or three detectives and two or three hundred hoboes, with the hoboes swarming on as fast as the detectives put them off. What they did was let the hoboes alone until the train was several miles under way; then they pulled down to a speed slow enough for men to drop off, but too fast for them to climb back on. Then the detective went down the line, brushing them off, like caterpillars from a twig. In two minutes they would all be ditched, a crowd of bitter men in a lonely spot; but they always cursed, always seemed surprised.
He crouched in the coal gondola and waited. He hadn’t boarded a flat or a refrigerator with the others, back in the Los Angeles yards, tempting though this comfort was. He wasn’t long on the road, and he still didn’t like to mix with the other hoboes, admit he was one of them. Also, he couldn’t shake off a notion that he was sharper than they were, that playing a lone hand he might think of some magnificent trick that would defeat the detective, and thus, even at this ignoble trade, give him a sense of accomplishment, of being good at it. He had slipped into the gond not in spite of its harshness, but because of it; it was black, and would give him a chance to hide, and the detective, not expecting him there, might pass him by. He was nineteen years old, and was proud of the nickname they had given him in the poolroom back home. They called him Lucky.
“Rise and shine, boys, rise and shine.”
Three dropped off the tank car ahead, and the detective climbed into the gond. The flashlight shot around, and Lucky held his breath. He had curled into one of the three chutes for unloading coal. The trick worked. These chutes were dangerous, for if you stepped into one and the bottom dropped, it would dump you under the train. The detective took no chances. He first shot the flash, then held on to the side while he climbed over the chutes. When he came to the last one, where Lucky lay, he shot the flash, but carelessly, and not squarely into the hole, so that he saw nothing. Stepping over, he went on, climbed to the boxcar behind, and resumed his chant: there were more curses, more feet sliding on ballast on the roadbed outside. Soon the train picked up speed. That meant the detective had reached the caboose, that all the hoboes were cleared.
Lucky stood up, looked around. There was nothing to see, except hot-dog stands along the highway, but it was pleasant to poke your head up, let the wind whip your hair, and reflect how you had outwitted the detective. When the click of the rails slowed and station lights showed ahead, he squatted down again, dropped his feet into the chute. As soon as lights flashed alongside, he braced against the opposite side of the chute: that was one thing he had learned, the crazy way they shot the brakes on these freights. When the train jerked to a shrieking stop, he was ready, and didn’t get slammed. The bell tolled, the engine pulled away, there was an interval of silence. That meant they had cut the train, and would be picking up more cars. Soon they would be going on.
“Ah-ha! Hiding out on me, hey?”
The flashlight shot down from the boxcar. Lucky jumped, seized the side of the gond, scrambled up, vaulted. When he hit the roadbed, his ankles stung from the impact, and he staggered for footing. The detective was on him, grappling. He broke away, ran down the track, past the caboose, into the dark. The detective followed, but he was a big man and began to lose ground. Lucky was clear, when all of a sudden his foot drove against a switch bar and he went flat on his face, panting from the hysteria of shock.