“Dinner’s ready,” called his sister-in-law.
“I don’t want any dinner!”
“But it’s ready!”
“Sorry. Can’t wait!”
Vinny was gone.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1929
Joy Ride
Down in the country when they built the state road it was a couple guys worked on it name of Luke and Herb Moore. And they was brothers, but their old man was stingy and wouldn’t never give them nothing for their work. Because they didn’t hire out to the contractor direct, but drove teams for their old man and the contractor paid him and he paid them. And he got thirty-five cents a hour apiece for both them double teams, and paid them $12.50 a month for driving them.
So all them other guys that worked on the road was all the time giving them the razz, and letting on their old man must be pretty rich by now, account he’s got a big farm but don’t never spend nothing, and goes to church every Sunday but don’t never put nothing on the plate, and all like of that; until Luke and Herb got so they hated to see the old man show up on Saturday afternoon to sign the payroll. So along about the first of October they begun mumbling to each other in the lunch hour, and then they give it out they was going to do something that would make them other guys on the road look pretty sick. And what they was going to do was go on a bender. They had just got their month’s wages, and that was $25, and they was going to swipe one of the old man’s horses, after he had went in the house that night, and drive down to the railroad station what was about six mile away, and hop the 6:46 in to Washington, and then come back on the owl what got in at 12:22, and then drive on back and put the horse in the stable without the old man knowing nothing about it. Because they figured that $25 would pay for a pretty classy drunk, and then they would have a comeback if they heard any more of this tightwad stuff.
So they done it. They et some supper in a hurry, and then they sneaked out and geared the old man’s best horse to his new buggy, and then they walked the horse on the grass so the old man couldn’t hear them going by the house, and then they hit for the station. And on the way down they passed Will Howe and Heinie Williams, what was rolling the road in the nighttime on account it was getting late in the year and the contract had to be finished before frost, and Will and Heinie blowed the roller whistles for them and it looked like their trick was going to work. Them razzes would be changed to cheers. And they caught the 6:46, and down in Washington they must of put on a swell drunk act, because some people heard them arguing in the Union Station just before the owl pulled out, and Herb was for staying and spending the rest of their money, but Luke says no he wouldn’t give the old man the satisfaction of knowing they stole the horse.
So they come back. And they was all set to get away with it, until they drove up to the piece of road they had built that day, where Will and Heinie had been rolling up to twelve o’clock. But then they seen something they had forgot about. Them two rollers was parked across the road with red lights hung on their water boxes to keep people from driving over the new piece of road that had just been rolled down. And it was a detour they could take, but Luke wouldn’t hear of no detour.
“What?” he says. “Us turn back and drive a half mile further just for a pair of measly steam rollers? Nothing doing.”
So he jumps out, grabs off the red lanterns, and commences waving them around.
“Engineer,” he hollers, “do your stuff, I’m too drunk. ’Stead of us getting out of the way of these here rollers, we’ll make them get out of our way.”
So Herb, he climbs up on the little Buffalo roller what was on the left, and he can’t see so good, and he’s pretty drunk too, but he’s seen Will and Heinie do it, and he grabs a couple of bars, and pulls them, and sure enough the little Buffalo roller begins to move and slides right back in the ditch.
“Whoa!” says Luke, waving his lights out there in the middle of the road. “Engineer, you done great. Casey Jones couldn’t of done it no better. Now get on that other one.”
So Herb climbs up on the big five-ton Acme what was on the right-hand side of the road.
Now a Acme, it don’t work just the same as a Buffalo. The throttle and reverse bar is placed a little different, so when Herb grabbed aholt of them and pulled, he didn’t have no such good luck as he had the first time. ’Stead of going backward, that big five-tonner went frontward. It give a jump and run across the road and whanged right up alongside that other one. And Herb, he got throwed plumb out of the cab on the road. And it wasn’t nothing but steam coming out of both them rollers on account the bump had strained the boilers and they begun to leak. And it was dark all of a sudden. And Herb, soon as he remembered where he was at couldn’t see nothing of Luke. Because that roller, when it jumped frontward, had knocked Luke down and put out his red lights. And it had rolled him flatter than a German pancake.
So the horse give a jump when them two rollers come together, and helloed past them up the road, and turned in at the home gate. So the old man got up and went out, and then he begun ringing all the rings on the party line telephone, and it wasn’t long before him and a bunch found the rollers, and Herb, and what was left of Luke. And then he begun to rave.
“Oh, God,” he says, right out in front of where Herb was crying on the side of the road, “what have I done that you do this to me? Ain’t I always done right? Why did you send me a pair of worthless rascals like this when I asked you for sons?”
So Will Howe, he stood it as long as he could, and then he says: “Well, if God made you, it ain’t much else that I would put past him.”
“Come on, kid,” he says to Herb; “you better stay with me tonight.”
So Herb, he stayed with Will; and the coroner held him, but the state’s attorney turned him loose. And after that, he done some work on the road, but he didn’t never get no razz.
Queen of Love and Beauty
Down in the country they used to have every summer what they called a tournament, and it wasn’t much to it, only a bunch of farmers calling theirself knights, and riding work plugs down a course and spearing iron rings off hooks with a pole they said was a lance. But they generally always had a pretty good time, because the knight that spread the most rings could crown the Queen of Love and Beauty at the dance they had in the Grand Opera House that night, and them that speared next to the most rings could crown the maids of her court, so it was a little excitement anyway, and what with plenty of fried chicken and deviled eggs at the supper they had in between, everybody made out pretty good.
So sure enough, right after wheat-thrashing time one July, they put it in the county paper the tournament would be held the next Saturday, at a farm name of Three Hills what was owned by Mr. Glynn, and when Saturday come it was a big crowd out to Three Hills, and all the women giggling about who was going to get crowned Queen of Love and Beauty.
But what shows up on top of a runty-looking horse with a pole in his hand but a guy name of Bert Lucas. And the committee didn’t hardly know what to do. Because Bert, he wasn’t really no guy to be riding in a tournament. When he was young, he had been kind of wild, and one night he swiped a car and went on a joy ride, and then didn’t have no more sense than to wreck it. So the Grand Jury indicted him and he done the only thing he could do, and that was to skip. And when he come back about five years later to work the little farm what his old man had, nobody didn’t have much to do with him. The indictment, nobody done nothing about it, because his old man had scraped together enough money to pay for the car before he died, so they just kind of let it drop. But there it was just the same, and a guy under indictment don’t hardly look like no knight.