At the dining room table with the entire family, Lockjaw had turned to the boilerplate story, personalizing it by adding that he had been given medical care in Pittsburgh (an injection of antitoxin by a kindly charity doctor; the wound cleaned out and bandaged; a bottle of muscle pills to boot) and found himself wandering off before the cure set in, only to collapse several hundred miles away on the rods at Stateline junction, giving all the details — about the rods, the way the tower worked — and keeping the tone even and believable until the entire table was wide-eyed for a moment, with the exception of the man of the house who, it turned out, had done a stint as a brakeman on the Nickleplate, worked his way up to conductor, and then used his earnings to put himself through the University of Chicago Law School. The man of the house began asking questions, casually at first, not in a lawyerly voice but in a fatherly tone, one after another, each one more specific, until he had a lawyerly tone that said, unspoken: Once you’ve eaten you pack yourself up and ship out of town before I call the sheriff on you. Go back to your wanderlust and stop taking advantage of hardworking folks. Right then, Lockjaw thought he was safe and sound. Dinner & the boot. Cast off with a full belly, as simple as that. But the lawyerly voice continued — Lockjaw went into this in great detail, spelling out how it had shifted from leisurely cross-examination questions — You sure you fell across a rod hard enough to bend it? You sure now you saved the day exactly as you’re saying, son? To tighter, more exact questions: Where you say you’re from? What kind of work you say you did in Pittsburgh? Did you say you poured from a ladle into a thimble, or from a ladle into a scoop? You said interlocking mechanism? You sure those things aren’t fail-safe? You said an eastbound and a westbound approach on the same line? (At this point, most of the men around the fire knew how the story would turn. They understood the way in which such questions pushed a man into a corner. Each answer nudged against the last. Each answer depended on a casualness, an ease and quickness of response, that began to give way to a tension in the air until the man of the house felt his suspicions confirmed in the way the answers came between bites, because you’d be eating in haste, making sure your belly was as full up as fast as possible, chewing and turning to the lady, and, as a last ditch, making mention of a beloved mother who cooked food almost, but not quite, nearly, but not exactly, as good. These are the best biscuits I’ve ever had, and that’s factoring in the fact that I’m so hungry. Even if I wasn’t this hungry, I’d find these the best biscuits I’ve had in my entire life.)
When Lockjaw told this part of the story, the men by the fire nodded with appreciation because he was spinning it all out nicely, building it up, playing it out as much as he could, heading toward the inevitable chase-off. One way or another the man of the house would cast him off his property. He’d stiffen and adjust his shirt collar, clearing his throat, taking his time, finding the proper primness. A stance had to be found in which casting off the hobo would appear — to the lady of the house — to be not an act of unkindness but one of justice. Otherwise he’d have an evening of bitterness. When the man turned to God — as expected — after the cross-examination about work, employment, and the train incident — Lockjaw felt his full belly pushing against his shirt — a man could eat only so much on such a hungry gut, of course — and had the cup to his mouth when the question was broached, in general terms, about his relationship to Christ. Have you taken Christ? the man said, holding his hands down beside his plate. Have you taken Christ as your Holy Savior and Redeemer? (I knew it. Fuck, I knew it, the men around the fire muttered. Could’ve set a clock to know that was coming. Can’t go nowhere without being asked that one.) At that point, the man of the house listened keenly, not so much to the answer — because he’d never expect to get anything but a yes from a hobo wanting grub — but to the quickness of the response, the pace with which Lockjaw had said, Yes, sir, I took Christ back in Hammond, Indiana, without pausing one minute to consider the width and breadth of his beloved Lord, as would a normal God-fearing soul, saved by Christ but still unable to believe his good grace and luck. (Gotta pause and make like you’re thinking it out, Lefty muttered. Gotta let them see you think. If they don’t see you thinking, you ain’t thinking.) Lockjaw had given his answer just a fraction of a second too quickly, and in doing so had given his host a chance to recognize — in that lack of space between the proposed question and the given answer — the flimsiness of his belief. Here Lockjaw petered off a bit, lost track of his train of thought, and slugged good and hard from the bottle in his hand, lifting it high, tossing his head back and then popping the neck from his lips and shaking his head hard while looking off into the trees as if he’d find out there, in the dark weeds, a man in white robes with a kind face and a bearded chin with his arms raised in blessing. Fuck, he said. All the man of the house saw was a goddamn hungry tramp trying to scare up some grub. We faced off while his wife prattled away about the weather, or some sort of thing, giving her husband a look that said: Be nice, don’t throw him out until he’s had a slice of my pie. But the man of the house ignored her and kept his eyes on mine until he could see right into them, Lockjaw said, pausing to stare harder into the woods and to give us time enough to consider — as we warmed our feet — that it was all a part of the boilerplate: The man of the house’s gaze would be long & sad & deep & lonely & full of the anguish of his position in the world, upstanding & fine & good & dandy & dusted off, no matter what he did for a living, farming or ranching or foreclosing on farms, doctoring or lawyering — no matter how much dust he had on him during his work he’d be clean & spiffy with a starched collar & watch chain & cufflinks & lean, smooth, small fingers no good for anything, really, except sorting through papers or pulling a trigger when the time came. A little dainty trigger finger itching to use an old Winchester tucked upstairs under the bed, hazy with lint but with a bullet in the chamber ready for such a moment: cocky young hobo comes in to beg a meal and wins over the little wife only to sit at the table with utter disrespect, offering up cockamamie stories that make the son go wide-eyed and turn the heart.