All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

33

It was like I figured. Jane had read the sign wrong because she hadn’t paid attention or because, like she said, she wanted off the train. Whatever, it was more than any four miles, and it was starting to get dark by the time we did see a sign for a town.

But it wasn’t Tyler. It was Winona, and the sign said WELCOME TO WINONA, POPULATION 340. Fact was, it was pretty much just a hole in the road with a couple of stores. Stopping at one of the stores, we decided to buy some Coca-Colas and eat some of our food. We opened up our sacks and got our can openers and had some beans, which I was getting really tired of. They wasn’t doing my stomach any good either, and on more than a few occasions as of late, I’d had to make a point of walking behind Jane and Tony so if I passed wind it wouldn’t make things difficult for my traveling companions. And I darn sure didn’t want that sort of thing to happen when I was next to Jane. I couldn’t hardly even live with the idea of it.

Tony, however, was less concerned. He was more than willing to run up in front of us and let it fly and laugh about it.

But now we were in town and we sat on a bench under an oak by the side of the road and ate our beans and drank our Coca-Colas and watched it get dark. Fireflies were starting to move under the tree, and I could see them across the streets and in the yards where there were houses. Unlike at home, these houses weren’t piled with sand, their paint stripped off by it blowing and gritting the color away. They were painted, and the grass in the yards was green, and the trees were tall and full of leaves. Squirrels were in the trees. I watched them play. A man in the house across the way came out on the porch and cleared his throat in a way that made me feel a little sick, and then spat a stream of whatever had been down in his chest out into the yard. It was so loud it startled the squirrels. The man went back inside.

A man in a new car pulled up at the curb and got out. He was a short man with a big straw hat, and his belly fell over his belt like it was trying to find some comfortable place to lie down.

He came over to where we sat and put his boot on the edge of the bench, right by me, and wiped the top of it off with a red kerchief he took out of his pants pocket. “You kids live here?”

“No,” I said.

“I didn’t figure you did,” he said. “Haven’t seen you around here before.”

“We’re just passing through,” Jane said. “Truth is, we inherited a little oil money over in Tyler, so we’re trying to get there, and we got our train tickets mixed up and ended up off the train.”

“Tickets, huh?” the man said, and snapped the handkerchief loudly, then folded it and put it back in his pants pocket.

“That’s right,” Jane said.

“From the looks of you,” he said, “and looking at your luggage,” he said, eyeing our bags, “my guess is your ticket was how fast you could run and jump inside a boxcar.”

“We rode a boxcar,” Jane said. “That part is right. But that’s because there was that ticket mix-up. Where was it, Jack? Fort Worth?”

I didn’t know what to do, so I just nodded.

“So we didn’t have tickets, even though they were paid for, and when we borrowed a phone and called our relatives in Tyler, they were out. We decided to just go on and catch a train hobo-style and ride in.”

“This ain’t Tyler,” the man said.

“No,” Jane said. “I was just explaining to my cousin Jack here, that he had us jump off the train too soon. Right, Jack?”

“Sure,” I said.

“If this is your cousin,” the man said, “who’s the little one?”

“I ain’t that little,” Tony said. “I’m young.”

“That’s my brother, Tony,” Jane said.

“Uh-huh,” said the man. “Well now, I got an idea for you. You can take it or leave it, but I figure on your way to your rich inheritance, you might be in need of money, ’cause Tyler, that’s still a good twelve, fifteen miles away as the crow flies. And since you ain’t no crows, maybe for you three it’s twenty-five walking by the highway, if you don’t get a ride. You might want to take yourself a break for a while if you need some pocket money, and a job might be something you’d consider.”

“We don’t need a job,” Jane said.

As much as I didn’t like eating beans, I had noted that when we opened our bags, we were down to one can of beans per bag. There were two bags and three of us. We did have some cooking gear, flashlights, and the like, but you couldn’t eat that.

I said, “What kind of job?”

“Fieldwork,” he said.

I had done plenty of that, and so had Jane and Tony. It was our background.

“I don’t want any fieldwork,” Jane said.

“You’ve done it before,” I said.

“Which is why I don’t want any more of it.”

“There’s better things than picking peas,” said the man, “but that’s what I got, and I’m offering a dollar a day for each of you for an honest day’s work.”

“Tony ain’t nothing but a kid,” I said.

“Kids working all over this country,” he said. “What makes him any different?”

“That’s hard work for a kid for a dollar a day,” I said.

“That’s hard work for anyone for a dollar a day,” Jane said.

The man took his boot off the bench and straightened his hat like he needed to adjust it for the wind, but there wasn’t any.

“Considering you’ve done this kind of work before,” the man said, “if I can take your word for it—”

“You can,” I said.

“Then I’ll give you each a dollar fifty a day.”

“That’s not any better,” Jane said.

“There’s plenty that would take the dollar,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jane said. “Where are they?”

“They’ll show up.”

“Then let them,” Jane said.

The man pursed his lips, took off his hat, ran his fingers along the sweatband inside it, wiped his fingers on his pants, and put his hat back on.

“Here’s the deal,” he said, “and this is the last of it. I’ll give you two dollars a day for a day’s work. I don’t pay the colored but seventy-five cents, and some of the whites a dollar. But you three look healthy enough, and I need someone that can work a full day. Maybe the boy here I’ll have to give less. But you two can put a full day in, I can tell by looking at you.”

“Two dollars, huh?” Jane said.

“What I said. Again, colored don’t get but seventy-five cents and most whites only a dollar, so that’s good money.”

“That’s not fair,” Jane said.

“Ain’t nobody said a darn thing about it being fair. Take it or leave it.”

I looked at Jane. I knew she had about three or four dollars left in her pocket. It was okay money for twenty-five miles, but not okay money for once we got there. Who knew how long we’d have to look for Strangler, or if we’d ever find him? She studied my face for a moment, sighed, turned, and looked at Tony. He nodded.

She turned back to the man, said, “All right. We’ll do it. But I want you to know, the way you’re treating those colored people is not fair, and I don’t like it.”

“Say you don’t?”

“I don’t,” she said.

“Thanks for clearing that up,” he said. “It’s good to know where the hired help stands.”