The Moth

15

I don’t know how it is now, but at that time Kansas City was a wide-open town, the only one, outside of the Nevada places, that was left in the whole country, any way that I heard of. So the day after we got there Buck came up with his bright idea. We were in a little hotel on Walnut Street, though in single rooms. There were three things I meant to do: get clean, lock the door on the whole human race, and tell somebody to do something and hear him say: “Yes, sir.” But he came in pretty often, and this time he camped on the edge of my bed, talked about how good it was to have a place to sleep, and pretty soon said: “Jack, I been hearing things about the town. She’s free, wide, and careless.”

“Meaning?”

“They got houses.”

“With red lights on them?”

“So how about stepping out? Take ourselves around to one of those places and have ourself a time.”

“... That I would have to think about.”

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s a new one on me. I — don’t know if I like it or not. I’ll have to let it cook a while, see how it hits me.”

“Don’t you ever think about the red lights, Jack?”

“I heard about them. That’s all I can say.”

“I always wanted to see them.”

“We got all day. They don’t open till night.”

“Oh, there’s no hurry.”

He sat there and talked about spring being in the air, even in a dump like this, and while he talked I thought. I guess the man never lived that didn’t get a prickle up his back when he thought about a house, I don’t know exactly why. Maybe it’s like what a guy told me once, in England, about the bullfights in Mexico: “If it was my own country I’d be against them, and do everything I could to get them stopped. But when it’s somebody else’s country, and there’s not one thing in the world I can do about it, I go. They get me. And as to why they get me, if you ask me, it’s because they’re so horribly, intentionally, and completely evil — evil all dressed up in purple satin, with lace sewed down the side.” Something like that was running through my head, listening to Buck, but pretty soon I knew I wasn’t going with him. To pay a woman for what had always been kind of a dream was something I couldn’t do. Still, that was something locked inside me, that I wouldn’t have wanted to tell anybody, and anyway it seemed a little over Buck’s head. So after a while I said: “Well, count me out.”

“... I’d been hoping you’d come.”

“Little old for that stuff.”

“How old are you, Jack?”

“I was born in 1910.”

“Twenty-four — old, say, that’s a joke.”

“How old are you, Buck?”

“Twenty-five.”

“When did you go on the road?”

“Three years ago. Oh, I’d left home before, so far as that goes. I started out when I was eighteen, to get me a job so I could get married. She was fifteen. I started on road work, got promoted to power shovel, and then came 1929 and the shovel blew up and the road job blew up and all jobs blew up. I’d been home quite a few times, and gave her a ring one Christmas, but when I didn’t have any job she started in teaching school, and then when I still didn’t have any job she lost interest. Then at home one thing led to another and I blew.”

“Change it around a little bit it’s me.”

“It’s everybody.”

“Getting back to the lights: No.”

“Any special reason?”

“Might catch something.”

“These places are inspected.”

“They were, up to last night. This is tonight.”

“Some things, Jack, you got to take a chance.”

“Not me, I haven’t.”

He sat thinking, and seemed so down I felt half sorry for him, and remembered what I’d heard once or twice: that one reason a mug goes to a house is he’s so lonesome he’d give anything for a half hour with a girl and the chance to forget who he is or what he is or why he is. But then he had another proposition: “Well, if you don’t want to go how about keeping me company while I do some visiting? You know — buy some girl a drink, sit out the dance, but — be there?”

“Me? Buy some tart a drink with dough that will mean another night out of the weather if I can hold on to it that long? Besides, you can’t buy a girl a drink in those places. It’s drinks up for everybody every time you call the maid, and what do I care for a bunch of stockyard cowboys and their sweeties? They got money. Let them spend it.”

“You mean — there’s ropes you got to know?”

“They’ll teach you. Take you, too.”

“Jack, just as a favor to me—”

“Buck, no.”

“But I never been to a house.”

“Me neither.”

“But you know your way around, and—”

“You’ll find your way.”

After a while there was a knock on the door and I opened and it was Hosey, with a bundle. Of course he hadn’t come to the hotel with us, but hiked himself over to some mission back of Union Station, because if no real hobo would work he wouldn’t pay either, or do anything but mooch. But it was all right, it turned out, for me to pay and him to wash up in the hot water I had, and that’s what the bundle was for. If you think I said help himself, just out of the kindness of my heart, you don’t know Jackie. I bawled him out for the filthy jungle buzzard that he was, told him I wasn’t going to have my bathroom stunk up like a mission bed, and said if he wanted to wash he could march himself downstairs, plunk down his money, and get a room like decent guys did. But he just sat there with a little grin on his face, his eyes shifting around like a rat on a dump. Pretty soon Buck said: “Hosey, what you doing tonight?”

“... Nothing, that I know of. Why?”

“How about going out among ’em?”

“Among who?”

“Why... the pretty dollies.”

“You mean women?”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know no women.”

“Don’t have to know them. Here they got women that’s so sociable you don’t even have to be introduced. They’re broad-minded. They got whole houses full of them.”

Hosey stood up and his eyes turned black and you wouldn’t have thought he could dig up that much excitement, let alone care about anything enough to go on like he did: “Buck, I’m telling you something, for your own good, right now. The real hobo, he don’t have nothing to do with women, of any age, shape, or kind — they’re out! They’re no part of his life. He just has to give up any thought of women. In the first place, he can’t afford it. In the second place, if he keeps it up, the kind of women he meets, he going to get himself a disease, and if he does, God help him. For typhoid or diphtheria or pneumonia or whatever else he catches, or a broken bone if he falls off a train, or anything of that kind, he can go to a clinic and they’ll take care of him, the public health will, wherever he is, some kind of way. But let him get something like that, and he’s just out of luck and nobody’ll do anything for him. In the third place, sooner or later some woman he’s with is going to get caught by friend husband, and then God help him. There’s plenty of guys doing time right now for rapes that was never committed, just because some two-timing dame had to say something quick, and hung it on them. Buck, I’m telling you, leave women alone!”

By then he was so hysterical he could hardly talk. Buck looked at me and I looked at him and then we begun talking about something else. Hosey picked up his bundle and went out. “Well, Jack, what the hell do you make of that?”

“It was real hobo talk, whatever it was.”

“Is he a preacher or something?”

“In some ways, of course, it made sense, but—”

“Yeah, but he looked so funny.”

The next night I was in bed, reading a magazine, when there came a rap on the door. I unlocked it and Buck came in. He looked pretty solemn. I waved him in, shut the door, and got back under the covers again. He sat down on the bed and lit a cigarette. “Well, Buck, was she nice?”

“—And pretty.”

“Then if you had a good time, what the hell?”

“I didn’t have any good time.”

“... I don’t get it.”

“I don’t either. God, you wanted to think, now let me do a little of it. Jack, there must be something the matter with me.”

“You mean — you’ve got something?”

“No, something else. Jack, I couldn’t go in any of the houses, once I found one. That part was easy. I thought I’d pay a taxi driver fifty cents to take me to one, but hell, before I could even see a cab a cop showed me. But I was afraid to go in. I don’t know why. There was guys ringing the bell of a dozen places and women letting them in, but — I couldn’t get up the nerve.”

“I’m not sure I could.”

“I thought about you, and didn’t feel so bad, somehow. So then I went over on Broadway, to see a picture maybe, before coming back here. And there I saw two girls. They were kind of cute and one of them looked at me and said something to the other one and I got excited, because she was a pretty little thing, maybe eighteen or nineteen, Mexican, but with color in her cheeks and not as dark as some of them. Another thing, she had on just a little cheap dress and coat so I didn’t feel so bad about this suit I had on. I started to cross, but just then a bus stopped and the other girl got on. My girl, she waved goodbye, then went on up the street. But just once she looked back and I piled after her hell to split. When I got close I spoke and she laughed and then we were arm in arm and I said something about a drink and she said she knew a place and then we were in one of these new cocktail bars they got all over now, and she ordered a bottle of red wine and we drank part of it. Then she said she had a place we could go and we took our bottle and walked quite a way, to some kind of Jimtown across from the yards, and went past Mexican shacks and then she took me inside a place made out of old boards and dry-goods boxes, but not too dirty, and with a couple of chairs and a coal-oil stove with two burners. We drank the rest of our wine, me loving her up all the time. And — that’s all.”

“What do you mean, that’s all?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Why not?”

“I... couldn’t.”

“Did something scare you, or what?”

“Nothing scared me. Get how it was. She was pretty as a picture. She was small, with as nice a shape as I ever hope to see. And she wanted me. I guess maybe she could be bought, I don’t know. I gave her five dollars when I left, but it didn’t seem she could be bought. I don’t think I had to buy her. I think she liked me. But — that was all. I couldn’t.”

“How long did this go on?”

“I guess an hour.”

“And what did you do then?”

“What would you do? After a while, from being friendly and laughing and all that, she just sat there looking at me, then just sat there. I got up and pitched the five dollars in her lap and left... What the hell does it mean, Jack?”

“I don’t know.”

“I wanted her, bad.”

“You wanted the idea of a woman, bad.”

“Yeah, but that’s the main part of it.”

He sat there a long time, looking at his feet. It seemed a pity, much as it had been on his mind, that things should have turned out like they did. His face began wrinkling up. “What did Hosey mean?”

“If anything.”

“Jack, he meant more than he said. Nobody could get that hot under the collar for the reasons he said were his reasons. There’s something else.”

After our money ran out in Kansas City we swung off through Kansas and Colorado and then south, and everywhere we went it got tougher. I mean, on the trains they didn’t bother you so much any more, because the big mob was gone, but in the towns they treated you like a polecat with the itch, and meant get out and stay out. That was on account of the CCC. It drew guys off the road all right, but at the same time it gave people the idea things were under control and there was no need to mooch. It was under control, if you’d go home and get certified by your family, or establish residence somehow, to prove you were entitled to help. But that was something Buck and I wouldn’t do, and Hosey couldn’t do, for reasons that kind of seemed to be there, once you got thinking about them. We applied of course, all three of us, in Denver. But when we found out the terms, having to go back home I mean, Buck and I backed off, and Hosey got almost hysterical: “It’s nothing but a stunt to get votes, that’s what it is. A guy ain’t no hungrier home than he is any other place, and he ain’t no better. But he’s on the books there, or can get put on the books, and if he affiliates right, he’s in. But how about them that can’t—”

If he hadn’t stopped so quick I don’t think Buck or I would have paid much attention, but when he went out like some radio that blew a tube, we looked at each other. Then we began to wonder if Hosey had done time, and if that was why he couldn’t get put on any books. And then pretty soon he began hinting around that if a man had made a mistake once and learned his lesson, was that a reason to shove him out in the cold for the rest of his life? Buck made a crack about work, but Hosey had a comeback: “Work — what work? Sitting on the onion bed, keeping them bullubs company while they grow? That’s all I see them CCC bastards doing. That and wait in line for the privy. That’s a sight for you. You want to know if it’s a government job you don’t look for a flag no more but only if it’s got a goddam green-and-white privy. What a country!” He got pretty bitter and talked so mysterious we began to wonder if the Communists had got him. They were in every mission by then, telling guys where to go to hear the dope handed out. But then we began to tumble that Hosey wasn’t talking about Russia, he was talking about grub, and was nothing like as hot for the law and keeping out of trouble like a real hobo does, as he had been.

All that, though, was before Albuquerque and what happened to me there, or didn’t happen, as it turned out. We were in the Santa Fe yards, getting ready to catch out West, for Arizona and maybe even California, if we could hang on that long. The shacks had said our train would leave around nine, so we parked on a flat while the yard engines slammed it together. When we saw three work cars pulled out, we got kind of excited, because if one of them was open and had bunks we might be able to have ourselves a trip. As I was the one that had mooched the supper Buck and Hosey said keep still, that they’d go see. So they went. It was quite a way, because the head of the train was half a mile away, so I got as comfortable as I could and began looking how bright the stars are on a New Mexico night. Then a passenger train pulled in. It made the station, then pulled out slow, with diner and club car going by, and me bitter as usual against people that were eating and drinking and reading and doing things I couldn’t do. Then some sleepers went by, mostly dark, but you could see porters in there making up berths. Then a sleeper began going by that was all dark, and then the train stopped. I was paying no attention until all of a sudden, not five feet from my face, a light went on. It was in a compartment, and who had turned it on was a girl. She was blonde, not too big, and with one of those shapes you see on a magazine cover. She switched around in front of the mirror, turned and twisted, and looked at herself from every angle there was. Of course that gave me an angle on every angle there was. Then she began to undress, and everything she took off she’d flirt with herself in the mirror again, and swing her hips from side to side like a dancer does. Pretty soon she hadn’t one stitch on, and I’d hate to tell you what she did then. Then the train began to move, and she was gone.

“What do you mean it did nothing to you?”

“What I say. Nothing, Buck.”

“Well, what the hell — with a window in between—”

“With a window in between or a whole glass mountain in between, for a guy to see that girl, what she was doing, and not have any reaction to it, don’t tell me it was just a little case of what-the-hell. There’s something funny about it.”

The work cars had been locked, but when the train began to move, Hosey stayed forward, in a sand gond that he liked, and Buck dropped off to join up with me. He kept calling my name so I wouldn’t go by without his seeing me, but I was so numb from what I had seen that I almost didn’t answer him. But I woke up in time to pull him aboard, and then when we got rolling I told him what had happened and what it didn’t do to me. He figured on it a while, then said: “You’ve forgotten something, haven’t you?”

“Like what, for instance?”

“Me and my Mex. And Hosey, how he carried on.”

“And what’s that got to do with it?”

“We just haven’t got it any more, that’s all. That’s what he was holding back. That’s what riled him like it did, and got him so excited he could hardly talk. That’s why a real hobo don’t have anything to do with women. It’s because he can’t. It’s not only that he stinks and they won’t have him and he wouldn’t even have the price of a bunch of flowers if they would, it’s because even if they would have him he can’t have them. He’s gone. Well, who the hell would expect any different if he thought about it awhile? That’s a life we lead, isn’t it? Sleep in some shed or tool chest or mission or boxcar or cattle chute, cold as hell, hard as hell, dirty as hell, and get the hell out before dawn for fear some bull will chase us. Shave out of that canteen cup of yours if we got any blades to shave with — shave every day with cold water, muddy water, any kind of water there is, till our face is raw or even got blood running out of it, because if we don’t shave we can’t mooch or even bum a ride or stay on a train without we get run in — because a guy without a shave, he’s just a bum that any judge would send up after one look at him. Then mooch a breakfast, whatever we can find, a bowl of soup with grease all over it or a bowl of grease with a little soup under it or six boiled potatoes from last night’s dinner or a cup of coffee and a piece of bread or whatever anybody’ll give us. Then work the stem a while if we’re clean enough to go on the stem, and if we’re not, find some goddam jungle under a railroad bridge where we can bring a can and some water and boil up our lousy clothes and hang our stockings up to dry and knock the mud off our shoes and hope the cops haven’t got orders to run us out while we’re sitting there naked with our knees up under our chin. Then into our clothes again and out on the stem again, and if we split it up right and Hosey finds a crate and you work the butcher shops and me the kitchen stoops, maybe we come up with enough for some mulligan, and if none of our stuff was rotten, we don’t get sick that night, but if some of it was, we spend half the night in some ditch before we start in town again trying to find another place to lie down and be warm and get some sleep. Next day we decide it’s the fault of the town and hop a freight and start all over again. You think that life puts anything in your bones that would be any use to a woman, you’re crazy. Glass, my eye. If there had been no glass there, nothing but a welcome sign, it wouldn’t have done you any good to go in. Would it?”

“No.”

In Phoenix we washed dishes in some restaurant for something to eat, and then Hosey went on back to a shed they had in the back yard, with gunny sacks piled up in it, where they said we could sleep. But Buck walked on over to a gully beyond the fence, and sat on a rock, and I could see him staring at the traffic that was going by on 80. Pretty soon I went out there with him. He was pretty glum: “Some life, Jack.”

“Bad as it can get.”

“Worse than I knew it could ever get.”

“I’ll go that far too.”

“What the hell are we going to do?”

“If I knew, pal, I’d tell you quick enough.”

We sat there a long time, and then my head began to pound. “Yeah, Jack, what is it?”

“Really, you’re still talking about one thing. What I found out through the glass, and you with your Mex.”

“If it wasn’t for that, Jack—”

“I could put up with the rest of it.”

“Come on, let’s have it.”

“Buck, the sleep part, we can manage, specially out here in the Southwest, where it’s warm, and at this time of year, when almost anywhere is a place to sleep. The rest of it’s grub. All right, get this: What we’ve lost, what we haven’t got any more, I mean to get back. I don’t mean to turn into just a thing, like Hosey is. I’m going to be a man, or else—”

“Yeah, Jack, that’s what I want to hear. But how?”

“I’m going to take it.”

“The grub?”

“You’re goddam right.”

“You think you’re doing it alone?”

“Then we’ll both do it.”

“Jack, we got it coming to us.”

“All right, then we got it coming to us. But I’m going to eat, whether we got it coming to us or not. Now if you want to come in—”

“Jack, shake just once and shut up.”

We sat out there till the traffic didn’t run any more, and you could hear birds warbling, and talked about how we were going to do it. By that time we knew where the grub was and how to get it and a whole lot of things nice people don’t know, but guys on the road do. The only difference was, would we or wouldn’t we? From now on we knew we would.