Those Across the River

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT WAS ON the first or second day of September that the vagrants came to town. Two men, one white and one black, accompanying a mannish woman who smoked a pipe and wore her hair up under a man’s hat, established themselves on the benches in the middle of the town’s square. The white man held a sign that read NEED WORK while the black man held his head down so the brim of his hat kept shade on his face and the woman smoked her pipe. The white man had a huge mustache that would have sat well on a cowboy’s face. Nobody approached the town square for several hours, which was normal in the hot part of the day when the sun stooped and whipped the tea roses unmercifully, so around two o’clock they shuffled over to Harvey’s Drug Emporium and ordered an ice cream.

That’s where I was sitting, reading a collection of James Joyce, procrastinating again and glad to be out of the dank basement.

They were a penny short of the cost, so I slid one over to them.

Funny how specific the memory is; I still remember the sound of that penny going ssshhhkkk across the counter. They all nodded their heads and the white man thanked me. Harvey found it in his heart to scoop an extra half scoop on top since it was clear they meant to share it.

What struck me about the way they ate the ice cream was that they had a system; each took a level spoonful to be fair to the others, and their attack was almost choreographed. I suspected then that these were rail-riders, and that they had learned their table manners in those hobo camps I had heard about where men, women, blacks, whites, dogs and Chinamen all slept together and ate out of the same pot. I was fascinated.

“How are you makin it?” Harvey asked them.

“We makin it alright,” the white man said. “Be makin it better with some work. We can all three of us chop cotton, split wood, fix a roof. You know somebody needs a hand?”

Harvey said, “No,” then shook his head afterwards as if to emphasize the no, but more likely to shake the image of Miles Falmouth out of his head; Miles with his bad back and his oldest son just ten; the neighbors had been taking turns pitching in with the farm work. Miles, who had a little money now thanks to Pastor Lyndon’s collection. Miles, who hated vagrants, but not nearly as much as he hated blacks.

“No, I don’t know nobody,” Harvey said, closing the matter.

That was all they had to offer in the way of conversation, except for short, bland responses to Harvey’s questions. He spoke to them about different things, like how hard it was to run a drugstore with the economy so bad, or how smart he had been to put in a soda machine, how that was all that saved him from getting boarded up like the jeweler, or he told them about his plans to buy a car when business picked up so he could get to the mill town without having to bum a ride off somebody, but after a while he saw that they were just looking at him so he gave up on talking altogether. It got quiet. Flies buzzed against the screen windows. The fan up in the corner made the only real noise, and the three of them knew that the quiet was going to get them kicked out soon. Harvey had removed the empty ice cream dish so they could not even look at that or hold it near them like a badge of their right to sit at the counter. None of them spoke until the white man said, “Mister, we just want to sit in your fan for a little while. It sure is plum hot out there.”

“That’s fine,” Harvey said, and it was fine for a while until Harvey got thinking how no customers had come in the store and none were likely to with three rough-looking hobos taking up space, and one of them a darkie. Nobody passing on the street and looking in could think that they were going to smell very good up close, and the truth was they did not smell good. Harvey probably didn’t want to be a bad Christian, but I imagine he got thinking how even in the desert Jesus and the others managed to wash their feet and anoint their heads with oil, having no money and no real work besides preaching. Harvey stood there at about three o’clock with a look on his face like he was practicing in his head how he was going to say something like, “Sitting in the fan is fine, to a point,” or “Alright, I think if you ain’t ordering it’s time to move along,” when the black man noticed him thinking. He nudged the white man and the white man said, “Thank you,” in his bland way and the three of them went out. The screen door banged behind them and Harvey was left with only myself and his fan for company.

My own soda glass had been empty the whole time.

Lester Gordeau later told me the vagrants went from business to business in Whitbrow asking if anyone needed help sweeping up that night, or if anyone had a leaky roof that needed fixing, but they found no succor. Lester was working at the feed shop that day, and he told them how to get to Pastor Lyndon’s house, but then wondered if he had done the right thing. No telling with people like that. But then, what was a pastor for if you couldn’t send poor and downtrodden folks to him for at least a few kind words?

The dinner had not gone well, according to Sheriff Estel Blake (he of the potbelly and the good baseball arm) when he later regaled us with the story at the general store.

Sheriff Blake had buckled on his belt and .32, pinned on his badge and closed up the hardware store to track the hoboes down. It wasn’t hard. Estel found them sitting at dinner with the pastor, his daughter and his wife. It was a nice dinner, too, but it looked like the pastor had done without fried chicken so the strangers could have some.

The sheriff searched the woman’s rope and canvas bag and found the stolen dress.

“What are we gonna do about this?” he said.

“Might these brethren not at least finish their plates?” the pastor said.

“If they do it quickly, I suppose.”

So they gobbled down their food while the sheriff stood a little off from the table with his hat and the dress in one hand and the other hand not too far from his holster, which, he told Old Man Gordeau, he “discreetly unsnapped.” They ate like dogs, Estel said, the woman breaking a thigh bone with her back teeth and using a splinter to scrape the marrow out. When they finished, he took them outside where the butcher was waiting on the porch. The sheriff handed the dress to the butcher and said, “Do you want to press charges, Hal?”

“What do you reckon, Estel?”

“Any harm done, Hal?” the sheriff said.

Hal might have looked at the pastor, or maybe at the three vagrants in their homemade shoes and worn-out clothes, before he said, “No, I don’t reckon they’s any harm done. Long as they git.”

“Oh, they’ll git alright. Maybe they’ll even be good enough to say sorry, now that their bellies is full.”

The white man said, “We sorry.”

“What about you two? He sorry for all three of you?”

“We sorry, mister. Bad sorry,” the black man said without looking up.

Now the sheriff looked at the woman, who did not speak or meet his gaze. The white man said, “She’s Polish, from Poland. Don’t speak no English.”

“Shit,” said the butcher, “she could a paid me in keelbossy if I’d a knowed that.”

The sheriff laughed. He was glad not to have to drive to the jailhouse in Morgan, the small town half an hour in the opposite direction from the mill town. Besides, Estel was lower on the pecking order than the full-time boys in Morgan and they never let him forget it. A real bunch of blowhards.

“Alright,” the sheriff said loudly, just in case the woman really was Polish, “the man you took from says no harm’s done, and I say the same. But there’s goin to be harm done if you don’t move on down the line, and I mean tonight.”

The three of them started walking.

The pastor said, “These brethren were thinking of working for Miles Falmouth. Seeing as they are contrite and wish only for the means to have things honestly, I wonder would it do any harm to let them remain until we may speak to Brother Miles?”

They did not stop walking, but they slowed their pace to listen.

“Pastor, I know you’re all washed in the Blood and I try to be, too. But I done my good turn tonight. I don’t think you want these three to have the run of Miles’ house, him as weak as he is, and them the kind of people they already proved they are.”

“Sheriff, how would it sound if I let them to stay here the nights and work for Brother Miles by daylight?”

“I would say that you are a Godly man, but that my word is final. Miles is too sick to keep a watch on these, and him with just the young boy. And you know how he feels about the blacks.”

“Alright, then. God bless you, Mr. Blake. I’m sure the Lord will remember the kindness you have already shown,” the pastor said. And then he shouted, “And God bless you three. May you find the next doors open to you.”

If they heard, they made no sign.