The Moth (24 page)

In the late afternoon I figured to get the gun. It’s when most guys want a drink, and while we didn’t have much money left, we did scrape together for some liquor and one or two things. I got a pint, with some fizz water, at a drugstore, and they gave me some ice in a container. There was a phone booth in there and I rang a picture theater and got the time of the feature, the newsreels, and all the rest of it, for Hosey. I checked on a bus he’d have to ride, to join up with us later. When I got back to the motel it was around five.

“Buck, you got a beer opener? ... Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought this was my friend’s room. I was thinking of throwing a drink together, but I’ve got nothing I can use to open my carbonated water. Well, have
you
got one?”

“No, I wish I could accommodate you, but—”

“I’ll find something.”

“Would—pliers do?”

“I bet they would work.”

“You’re welcome to try, if you think—”

“Well, say, why don’t
you
try?”

“Is that an invitation?”

He was a shriveled little guy, maybe forty, with wrinkles around his eyes, a little red mustache, and a jut-out chin that slewed over sidewise from his jaw, just about what you’d expect somebody to look like that had a .38 in his bureau drawer. How quick he found the pliers was funny, and we went in my room. They didn’t work, but by a funny coincidence, the screw driver on my jackknife did. I unscrewed the top of the whisky, that was so cheap it didn’t even have a cork, got out the glasses, poured drinks, and said: “Here’s how.” Right away he got friendly and began asking me if I wasn’t from Virginia. I said no, Tennessee, just outside Chattanooga, and he said he knew it was below the line somewhere. We talked along, I poured more drinks, said: “Here’s how” again. But about that time somebody outside began whistling
Casey Jones
and I started out. “Excuse me just a second—be right back. Help yourself to the liquor.”

“Thanks.”

Outside, crossing the street, were Buck and Hosey. A block away, I caught up with them. We strolled along and I made Buck show me the gun, to make sure he had it. He spread his coat pocket and I looked in. It was an automatic. We went over it then with Hosey, what he was to do, and explained it to him once more, that it was all part of his alibi, in case he had to prove one. He was to buy a ticket at the theatre, and sit in a loge seat at the back. If no usher bothered him he was to stay there. If an usher did ask to see his ticket, he was to show it to her and put up an argument, but kind of a rube’s argument, without much steam in it, enough that she’d remember him, not enough he’d get thrown out. Then he’d move and stay in his new seat till the newsreel started, which would be a few minutes after nine o’clock. Then he was to leave, by one of the fire doors marked “Exit,” so nobody could say exactly when he left. Then he was to walk down to Highway 91 and take position about a half block away from the filling station. At anything that even looked like a cop he was to signal us. “O.K., now. Put your fingers in your mouth and try that screech whistle we’ve got to have if you’re going to be any good out there.”

“Listen, Jack, I’ve whistled that way ever since I was—”

“I said try it.”

“Here goes.”

“... Good.”

“How much is the theater ticket, boys?”

“Thirty-five cents. Here’s a buck. Better have yourself some java and beans first, and don’t go in much before eight o’clock. Take it easy. Act natural. Talk straight from the shoulder. Let both girls, or anybody you meet going in the theatre, see you. Smile, act friendly, so they really remember you.”

Buck and I had some beans at a dump near the station, and when we got done it was eight, and time to get ourselves a car. We walked on toward a residential section, then found a street with some cars parked out on it. At that time cars still had running boards, so in the middle of the block we sat down on one, facing across the street, pretty much out of sight, and watched. We figured that incoming cars, full of people coming home, would be no good to us. Those cars would be driven into garages, and to follow them in would be just staking ourselves out. We aimed to catch somebody visiting, that had left their car at the curb and would be going home around eight thirty or a little after. From the time it would take them to leave some house, get to their car, climb in, and find the key, to the time we’d get there, would be just a convenient interval. I suppose we’d been there a half hour, getting pretty nervous, when three people, a man, a woman, and a boy, came out of a house up the street. Buck reached for the gun. “No.”

“What’s the matter, Jack, you getting cold feet?”

“We can’t handle three.”

“We better be handling somebody.”

“Let them go.”

They went, and two more parties went, a two and a four. And then came a girl, from a place three doors down. She had more comical jokes, saying goodbye, about not doing anything she wouldn’t do, not taking any rubber nickels, and being good, than you could count. I could hear the cusswords rising in Buck, and chocked him hard, with my elbow, to keep him quiet. But at last she came skipping along, humming under her breath. She got in from the curb side, and we were at the left-hand window, watching her switch on the ignition, before she had any idea we were there. “Easy, easy, easy.”

“What?”

“Not so loud.”

“Who are—?”

Buck slipped his hand over her mouth in kind of a gentle, regretful way, opened the door, and pulled her out. I hopped in, found her bag, started the motor. Then I slid over, in the right-hand seat, so Buck could hop in from the left, where he was holding her. He let go of her and she started to scream. He got in, took the wheel, and started. I looked back. A couple of people were at their front doors, but nobody was running and nobody was shooting. “Look in her bag, Jack. We’ve got to have dough, to pay for the gas we order—”

“... A five and a one. And change.”

“O.K.”

“And something
else.”

“What?”

“A watch.”

“Are you kidding?”

We’d spotted a drugstore with a clock on it, and we’d expected to check by it, so we’d come to the filling station exactly when we wanted. But the watch meant we could take a drive, relax, and get our nerve.

Out of town a few miles, toward the California border, he began to talk: “Jack, how many guys went on the road, do you think, about the same time we did?”

“How many eggs in a shad?”

“Millions, you think?”

“I saw at least that many.”

“What happened to their sisters?”

“... How do you mean, Buck?”

“You ever see any girls on the road?”

“Well, I heard stories.”

“Yeah, we know about those two bums in a boxcar, come one, come all everybody welcome. But I’m talking about those other girls, in homes that were just as hard put to it to feed them as they were to feed their brothers. What happened to them?”

“Well, I’ll bite. What?”

“How would I know? Except what I think.”

“Which is?”

“They stayed home.”

“Well?”

“I’ve cussed out the goddam country, tonight I stole a car, and I’m getting ready to do more. But a country that lets a million good-for-nothing tomatoes sit around home till things get better, just because they’re girls—well, somebody thought something of them.”

“You couldn’t mean the country’s O.K., could you?”

“Somebody took care of them.”

Around nine forty we slipped back to town, and the radios and juke boxes and orchestras were beginning to hit it up, though not loud like they would later. We checked on Hosey, and there he was, exactly where he was supposed to be, by the sycamore tree, in the shadow of a little real-estate office near the sidewalk. We drove past and waved, so he’d know we were there. We turned the corner, went past the station, checked the manager was at his desk, inside, doing paper work. Nobody else was around. We went down the street two blocks, cut our lights, turned around. Then we rolled back toward the station and parked facing it, maybe a hundred feet away. He didn’t look up. A car drove up and a guy got out, in the white pants and peaked cap all the managers wore, and a black sweater. The man inside went out and they seemed to be counting money. Then they opened the drawer Hosey had spotted, and put something inside. The guy in the black sweater drove off. The other one went back to his desk. “O.K., Buck, get out your matches.”

“There’s no matches in this.”

“I said get them out. We draw for it.”

“Every job we’ve pulled, you’ve done the dangerous part. This job, I’m doing it. I’ve got the gun, right here in my pocket, so we don’t have to do any shifting, and—”

“Cut the argument!”

“Then cut it yourself.”

He started the motor, snapped on the lights, and pulled out from the curb. In two seconds we were rolling into the station, beside a pump. The manager came out and spoke to Buck: “Yes sir? What can I do for you?”

“If I’m not too late for some gas—”

“We’re open. Fill her up?”

“That’ll be fine.”

The car was almost empty, so he’d be some little time. Buck and I got out and went in the men’s room, Buck leading the way. I kind of relaxed on one hip and walked with a limp, so I could fudge three or four inches on my height. Inside, I passed over the money he’d need when the time came to pay. He went out. A wild idea flashed through my head. From somewhere I could remember those descriptions of wanted persons, saying they were “light” or “dark” or whatever. I lit a match, charred it, and blacked my eyebrows. Then I took a piece of paper, wadded it up, and jammed it in my mouth, between the front teeth and the gum, the way Denny and I had done with cotton, for the pro football pictures. In the mirror I didn’t know myself. Instead of being light I was dark, and I had a buck-tooth look that was somebody else, not me. I slouched out again and the manager barely looked at me. Buck had his back to me. I climbed in, took the wheel, and started the motor. Buck said: “O.K., what do I owe you?”

“Two fifty-five.”

Buck passed over the five, the manager went to his cash drawer, and opened it. Inside, from where I sat, I could see thick piles of bills, in their compartments, bulged up high. He picked up two bills and some change, turned and was looking into the .38. “Step back... Put your hands on your chest and keep them there. Not high, we don’t want a gallery. That’s it. Now take it easy, don’t get excited, and—”

When it started I don’t know, but it seemed I’d been hearing it for years in some kind of a dream, this whistle of Hosey’s. Then, off in the night, a shot sounded. Buck twitched, went three feet in the air, then came down like he had turned into a sack of meal. I went out of there like a bat out of hell. Somewhere I saw Hosey, his face white, running toward me to jump in. I didn’t even slow down. Next thing I knew I was out of town, whether two miles or ten I couldn’t tell you, waiting at a grade crossing while a freight went by. All of a sudden I cut the motor, left the key in the ignition, and jumped out. That freight, brother, wasn’t meant to be boarded by anything on two feet. I mean, it was going fast. But it was headed west, that was all I wanted to know. I raced beside it, grabbed a handhold, hit the side of the car. I waved my foot around, found a step, pulled myself up. I was on a boxcar. I felt something funny in my mouth. The paper was still there. I hooked it out with my finger. Then I rubbed my eyebrows off. All I could think of was the miles that were clicking by, between me and what was lying there in a Las Vegas filling station, that had once been my pal, and the other one, that was still my pal, or wanted to be, but that knew something to tell on me.

Up ahead, I could see the brakeman coming. I didn’t move. When he got to me I waved. “Hiya, big boy.”

“Hiya.”

F
OR THREE DAYS I
sat around the Midnight Mission in Los Angeles, washing dishes for my grub and sleeping in their main dormitory. But it kept worrying me, spending nights with other guys. I was afraid I might talk in my sleep. I picked up a buck or two on some parking lot and moved to a little hotel over on Sixth Street, fifty cents a night and no questions asked. For the first time since I’d been on the road I signed in under my own name, because I wanted it in black and white I was in California, not Nevada. I kept talking to the clerk like he must remember me, and saying how glad I was to be back in Los Angeles from up in Fresno. It turned out he was new there. But then something happened that helped quite a lot. A guy came downstairs, carrying a vacuum cleaner, and telling how well he’d cleaned the upper halls, and the clerk said fine, he’d mark him paid right now. So he did. It was just an old-fashioned register, where guys signed their names, or F.D. Roosevelt, or whatever, with their address, if they had one. On the right-hand side was the room number, and beside this was marked “pd.” Soon as I handed over my fifty cents I was marked “pd.” But if this guy was working for his bed, and all they did about it was mark him “pd.” too, that meant there was no cross-check on cash, and
that
meant, if a name was there, a few days back, this clerk wouldn’t know if the face behind the name had been there or not. I watched my chance, then went to the register and began turning pages. I found July 10, the day we held up the station. The page was full up, solid. I looked at July 9. It was full. But on July 8 there was a blank line. I picked up the pen and wrote “Jack Dillon, City.” Then beside that I wrote a room number, and then with my thumb I smudged it. Then beside it I wrote “pd. pd. pd. pd.” All that time I watched the clerk. He went right on with what he was doing. I went up to my room, lay down, and felt better. It wasn’t much of an alibi, but it was some kind of alibi.

I felt better, but not much better. By day, I tramped around to every garage, shop, and filling station I could find, trying to land a job, and now and then picking up a buck fixing flats. If things had been bad before, they were as bad now as they could get. By night I worked on my clothes with spot remover, then pressed them under the mattress, trying to get myself in some kind of shape in case a chance would come. But it all spelled Skid Row, and sooner or later I knew Hosey would come along, or I’d bump into him in some soup kitchen, and what that would lead to I didn’t know. Maybe he was harmless, but I was afraid of him. So pretty soon, when I got two parking jobs in a row, and had five dollars I could call my own, I made up my mind to blow. Where I didn’t know, but I marched myself up to the bus depot at the corner and bought me a ticket for some town down the line.