“So I came out to find work!” he crows.
I rub his head, making the hair flop back into his eyes, and he grins up at me like I’m better than roast beef, and for a second things don’t seem so hard. Then someone starts clapping.
I spin around, keeping Billy and his treasure behind me.
Gable stands up, all knobs and limbs, one side of his mouth turned up and his hat still riding low, and he’s slapping his hands together like he’s not applauding but condemning.
“Excellent performance.” He touches his fingers to his hat but doesn’t tip it. Doesn’t remove it.
He watches me to see if it stings that he didn’t acknowledge me as a lady. I don’t let him see that it does.
I left home in skirts and saddle oxfords but quickly learned that you can’t jump a moving train with all that fabric flapping about or keep your feet warm in handsome shoes. Now I wear pilfered dungarees and a dead boy’s boots.
Billy huddles behind me, hands on my waist, forehead dug deep into the center of my back. He tries to hide it, but Billy cries at night, trying to cuddle close because I’m quiet and soft and have never once given him a backhand smack like some of the men do. Like he’s some rangy cur trying to snatch food from under their noses.
I can’t let him get close and I can’t let him cuddle, so I step away. Just because I’ve got soft curves doesn’t mean I can get soft.
“It wasn’t a show.” I don’t let my gaze waver from Gable’s.
“Oh, yes, it was,” he says with a foxy smile.
I feel utterly exposed. I don’t look to see if the drunks with the greasy beards and hands stained pink with Sterno are watching us.
“It’s the truth!” Billy says. “My pop was in the army. He fought in the War. And old Hoover would’ve just let him starve.”
When Billy sticks up for himself, he sounds like me. Like he’s sixteen and already weary of the world. Shame he can’t keep his presidents straight.
“Roosevelt’s president now,” I remind him.
“I know that.” Billy frowns at me. “Hoover would have let us starve. It’s why we lived in a Hooverville.”
I knew that Billy’d had it rough, but I hadn’t realized his family had lived in one of those cardboard shantytowns. It makes me wonder what else I don’t know about him.
Gable stoops to look Billy in the eye. “Telling a true story in a way that pulls heartstrings is a fair talent.” He turns to me. “I should know. I’m a journalist.”
The way he says it makes me laugh. All serious, like he really believes it.
“You’re a newsboy?”
His mouth twists. “I’m a reporter.”
That makes me laugh harder.
“I work for the Wenatchee World.” He steps too close, his jaw clenched like he’s ready to fight.
I’m not afraid of this showboat, but I take a step back anyway. “There’s grown men in this jungle can’t find work breaking their backs to build a dam. And you’re telling me you earn a living with your words?”
He bites his lip. Only for a second, but long enough to tell me I’ve caught him in a lie.
“I have an article due next week,” he says. I don’t know if it’s me he’s trying to convince or himself.
“Bully for you.” I raise an eyebrow to let him know I’m not impressed.
He stills. Suddenly, like a thought just struck him. He cocks his head to one side, looking more like Clark Gable than ever, and looks at me appraisingly.
“I’m investigating the migrant workers,” he says.
Investigating doesn’t sound good. I can already see the slander-ridden story he’ll write for his rag, all about how we get fat and lazy on roast beef earned by sob stories while the rest of the country is hard at work.
“Migrant workers.” I snort, trying to sound like I don’t care. “You mean hobos.”
“My dad —” He curses under his breath. “My boss wants to know what they’re doing here.”
There’s the lie. He doesn’t have to earn a living. But I can’t begrudge anyone getting a job from his father. I’d be washing towels and sweeping hair in my dad’s barbershop if he hadn’t lost it in this damned depression. My dad, with his badger hair shaving brush and straight razor, covering his customer’s face with sandalwood foam.
“Better get on with it, then,” I mutter.
“There was an article about . . . about hobos in the New York Times.”
“And you think you can do better?”
“It says there’s a million men out on the rails in America.” He’s nothing if not persistent.
“A million men, eh?” I turn away. “Well, you’ve no need to talk to me.”
“I want a different angle. You could tell me what it’s like for a girl.”
I could. I could tell him exactly what it’s like for a girl. The lewd propositions and surreptitious pinches. The skepticism and mistrust. But that would just give him what he wants — a sordid headline with me as the poor featherheaded victim.