He lays the tips of his fingers along his upper lip, and I feel something almost like conscience.
“I’m Billy!” He pushes himself between us. “Billy the Kid.” He stares at Lloyd’s pen and paper, waiting for his name to be written down in all its glory. Lloyd looks over Billy’s head at me and winks.
“And why are you out here?” When Lloyd smiles, it’s like Billy’s the only person he’s ever wanted to talk to. Like he’s been waiting his whole life for it. He’s suited to his profession — his smile could make folks confess any manner of secrets.
“Hard times, mister!” Billy says. “Hard times!”
It’s what all of us say. Why else would you risk life and limb, blowing across the country and back? Risking railroad bulls who would throw you headfirst off a moving train and sheriffs who’d sling you in jail till even your mother forgets your name? There’s some out here who seek adventure, I suppose, though I can’t find sense in that.
“Why are you here?” I ask. I could spend all night just tossing Gable’s questions back at him. “You’re not looking for any old story, are you?”
“My father thinks the migrants are a menace,” Lloyd says. “That they’ll bring fighting and robbery, that the . . . the women of Wenatchee won’t be safe to walk the streets. He wants me to write a story to convince the city council to raze the campsite where you all stay.”
“The jungle,” I correct him, fearful for the men celebrating food, unaware the town will destroy them, leaving behind nothing but a chalk-drawn symbol warning others it’s yet another place where it’s not safe to stay.
“What do you think?” I look at him directly. His gray eyes turn blue just at the center. I find myself holding my breath.
“I asked for the job.”
My breath comes out in a rush. “Did you talk to the men?”
Lloyd looks away. “No,” he says. “I was afraid of them.”
This unvarnished truth makes me squirm. Part of me wants to reach out to comfort him, like I would with Billy. The other part knows fear is like fire. It only takes a spark — like a newspaper article — to create a conflagration.
“They’re desperate,” I say finally. “No work. No food.”
His pen is poised. Ready. “Are you scared?”
All the time.
But I can’t say it, even in the wake of his confession, because it would mean admitting that the men are dangerous, deserving of fear, when all they want is a chance.
“No. We’re all the same.”
Lloyd studies me and I stare back. The longer he looks, though, the softer his face gets, until suddenly his eyebrows pinch forward and he looks down at Billy.
“I’ve heard that most ride the rails for six months,” Lloyd says. “Then they go home. How long have you been out here?”
Billy looks up at me. Time isn’t his strongest suit.
“I met Billy seven weeks ago,” I say. “I’ve been out here eight. I think your information is wrong. Nobody can go back to how it was. The dust bowl dried us all up bitter as seeds and spat us out all over the land, and none of us yet has taken root.”
Lloyd looks up from his pen, eyes wide.
“Can I use that?” he asks. “What you just said?” He clears his throat. “As a quote, of course.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s good. The way you said it. That’ll grab their attention. Make them care.”
I shrug, but warmth grows in my chest at his praise.
“And what is a girl doing out here?” he asks, looking up at me quick and then back down at his pen.
I wonder if he means what kind of girl?
I look back on the one I was — carefully modulated hair skin skirt shoes voice — and it’s like she’s not even me. The one who dreamed of being a teacher right up to the day the school ran out of money and closed its doors. There was nothing left to teach because hardship took it all.
I want to tell him that the bank took Dad’s shop and his will to live. That Mama needed more money and fewer mouths to feed and that my leaving has only achieved one of those things. But I say nothing, because I don’t want pity.
Out here on the rails, I’ve learned to keep my secrets close and my tongue still.
Lloyd glances around the boxcar, and his eyebrows pinch again. He must take my silence for refusal, because his questions change direction. “Where are you going?”
“There’s no work here, so we’re heading west.”
“Seattle?”
“Maybe there’s more in the city.”
“Maybe there’s just Skid Road.”
That’s a chance I have to take. “What do you care, as long as you get your story?”
“What about the New Deal programs? The CCC? Building dams and bridges and national parks?”
I snort. “It’s for young men. There’s many of us that don’t qualify.”
Billy shifts between us. It’ll be five years before he can work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, and by then things will be better.
We hope.