I don’t know that it would be in any book of etiquette, but I was a lot more welcome walking into the hobo gathering with an armload of firewood than if I had merely strolled in with my face hanging out. “Good fella,” said Midnight Frankie, stirring the black pot of mulligan, a stew found in no recipe book. I dumped my armload on the firewood pile and retreated to the farthest spot on one of the logs that served as seating surrounding the campfire, wishing Herman was with me to provide moral support or at least company.
“For any of you who didn’t have the pleasure of his company on the last bus, this here’s Snag.” Highpockets did the honors of making me known to the other batch of hoboes and them to me. Similar to our busload, they had names all over the map, Candlestick Bill and Buttermilk Jack and Dakota Slim and the Reno Kid—not to be confused with the California Kid—and Left-handed Marv, who had an empty sleeve where his right arm should have been, and so on through enough others to confuse St. Peter at the gate. My presence as a kid with no kind of a capital K did not seem to bother anyone since Highpockets vouched for me and he clearly was the topkick of the whole bunch. The Big Ole, as I soon learned this unelected but acknowledged type of boss was called. Why the hobo community fashioned an oversize Swede as the last word in leadership, I hadn’t the foggiest idea—it was their lingo, not mine—but in any case, Highpockets saw to things that needed seeing to, including keeping the peace now when Peerless Peterson and the Reno Kid scuffled over which of them had claimed the spot under a favorable cottonwood first. With that settled by Highpockets’s threat to knock their heads together, things went toward normal, the wine bottles appearing out of bindles every so often lubricating a general conversation that ran toward the unfairness of a world run by fat-cat capitalists and sadistic small-town sheriffs.
By now I was nervously glancing out into the dark, wondering what was delaying Herman and kicking myself for not going with him into town and keeping him out of trouble, or at least being on hand when it happened. Goddamn-it-to-hell-anyway, could even this remotest of towns conceivably be plastered with MOST WANTED posters, and had he been thrown into whatever variety of jail the Big Hole held? I was torn between holding our spot in the campfire community and plunging into the darkness to go searching for him.
In the meantime, the hoboes were loosened up by the circulating bottles to the extent there was now a jolly general demand. “C’mon, Shakespeare, give us one.”
“My kingdom for a source,” that individual half comically, half dramatically put a hand to his brow as if seeking inspiration. Mimicking a high-powered thinker—or maybe there was no mimicking to it, with him—he pondered aloud, “Now, what immortal rhyme would a distinguished audience of knights of the road wish to hear, I wonder?”
“Quit hoosiering us and deliver the goods, Shakey,” Highpockets prodded him.
“As you like it, m’lord,” the response pranced out, over my head and probably all the others as well. Crossing his legs and leaning on his knees with his arms, the learned hobo lowered his voice confidentially enough to draw his listeners in, me included.
“There was an old lady from Nantucket—”
Audience cries of “Hoo hoo hoo” greeted this promising start.
“Who had a favorite place to tuck it.”
The way this was going, I was momentarily glad Herman was not there.
“It slid in, it slid out—” The recital bounced the springs toward its climax, there is no more apt way to say it. I could see Pooch moving his lips in repetition to catch up with the words, while Midnight Frankie smirked like a veteran of such moves. Other hoboes banged fists on their knees along with the rhythm of the limerick or leaned back grinning expectantly. By now I was thankful Shakespeare’s contribution to the autograph book was only vaguely smutty.
“Slick and sure in its route—” An artful little pause to build suspense, I noted for future reference. Then the culmination:
“Under the bed. Her night bucket!”
“Ye damn fancifier, here we thought we was gettin’ somethin’ educational,” the Jersey Mosquito called out while other critics hooted and kicked dirt in Shakespeares’s direction and told him where to stick the old lady’s chamber pot. As the merriment went on, I was giggling along until I glanced over my shoulder for any sign of Herman yet and saw a flashlight beam headed straight for our culvert.
I knew it! Herman had been nabbed uptown, and here came a cop to confiscate our belongings. With a feeling of doom, I slipped away from the campfire circle and stumbled up the road embankment, frantically rehearsing pleas to the law officer now shining his light at the mouth of the culvert and pawing around in there.
And found it to be Herman, stowing two sets of blankets and wraps of canvas to roll them in. He kept dumping goods from his armload. A Texas tux work shirt for each of us. Leather gloves, ditto. Changes of underwear, even. Not to mention the flashlight. “So, Donny,” he said after a flick of the beam showed him it was me panting up to the culvert. “We have fixings to be haymakers.”
“Holy wow, how’d you get that much? Weren’t we next thing to broke?”
He fussed with a bedroll a bit before answering. “Old-timey wicker will just surprise you, how much it brings.”