Herman’s hand firmed on mine, helping to take the quiver out of my voice. “You guessed it. My Gramps, here, and my, uh—”
“Cousin,” said Harv offhandedly. “First cousin.” He glanced at the deputy sheriff barely an instant as if that were the issue.
Mallory’s jaw came up an inch, but he did not challenge Harv’s version of family life. He turned to Herman, studying the ruined side of his face where the eye had been and the facial wrinkles that looked deeper than ever in the flicker of the firelight. “Must be nice to have a helper in raising the youngster out in the rough like this, huh, old-timer?” His question was not without sympathy.
Giving the lawman a sad sweet smile, Herman uttered, “Ja,” which for once I was really glad sounded close enough to good old American “Yeah.”
“Well, I’ve seen worse bunches of renegades,” the deputy tried joking again, making a move toward leaving but not before a conciliatory nod to Highpockets and a general one to the rest of us. “Just don’t tear the town up on Saturday night and you won’t see my smiling face again.”
? ? ?
“HERMAN?” MY VOICE sounded hollow in the confine of the culvert where we were stretched feet to feet. “Do you think that deputy sheriff believed Harv?”
“Does not matter much.” He, too, sounded like he was at the bottom of a well.
“Mister Deputy made believe he did. Sometimes make-believe is as good as belief, hah?” I heard him shift inch by inch to try to get anywhere near comfortable on the corrugated metal, the bedrolls literally saving our skins. “Better catch winks, Donny. Tomorrow might be big day.”
25.
THEY ALL WERE big days, in the Big Hole. And I was among the first to see this one come, at least as represented in human form.
Herman and I crawled out of the culvert at earliest daylight, stiff in every joint and sore in corrugated bands across our bodies, the morning chill making us ache all the more. Were we ever thankful that down at the kip Skeeter was already up—hoboes do not sleep late—and rebuilding the fire while Midnight Frankie was working on mush of some kind in the mulligan pot. The encampment was gradually coming to life as its inhabitants groaned their way out of their bedrolls, abandoning the bed of earth to face another day. Harv could be seen rolling up a bedroll no doubt provided by loyal Lettie. As we crossed the road to head on down for whatever this day would bring, Herman blearily said he was going to the river to wash up, while I needed to take a pee so badly after the night of confinement in the culvert that my back teeth were swimming. Off he went to the gravel bar and I ducked into the brush below the road.
I was relieving myself when someone came thrashing through the willows, swearing impressively, right into the path of what I was at. He cut a quick detour, giving me an annoyed look. “Hey, PeeWee. Watch where you’re aiming that thing.”
“Oops, sorry.”
Still swearing enough to cause thunder, he plowed on through the brush toward the encampment, leaving me red with embarrassment, but what was worse, slapped with that tag. There it was. PeeWee, peeing in wee fashion in the bushes, homeless as a tumbleweed. Nowhere near making Believe It or Not! but already dubbed into the funnies. My shameful fallen state in life, a tramp, a shrimpy one at that.
No, damn it, a hobo. A haymaker, I resolved nearly to my bursting point, if anyone would just let me. Buttoning up quickly, on a hunch I set off after the visitor crashing his way toward the campfire.
? ? ?
AS HE BURST through the brush into the clearing with me close behind, the tandem of us drawing the attention of the entire kip, I saw he was wearing good but not fancy cowboy boots and a stockman Stetson with a tooled leather hatband complete with a miniature clasp. He probably was around forty years old, although his brown soup-strainer mustache was tinged with gray. Halting on the opposite side of the campfire from where Highpockets and Harv and others were lining up for Midnight Frankie’s version of breakfast, he held his palms toward the blaze to take the chill off. “Morning, men.”
“We can agree with both of those,” Highpockets acknowledged, the rest of the hoboes risking no commitment beyond silent nods. “What’s on your mind otherwise?”
“Putting up hay fast and furious, what the hell else?”
By now Herman had silently joined me, ruddy from the cold water of the river and with his glass eye in and his eyeglasses on. I can’t say he looked like a new person, but at least he looked like the old Herman the German, the one ready to hop a bus for the Promised Land somewhere south of the moon and north of Hell. His strong hand on my shoulder lent support as we found a place in the growing circle of hoboes crowding around to hear what came next from the man warming himself by the fire.