Back in the USSA

by Kim Newman

  The other hobo was the new smell. He wore too-big baggy pants under a too-small jacket, and had a tiny bowler-hat and a silly little cane. With his sharp toothbrush moustache and wide, scary eyes, he looked oddly like Reichskanzler Hitler. Ness had met some low-life but never anyone who stank quite as foul as the bum now holding out his hand. His mouth smiled, but his eyes said pure hate.

  Purvis handed him meat. He scuttled to the farthest corner to eat, picking fastidiously at the food with the tips of his fingers.

  "You'll have to forgive mah friend's manners," said the Texan. "He's a queer old duck. He don't talk. Don't even know his right name. We call him the Tramp. Girl's named Thompson. Call her 'Boxcar Bertha' and she won't mind. Say thanks for the eatin', Bertha."

  She nodded towards Purvis and carried on chewing. She might be pretty under the dirt, it was hard to tell.

  "The name's Johnson," said the man, accepting jerky from Purvis, "L.B. Johnson, Texan born and bred, dispossessed by the Mexican Occupation."

  "James Longford," said Purvis. "My buddy's Bill Brown. Where you headed?"

  "Going to slip into California, get ourselves work on an out-of-the-way illegal orange ranch. Get a little sun on our backs. How about you?"

  "Guy in San Francisco can get us papers. We can do construction work. Good money, good food stamps."

  "A deal of people got on the train back there," said Ness. "They all on their way to California too?"

  Bertha and the Tramp stopped chewing for a moment but Johnson blithely carried on. Ness knew he had been too pushy.

  "Sure," said Johnson. "I guess a lot will be going by way of Nowhere. That's where the Kid here wants to go, but I ain't going near the place. No sir, no thank you."

  "Nowhere?" said Purvis. "I don't understand."

  This was what they were on the road for.

  Johnson frowned. "How long you been on this train?"

  "Since Illinois," said Purvis. "Hopped on round about Big Rock."

  "Shoot," said Johnson. "You ain't spoken to nobody? Nowhere, Nevada, is where the squatter camp is."

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  "Squatter camp?" smiled Purvis, uncorking his bottle. "Why'd anyone want to squat in Nevada. It's all desert and mountains and snow."

  Johnson helped himself to more jerky. "Trying to get over the state line, mostly. Folks wants to get into California. There's work in California. Good wages and fresh fruit and warm sun and cool mountains. Who wouldn't want to live in California?"

  "Tom's at Nowhere," Boxcar Bertha cut in. "Tom's gonna lead us all to the Promised Land of Milk and Money."

  "Like the kid says," shrugged Johnson, accepting the bottle, "Tom Joad's supposed to be there. I don't know if I believe that. If Tom Joad's real and at this camp, I figure there'll be I-Men all over like flies on fresh cowflop. A man like that's a threat to the Party. They call him an 'agitator!"

  Johnson took a long pull on the bottle.

  "Cheezisfuckinchristawmighty!" he gasped. "Yes sir, that's J. Edgar's business. Mowin' down anyone says anythin' different from the CP. Bastard got the Amish, an' the nigra Baptists, an' the Mormons."

  Ness shot a glance towards Purvis. He was fiddling distractedly with an unlit cigarette, neutral half-smile set on his face.

  "Hey!" Johnson held the bottle out to the Tramp, "you want some of this kinkypoo joy juice you gotta get your cup. Ain't no way you can ask decent folk to drink outta this bottle after your diseased kisser's been round it."

  "I heard about Tom Joad," said Purvis. "Ain't he supposed to've croaked a CP boss in Atlanta for screwing folks out of their land during Collectivisation?"

  "Never heard that story," said Johnson. "Heard some others, though. Over Denver way he iced a buncha cops who gang-banged the only daughter of a widow-woman. Heard another how there was this shortage, people starving to death, good as, over in Iowa after Collectivisation. Joad and his sidekick Preacher Casey broke into the official stores and gave food to the folks. There's plenty of stories about Tom Joad feeding folks during the famines."

  "The bird sure gets around," said Ness.

  "Yeah," said Johnson. "I've even heard of him turning up in Texas. There's stories about how he's helped Texican folk—those of us still there, that is—against the Mexes."

  "Tom'll win back the land the Reds gave to the Mexicans," said Bertha. "Comrade, can I have one of them smokes?"

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  Purvis threw pack to the girl. She chewed it open and pulled out a cigarette.

  "One man can't be all these places at once," he said to Johnson. "Do you believe these stories?"

  "I don't know," said Johnson. "Some of them sound real enough, but others are moondust. You hear the same stories about Jesse James, or Purty Boy Floyd."

  Purvis's face was in darkness. Ness wondered if the Robin Hood tales about Floyd bothered him. No one said Boston Joe was anything but a parasite and a bourgeois counter-revolutionary, but plenty of saps rated some People's Enemies as heroes.

  Bertha went into the shadows and took the bottle back from the Tramp. She handed it to Purvis, who unhesitatingly drank. He wasn't pretending, he really was drinking that rat-poison.

  "Moondust?" said Purvis, encouraging Johnson.

  "Sure. After all the Mormons got put into camps or shot down a few years back, the story is that Tom Joad walks out of the desert and leads some of them up into the mountains where nobody can get 'em and where they keep their crazy religion alive."

  Purvis handed the bottle to Ness. He put it to his closed mouth. The booze stang against his clean-shaved upper lip.

  Bertha sat next to Johnson, smoking like an old-timer. "Injuns say Tom Joad can turn bullets to water."

  "Yeah!" laughed Johnson. "We were yakking with a 'bo the other day, a Navajo busted out of the reservation. He says Tom Joad is Navajo and he's given his people a heap powerful medicine that means nobody, not palefaces nor the Mexes, can steal their sheep again because if they try and shoot at a Navajo, the bullet turns to water."

  Purvis laughed. "I'd sure like to meet Tom Joad. Even a glimpse of him would do me. You really think he's at this Nowhere?"

  "I don't know what to think," said Johnson. "He's Moses, Santy Claus and Robin Hood all mixed up like my Mom's fruitcakes. If he's real, he's pretty much a regular guy. Not like in the stories."

  "Course he's real," said Bertha. "Tom protects folks on the road. They'd be too scared to cross America if Tom wasn't there."

  She took the bottle off Ness, and gulped at it as if it were mother's milk. Her big eyes watered. Ness wondered how she was getting by on the road.

  "What's Joad doing at the camp?" he asked. "Is he there to protect people, or lead a rebellion?"

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  "Neither, the way I hear it," said Johnson. "Like Bertha says, he's gonna lead folks to the Promised Land, California. There are state troopers to stop people getting in because only Party Planners decide where people travel to. California's got a long border so it's easy to sneak past them, but folks're gathering at Lake Tahoe, which is a plum stupid place to try and get into California. Up in the mountains you're nowhere near decent roads or railroads. People are gathering because they think something's gonna happen."

  "Maybe Tom Joad's going to part the waters lake and lead his people across," grinned Purvis, handing Johnson the bottle.

  "With Pharoah Capone's troops and I-Men chasing, getting drownded," laughed Johnson. Suddenly, he was serious. "Friend, I can tell you're interested. But take my advice—it's all I can offer for your hospitality—don't go nowhere near Nowhere. About the state line, the railmen usually 'member they ain't supposed to give out rides and toss you off. No ill feeling, they just know they're being watched. Even so, you might be able to slip into California by staying on this freight."

  In the light from Bertha's cigarette, L.B. Johnson looked old and sad, young face lined and battered.

  "Know why they call it Nowhere? Ch
airman Al named it when he opened the Olympics in '32. He said, you'll find unhappy people nowhere in the USSA.' So now there's this place called Nowhere, and it's full of unhappy people. A gathering of the hopeless, all come together to chase moonbeams. The CP thugs in Debs D.C. ain't going to like it. Whether or not there's any such animal as Tom Joad, sooner or later the Reds're gonna break it up. It'll be the Farm Collectivisation or the war on the Mormons all over again. People will die. Stay well clear of Nowhere, friend."

  "Untouchable," Purvis said, shaking him awake, "it's our stop."

  As a FBI agent, he was supposed to snap to and become instantly alert. He assumed J. Edgar Hoover had never endured hours of L.B. Johnson's filthy jokes then tried to get his shut-eye on the filthier floor of a cattle car. He guessed Purvis hadn't been getting tight, but anaesthetizing himself. His partner's breath was sharp with bad booze.

  "Reno, Nevada," Purvis explained.

  The train was in a station. Thin dawnlight shone through the wooden slats. Purvis hauled the door open, the rasp cutting through Johnson's snoring but not waking the sozzled hobo. He jumped down and Ness

  Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman

  followed. He tried to slide the door without waking their night companions. Looking back into the dark, he saw the glittering, alive eyes of the Little Tramp. Ness shivered, and shut away the icily piercing glare.

  "The rummy made us, Purvis."

  "Yeah, but he don't talk. LBJ and the broad, they've food in them. They wouldn't care if we were the Tsar of Russia and the King of England."

  Ness still shivered. The desert was cold before sun-up. His back ached badly. He used to practise ju-jitsu three nights a week but had lost the habit. Some agents limped about with chunks of counterrevolutionary lead in them; his wound of honour came from years bent over a desk.

  The porter had put off their cases in a heap. Standing by them was a cocky little fellow with a dandyish Western outfit, wide-brimmed stetson and bootlace tie. A star shone on his chest.

  "Howdy, boys," the Sheriff said.

  A toothless and enormously bearded deputy stood by, shotgun casually cradled. He wore patched overalls, only one shoulder-strap fastened.

  Purvis took his crisp straw hat from the pile of luggage, and set it on his head. "Purvis," he said, extending a hand. "Bureau of Ideology."

  "An I-Man, eh?" The Sheriff whistled tunelessly.

  "You'll be Sheriff Autry."

  Autry smiled like a mooncalf. The deputy spat a stream of tobacco juice that missed Purvis's shoes but not by much.

  "This is my Deputy. We call him Gabby, on account of because he talks so much."

  "Yessir, Sheriff Artery," said Gabby. "Sure do wonder how you-all kin stand my constant chatter and aggryvation."

  "This is Eliot Ness," Purvis said. "You've heard of him."

  Autry scratched his chin. "Nope," he said, "can't say as I have. You sir, Agent Purvis. Now you, I heard of. Got Dillinger, didn't you?"

  Purvis grinned.

  Sheriff Autry's coughing Tin Lizzie bumped along the road. Past Carson City was a wilderness. The Sierra Nevada rose ahead, a wall to keep trespassers out of California. Compared with the rail ride, the air was cooler, the country greener. Out of town, the car crawled uphill.

  "No sign of this monkey at all," Autry yelled over ever-lowering gears. "These folks are all tetched. Camp's a regular barrel of worriment. Squatters feudin' with the locals. Going to be an outbreak of typhus or

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  scarlet fever or something. On top of that, I got a warrant to arrest a guy who don't exist."

  "Tom Joad exists," Purvis said. "He's the Okie."

  The Population Index listed seven Joads with Tom or Thomas among their forenames. One too old, two still in grade school and one definitely dead last year in an works accident. Two more had been watched for months: they lead dull, blameless lives. Off to the People's Factory at eight every morning; home to wife and dinner at six every night. If the Index had every Tom Joad—under Minister of Manpower Resources Aimee Semple McPherson, a pretty reliable assumption—that left the Okie.

  "I was out there," Purvis said. "Never found his place, but I could smell him. It was like that with Johnny Dillinger. Where he'd been, he left an invisible track."

  Back in '31, the Oklahoma Tom Joad mashed a man's skull with a shovel in a dance-hall brawl. Sentenced to seven years State Service in the McAllister Pen, he'd kept his head down and got out in the summer of '35. After that, nothing was confirmed. Joad's prison file had disappeared. Before Ness was detailed to the case, Purvis had toured the county where Joad's family came from. Due to incompetence or corruption, it had been skipped in the '20s by former Secretary of Agriculture Long's Collectivisation drives.

  "It was crazy," Purvis told Autry. Ness could tell his partner was about to mouth off. "The Kingfish left gaps all over the Mid-West. Frank Spellman is filling 'em in, sending federal troops to take over farms and turn them collective. Easy to plan, impossible to do. If the Okies could afford bullets for anything but hunting food, there'd be a shooting war. Spellman is beating them, but the dusters will beat him. No point in collectivising land that's blown away. The Joad family is supposed to have lit out West last fall, after Spellman sent in the cats to doze their homestead. That's about when we first started hearing stories."

  The only element of physical description consistent between all the Tom Joad stories was that the agitator had a scar by his eye, where a comrade hit him with an axe-handle. Real or not, Tom Joad was the second most famous scarface in the USSA. Otherwise, he was a regular tall-short, fat-thin, handsome-ugly, black-white-yellow person.

  The car was on the level again and he changed gear upwards. Ness caught a glimpse of water, Lake Tahoe.

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  "I gotta say this, guys," said Autry. "You seen bad stuff, I reckon, but Camp Nowhere is the worst. Most people here ain't human, not like you or me. A human man couldn't stand to be so miserable."

  The Sheriff stopped his car behind a clump of trees. The I-Men got out: their plan was to walk into Nowhere, pick up the scuttlebutt on Tom Joad, then make a report. The camp stretched a quarter of a mile from the lake-shore, a mess of dull colours: mud shining in the sun; grey, brown and buff blankets raised as awnings and makeshift tents. It was strangely serene; no smoke from campfires, no sound of kids playing, no babies crying, no dogs barking, no machinery humming. There was no breeze, so not even the blankets moved. On Autry's reckoning, Nowhere had a population of 20,000 and growing, but it was silent in the middle of the day.

  They were in among the tents and vehicles before they saw sign of life, a shawled old woman sitting on a heap of furniture, smoking a corncob. She spat in the dust as they walked past. As though the witch had made a signal, the place came alive. Ness and Purvis were mobbed by ragged kids. Little pot-bellies and big staring eyes accused accusing the I-Men for having eaten. They asked for food, money, work. Purvis held out his hands and shrugged. The kids faded away. No one had anything.

  "This place doesn't have organisation," said Ness. "You'd think if there was leadership they'd get it tidied up, see to the sanitation."

  "Yeah, Untouchable. Nowhere could do with a bureaucracy. A cadre of desk-jockeys would get it sorted."

  The camp had no ground-plan. Tents were pitched at random, wagons and automobiles parked anywhere, most propping up "FOR SALE" signs. Every so often there was a garbage heap. On one a naked kid cleaned out already-spotless tin cans with his finger.

  "Maybe Tom Joad has not arrived yet," said Purvis. "Maybe they're waiting for him."

  Nobody did much of anything; one or two men moved around with fishing lines, but most sat or lay in the shade, staring into the middle distance. A man and dog tumbled in the dust in front of them, fighting over a pillow. The man, in vest and shirtsleeves, tried to tug the pillow from the dog's teeth. By the standards of Nowhere, the dog was well-fed. So was its adversary: in his
fifties, stocky, with a bulbous drinker's nose. The cut of his clothes was good. A hip-flask stuck out from his back pants pocket. The pillow exploded, showering feathers. The man made

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  things worse, shaking the pillowcase in exasperation while the dog retreated from the tip of his shoe. They all got covered in feathers. Purvis laughed.

  "Harold," screeched a woman. "Those were my mother's feathers!"

  "I didn't know your mother had feathers, dear," he drawled to himself.

  The woman emerged from under a blanket-awning, tall and middle-aged, a touch too prosperous to be here. She snatched away the pillowcase.

  "Harold, you're drunk!" she snapped, turning away.

  "And you're a gooney bird, dear," said the man to himself, pulling his flask. "Tomorrow I'll be sober, you'll still be a gooney bird. Bringing us up here, when we could've been in California! Tom Joad, indeed!"

  "Excuse me," began Purvis. The man jerked as if startled. "I couldn't help hearing you. We've just arrived and were wondering if the stories were true. Is Tom Joad here?"

  "He is not, my friend," he intoned, lowering his voice, "if you want my opinion he never was, nor ever will be. I'd like to get out of here, but Amelia and the children are convinced they're going to meet him any day. Wanna snort?"

  "Obliged," said Purvis, taking the flask and drinking.

  "The name's Harold Bissonette," he said, brushing feathers from his clothes, "though Amelia prefers Bisson^j/j/."

  "What brings you to Nowhere?" asked Purvis.

  Bissonnette looked around furtively. "We're out of Wappinger Falls, New Jersey. I'm going to manage a collective orange ranch in California. In Ogden, Utah about ten days ago, we heard tell of Nowhere, and how Tom Joad would be here. My lawful wedded gargoyle insisted we come this way."

  "You must be the fastest typist in the West," Purvis commented. "Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat."

  They were in Autry's tiny office. During the last five days, Purvis had talked. Now it was time for paper-work, Ness typed. They hadn't shown their badges. There was no point scaring information out of anyone when a crust of bread got them yarning up a storm. Starting with Bissonette, they'd logged 126 interviews spread evenly across Nowhere.