by Sam Torode
On the bright side, no one would call me the Remus Kid ever again.
CHAPTER 11
THE next thing I remember, my whole body was laid out flat and shaking on a boxcar floor. I couldn’t see Craw’s face in the darkness, but his voice was unmistakable. “Congratulations, my boy—you made it aboard with all your parts intact. So far as I can tell, that is. Whether or not you’ll be able to have children is an open question.”
I scooted back against the side of the car and rubbed my hands together, trying to bring some feeling back. “How did I get here?”
“Well,” Craw said, “I was going to compose a ballad in memorium of your demise, but I couldn’t decide whether it should be called ‘The Remus Kid’s Last Ride’ or ‘The Remus Kid’s First Ride’—so I gave up and rescued you instead.”
What I didn’t understand was how he could have dragged me all the way up the ladder and into the car, especially with only one good hand.
Craw slid over next to me. “Hungry?”
“You bet—I haven’t had a bite all day.” My stomach growled to second the motion.
“Be grateful you had one yesterday,” Craw said. “That’s better than some folks.” He pulled a silver tin out of his coat and peeled back the lid. With his hook, he speared a strip of pale, flaccid meat and dangled it in front of my face. The scent of lye burned my nose.
My stomach stopped growling and tightened into a knot. “What is it?”
“A Hoover steak.” Craw slurped it down and fished me another piece.
I nibbled on the edge—it tasted like a piece of bologna that had met a violent death and been embalmed. “I take it you didn’t vote for Hoover.”
+ + +
Sleeping in a boxcar was enough to make me miss my berth. When I woke up the next morning, I had to piss through a crack between the planks and hope that Craw’s tastes were limited to women. But I wasn’t in a position to complain about the accommodations.
Thankfully, the cracks in the walls were wide enough to let in some sun and provide a glimpse of the countryside, too. Missouri in May: it was the most beautiful land I’d ever seen—lush and green, with dew-drenched hills. We rolled on over mountains (maybe they were just hills, but they felt like mountains to me) and through cut-rock gorges. Craw called out all the stations from memory—Rolla, Lebanon, Joplin, Springfield.
After a while, he slid over next to me. “If I were your father,” he said, “I’d be worried about you. Of course, I speak only hypothetically. I have no children—to my knowledge, at least.”
“I didn’t run away,” I said. “My father’s the one who sent me out. He got in an accident and lost his sight.”
“I’m sorry,” Craw said. “How did it happen?”
“A bird shat in his eyes.”
He leaned in closer. “I can hardly hear with these old ears of mine. It sounded like you said—”
“Bird. Shat. He got drunk and passed out on the lawn. A bird flew over and—”
“Say no more,” Craw said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “I know what it’s like to have a drunk for a father.”
“He’s not a drunk,” I said. “It was the only time he’s ever touched the stuff. He’s a Baptist preacher.”
“Say no more.”
Craw scooted away and started carving at the wall with his hook. After a while, I saw he was carving a rhyme:
Baptists and Catholics, all have their creeds;
Still the doubt is, where true Christianity be.
“You’re a poet?” I asked.
“No, but I dabble.”
A minute later, Craw made his way to the back of the car to pee. He unzipped his pants and looked back over his shoulder. “My pecker’s a poet.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s a longfellow.”
+ + +
By now, I knew Craw was more a braggart than a pervert. When I asked him about his travels, he spun tales of riding the rails and stowing away on ships, bumming all the way from Alaska to Timbuktu and back—twice.
I asked if he’d ever been to France. “Oh yes,” he said. “Those French women love black men.”
“Why’d you ever leave?” If I could have gone to live with the French Lady, I sure as heck wouldn’t have come back.
“The ol’ wanderlust, I suppose. Leaving’s in my blood.”
I wanted to hear more. “Is it true that all the ladies in France, you know, don’t shave under their arms?”
Craw rubbed his chin. “I can’t say for certain. You see, I didn’t have time to inspect them all …”
“But as a general rule?”
“My boy, no woman in the world shaved her armpits till Mack Sennett’s bathing beauties started the craze. That was back about nineteen-and-sixteen.”
“1916?”
“That’s right. I was nineteen, and the bathing beauties were sixteen. But that’s a whole nuther story.”
+ + +
As the afternoon wore on, he asked more questions about my journey. “So what beckons you to Glen Rose?”
I hesitated. Lying is an important skill to have on the road, and I’ve always been terrible at it. My lips may say one thing, but my face always gives me away. And I surely didn’t want any hobo to know about the money.
When I stammered, Craw nudged me with his elbow. “A girl, eh?”
“Heck no,” I said. “It’s only my uncle. He owns a farm, and my father’s sending me to work for the summer.”
“Be grateful you have a job waiting for you. That’s better than most.”
That gave me an idea. I needed a guide, and Craw needed money—maybe we could strike a deal. “If you’re looking for work,” I said, “I’ll bet my uncle could use a extra hand.”
Craw held up his hook. “So could I.”
“Are you interested in work?”
“Work?” Craw snorted. “I’ve never worked a day in my life. Work is for chumps.” He waved his hand around the boxcar. “Look at me—I’ve got everything a man could ask for.”
My heart sank. There was no way I could make it to Glen Rose on my own. Even if I did make it there, I wan’t sure I could find the money. My father’s map was shredded in a hundred pieces somewhere along the tracks in St. Louis.
For a long while, neither of us said anything. Then Craw picked at his empty tin can with his hook and tossed it across the car. “I’ve been thinking about your offer,” he said. “Do you suppose your uncle could use the services of a carpenter?”
My eyes lit up. “I’m sure he would. So you’re a carpenter?”
“No—but for a bed and two meals a day, I’m willing to learn.”
+ + +
Later that afternoon, we crossed over into Oklahoma. My throat was parched and my stomach so empty it didn’t even bother growling anymore. My bones ached from
the constant vibration, and my ass had long since gone numb. So when Craw said he was ready to get off for a break, I heartily agreed. “Next stop is Muskogee,” he said. “There’ll be friends there. And food.”
He opened the hitch on the side door. “Let’s hope your exit is better than your entrance,” he said.
“You mean, we have to jump while the car’s still moving at full speed?”
“We can’t exactly ease into the station, waltz out, and wave hello like a couple of Hoover tourists. They’d throw us in the can.”
Craw could tell I was worried. “Just follow my lead,” he said. “Aim for the grass, watch out for the bushes, and don’t forget to roll.”
He slid open the door, tucked his hat under his arm, yelled something—a prayer or a curse, I couldn’t tell which—and shoved off. His body touched down with
a thump and tumbled over the grass like a sack of laundry.
It sure looked easy. I took a deep breath, pinched my eyes shut, and jumped for all I was worth.
Which, once again, wasn’t much. I hit the gravel face-first, flailed, bounced, and landed smack in the middle of a thistle bush.
&nb
sp; It took a minute for Craw to catch up with me. “I said aim for the grass,” he said. “Not land on your ass.”
Warm blood ran out of my nose and lip and trickled down my chin. But instead of helping me up, Craw started rutting around in the weeds. “What are you doing?” I asked. “I’m bleeding to death, and you’re picking wildflowers?”
“To send back home to your mama,” he said. “For your funeral.”
I climbed to my feet like a groggy prizefighter. My clothes were torn at the knees and elbows, and my arms and legs burned with gravel scrapes and nettle stings. I swaggered around like I’d just survived nine rounds with Jack Dempsey.
Craw crumbled up a handful of weeds and squeezed them till the juice came out. Then he took a chaw of tobacco, spit it over the weeds, and rubbed the mixture together in his hand. “Here,” he said. “Put this on your wounds.”
“Like heck,” I said. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“It’s ragweed and snuff,” he said. “The best medicine there is to stop itching and bleeding.”
I wasn’t in the mood for some half-baked hillbilly cure. “Why don’t you fetch some poison ivy while you’re at it.”
“Oh ye of little faith. Just try it. Unless you’d rather wait for an itinerant doctor to come riding up.”
Eventually, I decided to humor him. After all, it couldn’t sting any worse than the pricklers already did. I was wrong: when Craw smeared his concoction on my arm, it burned like the devil’s poker.
“Give it a minute,” Craw said. “You ever heard of a medicine that feels good at first?”
While I waited, he lectured me on the scientific method. “Everyone scoffs at a pioneer. Did you ever stop to consider the person who first discovered milk? It took a lot of nerve to be the first man to pull on a cow’s nipple and drink whatever came out. You can bet his friends never let him live that down. And yet, a million years later, nobody thinks anything of drinking cow juice.”
As it sank in, the ragwood-snuff salve went from fire to ice. To my astonishment, it was actually cool and soothing. Within five minutes, I could hardly feel my scrapes and scratches.
Craw was still talking. “If the world was full of skeptics like you, nobody would ever discover anything. Eggs, for instance. Would you have been first in line to eat a white ball that fell out of a hen’s ass? I think not. But I bet you’d trade anything for a hardboiled egg right now.”
When I asked for more salve, Craw beamed in triumph. Then he took some cigarette papers out of his pocket and told me to use them for bandages.
“My boy,” Craw said, “I’ve been collecting cures since before you were born. I know all the secrets of Indian shamans, Voodoo witch doctors, and mountain grannies. For instance, a turpentine and lard poultice will clear up a chest cold. Blackberry juice and red oak bark stop diarrhea. If you’ve got the opposite problem, mayapple root will get your bowels moving. For worms in the stomach, eat crackled egg shells in syrup. Walnut hulls ward off ringworm. Milkweed for warts. Why, I can cure everything from baldness to flatulence.”
I looked over at Craw’s head—he was still carrying his hat. “But you’re nearly bald.”
He snapped his derby back on his head. “I said that I know the cures, not that I have all the necessary ingredients at hand.”
Then he bent over, flipped up his coattails, and ripped a great fart.
CHAPTER 12
WE walked along the tracks for what seemed like miles, and I began to doubt whether Craw had any idea where we were. Now and then he’d stop and sniff the air. “We’re almost there. I can almost smell it.”
As far as I could see, there was nothing but red dirt and thistle bushes ahead. The sun was resting low on distant hills, casting a golden glow across the Oklahoma prairie. Back in Remus, it was probably raining icicles; who was I to complain?
After a while, Craw picked up the scent and turned off on a rabbit trail, through the knee-high grass and towards a row of scrubby trees.
“Smell that, boy?”
“What—did you mark your territory last time you were here?”
“Smoke, boy!”
I followed him through the trees and down into a gorge, towards a stream of water red as tomato juice. The air was pungent with the smell of dead fish, rotting vegetation—and smoke. Craw’s nose was right.
Then I spied an encampment of sorts, up ahead under a cement bridge. There were four or five shanties pieced together from wooden pallets, sheets of tin, and boxcar doors. On the river bank, two hoboes flanked a cookstove made from a barrel with a grate on top. A plump hobo stood stirring, while his skinny companion sat hunched over on a milk crate.
Craw gave a sweeping bow. “Welcome to Hooverville.” It looked more like a train wreck than a town, but all that mattered was the kettle of soup boiling on top of that stove. “We’ll eat like kings tonight,” Craw said. Then he called out— “Hey ho, jungle buzzards!”
The man stirring the soup dropped his ladle and hurried towards us. “Why, look what just washed up—you filthy old bastard, Craw!”
“When did you get out of the bughouse, Chester?”
After they exchanged a few more insults, Craw introduced me. “This here’s the Remus Kid. As tough a greenhorn as ever rode the rails. Watch your language, though—he’s a preacher’s boy. I don’t want to catch you taking the Lord’s name in vain or saying damn or hell, neither.”
“Damn it all to hell, Craw—them’s half the words I know! Can’t I say shit?”
“Of course you can say shit,” Craw said. “That’s not a curse—it’s a colloquialism.”
I tried to explain that Craw was only fooling and I didn’t give a damn what the hell anyone said. “Aw, don’t you mind us,” Chester said. “I done got religion myself once. Just can’t remember where I put it. And Craw, here—why, he knows the Good Book better’n any minister. He can recite all Ten Commandments by heart. Course, that’s cause he’s done broke ’em so many times.”
“You’ve got to sin before you can be redeemed,” Craw said. “A man might as well enjoy it.”
All this while, the skinny hobo stayed put with his back to us. When we got closer, I saw he was hunched over grinding coffee beans between two stones. “That’s Red,” Chester said. “He’s a comedian.”
Red mumbled something. The words were indecipherable, but they sent Chester into a laughing fit. “Like I keep sayin’, Red—they’re gonna put you in the movies.”
Red craned his neck around and grunted something vaguely threatening. When I saw his face, I stepped back; one of Red’s eye sockets was an empty, shriveled hole. But Chester only laughed harder. “Cut it out with them jokes, dammit. I done warned you—you’re gonna make me split my gut.”
When we reached the stove, Craw leaned over the kettle and grinned. “This, my boy, is mulligan stew. Also known as sonuvabitch stew, when we’re in impolite society.”
The bubbling mixture was gray as ditchwater, swimming with unidentified chunks of white and brown. It wasn’t Campbell’s, but by this point I didn’t care. “I’m so hungry I could eat a skunk,” I said.
“Careful,” Craw said. “You might just get your wish. Chester—what’s in this gruel?”
“Oh, the usual,” Chester said. “Potatoes, onions, beans, carrots, catfish, possum. And a snapping turtle—couldn’t pry the shell off the devil, so I threw him in whole.”
Craw took another sniff. “Dare I ask how long that possum has been deceased?”
“Red killed him fresh just this morning,” Chester said, ladling the soup into tin cups. That was one detail I could have done without.
I took a sip. It tasted pretty good, actually, as long as I closed my eyes and pinched my nose.
“Fill up,” Craw told me. “This might be our last grub for a while. Food on the road is as scarce as preachers in heaven—if you’ll pardon the expression.”
+ + +
A few more hoboes straggled into the Muskogee jungle before nightfall, but none made an imp
ression on me like Chester and Red. Chester looked like an overgrown baby, jolly and plump, with a head as bald as a billiards ball. Red was long and gaunt with sunken cheeks, an Adam’s apple the size of a baseball, and a wild shock of orange hair. Chester did all the talking for the both of them, aside from Red’s grunts. They were the Laurel and Hardy of hoboes.
When the ladle scraped the bottom of the kettle and our bellies were full, we gathered twigs and branches for a bonfire. Our ragtag company gathered around, about eight in all, and Craw regaled us with his songs. One of his ballads described a hobo’s vision of heaven:
Where the cigarettes grow near whiskey streams,
An’ hamburgers sprout on trees;
Where the chickens lay eggs right in your hand,
An’ lay down to roast in a fryin pan;
Where the cows churn butter in their pails,
An’ pour you milk when you pull their tails;
Where pretty girls swim in the fountains,
In the Big Potato Mountains …
Another of his songs told the story of a hobo Don Juan whose exploits could have filled a dozen dirty comics. The ending went something like this:
Now Hobo Bill sits on his porch,
An’ his wives play with his hair;
He sees the freight trains passin’ by,
But he says ‘Go on, I don’t care.’
He’s settled down, the old-time rambler,
An’ he’s got more wives than a priest;
He’s loaded up higher than a riverboat gambler,
The dirty old bum of a beast.
As Craw sang, the other ’bos would interject an occasional shout or “amen.” It wasn’t much different from a Baptist camp meeting—except that instead of God and the Bible, he was singing about whiskey and women.
