Shaking the Nickel Bush

by Ralph Moody

  The next morning I had Lonnie up and wide awake by seven o’clock, and I let him have only pancakes, three strips of bacon, and coffee for his breakfast. I told him I didn’t want to be tight but it would have to be that way till we found jobs, that I was going to eat only one egg at a meal and make out the rest on gluten bread and peanuts—with a little cabbage for supper.

  From where we camped that night it was about sixty miles across San Carlos Indian Reservation, and we’d planned to make the whole distance in a single day, because there’d be no ranches where we could stop to look for jobs. For the first three or four miles it looked as though we were going to make it. Then Shiftless went into a fit of shimmying. She’d always wandered more or less, but it had always been in sort of long sweeping curves, and Lonnie had become so used to the feel of her that he could usually keep the curves from being very wide. But as soon as we got onto the Indian reservation that morning she began wiggling her front wheels the way a polliwog wiggles his tail. If Lonnie tried to go more than five miles an hour she’d shake herself like a wet dog.

  At first Lonnie thought he might have put too much air in the tires, so he let a little out, but that didn’t help a bit. Then, because we had to drive so slow, the fan wouldn’t suck air through the radiator, so Shiftless boiled like a teakettle on a forge. At our first three or four stops we drained out part of the boiling water and added fresh from the can we always filled whenever we reached a town or river. The only trouble was that we had to put in five times as much as we drained out. The rest had blown off in steam. And we’d already found out in Globe that we’d have a twenty-five-mile waterless drive before we reached the Gila River. It took us till midnight to make the twenty-five, and we’d used up every drop of water we had long before we got there.

  The next day the boiling didn’t bother us so much, because we were following the river and could get plenty of water to cool Shiftless down, but she wouldn’t quit her shimmying. Even at that we thought we’d be able to make Fort Thomas for Christmas Eve, but we didn’t do it. It was just turning dark when we left the reservation and passed the little flag station at Geronimo. Halfway between there and Fort Thomas one of our front tires whistled like wind around the eaves of a barn. By the time we were stopped, it was flatter than a dropped egg. Between the shimmying and the rough gravel of the road, the rubber of both front tires had been filed away till the canvas lining showed through.

  I thought we were finished. Even with the change Lonnie had brought back after he bought the gas I had less than eight dollars in my pocket, and I was sure a new tire would cost more than that. Lonnie got down on his hands and knees, lit matches, and felt all along the tread of the tire. “We ain’t bad off!” he shouted after a minute or two. “We ain’t bad off at all, buddy! It just blowed out a little hole no bigger’n a lead pencil. Jeepers Creepers! I wish’t I’d remembered to bring along a vulcanizin’ set and a boot! I could fix this old baby up so’s’t she’d run another thousand miles.”

  “How much would one cost?” I asked him.

  “Well . . .” he said. “A good one would cost three, four bucks. But I could patch this little old hole up with a five-cent rubber plug and a ten-cent tube of rubber cement. And I could make a good enough boot by stickin’ in a piece of old shoe sole. How far do you reckon it is from here to Fort Thomas?”

  “According to the map it ought to be three or four miles,” I told him.

  “Gi’me two bits and go to gettin’ supper ready,” he told me. “I’ll hoof it into town and be back by the time you get the grub cooked.”

  We drove Shiftless off the road, I gave Lonnie the quarter, and he was starting off down the road toward Fort Thomas when I remembered it was Christmas Eve. I wasn’t a bit sure he’d be able to fix the tire when he got back, and it seemed to me that we’d probably have to spend Christmas Day right where we were. Then we’d have to decide which we’d sell first, our outfits or Shiftless. That was what made me call Lonnie back. I knew how much he’d hate to part with either, and if we were going broke anyway, we might as well go in style. When he got back to me I passed him two dollars and said, “Tomorrow’s Christmas. You spend all of that for our dinner—a good fat chicken we can roast, and all the trimmings.”

  “Jeepers Creepers!” he shouted, grabbed the two dollars, and started away down the road at a trot.

  I found some good dry greasewood for the fire, put a head of cabbage on to boil, and a pot of water for coffee. There wasn’t any sense in warming up what was left of Lonnie’s beans and bacon until he came back, and I could bake him some biscuits while he was fixing the tire, so there was nothing for me to do but sit and wait for him. But just waiting was no good because I couldn’t stop thinking, and there wasn’t much comfort in thinking right then. Just to have something to kill time with I got the clay bucket and box of sticks and wires out of Shiftless. Then I sat down beside the fire and began twisting up a little armature for a horse.

  As we’d come through the reservation I’d seen an old Indian pony standing out on the desert; three-legged, with his head hung nearly to the ground. I felt about the way that old pony looked, and before I realized what I was doing I found myself bending an armature for a horse standing just as he had been. The light from the greasewood fire was good, and I dug deep into the bucket to find some clay that wasn’t dried out too much. It had just the right feel about it, and when I began working it onto the armature it slipped under my thumb like wet silk. I fished around in the box till I’d found most of the little tools I’d whittled in Phoenix, and began scraping and shaping the clay the way I wanted it. I didn’t try to make a nice smooth job of it, but let the tools pull on the clay a bit, so as to make it rough like that old pony’s hair. And I put a big hay-belly on him, and sprung knees, and a bone spavin below one hock.

  I was so busy with the old pony that I didn’t hear Lonnie when he came back. I didn’t know he’d been gone more than a few minutes when, from right above my shoulder, he said, “Jeepers Creepers, buddy! That’s the Injun pony we seen on that little hill this afternoon! Why didn’t you tell me you could do that stuff?”

  “What’s the sense?” I said. “It wouldn’t help us to find a job . . . nor to find tires for Shiftless. I only do it when I’ve got time to kill. I’ve whittled them out of wood since I was a little kid. How did you make out?”

  “Well, I’ve did worse,” he chuckled, and dropped two big fat hens down beside me. “And I got sweet potatas, and celery, and onions, and a pie. I had to snitch the vegetables off’n a sidewalk stand. The pie was four bits—it’s mince.”

  “And by the looks of these hens you snitched them too,” I said.

  “Look, buddy, I had to,” he told me. “I wasn’t goin’ to leave Christmas go by without getting you nothin’.” As he spoke he fished into his hip pocket, brought out a real nice jackknife, and passed it toward me. “It ain’t much,” he said, “but it might do for whittlin’ horses.”

  I knew that knife had cost at least a dollar, so before I reached for it I asked, “Did you swipe that too?”

  “Buddy,” he said, “you ought to know me better’n that. I wouldn’t steal stuff! Not out of a store or nothin’. But chickens, that’s different. A man’s got to eat.”

  That time I put my arm around Lonnie’s neck and told him he was my buddy, and I didn’t say another word about his having swiped most of our Christmas dinner. While I was warming up his beans and putting the coffee on to boil he sat holding the little clay Indian pony, looking at it, and turning it over in his hands. “Could you make one of these here with a rider on it?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I told him, “but it wouldn’t be much good. As soon as the clay dried, it would warp out of shape and crack. Without a rider I can cast one in plaster so it will last forever . . . or until it gets dropped, but it would be too tough a job to cast one with a rider. The hat brim and the reins wouldn’t come out of the mold clean, and the least little bump would break them.”

  Lonnie was s
till looking at the little horse when I dished up his beans and poured the coffee. “How long does it take to cast one in plaster?” he asked.

  “Oh, a couple of days in dry country like this,” I said. “One to dry the mold and one to dry the casting. Why?”

  “Nothin’,” he said. “I was just thinkin’. Will this here one last over Christmas?”

  “Sure,” I told him, “if I keep a damp rag around it. It’ll last as long as the clay’s kept moist.”

  “Well, hadn’t you best to wrap it up then ’fore we have our supper? You could use one of them dish towels. There’s one of ’em ain’t too dirty.”

  Before he’d touch a bite Lonnie got out the cleaner of our two dish towels, wet it at the water can, wrung it out, and wrapped the little clay horse as carefully as if it had been a sick bird. After he’d stowed it away in the grub box I tossed him the package with his shirt and overalls in it, and said, “There’s something Santa Claus left while you were gone to town.”

  It’s funny how happy you can be over just little things, and how quickly you can forget all about your troubles. Neither Lonnie nor I could sing worth a whoop, but we both knew a few of the old Christmas songs, mostly hymns we’d heard at Sunday School. With the moon hanging over the mountains beyond the river, and a coyote barking somewhere up the valley, we sat by our little fire and sang till we were sure it was past midnight. Then we shook hands, told each other “Merry Christmas,” and turned in as if we didn’t have a worry in the world.

  10

  Rice Pudd’n

  CHRISTMAS morning I let Lonnie sleep late while I heated a dishpanful of water and washed my underwear, spare shirt, and jeans. I couldn’t do much about Lonnie’s washing. He was sleeping in his dirty shirt, and his old overalls were so full of grease that I couldn’t have got them clean without boiling them in lye water. After I had my washing done and hung out on a creosote bush I washed our dishes and silverware, and scoured the frying pan and Dutch oven with sand. With Shiftless shimmying the way she was, we kicked up as much dust as a cavalry regiment, and most of it seemed to have settled in the orange crate we used as a pantry. And from cooking over greasewood campfires the frying pan, Dutch oven, and dishpan had grown a black shell as thick and hard as a turtle’s.

  After the dishes were done I started cleaning the hens Lonnie had swiped, but the job would have been easier if he’d just wrung their necks and brought them with their clothes on. In that way I could have rubbed clay into the feathers, smeared on a coat half an inch thick, and roasted them in the coals from a campfire. Then when we were ready to eat them all I’d have to do would be to whack them against a rock. The hard-baked shells would break like an old flourpot, taking the feathers off as clean as a whistle and leaving the meat hot and juicy. But I guess Lonnie had thought he could fool me about having swiped them. He’d yanked off about three-quarters of the feathers—just in handfuls—had torn the skin in half a dozen places, and had got sand ground into the torn parts.

  Lonnie never would tell me where he swiped the hens, but it must have been off somebody’s roost, and it must have been plenty dark in that hen house. He’d picked two fat ones all right, but it had been years since they’d been pullets. There were dry scales along their breastbones, and they were poochy—like geese—in the rear. That kind of a hen will roast fine in clay, if you give it three or four hours in a good deep bed of coals, but if you try to roast it in an ordinary oven it will usually come out tougher than bullhide. I was afraid ours would come out even worse if I tried to roast them in the Dutch oven, so I decided to cut them up, roll the pieces in white flour, brown them in grease, and stew them into a pot of fricassee.

  I could hear Lonnie snoring when I picked off the last pin-feathers and washed the sand out of the torn places, but I’d barely picked up the butcher knife to cut the old hens into pieces when he wailed, “Aw, buddy, it’s Christmas Day. You ain’t about to make stew out of them chickens, are you? I spent near onto an hour huntin’ fat ones like you told me, so’s’t we could roast ’em.”

  “Sure I’m going to roast ’em,” I called back. “I was just getting ready to take their insides out. But if you want them stuffed you’d better shake out of that bedroll and fix our flat tire. I can’t make stuffing without stale white bread and sage.”

  I don’t believe Lonnie ever woke up or got up any faster in all the time I knew him. By the time I had the hens cleaned, he’d jacked up the wheel and was going at the flat tire like a coyote trying to dig a gopher out from under a rock. “Come gi’me a hand, buddy!” he hollered. “Don’t reckon this here tire’s been off in a month o’ Sundays. It’s froze to the rim like as if it was cemented. Here, take this piece of broke spring and pry that side loose while I get the tire iron and screwdriver in over here.”

  It took us nearly half an hour to pry the tire off the rim, and when Lonnie took the inner tube out it looked like a patchwork quilt. There were already two rubber plugs in it, and six or seven glued-on patches. “Jeepers!” Lonnie said as he turned it around and looked it over. “It’s a wonder we didn’t have a blowout on one of them mountain roads—and, brother, that would of been all! . . . what with Shiftless bein’ a mite loose in the steerin’ gear and wheel bushings. Hmf! I’d about as leave have a paper sack in there as this thing—’twould hold air better. Well, you go on with your housekeepin’, and I’ll get this hole plugged up, one way or ’nother.”

  I’d daubed a good thick covering of clay on the biggest sweet potato so it would bake in the coals, had peeled the onions, and was cleaning the celery when Lonnie came over to the fire and asked to borrow my new knife. As soon as I passed it to him he reached down and began cutting one leg of his overalls off at the knee.

  “What in the world are you doing that for?” I asked him.

  “Got to make a boot for that tire,” he told me. “Where it blowed out it’s wore down to paper-thin, and I won’t be wearin’ these dirty britches no more noways. Anyhow, not to town, and on Christmas Day. A man’s got to get dressed up once in a while.”

  I helped Lonnie while he folded the piece he’d cut off his overalls and stuck it over the broken place inside the tire. Then we put the mended tube back in, pried the tire onto the rim, and pumped, and pumped, and pumped. The old air pump hadn’t been used for so long that the leather valve washers were all dried out, and the only way we could get it to take hold at all was by unscrewing the top and pouring in water every few minutes. I think we got about as much water as air into the tire, and when we had it about halfway up Lonnie told me, “Leave it go. That’s enough to get me into town, and I’ll fill it up at a garage. They don’t charge you nothin’ for air. You just tell ’em you’ll come back later and buy some gas.”

  He peeked up at the sun and shouted, “Jeepers Creepers! It’s near onto noon. Mind fillin’ the radiator while I change my cloze?”

  I’d filled the radiator and wiped the thickest of the dust off Shiftless by the time Lonnie came back, and he really looked like a gentleman. He had on his new shirt and overalls—with the cuffs turned up the way I wore mine, but nearly six inches above his ankles. He’d shaved, combed his hair, polished his old boots as well as he could with bacon grease, and dusted off his hat. “Reckon I’ll need about four bits,” he told me as he peeked at his reflection in the windshield. “Spent myself clean broke last night . . . what with that mince pie and all.”

  I gave him a half-dollar and said, “That ought to do it all right. All we need is a loaf of stale white bread and a dime’s worth of sage.”

  I’d cranked Shiftless and Lonnie had warmed her up till she began hitting on all four, then he leaned out over the door and asked, “Look, buddy, if I was to get some rice and raisins, do you reckon you could whack up a rice pudd’n? My maw always used to make it on Christmas, and it was larrupin’ good.”

  “Rice custard?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but there was yellow all in amongst the rice . . . and lots o’ raisins.”

/>   “Then you’ll have to get a quart of milk and a nutmeg,” I told him. “We’ve got plenty of eggs. Both those hens were laying, and they were full of yolks.”

  Lonnie gave Shiftless a shot of gas, kicked the pedal into low, and started off with a roar. By the time he’d gone a hundred feet he had old Shiftless up to fifteen miles an hour, and she was going down the road like a drunk running for a train. Every time the front wheel came around to the place where Lonnie had put in the piece of overall leg it hopped and made a sound like a flapping sole on a worn-out shoe.

  I didn’t expect Lonnie to be gone more than an hour at the most, but it was nearly two before he came back, and when he came he was as excited as a little boy at his first carnival. “We’re all set, buddy! We’re all set!” he yelled as he turned Shiftless off the road and came dodging toward camp through the creosote bushes. “I was pretty dang sure of it when I seen that little horse last night!”

  When Lonnie turned off the road I’d expected our patched tire to blow at any second, and I was watching that wheel when he pulled around the last clump of brush between us, but the old tire wasn’t on it. Instead, there was a pretty fair looking one—not new, but without any of the canvas lining showing.

  Lonnie jumped out over the door as Shiftless switched her tail and came to a stop. He threw his arm around my neck and hollered loud enough to nearly break my eardrums, “We’re set, buddy! We’re set, I tell you! Look what I got for that little old horse you made—and two gallons of gas to boot. Boy, howdy! If you can make enough of ’em I can trade ’em for all the gas and grub we’ll need! Even tires! If that little critter had of been made out of somethin’ hard, ’stead of mud, I could of got a brand new tire for him.”

  “That’s fine,” I told him. “I’ll bet I can make them as fast as you can trade them off, but did you get the other stuff you went after?”