Lonesome Whistle Blow: A Novel of Hard Times

By James M. Vesely

In this exciting sequel to Coon Creek, Elias Bunt and his family are once again uprooted from their home - this time by the ravages of the Great Depression. The Bunts leave California after Elias decides to take his wife and family back to Dallas City, the small town in Illinois where they were born. But his youngest son is restless. Pushed by the boredom of the farm, and the grinding reality of hard times, young Rafe Bunt bids his family farewell and leaves Hancock County to make his own way through the grim and uncertain landscape of America in the 1930s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 10, 2004
• ISBN: 9780595786220

James M. Vesely

James M. Vesely has written "Seasons of Harvest," "The Awakening Land," "Shadows on the Land," (THE CORRALES VALLEY TRILOGY) "Journey," "Unlike Any Land You Know," (NON-FICTION) "Coon Creek," "Lonesome Whistle Blow," "Cadet Gray," and "Creature." Jim was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He and his wife now live in the small, rural village of Corrales, New Mexico, just outside Albuquerque. Jim is a member of the Western Writers of America.

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LONESOME WHISTLE BLOW

A Novel of Hard Times

All Rights Reserved © 2004 by James M. Vesely

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

iUniverse, Inc.

For information address:

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Inc. 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

LONESOME WHISTLE BLOW is a work of fiction. Aside from actual historic figures and historically factual events, all other names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 0-595-33832-1

ISBN: 978-0-5958-6164-4 (ebook)

Contents

Part One

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

14

15

Part Two

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

Part Three

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR:

Seasons of Harvest

The Awakening Land

Shadows on the Land

(A three-volume trilogy of the Corrales Valley)

Unlike Any Land You Know

The 490th Bomb Squadron in China-Burma-India

Journey

A Novel of America

Coon Creek A Novel of the Mississippi River Bottoms

Lonesome Whistle Blow

A Novel of Hard Times

For Kathy, Paul, Karen, and David.

LONESOME WHISTLE BLOW

A Novel of Hard Times

Part One

Coming Home

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Requiem

1

Raphael Bunt lit a smoke, annoyed at his pa’s plans for the family and convinced that just because the state strung up some fugitive back in Illinois, it was no reason for all of them to pack up and quit Long Beach, California, for some poor flyspeck of a town back on the Mississippi River.

He was told they’d hung the man four years before, and it was only now that his pa had got it in his head to move the fa mily back east. To Rafe, that didn’t make much sense at all.

Your daddy had some harsh dealings with that man when you was still a baby and Aaron and Dorie just toddlers, Rafe’s mother explained, referring to his older brother and sister. That’s the only reason we all come out here in the first place.

At the age of fifty, Addie Bunt was still a pretty woman. The years of mild California weather had left her skin tan and unlined. Her figure had always been slim and in the months following each of her three pregnancies she’d been able to lose any extra weight she carried. Most of the neighbor women were envious that Addie Bunt, in middle age, wore dresses only one size larger than the day she’d been married.

Sitting hunched over the oilcloth-covered table in the kitchen of their small, rented house, Rafe thought a moment about what his mother said, and then he grew curious. I never was sure of that whole business. What happened back then?

Ask your pa, Addie told him as she finished drying dishes. It’s an entertaining story. He’ll tell you, if he’s a mind.

Elias Bunt was in the back yard, sitting in a chair and carefully studying a road map he’d gotten from the Chicago Motor Club.

It ain’t only the fact that Charlie Birger was hung, Elias told Rafe, and then went on to relate the story of his dealings with the notorious

Illinois outlaw. How he’d once run bootleg liquor for the man, and then turned on him, seeking revenge for a friend who Charlie had ordered killed—an old man named Euley Sud, who ran a small homebrew still that Charlie was convinced ate into his own illegal profits. When Elias killed two of the men who’d murdered Euley Sud, it was Charlie Birger’s turn to vow revenge—forcing Elias and his young family to flee Illinois for California.

Birger’s gang might have drove us out here, Elias explained. But it was the work and wages that made us stay.

Then why leave now? Rafe asked.

Well, times has changed, Elias said. The newspapers call it a Depression. They say millions of men is out of work and most of the banks is closed. We need to make our living, son, and it don’t look like California’s going to let us do it anymore.

Elias Bunt had turned fifty-one a month before, but unlike his wife, he’d put on a little weight and the years of hard work on the Long Beach docks had made him look older than he was.

Back in Moline, Illinois, on a bright spring morning more than twenty years earlier, Elias had put his wife and children aboard the westbound Santa Fe Chief and brought them all the way across the country to California—as far from Dallas City as it was possible to be. His own father, Japheth Bunt, had been there once, and said he remembered it as being warm, sunny, and green.

And the old man had been right. That’s the way California had been. There were irrigated orange groves and sprawling farms that were bigger than any Elias had ever seen—along with good-paying jobs for any man who wanted to work, and California gave the five of them a decent life for years.

But when the hard times came in ‘29, the banks went bust and the jobs began to dry up right along with the land.

Elias heard stories about the slow, desperate lines of worn out jalopies and steaming, overheated trucks piled high with the things that had once made up homes—all of them inching slowly west in a grim caravan along Route 66—vehicles with busted springs and burned out headlights, with license plates from Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico—whole families blown off their land, desperately seeking jobs as pickers.

Goddamn, you got twenty or thirty of these poor bastards for every orange that needs picking, Elias overheard a state patrolman say. But they still keep coming.

The cop had shrugged and shook his head. Even though there ain’t near enough work to feed their families.

I expect you’re old enough to stay if you want, Elias told his son when Rafe voiced his objections. Same with your brother and sister. But I got to support your ma and myself. Last Friday, the union steward give me notice my job’s only good for another three weeks. Even work on the docks is drying up and he said I ain’t got enough seniority for them to keep me on—it’s the same for your brother, Aaron.

But what’s the use of going back to someplace we don’t even know? Rafe argued. It don’t make any sense.

You might not think so, Elias said. But your ma and me see it different. The sense it makes is a quarter section of good Illinois bottomland that Grandma Bunt still owns. It ain’t blowed away yet, and a family that can grow their own food, shoot a deer now and again, and raise critters for the supper table can ride out almost anything—hard times included.

With grocery stores supplying most of their provisions, Elias Bunt missed the fine hunting that had once been his in the woods along the Mississippi River. He’d taken his firearms with him, and soon after they first came west, he tried the hunting California had to offer—mostly ducks and snow geese near the Salton Sea in the eastern part of the state, and big mule deer in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles. What luck he had was tempered by the sad realization that this new country wasn’t really home—not really his country—the deep woods and tangles, the creeks and bottomlands of his youth.

Pa, I fish for a living, Rafe countered. I ain’t a farmer.

Raphael Bunt had started out working on the tuna boats out of Long Beach Harbor. After three years with the tuna fleet, Rafe was offered a first mate’s job aboard a sportfishing boat that cruised the San Pedro Channel and the rich waters off Catalina Island, hunting giant tuna, marlin, and broadbill swordfish for wealthy sportsmen.

The Mississippi’s right on our doorstep in Dallas City, Elias reasoned. A fellow can catch catfish on that river most any day of the week—your grandpa used to take me all the time.

Catfish is trash, Rafe said. Compared to what we go after.

When’s the last time your boss had a charter? Elias asked.

Three weeks, Rafe said, shrugging. A railroad fellow down from San Francisco.

Three weeks—you can’t hardly live off that, son.

Captain Wil thinks it’ll pick up again soon, Rafe argued.

Your boss might know boats and tuna fish, Elias said. But I read the newspapers and Wil Poague don’t know shit about what’s pickin’ up and what ain’t—even President Roosevelt can’t tell you that.

Rafe had to admit his pa had a point. Captain Wilburn Poague was a somewhat acerbic, foul tempered skipper with little patience for anyone who disagreed with him, and a dislike for most of his clients—particu-larly those who thought they knew more than he did about fishing and the sea, and who insisted on doing things their way.

Once, Rafe heard the old man tell a disappointed client—with the fellow complaining all the way back into port about their poor luck catching fish—Well, I see us as fortunate, mister, least you didn’t get the seasick pukes and this goddamned tub didn’t sink.

Although chartering out of Long Beach was convenient, when times were good, Rafe and Captain Wil took the boat to Catalina Island and lived aboard full time. It was an aging and slow twenty-four foot converted cruiser he’d named the Seabird. They moored her off Avalon, in Catalina’s little harbor.

The good times of the 1920s saw Catalina in its heyday, with sequin-gowned women and well-dressed, sleek-haired gentlemen finding the isolated resort a pleasant and convenient getaway from mainland Los Angeles.

On the island, the greatest single attraction was the big casino, owned by the chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr., who’d bought the island in 1919. Never intended for gambling, Wrigley’s magnificent theater and ballroom were built to entertain the increasing number of tourists coming to Catalina. A marvel of unique architecture, the casino had been built on Sugarloaf Point overlooking Avalon Bay—its entrance and interior decorated with fantasy-like murals of Indians on horseback and fanciful aquatic creatures.

When they weren’t fishing or working on the Seabird, Rafe would often row the dinghy into town, shop for groceries, and visit the casino to watch a moving picture.

The lower floor housed a spacious motion picture theater built with small twinkling lights imbedded in the ceiling—creating a starry illusion. Rafe brought his boss in with him one afternoon to see a double fea-ture—The Big Trail, a western with John Wayne was playing, along with Edward G. Robinson in a gangster movie called Little Caesar.

Gunsmoke and horseshit, was what Wil Poague thought of the western, but he enjoyed the gangster film. Tough monkey, he said of

Edward G. Robinson. Don’t take no crap from nobody. I’d fish him any day of the week.

He might not take any crap from you, neither, Rafe pointed out. And you ain’t overly fond of clients like that.

Even more popular than the moving picture theater was the second-floor ballroom featuring the likes of Paul Whiteman or Ted Lewis, and a popular orchestra called the California Ramblers.

Rafe had gone upstairs a few times, usually hoping to meet a girl who might be agreeable to a dance with him, but he always felt outmatched by the smooth, slick-haired young fellows who’d come across on the ferries. With their patent leather shoes glistening and dressed to the nines—they were the ones the girl’s eyes turned hot for, and after standing around like a fool for an hour, Rafe would more than likely finish the evening rowing back out to the Seabird alone.

Best you stick to the swordfish, Bub, Captain Wil would often chide. Them dollies ain’t interested in some poor, dumb gaffer like you—they’ll just bust your heart.

Although neither Rafe nor Wilburn Poague had ever seen the inside of the place, it was the exclusive Catalina Tuna Club that let them earn a modest living taking clients out to fish the San Pedro Channel and the rich waters off the island.

The Tuna Club was a result of an abundance of large fish off Catalina Island, the evolution of saltwater tackle, and the arrival of wealthy men possessing both an appreciation of these resources and the resolve to develop the sport of big game fishing—men who valued good sportsmanship and camaraderie as important as the angling itself.

Techniques were learned, innovations in tackle made. Anglers could console or congratulate one another, all the while keeping up with the latest fishing news by greeting the incoming boats that moored in the harbor.

Theodore Roosevelt was a frequent visitor to the Tuna Club, as well as Winston Churchill and young army major, George S. Patton. Rafe and Captain Wil often saw moving picture directors Hal Roach and Cecil B. Demille out for some sport, as well as picture stars Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.

And high above the harbor, noted author and adventurer Zane Grey had built a sprawling home to go along with his membership in the Tuna Club and his lifelong love of fishing.

Do we ever charter any of them boys, Captain Wil reasoned. You and me’ll be in tall clover.

When cows fly, maybe, Rafe speculated. It was something he’d often heard his Grandma Bunt say when she took the train out from Illinois to visit them once or twice a year. Those Hollywood sports either got their own boats or else they charter the best. Why would Mr. Chaplin put out into the channel on a tub like ours?

First off, this tub ain’t ours—it’s mine, Rafe’s boss pointed out. Second of all, son—any time this vessel don’t measure up to what you’re used to, you can always go back to bustin’ your ass on the tuna boats.

But the growing Depression of the ‘30s had put a crimp in the island’s style. Fewer and fewer people were checking into elegant seaside hotels like the St. Catherine’s seven dollar a night rooms—equipped with Simmons Beautyrest matresses and ocean views.

The Depression had put a crimp in the fishing, too. Over the past year or two, charters out of Avalon Harbor or Long Beach had slowly dried up. Elias Bunt had been right when he told Rafe that the boy couldn’t live off one charter every three weeks. Hell, at that rate, Elias added. Captain Wil won’t even be able to pay off the note on his boat—then what do you do?

Most likely fish tuna again, Rafe answered.

Elias shrugged and went back to his motor club map. That’ll be your choice then, son, but your ma and me would be pleased did you decide to come back to the farm with us.

2

I guess you and Dorie are leaving, too, Rafe said. It was more a statement of fact than a question.

I guess, Aaron Bunt answered with a sigh. Seems Pa’s set on it, and with Dorie’s husband run off, she’ll probably need Ma to help out with the kids.

Up until two weeks earlier, Dorie’s husband had been a stove and refrigerator salesman at the Sears Roebuck department store on West Broadway. One evening after supper, Lyle Perdue had walked out the door of their little rented house to buy a pack of cigarettes, and hadn’t been seen since. When Dorie finally thought to check the dresser drawers and the closet, most of Lyle’s clothes were gone, and a battered old suitcase, too.

He cleaned out our savings, Dorie groaned. He even busted into the boys’ piggy banks.

Well, it’s plain as the nose on your face, Addie Bunt told her daughter. The scamp’s run out on you and the kids.

They checked with Lyle’s supervisor at the Sears store, but he just shook his head and seemed as surprised as Dorie. With no clue as to her husband’s whereabouts, she tearfully packed up what they had and she and her two boys moved in with Elias and Addie.

That’s reason enough for Dorie to go, Rafe kept on. What about you?

Hell, Aaron said, lighting a smoke. I had less seniority than Pa—the steward laid me off more than a week ago. I got no job, no steady girl, and not many prospects. There sure ain’t much holding me here.

The next morning, Rafe made his way down to the harbor, still uncertain of what he was going to do. The Seabird was in its berth with Captain Wil relaxing in a torn canvas deckchair on the stern. The old man was smoking the last three inches of a cheap cigar and reading a Tugboat Annie story in a torn, tattered old issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

Anything? Rafe asked, as Wil Poague glanced up from the magazine.

Nope, the captain answered glumly. Couple of fellers out here yesterday askin’ about a charter. I give ‘em a twenny percent discount off the regular rate and the pikers still walked away.

Rafe sighed and shook his head. My folks are heading back east—to Grandma’s farm. Pa wants me to go along.

You got a mind to go?

Boss, we ain’t fished anybody in three weeks, Rafe said. I don’t care to walk out on you, but I still got to eat and help pay the rent.

Captain Wil grunted. Getting up from his chair he went over to a locker and took out a half-full bottle of whiskey. Don’t worry none about me, son. Things get better, I can hire another mate easy enough. With times like they are, hired help around here is thicker than fleas on a dog.

He poured two glasses of rye and held one out to Rafe. For as long as he’d known the old man, it was the first time Rafe had ever seen his boss drink liquor aboard the boat—much less offer a drink of whiskey to him.

Wil Poague raised his glass. To better times.

Rafe swallowed the rye and winced as it burned his throat. His boss seemed to prefer cheap whiskey as well as cheap cigars.

You saying I should go? Rafe asked.

Without offering Rafe another, Captain Wil poured himself a second drink. "Well, it’s like you said, young fella, you got to earn your livin’—and neither one of us is doin’ that lately.

If you can get by growin’ corn, sloppin’ hogs, and shovelin’ chicken shit, the skipper added. Then go to it.

The road they’d named Route 66, commissioned in 1926, was over two thousand miles long and still unpaved as far as California. It started in Chicago and stretched all the way to Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean.

As the Bunts drove slowly east, the road was hot and dusty, with seemingly endless, crawling lines of clapped-out jalopies and ungainly trucks, their overloaded springs weighed down by what their exhausted, anxious families couldn’t bear to leave behind, all heading west toward Barstow.

Them’s Okies, Elias said, nodding toward the sad, desperate string of vehicles. They’re lookin’ for picker’s work out here. It’s the dust storms and the bank foreclosures that done it. They’ll head north out of Barstow for the San Joaquin or south to the Imperial Valley.

The San Joaquin Valley was the state’s top agricultural region. The California newspapers often called it the nation’s salad bowl for the fruits and vegetables produced by its fertile soil.

South of the San Joaquin was the Imperial Valley, stretching across almost four thousand square miles of Southern California and producing citrus fruit, dates, grapes, sugar beets, many kinds of vegetables, small grains, flaxseed, hay and pasture grasses.

Traveling further east along their route, Addie Bunt, who took some pleasure reading passages from the Old Testament, was now seeing an American version of Exodus as the uprooted Okies were facing their own Sinai crossing in the parched desert of Arizona, where many of their old, overburdened vehicles had broken down, overheated, or run out of gas.

Can’t we do nothing to help them out, Pa? Dorie asked, as she and her two boys stared out the window at each small roadside tragedy they passed. Rafe knows a lot about fixing motors.

Elias shook his head and kept his eyes on the road. We ain’t got time for other people’s troubles, he told his daughter. If your brother wants to fix automobiles, he can do it in Dallas City, where folks’ll pay cash money for them skills.

The Ford sedan was hot and crowded—a tired old 1926 Model T that Elias bought at a bargain, and then had to rebuild with the help of his younger son. All their clothes were packed in suitcases and everything Addie couldn’t bear to part with was lashed on top of the Ford’s roof. Elias, Rafe and Aaron took turns either sitting in front or driving, while Addie, Dorie, and the two boys, Frankie and Earl, were permanently assigned to the back seat.

I don’t know why you think I’d care to be a mechanic, Rafe said, glancing at his father behind the wheel.

Elias shrugged. Well, you helped me rebuild this flivver, and you put in plenty of time tinkerin’ with that old diesel motor in Wil Poague’s boat.

That don’t mean I want to be a grease monkey all my life, Rafe pointed out, quickly adding: Nor a durned farmer, neither.

Elias chuckled. Then you can catch catfish and carp on the river—keep all of us fat and well fed.

Rafe hunkered down in his seat, turning sullen and quiet. They had already passed through Flagstaff and were just thirty miles out of

Winslow, and he still hadn’t made up his mind as to whether he’d done the best thing by leaving California with his family.

Just as it was with his older brother, Rafe was leaving no one behind. He’d known a few girls, but nothing serious had developed with any of them, and as far as his job with Captain Wil and the Seabird was concerned—it looked as if the old man was resigned to the possibility of losing his boat.

He stared out the window and watched a hawk spiraling lazily over the drab scrub of Arizona desert. Likely it’s hunting for food, Rafe thought—looking for its supper. As he thought about it, he felt a gnawing in his own stomach. They’d had nothing but a donut and some stale coffee since before the sun rose.

With his mother, brother, sister, and two nephews crowded in the back, and his pa at the wheel, they made their slow, determined progress east—ninety miles a day if they were lucky and had no breakdowns, always heading eastward toward the small town on the edge of the Mississippi River—the place where Elias Bunt felt certain they still belonged.

3

Six nights later as it was growing dark, with the family weary and sore after another long day of driving, Aaron pulled the Ford into a Hooverville just east of Albuquerque—outside a small town called Moriarity.

As Aaron drove in and stopped, two men approached, wearing faded coveralls and soft caps. Hope you folks can see your way to make a donation, one of them said.

Donation? Rafe asked.

Yessir, the man said. This place ain’t no fancy motor court, but it’s safe enough for a family to sleep the night—anything you care to give goes into a pot and is shared by them who needs it.

I guess we can afford a dollar, Elias told the man.

That’s fine, mister, one of the men said. He took the dollar and pointed toward an empty area on the far side of the scattered little settlement of tents and tarpaper shacks. You folks can park over there, build yourselves a fire, and cook whatever you got.

Rafe stepped out of the Ford and looked around, seeing a little house made of old, paint-peeling doors nailed together. Most of the other people going about their business were living in cardboard or tarpaper shacks, old trucks, buses and tents. All around were the sounds of dogs barking, children chasing one another, and the smell of hot grease and bacon frying.

You think Pa knows what he’s doing? Rafe whispered to his brother. Hell, we were living better than this in Long Beach.

Maybe, but not for long, Aaron reasoned. Once the savings ran out, we would’ve been on the street.

As they passed through Albuquerque an hour earlier, Elias had stopped at a filling station and grocery on Central Avenue. While Dorie herded her boys to the outhouse in back of the station, Addie went into the store to buy a loaf of bread, some sliced cheese, and a pound of bologna for their supper.

You people on your way to California? the clerk asked. He was a short, bald-headed little fellow who wheezed when he spoke.

No sir, Addie said. We just come from there. We’re headed in the other direction. My mother-in-law has got a quarter section of farmland back in Illinois.

Slicing the cheese, the little man nodded and wheezed. That’s mighty smart, missus—them with land that ain’t blowed away can always put food on the table.

Well, that’s how my husband sees it, Addie agreed, taking out coins from her pocketbook.

That’ll be seventy-four cents, the clerk told her, placing the bread on the counter along with the wrapped cheese and bologna."

Seventy-four cents? Addie protested. That’s awfully dear, ain’t it?

I give you Silvercup bread, ma’am. That’s all we sell.

How much for the cheese? Addie asked.

That was twenty-seven cents for the pound—sliced.

And the cold cuts?

Thirty-five cents a pound.

Good Lord—we was paying twenty-nine cents a pound for sirloin steak back in California.

Well, you ain’t in California no more, missus—you folks is on the road now, where ever’body’s scratchin’ to make out. I got to make my living, too.

Not by robbing folks, Addie shot back. She glanced out the window where an attendant was putting gas into the Ford. I’ll take the bread. You can keep the cheese and those cold cuts.

But they’s already sliced, the clerk protested.

Addie lay down ten pennies for the loaf of bread. Eat them yourself, she snapped at him. I won’t have myself and my family robbed by no grocery clerk.

Jesus Christ, lady, the clerk wheezed. What do you figure them provisions is worth?

Addie quickly turned around to look at him across the counter. Twenty cents for the cheese, she said quietly. And twenty-five cents for the meat.

Okay, okay—have it your way, the little fellow grumbled, pushing the two packages across the counter. I swear, some folks is tighter’n a pig’s ass at fly time.

That might be so, mister, Addie said, carefully counting out the rest of the money. But we still got us a long way to go.

The night was soft and warm and they didn’t need a fire, but Elias built one anyway. Dorie had brought some marshmallows in a paper bag, and the boys were happily toasting them on sticks.

Well, so far, so good, Aaron offered, as he took a bite out of his sandwich. No flat tires or breakdowns.

We ain’t been scalped by wild injuns yet, neither, Rafe said. But that don’t make it nothing special.

What’s eating you, son? Elias asked.

Hell, Pa, Rafe said. Just look at us—camped out along the side of the damned road with a bunch of Okies—bums and tramps is more like it. What I’d like to know is how’s this any better than being back home?

Ever since Rafe had been a boy, Elias thought, he’d been their difficult child. Aaron and Dorie had grown up easy, but Rafe had always been another matter. He had poor grades in school and made few friends. Involved in innumerable fights, young Raphael Bunt was usually in trouble of one sort or another and was often reported as being sullen and unruly by his annoyed and impatient teachers. Now grown, Rafe relied on his wits and hard work to make his way—but Elias and Addie could easily see that there still remained a troublesome bent, and their youngest son seemed to be on a permanent path of discontent.

We’re heading toward our own land, Elias said wearily. He was increasingly annoyed with Rafe’s attitude. That’s what makes it better.

Rafe looked around once again, at the poor shacks and tents, and all the hungry, frightened people. He shook his head. Well, it don’t look a damn bit better to me.

Elias stood up and adjusted his suspenders. He’d heard enough complaints out of Rafe.

Son, he said, pointing toward the highway. That there’s the road, and it runs both ways. You got a thumb, and if California’s where you want to stay—go to it.

That ain’t what I meant, Pa.

Then shut up about it—I won’t abide a grumbler.

Addie was putting out their fire, when an old man from one of the nearby tents approached. Introducing himself as Asa Grubb, he explained that he and his wife lived in the camp permanently, and that he made a living shooting jackrabbits in the surrounding scrub, selling them to the Okies for eight cents a rabbit—skinned, gutted, and ready for the stewpot.

We already ate our supper, Addie told him.

Well, if you folks is going east through Texas, Asa advised her. And you got ten extra cents to spare—you ought let them two little boys see the snake feller outside Glenrio. It’s just across the state line.

Snake feller? Addie asked.

Yes ma’am, Asa said, enthusiastically. Ain’t to be missed. Calls hisself Rattlesnake Red—the Serpent King. I seen it once’t, and the man puts on a fine show handling them deadly reptiles—I expect them two boys kin get in for a nickel each.

Thank you, Mr. Grubb, Addie said pleasantly. If the boys get restless in the car, we just might do that.

Maybe you got some change to spare, missus? Asa Grubb asked hesitantly. My old woman’s kinda sickly—a few pennies would be all right.

Addie scattered ashes with a stick and shook her head. I ain’t much inclined to giving away money, Mr. Grubb.

Yes ma’am, sorry, the old man said, nodding. Never meant to be a bother.

Watching Asa Grubb turn to walk back toward his tent, Addie recalled