I turned away, feeling some pity for her but more anger. “Just a plain No would be plenty to get rid of us, lady,” I muttered. “You needn't go into details.”
But Joey was different. He went up to her and spoke in a low voice. “It's all right,” he told her. “We know how hard times are.”
She pulled her apron up and hid her face in it, but Joey and I could hear her sobs as we walked down the snowy street. The experience shook us; we knew we had to try again at some other house, but the wildness of the woman we'd just left made us dread to ask anyone else.
We had just turned a corner at the end of the block when I heard her coming down the street and calling to us in the same hysterical voice. I wanted to run from her, but I couldn't. We waited as she came up to us, bareheaded and without a coat in the freezing wind.
“You must come back; you're hungry children, and I've sinned against others as unfortunate as my own. I can't rest tonight if I have to remember that I've denied children because they aren't my own.” She was pulling at Joey's arm, but she seemed to be pleading with me. “You've got to listen. You must come back. Please. We'll stretch our meal to help fill all of us.”
I didn't want to go back with her, but I was almost afraid to refuse. She looked so desperate, so determined that we free her from her feeling of guilt. And so we thanked her and walked soberly back to the shack where children were standing at the windows gazing out at their mother and the two strange boy-tramps.
Inside the kitchen we sat at a bare table with six children lined up beside us. Quickly, the woman lifted the lid from a kettle of soup and poured more water inside. She had stopped crying, but she talked to herself in a strange way as she ladled the soup out into bowls. “We will eat,” she kept repeating. “We will eat, all of us. My hungry children will eat and another woman's hungry children too. We will eat today, and maybe the Lord will provide for tomorrow.”
When we left the woman's house, we followed the railroad tracks to the outskirts of town. Near the tracks we found a deserted shed and an empty oil drum in which we built a fire. I told Joey I thought we'd better rest for a day or two before going any farther; privately I wondered if I would ever be able to get myself out on the highway again.
The next day I was too weak to get up, so Joey went out begging alone. He had real luck at one house. A woman gave him a whole loaf of bread, fresh and brown from the oven. I was drowsy with fever when he brought the loaf in to show me, but as I fell asleep, I felt a kind of satisfaction that the bread would provide us with food for the next few days.
When I woke up, Joey was gone, and it was nearly dark when he returned. “You know the lady that gave us the soupâthe one that cried so hard?” he asked. “Well, I took half of our bread to her. She was so happy she said to thankâ” He stopped, frightened and amazed, I suppose, as I lurched toward him.
“You gave away our bread, you little fool? Here we are starving and you give away food enough to keep us alive for daysâ”
“She gave us food, don't forget that,” Joey said gruffly, moving away from me.
“She gave us a bowl of thin soup. And I don't care if she gave us beefsteakâwe need that bread. You march yourself right back and tell her we have to have it.” I hardly knew what I was saying. There was just a burning anger inside me; no reason, no feeling of compassion or pity.
Joey's thin face was hard as he faced me. “You can yell at me till you're blue, and a lot of good it will do you. It was my bread, and I had a right to do what I pleased with it. And I'm not mean enough to forget people that have been good to me even if you are.”
Joey didn't know how sick I was. He didn't know. If he had only known, he would have handled me differently. But he didn't. He didn't know.
I struck Joey. It was the first time in my life I'd ever struck him. When I was little, I had been jealous sometimes and resentful, but I'd never laid a hand on him roughly. During the months we'd been on the road, I had come to love him more than anyone else in the world. But as he stood before me, defiant and angry, I forgot the years of training in decent behavior that I had received when I was young. The fever, the feeling of desperation, the red rageâall these things got the better of me. In that blind minute I struck a frail boy five years younger than I was, a boy who had once fed a hungry cat on a night that now seemed a hundred years away, a boy who had given a half loaf of bread to a woman and her hungry children.
Joey fell and I froze in a kind of agony at what I had done. I stood there staring at him on the ground, still staring when he leaped back to his feet and faced me with blazing eyes.
Joey was not at a loss for words. “I've taken a lot from you, Josh, and this is the last. I'm through with you. I'm through right now and for as long as I live. I can take care of myself, and as far as I'm concerned, you can go to the Devil.” He grabbed his coat and the banjo; it was strange that I should notice it at such a time, but I felt glad that he was wearing his overshoes. When he went outside, he banged the door of the shed.
I don't know how long I stood there. The fever brought strange patterns to my mind, thoughts that spun in circles, repeating themselves over and over as each circle was completed. “My brother is gone, my brother is gone,” whirled through my brain. And then, “Lowest common denominator, lowest common denominator, reduced to the lowest common denominator.”
When I opened the door, the twilight had become night. I think I called Joey several times; at least I tried to call him. Then I stumbled out and across the fields in a blind search for him. The half loaf of bread lay on the floor beside the oil drum we had used as a stove.
I had no plan of search for Joey, no sense of direction. I just struck out blindly and kept going except when a seizure of coughing threatened to tear my chest wide open. Whenever that happened, I'd lean against a tree or a fence until I was able to go on. Sometimes I'd think I saw a little figure that looked like Joey in the distance, and I'd run toward it only to find it was some stationary object that suggested a boy's form in the darkness.
“He'll come backâhe'll get over his mad spell and come back,” I commenced to tell myself after I'd searched for a long time. I decided I'd better go back to the shed, better be there when Joey got back. “I'll apologize,” I repeated over and over again. “I'll make it right with Joey.”
I tried for a long time to find the shed again, but I was lost. There was only black night around me and snow that had melted a little during the day and was now a shallow river of slush with a thin layer of freezing crust on the surface. My shoes were filled with water; neither the cardboard soles that the old man had fitted for me nor the heavy socks he'd given me were of any use in keeping out the snow and water.
Panic hit me finally when neither the shed nor Joey could be found. There wasn't a single lighted window in sight, not a doorway where I could find shelter. I coughed so hard that I finally lost my balance and fell. The effort to get up again was too much. “I guess I'm going to die,” I thought, and stopped trying to do anything about it.
I had heard that one's whole life passes before his eyes at such a time,.but one segment of mine is all that I remember seeing. I seemed to go back to a time when I was a little boy, sick with croup or some childhood ailment. I was lying in Dad's lap with my head against his shoulder, and he was rocking me in the big leather chair that Mom kept in front of the stove in winter. His arms felt strong and comforting; he patted my back rhythmically as he rocked, and he sang to me, an old Polish song of his own childhood. I could feel the vibration of his deep voice when I placed my hand against his chest. That was all there was to the memory. After that the light in my brain was turned out.
Voices came after a while, voices that sounded a thousand miles away. I had a sensation of being moved, of wet shoes and socks being taken off, and of warmth enveloping me. Once I thought I could feel wheels beneath me and could hear the sound of them on the road. Then I gave up and knew nothing at all.
When I woke up, I was in a bed with warm blankets covering me. There was winter sunshine coming in through the windows, and the fragrance of a rich, meaty soup was in the air. When a coughing fit hit me, the hand and arm of a man appeared; my head was lifted, and the hand placed a spoonful of sweet, tangy medicine between my lips. I swallowed, and the coughing stopped for a while.
Everything was silent except for the crackle of fire in a big stove that took up one end of the room. I was puzzled about where I was, but too tired and weak to care very much. I knew that someone was sitting beside me, someone whose hand and arm had lifted my head and given me medicine. Someone was kind.
A girl came and stood at the foot of my bed, a girl in a loose shirt that hung down almost to her knees. She had stiff brown braids that stuck out over her ears, and a square little face with a few freckles. “Kind of a homely kid,” I thought, and was immediately ashamed of my secret unkindness. The girl was studying me soberly.
“I think he's coming back, Lonnie,” she said. “Maybe we'd better try to get some more soup down him.”
She had said “Lonnie.” A flash of joy went through me. I turned my head enough to look up at the man who sat beside me, and before my eyes could focus upon him, I went through some seconds of agony for fear that I hadn't heard right. But I had. Lonnie was beside me, and he nodded, smiling, as I looked up at him.
“You're feeling better, aren't you, Josh? You've had us plenty scared, d'you know it?”
It must have been a long time since I had spoken. I found it hard to form the words I wanted to say. Finally I managed to whisper, “How did you find me?”
“A couple found you at the side of the road in a town about fifty miles south of Omaha. You had my name and address in your wallet so they got in touch with me. Janey and I drove over and brought you home with us.”
The girl smiled at me just a little. She was Janey, I sup- . posed. But she didn't matter. Some deep trouble within me was trying to push into my mind. I couldn't think what it was, but it was bad. I looked from the girl back to Lonnie.
He leaned down so that his eyes were level with mine. “I know you're too weak to talk much, but there's one thing I've got to know: Where's your brother, Josh? Where's Joey?”
Then it all came back like a big wave sweeping in, all the pain and the meanness that made me strike Joey; the rage in his eyes came back to me and his defiance. I remembered the slush that filled my shoes and the moment when I decided that I couldn't go any farther. I closed my eyes as the memories poured back.
“Tell me, Josh.” That was Lonnie again. “Tell me what happened. Then we'll let you sleep again.”
The girl's voice was full of sympathy. “He can't talk, Lonnie. Something is hurting him. Don't try to make him talk now.”
“I have to know. I have to know right away.” He walked over to the stove and ladled some soup into a bowl. Then he handed the bowl to the girl while he lifted my head. “Here, I'll hold his head up; you feed him a little more soup. Maybe it will give him strength.”
The tightness in my throat overcame the hunger in me, and I tried to push the spoon away. But Lonnie was determined. “Swallow this soup, Josh. It will make you feel better. Swallow it, I tell you, and make up your mind that you have to talk.”
And so I did. I swallowed some of the soup which at another time I would have appreciated as being delicious. At that moment, though, it was tasteless. But Lonnie was right. It gave me strength almost immediately.
When I was able, I told him enough of the story to let him understand what had happened. Lonnie interrupted now and then. He wanted to know if Joey had a cold like mine when he left. He asked about clothingâdid Joey have a warm coat? I told him about the overshoes, and that pleased him. At the end I was so tired that I had to whisper the last sentence. I said, “If Joey is gone for good, I don't want to live anymore.”
Lonnie was silent for a long time. “I know,” he said finally. Then he added in a voice that was suddenly different, very brisk and cheerful. “But he's not gone for good. He's probably doing all right for himselfâpeople can't resist Joey. And well find him if we have to take a fine-tooth comb to the state of Nebraska.”
He drew a shade down so that the room was in shadow. “Go back to sleep now, Josh. You've got to get a lot of rest. Don't worry. I'll take care of everything.”
I believed him. My confidence in him and my weariness made me forget the despair for a while. I went off into a sleep that must have lasted for hours.
When I opened my eyes again, the room was lighted dimly by a kerosene lamp on the table. The girl was gone, and Lonnie was sitting beside the stove, leaning forward with his head in his hands. When I called his name softly, he came over and sat beside me again.
“I feel better, Lonnie.”
“Good. You'll come out of this. You must have an iron-plated constitution.”
“I want to tell youâI won't stay long. I don't want to be a drag on you.”
“You'll stay till you're good and well. That's the way I want it.”
“Did you find another job, Lonnie?”
“Yes, I was lucky. I'm not getting rich, but my family is eating. That's something these days.”
“Is the girl your family?” I remembered that he'd spoken of a girlâa girl who should have called him Uncle Lonnie but was too set in her ways.
“Yes. Janey's my niece. She's been with us since she was four; her parents were killed in an automobile accident. She and my motherâher grammaâlive next door. I look after them. They're all I have.”