All the Earth, Thrown to the Sky

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Jane said, “How about that? We met Pretty Boy Floyd and he befriended us.”

  “Who’s Pretty Boy Floyd?” Tony said.

  “He’s famous,” Jane said.

  “A criminal,” I said. “That’s who he is.”

  “He was all right,” Jane said.

  “He robs banks and steals stuff from people,” I said, and I knew I was telling the truth, and I stand by it to this day, but I knew too some of it was my jealousy talking. Still, I couldn’t help myself. I hadn’t liked the way Jane had kissed him on the cheek.

  “He didn’t steal nothing from us,” Tony said.

  “No,” Jane said, “he didn’t.”

  “He’s still a criminal,” I said.

  “I liked him,” Tony said. “He was good to that old man, and he ran with me on his shoulders.”

  “He robs banks,” I said.

  “Banks haven’t treated people so good,” Jane said. “You can rob someone with a gun, or you can do it with a fountain pen. A mark here and there and they can foreclose on your property.”

  “They was talking about doing it to us,” Tony said. “Taking our farm.”

  “By now, they have,” Jane said. “With Pa dead, ain’t no one to pay for it. Hell, they can have it. It wasn’t nothing but a sandpit anyhow.”

  “I reckon ours is gone too,” I said, “but Floyd is still a criminal.”

  “Yeah, he is,” Jane said, “but he isn’t like Bad Tiger or Timmy. They started out sideways. Pretty Boy just got turned that way and couldn’t get back.”

  “You can’t know that,” I said.

  “I think I’m a pretty good guesser.”

  I crossed my arms and looked at the floor.

  “You jealous of him?” Jane said.

  “No.”

  “I think you are,” she said.

  “Maybe a little. He ain’t one of your knights, Jane. He ain’t Sir Galahad.”

  “He’s about as close as I’m going to get to a knight. Let me believe that, even if it is only for a moment.”

  “That’s silly,” I said.

  “Listen here, Jack. A kiss on the cheek isn’t the same as a kiss on the lips. I don’t want you to make too much out of that. Both kinds of kisses are friendly, but the lips is more friendly. It means more.”

  I studied her face. It was hard to know when that girl was lying.

  “Really?” I said.

  “Really,” she said, and winked at me.

  31

  It’s the solid truth that when we were riding that train to Tyler, it was the lowest I’d ever been. Even lower than when my folks died. Reason was, them dying was just then coming home to roost. It wasn’t like I didn’t know they were dead, but when I saw that old man, all of a sudden I realized it was real. It had taken me a while, and I guess I had sort of been stunned all that time, but right then I could feel it come down on me heavy as a falling house.

  I just sat there with my back against the boxcar so I had a view out the open door and thought about Mama dying, and then Daddy doing what he did, and me burying them in the barn. Then I thought about Jane and Tony coming along, and us going over and stealing a dead man’s car. Next, there had been Buddy, shot by his own partners, and now Daggart, dying while waiting to catch a train. All I could think of was his eyes staring at nothing, and just before that he had been talking and seeing what we were seeing. It was sobering to realize life came and then it went.

  It was hard to see how things would get any better. Right then I was feeling that boxcar bouncing over the tracks and it was shaking me down to my bones. I guess the wind was tearing me up, even if I wasn’t right in the doorway, ’cause my eyes got so full of tears I had to use the back of my sleeve to wipe them dry. And I must have been hungry, ’cause my belly started seizing up and cramping.

  I glanced at Jane, who had put her back against the boxcar and had her eyes closed. She looked pretty sweet when she was asleep. I decided then and there that Jane was about as big a blowhard as there was, but at the bottom of her bucket there was something real. She knew life was short, and she lived like it was and sucked all the juice out of it. I told myself right then and there I was going to do the same, even if I knew I’d never be quite like Jane. Wasn’t nobody could get to the juice the way she could, and wasn’t nobody ever who could enjoy it as much as she did, even the times when it was sour.

  Looking at Tony, I could see he was weakening, and it wasn’t just from the trip and eating kind of here and there, never getting any solid rest, and seeing what he had seen. It was like there was a hole in the top of his head and you could almost see him easing out of it.

  He turned and looked at me and tried to smile. The corner of one side of his mouth lifted up and fell down, like a window blind that hadn’t caught good when you pulled the cord to raise it.

  There were tears in his eyes.

  I glanced back at Jane.

  She opened her eyes while I was looking, smiled at me, got up, and come over to the edge of the boxcar. She sat down in the wide doorway and let her feet dangle over the edge. The sun was on her face, and it lit her up good. The way she looked, you would have thought she’d been given the keys to everything there was in life that was good. She was grinning a little. She was in her element. She was born for adventure. And she couldn’t have been happier.

  I guess she thought about the same things I had been thinking about, the loss of her family and all, but she could move on quick. Daggart was maybe not forgotten, but she sure wasn’t sweating over him. He was dead and gone and we weren’t. That was how she saw things. It was now, and it was all about the living.

  “That’s some pretty country,” she said.

  I wanted to answer, but I was afraid my voice would crack. The wind was making my eyes water again. I turned so I wasn’t looking right at her.

  The train clattered along and slowed here and there, and we even had a guy jump in our car as we got into East Texas and it slowed going through a station. He wasn’t as ragged as some. He had dark hair and a face that wasn’t as lined as those of most men on the road. He had on good shoes, which made me think he had been someone important once. The leather on them squeaked as he walked to the back of the boxcar. He spoke to us kindly and sat down with his knees pulled up under his chin. If he had any curiosity about us, he kept it to himself.

  I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my pocketknife so he couldn’t see it, kept it down by my leg so that I could pop it open. It was that kind of knife. A flick of the wrist and you had raw blade.

  But he didn’t bother us. He rode to the next town, said goodbye, and got off.

  I put the knife away.

  I moved to where I could let my legs hang like Jane was doing. Tony came and sat down between us.

  We passed lots of green and lots of water. At first glance, after where we had been, you could mistake it for paradise. But after a while we saw shacks and old cars and people walking, wearing clothes that had been patched so much they wasn’t nothing but patches.

  We passed little farms where chickens ran loose and so did the kids.

  We passed sawmills, and we could see the tall sheds that housed the great blades of the mill, and we could hear the blades whining through the lumber, throwing up sawdust like sand in a windstorm. There were glimpses of long trucks and ox-drawn wagons and some with teams of mules, hauling the lumber out.

  Finally we passed a river. Jane said it was the Sabine. I reckoned that was so, but I didn’t know for sure, and there wasn’t no use asking her if she was sure. She’d just lie about it. There were some people sitting on a long wooden bridge over the river with lines in the water. Farther down, we saw some kids on the bank fishing. Two boys and a little girl. They waved at us as we went by, and we waved back.

  The sky was clear for a long time, and then all of a sudden the air got cool and clouds dark as the bottom of a well rolled in. With them came flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder. The rain hammered the earth and the wind
whipped the trees, making the tops of them slash at the sky. We had to pull completely back inside the car to keep from getting wet. It had been a long time since we’d seen a real rain. One with all the power of the heavens behind it, wetting up the earth and making the air smell like dirt. For me, it was like something religious was happening. Like a thing denied me for a long time was now being given, and there was a lot of it.

  The trees on the side of the track were close, and they were dark with shadow, but from time to time the lightning came and for a moment the inside of the boxcar was bright as day.

  Along the tree-shadowed tracks we went, into the dark rain, and finally into the dark night that was cut open here and there by bright swords of lightning. The air shook the train with explosions of thunder.

  Finally we lay in the center of the car and closed our eyes. We didn’t talk at all. I just lay there thinking on things, and none of the things I was thinking on were cheering me up much, except maybe that rain. The air felt so cool, and it was dark with cloud shadow. But the rain was all there was that was good right then. I just couldn’t get away from all that had happened back home, from Mama and Daddy down in the dry earth. I hoped it was raining there.

  I tried to feel better by thinking about finding Strangler and about us warning him that Bad Tiger and Timmy were coming. But I kept thinking it wasn’t going to be easy, and Bad Tiger and Timmy were looking too. They might have already found him. We might never find him. And no matter what Strangler was wanting to do with the money, he was still the same as them. Same as Pretty Boy Floyd. They were all crooks. Maybe some crooks are better people than other crooks, but they’re all crooks.

  I thought about Jane’s East Texas relatives. She didn’t even know their names. I assumed they had the same last name as her, but then I come to realize that she hadn’t actually told me if her original kin was the uncle or the aunt. If it was the aunt, then she’d most likely taken up her husband’s name. And on top of that, wasn’t anything that said they’d be glad to see her and Tony, let alone me, who wasn’t no kin at all.

  What it came down to was we were just sort of out there in the wind.

  Still, trying to stop someone from being killed had to be the right thing to do. It would be nice to save someone once. Or if they died, to bury someone once, or see to it that they were buried. We were sort of like bad luck charms. Wherever we went, a dead body was bound to show up before long, and it was bound to be left unburied or unreported. It was a knack.

  In time, the lightning and the thunder were less frequent, and there was just the wind and the rain. The rain was cold enough that we huddled together and pulled our two bags close to us until we were a little warm from each other’s bodies. The rocking of the train and the rattle and the squeaking of the wheels on the track became comforting.

  Even damp and cold and unhappy, I slept.

  32

  Come early morning the rain was long gone. The sun was warm, and the trees, mostly tall pines, had become thicker along the track. There was water that could be seen between the pines, and those spots of water were shiny like the wet scales of a fish. But mostly there were shadows from the trees, and they lay across the water like dark logs. They were so dark it made the bright spots seem even brighter.

  We got some food from our bags and sat in the doorway eating it. The day began to brighten and the shadows from the trees on the water shifted and faded and pretty soon the water was clear and bright except where there was moss and plants on the surface or growing up out of it. Birds were fluttering from tree to tree. All kinds of birds. Bluebirds and redbirds and mockingbirds and sparrows. Before long it turned hot.

  I watched the water go by. There wasn’t a river or a creek, but there were some big pools out there. I thought I might like to get some worms and a pole and fish it. I knew some of the water was fed by a creek somewhere. There would be fish in the deep parts. Not big fish, but hungry fish that I could catch and eat. I was hungry all the time. Some place inside of me was always empty.

  We passed a crossing where a pickup waited on the train. The pickup was stuffed with kids. When they saw us they waved at us, but we went by so quick we didn’t have time to wave back.

  “I saw a sign,” Jane said. “It said Tyler, four miles.”

  “We’ll be there pretty quick,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Jane said, “and my thinking is we’ll start slowing down soon. I think when it’s slow enough we ought to jump off right away and not even mess with being close to the station and those bulls.”

  “It may not slow enough,” Tony said.

  “It will,” she said. The way she talked, you’d have thought she’d been a hobo for twenty years.

  But she was right. Not long after, the train began to slow. And then it slowed a lot. I leaned out the door and looked up the track. There was nothing to see.

  “I think it’s better to walk a little,” Jane said, “than be in sight of the station.”

  “You said that,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, “but I wasn’t sure anyone was listening.”

  We got our bags, and when we came to a place where there was some thick-looking grass, we tossed our bags and jumped.

  I couldn’t stop tumbling on the grass, and finally I fetched up against a tree with my feet in the air and my back on the ground. By the time I was on my feet, Jane had both our bags and Tony was scrambling. She brought me mine and I threw it over my shoulder. The three of us started walking along the edge of the track. The train was still going by, but it didn’t take long before it left us. We could hear those boxcars rattling for a long time, and we could see the smoke from the engine hanging in the air and we could smell it.

  After a long time walking, I said, “Are you sure it said four miles and not forty miles?”

  “I been thinking about that,” Jane said. “Actually, I just saw a four. But there might have been a number in front of it. Or behind it. But I did see a four.”

  I stopped. “That’s a big difference from saying it was four miles, and now you’re saying you don’t know if it was four or fourteen or almost any number that either begins or ends with four.”

  “I guess I got a little excited,” Jane said. “I wanted to get off. And the train did slow, didn’t it?”

  I was starting to think it had just slowed because of a bad curve, and not because we were near a station, but I didn’t feel any need to say it right then. It didn’t matter. We were off the train.

  “I’m tired of walking,” Tony said. “And it’s hot.”

  “There’s plenty of trees,” Jane said. “We can find shade.”

  “And with all those pools of water,” I said, “we can find mosquitoes in the shade.”

  “And dad-burned snakes,” Tony said. “I don’t like snakes.”

  “You both are such pessimists,” Jane said. “Where is your spirit of adventure?”

  “Who says I have to have one?” I said.

  33

  It was like I figured. Jane had read the sign wrong because she hadn’t paid attention or because, like she said, she wanted off the train. Whatever, it was more than any four miles, and it was starting to get dark by the time we did see a sign for a town.

  But it wasn’t Tyler. It was Winona, and the sign said WELCOME TO WINONA, POPULATION 340. Fact was, it was pretty much just a hole in the road with a couple of stores. Stopping at one of the stores, we decided to buy some Coca-Colas and eat some of our food. We opened up our sacks and got our can openers and had some beans, which I was getting really tired of. They wasn’t doing my stomach any good either, and on more than a few occasions as of late, I’d had to make a point of walking behind Jane and Tony so if I passed wind it wouldn’t make things difficult for my traveling companions. And I darn sure didn’t want that sort of thing to happen when I was next to Jane. I couldn’t hardly even live with the idea of it.

  Tony, however, was less concerned. He was more than willing to run up in front of us and let it fly and laugh
about it.

  But now we were in town and we sat on a bench under an oak by the side of the road and ate our beans and drank our Coca-Colas and watched it get dark. Fireflies were starting to move under the tree, and I could see them across the streets and in the yards where there were houses. Unlike at home, these houses weren’t piled with sand, their paint stripped off by it blowing and gritting the color away. They were painted, and the grass in the yards was green, and the trees were tall and full of leaves. Squirrels were in the trees. I watched them play. A man in the house across the way came out on the porch and cleared his throat in a way that made me feel a little sick, and then spat a stream of whatever had been down in his chest out into the yard. It was so loud it startled the squirrels. The man went back inside.

  A man in a new car pulled up at the curb and got out. He was a short man with a big straw hat, and his belly fell over his belt like it was trying to find some comfortable place to lie down.

  He came over to where we sat and put his boot on the edge of the bench, right by me, and wiped the top of it off with a red kerchief he took out of his pants pocket. “You kids live here?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I didn’t figure you did,” he said. “Haven’t seen you around here before.”

  “We’re just passing through,” Jane said. “Truth is, we inherited a little oil money over in Tyler, so we’re trying to get there, and we got our train tickets mixed up and ended up off the train.”

  “Tickets, huh?” the man said, and snapped the handkerchief loudly, then folded it and put it back in his pants pocket.

  “That’s right,” Jane said.

  “From the looks of you,” he said, “and looking at your luggage,” he said, eyeing our bags, “my guess is your ticket was how fast you could run and jump inside a boxcar.”

  “We rode a boxcar,” Jane said. “That part is right. But that’s because there was that ticket mix-up. Where was it, Jack? Fort Worth?”

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just nodded.