The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer [106]
You don't mean that, Red!
(Underneath the blanket his father's body had been crushed almost flat.) Yeah, that's right, I just don't believe in God.
Sometimes I don't either, Agnes says.
Yeah, I can talk to you, you understand.
Only you want to go away.
Well. (There is the other knowledge. Her body is young and strong and he knows the smell of her breasts, which are like powdered infant-flesh, but all the women turn to cordwood in the town.) You take that guy Joe Mackey who got Alice with a kid and left her, my own sister, but I tell ya I don't blame him. You got to see that, Agnes.
You're cruel.
Yeah, that's right. It's praise to the eighteen-year-old.
Of course you can always depend on the mines to shut down.
It's good for a week; there's hunting for jack rabbit and a ball game or two, but it loses its edge. There's more time to be in the house, and it's all bedrooms except for the kitchen. His kid brothers are always making noises, and Alice is sullen as she nurses her bastard. When he was working it was easier, but now he's with them all the time.
I'm getting out of this town, he says at last.
What? No, by God, no, his mother says. Just like his father. (A short squat woman who has never lost her Swedish accent.)
I can't take it any more, I'm gonna rot my life away, Eric's old enough to work in the mines if they ever open.
You don't go.
You're not going to tell me! he shouts. What the hell does a man get out of it, some food for his belly?
Soon Eric works in the mines. You get married. A nice Swenska.
He slaps his cup against the saucer. To hell with that, get tied down with a marriage. (Agnes. The idea is not wholly unpleasant, and he rejects it furiously.) I'm getting out of here, I ain't gonna waste my life in back of a drill, waiting for a goddam tunnel to collapse on me.
His sister comes into the kitchen. You lousy kid, you're only eighteen, where do you talk of getting away?
Stay out of this, he shouts.
I'm not going to stay out, it's my business more than ma's. That's all you men are good for, you get us in trouble and then you skip out. Well, you can't do it! she screams.
What's the matter? There'll always be some grub for ya.
Maybe I want to get out, maybe I'm sick to death of hanging around here without a man who'll marry me.
That was your lookout. You're not going to stop me, goddammit.
You're just like that louse that skipped out on me, if there's anything that's worthless it's a man who won't stick around to face the music.
(Trembling) And if I'd been Joe Mackey I'da skipped out on ya too. That was the smartest thing he ever did.
Take sides against your sister.
What the hell was in it for him, he had all the good out of you. (She slaps him. Tears of anger and guilt form in his eyes. He blinks them back, and glares at her.)
His mother sighs. You go then. It's bad thing when family fights like animals. Go.
What about the mines? (He feels himself weakening.)
Eric. She sighs again. Someday you know just how bad you be tonight, by God.
A man's got to get out. He's trapped in a hole here. (This once, it gives him no relief.)
In 1931 all the long voyages end in a hobo jungle.
But the itinerary is various:
Freight trains out of Montana through Nebraska into Iowa.
Handouts at farmhouses for a day's work.
The harvest and working in a granary.
Manure piles.
Sleeping in parks, being picked up for vagrancy.
When they let him out of the county workhouse he walks back to town, spends the dollar he has made for a good meal and a package of cigarettes, and catches a freight out of town that night. The moon gives a silver wash to the cornfields, and he curls up in a flatcar and watches the sky. An hour later another hobo drops into his car. He has a flask of whisky and they drink it up and finish Red's cigarettes. In the flatcar lying on his back the sky quivers in time to the clacking and jolting of the train. It's not too bad.
Jesus, tonight's Saturday night, the other bum says.
Yeah.
On Saturday night in his mining town there is always a dance in the basement of the church. The round tables have checked cloths on them, and each family sits around one table, the miners and their grown sons, the wives and daughters and grandparents, the younger kids. There are even infants slobbering drowsily at their mother's teats.