Dreams Bigger Than the Night (27 page)

Having no choice, Jay hung around the station to wait for the afternoon train. When the San Francisco boarding was announced, he stood out of sight watching the gate. Arietta and her father most likely had left on the morning train for Los Angeles. A moment before the gate closed, a man came rushing up, waving a ticket: Cauliflower.

Using a station phone, Jay called Janice, who said T had taken her daughter to the movies. He left a message: He would be picking him up to take him to sunny California, the land of citrus groves and walnuts and cotton. If T wanted to know why, she should tell him that the two people they wanted had gone to Los Angeles. The woman on the other end of the line let out a low whistle and said, “I wish you’d take me.”

Of course, Jay had no idea whether the Maglioccos would be staying right in L.A. They could have taken a train there but migrated elsewhere, like Pasadena or Santa Monica or the San Fernando Valley. And yet in light of Mr. M.’s comment that the only job he’d prefer to rum-running would be the movie industry, and Reinhard Gehrig’s reference to Los Angeles, Jay had a hunch that father and daughter would gravitate to the Hollywood area.

Returning to the hotel, he gathered his belongings. As he drove south to Chicago, he briefly wondered what Reinhard would think when he failed to show. Shortly after crossing the border into Illinois, he picked up a hitchhiker, an elderly man with rheumy eyes, wispy hair and beard, and a large pouch of loose skin under his jaw that brought to mind a turkey gobbler. The man said he needed to cover ten miles and felt much obliged that Jay had stopped for him. The two of them exchanged introductions, Jay Klug and Stine Becker. On his way home from following itinerant jobs in Wisconsin, Mr. Becker explained that his wife and three boys used to travel with him until that proved too costly.

“Now she and the kids stay with her mother while I travel around looking for work.”

“What kind?”

“I’m not particular, if it pays.”

Traveling through small towns that had little to show for their devotion to the Protestant ethic, Jay deduced from the number of American flags mounted on front porches that army recruiters found most of their fodder in these hamlets, where the out-of-work young men eagerly signed on for regular meals, clothes, shoes, and a small allowance. Although Mr. Becker’s age would have kept him from service, Jay could imagine his sons joining up in response to the local patriotism and the promise of a new life.

“Do you normally hitchhike to get around?”

“Depends. If I can, I ride the rattlers . . . freight trains.”

“I’m headed to Los Angeles after a stop in Chicago.”

“Route 66. Just take it all the way, from Chicago to Springfield to St. Louis, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, L.A. Before I lost my job to a fellow a lot younger than me and willing to take a lot less money, I used to be a truck driver. I know 66 like the palm of my hand.” Mr. Becker opened the road map that Jay had wedged on the top of the dashboard and studied it. Running his index finger along the black-lined highways made him appear like a man feeling the pulse of a nation. “Hardly a one I haven’t traveled.” Mr. Becker folded the map and leaned his head back against the seat, murmuring, “Old 66. Some folks call it the mother road. I call it the river of rue.”

The old guy then launched into an amazing aside. “Sixty-six is the path of people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all of these, the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. Sixty-six is the mother road, the road to flight.”

Jay sat speechless. What can you say in the presence of such talk? But as he drove, he kept stealing glances at Mr. Becker, hoping that he would lean back and again become reflective. No such luck. At Heywood Junction, Jay dropped him off and continued on into Chicago, retracing the route he’d taken when he had left T behind.

Janice met him at the door. Jay stayed for both dinner and the night. Over pork chops and sauerkraut, she related how her husband had been in the meat-packing industry and had died of blood poisoning contracted from some contaminated beef. Her daughter, Melanie, sat listening.

“He stood in a line with a lot of other hog butchers cutting the meat carcasses as they came through. I always worried about the sharp knives they used and the speed of the line. But those things didn’t kill him, some disease did. Even though he wore rubber gloves, his arms were bare. He had a cut on his arm, and it must have rubbed up against the infected slab. The doctors gave him sulfur drugs, but his temperature just kept rising till his body burned up. I asked the Cudahy people for money to help me and the girl. They said no. Without T and some others, I don’t know how I would’ve got by. Lucky for me that Melvin bought this house when he could. Otherwise we’d be living with kin.”

After washing the dishes, Jay discussed the impending trip. He felt that the leads he had come up with left them looking for a mote in a sunset.

T observed that “without somethin’ like the names we got from Mr. George McManus, I think we’re startin’ out on a fool’s errand.”

“Ignis fatuus,” Jay mumbled.

“What in the hell’s that?”

Jay told T the story of a professor he had once studied with, Ralph Cohen, whose vocabulary kept classes breathless. One day he uttered the phrase “ignis fatuus,” and when they all looked blank, Professor Cohen explained its meaning and told them that someday they would have an occasion to use it.

“So what does it mean, you still ain’t said?”

“I’ll give you the short answer: a deceptive hope, a delusion.”

“That’s exactly what Los Angeles is, a dreamland. I played ball there once. The place ain’t hardly real. So why go chasing after the Maglioccos in a place that’s just all smoke and mirrors?”

They argued until Jay reminded him of Longie’s generosity. The money he’d shower on them for finding Arietta would beat fixing potholes in Newark.

“Yeah,” T said, “government work ain’t gonna make a man rich, and worse of all, it ain’t even steady.”

Hitting the road early with only about four hours of sleep, they left before Janice and her daughter awoke. T slipped a tenner into Janice’s purse. Driving south through Springfield, they crossed the Mississippi River, flowing lazy and muddy, entered St. Louis, and continued southwest through a corner of Kansas and into Oklahoma. Neither of them was prepared for what they saw in the Sooner state, where single-crop farming had impoverished the soil, leaving it to utter ruination from the pitiless droughts and the wind. Some people called it the Dust Bowl, but Jay figured a better name would have been the Valley of Ashes.

As usual some cottages and cabins turned them away because of T’s skin color, so they pulled into a tent camp. Without sleeping or cooking gear of their own, they rented some from the manager. But having no food, they were reduced to asking other campers if they might sell them a can of beans and some bread with a few bacon strips. No luck. Jay told T that they could stand to go without a meal; they were still better off than some of the other campers. A rain of locusts suddenly blew in from the south, causing them to beat a hasty retreat to their tent. As they stomped on the bugs, a middle-aged woman with pale blue eyes, leathery skin, gray hair, and discolored teeth pushed her head through the door flap and asked if they would like to share a meal with her family. Hungrily accepting her offer, they followed her to her campsite. Three tents housed thirteen people: the woman, called Ma, her husband, her parents, her brother, six children, a son-in-law, and a preacher man by the name of Casy. Even though her group clearly had more members than any other, she insisted it would be no trouble to feed two extra mouths.

Using a small kerosene stove and pan, she brought a wad of bacon grease to a sizzle, added dough and taters and then some greens and onions. They ate with bent silverware on chipped plates. Jay suspected that his parents would have gagged at the greasy-smelling concoction, but he thought it tasted like manna from heaven.

After the meal, Ma said, “Since no one said grace before the eatin’, Preacher, how’s about you shoutin’ up a thanks to the Lord for sendin’ us a full stomach.”

What Ma called a full stomach, Jay regarded as a scant mouthful. Other members of the family must have felt the same, as they took crusts of bread and sopped up the last bits of grease in the pan.

Casy explained for the sake of the two guests that he had given up preaching but in appreciation for the meal would say a few words. “We thank those responsible for the growin’ of the fruits of the earth and the pasturin’ of animals for what we’ve just et. Their hard labors, and that of others, keep us goin’, even though the rich foxes try to spoil the vineyards. Someday, though, when we harvest the grapes, the people, I pray, will rise up in wrath against the spoilers. Amen.”

The family chimed in and fell to telling stories. Jay gathered from some of them that the oldest child, Tom, had done time in Oklahoma for killing a man in self-defense. Ma’s son-in-law, married to Rose, babbled stupidly about the money to be made once they arrived in California. His lack of sense made him think that enrolling in a night-school class and learning how to repair radios would enable him to afford a home with electrical appliances in Hollywood. Similarly, Ma’s second son, Al, resolved to find a job in a garage fixing cars and to spend his money on lovely long-legged aspiring actresses. From his talk, Jay concluded that Al knew a great deal about engines and was the person responsible for keeping the family truck running, an old Hudson that looked as if any moment it might quit.

Ma, who provided the moral strength of the family, urged T, who had briefly played baseball in Los Angeles, to tell what they could expect to find there.

“The city fathers call it the City of Angels, but I think of it as the city of dreams. Even then, back in the twenties, all the failed and frustrated folks from around the country had started to move to the coast, ’specially hopeful actors. What I remember was the weather, the sameness of it, and the orchards and the movie studios abuildin’ out toward the beach. Them hills overlookin’ the city on one side and the valley on the other sure were pretty. The best town of all, though, was up the coast a bit, Santa Barbara. Now that place, if you had enough money, would be my idea of landin’ in paradise. From the city, you can see up on the hillside a mission datin’ back to the Spaniards. Hikin’ up to that church, I got to speak to the padre. One of my sweetest memories is of that man in his brown robes and rope belt.”

Back in their tent, Jay asked what the padre had said. “That God was color blind.”

In the morning, as they loaded the car, Jay could see Ma and her family packing up their Hudson truck. She waved. Jay folded a fiver in his palm and asked T to join him in saying goodbye to these kind folks. When they shook hands with the old lady, Jay transferred the money and closed his hand around hers, whispering, “Promise you won’t look until we’ve left the camp.” She reluctantly agreed. They thanked the family for their hospitality, shook hands all around, and once again took to the road. The Texas panhandle lay ahead.

They stopped at a campground outside of Amarillo, and T set up his checker board, as he had done many times before, to earn a handful of change. As usual, Jay hustled players, going from one tent and cooking pit to another announcing the start of the game. On this particular evening, they attracted about twenty players, each good, Jay figured, for at least a dime. What he didn’t count on were the cops showing up with lights flashing and night sticks waving. Hauled off to jail for breaking Texas gambling laws, T and Jay were questioned about their age, place of birth, residence, last job, education, name of father, maiden name of mother, length of stay in Amarillo, destination. Jay wondered what all these questions had to do with gambling. Eventually, they were turned over to the turnkey, who told them to follow him. They found themselves in a cell measuring about ten-by-fifteen feet. Five men were already in the cage when they entered, and by midnight the number had increased to ten. Everyone lay on the cement floor in all sorts of positions. Jay was doubled like a jackknife; T was trying to sleep sitting up; and a hobo felt no reluctance to use Jay’s stomach as a footrest. The last two men who entered the cell arrived drunk and, for want of space, were forced to sleep with their heads against the toilet bowl.

Well past midnight, Jay felt someone trying to take his watch, one of the two drunks. When he shoved him aside, the man grew truculent and struck Jay with his boot. A second later, T had him in a neck lock. His companion tried to help him, but T kicked the man in the groin, ending the night’s adventure and attracting the turnkey, who proved susceptible to a bribe. The bull led them out the back door of the jailhouse into a darkened street but not before hitting T with a nightstick on the back of his head, a lacerating blow that exacerbated the ones administered by Rolf Hahne and caused T no little blood and pain.

As they approached their car, they saw a drummer and his tart, whose giggle sounded strange in the perfect deadness of the hour, and a family sleeping in a doorway, their two young children hunched over with their faces hidden in the mother’s skirts. What dreams obsessed the parents? Probably dreams that swallowed up the night. Reaching the car, they drove west toward New Mexico with its beautiful mesas and dry desert stretches. Slowed by the sea of souls in every conceivable conveyance making their way down 66, they gave up any idea of making good time. Vehicles lined the road for miles. It looked as if all of America was resettling from east to west. Reaching Albuquerque two days later in the late afternoon, they slept on the outskirts of town. A blistering sun greeted them in the morning. Before setting out, T bought some curios and an Indian blanket for Janice and Melanie. The desperately tedious drive through New Mexico and Arizona ended with their arrival at the Colorado River and an agricultural station checking for plants. By the time they rolled into Needles, California, where they luckily found lodging in a tent camp, T had just about consumed his second and last bottle of Energy Elixir. Perhaps the stuff partially worked: T hadn’t become a white man, but Jay’s faithful friend had manhandled two thieving drunks and kept him from harm. Unloading their gear from the car, they heard familiar accents: Ma and her family. Although they had left Oklahoma before Ma, the endless queue of cars and their arrest had put the two men only a short ways behind.