The Dirty Parts of the Bible (10 page)

The veins in Red’s neck swelled up. “You shut up, Craw. I seen him with my own eye.”

“What were you drinking?”

Red spat in the fire and it sizzled. “You don’t believe in spooks?”

“Course I believe in spooks,” Craw said. “If, by that, you mean the shades of departed souls. But I don’t believe in headless heifers.”

+ + +

As the fire died out, we settled into our separate shanties. Craw showed me how to make a bed out of newspapers—Hoover blankets, he called them. Before he left me alone, I asked whether he’d ever seen a ghost.

“Certainly. In fact, I’m looking at one now.” I looked back over my shoulder. “Why,
you’re
a ghost,” he said, “and so am I. We’re spirits haunting these bodies of flesh and blood, just as spooks haunt houses of wood and stone.”

“You believe in haunted houses?”

“All houses,” he said, “wherein men have lived and died, are haunted houses.

Through open doors, the phantoms

on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense

Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere

Wafts through these earthly mists

and vapors dense

A vital breath of more ethereal air.

One of the perks of being an atheist—or so I thought—was that I didn’t have to be afraid of ghosts anymore. Growing up, I was so scared of ghosts that I could hardly sleep some nights. I’d tremble every time a branch scraped across my window, and shake at every creak of the hallway floor—just waiting for a spook to burst in. This was because Mama used to tell me her family’s ghost stories.

Mama even claimed to have seen a spook with her own eyes. “When I was a little girl, I had a baby brother who drowned in the river. Papa made a gravemarker for him, but somehow it got broken in two. Papa didn’t want to throw it out, so he put that broken gravestone under my bed. One night, I woke up to someone tickling my toes. There was a fat little boy—white as a sheet—standing at the foot of my bed, smiling. He didn’t say anything at all, just smiled. I know it was my little brother, come back to tell me he was happy in heaven.”

But Father always cut off Mama’s stories. “There’s no such thing as ghosts,” he’d say. “When you die, you either go to heaven or hell. Nobody returns to this earth.

“But,” Father was quick to add, “there
is
such a thing as demons. The Bible says they’re fallen angels. When people think they’ve seen a ghost, it’s really a demon sent by Satan to torment them.” That didn’t help comfort my night terrors.

Demons, ghosts, ghost cows—it’s all pure superstition, I thought, lying there in the Muskogee jungle. Every supposedly supernatural phenomenon has a perfectly reasonable, natural explanation. To an inebriated, one-eyed hobo, a white dog becomes a ghost cow. The moonlight was probably playing tricks with Mama’s eyes. As for Craw—this was a man who believed that eating eggshells would kill a tapeworm.

With all this thinking about spooks, I didn’t sleep well. In the middle of the night, something startled me awake. It sounded like an animal outside my shanty. I lay there in terror, listening to the snorts and snarls. For what seemed like an hour, the sounds kept coming from the same spot, just a few feet from my flimsy shelter. Maybe Red was right about the ghost cow.

When it became apparent that the beast—whatever it was—wasn’t going anywhere, I mustered enough courage to poke my head outside. There was no animal, living or deceased, to be seen. Instead, the noises seemed to be coming from Craw’s shanty.

I crept over to the opening. There was no one but Craw inside, and he was face down and snoring. I shook his shoulder till he rolled over. “Do you hear those noises?”

“Sorry about the commotion,” Craw said, rolling back onto his belly. “That’s why they call it sonuvabitch stew.”

CHAPTER 13

T
HE
Remus Kid’s second ride got off to a much better start than his first. As the sun rose, we hid at the top of a hill where the train would slow down. When the ’bos made their run, I kept close behind Craw. He leapt up, hooked the ladder, and held out his hand.

We climbed up top and dropped through the open hatch of the same boxcar as Red and Chester. It was an empty cattle car, the floor covered with hay and manure. Avoiding the shit as best we could, we piled the hay into beds. Craw leaned back and grinned. “Now this is what I call first class—cushioned seats!”

An hour or two into the ride, Chester lit up a half-burnt cigar and pulled an amber bottle out of his coat pocket. “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion,” he said.

Craw jumped up. “Hot damn! What’s the occasion?”

“There ain’t one,” Chester said, pulling out the cork. “But I got a terrible thirst and can’t wait no longer.” He took a swig and passed it to Craw.

Craw took one drink and grimaced. “This isn’t whiskey—it’s horse pee.” Then he took another. “Damn fine horse, though.”

“Tennessee bred,” Chester said.

Craw lifted the bottle as if to make a toast. “The Tennessee stud—that’s what the girls used to call me.”

Red grabbed it out of Craw’s hand and grunted. “Used to.” (I was getting to where I could understand him now.) That got Chester laughing, till he choked on his cigar. “Damn it, Red—yer gonna be the death of me.”

Red shoved the bottle between his lips and threw back his head. As he swallowed, his Adam’s apple ran up and down his throat like a mouse. The bottle was halfway empty and draining fast.

Chester stopped laughing. “Gimme that, you red-haired bastard!” He tried to wrestle it out of Red’s grip.

“Red hair’s better’n no hair at all,” Red growled. Whiskey splashed down his coat, but he wouldn’t let go.

“I’ll tear yer
other
eye out!” Chester yelled. He swung his fist and knocked the bottle out of Red’s mouth—along with a bloody tooth. Red lunged forward and the two of them locked together, tumbling and cursing across the floor.

In the middle of the ruckus, Chester’s burning cigar fell onto the whiskey-drenched hay. Craw stamped his feet at the flames, but they spread too fast. When they reached the bottle, it exploded in a shower of red-hot glass.

“Hellfire and damnation!” Chester yelled, beating at his flaming sleeve. Soon, the whole back of the boxcar was on fire. Red—and I had no idea why—was struggling to unbuckle his pants. I stayed behind Craw, who rattled the sidedoor latch. “Locked, dammit!” He started hacking away at the wood with his hook.

The next thing I knew, Red had his pants around his ankles, standing there naked as Noah. Then he aimed his pecker at the flames and let loose with a shower. Chester cheered him on and urged me to join in. “Pee, boys, pee!”

It was no use. The flames only climbed higher. Red had so much alcohol in him that his piss was probably like kerosene. The entire car was hot as a tinderbox and filling up with smoke.

Finally, Craw knocked off the latch and the door swung open. I yelled for Craw to jump first. “Not this time. I’ve got to save their sorry asses,” he said, pointing at Chester and Red. “As soon as they get their pants back on.”

He shoved me forward. “Remember—aim for the grass!”

+ + +

When you’re flying in midair, having just jumped from a boxcar rolling at full speed, it’s very difficult to aim for anything. Or maybe that’s just my excuse. At any rate, I hit the gravel, bounced, and landed upside down in the dirt. At least I managed to dodge the bushes this time; my technique was improving.

I watched the rest of the train scream past, then climbed to my feet and waited for Craw. The cars rolled on, leaving a cloud of smoke hanging in the sky, and then the train was out of sight.
Why didn’t he jump?

I ran along the tracks till I was out of breath. About a mile down the line, I found Craw’s derby; there was a hole burnt in the top. I tucked it under my arm and kept walking.

As the Oklahoma sun beat down, I felt as small and insignificant as an ant crawling in the middle of the Sahara Desert. My throat was as dry and parched as the red dirt. Dust stung my cheeks and eyes.

The scene played over and over in my head: Chester and Red peeing. Craw fighting back the flames to drag them out. The three of them, trapped. The charred bodies. Red’s burnt pecker.

I didn’t cry—I never did, not even the day of Father’s accident—but I felt like crying. It wasn’t just that I was lost in the middle of nowhere, though that was bad enough.

I’d only known Craw for two days, but he was like a father to me. He was opposite my real father in every way—a black man who chewed snuff and drank whiskey and told dirty jokes—but he was like a father nonetheless. I missed the dirty old bum of a beast.

CHAPTER 14

I
F
I could have turned back, I would have. I’d lost my money, Father’s map—and now my guide. I had nothing left to lose but my life.

A couple hours later, another train whistled in the distance. I crouched behind a bush and waited. Part of me wanted to jump onto it; part of me wanted to jump in front of it. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference. I let it steam past and kept walking.

Late afternoon, I came to a bridge over a river. Unlike the creek at the Muskogee jungle, this was a real river, at least a quarter mile across. I didn’t dare cross a trestle that long on tired legs—no telling when another train would come along.

So I followed a trail down to the bank, cupped the warm water in my hands, and splashed the sweat and dust from my face. The sights and smells refreshed me. It was an oasis of life in a dry land—mayflies floating on the air, frogs splashing into the water, sunfish nipping bugs off the surface.

If only I had my fishing pole, I thought, I’d catch dinner in no time. As it was, the menu was limited. Mayflies make scant eating. Frog legs sounded appetizing—provided I could catch and cook the devils. For the next hour, I chased frogs along the bank, but all I managed to catch was a lumpy, bloated gray toad. Even after a full day without food, I wasn’t
that
hungry.

When the sun started to set, I collected sticks for a fire. I’d never started a fire without matches, but I’d read about how to do it in boy’s adventure magazines—all you do is rub the sticks together and puff on them.

After half an hour of lying on my belly, rubbing and puffing, I hadn’t generated enough heat to melt a snowflake. If only I’d been a boy scout, I would have learned how to survive in the wild. Remus didn’t have any boy scout troop. I suppose they didn’t need one—your average Remus boy could kill and skin a buck with his bare hands. The problem was, I wasn’t your average Remus boy—I was the pale, pansy preacher’s son. All I could do in a pinch was recite a bunch of Goddamn Bible verses.

Finally, I jumped up, stomped around, yelled every curse word I knew, and hurled the sticks into the river. That made me feel a little better.

For the heck of it, I stuck a branch into the mud and hung Craw’s hat on it. Then I started asking it questions.
What now, Craw? Try to hop another train? Find a farmhouse and beg? Swim out to a barge and hope they throw me a lifeline? Or just sit here and jerk off a few times before I die?”