Cass was a sickly thing, and Bryan had left his health in France. But Nancy was strong, her girlhood was happy, she had always been gay.
As a small girl, walking alone in the tiny garden on the mornings of those early days, days as yet undarkened by any shadow, she would laugh at everything she saw, red zinnias and blue morning-glories, tall dahlias and the wild daisy. Of the sweet purple clover she wove herself garlands, she made herself crowns of lilac and rose. Then, dressed like some little brown Mexican flower-girl, anklets of marigold, wristlets of grass, she would dance through the garden singing in sunlight, till she frightened the sparrows and caused them to scold her. For sheer delight she would dance, laughing, leaping and twirling, whirling about with her brown arms stretched wide; then, laughing and gasping, half-dizzied and toppling, she would throw herself down in the long grass of summer; laughing, laughing, weeping with laughter.
In all bright things she took deep joy: in gay-colored birds, in pictures and ribands; in gaudy new dresses, in flowers and songs.
Nance had been mischievous, too, as a child, always fighting with street urchins, chasing the chickens, or stealing white grapes off honest folks’ vines.
All day one day she coveted a great white blossom growing in the yard of neighbor Luther Gulliday. It was a wild chrysanthemum, she had not seen one before in her life; so she begged Luther for it, and he gave her instead—an apple. Nance went off quite humbly—an excellent actress. But when dark came she strolled again toward her flower, saw no one watching, plucked it and ran.
So all her days passed, unreckoned, fast-fleeting. She plucked wild plums, in the sunlight she found them, and her days were like these: she grew in light, unattended.
Sometimes after supper, while undressing for bed, she would press her hands slowly down the white bow of her loins. A great wonder would fill her, she would stand looking down. She would lie still in the darkness, her breasts like twin spears; and she would feel then as though she lay on a pyre whose flames were already beginning beneath her. The girl would be afraid, though she did not know of what. And her face in the dark would change to that of a woman.
Then she would sleep, and in sleep too she laughed. She was three years older than the boy Cass.
So the house stood, and so were the McKays, in the pre–depression years, on the West Texas prairie. Their home stood like a casual box on the border; it was wooden and half-accidental. It had no roots in the soil, it stood without permanence. Although it was old and unpainted and rotting, yet it appeared somehow to have been in its place for but the past few days. So with the people within—Texan-American descendants of pioneer woodsmen—they too had no roots. They too were become half-accidental. Unclaimed now they lived, the years of conquest long past, no longer accessory to hill and plain, no longer possessing place in the world.
They too were rotting.
On the edge of the town grew the jungle. Fathers warned sons not to go near it. Mothers intimidated their six-year-olds with tales of bearded men lying in wait in the long grass down by the Santa Fe tracks. But to a boy like Cass McKay, who was a lonely child, the Santa Fe jungle was not a fearful place. To a boy like Cass, who feared his father and had no mother, the jungle offered companionship.
Boys little older than himself lay idling about in long sun-shadows there, talking, jesting, eating, sleeping, waiting for one train or another. They boiled black coffee in open tins or ate beans with a stick; they rolled cigarettes single-handed and sang songs about far-away places. Cass never listened without wonder, he never watched without admiration.
“Ah’d like to git out of this pesthole some day,” he mused to himself. “Ah’d go to Laredo or Dallas or Tucson—anywhere ah’d take fancy to go. Ah’d git mah right arm tattooed in New Awlins, ah’d ship out f’om Houston or p’raps f’om Port Arthur; ah’d git to know all the tough spots as well as the easy ones. Ah’d always know jest where to go next. Ah’d always be laughin’ an’ larkin’ with folks.”
Cass listened to the boys and older men, and he learned many things:
That Beaumont was tough, but was loosening up. That Greensboro (in the place called Car-line)—that that was a right bad little town to ride into. That Boykin, right below it, was even worse. That toughest of all was any place that was anywhere in Georgia; if you were caught riding there you were put on a gang, and you worked on a pea farm from sunrise till sunset, sweating along in a chain for sixty-one days or until they caught someone else to take your place. But they gave you fifteen cents every week, and a plug of tobacco on Sundays besides. “So that part’s not so bad,” Cass thought.
He was a red-headed shaver in blue overalls and bare feet.
“Stay ’way from Waycross,” an old Wobbly warned him, “less you want to do ninety days in a turp camp.” And a young man sang an old tune for the boy, beating on a tin can in time with his song.
Turp camp down in Gawgia,
Cracker on a stump,
Big bull-whip he carries makes them blizzard-dodgers hump.
Watch ’em flag it out of Gawgia when they’ve done their little bump.
Oh boom the little saxophone, rap the little drums;
We’ll sing a little ditty till the old freight comes.
Southern Texas, but for Beaumont and Sierra Bianca, was simple; the Rio Grande valley was a downright cinch—you could ride blind down there without any penalty just so long as you got off on the side away from the depot when you got into McAllen. You could get through Alabama all right—provided you didn’t stand up on the tops like a tourist, so long as you stayed out of sight at division points, provided you stayed off the A. & W.P. Those A. & W.P. bastards utterly discouraged a man, for they made a point of putting you off at a spot in the woods forty-four miles northeast of Montgomery—a water-tank in the wilderness entitled Chehawee. And you walked to Montgomery then unless you had a fin. You could stay on for a fin, cash down on the barrelhead.
Look out for that town in Mississippi called Flomaton, ’cause that’s Mick Binga’s hole. Binga, even when he had both arms, was plenty-plenty tough. One night he licked two niggers for riding and they came back an hour after and shoved him under the wheels so that he lost his right wing—but he shot and killed both niggers while they were running away. Since then he’s a devil on whites, and death to blacks. Since then he’s killed and crippled so many niggers that even his railroad has lost count. Some say he’s killed twenty. Some say more, some less. Some say that when he gets fifty even he’s going to quit to give his boy the job. His boy is majoring in French philosophy now at Tulane, but everyone knows how well such stuff will pay him.
The roundhouse in Cheyenne is filled every night
With loafers and bummers of most every plight;
On their backs in no clothes, in their pockets no bills,
Each day they keep coming from the dreary black hills.
Look out for Marsh City—that’s Lame Hank Pugh’s. Look out for Greenville—that’s old Seth Healey’s. He’ll be walking the tops and be dressed like a ’bo, so you’ll never know by his looks he’s a bull. But he’ll have a gun on his hip and a hose-length in his hand, and two deputies coming down both the sides; your best bet then is to stay right still. You can’t get away and he’ll pot you if you try. So give him what you got and God help you if you’re broke. When he lifts up that hose-line just cover up your eyes and don’t try any back-fightin’ when it comes down—sww-ish. God help you if you run and God help you if you fight; God help you if you’re broke and God help you if you’re black.
Old Seth Healey at Greenville—there’s a real bastard for you. Someone ought to kill that old man one of these days. The only way you can tell he’s a bull as welt as a brakie is by his hat. He wears patched blue overalls and keeps his star hid. Lean as Job’s turkey and twice as mean. The hat’s a big floppy affair with three holes in the top,