The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel Read online

  Red sat on a log next to me, but he kept silent. Amidst the revelry, he just sipped his coffee and stared at the dirt between his feet. I couldn’t help but glance at his hands and imagine them tearing the skin off a live possum. But then he jerked up his head and caught me looking, with the one eyeball he had left. And once he latched that yellow, bloodshot orb on me, he wouldn’t let go.

  For the first time, he spoke. “I reckon Craw warned you about the ghost cow.” The mention of a ghost wasn’t as unnerving as Red’s voice itself, which seemed to rise out of his chest and scrape against the sides of his throat on the way out.

  “No,” I said.

  Red pointed a bony finger towards a tree at the edge of camp. “See that there skull?” There was a cracked, sun-bleached cow skull hanging on the trunk of the tree. I nodded.

  “They used to drive cattle over this land,” Red said. “One night a cow got separated from the herd and wandered into the river. The bed of this here river’s like quicksand, and that cow sunk down till the water was up to her neck. Coyotes came and took her in the middle of the night. Picked her bones clean and carried off everything but the skull.”

  I pulled away from Red’s eye long enough to look around the bonfire. All the other hoboes were in rapt attention to the story. Craw was gone—he must have stepped out to relieve himself.

  Red went on. “Now, some nights you can hear a clanging bell, or a cow moaning from the middle of the river. I even seen it once—a cow’s body, all pale and glowing, walking around with no head. That’s why I hung the skull on that tree—so when she comes looking for her head, she can find it easy.”

  I glanced over at that white skull and a shiver went down my spine. Red had me scared out of my wits, and I didn’t even believe in ghosts. This world is all there is, I tried to remind myself. Since there’s no afterlife, nobody—human or cow—can return to haunt the living.

  Then Craw returned, laughing. “Aw, not that ghost cow bullshit.”

  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

  THE 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 sp
lashed 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

  IF 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?”

  Funny—I hadn’t even thought about whacking the weasel for a week. That was a phenomenon even more amazing than Father being blinded by bird shit.

  I wondered what jerking off would be called in hobo lingo. After a minute, I thought of the answer: “It’s a Hoover fuck,” I told Craw’s hat. “A poor substitute for the real thing, but when it’s all you’ve got it’ll have to do. What do you say to that?” Craw thought that was pretty good.

  I’d really gone over the edge now—talking to an empty hat about slapping the snake. What was worse, the hat started talking back. I heard it say my name—faintly at first, then louder. “Tobias … ”

  Hats don’t talk, I told myself. Unless they happen to be haunted hats. That notion was more far fetched than a ghost cow.

  But there it was again. “Tobias!”

  Then I heard a rustling in the weeds. I spun around. “Craw?”

  “Thank God,” he said, “there you are!” As I reached out to shake his hand, Craw brushed right past me and took his derby from the stick. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said, brushing it off. “I’m only half a man without my hat.”

  He screwed it onto his head and grinned. “Well, what are you staring at? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Maybe I have.” I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if Jesus had appeared to me.

  Craw raised his arms and twirled around. “I’m solid as ever, I assure you. Go ahead—touch me.”

  “But the fire—” I said. “How did you make it out?”

  “Luckily, my coat’s made of asbestos.”

  Then I remembered our comrades. “Where’s Red and Chester?”

  “They’re hoofing it back to Muskogee, slightly fricasseed but none the worse for it. I had a hunch I’d find you at the river, and sure enough—I could hear you yelling from a mile away. I knew it was you, ’cause you cuss like a Baptist.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Well, it ain’t good. It’s like a Yankee trying to speak Spanish—you got the words right, but not the accent.”

  My face turned red. I couldn’t catch my own supper, couldn’t start a fire from sticks—now I couldn’t even curse right. I was a complete failure as a hobo.

  Craw patted my shoulder. “You’ll get it someday. Just keep hanging around with riffraff like me.”

  + + +

  It was dark now, except for the moonlight reflecting on the river. Craw showed me how to properly start a fire—it turned out that you have to find dry wood instead of pulling green twigs off trees.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,�
�� Craw said, “I’ve got to go lighten my load.” He went off into the bushes and grunted—though I tried not to hear. Ten minutes later, he returned. “Take my advice,” he said. “Don’t get old. When I was your age, all I thought about was girls. When I was forty, all I thought about was money. These days, all I ask for is a good shit once a week.”

  I didn’t ask whether he got his wish.

  Craw slapped his leg. “Now—how about some food?”

  My stomach rumbled at the word, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. “More Hoover steaks?”

  “No,” he said. “Catfish.”

  “And where are you going to get a catfish?”

  Craw laughed. “We’re sitting by a river chock full of them, aren’t we?”

  “True. But we don’t have a pole, or line, or a hook, unless you’re hiding something.”

  Craw held up his hook. “One out of three ain’t bad. We don’t need a pole, anyhow. Haven’t you ever gone grappling?”

  I hadn’t. Craw explained the technique: “At night, catfish burrow in underwater caves to rest. You find a drop off in the bank where the water is waist high. Lower yourself into the river and feel your way along the bank, checking for holes. When you find a hole, reach inside. If you feel the slippery skin of a catfish, just grab it by the gills and grapple it up to the surface.”

  I preferred to do my fishing from dry land, with all my clothes on. But Craw seemed hell-bent on this grappling, and I was hungry enough to try.

  I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my pants’ legs. Craw laughed. “You’re going to have to go in deeper than that.”

  Hoping this wasn’t some perverse ploy to get me naked, I hid behind a tree and stripped down to my undershorts, then dropped into the water. Craw stood up above with his arms crossed, smirking.

  “Well, are you coming in?” I asked.

  “I’m spotting you,” he said. “Someone’s got to haul the fish up once you catch it.” As unfair as it was, that suited me fine—I sure as hell didn’t want to see Craw in his skivvies.