Hot Night in the City

A big yellow-fanged dog came running out to bark and scratch at the gate and snarl through its slats, making my stomach tingle the way it does when you look down from a high place. Dirty-Shirt Red stayed on our side of the fence, but he smiled and talked to the dog in a cooing voice, calling it nice fella, nice fella and saying, 'You really know how to bark, don't you, old fella?' then saying under his breath, 'I'd like to kick his hairy ass into next Wednesday for him.' Then aloud, 'There's a nice fella! Yes, there's a nice fella!'

A gray-haired woman came around the side of the house and shouted, 'Hugo?' and instantly the dog's menace dissolved into a slack, moist grin with a slippery tongue hanging out the side of its mouth and lots of whimpering and whining for attention. 'No need to get scared,' the old woman said when she got to the gate. 'There ain't a peck of mischief in a bushel of him.'

'I could tell that right off, ma'am,' Dirty-Shirt said, peeling off his battered hat and elbowing me in the same motion. 'But you mustn't scold him for barking, ma'am, because that's his job, and he's only doing it to protect his mistress. Ain't you, big fella? Yes, you are. Yes, you are! Fact is, ma'am, I just love dogs. It may be a weakness in my makeup, but there it is.' He elbowed me again, hard, and I dragged my cap off. 'Yessireebob, I've had dogs since I was knee-high to a grass snake, and I'd have one still if I wasn't on the road and didn't have any proper way to care for it.'

'Say, wait a minute,' the lady asked. 'Don't I recognize you? Haven't you been at my gate before?'

'Gosh, I'm afraid I haven't, ma'am. This is the first time me and my boy's been in this neck of the woods.'

'This your boy?' She looked at me, and I just smiled.

'Yes, ma'am,' Dirty-Shirt said. 'He ain't much, but he's mine.'

'Looking for work, are you?' Her voice still had a certain measuring tone to it.

'That's right, ma'am. Back home, there's no work to be had for love nor money. We're hoping to find something up North.'

'Just the two of you, is it?'

Dirty-Shirt's smile suddenly collapsed. He looked down at his shoes and in a thin, dry voice he said, 'Yes, ma'am, there's just the two of us now. After the drought and the dust had done their worst, then the fever come along and...' But he couldn't go on. He covered his face with his hand, pushing his finger and thumb into his eye sockets until there were tears. Then he sniffed and wiped them away. 'My woman was always sort of frail, and I guess she just didn't have the strength to go on, so she...' He didn't have the strength to go on, either. But he sniffed and made a brave, if pale, smile. 'I'm hoping to make a new start up North. For the boy's sake.'

The woman looked down at me with compassion melting in her eyes. I frowned and looked at the ground.

'Fact is, ma'am,' Dirty-Shirt continued, 'I was hoping your husband might have some work I could do to earn dinner for the boy and me. Now, before you say anything, I want you to know that if you don't have any honest work that needs being done, or if things are so hard that you really can't spare a couple of meals, I'd understand completely because that's just how things was with me and Maudie before she...' He couldn't go on.

'I'm a widow woman,' she told us. 'So of course there's always plenty of man's work that wants being done.'

'True. I noticed there's a pile of wood yonder that needs stacking.'

'That's right. A couple of tramps came by yesterday, and I give them each a po'boy to split that wood for me. But they left without stacking it.'

'Those tramps are all the same, ain't they? We was forever being pestered by them back on the farm before...' He stopped again, but pulled himself together with a shake. 'Now, I know as well as you do that most of these 'Knights of the Road' are nothing but bums looking for handouts, and trying to avoid honest work. But nevertheless I always used to give them whatever I could spare because, like our parson once said, you never know but what one of them might be honest-to-God down on his luck, and it would be a crying shame to turn that one hungry man away, even if all the rest of them is just no account bums. I've never forgotten those words of wisdom and guidance.'

'Well, you might as well come into the yard. Today's baking day, so there's fresh bread. I can make you a couple of po'boys out of cold chicken and whatever else I find. I hope that'll do you.'

'That'll do us just fine, ma'am. Down, Hugo! Ain't it cute the way he sticks his nose just about everywhere, the little... rascal?'

The widow led us to the pile of split wood and left us there while she went into the house to make the sandwiches. As soon as she was out of earshot, Dirty-Shirt told me in a quick whisper, 'Now you just sit over there by the pump and press your hand to the middle of your chest, like this. See? When she comes back, you smile and smile, but don't you say a word.'

'But why—'

'Why's ass. Just do what I say.'

I perched on the edge of a wooden watering trough next to the pump, feeling stupid with my hand pressed against my chest like that, while Dirty-Shirt selected a small stick of wood from the stack and brought it over to the woodpile, walking slowly and stopping a couple of times to suck air in with long, painful inhalations, then push it out with breaths that puffed his cheeks.

He had managed to move three pieces to the woodpile, and he was resting, cradling the fourth in his arms like a baby, when the widow came out with a short plank on which there were two half-loaf po'boys, chock-full of chicken and tomatoes and greens, and two big glasses of milk, cool and frothy from the spring house. She gave one of each to me, and I smiled at her without a word, just like I'd been told.

'Didn't your ma teach you to say 'thank you', boy?' she asked in a tone more joshing than pestering.

I smiled even broader.

'He's a good boy,' Dirty-Shirt called from the woodpile as he hoisted the split piece up onto the top with some effort, then stood leaning on the pile to catch his breath. 'Yes, ma'am, he's a good boy, and a kind-hearted one, but he's a little...' He made a vague gesture towards his head and shrugged.

'O-oh,' the widow said in a melting voice. 'Well, that's all right, then. You just sit there and enjoy your sandwich. And when you're done, you can help your pa.'

I was so embarrassed I could have kicked Dirty-Shirt in the shins. Instead, I smiled even more broadly—just like an idiot should—and I took a huge bite from my po'boy that squirted stuff out the back, and that made me even more embarrassed.

'I'm afraid I can't let the boy help me,' Dirty-Shirt said as he came over to take his sandwich and glass of milk. 'But don't you worry none. I'll do work enough for the two of us... soon as I finish this dee-lish-ious feast you've prepared with your own two—Get down, Hugo!—God bless it! Sure is a healthy, active dog you've got there, ma'am.'

'I was watching you out the window while I was making the po'boys,' the widow told him.

'That was very neighbourly of you, ma'am.'

'Didn't seem to me you was moving around any too frisky. I think your boy'd better give you a hand.'

'I just can't let him do that, ma'am,' he muffled through a mouthful of bread and chicken and greens. 'It's his heart, you see.'

I set my glass down and pressed my hand against my chest.

'But don't you worry,' Dirty-Shirt continued. 'I'll do the work of two men.'

'It ain't often you hear tell of a child with a weak heart,' the widow said.

'That is so true, ma'am. So true. It's a rare congenital form of subacute bacterial endocarditis. But please don't let my doctor talk bamboozle you. The only reason I know the medical term is because... well, I suffer from the malady myself. Have ever since I was a kid. It's hereditary. Thankfully, it ain't a quick killer... so long as you don't tax yourself none.'

'But... how on earth did you ever run a farm with your subacute bactra—what it is?'

'Slowly, ma'am. Real slowly. And maybe that's why there wasn't enough put aside to care for my Maudie when the fever came and she...' He couldn't finish. I mean he couldn't finish what he was saying. He finished his po'boy and milk just fine. And seconds on the milk. But the widow wouldn't let him finish stacking the wood, no matter how much he begged her not to shame him by treating him like some shiftless bum because he was eager to give a fair day's work for a fair day's— 'Is that apple pie I smell?'

'Happens it is. Like I said, this is baking day.'