fateful Sunday, when the sheriff summoned ambulances to remove the murdered family, the ambulances had driven across the grass straight to the front door, and the tire tracks were still visible.
The hired man’s house was empty, too; he had found new quarters for his family nearer Holcomb—to no one’s surprise, for nowadays, though the weather was glittering, the Clutter place seemed shadowed, and hushed, and motionless. But as Bobby passed a storage barn and, beyond that, a livestock corral, he heard a horse’s tail swish. It was Nancy’s Babe, the obedient old dappled mare with flaxen mane and dark-purple eyes like magnificent pansy blossoms. Clutching her mane, Bobby rubbed his cheek along Babe’s neck—something Nancy used to do. And Babe whinnied. Last Sunday, the last time he had visited the Kidwells, Sue’s mother had mentioned Babe. Mrs. Kidwell, a fanciful woman, had been standing at a window watching dusk tint the outdoors, the sprawling prairie. And out of the blue she had said, “Susan? You know what I keep seeing? Nancy. On Babe. Coming this way.”
Perry noticed them first—hitch-hikers, a boy and an old man, both carrying homemade knap-sacks, and despite the blowy weather, a gritty and bitter Texas wind, wearing only overalls and a thin denim shirt. “Let’s give them a lift,” Perry said. Dick was reluctant; he had no objection to assisting hitchhikers, provided they looked as if they could pay their way—at least “chip in a couple of gallons of gas.” But Perry, little old big-hearted Perry, was always pestering Dick to pick up the damnedest, sorriest-looking people. Finally Dick agreed, and stopped the car.
The boy—a stocky, sharp-eyed, talkative towhead of about twelve—was exuberantly grateful, but the old man, whose face was seamed and yellow, feebly crawled into the back seat and slumped there silently. The boy said, “We sure do appreciate this. Johnny was ready to drop. We ain’t had a ride since Galveston.”
Perry and Dick had left that port city an hour earlier, having spent a morning there applying at various shipping offices for jobs as able-bodied seamen. One company offered them immediate work on a tanker bound for Brazil, and, indeed, the two would now have been at sea if their prospective employer had not discovered that neither man possessed union papers or a passport. Strangely, Dick’s disappointment exceeded Perry’s: “Brazil! That’s where they’re building a whole new capital city. Right from scratch. Imagine getting in on the ground floor of something like that! Any fool could make a fortune.”
“Where you headed?” Perry asked the boy.
“Sweetwater.”
“Where’s Sweetwater?”
“Well, it’s along in this direction somewhere. It’s somewhere in Texas. Johnny, here, he’s my gramp. And he’s got a sister lives in Sweetwater. Least, I sure Jesus hope she does. We thought she lived in Jasper, Texas. But when we got to Jasper, folks told us her and her people moved to Galveston. But she wasn’t in Galveston—lady there said she was gone to Sweetwater. I sure Jesus hope we find her. Johnny,” he said, rubbing the old man’s hands, as if to thaw them, “you hear me, Johnny? We’re riding in a nice warm Chevrolet—‘56 model.”
The old man coughed, rolled his head slightly, opened and closed his eyes, and coughed again.
Dick said, “Hey, listen. What’s wrong with him?”
“It’s the change,” the boy said. “And the walking. We been walking since before Christmas. Seems to me we covered the better part of Texas.” In the most matter-of-fact voice, and while continuing to massage the old man’s hands, the boy told them that up to the start of the present journey he and his grandfather and an aunt had lived alone on a farm near Shreveport, Louisiana. Not long ago the aunt had died. “Johnny’s been poorly about a year, and Auntie had all the work to do. With only me to help. We were chopping firewood. Chopping up a stump. Right in the middle of it, Auntie said she was wore out. Ever seen a horse just lay down and never get up? I have. And that’s like what Auntie did.” A few days before Christmas the man from whom his grandfather rented the farm “turned us off the place,” the boy continued. “That’s how come we started out for Texas. Looking to find Mrs. Jackson. I never seen her, but she’s Johnny’s own blood sister. And somebody’s got to take us in. Least ways, him. He can’t go a lot more. Last night it rained on us.”
The car stopped. Perry asked Dick why he had stopped it.
“That man’s very sick,” Dick said.
“Well? What do you want to do? Put him out?”
“Use your head. Just for once.”
“You really are a mean bastard.”
“Suppose he dies?”
The boy said, “He won’t die. We’ve got this far, he’ll wait now.”
Dick persisted. “Suppose he dies? Think of what could happen. The questions.”
“Frankly, I don’t give a damn. You want to put them out? Then by all means.” Perry looked at the invalid, still somnolent, dazed, deaf, and he looked at the boy, who returned his gaze calmly, not begging, not “asking for anything,” and Perry remembered himself at that age, his own wanderings with an old man. “Go ahead. Put them out. But I’ll be getting out, too.”
“O.K. O.K. O.K. Only don’t forget,” said Dick. “It’s your damn fault.”
Dick shifted gears. Suddenly, as the car began to move again, the boy hollered, “Hold it!” Hopping out, he hurried along the edge of the road, stopped, stooped, picked up one, two, three, four empty Coca-Cola bottles, ran back, and hopped in, happy and grinning. “There’s plenty of money in bottles,” he said to Dick. “Why, mister, if you was to drive kind of slow, I guarantee you we can pick us up a big piece of change. That’s what me and Johnny been eating off. Refund money.”
Dick was amused, but he was also interested, and when next the boy commanded him to halt, he at once obeyed. The commands came so frequently that it took them an hour to travel five miles, but it was worth it. The kid had an “honest-to-God genius” for spotting, amid the roadside rocks and grassy rubble, and the brown glow of thrown-away beer bottles, the emerald daubs that had once held 7-Up and Canada Dry. Perry soon developed his own personal gift for spying out bottles. At first he merely indicated to the boy the whereabouts of his finds; he thought it too undignified to scurry about collecting them himself. It was all “pretty silly,” just “kid stuff.” Nevertheless, the game generated a treasure-hunt excitement, and presently he, too, succumbed to the fun, the fervor of this quest for refundable empties. Dick, too, but Dick was in dead earnest. Screwy as it seemed, maybe this was a way to make some money—or, at any rate, a few bucks. Lord knows, he and Perry could use them; their combined finances amounted at the moment to less than five dollars.
Now all three—Dick and the boy and Perry—were piling out of the car and shamelessly, though amiably, competing with one another. Once Dick located a cache of wine and whiskey bottles at the bottom of a ditch, and was chagrined to learn that his discovery was valueless. “They don’t give no refund on liquor empties,” the boy informed him. “Even some of the beers ain’t no good. I don’t mess with them usually. Just stick with the sure fire things. Dr. Pepper. Pepsi. Coke. White Rock. Nehi.”
Dick said, “What’s your name?”
“Bill,” the boy said.
“Well, Bill. You’re a regular education.”
Nightfall came, and forced the hunters to quit—that, and lack of space, for they had amassed as many bottles as the car could contain. The trunk was filled, the back seat seemed a glittering dump heap; unnoticed, unmentioned by even his grandson, the ailing old man was all but hidden under the shifting, dangerously chiming cargo.
Dick said, “Be funny if we had a smash-up.”
A bunch of lights publicized the New Motel, which proved to be, as the travelers neared it, an impressive compound consisting of bungalows, a garage, a restaurant, and a cocktail lounge. Taking charge, the boy said to Dick, “Pull in there. Maybe we can make a deal. Only let me talk. I’ve had the experience. Sometimes they try to cheat.” Perry could not imagine “anyone smart enough to cheat that kid,” he said later. “It didn’t shame him a bit there with all those bottles. Me, I never could’ve. I’d have felt so ashamed. But the people at the motel were nice about it; they just laughed. Turned out the bottles were worth twelve dollars and sixty cents.”
The boy divided the money evenly, giving half to himself, the rest to his partners, and said, “Know what? I’m gonna blow me and Johnny to a good feed. Ain’t you fellows hungry?”
As always, Dick was. And after so much activity, even Perry felt starved. As he later told about it, “We carted the old man into the restaurant and propped him up at a table. He looked exactly the same—thanatoid. And he never said one word. But you should have seen him shovel it in. The kid ordered him pancakes; he said that was what Johnny liked best. I swear he ate something like thirty pancakes. With maybe two pounds of butter, and a quart of syrup. The kid could put it down himself. Potato chips and ice cream, that was all he wanted, but he sure
