She said, “Well, sounds like you better keep it to yourself, whatever it was.”
“Yeah,” he said, and laughed. “I better.” After a minute he said, “You ever had a dog? I did once. Then he took off after a rabbit or something and he never come back. So how you come to be living here?”
“Same as you. Drifting.” She said, “Then this man wanted to marry me. So I said all right.”
“Sounds like you making that up.”
“I spose it does. And he’s a preacher.”
The boy laughed. He could tell things by looking at her, too.
“I ain’t joking. He’s a big old preacher.”
“Well,” he said, “maybe so. That his child you got there?”
“You bet it is.”
“So you’re all right.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Because,” he said, “I was thinking you was maybe back here looking for that money I found. Was you the one hid it there?”
“That was my money.”
“Then how much was it?”
“It was almost forty-five dollars. Three fives, a lot of ones, and change. I had it in that canning jar, with the handkerchief. You can keep it.”
He nodded. “That’s about the most money I ever seen in my life.”
“I was saving up. Thinking about California.”
“If I give you half, that would still mean I had about twenty bucks.”
“That’s all right. You can keep it all. I was just going to buy some kind of a present for my old preacher. But he don’t need nothing. He’d be the first to say. Better you keep it.”
“I got it hid away in a good spot.”
“Figured you might.”
“Well, it would be safe there, if somebody was meaning to steal it.” He looked up at her. Kindness was something he didn’t even know he wanted, and here it was. It made him teary and restless, and he was trying to seem to repay it by pretending he’d hid the money partly for her sake.
She said, “Can’t be too careful.”
“First thing I done when I seen that board was loose was I looked under it. First thing anybody’s going to do.” She thought, It comes with the whiskers, that idea that they know how things are. They get a lot of happiness out of it.
He was looking out over the field, as if there were something to see out there. “Yeah,” he said. “I knew a fellow had a hunting dog. It’d do any damn thing he said. A hundred things.”
She said, “You planning on getting a dog?” He had never cut that beard, never shaved. It was reddish and curly at the edges, and then it was straight and brown, what there was of it. And his hair was reddish, matted like sheep’s wool. He’d scratch at it. And his skin was milky white. She’d seen that before. Like the sun just didn’t shine on him the way it did on most people. His big hands were lying on his knees, palms up, and he was looking at them as if he’d never really gotten used to them.
He glanced up at her. He might have been about to say, The way I am ain’t your business. It was you told me to sit down here. And that was true enough. So she looked away. He shrugged. “Thought about getting one.” Then he said, “I been thinking I might give that money to my pa. He’d be glad to see me then, that’s for sure.” He laughed. “He was always telling me I was too puny to be worth keeping. Well, he’d think I stole it, anyhow. He’d tan me for it, too. Like he never done any stealing. But he’d be glad to have the money.”
She said, “Then you’ll be going back where you come from, I guess.”
He said, “Probly not. My pa and me was fighting, and I hit him with a piece of firewood. I don’t know. I think I killed him. If I didn’t, he would have killed me, soon as he woke up. So I just took off.” He looked at her. That dirty, weary child face with a beard stuck on it like a mean joke. “I don’t know where I’ll go. I don’t even know where I am now!” He laughed.
She said, “Well, you’re in Iowa. And the winter here is even worse than it is everyplace else. So you better not try staying on in this shack. You must be freezing already. For sure you won’t last till the spring.”
He shrugged. “Might not anyway. Might not want to. I hated my pa about half the time, but I sure never thought I’d end up killing him.”
“Maybe he ain’t dead.”
“I sure did mean to kill him. I hit him three or four times. Hard as I could. Him laying there.” Tears were running down his cheeks. “I think back on how it was, and I figure I must have killed him. I remember the sound it made when I hit him.” He rested his head on his folded arms and wept.
After a while she said, “Well, you got to get some warm clothes and some good shoes. The preacher keeps things like that in a box somewhere. I can bring
