That means a hunderd an’ sixty, an’ God knows how many times they turned the numbers back.
Gets hot—maybe somebody let the oil get low—jus’ went out.” He pulled the cotter-pins and put his wrench on a bearing bolt.
He strained and the wrench slipped.
A long gash appeared on the back of his hand.
Tom looked at it—the blood flowed evenly from the wound and met the oil and dripped into the pan.
“That’s too bad,” Casy said. “Want I should do that an’ you wrap up your han’?”
“Hell, no!
I never fixed no car in my life ’thout cuttin’ myself.
Now it’s done I don’t have to worry no more.” He fitted the wrench again. “Wisht I had a crescent wrench,” he said, and he hammered the wrench with the butt of his hand until the bolts loosened.
He took them out and laid them with the pan bolts in the pan, and the cotter-pins with them.
He loosened the bearing bolts and pulled out the piston. He put piston and connecting-rod in the pan. “There, by God!” He squirmed free from under the car and pulled the pan out with him. He wiped his hand on a piece of gunny sacking and inspected the cut. “Bleedin’ like a son-of-a-bitch,” he said.
“Well, I can stop that.” He urinated on the ground, picked up a handful of the resulting mud, and plastered it over the wound.
Only for a moment did the blood ooze out, and then it stopped. “Bes’ damn thing in the worl’ to stop bleedin’,” he said.
“Han’ful a spider web’ll do it too,” said Casy.
“I know, but there ain’t no spider web, an’ you can always get piss.” Tom sat on the running board and inspected the broken bearing. “Now if we can on’y find a ’25 Dodge an’ get a used con-rod an’ some shims, maybe we’ll make her all right.
Al must a gone a hell of a long ways.”
The shadow of the billboard was sixty feet out by now.
The afternoon lengthened away.
Casy sat down on the running board and looked westward.
“We gonna be in high mountains pretty soon,” he said, and he was silent for a few moments. Then, “Tom!”
“Yeah?”
“Tom, I been watchin’ the cars on the road, them we passed an’ them that passed us.
I been keepin’ track.”
“Track a what?”
“Tom, they’s hunderds a families like us all a-goin’ west.
I watched.
There ain’t none of ’em goin’ east—hunderds of ’em.
Did you notice that?”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Why—it’s like—it’s like they was runnin’ away from soldiers.
It’s like a whole country is movin’.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “They is a whole country movin’.
We’re movin’ too.”
“Well—s’pose all these here folks an’ ever’body—s’pose they can’t get no jobs out there?”
“Goddamn it!” Tom cried. “How’d I know?
I’m jus’ puttin’ one foot in front a the other.
I done it at Mac for four years, jus’ marchin’ in cell an’ out cell an’ in mess an’ out mess.
Jesus Christ, I thought it’d be somepin different when I come out!
Couldn’t think a nothin’ in there, else you go stir happy, an’ now can’t think a nothin’.” He turned on Casy. “This here bearing went out.
We didn’ know it was goin’, so we didn’ worry none.
Now she’s out an’ we’ll fix her.
An’ by Christ that goes for the rest of it!
I ain’t gonna worry.
I can’t do it.
This here little piece of iron an’ babbitt.
See it?
Ya see it?
Well, that’s the only goddamn thing in the world I got on my mind.
I wonder where the hell Al is.”
Casy said,