An’ when’d we get to be bums?
We ain’t asked ya for nothin’.
All of us bums, huh?
Well, we ain’t askin’ no nickels from you for the chance to lay down an’ rest.”
The men on the porch were rigid, motionless, quiet.
Expression was gone from their faces; and their eyes, in the shadows under their hats, moved secretly up to the face of the proprietor.
Pa growled,
“Come off it, Tom.”
“Sure, I’ll come off it.”
The circle of men were quiet, sitting on the steps, leaning on the high porch.
Their eyes glittered under the harsh light of the gas lantern. Their faces were hard in the hard light, and they were very still. Only their eyes moved from speaker to speaker, and their faces were expressionless and quiet.
A lamp bug slammed into the lantern and broke itself, and fell into the darkness.
In one of the tents a child wailed in complaint, and a woman’s soft voice soothed it and then broke into a low song,
“Jesus loves you in the night.
Sleep good, sleep good.
Jesus watches in the night.
Sleep, oh, sleep, oh.”
The lantern hissed on the porch.
The owner scratched in the V of his open shirt, where a tangle of white chest hair showed.
He was watchful and ringed with trouble.
He watched the men in the circle, watched for some expression.
And they made no move.
Tom was silent for a long time.
His dark eyes looked slowly up at the proprietor.
“I don’t wanta make no trouble,” he said. “It’s a hard thing to be named a bum. I ain’t afraid,” he said softly.
“I’ll go for you an’ your deputy with my mitts—here now, or jump Jesus.
But there ain’t no good in it.”
The men stirred, changed positions, and their glittering eyes moved slowly upward to the mouth of the proprietor, and their eyes watched for his lips to move.
He was reassured.
He felt that he had won, but not decisively enough to charge in.
“Ain’t you got half a buck?” he asked.
“Yeah, I got it.
But I’m gonna need it.
I can’t set it out jus’ for sleepin’.”
“Well, we all got to make a livin’.”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “On’y I wisht they was some way to make her ’thout takin’ her away from somebody else.”
The men shifted again.
And Pa said,
“We’ll get movin’ smart early.
Look, mister. We paid.
This here fella is part a our folks.
Can’t he stay?
We paid.”
“Half a dollar a car,” said the proprietor.
“Well, he ain’t got no car.
Car’s out in the road.”
“He came in a car,” said the proprietor. “Ever’body’d leave their car out there an’ come in an’ use my place for nothin’.”
Tom said,
“We’ll drive along the road.
Meet ya in the morning.