“No, it ain’t,” Ma interrupted. “Make out like he’s dead.
You wouldn’ say no bad things about Connie if he’s dead.”
Tom broke in,
“Hey, what is this?
We ain’t sure Connie’s gone for good.
We got no time for talkin’.
We got to eat an’ get on our way.”
“On our way?
We jus’ come here.” Ma peered at him through the firelighted darkness.
He explained carefully,
“They gonna burn the camp tonight, Ma.
Now you know I ain’t got it in me to stan’ by an’ see our stuff burn up, nor Pa ain’t got it in him, nor Uncle John.
We’d come up a-fightin’, an’ I jus’ can’t afford to be took in an’ mugged.
I nearly got it today, if the preacher hadn’ jumped in.”
Ma had been turning the frying potatoes in the hot grease.
Now she took her decision.
“Come on!” she cried.
“Le’s eat this stuff.
We got to go quick.” She set out the tin plates.
Pa said,
“How ’bout John?”
“Where is Uncle John?” Tom asked.
Pa and Ma were silent for a moment, and then Pa said,
“He went to get drunk.”
“Jesus!” Tom said. “What a time he picked out!
Where’d he go?”
“I don’ know,” said Pa.
Tom stood up.
“Look,” he said, “you all eat an’ get the stuff loaded.
I’ll go look for Uncle John.
He’d of went to the store ’crost the road.”
Tom walked quickly away.
The little cooking fires burned in front of the tents and the shacks, and the light fell on the faces of ragged men and women, on crouched children.
In a few tents the light of kerosene lamps shone through the canvas and placed shadows of people hugely on the cloth.
Tom walked up the dusty road and crossed the concrete highway to the little grocery store.
He stood in front of the screen door and looked in.
The proprietor, a little gray man with an unkempt mustache and watery eyes, leaned on the counter reading a newspaper.
His thin arms were bare and he wore a long white apron.
Heaped around and in back of him were mounds, pyramids, walls of canned goods.
He looked up when Tom came in, and his eyes narrowed as though he aimed a shotgun.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Run out of something?”
“Run out of my uncle,” said Tom, “Or he run out, or something.”
The gray man looked puzzled and worried at the same time.
He touched the tip of his nose tenderly and waggled it around to stop an itch.
“Seems like you people always lost somebody,” he said. “Ten times a day or more somebody comes in here an’ says,
‘If you see a man named so an’ so, an’ looks like so an’ so, will you tell ’im we went up north?’
Somepin like that all the time.”
Tom laughed.
“Well, if you see a young snot-nose name’ Connie, looks a little bit like a coyote, tell ’im to go to hell.