Says he’s read ever’thing about prisons now, an’ in the old times; an’ he says she makes less sense to him now than she did before he starts readin’.
He says it’s a thing that started way to hell an’ gone back, an’ nobody seems to be able to stop her, an’ nobody got sense enough to change her.
He says for God’s sake don’t read about her because he says for one thing you’ll jus’ get messed up worse, an’ for another you won’t have no respect for the guys that work the gover’ments.”
“I ain’t got a hell of a lot of respec’ for ’em now,” said Muley. “On’y kind a gover’ment we got that leans on us fellas is the ‘safe margin a profit.’
There’s one thing that got me stumped, an’ that’s Willy Feeley—drivin’ that cat’, an’ gonna be a straw boss on lan’ his own folks used to farm.
That worries me.
I can see how a fella might come from some other place an’ not know no better, but Willy belongs.
Worried me so I went up to ’im and ast ’im.
Right off he got mad.
‘I got two little kids,’ he says.
‘I got a wife an’ my wife’s mother.
Them people got to eat.’
Gets madder’n hell.
‘Fust an’ on’y thing I got to think about is my own folks,’ he says.
‘What happens to other folks is their look-out,’ he says.
Seems like he’s ’shamed, so he gets mad.”
Jim Casy had been staring at the dying fire, and his eyes had grown wider and his neck muscles stood higher.
Suddenly he cried,
“I got her!
If ever a man got a dose of the sperit, I got her!
Got her all of a flash!” He jumped to his feet and paced back and forth, his head swinging. “Had a tent one time.
Drawed as much as five hundred people ever’ night.
That’s before either you fellas seen me.” He stopped and faced them.
“Ever notice I never took no collections when I was preachin’ out here to folks—in barns an’ in the open?”
“By God, you never,” said Muley. “People around here got so use’ to not givin’ you money they got to bein’ a little mad when some other preacher come along an’ passed the hat.
Yes, sir!”
“I took somepin to eat,” said Casy. “I took a pair a pants when mine was wore out, an’ a ol’ pair a shoes when I was walkin’ through to the groun’, but it wasn’t like when I had the tent.
Some days there I’d take in ten or twenty dollars.
Wasn’t happy that-a-way, so I give her up, an’ for a time I was happy.
I think I got her now.
I don’ know if I can say her.
I guess I won’t try to say her—but maybe there’s a place for a preacher.
Maybe I can preach again.
Folks out lonely on the road, folks with no lan’, no home to go to.
They got to have some kind of home.
Maybe—” He stood over the fire.
The hundred muscles of his neck stood out in high relief, and the firelight went deep into his eyes and ignited red embers.
He stood and looked at the fire, his face tense as though he were listening, and the hands that had been active to pick, to handle, to throw ideas, grew quiet, and in a moment crept into his pockets.
The bats flittered in and out of the dull firelight, and the soft watery burble of a night hawk came from across the fields.
Tom reached quietly into his pocket and brought out his tobacco, and he rolled a cigarette slowly and looked over it at the coals while he worked.
He ignored the whole speech of the preacher, as though it were some private thing that should not be inspected.
He said,
“Night after night in my bunk I figgered how she’d be when I come home again.
I figgered maybe Grampa or Granma’d be dead, an’ maybe there’d be some new kids.
Maybe Pa’d not be so tough.
Maybe Ma’d set back a little an’ let Rosasharn do the work.
I knowed it wouldn’t be the same as it was. Well, we’ll sleep here I guess, an’ come daylight we’ll get on to Uncle John’s.
Leastwise I will.
You think you’re comin’ along, Casy?”
The preacher still stood looking into the coals.