The Dirty Parts of the Bible: A Novel (11 page)

I didn’t cry—I never did, not even the day of Father’s accident—but I felt like crying. It wasn’t just that I was lost in the middle of nowhere, though that was bad enough.

I’d only known Craw for two days, but he was like a father to me. He was opposite my real father in every way—a black man who chewed snuff and drank whiskey and told dirty jokes—but he was like a father nonetheless. I missed the dirty old bum of a beast.

I
F
I could have turned back, I would have. I’d lost my money, Father’s map—and now my guide. I had nothing left to lose but my life.

A couple hours later, another train whistled in the distance. I crouched behind a bush and waited. Part of me wanted to jump onto it; part of me wanted to jump in front of it. It probably wouldn’t have made any difference. I let it steam past and kept walking.

Late afternoon, I came to a bridge over a river. Unlike the creek at the Muskogee jungle, this was a real river, at least a quarter mile across. I didn’t dare cross a trestle that long on tired legs—no telling when another train would come along.

So I followed a trail down to the bank, cupped the warm water in my hands, and splashed the sweat and dust from my face. The sights and smells refreshed me. It was an oasis of life in a dry land—mayflies floating on the air, frogs splashing into the water, sunfish nipping bugs off the surface.

If only I had my fishing pole, I thought, I’d catch dinner in no time. As it was, the menu was limited. Mayflies make scant eating. Frog legs sounded appetizing—provided I could catch and cook the devils. For the next hour, I chased frogs along the bank, but all I managed to catch was a lumpy, bloated gray toad. Even after a full day without food, I wasn’t
that
hungry.

When the sun started to set, I collected sticks for a fire. I’d never started a fire without matches, but I’d read about how to do it in boy’s adventure magazines—all you do is rub the sticks together and puff on them.

After half an hour of lying on my belly, rubbing and puffing, I hadn’t generated enough heat to melt a snowflake. If only I’d been a boy scout, I would have learned how to survive in the wild. Remus didn’t have any boy scout troop. I suppose they didn’t need one—your average Remus boy could kill and skin a buck with his bare hands. The problem was, I wasn’t your average Remus boy—I was the pale, pansy preacher’s son. All I could do in a pinch was recite a bunch of Goddamn Bible verses.

Finally, I jumped up, stomped around, yelled every curse word I knew, and hurled the sticks into the river. That made me feel a little better.

For the heck of it, I stuck a branch into the mud and hung Craw’s hat on it. Then I started asking it questions.
What now, Craw? Try to hop another train? Find a farmhouse and beg? Swim out to a barge and hope they throw me a lifeline? Or just sit here and jerk off a few times before I die?”

Funny—I hadn’t even thought about whacking the weasel for a week. That was a phenomenon even more amazing than Father being blinded by bird shit.

I wondered what jerking off would be called in hobo lingo. After a minute, I thought of the answer: “It’s a Hoover fuck,” I told Craw’s hat. “A poor substitute for the real thing, but when it’s all you’ve got it’ll have to do. What do you say to that?” Craw thought that was pretty good.

I’d really gone over the edge now—talking to an empty hat about slapping the snake. What was worse, the hat started talking back. I heard it say my name—faintly at first, then louder. “Tobias … ”

Hats don’t talk, I told myself. Unless they happen to be haunted hats. That notion was more far fetched than a ghost cow.

But there it was again. “Tobias!”

Then I heard a rustling in the weeds. I spun around. “Craw?”

“Thank God,” he said, “there you are!” As I reached out to shake his hand, Craw brushed right past me and took his derby from the stick. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said, brushing it off. “I’m only half a man without my hat.”

He screwed it onto his head and grinned. “Well, what are you staring at? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Maybe I have.” I wouldn’t have been any more surprised if Jesus had appeared to me.

Craw raised his arms and twirled around. “I’m solid as ever, I assure you. Go ahead—touch me.”

“But the fire—” I said. “How did you make it out?”

“Luckily, my coat’s made of asbestos.”

Then I remembered our comrades. “Where’s Red and Chester?”

“They’re hoofing it back to Muskogee, slightly fricasseed but none the worse for it. I had a hunch I’d find you at the river, and sure enough—I could hear you yelling from a mile away. I knew it was you, ’cause you cuss like a Baptist.”

“Is that bad?”

“Well, it ain’t good. It’s like a Yankee trying to speak Spanish—you got the words right, but not the accent.”

My face turned red. I couldn’t catch my own supper, couldn’t start a fire from sticks—now I couldn’t even curse right. I was a complete failure as a hobo.

Craw patted my shoulder. “You’ll get it someday. Just keep hanging around with riffraff like me.”

+ + +

It was dark now, except for the moonlight reflecting on the river. Craw showed me how to properly start a fire—it turned out that you have to find dry wood instead of pulling green twigs off trees.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Craw said, “I’ve got to go lighten my load.” He went off into the bushes and grunted—though I tried not to hear. Ten minutes later, he returned. “Take my advice,” he said. “Don’t get old. When I was your age, all I thought about was girls. When I was forty, all I thought about was money. These days, all I ask for is a good shit once a week.”

I didn’t ask whether he got his wish.

Craw slapped his leg. “Now—how about some food?”

My stomach rumbled at the word, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. “More Hoover steaks?”

“No,” he said. “Catfish.”

“And where are you going to get a catfish?”

Craw laughed. “We’re sitting by a river chock full of them, aren’t we?”

“True. But we don’t have a pole, or line, or a hook, unless you’re hiding something.”

Craw held up his hook. “One out of three ain’t bad. We don’t need a pole, anyhow. Haven’t you ever gone grappling?”

I hadn’t. Craw explained the technique: “At night, catfish burrow in underwater caves to rest. You find a drop off in the bank where the water is waist high. Lower yourself into the river and feel your way along the bank, checking for holes. When you find a hole, reach inside. If you feel the slippery skin of a catfish, just grab it by the gills and grapple it up to the surface.”

I preferred to do my fishing from dry land, with all my clothes on. But Craw seemed hell-bent on this grappling, and I was hungry enough to try.

I took off my shoes and socks and rolled up my pants’ legs. Craw laughed. “You’re going to have to go in deeper than that.”

Hoping this wasn’t some perverse ploy to get me naked, I hid behind a tree and stripped down to my undershorts, then dropped into the water. Craw stood up above with his arms crossed, smirking.

“Well, are you coming in?” I asked.

“I’m spotting you,” he said. “Someone’s got to haul the fish up once you catch it.” As unfair as it was, that suited me fine—I sure as hell didn’t want to see Craw in
his
skivvies.

The warm water lapped against my skin, all the way up to my chest, and the river bed squished between my toes below. It didn’t take long to find a hole, and it was close enough to the surface that I could reach inside without ducking my head underwater. I crouched down and stretched my arms forward, keeping my head just above water. Sure enough, the hole was inhabited. What luck—I could almost taste broiled catfish.

“I’ve got one!” I yelled up to Craw. As I tried to get a grip, it twisted and thrashed against my hands and forearms. Wherever I grabbed, I couldn’t feel any gills.

“One thing I forgot to tell you,” Craw said. “Watch out for snakes.”

I didn’t have time to listen—just then, my dinner shot out of its hole to make an escape. As it passed over my shoulder, I saw it wasn’t a catfish at all. It was a water snake as big around as my arm.

I screamed and splashed, batting it away. “Damn! Shit! Hell!”

“It’s all right,” Craw said. “You scared him off.”

Despite the warm water, I was cold and trembling. Besides ghosts, snakes had always been my biggest fear—and being an atheist didn’t help that one. “Why didn’t you warn me
before
I got in the water?”

“Look on the bright side,” Craw said. “That snake did wonders for your cursing. You sounded like a natural that time.”

That was scant consolation.

“Furthermore,” Craw said, “it’s a sure bet that you flushed out the only snake in the area.”

“You
sure
of that?”

“Certainly—a water moccasin that size doesn’t take kindly to neighbors.” My arms were trembling, but Craw didn’t show much concern. “Even if you
had
gotten bit,” he said, “it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I know a surefire cure for snakebite.”

“I’ll bet you do.” I made my way up river, eager to get away from that snake’s den in case he decided to return home.

“Turpentine and milkweed poultice,” Craw said. “Works every time, even on the most poisonous bites. Of course, I don’t have any turpentine on me at the moment …”

After a little while, I found another hole. The opening was at least two feet in diameter—too large for a snake’s home, I hoped. I reached inside, deeper and deeper. The water lapped against my neck, and then my chin, and then my lips—and still I hadn’t reached the back of the hole.

Craw babbled on. “But there’s always jackrabbit dung. That’s easy to come by out in the wild. I once met a Cherokee Indian medicine man who swore by jackrabbit droppings for snakebite.”

My fingers pressed against soft, slick flesh. I jumped back, and felt whiskers brush against my forearm. This was definitely not a snake.

“And if you think that’s something, you wouldn’t believe the things he could do with buffalo chips …”

My heart pounding, I eased my hand along the gills, wrapped my fingers around the sharp, bony edge, and tugged. At first, it didn’t budge—I might as well have been trying to lift a boulder. Then it tugged back. It yanked my arms like a freight train, dragging my head underwater. I braced my legs against the sides of the hole and pulled with all my might. Which, as usual, wasn’t much—but it was enough to get the fish riled.

When it came barreling out of its den, I wrapped my legs around its belly and rode that catfish like a bucking bronco. I gasped for breath as my head splashed in and out of water. Craw yelled from up above. “Holy sardines!”

The fish pinned my back against the riverbottom. I tried to pinch its thick, pulsing body between my legs, but water stung my nose and clogged my throat.

Then Craw jumped into the water and speared the fish through the nose with his hook.

As Craw dragged the flopping fish to land, I crawled behind coughing up water and sand. I collapsed on the bank, feeling like Jonah after he’d been spit up by the whale.

Craw beamed over our prize. “By damn, boy! You’ve caught the mother of all catfish!”

“I didn’t catch her,” I said. “She caught me.”

+ + +

Emerging from the river victorious, I was a new man. That channel cat was half as tall as me, and twice as big around in the belly. Craw carved enough meat off its body to feed an army—or at least two exceptionally hungry hoboes. Those succulent fillets, roasted over the campfire, were the best I’ve ever eaten.

After the feast, with bellies full, we basked in the fire’s warmth. “You’re a real hobo now,” Craw said. “I’ve never seen anybody wrestle a monster like that and live to tell the tale.”

“Maybe you’ll write a ballad about it someday.”

“A capital suggestion,” Craw said. “The Remus Kid Meets the Okie Cat.”

Craw didn’t sing any ballads that night. But as he tended the fire, he elaborated on his philosophy of life.