Shaking the Nickel Bush (2 page)

The last thing at night Hi always walked around to see that everything was all right in the corrals, and I always went along with him, if still awake. That night we were barely out of earshot from the bunkhouse when I asked him, “Why did you pick a time to bluff when you had the very worst hand at the table?”

“Ain't no time for bluffin' like when you're beat in sight,” he told me, “and there ain't no sense waitin' till you're broke. How's a man goin' to run a bluff when he's broke?”

It was certain that every cowhand in that employment office had me beat in sight, and I'd decided to tell the man behind the counter that I'd pay five dollars for any kind of a job he had, regardless of the wages. But when Hi's words flashed through my head, I changed my mind in a hurry. I slapped my ten-dollar bill up on the counter and said, “I'll shoot the whole ten for a job if you've got a good one. I don't mind riding the rough string, and can rope with the best of 'em—once I get my hand back in.”

“Only got one job, and it's a pretty fair one,” the man told me. Then he smiled and said, “Lookin' a bit puny; been in the hospital?”

“Yep,” I said, “but I'm all right now.”

“Gas?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “I wasn't in the service. I was. . . .”

The man had been looking right into my eyes when he asked if I'd been gassed, but the moment I told him I hadn't been in the service his eyes drifted away and he shook his head. “Not a chance!” he told me, almost as if I'd asked him for a hand-me-out. “There's too many boys that's done their bit looking for jobs; you're in the wrong town!”

I didn't try to bluff at either of the other employment offices. I just walked up to the counters and told the agents I'd pay five dollars for any kind of a job they could send me out on right away, and that I didn't care how small the wages were. Both agents were real pleasant when I first went in, and they both thought I was a soldier just back from the war—but when I told them I wasn't, they didn't treat me so well. The one in the last office I went to shouted loud enough for everybody in the place to hear him, “I ain't got no job for a slacker today, nor no other day. Get on back where you come from!”

I hunted for another employment office until dark, then went back to the depot for my suitcase, and started out to find a room and some supper. I found a little room near the stockyards that wasn't too bad, and cost only seventy-five cents a night, but I didn't make out very well on supper. I went into half a dozen restaurants that looked as if they wouldn't be too high-priced, but none of them had any leafy green vegetables or fish, and the only kind of chicken they had was fried. I finally had to settle for three boiled eggs and a cup of coffee, but they charged me thirty-five cents, though I had neither bread nor potatoes.

I didn't really feel homesick when I went back to my room—I'd worked away from home too much for that—but I did feel sort of all alone. When I couldn't go to sleep, I got out Mother's little notebook to look up a few Bible verses, but I didn't do it. Before she had written down the chapter and verse numbers, she'd filled all the pages with things she'd wanted to say to me before I came away. At the end she wrote, “Son, you are in God's hands, so I shall not let myself worry, and I won't expect long letters, but do let us hear from you often, even though it is only a penny postal card.”

I never was much good at writing letters, but regardless of what Mother said I knew she'd be worrying, so I got out the pad she had put in my suitcase and sat down to write her a little note. Then, once I got started, I couldn't seem to quit till I'd written a dozen pages. Ever since I was knee-high to a toad the thing she had insisted on most was that I tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” But it didn't seem to be the right thing to do in that letter, so I just wrote whatever I thought would keep her from worrying.

After I'd written about how much I liked my diet and how warm the weather was, I told her about having landed a fine job on a big cattle ranch right near town, where they had lots of leafy green vegetables and a cook who knew all about making gluten bread, and where I could get in to see the doctor every week. Then I told her that I'd have to spend my first couple of months' wages to buy a saddle and outfit and wouldn't be able to send any money home till spring, but that I'd be getting my keep as part of my pay. In that way I wouldn't need a penny for anything except the doctor, so she should cash the Liberty bonds right away, to hold the family over until Philip had finished his apprenticeship. In the rest of the letter I just told her things I made up about how big the ranch was, and how many cattle there were on it, and how friendly everybody had been. When I'd finished, I almost believed it myself.

It was a week before I wrote home again, and I had to do some more lying, but I found it a lot harder that time, and I couldn't make myself believe a word of it for a single second. I wrote that the place where I was working was the home ranch for one of the biggest cattle outfits in the Southwest, and that the owners had other ranches scattered all around Arizona and New Mexico. Then, after I'd told how much better I was feeling and how well I was getting along on my job, I said that the boss was sending another cowhand and me to one of the ranches near Phoenix, that I didn't know exactly what my address would be, but that I'd write again when I got there.

What had really happened was that I had gone broke. I'd talked to every cowhand and every cattleman who came in to the stockyards that week. They had all been friendly when I first talked to them, and I think a couple of the cattlemen might have given me a job, but they all froze up when I told them I hadn't been in the service. I went to every employment office in Tucson, looking for a job of any kind. I found only one, and I'd have been better off if I hadn't found it. The agent charged me three dollars for a job as night dishwasher in a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant, then the boss fired me within an hour. I couldn't blame him for it because there were lots of returned Arizona soldiers, a good many of them Mexicans, who were looking for any kind of job. One just happened to come along at the wrong time for me.

That job, and the doctor, and gluten bread were the reasons I went broke so fast. The morning after I wrote Mother my first letter I had to pay thirty-five cents for three more eggs and a cup of coffee. Three eggs alone don't go very far, and neither does money if you have to buy them at ten cents apiece. I decided that until I found a job I'd better try to live on the gluten flour I'd brought from home, so I asked the cook in the restaurant what he'd charge me to make it up into bread. Even though I was furnishing my own flour, the best deal I could make with him was fifty cents. But that didn't seem too bad, because I expected I'd get five or six loaves.

Before I took the flour back to the restaurant I wrote out Mother's recipe for making gluten bread, but the cook got huffy and wouldn't take it. He said he didn't need anybody to tell him how to make bread, and if I knew so much about it I could make it myself. I'd have been fifty cents better off if I had. I don't think he'd ever seen gluten flour before, and I don't think he put anything but salt and water into it before he baked it—and he must have baked it all day. When I went back that evening he made me pay him before he'd bring the bread out of the kitchen, and when he brought it I knew why. He'd baked the whole five pounds of flour into two loaves that were the same size, shape, color, and hardness as paving bricks. If I'd been a dog with good teeth I might have been able to gnaw a corner off one of them, but I couldn't make a dent in it with the teeth I had. After I'd tried for about ten minutes, I threw both loaves in an alley and bought a can of salmon for my supper. For the rest of the week I made out on a ten-cent pound of peanuts and a fifteen-cent can of salmon a day. I just about had to because of a mistake I made the first time I went to the doctor. And then too, they were the only things on my diet that I could eat without cooking.

In the first letter I'd written to Mother I'd told her I was going to a doctor the next morning, before I went out to my new job on the ranch. Even though I didn't have any job, I didn't dare not to go to a doctor, because I knew Dr. Gaghan would tell Mother if he failed to get a report card every week. I put one of the cards Grace had written out for me in my pocket when I took the flour to the restaurant, then hunted up a doctor. He was a kindly old gentleman, and visited with me nearly half an hour before he made his tests on the sample I'd brought. He wanted me to tell him when I first noticed that I was losing weight, and what the specialists in the hospital said, and what Dr. Gaghan said, and what diet he'd laid out for me.

“Hmmmm. Hmmmm,” he said after he'd looked at the diet pages in my notebook. “Don't know but what I'd agree with your family physician instead of the specialists, but you'll find this diet rather hard to live on in this country, particularly if you're planning to do ranch work. Most of the grub will be bully beef and beans and biscuits, or chili con carne and tortillas. On ranches that hire more than one or two hands you won't find any green vegetables, and unless the foreman has a family of youngsters he won't be milking a cow or keeping chickens. And, of course, there is no fresh fish in this country. It seems to me you'll have to depend heavily on gluten bread, nuts, and canned salmon. You can make out all right if you have plenty of fresh milk, but without it you might run into trouble. However, you'll have to lay in a supply of gluten flour here, and I'd advise you to take plenty of it along. In any other town except Phoenix they'd have to send away for it.”

The doctor tested the sample I'd brought him in a little back room, and when he came out I noticed that he'd made three or four check marks on the report card. Then, as he weighed me, and took my pulse, temperature, and blood pressure, he wrote down the figures. After he'd finished he said, “Except for the sugar, it's not too bad. That will be two dollars. I'll mail the card to your physician when I go to lunch.”

If I'd known I wasn't going to find a job I'd have told him I'd do my own mailing, but, of course, I didn't know it then. That's why I had to save out two dollars before I went stone broke, and go to see him the second time. That time I told him not to bother about mailing the card, that I'd take it with me and enclose it in a letter to Dr. Gaghan. So he scrawled his name at the bottom of the card and gave it to me. I didn't write any letter, and I didn't plan to, but I copied all the check marks and figures onto another card before I mailed the one the doctor gave me. I didn't bother about trying to copy the signature because no two doctors write the same anyway.

After two nights in the hotel I could see that I was living beyond my means, and that seventy-five cents a night would break me in a hurry. Besides, I wouldn't have any more use for my suitcase or the pinchbacked suit I'd worn on the train. A fellow would look pretty silly to be carrying a suitcase and no bedroll when he went to work on some ranch as a cowhand. He'd look even sillier with a pinchbacked suit and tan oxfords instead of a denim jumper and riding boots. Before I started out to look for a job that third morning I took my suit, suitcase, watch, and empty lunch basket, and went hunting for a pawnshop where the owner would do a little trading.

I had to try three or four pawnshops before I found one where I could make a decent deal. Of course, I expected to come out at the little end of the horn, but I didn't get stuck too badly. The suitcase wasn't new, I'd had the shoes six months and the suit a year, but the lunch basket had double covers and was brand new, and the watch had cost five dollars. After an hour's haggling I traded them for a pretty good blanket, a tarpaulin that looked as though it would still shed rain, a pair of boots that were just a bit scuffed and run down at the heels, a jumper and pair of jeans that had been worn only enough to fade in good shape, and a throw rope that was almost new. I could have made the deal a lot quicker if I hadn't held out for the throw rope, but I needed some practice to get my hand and eye back in, and I couldn't do it without a rope.

From the pawnshop I went back to my room, folded everything I had inside the blanket, and wrapped it in the tarp. When I had it corded up it looked like a good husky bedroll, so I took it down to the stockyards and tossed it into one corner of the scaler's office, just as if I were a cowhand in with a bunch of cattle for shipping. During the day I tried to get a job from every cattleman who came to the yards, and in my spare time I practiced with the rope. It's hard to get in any good rope practice without a horse and some cattle to work on. But I'd have made the drovers sore if I'd worked on any of the cattle in the pens, so I just sat astraddle of a fence to practice; trying to lay my loop around some pebble in an empty pen, or to make it stand close to the ground where some imaginary critter would step into it.