he went and pissed on Artie Young's front lawn.
On this occasion he did not take out any grudges
against the city folks up the holler. For one thing
the grudges there went deeper down. In the village,
the folks had come off the farm, settled in the little
chickenmanure town and thought they were Some-
bodies. They gabbled and gossiped about Fred's
drinking. They slaved to keep. their homes painted
like Kingdom Come. They were good grist for the
paper and pottery mills across the river. The farm
boys were hog-tied with this bunch. The poor land
wouldn't support the farm families any longer, and
the boys gravitated to the mills as soon as they
were old enough to lie about their ages. It was a
tough break after the farm life, where a feller could
use his legs and take a shot a t a rabbit or a pheasant
between times. If it wer'en't for the small town men,
the farm boys would have liked to sta'rt something.
As yet they didn't know just what, but they were
getting fired up ready to go.
The farm boys often drank with Fred, and the
whole bunch sometimes made a holy show of them-
selves on Sundays. But like him they had no money
to spend and no cars, and unlike the village crowd
they didn't haH any little two-by-four houses to
worship. The city folks, sailing by waving their
hands grandly as if they were giving the boys a
treat and were on top of the world and meant to
stay there forever,
sure riled their SQuis. Rye was
the only medicine. In the village they called Fred a
demoralizer, but the boys just wondered where the
heck they would go if
it
wasn't for Fred.
Fred didn't learn anything from his adventures
with rabbits and mushrooms.
He was all primed to
bite off another chance. He took literally the notion
that it was a free country and. every man bound to
rise eventually if he had the will. VVhen he had come
to this country as a boy his relatives had started
him out in a factory. Then
it
was held against him
he was unskilled,
then they didn't need him, and
finally he took to riding the rods, following work
and crops pretty near over the whole damned map.
He hadn't always been a drinker.
Drink had got
him after the Key vVest tornado.
Fred had been one
of several hundred working for Flagler, building the
railroad across the Keys. It was the tornado season,
but they kept the men on just the same to hurry up
the job. The storm rammed them like a brass ship out
of hell when they were on a raft tied to the piling.
The raft chipped loose, and the gang washed off,
little by little. The damn sea inched up on them, lick-
ing its chops, growling and gobbling and chewing
them up in its gullet. He would have got swilled off,
too, if it hadn't been for Jensen. Jensen had tied him
to the raft with his belt. Then Jensen went down
slick as a knife.
Fred had been in a daze for a long time. He was
one of the four survivors, and he still had the soaked
Wobbly card that had been in his pocket. He kept
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
that more as a remembrance of Jensen than for him-
self. Jensen hadn't just had a card so he could ride
the rods without a fight. Jensen had been as proud
of his card as an Elk's tooth. Fred remembered the
time they were stringing lights up to make high
jinks in honor of Flagler and "his great vision and
achievement." Jensen had been a card, taking off the
committee of town flunkeys. He had the boys split-
ting their sides with his take-offs. Then he had
patted his pocket where the card was. "Let the high
Mucky-mucks get their little brass key to their tin
Jesus city," he says. "Let them. I got the key to the
whole bloody world."
"Yep," he had said, boasting, "and to the
world
to come."
At the time, Fred had been kind of confused.
Jensen didn't believe in an ordinary heaven.
He
wasn't the kind to care about ghosts trailing around
on balmy clouds. It had been right after that the
storm came, and for a long time when Fred didn't
amount to much for work he used to sit brooding
over things Jensen had said. He had the feeling that
if he could remember them right and string them
together they would make sense and help him in his
life. But he had gone back to his aunt's little house
instead, and he kind of fell under her influence and
the expectation that his parents would have had of
him. He just became a tame dog for the city folks to
kick around,
with things stinging him but never
again enough guts to leave the valley.
Along about November,
Fred took another flier
on an ad. It looked pretty good and gave a
POSITIVE GUARANTEE with it. It was for
painting postcards.
It said that on account of the
depression many people wouldn't be giving gifts and
more would be giving cards. It said here's YOUR
Little Gold Mine. It made a fair proposition of six
lessons (reduced holid;:.y terms) for five dollars, and
after that every card you painted would get paid
for in real CASH. Even a child could paint as many
as SIXTY a day. You could get fifteen cents CASH
for every card painted.
Fred was on air, and he kind of patronized the
boys when they came around. He couldn't tcll them
what he was up to, for he was ashamed of the little
brushes. They were hard to handle for mitts that
were calloused with outdoor work and chapped by
wind and washing in cold water. But he stuck right
at it. He had sunk about all he had into the lessons,
and he HAD TO WIN. This year he had been able
to save mighty little from summer chores. The city
folks had taken advantage of the hard times and had
pared his wages down to twenty cents an hour.
There was less work, and some of the boys fired
from the mill had cut in on him. Only Mr. Schaap
hung on regular, taking his cuts one right after the
other like a little gentleman.
Along about Christmas,
Fred got scared he
wouldn't get in on the money, so he hurried up his
