Joe by Larry Brown Page A

Parts of each day were given over to walking along the sides of the highways, the boy down in the ditches throwing the cans up onto the road, the old man shuffling along and stuffing the sack. Often he would have to sit down and rest, and the boy would range far ahead and come back with his arms laden and his own sack full. They dumped the cans in a pile beside the house, and they would stand sometimes and quietly contemplate their growing wealth.
     
    The old man made a trip to town one day, hitching a ride with a farmer who was going to the feed mill in a pickup. The farmer had a load of shelled corn, big sacks of it that swirled chaff into the face of the rider where he sat nodding in the back end.
     
    When the truck stopped, he roused himself and got out in front of a barnlike building, its walls patched over with roofing tin and Purina signs. A rutted parking lot of gravel was littered with rusted farm implements, their moving parts frozen solid with corrosion and decorated with ten or fifteen cats. He climbed down from the back as the farmer came around.
     
    “I sure thank you for the ride,” he said. “Is it much further to town?”
     
    The farmer was a man in denim pants and a T-shirt, a busy man hurrying toward his feed. “It’s bout a mile,” he said, pointing up the road with his chin.
     
    Wade nodded. He looked, his eyes taking in the searing strip of asphalt lined with trees standing still under no breath of air and the sun overhead like a white coin in the sky. The farmer started lifting the sacks out and handing them across to a black man who had come silently from the depths of the shadows inside the building pushing a heavy two-wheeled cart.
     
    “Well, listen,” Wade said. He put a somber look on his face. The farmer in the truck stopped with both hands on the sewn ears of a sack and regarded him, the muscles in his forearms standing up like little ropes.
     
    “You couldn’t loan me a dollar or two, could you? I got a sick youngun at home and I done called about the medicine. They said it was five dollars and somethin and I ain’t got but four dollars.”
     
    “A dollar?”
     
    “Yessir. A dollar or two. I hate to ask you after I done caught a ride and all with you but she sure needs that medicine.” He had one hand on the sideboards of the truck and his upturned face looked weak and ashamed.
     
    “Why, hell,” the farmer said, and looked ashamed himself. “Feller, I don’t even know you.”
     
    “That’s all right,” the old man said quickly. “That’s okay. I thank you for the ride anyway.” He turned away and had taken but three steps when the farmer called out to him.
     
    “Hey. Wait a minute.”
     
    He turned. “Yessir,” he said. Waiting.
     
    “Hell. Come back here a minute. You didn’t say nothin about you had a sick youngun.”
     
    Wade scuffed his shoes among the little stones.
     
    “I just hated to,” he said. “You’s good enough to give me a ride and all. I hated to ask you for anything else.”
     
    The farmer in the truck and the black man on the dock were watching him. The black man pulled the cart back and turned it and pushed it away into the dim stacks of feed and disappeared. The farmer got down from the truck and dusted his hands off. He approached his rider with a hurt look, his eyes downcast.
     
    “Is she bad sick?” he said.
     
    “Well. She stays sick pretty much. Been sick all her life.”
     
    The farmer nodded and rubbed his chin with a finger.
     
    “How old is she?”
     
    “She’s four years old. Course the doctor’s always sayin he’s surprised she’s lived this long. They said at first she would never live this long.” He lifted his head and looked off into the distance, shaking his head slightly in awe. “She don’t never complain, though. Just to look at her you’d never think they’s nothin wrong with her.”
     
    “Well, Lord,” the farmer said softly. “I got a granddaughter four years old.” He had one