No Promises in the Wind by Irene Hunt

his arm on the back of his wife’s chair, and his hand touched her shoulder. When Joey grew tired, they thanked him, and before we left, the man gave him a bag containing a half dozen large potatoes.
    â€œThese will help out for a few meals,” he said. He shook hands with us. The woman hugged Joey.
    Then we were out on the road again. We got a ride from a farmer, a cheerful man whose friendliness reassured us, helped us to forget the crowd of men in a town not many miles away, men who had met us in the middle of the night with pitchforks. Our spirits rose on that ride. We had had a sheltered night and kindness from the couple we’d just left; we had a bag of potatoes and now a lift of several miles from a man who told us in a pleasant drawl that he guessed we’d find work of some kind or other in the next town. Times were bad, yes, he said, but he reckoned that times had been bad, off and on, for many a year and somehow people had managed to get by. He thought that two boys like us would get along all right, especially if we weren’t afraid of hard work and low wages. It was good to find someone with a little hope. I told him so when he stopped the car to let us out and showed us the road to take into town.
    After walking a mile or two, we decided that we wouldn’t go into town that evening, that we’d camp out and go in the next morning when we were rested and fresh. Actually, we dreaded the town in spite of the farmer’s reassurance—at least, I did. The angry snarls of the men in the railroad yards came back to my ears at the thought of a town. Anyway, the rain had stopped and the night was much warmer than the one before; a night in the woods would not be too uncomfortable, and it would delay for a while the facing of strangers in a town.
    We had eaten one good meal that day, and it seemed extravagant to give ourselves the luxury of a baked potato that night. Still, we felt rich in having so much food, and since our hunger was never quite satisfied, we gave ourselves a treat, though we limited our meal to one potato to be shared rather than one each which we would have liked.
    I dug a shallow trench and built a fire in it. Then Joey and I sat watching the fire burn down to a bed of blue and rosy coals, talking quietly together as we waited for our potato to bake. When the darkness grew deeper, our fire glowed with a radiance that made a little island of light in the night. A few spirals of smoke drifted upward occasionally as Joey added a pile of twigs or clump of leaves to the coals.
    We felt perfectly safe there in the quiet woods with the beauty of our fire, the good smell of our roasting potato, and the comfort of being together. We didn’t dream of danger, not even when we heard someone approaching, and the attack, when it came, filled us with as much amazement as it did fear.
    Four or five boys were in the group that suddenly leaped upon us, big fellows with shaggy hair and harsh, high voices. They screamed at us, but I understood only part of what they said—just enough to know that they were hungry.
    Joey had had no dealings with thugs or hoodlums; he made the mistake of holding on to the bag of potatoes as fiercely as if he stood a chance against those boys who were almost men. One of the attackers knocked him flat, and when I ran to his rescue, all four or five of them took out their venom on me, enraged, I guess, at anyone who had a bite to eat while they starved.
    They left us after a few minutes, taking with them Joey’s bag of potatoes and the baked potato too, which they raked out of the ashes. They took our blanket and our extra clothes; one of them picked up Howie’s banjo, looked at it a moment, and then for some unexplained reason, threw it contemptuously back on the ground.
    When they were gone, we dragged ourselves together and started out for the highway. Joey was more frightened than physically hurt, but my forehead was bleeding from a deep cut