The way he ties into the groceries I deliver makes me suspect the old man has been living on jack-rabbit and not much else. He starts with the cheese, paring cheddar from the wedge, shingling his soda crackers with paper-thin slices. Unhurried, steady chewing, a ruminative savouring of flavour, old turtle eyes squinching up with delight. After that, a can of sardines, forked up with the blade of a jackknife, the empty can mopped clean of the last of the oil, polished shiny with a dry heel of bread stored in the apple box by his bed.
“That was some fine!” he exclaims, wiping his mouth, hefting a can of peaches. The fruit ceremonially relished piece by piece, rolled slippery and sweet in the mouth, mulled over. The juice drunk off with a sigh and stately bobbing of Adam’s apple in the loose skin of the throat. Last of all, he uncorks the whisky, sloshes it into the tin, rinses the film of sugary syrup around and around, sips and grins, sips and grins his gaunt old man’s smile while studying the label, its pictures of tawny, blushing fruit.
I get up and go to the door for a breath of air; it is stiflingly hot in the bunkhouse. I look out at the burned house and barn, the quixotic scorched windmill. This abandoned ranch, this barren portion of earth might be the photographic negative of the Golden State. Hollywood is supposed to be orange blossoms, eucalyptus, jasmine, palmetto palms, pepper trees, geraniums, bougainvillea, roses, poinsettias flourishing wild in the Hollywood hills. Hollywood is supposed to be soft breezes, the languishing blue eyes of swimming pools, the waves of the Pacific rhythmically combing miles of smooth sand. It is supposed to be flowers and flesh, Mack Sennett bathing beauties, Valentinoish males. Longing, clinging, beckoning. That is what California is supposed to be. Love, riches, fame, dreams, wild possibility. Not blackened, ruined buildings, a half-starved old man filling himself with sickeningly sweet canned fruit, dust chasing dust, blind windows and rusted locks, suspended action, the camera crank stuck. Suspended action, the failure to find the right key for his rusted lock, is what the rest of the morning turns into.
I don’t make much headway because I press too hard. The long frustrating search for Shorty McAdoo makes me impatient of further delay. I feel my life gathering speed, impelling me onward like the compulsive forward momentum of motion pictures Chance talks about.
Forward momentum, however, does not sit well with Shorty McAdoo. I ask a question about Indian fighting and he says, “Only thing them peaches lacked was a dollop of yellow cream. Churn it into that heavy syrup – Lord, my toes curl.”
“I’ll get you some tomorrow,” I say.
He nods slowly, stroking his bottom lip with his thumb.
I back off on the Indians. There is obviously something there, but it isn’t for today. I have a feeling about McAdoo, that he wants to talk. At the mention of Indians, his jaw clamped down hard, just the way a recovering alcoholic picks up his pace passing the entrance to a bar.
So I draw back, but keep my pencil and my pad in prominent view. I want him to get used to the sight of them, see them as a natural part of me, ordinary as my ear, or my nose, rob them of any power to turn him self-conscious. I am trying to ease Shorty McAdoo into conversation the way you ease yourself into a scalding bath. My mistake is that McAdoo has been in more scalding baths than I have. I ask easy questions. He replies with teasing answers.
Where was he born? He tucks his tongue into his cheek and examines the ceiling. Couldn’t rightly say. He didn’t have the papers on it.
Where did he think he was born then? He’d never given it too much thinking, he says. His mother said she got him from under a cabbage, but never named the patch. She’d been a godly, upright, Christian woman, so he’d take her word for it until somebody proved him wrong. She’d died of gravel and stone of the kidney when he was about seven, so he’d never heard her supply a correction.
What did his people do? Farmed.
Where? Ends of the bloody earth.
What ends of what bloody earth? Made no difference. If I wanted the nearest post office, write down hell.
“I’m not checking up on you,” I say. “What difference would the truth make?”
“You got it right,” he says. “What difference would it make?”
I want to know what made it hell.
“Worked harder and ate worst than the mules.”
“What did you raise on your farm?”
“Stones.”
Does he have any family living? He shrugs. His daddy is dead. Died when Shorty was twelve, of unspecified complaints. His brother might be dead or alive, might have children, he doesn’t know. He’d put distance between himself and hell as quick as he could.
Where did he go? On the wander.
Wander where? No place to speak of. Every place. Just on the wander.
How old was he when he went on the wander? It was a long time ago. Maybe he was thirteen, maybe fourteen, couldn’t testify exactly. One day he scooted, just up and scooted. Spent the summer snitching vegetables from gardens, snaring game. If I didn’t tell anybody, he’d lifted a few chickens and milked a cow or two didn’t belong to him.
After that? After that, this and that. Come first snow, a sheriff arrested him for vagrancy or beggary, some charge along those lines. The county sold him to a farmer who paid his five-dollar fine. He was bound over to pay off the cash owed to Mr. Good Samaritan. Drew a six-month sentence. Worked out to eighty-three cents a month, room and board. Mr. Samaritan figured he’d scamper first chance he got, which was about right, so he chained him up in a cold chop-box every night. He might have starved if it weren’t for that chop-box; ate pig feed by the handful, the farmer weren’t a heavy feeder of jailhouse help. He was due for release in May but May came and the farmer said he weren’t going nowhere. He’d broke a fifty-cent saw blade, had to work that off before he was free and clear, all debts discharged. All right, he’d said. Don’t matter. Another month and I’ll be dead of starvation anyways. But just so Mr. Samaritan knew. Watch his Christian back waking and sleeping. He didn’t care. They’d hang him for it but he’d see the farmer breeding maggots first. So help him God, he’d put a pitchfork in his guts, a chisel in his head, an axe in his back, he’d bash his brains with a rock till they splashed. If he didn’t kill him, he’d burn his barn or house.
“And,” I say, “what was the result?”
“He give me a cool glass of buttermilk and some warm corn bread – with butter. He put a bit of salt pork in my satchel. He made his nigger take the boots right off his feet and give them to me. A man travels faster with boots on his feet.” He sends me a confiding look, his tongue mischievously tucked in his cheek. “You think your rich man going to like that story? That one going to sell?”
“It might, if that isn’t all. Tell me you met an angel of mercy on that road from the farmer’s house who turned your life around and put forgiveness in your heart. Tell me you went on to found a great business and endow numerous homes for orphans. Is it possible you did any of those things, Mr. McAdoo?”
He smiles to show we understand one another. “Hell no, Harry, I didn’t get around to doing none of them things.”
I close my pad and put my pencil in my pocket. “Then this was just practice,” I say. “I’m a little rusty with the shorthand and you’re a little rusty finding the right stories. Both of us will improve as time goes by.” I open my wallet and pass him the money. “Let’s see how we manage tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget that rich yellow cream,” he reminds me. “A peach ain’t a peach without it has some cream.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Yes you will!” he shouts after me as I go out the door. “Yes you will!”