Free The Complete Crime Stories by James M. Cain Page B

time—”
    â€œWater! Water! Where’s that water cart?”
    The foreman, realizing belatedly that a life might be more important than the shovel tally, gave orders to “work his arms and legs up and down.” Somebody brought a bucket of water, and little by little Ike Pendleton came back to life. He coughed, breathed with long shuddering gasps, gagged, vomited. They wiped his face, fanned him, splashed water on him.
    Soon, in spite of efforts to keep him where he was, he fought to his feet, reeled around with the hard, terrible vitality of some kind of animal. “Where’s my hat? Who took my hat?” They clapped a hat on his head, he sat down suddenly, then got up and stood swaying. The foreman remembered his responsibility. “All right, men, give him a hand, walk him down to his bunk.”
    â€œCheck him off!”
    â€œCheck the rest of us! You ain’t passed the P’s yet!”
    â€œO.K. Sing out when I call. Gus Ritter!”
    â€œYo!”
    When the names had been checked, Paul took one of Ike’s arms and pulled it over his shoulder; somebody else took the other, and they started for the place, a half mile or so away on the main road, where the camp was located. The rest fell in behind. Dawn was just breaking as the little file, two and two, fell into a shambling step.
    â€œHep! … Hep!”
    â€œHey, cut that out! This ain’t no lockstep.”
    â€œWho says it ain’t?”
    When he woke up, in the army tent he shared with five others, he became aware of a tingle of expectancy in the air. Two of his tent mates were shaving; another came in, a towel over his arm, his hair wet and combed.
    â€œWhere did you get that wash?”
    â€œThey got a shower tent over there.”
    He got out his safety razor, slipped his feet in the shoes, shaved over one of the other men’s shoulders, then started out in his underwear. “Hey!” At the warning, he looked out. Several cars were out there, some of them with women standing around them, talking to figures in blue denim.
    â€œSunday, bo. Visiting day. This is when the women all comes to say hello to their loved ones. You better put something on.”
    He slipped on the denims, went over to the shower tent, drew towel and soap, stripped, waited his turn. It was a real shower, the first he had had in a long time. It was cold, but it felt good. There was a comb there. He washed it, combed his hair, put on his clothes, went back to his tent, put the towel away, made his bunk. Then he fell in line for breakfast—or dinner, as it happened, as it was away past noon. It consisted of corned beef, cabbage, a boiled potato, apricot pie, and coffee.
    He wolfed down the food, washed up his kit, began to feel pretty good. He fell into line again, and presently was paid, $4.50 for nine hours’ work, at fifty cents an hour. He fingered the bills curiously. They were the first he had had in his hand since that day, two years before, when he had run away from home and begun this dreadful career of riding freights, bumming meals, and sleeping in flophouses.
    He realized with a start they were the first bills he had ever earned in his twenty-two years; for the chance to earn bills had long since departed when he graduated from high school and began looking for jobs, never finding any. He shoved them in his pocket, wondered whether he would get the chance that night to earn more of them.
    The foreman was standing there, in the space around which the tents were set up, with a little group around him. “It’s under control, but we got to watch it, and there’ll be another call tonight. Any you guys that want to work, report to me eight o’clock tonight, right here in this spot.”
    By now the place was alive with people, dust, and excitement. Cars were jammed into every possible place, mostly second­-­, third-, and ninth-hand, but surrounded by neatly dressed women, children, and