It was just a little store, with canned stuff, open crates with vegetables and fruit, and packages of stuff like crackers. I could see well enough, by the light from the street, so I got out my sack, where it was folded against my stomach, and went to work. The first thing that was wanted, what Buck and Hosey talked so much about, was chicken. They wanted the boiled chicken that comes in a wedge-shape can, and I began hunting for it. I was in the place altogether, Buck told me later, exactly twenty-five minutes, by a clock on Van Buren Street. But if I tell it like I remember it, I was in there twenty-five years, with the lights going dim every so often where they were executing somebody back of the little green door, feet tramping over my head, where the trusties were marching in from the farm, and me there in my dark little cell with bars over the window, getting a little stir-happy by now on account of the time I’d served. After ten or fifteen years I thought to hell with chicken, drop something in the sack and get out. I grabbed cans of beans, mock turtle soup, even beets, on top of raw potatoes, oranges, bread, soap, anything. Then all of a sudden it was like a football game, with the first quarter nearly up, the flutters gone, and my mind clicking. My hands began reaching for exactly what I ought to have, I took three chickens in cans, then peas, carrots, and corn. I took pears, for dessert. I found the icebox and dropped butter in. I took a quart of milk and another of cream. There were special shelves with shoe polish, fly swatter, and stuff like that. I looked for razor blades, found a whole box, dropped that in. My thumb snagged a beer opener. I dropped that in, began looking for beer, found it, dropped a dozen cans in. I found instant coffee, condensed milk, and a sack of sugar, and dropped them in. I found a sack of salt and dropped that in, and a can of pepper.
All that I did so fast I’d breathe and then not breathe, but pretty soon I knew I was done and started for the window. Then I saw the cash register. All that stuff about taking only food ran through my head, and even while it was running I dumped the sack on the floor and reached for my spike. I jammed it in a crack and bore down and something popped. I yanked open the drawer. It was empty. I began growling curses like a wild man. I picked up the sack again and started out and then my eye caught the cash drawer, under the counter, that hardly anybody would see unless they’d worked around some business place like a garage. I tried it and it was locked. I jammed the spike in and nothing gave. I reached under for keys. You don’t see them when the storekeeper makes change, but they’re there just the same, four or five or six finger taps that work on springs and have to be pressed in combination before the lock releases. On this drawer there were six, and that meant probably a three-key combination. I tried 1-2-3, 1-3-4, 1-4-5, and 1-5-6, and inside of me something kept yelling to get out and get out quick, but my fingers kept working the combos and my head kept ticking them off, so I wouldn’t waste time trying one twice. I started the two-series. The drawer pulled open and I saw steel. It was a metal box, and it was locked. I set it up on its edge, held the spike on the lock, and used a box opener that was under the counter as a hammer. There was a snap and the lid was off. Inside was money. I could see ones and fives and tens, but I didn’t stop to count and didn’t take the silver. I stuffed the bills into my pocket, picked up the sack, and stepped out the window. I closed it, then looked around. I didn’t see anything, slipped into the alley, and down to the cross street. On Van Buren, Buck was still there, waiting for his bus. I waved and he ran toward me. “God, Jack, I thought you’d never come.”
“Had to find stuff.”
“Gee, you’re loaded. We better split it, so we can make time.”
“Not here. Let’s hit for the river.”
“O.K. Come on.”
The river is one of those Western jobs, ten parts sand and rock and gravel to one part water, but it wasn’t too rough, and we figured we could follow it easy enough, and we wouldn’t meet anybody. We hit it in a half hour and began looking for Hosey. He was to light up a fire, so we’d have a torch to steer by. But we walked and walked and routed up about forty things that rustled and hissed and scrabbled, and still nothing but black ahead. “Jack.”
“Yes, Buck?”
“Did he say upriver?”
“Not once but twenty-eight times.”
“Does the bastard know upriver from down?”
“Well, feel the water! You can feel how it—”
“Yeah, Jack, I can and you can. But can he?”
I’d say we went two miles, feeling like twenty. And we saw a flicker of yellow, and then we could hear him: “Yay Jack, yay Buck!”
“... Well, why didn’t you pick Alaska?”
“It’s perfect. It’s a — jungle! Look over top of you!”
Overhead was a bridge that made shelter, where the railroad went over the river. That it was worth two miles of walking, by the dark of the moon, I couldn’t see, but I didn’t argue about it. He had cans, big ones, for boiling, and little ones, to eat out of, and plenty of wood. We fed up the fire, set water on to heat, and pretty soon put the chicken, soup, peas, and other stuff in, still in the cans. Then in one can I made coffee. When I put that instant stuff in, with sugar and cream, they began gulping it without even waiting for the other stuff. Then we opened the soup and drank a can apiece. Then we had the chicken, but one can was all we were able to get away with. Then we had peas, carrots, and corn, and canned peaches. Then I broke out what I hadn’t said anything to them about. That was the beer, that I had stashed in the running water so it would get cold. They took one look at those cans and began mumbling those cusswords that are little prayers of thanks in tough guys’ language. I cut into three, and we sat there with the foam sliding all over our mouths, and the cold beer sliding down our throats. Buck began to mumble how they both owed plenty to me. Hosey said they sure did. I said thanks, pals, thanks.
By then it was daylight, so when a train came along we slid out from under to have a look at her. She was a passenger train, westbound, all curtained in, but on the observation platform, smoking a cigar, in pajamas, dressing gown, and slippers, was a fat guy. We waved, and he stared, like he couldn’t believe his eyes: Then he leaned forward, held on to the brass rail, and spit at us. “... That dirty son of a bitch.”
“O.K., Buck, tell him some more.”
“God, boys, would I get like that? First they throw you out, then they spit in your goddam eye. That fat slob! No, not one of the three of us would get like that. At least we’d give a guy a break. At least if he waved at us we’d wave back. But that fat bastard couldn’t even give us a wave. Not even a kind look.”
We went back to the fire and began talking what we’d do if we had it good and three guys off the road came in and asked for a break. We said we’d feed them and bed them down till they were ready to talk and then line it up for them to get a job. In the middle of that Buck took off his coat, crawled inside his gunny sack, stuck the coat under his head and went to sleep. Then Hosey did. Then I did, or tried to. But all the time the beer and chicken and the rest of it were taking me down I kept thinking about the money and why I hadn’t said anything about it. It seemed to me I was as close to them as brothers. And yet I was mortally afraid to open my trap about it.