The Raffle Baby by Ruth Talbot

Author:Ruth Talbot
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ruth Talbot

Chapter Twelve

Friend. You have been with me for a while. And I thank you. But I can no longer hold my tongue. For I have lied to you. I told you before that when I helped Vic punish Roley, that was my only act of violence. It is not so. It was, however, my only willing act of violence. I was too scared to speak of this before. Forgive me for what I am about to tell you. Please stay with me until the end of my tale, despite what you are about to learn. For now, you are as much a part of this story as I am. And I need you.

Not long after we lost Teeny, with Davenport come and gone, Vic and I decided to head toward California. Without Teeny, we took more chances than ever, and decided to ride through Kansas, right through the worst of the dirt storms.

We hopped into a box on the Missouri Pacific, relieved that the conductor had been a good sort and not booted us off. Soon I understood why. It was our bad luck the train got stuck on tracks in western Kansas when it ran into a dust mountain, on the heels of a big boy of a windstorm. The conductor stopped and put all us ‘boes to work. With shovels, tin cups, and even our hands, we moved the dust drifts from the tracks.

It was the first time either Vic or I had felt the dust. Oh, we had tasted Oklahoma, Texas, and parts of Kansas, as their soil defied gravity and deposited a thin film of dust in its wake, even back in the East. And we had heard stories of the billowing dark clouds and the gas masks people wore. But in our hands, the dust doubled as the inhumanity we seemed always to be dodging.

After our work was done, we scrambled up the catwalks ready to hear the thrust of the steam and the rocking of the cars. But instead, the conductor powered down at the sound of a whining siren, announcing the arrival of bulls. For our hard labor, the bulls rewarded us with a kick or a slap atop our heads. But instead of taking us to jail, bulls and deputies handed each of us—at least one hundred—a club or stick and herded us for a mile or so toward a gathering crowd.

For as far as I could see, across the dead, windswept land, jackrabbits ran this way and that, their ears made larger by their emaciated bodies, their eyes protruding like sores. There were thousands of them. Some stopped to sniff the ground looking for grass. Others hopped on or over each other. This was the frenzy of something that had gone very wrong.

Someone had erected hasty wire fencing into a makeshift enclosure stretching for what seemed like miles. The crowd stood in rows forming a square and began to move in as one, herding the rabbits into the middle of the enclosure.

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