“That’s a crock of shit,” Archie said. “You don’t know anything,” Deacon said calmly.
Bone had seen oceans, mountains, deserts so dry they drew the moisture out of you and left you like a cooked crab, all hard dry chitin and no meat. And cold and hot. He had seen river valleys lush as rain forests, industrial towns black with coal smoke and battered by noise and poverty. It was all the same to him. There was a thing he wanted, and he had not found it. Something sweet, he thought, like music. Privately, he believed Deacon’s story about the dead hoboes and wondered if he would end that way himself: Bone floating anonymously with the others, Bone merged into a vast human sea-wrack.
Deacon led him to a circle of charred stones under a tree, a blackened frying pan. “We have a little i food,” Deacon said. “You’d like that? Yeah? A little food?”
Bone nodded. He had not eaten for some days.
“Food,” Deacon said, gratified.
Archibald sighed unhappily and began heating up a few chary slices of salt pork. There was a can, also, of concentrated soup.
Deacon sat down and Bone, grimacing in pain, crouched beside him. Deacon dug deep into the folds of his faded cotton shirt and brought forth one of his snipes—a “Sunday church snipe,” Deacon called it; he had explained back on the flatcar that the best and longest snipes were the ones the churchgoers butted out just before services Sunday mornings. Bone didn’t smoke; he shook his head, smiling to demonstrate his gratitude. He thought Deacon must be really sorry for trying to steal his coat. Deacon carefully repocketed the snipe and said, “You’re the most ugly man I have ever seen but I like you. Bone, Deacon likes you.”