OCR Text |
Show 171 Karl didn't answer. The begging humiliated him, but the numbness inside him sapped his energy so that he couldn't bother to oppose Wabash Sam. He was also unable to resist his body's demand for food, which the scam supplied, and neither Karl nor Andy could. Andy had been unsuccessful in finding honest work. He spent his days with a group of unemployed steelworkers who got meals from a charity kitchen, and when he returned to the hobo jungle at night, his talk was full of the things he was learning from the men. "They really know a whole lot about labor, and industry, and the American economic system," Andy enthused. That didn't interest Karl -- he paid hardly any attention to the things Andy said. Nothing interested him. If Andy hadn't come back to the bridge each night, pushing Karl closer to the fire, finding him a pile of rags to sleep on inside the hobo shanty, as far as possible from the crack-ridden walls, Karl would have grown sick from exposure. Mindlessly, he let Andy watch over him at night, let Wabash Sam use him during the days. So on that Friday morning, a week after Karl had joined Wabash Sam in their fraudulent scheme, Sam led him up the drive toward the most luxurious house they'd yet approached. Because a crumb of bread from a handout he'd received at the last house was lodged in Karl's throat, his cough was genuine for a change. Even before Sam began to con her, the kitchen maid who opened the door gazed at Karl with sympathy. Her broad Irish face shone red from the heat of the cookstove; her eyes had their own warmth. |