“Uh-uh! I’d a walked her if my dogs wasn’t pooped out.” The questions of the driver had the tone of a subtle examination. He seemed to spread nets, to set traps, with his questions. “Lookin’ for a job?” he asked.
“No, my old man got a place, forty acres. He’s a cropper, but we been there a long time.”
The driver looked significantly at the fields along the road where the corn was fallen sideways and the dust was piled on it. Little flints shoved through the dusty soil. The driver said, as though to himself, “A forty-acre cropper and he ain’t been dusted out and he ain’t been tractored out?”
“’Course I ain’t heard lately,” said the hitch-hiker.
“Long time,” said the driver. A bee flew into the cab and buzzed in back of the windshield. The driver put out his hand and carefully drove the bee into an air stream that blew it out of the window. “Croppers going fast now,” he said. “One cat’ takes and shoves ten families out. Cat’s all over hell now. Tear in and shove the croppers out. How’s your old man hold on?” His tongue and his jaws became busy with the neglected gum, turned it and chewed it. With each opening of his mouth his tongue could be seen flipping the gum over.
“Well, I ain’t heard lately. I never was no hand to write, nor my old man neither.” He added quickly, “But the both of us can, if we want.”
“Been doing a job?” Again the secret investigating casualness. He looked out over the fields, at the shimmering air, and gathering his gum into his cheek, out of the way, he spat out the window.
“Sure have,” said the hitch-hiker.
“Thought so. I seen your hands. Been swingin’ a pick or an ax or a sledge. That shines up your hands. I notice all stuff like that. Take a pride in it.”
The hitch-hiker stared at him. The truck tires sang on the road.