“Geez,” said one of the men who’d got picked up with us. “And I thought we was just bumming rides.” He told the officer he was John Smith.

The other man gave his name as Clark T. Gable. “That’s with a T,” he said. “Don’t want you mixing me up with the movie star.”

I mumbled my true one but didn’t correct the officer when he wrote down Mose Tornley, and Pa didn’t correct him over Jackson Tornley, either.

The four of us spent the night in a foul-smelling, concrete-block cell. Then the next morning we got hauled before a justice of the peace who let the men, including Pa, off for time served and a promise they’d leave town promptly.

The JP turned to me. “I’d like to keep you locked up awhile,” he said. “Teach you a lesson while you’re still young enough to learn it. But I can’t do that without keeping your companions, and it isn’t this town’s job to feed no-goods.”

I felt my face heat up, over being singled out as young and for the JP calling Pa and me worthless.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he told Pa, “you’re the worst of the lot, not doing more for your son than this. Well, take off! All of you. The next time you break the law, do it in someone else’s jurisdiction.”

We were going out the door when he called me back. “You! Tornley! The young one.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Wait a minute,” he said, as he hunted through a newspaper. He tore out a piece and motioned for me to take it. “Can you read?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t tell me ‘sure.’ Lots can’t. Anyway, read that before you hop another freight train. It’s about the CCC’s fall enrollment. It’s not too late to sign up.”

Pa had followed me back in, and now he said, “CCC! Moss is too good for welfare and he knows it. Moss, you come with me.”

“No, Moss, you wait,” the JP said. “Before you leave I want you to take a hard look at your father. Is that how you want to turn out? Like him?”

Pa stalked off, and after a moment I followed.

No, I didn’t want to turn out like him. Not like he was now, anyway. But I didn’t think the JP had any call to talk like he had. It wasn’t right.

Heeding the JP’s warning about his jurisdiction, Pa and I started walking north along a county road, aiming for a parallel branch of the railroad we’d come in on. As we walked, I tried talking about the newspaper article. “Maybe the CCC wouldn’t be so bad,” I said. “It would be a job anyway.”

“Welfare,” Pa said. “I told you, me and mine is done begging for government handouts.”