The two of them just sat there smoking cigarettes. Harry was dangling his legs from the platform and Jib Jab had his feet resting on it and his chair tilted back. It was awful funny to see them. For a couple of minutes neither of them said anything, only Harry kept looking around at the platforms where the freaks usually were.
Pretty soon he just blurted out, “How’d you happen to hit this job, Chandler?”
Jib Jab said, “Oh, I don’t know; it’s a long story. It’s a pretty good job when you want to lie low.”
“Lie low, huh? Why, what’s the matter?” Harry asked.
Cracky, I never saw Jib Jab so serious before. He said, “Oh, I was just one of the heroes that didn’t get a job, that’s all. I’m a happy-go-lucky.”
“Same here,” Harry said, and he just kept looking at him, awful sharp and searching, kind of.
“And I just thought I’d try to pull together a bit before I hit the trail for home,” Jib Jab went on. “I had a little over two hundred dollars to bring home to my old dad, but they relieved me of it in a sailors’ dance hall over in Brest.”
“Yop, and I started home as soon as I was mustered out, but didn’t make it. Just couldn’t face the old folks—busted. I tried to get a job in Albany, in Poughkeepsie; nothing doing. Worked for a couple of days for a farmer over here in Elm Center, then hit the circus. Circus is a great place when you’re down and out. Ever work in a circus?”
“I kinder think I’d like to,” Harry said; “I’ve done most everything else.”
“So here I am among the missing till I can save as much as I promised to bring home. I sent the old gent a letter saying I had two hundred bucks. I don’t know who’s got that two hundred, but I know one thing; I’m not going up to Greendale till I have that much. I’m not human till then.”
“Old gent write you a letter?” Harry asked, kind of careless.
“Yop, and warned me. Didn’t do much good.” For about a minute Harry just sat there smoking and Jib Jab did the same thing. Neither one of them spoke. Harry was whistling _Over There_. Then he reached down into his pocket and threw a roll of bills into Jib Jab’s lap.
“Here’s your two hundred, Jib,” he said; “and here’s part of the letter. Let’s have a squint at that ring, will you?”
Gee whiz, I guess you could have knocked Jib Jab down with a feather.