Read Online That Night at the Palace by L.D. Watson - Free Book Online

they came to an old mine. The building had burned down, but the smoke-stack from the smelter remained. There was also a mineshaft with a crumbling wooden framework around it. As they approached, Cliff picked up a pebble and tossed it into the shaft. The stone bounced and echoed, and finally they heard the splash of water. All three looked down into the deep shaft, making sure to maintain balance lest they fall in.
    “How deep do you suppose it is?” Jewel asked.
    “It’s hard to tell. All I see is black,” Jesse replied.
    Shakes watched the kids peering into the mine from only twenty feet away. He had gone out the back door of the hotel and followed them along, keeping to the side street, out of sight. It occurred to him that all he had to do is run across the street and give the three a little push and that would be it. If someone came looking for them, all they would find was that three kids had fallen into a really deep hole.
    All he had to do was run and give them a push.
    The kids walked back through the town and came out the rutted road that led them in. When they came to the trail they had followed in, Jesse turned down it, but Cliff stopped. “Let’s take this road. I think it’ll be shorter.”
    “Do you have any idea where it goes?” Jewel asked.
    “No, but it goes in the direction of the railroad tracks, so it has to put us out close to home,” Cliff argued as he headed up the road with Jewel behind.
    “Are you sure about this?” Jesse asked before following the other two.
    “No, but we don’t have anything better to do.”
    The three followed the lane to the railroad. It was obvious that before the tracks were built the road went straight through. When they climbed up on the tracks, the road on the other side that had once gone straight to New Birmingham now curved and followed along the tracks. Instead of leading to New Birmingham, the road now led to a little shantytown.
    Jesse was wide-eyed with amazement. He knew about shantytowns. Lowell Thomas talked about them on the radio all the time, and he had seen one in a movie. He knew the place existed, of course - hobos wandered into Elza almost every day - but he had never seen the town and had no idea that so many people were there.
    His mother called those people freeloaders and bums, but his father said that they were just normal folks who were down on their luck. Most had lost their jobs and then their homes because of the Depression and were trying to make their way to California.
    The town covered about an acre of land where the railroad tracks curved to the south next to a county road that led out to the highway near McMillan’s. There were around a hundred men and women and children, most living in tents and lean-tos. Some were living out of cars and wagons. All had the same downcast look upon their faces.
    Until that moment Jesse had never thought of his family as wealthy. He knew that they were one of the better-off families in Elza. Just living on Red Oak Avenue said it all. There were only a few two-story brick homes in town, and they were all on Red Oak. In fact, there were only two houses bigger than his. One belonged to the bank president and the other was Fitches Funeral Home.
    He also knew that they had it a lot better off than Cliff’s and Jewel’s families. Both of their fathers were farmers who had to take part-time work at the mill to make ends meet. Farming, his father had often told him, had made pretty good money before the depression. Crop prices dropped dramatically after the crash of ’29, and many of the farmers had to find jobs. Others lost their farms to the banks. Elza was lucky to have the pulp mill even though his mother complained constantly about the smell of burned wood and tar. According to Jesse’s father, the only reason the town survived was because there was one good business that continued to hire workers. Murdock Rose often liked to remark, to Garvis’s utter humiliation, that Jesse’s grandfather,