He That Covereth His Sins

“Hello, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you, but my name is Harlan Jensen, and I just jumped off the train next to your back pasture, and I was wondering if you had any work that a fellow could do for a bite to eat,” Harlan repeated.
Harlan shook his head. It was probably folly to have jumped off the train where he had. After he had gotten himself up off the ground, made sure that he had suffered no major injuries, and dusted himself off, he examined several of the fence posts, looking for the telltale marks that hobos who had preceded him might have left. However, he could find nothing—which he considered a bad sign. Surely other men had seen in the distance the well-kept flowerbeds, weedless vegetable garden, and smoke curling out of the kitchen chimney and assumed that it might be a good spot to get a hot meal. At least, he figured, there had been no signs of any hostility at this particular farmstead. Harlan had carefully memorized all of the hobo code that Dirty Darby had taught him at the little hobo jungle he had been in a couple of weeks ago, but he couldn’t find anything more than a vacant pair of staple holes along the stretch of fence that ran parallel with the railroad. With that, he had hopped the fence and begun rehearsing his introduction while keeping an eye out for any not-so-amiable bull.
“She’ll probably start right in with a bunch of questions, you know,” Harlan said to himself. “Are you going to tell her that you’ve run off from the Civilian Conservation Corps? Are you going to tell her why? That’ll get you nowhere and probably take away any chances for anything to eat.”
Harlan shook his head and kept walking. Every failure that he had ever experienced was replaying itself in his head and would have successfully prevented him from continuing on toward the small farmhouse except that his empty stomach was in command. Harlan felt that if he could even just get a piece of bread, that would at least get him a little farther down the road to the next farmstead. He wasn’t sure when he had eaten last, but he knew that it had been days earlier and that his last meal had been only a part of a can of pork and beans that another bindle stiff had been kind enough to share with him.
The pasture that Harlan had been walking through came to an end at an assortment of feedlots and barn pens. He climbed the sturdy fences agilely but with less energy than he might have had he consumed a square meal in the recent past. All that lay between him and the house then was a short stretch of farmyard, a white wire fence, and a small patch of neatly trimmed house yard.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you, but my name is Harlan Jensen, and I just jumped off the train next to your back pasture, and I was wondering if you had any work that a fellow could do for a bite to eat,” Harlan repeated in a whisper, fixing his eyes resolutely on the back door of the house.
Harlan quietly opened the back gate and strode toward what looked to him like the kitchen door. He knew that at most farmhouses, the front door was merely a formality and that the back door greeted the majority of the traffic. Harlan knocked firmly at the screen door frame. The inner door was open into the kitchen of the house, but he could see no one.
“Now who could that be?” he heard a woman’s voice ask somewhere inside.
Harlan thought too lately about taking off his cap, so he didn’t have any time to smooth the blond hair that tumbled out from beneath it, but he felt that it was more polite to be hatless when he met the lady of the house.
Harlan heard Elsie Meyer’s footsteps coming before she appeared in the kitchen, and he was somewhat reassured when he saw that the lady of the house was a short, matronly woman who was dressed plainly. The dress that she was wearing was covered by a white apron with deep pockets on the sides, and her graying, crimped hair framed a kind face. Harlan could immediately see that above her reading glasses she was scrutinizing him carefully as she approached her side of the screen door. Then, unmistakably, a look of surprise passed over her face which then melted into an expression that seemed to indicate that she recognized him. If he’d had time, Harlan would have been confused by this, but suddenly he heard himself speaking.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m sorry to bother you, but my name is Harlan Jensen, and I just jumped off the train next to your back pasture, and . . .”
He was interrupted before he could finish his well-rehearsed opening lines. “Well, come right in, Harlan Jensen, and go into the washroom here and make yourself presentable while I get you something to eat,” said Mrs. Meyer, opening the screen door and directing him to a small room on his right. “You look like you just finished threshing in a windstorm with all of that dust on you, and if I guess right, you haven’t had much to eat in the last few days.”
Harlan tried to continue the speech he had rehearsed. “I was wondering if you . . .”
Elsie Meyer had grabbed his arm and was pulling him into the house. “Let me get you a fresh wash rag. You’re going to have to get that fuzz off your cheeks, too. I’ll not have you at my table looking like a heathen. You’ll find everything you need there in the medicine chest.” She was bustling about the small wash room as she said all of this and suddenly disappeared back into the kitchen.