W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

CHAPTER THREE T .he first night of Fields' exodus he slept in a hole in the ground — a "bunk," covered over with boards and dug by his gang — in a field a mile from home. It was tolerably comfortable, as accommodations of this sort went, but toward morning the rain came down and the bunk began to leak pretty freely. By morning it had most of the earmarks of a hog wallow, and Fields began to be sorry he had left. When the sun rose over the treetops, he climbed out, after a couple of false starts, scraped off the topsoil, and lay down in the grass to dry off. He felt creaky and rheumatic, he said later, but the sun soon revived his prejudice against being hit with shovels. And now a new worry came up — he was hungry. After a while he crawled over behind some bushes near the road and awaited developments. Around nine o'clock a colleague known by the affectionate name of "Pot-head" Edwards came along on his way to school. Fields called hoarsely from the shrubs, explained his plight, and invoked aid. It was not long forthcoming. As they took their meals, the fugitive's friends, like Pip supplying the convict in Great Expectations, secreted a bun here and a parsnip there, and made for the bunk as soon as they escaped surveillance. They looked up to Fields. They were proud of his indifference to authority. 18