doing something good,
like painting their Goddam barns, or building some new roads?"
The four-time whistle blew, and the train bounced back a little. That
was our sign. Guys walked and ran along the side of the cars, mumbling and
talking, swinging onto their iron ladders, and mounting the top of the
string. Wheeler hadn't come back with the cigarets. I went over the top, and
when I got set down, I commenced yanking my shirt off again, being a big
hand for sunshine. I felt it burning my hide. The train was going too fast
now for anybody to catch it. If Wheeler was on the ground, he's just
naturally going to have a little stay over in El Centre. I looked over the
other edge of the car, and saw his head coming over the rim, and I saw that
he was smiling. Smoke flew like a rain cloud from a new tailor-made cigaret
in his mouth. He scooted over beside me, and flipped ashes into the breeze.
"You get anything to eat?" he said.
I said, "No," that I hadn't got anything.
He reached under his sweater and under his belt and pulled out a brown
paper sack, wet, dripping with ice water, and held it up to me and said,
"Cold pop. I brung a couple. Wait. Here's something to gnaw on with it," and
he handed me a milk candy bar.
"Candy's meal," I told him.
"Sure is; last you all day. That was my last four bits."
"Four bits more'n I got," I joked.
We chewed and drank and talked very little then for a long time.
Wheeler said that he was turning the train back to the railroad company at
Indio. That's the town coming up.
"I know just where to go," Wheeler told me, when the train come to a
quick stop. "Don't you worry 'bout me, boy." Then before I could talk, he
went on saying, "Now listen, I know this track. See? Now, don't you hang on
'er till she gets to Los Angeles, but you leave 'er up here at Colton.
You'll be just about fifty miles from L.A. If you stay on till you come to
L.A., them big dicks'll throw you so far back in that Lincoln Heights jail,
you never will see daylight again. So remember, get off at Colton, hitch on
in to Pasadena, and head out north through Burbank, San Fernando, and stay
right on that 99 to Turlock." Wheeler was climbing over the side. He stuck
out his hand and we shook.
I said, "Good luck, boy, take it easy, but take it."
He said, "Same to you, boy, and I always take it easy, and I always
take it!"
Then be stood still for a few seconds, bending his body over the edge
of the car, and looked at me and said, "Been good to know you!"
Indio to Edom, rich farm lands. Edom to Banning, with the trees popping
up everywhere. Banning to Beaumont, with the fruit hanging all over the
trees, and groceries all over the ground, and people all over everything.
Beaumont to Redlands, the world turned into such a thick green garden of
fruits and vegetables that I didn't know if I was dreaming or not. Coming
out of the dustbowl, the colors so bright and smells so thick all around,
that it seemed almost too good to be true.
Redlands to Colton, A railroad and farming town, full of people that
are wheeling and dealing. Hitch-hikers are standing around thicker than
citizens. The 99 looks friendly, heading west to the coast. I'll see the
Pacific Ocean, go swimming, and flop on the beach. I'll go down to Chinatown
and look around. I'll see the Mexican section. I'll see the whole works.
But, no, I don't know. Los Angeles is too big for me. I'm too little for Los
Angeles. I'll duck Los Angeles and go north by Pasadena, out through
Burbank, like Wheeler told me. I'm against the law, they tell me.
Sign says: "Fruit, see, but don't pick it." Another one reads:
"Fruit--beat it." Another one: "Trespassers prosecuted. Keep Out. Get away
from Here."
Fruit is on the ground, and it looks like the trees have been just too
glad to grow it, and give it to you. The tree likes to grow and you like to
eat it; and there is a sign between you and the tree saying: "Beware The
Mean Dog's Master."
Fruit is rotting on the ground all around me. Just what in the hell has
gone wrong here, anyhow? I'm not a very smart man. Maybe it ought to be this
way, with the crops laying all around over the ground. Maybe they couldn't
get no pickers just when they wanted them, and they just let the fruit go to
the bad. There's enough here on the ground to feed every hungry kid from
Maine to Florida, and from there to Seattle.
A Twenty-nine Ford coupe stops and a Japanese boy gives me a ride. He
is friendly, and tells me all about the country, the crops and vineyards.
"All you have got to do out in this country is to just pour water
around some roots, and yell, 'Grapes!' and next morning the leaves are full
grown, and the grapes are hanging in big bunches, all nice and ready to
pick!"
The little car traveled right along. A haze was running around the
trees, and the colors were different than any that I'd ever seen in my life.
The knotty little oak and iron brush that I'd been used to seeing rolling
with the Oklahoma hills and looking smoky in the hollers, had been home to
my eyes for a long time. My eyes had got sort of used to Oklahoma's beat-up
look, but here, with this sight of fertile, rich, damp, sweet soil that
smelled like the dew of a jungle, I was learning to love another, greener,
part of life. I've tried to keep loving it ever since I first seen it.
The Japanese boy said, "Which way do you plan to go through Los
Angeles?"
"Pasadena? That how ya say if? Then north through Burbank, out that
a-way!"
"If you want to stay with me, you'll be right in the middle of Los
Angeles, but you'll be on a big main highway full of trucks and cars out of
town. Road forks here. Make up your mind quick."
"Keep a-drivin'," I said, craning my neck back to watch the Pasadena
road disappear under the palm trees to the north of us.
We rounded a few hills and knolls, curving in our little jitney, and
all at once, coming over a high place, the lights of Los Angeles jumped up,
running from north to south as far as I could see, and hanging around on the
hills and mountains just as if it was level ground. Red and green neon
flickering for eats, sleeps, sprees, salvation, money made, lent, blowed,
spent. There was an electric sign for dirty clothes, clean clothes, honky
tonky tonks, no clothes, floor shows, gyp-joints, furniture in and out of
homes. The fog was trying to get a headlock on the houses along the high
places, Patches of damp clouds whiffed along the paving in crazy,
disorganized little bunches, hunting some more clouds to work with. Los
Angeles was lost in its own pretty lights and trying to hold out against the
big fog that rolls in from that ocean, and the people that roll in just as
reckless, and rambling, from the country as big as the ocean back East.
It was about seven or eight o'clock when I shook hands with my Japanese
friend, and we wished each other luck. I got out on the pavement at the
Mission Plaza, a block from everything in the world, and listened to the
rumbling of people and smoking of cars pouring fumes out across the streets
and alleys.
"Hungry?" the boy asked me.
"Pretty empty. Just about like an old empty tub,'' I laughed
at him. If he'd offered me a nickel or a dime, I would of took it, I'd of
spent it on a bus to get the hell out of that town. I was empty. But not
starved yet, and more than something to eat, I felt like I wanted to get
outside of the city limits.
"Good luck! Sony I haven't any money on me!" he hollered as he circled
and wheeled away into the big traffic.
I walked along a rough, paved street. To my left, the shimmy old houses
ran up a steep hill, and tried to pretend that they were keeping families of
people in out of the wind and the weather. To my right there was the noise
of the grinding, banging, clanging, and swishing of the dirty railroad
yards. Behind me, south, the big middle of Los Angeles, chasing hamburgers.
Ahead of me, north, the highway ached on, blinking its red and green eyes
and groaning under the heavy load of traffic that it had to carry. Trains
hooted in the low yards close under my right elbow, and scared me out of my
wits.
"How'd ya git outta this town?" I asked a copper.
He looked me over good, and said, "Just follow your nose, boy. You can
read signs. Just keep traveling!''
I walked along the east side of the yards. There was lots of little
restaurants beside the road, where the tourists, truck drivers, and
railroaders dropped in for a meal. Hot coffee steamed up from the cups along
the counters, and the smell of meat frying leaked out through the doors. It
was a cold night. Drops of steamy moisture formed on the windows, and it
blurred out the sight of the people eating and drinking.
I stopped into a little, sawed-off place, and the only person in sight,
away back, was an old Chinaman. He looked up at me with his gray beard, but
didn't say a single word.
I stood there a minute, enjoying the warmth. Then I walked back to
where he was, and asked him, "Have ya got anything left over that a man
could do some work for?"
He set right still, reading his paper, and then looked up and said, "I
work. Hard all day. Every day. I got big bunch people to feed. We eat things
left over. We do work."
"No job?" I asked him.
"No job. We do job. Self."
I hit the breeze again and tried two or three other places along the
road. Finally, I found an old gray-headed couple humped up in front of a
loop-legged radio, listening to some of the hollering being done by a lady
name Amy Semple Temple, or something like that. I woke the old pair up out
of their sermon on hell fire and hot women, and asked them if they had some
work to do for a meal. They told me to grab some scalding hot water and mop
the place down. After three times over the floors, tables, kitchen, and
dishes, I was wrapping myself around a big chicken dinner, with all of the
trimmings.
The old lady handed me a lunch and said, "Here's some-thing extra to
take with you--don't let John know about it."
And as I walked out the door again, listening to the whistle of the
trains getting ready to whang out, John walked over and handed me a quarter
and said, "Here's somethin' ta he'p ya on down th' road. Don't let th' Ūl'
lady know."
A man dressed in an engineer's cap and striped overhalls told me that a
train was making up right at that point, and would pull out along about four
in the morning. It was now about midnight, so I dropped into a coffee joint
and took an hour sipping at a cup. I bought a pint of pretty fair red port
wine with the change, and stayed behind a signboard, drinking wine to keep
warm.
A Mexican boy walked up on me and said, "Pretty cold iss it not? Do you
want a smoke?"
I lit up one of his cigarets, and slipped him the remains of the wine
jug. He took about half of the leavings, and looked at me between gulps,
"Ahhhh! Warms you up, no?"
"Kill it. I done had my tankful," I told him, and heard the bubbles
play a little song that quit when the wine was all downed.
"Time's she gittin' ta be? Know?" I said to him. "Four o'clock or
after," he said. "When does that Fresno freight run?" I asked him. ''Right
now," he said.
I ran out into the yards, jumping dark rails, heavy switches, and
darting among the blind cars. A string of black ones were moving backwards
in the wrong direction. I mounted the side and went over the top, and down
the other side, and took a risk on scrambling between another string at the
hitch. I could just barely see, it was so dark. The cars were so blended
into the night. But, all at once, I looked up within about a foot of my
face, and saw a blur, and a light, and a blur, and a light, and I knew that
here was one going my way. I watched the light come along between the cars,
and finally spotted an open top car, which was easier to see; and grabbed
the ladder, and jumped over into a load of heavy cast-iron machinery. I laid
down in the end of the car, and rested.
The train pulled along slow for a while. I ducked as close up behind
the head end of the car as I could to break the wind. Pretty soon the old
string got the kinks jerked out of her, and whistled through a lot of little
towns. Then we hit a good fifty for about an hour, and started up some
pretty tough grade. It got colder higher up. The fog turned into a drizzle,
and the drizzle into a slow rain.
I imagined a million things bouncing along in the dark. A quick tap of
the air brakes to slow the train down, and the hundred tons of heavy
machinery would shift its weight all over me, I felt so soft and little. I
had felt so tough and big just a few minutes ago.
The lonesome whip of the wind sounded even more lonesome when the big
engine joined in on the whistling. The wheels hummed a song, and the weather
got colder. We started gaining altitude almost like an airplane. I pulled
myself up into a little ball and shook till my bones ached all over. The
weather didn't pay any more attention to my clothes than if I didn't have
them on. My muscles drew up into hard, leathery strings that hurt. I kept a
little warmer by remembering people I'd known, how they looked, faces and
all, and all about the warm desert, and cactus and sunshine growing
everywhere; picturing in my mind something friendly and free, something to
sort of blot out the wind and the freezing train.
On a big slope, that went direct into Bakersfield, we stopped on a
siding to let the mail go by. I got off and walked ten or fifteen cars down
the track, creaking like an eighty-year-old rocking chair. I had to walk
slow along the steep cinder bank, gradually getting the use of myself back
again.
I was past the train when the engineer turned the brakes loose, give
her the gun, and started off.
I'd never seen a train start up this fast before. Most trains take a
little time chugging, getting the load swung into motion. But, setting on
this long straight slope, she just lit out. Running along the side, I just
barely managed to catch it. I had to take a different car as mine was
somewhere down the line. In a few minutes the train was making forty miles
an hour, then fifty, then sixty, down across the strip of country where the
mountains meet the desert south of Bakersfield. The wind blew and the
morning was frosty and cold. Between the two cars, it was freezing. I
managed to mount to the top, and pull a reefer lid open. I looked in, and
saw the hole was filled with fine chips of new ice.
I held on with all of my strength, and crawled over and opened up
another lid. It was packed with chipped ice, too. I was too near froze to
try the jump from one car to the next, so I crawled down the ladder between
two cars--sort of a wind-break--and held on.
My hands froze stiff around the handle of the ladder, but they were
getting too cold and weak to hold on much longer. I listened below to five
or six hundred railroad wheels, clipping the rails through the morning
frost, and felt the windy ice from the refrigerator car that I was hanging
onto.
The fingers of one hand slipped from around the handle. I spent twenty
minutes or so trying to fish an old rag out of my pocket Finally I got it
wound around my hands and, by blowing my breath inside the cloth for a few
minutes, seemed to be getting them a little warmer.
The weather gained on me, though, and my breath turned into thick
frosty ice all over my handkerchief, and my hands started freezing worse
than ever. My finger slid loose again, and I remembered the tales of the
railroaders, people found along the tracks, no way of telling who they were.
If I missed my hold here, one thing was sure, I'd never know what hit
me, and I'd never slide my feet under that good eating table full of hot
square meals at the big marble house of my rich aunt.
The sun looked warmer as it came up, but the desert is cold when it is
clear early in the morning, and the train fanned such a breeze that the sun
didn't make much difference.
That was the closest to the 6x3 that I've ever been. My mind ran back
to millions of things--my whole life was brought up to date, and all of the
people I knew, and all that they meant to me. And, no doubt, my line of
politics took on quite a change right then and there, even though I didn't
know I was getting educated at the time.
The last twenty miles into the Bakersfield yards was the hardest work,
and worst pain, that I ever run onto; that is, of this particular brand.
There are pains and work of different sorts, but this was a job that my life
depended on, and I didn't have even one ounce to say about it. I was just a
little animal of some kind swinging on for my life, and the pain was not
being able to do anything about it.
I left the train long before it stopped, and hit the ground running and
stumbling. My legs worked more like toys than like my real ones. But the sun
was warm in Bakersfield, and I drank all of the good water I could soak up
from a faucet outside, and walked over to an old shack that was out of use
in the yards, and keeled over on the cinders in the sun. I woke up several
hours later, and my train had gone on without me.
Two men said that another train was due out in a few minutes, so I kept
an eye run along the tracks, and caught it when it pulled out. The sun was
warm now, and there were fifty men lined up along the top of the train,
smoking, talking, waving at the folks in cars on the highway, and keeping
quiet.
Bakersfield on into Fresno. Just this side of Fresno, the men piled off
and walked through the yards, planning to meet the train again when it come
out the north end. We took off by ones and twos and tried to get hold of
something to eat. Some of the men had a few nickels, some a dollar or two
hid on them, and others made the alleys knocking on the back doors of
bakeries, greasy-spoon joints, vegetable stands. The meal added up to a
couple or three bites apiece, after we'd all pitched ours in. It was
something to fill your guts.
I saw a sign tacked up in the Fresno yards that said: Free Meal &
Nights Lodging. Rescue Mission.
Men looked at the sign and asked us, "Anybody here need ta be rescued?"
"From what?" somebody hollered.
"All ya got ta do is ta go down there an' kneel down an' say yer
prayers, an' ya git a free meal an' a flop!" somebody explained.
"Yeah? Prayers? Which one o' youse boys knows any t'ing about any
prayers?" an Eastern-sounding man yelled out.
"I'd do it, if I wuz just hungery 'nuff! I'd say 'em some prayers!"
"I don't hafta do no prayin' ta get fed!" a hard looker laughed out. He
was poking a raw onion whole into his mouth, tears trickling down his jaws.
"Oh, I don't know," a quieter man answered him, "I sometimes believe in
prayin'. Lots of folks believes in prayin' before they go out to work, an'
others pray before they go out to fight. An' even if you don't believe in a
God up on a cloud, still, prayin's a pretty good way to get your mind
cleared up, or to get the nerve that it takes to do anything. People pray
because it makes them think serious about things, and, God or no God, it's
all that most of them know how to do." He was a friendly man with whitish
hair, and his easy temper sounded in his voice. It was a thinking voice.
" 'Course," a big Swede told us, "we justa kid along. These monkeys
dun't mean about halfa what they say. Now, like, you take me, Swede, I
prayed long time ago. Usta believe in it strong. Then, whoof, an' a lot of
other things happen that knock my prop out from under me, make me a railroad
bum, an'--I just forget how to pray an' go church."
A guy that talked more and faster said, "I think it's dam crooks that
cause folks like us to be down and out and hungry, worried about finding
jobs, worried about our folks, and them a-worrying about us."
"Last two or three years, I been sorta thinkin' long them lines--an' it
looks like I keep believin' in somethin'; I don't know exactly, but it's in
me, an' in you, an' in ever' dam one of us." This talker was a young man
with a smooth face, thick hair that was bushy, and a fairly honest look
somewhere about him. "An' if we c'n jist find out how ta make good use of
it, we'll find out who's causin' us alla th' trouble in the' world, like
this Hitler rat, an' git ridda them, an' then not let anybody be outta work,
or beat down an' wonderin' where their next meal's a comin' from, by God,
with alla these crops an' orchards bubblin' up around here!"
"If God was ta do what's right," a heavy man said, "he'd give all of
these here peaches an' cherries, an' oranges, an' grapes, an'
stuff to eat, to th' folks that are hungry. An' for a hungry man to pray an'
try to tell God how to run his business, looks sort of backwards, plumb
silly to me. Hell, a man's got two hands an' a mind of his own, an' feet an'
legs to take him where he wants to go; an' if he sees something wrong with
the world, he'd ought to get a lot of people together, an' look up in th'
air an' say, Hey, up there, God, I'm--I mean, we're goin' to fix this!"
Then I put my three cents worth in, saying, "I believe that when ya
pray, you're tryin' ta get yer thinkin' straight, tryin' ta see
what's wrong with th' world, an' who's ta blame fer it. Part of it is
crooks, crooked laws, an' jist dam greedy people, people that's afraid of
this an' afraid of that. Part of it's all of this, an' part of
it's jist dam shore our own fault."
"Hell, from what you say, you think we're to blame for everybody here
being on the freights?" This young traveler reared his head back and laughed
to himself, chewing a mouthful of sticky bread.
"I dunno, fellers, just to be right real frank with you. But
it's our own fault, all right, hell yes. It's our own personal
fault if we don't talk up, 'er speak out, 'er somethin'--I ain't any too
clear on it."
An old white-headed man spoke close to me and said, "Well, boys, I was
on the bum, I suppose, before any of you was born into this world."
Everybody looked around mostly because he was talking so quiet, interrupting
his eating. "All of this talking about what's up in the sky, or down in
hell, for that matter, isn't half as important as what's right here, right
now, right in front of your eyes. Things are tough. Folks broke. Kids
hungry. Sick. Everything. And people has just got to have more faith in one
another, believe in each other. There's a spirit of some kind we've all got.
That's got to draw us all together."
Heads nodded. Faces watched the old man. He didn't say any more.
Toothless for years, he was a little bit slow finishing up his piece of old
bread.
Chapter XIV
THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
"Hey! Hey! Train's pullin' out in about ten minnits! This a way!
Ever'body!"
We got rolling again. The high peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
jumped up their heads in the east. Snow patches white in the sun. There was
the green valley of the San Joaquin River, rich, good-smelling; hay meadows
waving with thick, juicy feed that is life; people working, walking bending
down, carrying heavy loads. Cars from farms waited at the cross-roads, some
loaded down with wooden crates, and boxes, and some with tall tin cans of
cow's milk. The air was as sweet as could be, and like the faint smell of
blossom honey.
Before long we hit a heavy rain. A lot of us crawled into an empty car.
Wet and yelling, we hollered and sung till the sun went down, and it got
wetter and dark. New riders swung into our car. We curled up on strips of
tough brown wrapping paper, pulling it over us like blankets, and using our
sweaters and coats for pillows.
Somebody pulled the doors shut, and we rambled on through the night.
When I woke up again, the train had stopped, and everything was in a wild
hustle and a bustle. Guys snaking me, and saying in my ear, "Hey! Wake up!
Tough town! Boy! This is far's she goes!"
"Tough bulls! Gotta git th' hell outta here. C'mon, wake up."
I rousted myself out, pulling my wet sweater over my head. The train
was falling heavy as about twenty-five or thirty of us ganged up in front of
a Chinese bean joint; and when a certain big, black patrol car wheeled
around a corner, and shot its bright spotlight into our faces, we brushed
our clothing, straightened our hats and neck ties, and in order to act like
legal citizens, we marched into the Chinaman's bean joint.
Inside, it was warm. The joint contained seven warped stools. And two
level-headed Chinese proprietors, "Chili bean! Two chili bean! Seven chili
bean!" I heard one say through the hole in the wall to the cook in the back.
And from the kitchen, "Me gotcha! All chili bean!"
I was going through the process, not only of starving, but also of
being too hot and too cold about fifty times in the last forty-eight hours.
I felt dizzy and empty and sick. The peppery smell of the hot chili and
beans made me feel worse.
I waited about an hour and a half, until ten minutes before the
Chinaman locked the door, and then I said, "Say, friend, will you gimme a
bowl of yer chili an' beans fer this green sweater? Good sweater."
"You let me slee sletee."
"Okay--here--feel. Part of it's all wool."
"Chili bean you want this sletee for?"
"Yeah. Cuppa coffee, too."
"Price. You go up."
"Okay. No coffee."
"No. No chili bean."
"Good sweater," I told him.
"Okay. You keep. You see, I got plentee sletee. You think good sletee,
you keep sletee. My keep chili bean.''
I set there on the stool, hating to go out into the cold night and
leave that good warm stove. I made a start for the door, and went past three
men finishing off their first or second bowl of chili and beans. The last
man was a long, tall, irony-looking Negro. He kept eating as I walked past,
never turned his face toward me, but told me, "Let me see yo sweatah. Heah's
yo dime. Lay th' sweatah down theah on th' stool. Bettah hurry an' ordah yo'
chili. Joint'll shut down heah in a minute."
I dropped the sweater in a roll on the stool, and parked myself on the
next stool, and a bowl of red-hot, extra hot, double hot chili beans slid
down the counter and under my nose.
It was long about two o'clock when I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and
the rain was getting harder, meaner, and colder, and blowing stiffer down
the line. A friendly looking cop, wearing a warm overcoat, walked around the
corner. Three or four of the boys stood along under the porch, so as to keep
out of the drift of the rain. The cop said, "Howdy, howdy, boys. Time to
call it a night." He smiled like a man doing an awful good job.
"What time yuh got?" a Southern boy asked him, dripping wet.
"Bed time."
"Oh."
"Say, mister," I said to him, "listen, we're jist a bunch of guys on
th' road, tryin' ta git somewhere where ther's a job of work of some kind.
Come in on that there freight. Rainin', an' we ain't got no place ta sleep
in outta th' weather. I wuz jist wonderin' if you'd let us sleep here in yer
jail house--jist fer tonight."
"You might," he said, smiling, tickling all of the boys.
"Where's yer jail at?" I asked him.
"It's over across town," he answered.
Then I said, "Reckon ya could put us up?"
And he said, "I certainly can."
"Boy, man, you're a pretty good feller. We're ready, ain't we, guys?"
"I'm ready."
"Git inside out of this bad night."
"Me, too."
The same answer came from everybody.
"Then, see," I said to the cop, "if anything happens, they'd, you'd
know it wuzn't us done it."
And then he looked at us like a politician making a speech, and said,
"You boys know what'd happen if you went over there to that jail to sleep
tonight?"
We said, "Huh uh." "No." "What?"
"Well, they'd let you in, all right, not for just one night, but for
thirty nights and thirty days. Give you an awful good chance to rest up out
on the County Farm, and dry your clothes by a steam radiator every night.
They'd like you men so much, they'd just refuse to let you go. Just keep you
for company over there." He had a cold, sour smile across his face by now.
"Let's go, fella." Somebody back of me jerked my arm.
Without talking back, I savvied, and walked away. Most of the men had
left. Only six or eight of us in a little bunch. "Where we gonna sleep,
anybody know?" I asked them.
"Just keep quiet and follow us."
The cop walked away around the corner.
"And don't ever let a smiling cop fool yuh," a voice in back of me told
us. "That wasn't no real smile. Tell by his face an' his eyes."
"Okay, I learnt somethin' new," I said, "But where are we gonna sleep
at?"
"We gotta good warm bed, don't you worry. Main thing is just to walk,
an' don't talk.''
Across a boggy road, rutty, and full of mudholes, over a sharp
barb-wire fence, through a splashing patch of weeds that soaked our clothes
with cold water, down some crunching cinders, we followed the shiny rails
again in the rain about a half a mile. This led us to a little green shack,
built low to the ground like a doghouse. We piled in at a square window, and
lit on a pile of sand.
"Godamighty!"
"Boy, howdy!"
"Ain't this fine?"
"Warmer'n hell."
"Lemme dig a hole. I wanta dig a hole, an' jist bury myself. I ain't no
live man. I'm dead. I been dead a long, long time. I'm gonna jist dig me a
grave, an' crawl off in it, an' pull my sand in on top of me. Gonna sleep
like old Rip Van Twinkle, twenty, thirty, or fifty dam years. An' when I
wake up, I want things ta be changed around better. When I wake up in th'
mornin'--" And I was tired and wet, covering up in the sand, talking. I
drifted off to sleep. Loose and limber, I felt everything in the world just
slipping out from under me and fading away. I woke up before long with my
feet burning and stinging. Everything was sailing and mixed up backwards,
but when they got straight I saw a man in a black suit bending over me with
a big heavy club. He was beating the bottoms of my feet.
"You birds get up, and get your ass out of here! Get up. Goddam you!"
There were three men in black suits, and the black Western hats that
told you so plain that you was dealing with a railroad deputy.
They had come in through a little narrow door and were herding us out
the same. "Get out of here, and don't you come back! If you show your head
back in this sandhouse, you'll go to the judge! Ninety days on that pea farm
would do you loafers good!"
Grabbing shoes, hats, little dirty bundles, the migratory workers were
chased out of their bed of clean sand. Back outside, the rain was keeping
up, and in the V-shaped beam of the spotlights from the patrol car you could
see that even the rain was having trouble.
"Git on outta town there!" "Keep travelin'!" "Don't you even look
back!" "Start walkin'!" We heard low, grumbling voices coming from the car
behind us. Heard, too, the quiet motor start up and the gears shifted as the
car rolled along back of us. It followed us about a half a mile, rain and
mud. It drove us across a cow pasture.
From the car, one of the watchmen yelled, "Don't you show up in Tracy
again tonight! You'll be dam good an' sorry if you do! Keep walking!"
The car lights cut a wide, rippling circle in the dark, and we knew
that they had turned around and went back to town. The roar of their exhaust
purred and died away.
We'd marched out across the cow pasture, smiling and yelling, "Hep!
Hep! Whattaya say, men? Hep! Hep! Hep!"
Now we stood in the rain and cackled like chickens, absolutely lost and
buffaloed. Never before had I had anything quite so dam silly happen to me.
Our clothes were on crooked and twisted; shoes full of mud and gravel. Hair
soaking wet, and water running down our faces. It was a funny sight to see
human beings in any such a shape. Wet as we could get, dirty and muddy as
the ground, we danced up and down through puddles, ran around in wide
circles and laughed our heads off. There is a stage of hard luck that turns
into fun, and a stage of poverty that turns into pride, and a place in
laughing that turns into fight.
"Okay. Hey, fellers! C'mere. Tell ya what we're gonna do. We're a-gonna
all git together, see, an' go walkin' right back into town, an' go back to
sleep in that sandhouse ag'in. What say? Who's with me?" a tall, slippery,
stoop-shouldered boy was telling us.
"Me!"
"Me."
"Same fer me!"
"Whatever you guys does, I'll stick."
"Hell, I c'n give that carload of bulls a machine gun apiece, an' whip
th' whole outfit with my bare hands!" an older man said.
"But, no. We don't aim ta cause no trouble. Ain't gonna be no
fightin'."
"I'd just like to get one good poke at that fat belly."
"Get that outta your head, mister."
Just walking back toward town, talking.
"Hey. How many of us here?"
'Two. Four. Six. Eight."
"Mebbe we'd better split up in twos. Too plain to see a whole big
bunch. We'll go into town by pairs. If you make it back to the old
blacksmith shop right there by the old Chinese bean joint, whistle once,
real long. This way, if two gets caught, the rest'll get away."
"What'll we do if we get caught an' run in jail?"
"Whistle twice, real short," and under his breath he showed us how to
whistle.
"Can everybody here whistle?"
"I can."
Four of us said yes. So one whistler and one expert listener was put
into each pair.
"Now, remember, if you see the patrol car's gonna ketch yuh, stop
before it gits yuh, an' whistle twice, real short an' sweet."
"Okay. First pair take that street yonder. Second pair, drop over a
block. Third couple, down the paved highway; and us, last pair, will walk
back down this same cow trail that we got run out of town on. Remember,
don't start no trouble with them coppers. Loaded dice, boys; you cain't win.
Just got to try to outsmart 'em a little."
Back through the slick mud, walking different ways, we cussed and
laughed. In a few minutes, there came a long, low whistle, and we knew the
first pair had made it to the blacksmith shop. Then, in a minute or so,
another long one. We came in third, and I let out a whistle that was one of
California's best. The last pair walked in and we stood under the wide eaves
of the shop, watching the water drip off of the roof, missing our noses by
about three inches. We had to stand up straight against the wall to stay out
of the rain.
The sandhouse was just across the street and up a few steps.
"Lay low."
"Duck."
"Car."
"Hey! Ho! Got us ag'in!"
The new model black sedan coasted down a side street, out over in our
direction real quick, and turned two spots on us. We held our hands up to
keep the lights from blinding us. Nobody moved. We thought maybe they'd made
a mistake. But, as the car rolled up to within about fifty feet of us, we
knew that we were caught, and got ready to be cussed out, and took to the
can.
A deputy opened his front door, turned off one spotlight, and shot his
good flashlight into our faces. One at a time, he looked us over. We blinked
back at him, like a herd of young deer, but nobody was to say afraid.
"Come here, you--" he said in a hard, imitation voice.
The light was in my face. I thought it was shining in everybody's, so I
didn't move.
"Hey, mister. Come over here, please." He was a big heavy man, and his
voice had a nice clank to it, like cocking back the hammer of a rifle.
I shook the light out of my eyes and said, "Who?"
"You."
I turned around to the men with me and told them loud enough for the
cops to hear it, "Be right back, fellers."
I heard the patrol man turn around to the other cops and kid them about
something, and as I walked up they were all laughing and saying, "Yeah. He's
th' one. He's one. One of them things."
The radio in the car was turned on a Hollywood station, and a lady's
voice was singing, telling what all of the pretty girls were thinking about
the war situation.
"I'm a what?" I asked the cop.
"You know, one of them 'things.' "
"Well, boys, ya got me there. I don't even know what one of them
'things' is."
"We know what you are."
"Well," I scratched my head in the rain, "maybe you're smarter than I
am; 'cause I never did know jist what I am."
"We do."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"What am I then?"
"One of them labor boys."
"Labor?"
"Yeah, labor."
"I think I know what labor is--" I smiled a little.
"What is it?"
"Labor's work."
"Maybe, you're one of them trouble causers."
"Listen, fellers, I jist rolled inta this town from Oklahoma, I mean
Texas, an' I'm on my way to Sonora to stay with my relatives."
"Relatives?"
"Yeah," I said. "Aunt. Cousins. Whole bunch. Well off."
"You're going to stay in Sonora when you get there, aren't you?" A
different, higher-sounding voice wheezed out from the back seat.
"I'm gonna settle down up there in them mountains, an' try ta go ta
work."
"Kinda work, sonny?"
"Painter. Signs. Pictures. Houses. Anything needs paintin'."
"So you don't go around causing trouble, then?"
"I'm runnin' inta a right smart of it. I don't always cause it."
"You don't like trouble, do you, mister painter?"
"Oh, I ain't so 'fraid no more. Sorta broke in by this time."
"Ever talk to anybody about working?"
"Train loads of 'em. That's what ever'body's talkin' 'bout, an' ridin'
in all of this bad weather for. Shore, we ain'ta 'fraid of work. We ain't
panhandlers, ner stemwinders, jest a bunch of guys out tryin' ta do th' best
we can, an' had a little streak of hard luck, that's all."
"Eyer talk to the boys about wages?"
"Wages? Oh, I talk to ever'body about somethin'. Religion. Weather.
Picture shows. Girls. Wages."
"Well, mister painter, it's been good to get acquainted with you. It
seems like you are looking for work and anxious to get on up the road toward
Sonora. We'll show you the road and see that you get out onto the main
highway."
"Boy, that'll be mighty fine."
"Yes. We try to treat an honest working man right when he comes through
our little town here, either by accident or on purpose. We're just a little,
what you'd call, 'cautious,' you understand, because there is trouble going
around, and you never know who's causing it, until you ask. We will have to
ask you to get out in front of this car and start walking down this highway.
And don't look back--"
All of the cops were laughing and joking as their car drove along
behind me. I heard a lot of lousy jokes. I walked with my head ducked into
the rain, and heard cars of other people pass. They yelled smart cracks at
me in the rain.
After about a mile, they yelled for me to halt. I stopped and didn't
even turn around. "You run a lot of risk tonight, breaking our orders."
"Muddy out there!"
"You know, we tried to treat you nice. Turned you loose. Gave you a
chance. Then you broke orders."
"Yeah, I guess I did."
"What made you do it?"
"Well, ta be right, real truthful with you guys, we got pastures just
about like these back in Oklahoma, but we let the cows go out there and eat.
If people wants to go out there in the cow pasture, we let them go, but if
it's rainin' an' a cold night like this, we don't drive or herd anybody out
there."
Cop said, "Keep travelin