Vudi Gasri. Bound for glory (engl) First Plume Printing, September, 1983 Copyright © 1943 by E. P. Dutton Renewed copyright © 1971 by Marjorie M. Guthrie LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA: Guthrie, Woody, 1912-1967. Bound for glory. Reprint. Originally published: New York: E. P. Dutton, 1943. Scan, OCR & proofreadin': T.A.G. a.k.a. Copper Kettle, November 2002, Ekaterinburg Orfografiya sohranena. Vse grammaticheskie oshibki - avtora. Risunki - tozhe. Pros'ba ne ispravlyat'. Naslazhdajtes' - eto odna iz luchshih knig iz teh, chto ya prochel.. SO LONG, WOODY, IT`S BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YA Woody Guthrie, 1912-1967 0x08 graphic One of Woody Guthrie's last songs, written a year after he entered the hospital, was titled I Ain't Dead Yet. The doctors told him he had Huntington's chorea, probably inherited, a progressive degeneration of the nervous system for which there was no cure known. For thirteen more years he hung on, refusing to give up. Finally he could no longer walk nor talk nor focus his eyes nor feed himself, and his great will to live was not enough and his heart stopped beating. The news reached me while I was on tour in Japan. All I could think of at first was, "Woody will never die, as long as there are people who like to sing his songs." Dozens of these are known by guitar pickers across the U.S.A., and one of them has become loved by tens of millions of Americans: This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to the New York island, From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters, This land was made for you and me. He was a short, wiry guy with a mop of curly hair under a cowboy hat, as I first saw him. He'd stand with his guitar slung on his back, spinning out stones like Will Rogers, with a faint, wry grin. Then he'd hitch his guitar around and sing the longest long outlaw ballad you ever heard, or some Rabelaisian fantasy he'd concocted the day before and might never sing again. His songs are deceptively simple. Only after they have become part of your life do you realize how great they are. Any damn fool can get complicated. It takes genius to attain simplicity. Woody's songs for children are now sung in many languages: Why can't a dish break a hammer? Why, oh why, oh why? Because a hammer's got a pretty hard head. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. His music stayed rooted in the blues, ballads and breakdowns he'd been raised on in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Like Scotland's Robert Bums and the Ukraine's Taras Shevchenko, Woody was a national folk poet Like them, he came of a small-town background, knew poverty, had a burning curiosity to learn. Like them, his talent brought him to the city, where he was lionized by the literati but from whom he declared his independence and remained his own profane, radical, ornery self. This honesty also eventually estranged him from his old Oklahoma cronies. Like many an Oklahoma farmer, he had long taken a dim view of bankers. In the desperate early Depression years he developed a religious view of Christ the Great Revolutionary. In the cities he threw in his lot with the labor movement: There once was a Union maid. She never was afraid Of goons and ginks and company finks And the deputy sheriff that made the raids. He broadened his feeling to include the working people of all the world, and it may come as a surprise to some readers to know that the author of This Land Is Your Land was in 1940 a columnist for the small newspaper he euphemistically called The Sabbath Employee. It was The Sunday Worker, weekend edition of the Communist Daily Worker. Woody never argued theory much, but you can be quite sure that today he would have poured his fiercest scorn on the criminal fools who sucked America into the Vietnam mess: Why do your warships sail on my waters? Why do your bombs drop down from my sky? Why do you burn my towns and cities? I want to know why, yes, I want to know why. But Woody always did more than condemn. His song Pastures of Plenty described the life of the migrant fruit pickers, but ends on a note of shining affirmation: It's always we've rambled, that river and I. All along your green valley I'll work till I die. My land I'll defend with my life if it be, For my Pastures of Plenty must always be free. A generation of songwriters have learned from him--Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs and I guess many more to come. As we scatter his ashes over the waters I can hear Woody hollering back to us, "Take it easy--but take it!" PETE SEEGER A TRIBUTE TO WOODY GUTHRIE The Secretary of the Interior Washington April 6, 1966 Dear Mr. Guthrie, It gives me great pleasure to present you the Department of the Interior's Conservation Service Award. In conjunction with this award we are also naming a Bonneville Power Administration substation in your honor. It will be known hereafter as the Woody Guthrie Substation in recognition of the fine work you have done to make our people aware of their heritage and the land. You sang that "this land belongs to you and me," and you sang from the heart of America that feels this about its land. You have articulated, in your songs, the sense of identification that each citizen of our country feels toward this land and the wonders which it holds. You brought to your songs a heart as big as all outdoors, and we are fortunate to have music which expresses the love and affection each of us feels, though we are unable to express it so eloquently, toward this land . . . "from California to the New York Island-- from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters." Yours was not a passing comment on the beauties of nature, but a living, breathing, singing force in our struggle to use our land and save it too. The greatness of this land is that people such as you, with creative talent, worked on it and that you told about that work--told about the power of the Bonneville Dam and the men who harnessed it, about the length of the Lincoln Highway and the men who laid it out. You have summarized the struggles and the deeply held convictions of all those who love our land and fight to protect it. Sincerely yours, (Signed) Stewart L. Udall Secretary of the Interior Mr. Woodrow W. Guthrie Brooklyn State Hospital 681 Clarkson Avenue Brooklyn, New York 0x08 graphic CONTENTS foreword: "So Long, Woody, It's Been Good To Know Ya" by Pete Seeger vii a tribute to woody guthrie by Stewart L. Udall, Secretary of the Interior xi I soldiers in the dust 19 II empty snuff cans 37 III i ain't mad at nobody 57 IV new kittens 74 V mister cyclome 82 VI boomchasers 93 VII cain't no gang whip us now 116 VIII fire extinguishers 133 IX a fast-running train whistles down 142 X the junking sack 158 XI boy in search of something 162 XII trouble busting 179 XIII off to california 191 XIV the house on the hill 231 XV the telegram that never came 245 XVI stormy night 256 XVII extra selects 270 XVIII crossroads 290 XIX train bound for glory 309 Postscript 320 BOUND FOR GLORY Chapter I SOLDIERS IN THE DUST I could see men of all colors bouncing along in the boxcar. We stood up. We laid down. We piled around on each other. We used each other for pillows. I could smell the sour and bitter sweat soaking through my own khaki shirt and britches, and the work clothes, overhauls and saggy, dirty suits of the other guys. My mouth was full of some kind of gray mineral dust that was about an inch deep all over the floor. We looked like a gang of lost corpses heading back to the boneyard. Hot in the September heat, tired, mean and mad, cussing and sweating, raving and preaching. Part of us waved our hands in the cloud of dust and hollered out to the whole crowd. Others was too weak, too sick, too hungry or too drunk even to stand up. The train was a highball and had the right of way. Our car was a rough rider, called by hoboes a "flat wheeler." I was riding in the tail end where I got more dust, but less heat. The wheels were clipping it off at sixty miles an hour. About all I could hear above the raving and cussing and the roar of the car was the jingle and clink on the under side every time the wheels went over a rail joint. I guess ten or fifteen of us guys was singing: This train don't carry no gamblers, Liars, thieves and big-shot ramblers; This train is bound for glory, This train! "We would hafta git th' only goddam flat wheeler on th' whole dam train!" A heavy-set boy with a big-city accent was rocking along beside me and fishing through his overhauls for his tobacco sack. "Beats walkin'!" I was setting down beside him. "Bother you fer my guitar handle ta stick up here in yer face?" "Naw. Just long as yuh keep up th' music. Kinda songs ya sing? Juke-box stuff?" "Much oblige, just smoked." I shook my head. "No. I'm 'fraid that there soap-box music ain't th' kind ta win a war on!" "Little too sissy?" He licked up the side of his cigaret. "Wisecracky, huh?" "Hell yes." I pulled my guitar up on my lap and told him, "Gonna take somethin' more'n a dam bunch of silly wisecracks ta ever win this war! Gonna take work!" "You don't look like you ever broke your neck at no work, bud!" He snorted some fumes out of his nose and mashed the match down into the dust with his foot. "What th' hell do you know 'bout work?" "By God, mister, I work just as hard as you er th' next guy!" I held the ends of my fingers up in his face. "An` I got th' blisters ta prove it!" "How come you ain't drafted?" "I never did get by those medical gents. Doctors and me don't see eye to eye." A blond-headed man about forty nudged me in the ribs with his elbow on my left side and said, "You boys talkin' about a war. I got a feelin' you're goin" to see a little spell of war right here in just a few minutes." "Makes ya think so?" I looked around all over the car. "Boy!" He stretched out his feet to prop his self back up against the wall and I noticed he was wearing an iron brace on his leg. "They call me Cripple Whitey, th' Fight Spotter!" "Fight spotter?" "Yeah. I can spot a fist fight on the streets three blocks before I come to it. I can spot a gang fight an hour before it breaks out. I tip off the boys. Then they know how to lay their bets." "Ya got a fight spotted now?" "I smell a big one. One hell of a big one. Be some blood spilt. Be about ten minutes yet." "Hey! Heavy!" I elbowed the big boy on my right. "Whitey here says he smells a big fight cookin'!" "Awwww. Don't pay no 'tention to that crippled rat. He's just full of paregoric. In Chicago we call 'im P. G. Whitey'! I don't know what they call him here in Minnesota!" "You're a goddam lyin' rat!" The cripple got up and swayed around on the floor in front of us. "Get up! I'll cave your lousy dam head in! I'll throw you out inta one of these lakes!" "Easy, boy, easy." Heavy put the sole of his shoe in Whitey's belly and held him back. "I don't wanta hit no cripple!" "You guys watch out! Don't you stumble an' fall on my guitar!" I eased over a little. "Yeah! You're some fight spotter! If you spot a fight an' then it don't happen just when you said, why, you just pitch in and start one yer self!" "I'll crack that box over your dam curly head!" The cripple made a step toward me, laughing and smearing cement dust down across his face. Then he sneered and told me, "Goddam right! Hell yes! I'm a bum! I gotta right ta be. Look at that gone leg. Withered away! You're too dam low down an' sneakin' to make an honest livin' by hard work. Sonofabitch. So you go into a saloon where th' workin' stiffs hang out, an' you put down your kitty box an' play for your dam tips!" I told him, "Go jump in one of these lakes!" "I'm settin' right there!" He pointed at my guitar in my lap. "Right, by God, on top of you!" I grabbed my guitar and rolled over three or four other fellows' feet and got out of Whitey's way just as he turned around and piled down backwards yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs. I stumbled through the car trying to keep my balance and hold onto my guitar. I fell up against an old man slumped with his face rubbing up against the wall. I heard him groan and say, "This is th' roughest bastardly boxcar that I ever swung into." "Why doncha lay down?" I had to lean up against the wall to keep from falling. "How come ya standin' up this a way?" "Rupture. It rides a little easier standin' up." Five or six guys dressed like timberjacks brushed past us cussing and raving. "I can't stand this dust no longer!" "Out of our way, men!" "Let us by! We want to get to the other end of the car!" "You birds won't be no better off in th' other end!" I hollered at them. The dust stung the roof of my mouth. "I tried it!" A big husky gent with high boots and red wool socks rolled back on a pair of logger's britches stopped and looked' me over and asked me, "Who in the hell are you? Don't you think I know how to ride a boxcar, sonny? I'm gettin' out of this wind!" "Go ahead on, mister, but I'm tellin' ya, ya'll burn up back in that other end!" I turned again to the old man and asked him, "Anything I can do ta help ya?" "Guess not, son." I could see by the look on his face that the rupture was tying him up in knots. "I was hopin' ta ride this freight on in home tonight. Chicago. Plumber there. But looks like I'll have ta get off at the next stop an' hit the highway." "Purty bad. Well, it ain't a dam bit lonesome in here, is it?" "I counted sixty-nine men in this car." He squinted his eyes and gritted his teeth and doubled over a little farther. "Might be, I counted wrong. Missed some of th' ones layin' down or counted some of them twice. Pretty close ta sixty-nine though." "Jest like a car load of sheep headed fer th' packin` house." I let my knees bend in the joints a little bit to keep the car from shaking me to jelly. A long tall Negro boy walked up and asked us, "You men know what's makin' our noses burn?" He was wearing a pair of work shoes that looked like they had seen Civil War service. "Eyes, too?" "What?" I asked him. "Cement dust. This heah cah wuz loaded down wid sack cement!" "Shore 'nuff?" "I bet I done sucked in three sacks of th' damn stuff!" He screwed his face up and mopped across his lips with his hands. "I've breathed in more'n that! Hell, friend! You're talkin' to a livin', breathin' stretch of concrete highway!" "Close as we is jammed an' packed in heah, we'z all gonna be stuck 'n' cemented together time we git outta dis hot box." "Boys," the old man told both of us, "I hope we don't have no trouble while I'm in here. If somebody was ta fall on me or push me around, this rupture, I know, it would kill me." "I'll he'p see to it dat nobody don't push nobody on toppa you, mistah." "I'll break 'em of th' habit," I told both of them. "What time of day is it? Must be fightin' time?" I looked around at the two. "Mus' be 'roun' about two or three o'clock," the Negro boy told me, "jedgin' from that sun shinin' in th' door. Say! What's them two boys doin' yondah?" He craned his neck. "Pourin` somethin' out of a bottle," I said, "right by that old colored man's feet. What is it?" "Wettin` th' cement dust wid it. Strikin` a match now." "Gasoline!" "Ol` man's 'sleep. They's givin' 'im de hot foot!" The flame rose up and burned in a little spot about the size of a silver dollar. In a few seconds the old man clawed at the strings of his bundle where he was resting his head. He kicked his feet in the dust and knocked little balls of fire onto two or three other men playing some poker along the back wall. They fought the fire off their clothes and laughed and bawled the kids and the old man both out. "Hey! You old bastard! Quit bustin' up our card game!" I saw one of the men draw back to hit the old man. Another player was grinning and laughing out to the whole crowd, "That wuz th' funniest dam sight I ever seen!" The two boys, both dressed in overhauls, walked back through the crowd, one holding out the half-pint bottle. ''Drinka likker, men? Who wantsa drinka good likker?" The boy with the bottle shoved it up under my nose saying, "Here, mister music man! Take a little snort! Then play somethin' good an' hot!" "I been a needin' a little drink ta ease me on down ta Chicago." I wiped my hand across my face and smiled around at everybody. "I shore thank ya fer thinkin' 'bout me." I took the bottle and smelled of the gasoline. Then I sailed the bottle over a dozen men's heads and out of the door. "Say, stud! Who daya t'ink youse are? Dat bottle was mine, see?" He was a boy about twenty-five, wearing a flop hat soaked through with some kind of dime-store hair oil. He braced his self on his feet in front of me and said again, "Dat bottle was mine!" "Go git it." I looked him straight in the eye. "Whattaya tryin' ta pull?" "Well, since yer so interested, I'll jest tell ya. See, I might wanta lay down after while an' git a little sleep. I don't wanta wake up with my feet blistered. 'Cause then, dam yer hide, I'd hafta throw ya outta this door!" "We was gonna use dat gas ta start a fire ta cook wid." "Ya mean ta git us all in jail with." "I said cook an' I mean cook!" Then my colored friend looked the two boys over and said, "You boys, how long you been goin' 'roun' cookin' people's feet?" "Keep outta dis! Stepinfetchit!" "You cain't call me dat an' git by wid it, white boy!" I put my shoulder against the colored boy and my hand against the white boy's arm, and told them, "Listen, guys! Goddamit! No matter who's mad at who, we jest cain't start a fight of no kind on this freight! These big Burlington dicks'll jail th' whole bunch of us!" "Yaaa. Skeerd!" "You're a dam liar! I ain't afraid of you ner twenty more like ya! But do you know what would of happened if these railroad bulls shook us down ta look at our draft cards, an` found you with that bottle of gasoline on ya? It'd be th' lockup fer you an' me an' all of th' rest of us!" The old man with the rupture bit his lips and asked me, "Son, do you suppose you could get one of the men to move up out of the door and let me try to get a little breath of that fresh air? I feel like I've just got to get a little air." The colored boy held the old man up while I walked over to the door and tapped a nice healthy-looking boy on the back. "Would you mind lettin' this old man ride in yer place there in th' door fer a little while? Sick. Rupture trouble." "Not at all." The boy got up and set down back where the old man had been standing. He acted friendly and hollered at us, "I think it's about time we took turns ridin' in the doors. Let everybody have a whiff of that fresh air!" Almost everybody in the car rolled over or stood up and yelled, "Hell yes!" "Turn about!" "I'm ready." "Too late, boys, I been dead an' buried in solid cement for two hours!" "Gimme air!" "Trot out yer frash airr!" Everybody mumbled and talked, and fifteen or twenty men pushed their way through the others to stand close to the doors, hoping to be first. Heavy walked through a bunch of them saying, "Watch out. Men, let this Negro boy through with this old man. He's sick. He's needin' air. Back up a little. Make room." "Who'n th' hell are you? Tubba lard! Dictater 'round here?" one old boy popped off. Heavy started for the man, but he slipped back in through the crowd. "All of you men get up! Let a new bunch get cooled off! Where's the old man that the boys put the hot foot on a few minutes ago? There you are! Hey! Come on! Grab yourself a hunk of this nice, fresh, cool climate! Set right there! Now, who's to be next?" A red-eyed vino drunkard took a man by the feet and pulled him along the deck to the door. "My buddy. Ain't said a word since I loaded 'im in last night in Duluth. Bummed th' main stem fer two bits, then he scooped his flue." A Mexican boy rubbed his head and got up from somewhere along the wall. He drank half of a quart vinegar jug of water and then sailed the bottle out the door. Then he set down and hung his feet out the door and rode along holding his head in his hands vomiting into the wind. In each door there was room for five men. The first ten being sick and weakly, we let them ride for about half an hour. Then they got up and ten more men took their seat for only fifteen minutes. I was watching a bunch of men hold their fingers to their lips and shush each other to keep quiet. Every one of them haw-hawing and tittering under their breath and pointing to a kid asleep on the floor. He was about twenty. Little white cap from the ten-cent store, a pair of old blue washed-out pants, shirt to match, a set of dirty heels caked over with the dust of many railroads, and a run-over pair of low-cut shoes. He was hugging his bed roll and moving his lips against the wool blanket. I saw him dig his toes in the dust and kiss the bundle. I walked over and put my foot in the middle of his back and said, "Wake up, stranger. Git ya some fresh air there in th' door!" The men cackled and rolled in the dirt. They rared back and forth slapping their hands against their legs. "Ddrrreeeeeeeaaaammming of youuuu with your eyes so bluue!" One man was grinning like an ape and singing worse than that. "What's th' boy dreamin' about so purty, music man?" another big guy asked me with his tongue in his cheek and eyes rolling. "Leave th' boy alone," I told him back. "What th' hell do you dream about, freight trains?" 0x08 graphic I set down with my back against the wall looking all through the troubled, tangled, messed-up men. Traveling the hard way. Dressed the hard way. Hitting the long old lonesome go. Rougher than a cob. Wilder than a woodchuck. Hotter than a depot stove. Madder than nine hundred dollars. Arguing worse than a tree full of crows. Messed up. Mixed-up, screwed-up people. A crazy boxcar on a wild track. Headed sixty miles an hour in a big cloud of poison dust due straight to nowhere. I saw ten men getting up out of the door and I took my guitar over and set down and stuck my feet out. The cold air felt good whipping up my pants leg. I pulled my shirt open to cool off across my waist and chest. My Negro friend took a seat by my side and told me, "I reckon we's 'bout due some frash air, looks like." "Jest be careful ya don't use it all up," I kidded back at him. I held my head in the wind and looked out along the lake shoreline with my ear cocked listening to the men in the car. "You're a lyin' skunk!" one was saying. "I'm just as hard a worker as you are, any old day!" "You're a big slobbery loafin' heel!" "I'm th' best dadgum blacksmith in Logan County!" "You mean you use ta was! You look like a lousy tramp ta me!" "I c'n put out more manly labor in a minnit then you kin in a month!" "Hay, there, you sot! Quit spittin' on my bed roll!" "Yeah! Yeah! I know! I'm woikin' stiff, too, see? But I ain't no good here! Yeah! I woiked thirteen years in th' same weave room! Breakout fixer on th' looms! Poil Harbor comes along. Big comp'ny gits alla de war orders. My place is a little place, so what happens? Just like dat! She closes down. An' I'm out on de freights. But I ain't nuttin' when I hit th' freights. Takes it all outta me. Nuttin`. But a lousy, dirty tramp!" "If you're such a good weaver, mister, you can come back here and sew up my drawers! Ha! Ha! Ha!" "Fancy pants! Whoooeee!" "I plowed th' straightest row of corn in Missouri three year ago!" "Yaaa! But, mister big shot, dey don't grown no corn in dese here boxcars, see! Yaaa! Dat's de last bitta woik yez ever done!" "No Swede cut much timber as me, Big Swede! I cutta 'nuff of that white pine ta build up da whole town!" "Quiet down! You dam bunch of liars, you! Blowin' off at yer head what all you can do! I hear this talk all up and down these railroads! You had a good job somewhere once or twice in your life, then you go around blabbin' off at your mouth for fifteen years! Tellin' people what all kinds of wonders you done! Look at you! Look at your clothes! All of the clothes in this car ain't worth three dollars! Look at your hands! Look at your faces! Drunk! Sick! Hungry! Dirty! Mean! Onery! I won't lie like you rats! An` I got on the best suit of clothes in this car! Work? Me work? Hell, no! I see somethin' I want, an' I just up an' take it!" Looking back over my shoulder, I saw a little man, skinny, puny, shaking like he had a machine gun in his hands, raise up on his knees from the other end of the car and sail a brown quart bottle through the air. Glass shattered against the back of the well-dressed man's head. Red port wine rained all over me and my guitar and twenty other men that tried to duck. The man in the suit of clothes keeled over and hit the floor like a dead cow. "I got my papers! I got my job already signed up!" The guy that slung the bottle was tromping through the car patting his chest and preaching. "I had a brother in Pearl Harbor! I'm on my way right this minute to Chicago to go to work rollin' steel to lick this Hitler bunch! I hope the gent with the nice suit on is restin` comfortable! But I ain't apologizing to none of you! I throwed that bottle! Want to make anythin' out of it?" He shook both fists and stood there looking at all of us. I wiped my hands around over me where the wine was spilled. I saw everybody else was picking chips of glass out of their clothes and mumbling amongst themselves. "Crazy lunatic." "Hadn't ought ta done that." "Might of missed 'im, hit one of us." The mumble got loud and broke into a crack like zigzag lightning. Little bunches of men circled around arguing. A few guys walked from bunch to bunch preaching over other fellows' shoulders. At the side of me a husky-looking man got up and said, "What all he says about Pearl Harbor and all is okay, men, but still he hadn't ought to have thrown that wine bottle. I'm going to walk back there and kick his rear good and proper just to teach him a lesson!" Then from somewhere at my back a half-breed Indian boy dove out and tackled the husky man around the ankles and they tangled into a knot and rolled around over the floor, beating, scratching, and clawing. Their feet kicked other men in the face and other men kicked them back and jumped into the fight. "You're not gonna hurt that little fella!" "I'll kill you, Indian!" "Hey! Watch who th' hell you're kickin'!" Heavy split through the car knocking men out of his way hollering, "Hey! Cut it! Cut!" "You fat pimp, keep outta dis!" A dirty-looking, dark-complected man was pulling a little oily cap down over his eyes and making for Heavy. Heavy grabbed him by the throat and busted the back of his head up against the wall about a dozen times cussing, "I'll teach you that you cain't call no decent man a pimp! You snaky-looking hustler!" All down the line it started and spread, "You said I wouldn't work fer my livin', huh? I'll bat your eyes out!" "Who wuz it yez called da loafer?" Shirts and pants ripped and it sounded like everybody was getting their duds tore off them. "I didn't lak ya dam looks frum da very start!" Five and then ten other couples dove in. "Where's that low-life bastid that called me a bum?" Men walked up and down the car pushing other men off of their feet, heaving others to one side, looking at the few that was still riding along on the floor. "They're goin' an' blowin'!" 'There ye air, ye foul-mouth cur, you!" I saw six or eight reaching down and grabbing others by their shirt collars, jerking them to the middle of the floor. Fists sailing in the air so fast I couldn't see which fist was whose. "I knowed you was nuthin' but a lousy chiselin' snake when I first seen yuh climb on this train! Fight! Goddam yuh! Fight!" Shoe soles cracked all around over the car and heads banged against the walls. Dust flew up in the air as if somebody was dumping it in with trucks. 'I'm a tramp, am I?" Men's heads bobbed around in the dust like balloons floating on the ocean. Most everybody shut their eyes and gritted their teeth and swung wild haymakers up from the cement and men flattened out on the floor. Water bottles flew through the air and I could see a few flashes that I knew was pocketknife blades. Lots of the men jerked other men's coats up over their heads to where they couldn't see nor use their arms, and they fought the air like windmills, blind as bats. A hard fist knocked a fellow stumbling through the dust. He waved his hands trying to keep balanced, then fell, spilling all kinds of junk and trash out of his pockets over five or six other men trying to keep out of the fight. For every man who got knocked down, three more jumped up and roared through the mob taking sidelicks at any head that popped up. "Boy!" My colored friend was shaking his head and looking worried. "You sho' as hell bettah not git yo' music box mixed up in dis!" "I've got kicked in th' back about nine times. 'Nother good poke an' I'll sail plumb out this door inta one of them there lakes!" I was fighting to get myself braced again. "Here, let's me an' you hook our arms together so we can hold each other in th' dam car!" I clamped my hands together in front of me holding the guitar on my lap. "Be hell of a thing if a feller was ta git knocked outta this dern boxcar goin' this pace, wouldn't it? Roll a week. Hey! Look! Tram's slowin' down." "Believe she is at that." He squinted his eyes up and looked down the track. "She's slowin' down ta make a switch." "I been lookin' fer you, mister music maker!" I heard somebody talking behind me. I felt a knee poking me in my back, each time hard enough to scoot me a little more out the door. "So ua thought I'd forgot about da bottla gas, huh? I t'ink I'll jist boot yez offa dis train!" I tried to hold onto the colored boy's arm. "Watch out there, ya silly dam fool! What're ua tryin' ta do? Kick me out? I'll git up from here an' frail yore knob! Don't ya kick me again!" He put his foot flat up against my shoulder blade and kicked me out the door. I swung onto the Negro's arms with both hands, and the leather strap of my guitar slipped out of my hold. I was holding both feet clear of the cinders down on the ground. When my guitar fell, I had to turn loose with one hand and grab it by the handle. The Negro had to hold onto the side of the door to hold his own self in the car. I seen him bend backwards as far as he could and lay down flat on the floor. This pulled me up within an inch or so of the edge of the door again, and I was about to get one arm inside. I knew he could pull me back in if I could make it that far. I looked down at the ground going past under me. The train was slowing down. The Negro and me made one more hard pull together to swing me back inside the door. "Nol' on! Boy!" he was grunting. "No ya don't!" The young fellow bent down into a squatting position, heaving at the Negro's shoulders with both hands. "I'll jist kick da pair of yez out!" The colored man yelled and screamed, "Hhhaaaayyy! Hheeelllpp!" "Goddam it, donnn't!" I was about to lose all of my strength in the left arm locked around the Negro's, which was the only thing between me and the six-by-three grave. "Dis is where da both of yez hits de cinders! Good-bye! An' go ta hell!" He stuck his tongue out between his teeth and throwed every ounce of his weight against the colored man's shoulders. Slowing down, the train jammed its air brakes and jarred every man in the boxcar off his feet. Men stumbled against each other, missed their licks, clawing and swinging their fists through the air. Two dozen hit the floor and knocked hide and hair and all off each other's heads. Blood flew and spattered everybody. Splinters dug into hands and faces of men tromped on the floor. Guys dove on their faces on top of strangers and grabbed handfuls of loose skin in their fingernails, and twisted until the blood caked into the dust. They rolled across the floor and busted their heads against the walls, knocked blind by the jar, with lungs and eyes and ears and teeth full of the cement. They stepped on the sick ones, ruptured the brave ones, walked on top of each other with loggers' and railroaders' spike shoes. I felt myself falling out of the Negro's hand hold. Another tap on the brakes jerked a kink in the train and knocked the boy loose from his hold on the Negro's shoulders. The jar sent him jumping like a frog from where he was squatting, over me and the Negro both, and over the slope of the steep cinder grading, rolling, knocking and plowing cinders twenty feet to each side till like a wild, rolling truck tire he chugged into the water of the lake. I pulled the Negro friend over the edge with me and both of us lit running with our feet on the cinders. I stumbled and took a little spill, but the colored boy run and managed to stay on his feet. I made a run for the door of the same boxcar again, and put my hand down on an iron bolt and tried to run along with the train and swing myself up again. Men's hands reached out the door trying to grab me and help me in, but my guitar was going wild and I had to drop my hold on the bolt and trot off to the edge of the cinders. I was giving up all hopes of getting back in, when I looked behind me and saw my colored partner gripping onto the iron ladder on the end of the car. Holding the ladder with one hand, he was waving his other one in the air and yelling, "Pass me yo' guitah!" As he went by me I got a running start on the cinders and held the guitar up to him. He caught it by the neck and clumb up onto the roof of the car. I swung the ladder and went over the top just at his heels. "Hurry on up heah! You wanta see dat fella in th' lake?" He pointed back down along the string of cars picking up speed again. "Off at d' side of dat little clump of trees there, there! Wadin' out yondah? See 'im? See! Boy, I bet you dat dip sobered i'm up!" Both of us was standing side by side propping each other up. The roof of the car moved and bounced rougher than the floor inside. The Negro friend grinned over at me with the sun in his eyes. He still hadn't lost his little greasy brown cap and was holding it down on his head while the wind made a few grabs at it. "Whoooee! Dat wuz a close one! Boy, you set fo' a good fas' ride on top? Sho' ain't no way gettin' back down inside dat cah when this roller gits ridin' ag'in!" I squatted down cross-legged and took hold of the boards on the runwalk on top of the car. He laid down with his hands folded back of his head. We laughed at the way our faces looked with the cement all over them, and our eyes watering. The black coal dust from the locomotive made us look like white ghosts with black eyes. Lips chapped and cracked from the long ride in the hot sun and hard wind. "Smell dat cool aih?" "Smells clean. Don't it? Healthy!" "Me 'n' you's sho' in fo' a soakin', ourselves!" "Makes ya think?" "I knows. Boy, up heah in dis lake country, it c'n cloud up an' rain in two seconds flush!" "Ain't no rain cloud I can see!" "Funny thing 'bout dese Minnesoty rain clouds. Evah cloud's a rain cloud!" "Gonna go hard on my guitar." I played a few little notes without really noticing what I was doing. The air turned off cooler as we rolled along. A second later I looked up and saw two kids crawl from an open-top car just behind us: a tall skinny one about fifteen, and a little scrawny runt that couldn't be over ten or eleven. They had on Boy Scout looking clothes. The older one carried a pack on his back, and the little kid had a sweater with the sleeves tied together slung around his neck. "Hiyez, men?" The tall one saluted and dumped his pack down a couple of feet from us. The little feller hunched down and set picking his teeth with a rusty pocket knife, talking, "Been wid 'er long?" I'd seen a thousand kids just like them. They seem to come from homes somewhere that they've run away from. They seem to come to take the place of the old stiffs that slip on a wet board, miss a ladder, fail out a door, or just dry up and shrivel away riding the mean freights; the old souls that groan somewhere in the darkest corner of a boxcar, moan about a twisted life half lived and nine tenths wasted, cry as their souls hit the highball for heaven, die and pass out of this world like the echo of a foggy whistle. "Evenin', gentulmen, evenin'." The Negro boy raised up to a sitting position. "You gents is a little shade yo'ng t' be out siftin' th' cinders, ain't you?" "C'n we help how old we are?" The biggest kid spit away into the wind without even looking where it would land. "Me ole man's fault. Oughtta been bornt sooner," the little runt piped up. The big one didn't change the expression on his face, because if he'd of looked any tougher, something would have busted. "Pipe down, squoit!" He turned toward us. "Yez hittin' fer de slaughter-house er Wall Street?" "I don't git ya." I looked over at him. "Chi? Er N'Yok?" I tried to keep from busting out laughing in the kid's face. And I could see the colored boy turning his head the other way to hide a snicker. "Me," I answered the kid, "me, I'm headed fer Wall Street, I reckin." Then I thought for a minute and asked him, " 'Bouts you boys goin'?" "Chi." "On da fly." "Kin ya really beat it out on dat jitter box dere, mister?" "I make a rattlin' noise." "Sing on toppa dat?" "No. Not on top of it. I stand up and hold it with this leather strap around my shoulder, or else I set down and play it in my lap like this, see?" "Make anyt'ing wid it?" "I've come purty close ta starvin' a couple of times, boys, but never faded plumb out of th' picture yet so far." "Yeah?" "Dat's bad." I come down on some running notes and threw in a few sliding blues notes, and the kids stuck their ears almost down to the sound-hole, listening. "Say ya hit da boog on dere, don'tcha?" "Better boog all yez wants, sarg," the older kid said. "I dunno how dat box'll sound fulla wadder, but we gon'ta be swimmin' on toppa dis train here in about a minnit." The Negro boy turned his head around toward the engine and whiffed of the damp air. "About one minnit's right!" "Will it wreck dat music box?" Th