flatfeet. Rich place. Big tourists get sick
and come here for to lay around," he said, spitting off of the sidewalk, out
into  the  street. "Mighty tough town."  He talked  slow  and  friendly, and
looked at me most of the time, ducking his head, a little bit ashamed of the
way he looked. "I was doing all right till I hung a high ball. Engine pulled
out  and left my car  settin' here." Then he nodded a quick  nod and ran his
eyes over  his dirty clothes, two shirts, wadded down inside a tough pair of
whipcord cotton pants, and  said, "That's how  come me to be so dam  filthy.
Couldn't find a clean hole to ride in."
     "Hell," I said, "man, you ain't  half as bad off as I am as far as dirt
goes. Look at me." And I looked down at my own clothes.
     For the first  time I stood  there and thought to myself  just  what  a
funny-looking  thing  I  was--that  is, to  other people  walking  along the
streets.
     He turned around,  took  off  his hat  and  ran  his  hand through  his
straight hair, making it lay down on his head; he moved over a foot or  two,
and looked at his reflection in the big plate-glass window of a store.
     Then he  said, "They got a County Garden here that's a dude." His voice
was sandy  and broken up in little pieces.  Lots of things went through your
mind when he talked-- wheat  stems and empty cotton stalks, burnt  corn, and
eroded  farm land.  The sound was as  quiet as a  change in the weather, and
yet,  it  was  as  strong as he  needed. If  I  was a soldier, I would fight
quicker  for his talking to me, than for the cop. As I followed his talk, he
added, "I been out on that pea patch a couple of shots; I know."
     I told him that I'd been hitting the preachers up for a meal.
     He  said, "That  ain't a very smart trick; quickest  way to  jail's  by
messing around the  nice parts. Qughtta get out on the edge  of town. That's
best."
     The sun  was warm  on the  corner, and Tucson's  nice houses  jumped up
pretty  and clean, pale colors of  pink and yellow. "Mighty purty  sight  to
see. Make anybody want to come out here to live, wouldn't it?" he asked me.
     "Looks like it would," I told him. We both stood and soaked our systems
full of the whole thing. Yes, it is a sight to see the early morning sun get
warm in Tucson.
     " Tain't fer fellers like me'n you, though," he said.
     "Just something pretty to look  at," I said to him. "At  least, we know
it's here, towns like this to live in, and the only thing we got to do is to
learn how to do some kind of work, you know, to make a living here," I said,
watching the blue  shadows chase around the buildings, under  the trees, and
fall over  the adobe fences that were  like regular walls around some of the
buildings.
     "Hot sun's good for sick folks. Lungers. TV. Consumptives come here all
shot to hell, half dead from no sunshine 'er fresh air; hang around here for
a few months, takin' it easy, an', by God, leave out of  here  as sound  and
well as the day they crippled in," he told me.
     I cut  in  on him  and said,  "You mean, as well as  they ever was. You
don't mean they go out as well as the day they come in sick."
     He shuffled his feet and laughed at his mistake. " 'At's right, I meant
to say that. I meant to  say, too, that you  can come  in here with a little
piece of money that you saved up, 'er sold your farm or place of business to
get  a holt  of,  an' it  don't last till  the sun can  get up good," He was
smiling and moving his head.
     I asked him how about the broke people that was lungers.
     He said that they hung around on the outsides of the town, and lived as
cheap as they could, and worked around in the crops, panned gold, or any old
thing to make a living, in order to  hang around the place  till they  could
get healed  up. Thousands of folks with their lungs shot to the devil. Every
other person, he told me, was a case of some kind of TV.
     "Lots of different brands of lungers, huh?" I asked him.
     "Hell's bells, thousand different kinds of it. Mostly 'cording to where
'bouts you ketch it, like in a mine,  or a cement factory, or saw mill. Dust
TV, chemical TV from paint factories, rosin TV from the saw mills."
     "Boy howdy, that's hell, ain't it?" I asked him.
     "If they is a hell," he told  me, "I reckon  that's it. To be down with
some kind  of  a trouble, disease, that you get while you're workin', an' it
fixes you to where you cain't  work no more." He looked down at  the ground,
ran his  hands  down into his pockets, and I guessed that he, hisself, was a
lunger.
     "Yeah, I can see just how it is.  Kinda messes a person  up all th' way
around.  But,  hell, you don't look  so bad off to me; you can still put out
plenty of work, I bet; that  is,  if you could find some to do." I  tried to
make him feel a little better.
     He cleared his  throat  as  quiet  as he  could, but there was the  old
give-away, the little dry rattle, like the ticking of a worn-out clock.
     He rolled himself a smoke, and from his sack I rolled one. We  both lit
up from the same match, and blew smoke in the air. He thought to himself for
a  minute, and didn't say  a  word. I didn't know  whether to talk  any more
about it or not. There is something  in most men that don't like  petting or
pity.
     What he said  to me next  took care  of the  whole thing, " 'Tain't  so
terr'ble a thing. I keep quiet about  it mostly on account  of  I don't want
nobody looking  at me,  or treating me like I was a  dying  calf,  or an old
wore-out horse with a broke leg. All I aim to do is to stay out here in this
high, dry country--stay  out of doors all I can, and get all the work I can.
I'll come out from under it."
     I could have stood there and talked to this  man for a  half a day, but
my stomach just wasn't willing to wait much longer; and the two of  us being
in Tucson together would have  been a matter  of  explaining more things  to
more  cops. We  wished each other good luck, and shook  hands, and he  said,
"Well, maybe  we'll  both be  millionaires' sons next time  that we run onto
each other. Hope so, anyhow."
     The last glimpse  I got of  him  was when I turned around for a minute,
and looked  back down his direction. He was walking along with his  hands in
his pockets, head  ducked a little, and kicking in the dust with the toe  of
his shoe. I couldn't help  but think, how friendly most people are that have
all of the hard luck.
     There was one more church that I had to make, the biggest one in  town.
A big mission, cathedral, or something. It was a great big, pretty building,
with a tower, and lots of fancy rock carving on the high places. Heavy vines
clumb around, holding onto  the rough face of the rocks, and since it  was a
fairly new church, everything was just getting off to a good start.
     Not familiar with the rules, I didn't know just how to go about things.
I  seen  a young lady dressed in  a  sad, black  robe, so  I  walked down  a
mis-matched stone walk and  asked  her if  there was any kind of work around
the place that a man could do to earn a meal.
     She brushed  the  robe back  out of  her face and  seemed to be  a very
polite and friendly person. She talked quiet  and seemed to feel very  sorry
for me since I was so hungry.
     "I just sort of heard people  talkin'  up  in town there, an' they said
that you folks would always give a stranger a chance to work fer a meal, you
know, just sorta on th' road to  California.  ..." I  was too hungry to quit
talking.
     Then  she took a few  steps  and walked up onto a low  rock porch. "Sit
down  here  where it is  cooler," she  told  me,  "and I'll  go and find the
Sister. She'll be able to help you, I'm sure." She was a nice-looking lady.
     Before  she could walk away, I  felt  like  I'd ought to say  something
else, so I said, "Mighty cool porch ya got here."
     She turned around,  just  touching  her hand  to  a  doorknob that  led
somewhere through a garden. We both smiled without making any noise.
     She stayed gone about ten minutes. The ten minutes went pretty slow and
hungry.
     Sister Rosa (I will call her that for a name) appeared, to my surprise,
not through the door where the first lady had gone, but through a cluster of
tough vines that swung close to a little arched gate cutting through a stone
wall. She was a little  bit older. She was just as nice, and she listened to
me while I told her why I was there. "I tried lots of other places, and this
is sort of a last chance."
     "I see! Well, I know that, on certain  days, we have made it a practice
to fix hot meals for the transient workers. Now, unless I am badly mistaken,
we  are  not  prepared to  give meals  out today;  and I'm not just  exactly
certain  when it  will be free-ration day again. I know that you are sincere
in your coming here, and I  can plainly see that you are not one of the kind
that travels through the country eating free meals when you can get work.  I
will take the  responsibility  onto  my shoulders, and  go and  find  Father
Francisco for you, tell him your  whole predicament, and let the judgment of
the  matter  be up  to  him. As far  as all  of the  sisters  and  nuns  are
concerned, we love to prepare the  meals  when the proper authority is given
to us.  I, personally, pray that Father Francisco  will understand the great
faith shown by your presence here, and  that he will be led to extend to you
the  very  fullest courtesy  and helping  hand." And Sister  Rosa walked  in
through the same door that the first lady had walked in at.
     I  set there  and  waited ten more minutes,  getting a  good  bit  more
anxious to get a meal inside of me, and  I counted the leaves on a couple of
waving vines. Then  counted them over again according  to dark green or pale
green. I was just getting ready to count them according to light green, dark
yellow  green,  and dark  green, when  the  first young lady stepped  around
through a door at my back, and  tapped me on the shoulder and said that if I
would go around  to the front door, main  entrance, Father  Francisco  would
meet me  there, and we would discuss  the  matter until we  arrived at  some
definite conclusion.
     I got up shaking like the leaves and held onto the wall like  the vines
till I got myself under  way, and then I  walked pretty straight to the main
gate.
     I knocked  on the door, and in about three minutes the door swung open,
and there was an old man  with white hair, a keen shaved  face, and a clean,
stiff white collar  that fit him  right up around his neck.  He was friendly
and  warm.  He  wore  a black  suit  of  clothes which was  made out of good
material. He said, "How do you do?"
     I stuck out my hand to shake, grabbed his and squeezed as friendly as I
knew how and said,  "Mister Sanfrancisco,  Frizsansco,  Frisco, I'm glad  to
know you! Guthrie's my name. Texas. Panhandle country. Cattle. You know. Oil
boom. That's what--fine day."
     In a deep,  quiet-sounding voice that somehow matched in with the halls
of the church, he said that it was a  fine day, and that he was very glad to
meet  me. I  assured him again that  I  was glad  to meet  him, but would be
somewhat  gladder if  I could also  work for  a meal. "Two days. No eats," I
told him.
     And then, soft and friendly as ever, his eyes shining out from the dark
hall, his voice spoke up again and said, "Son,  I have  been in this service
all my  life. I  have seen to it  that thousands of men just like you got to
work for a  meal. But, right at this moment, there is no kind of  work to do
here, no kind of work at all; and therefore, it would be just a case of pure
charity. Charity here is like charity everywhere; it helps for a moment, and
then  it  helps no more. It is part of our policy to  be  charitable, for to
give is better than to  receive. You seem  still to retain a good measure of
your pride and dignity.  You do not beg outright for food, but  you offer to
do hard labor in  order to earn your meal. That is  the  best spirit in this
world. To work for yourself is to help others, and to help others is to help
yourself. But  you have asked  a  certain question;  and  I must answer that
question  in your own words to satisfy your own thinking. You asked if there
is work that  you can do to earn a meal. My answer is this: There is no work
around here that you can do, and therefore, you cannot earn a meal.  And, as
for charity, God knows, we live on charity ourselves."
     The big, heavy door closed without making even a slight sound.
     I walked a half a mile  trembling past the yards, down to the shacks of
the  railroad  workers, the  Mexicanos,  the Negroes,  and  the  whites, and
knocked  on  the first door. It  was  a  little brown wooden house, costing,
alltogether,  less than  one single  rock  in the church.  A lady opened the
door. She said that she didn't have  anything for me to do; she acted crabby
and fussy, chewing the  rag, and talking sour  to herself.  She went back in
the house again, still talking.
     "Young men, old men, all kinds  of men;  walking, walking,  all of  the
time walking, piling  off  of the  freights, making  a run across  my tomato
garden,  and  knocking on  my  door; men  out  gallivantin' around  over the
country; be  better off  if you'd of stayed  at home; young boys taking  all
kinds of crazy chances, going  hungry, thirsty, getting all dirty and  ugly,
ruining  your  clothes,  maybe getting run over and  killed by a truck  or a
train--who knows? Yes. Yes.  Yes. Don't you dare run away, young nitwit. I'm
a fixing you a plate of  the  best I got. Which is all I got.  Blame fools."
(Mumbling) "Ought to be at home with your  family; that's where you'd  ought
to be. Here." (Opening the door again, coming out on  the porch.) "Here, eat
this. It'll at least stick to your ribs.  You  look like an old hungry hound
dog. I'd be ashamed to ever let the world beat me down any such a way. Here.
Eat  every bite of this. I'll  go and fix you  a  glass  of good milk. Crazy
world these days. Everybody's cutting loose and hitting the road."
     Down  the  street, I stopped at another house. I walked up to the front
door, and  knocked. I  could hear somebody moving around on the inside,  but
nobody come  to  the door.  After a few more knocks,  and  five  minutes  of
waiting, a  little woman opened the  door back a ways, took a peek out,  but
wouldn't open up all of the way.
     She looked me over good. It  was so  dark in her house that  I couldn't
tell  much about her. Just some messed-up hair, and her hand on the door. It
was  clean, and reddish, like she'd been  in the  dishwater, or putting  out
some clothes. Mexican or white, you couldn't tell  which. She asked  me in a
whisper, "What, what do you want?"
     "Lady,  I'm headin' ta California lookin' fer work.  I just wondered if
you had a job of work of some kind that a man could do to earn a lunch. Sack
with somethin' in it ta carry along."
     She  gave  me  the feeling that  she  was  afraid of something.  "No, I
haven't  any  kind  of work. Sshhh. Don't talk so  loud. And  I  haven't got
anything in the house--that is--anything fit to pack for you to eat."
     "I just got  a meal  off  of  th'  lady down th street here,  an'  just
thought maybe--you know, thought maybe a little sack of somethin' might come
in purty handy after a day or two out on the desert--any old thing. Not very
hard ta please," I told her.

     "My husband is sleeping.  Don't talk so loud. I'm a  little ashamed  of
what I've got left over here. Pretty poor when you need a good meal. But, if
you're not too particular about it, you're welcome to take it with you. Wait
here a minute."
     I stood there  looking back up across the tomato patch  to the railroad
yards. A switch engine was  trotting loose cars  up and down the track and I
knew that our freight was making up.
     She  stuck  her hand  out through an old  green  screen door, and said,
"Sshhh," and I tried  to whisper "thank you," but she  just kept  motioning,
nodding her head.
     I  was  wearing a black slip-over sweater and I pulled  the loose  neck
open, and pushed the sack down  into the bosom. She'd put something good and
warm from the warming-oven into the sack, because already  I could feel  the
good hot feeling against my belly.

     Trains were  limbering up  their big  whistles,  and there  was a  long
string of cars made  up  and raring  to step. A  hundred  and ten cars meant
pretty certain that she was a  hot one  with the right-of-way  to  the  next
division.
     A tired-looking Negro boy trotted down the cinders,  looking at the new
train to spot  him a reefer car to crawl into.  He  seen that he had a spare
second or two, and he stopped alongside of me.
     "Ketchin' 'er out?" I asked him.
     "Yeah. I'm switchin' ovah pretty fas'. Jes' got in. Didn' even  have no
time ta  hustle me up  a  feed. I guess I c'n  eat when I gets  to wheah I'm
headed."  His pale  khaki work clothes were  soaked with  salty sweat. Loose
coal soot, oil  smoke,  and colored dust was smeared all over him. He made a
quick  trip over to a clear puddle  of water  and laid flat of his belly  to
suck up all of the water he  could hold. He blowed out his breath, and  came
back wiping  his face with  a bandana handkerchief as dirty as the  railroad
itself,  and then the handkerchief being cool and wet, he tied it around his
forehead, with a hard knot on the back of  his head. He looked up at me, and
shook  his head sideways  and said, "Keeps  th'  sweat from runnin'  down so
bad."
     It was an old  hobo  trick. I knew it, but didn't  have any  kind  of a
handkerchief. The heat of the day was getting  to be pretty  hard to take. I
asked him, "When's th' last time ya had anything to eat?"
     "El Paso," he told me. "Coupl'a days back."
     My  hand  didn't  ask  me anything  about it,  but it  was okay with me
anyhow, and I slid  the  sack out of my sweater  and banded it over to  him.
Still warm. I knew just about how good it felt when he got his hands on that
warm greasy sack. He bit into a peanut-butter sandwich together with  a hunk
of salty pork between two  slices of bread.  He looked toward the water hole
again, but the  train jarred the cars a few feet, and we both  made for  the
side of the high yellow cars.
     We got  split  up a  few yards,  and  had  to hang separate cars, and I
thought maybe he wouldn't make it.  I looked down from  the top of mine, and
saw him trotting easy  along the ground, jumping an iron  switchpost or two,
and holding his  sandwich  and sack in both  hands. He crammed the  sandwich
down into the sack, rolled the top edge of the sack over a couple of twists,
and stuck the sack into his teeth, letting both  of his hands free to use to
climb up the side of the car. On the top, he crawled along the blistered tin
roof  until he set facing me, me on the end of my car, and him on the end of
his. It was getting windier  as the train got her speed up, and we waved our
hats "good-bye and good luck and Lord bless you" to the old town of Tucson.
     I looked at the lids of my two reefer holes, and both was down so tight
that you couldn't  budge  them with a team of  horses. I  looked  over at my
partner again, and seen that  he'd got his lid open. He braced the heavy lid
open, using the lock-bar  for a wedge, so  that it couldn't fly  shut in the
high  wind. I seen  him crawl down inside, examine the ice hole, and then he
stuck his head out, and  motioned for me to come on over and ride.  I got up
and jumped the  space  between the two  cars,  and clumb down out of the hot
winds; and he finished his lunch without saying a word in the wind.
     Our car was an easy rider. No flat wheels to speak of. This is not true
of many cars on an empty train, because loaded, a train rides  smoother than
when  empty. Before long, a couple  of other riders  stuck their heads  down
into the hole and hollered, "Anybody down in this hole?"
     We yelled back, 'Two! Room fer two more!  Throw yer stuff  down!  C'mon
down!"
     A bundle hit the floor, and with it come an old blue serge coat, from a
good suit of clothes, no doubt, during one of the earlier wars. Then one man
clumb  through each of  the  holes, and grabbed  the coarse net of wire that
lined the ice compartment. They settled down into a good position for riding
and looked around.
     "Howdy. I'm Jack."
     The Negro boy nodded his head, "Wheeler." He put the last bite into his
mouth, swallowed it down, and said, "Plenty dry."
     The second stranger  struck  a match  to relight a spitty  cigaret, and
mumbled, "Schwartz, my name. Goddam this bull tobaccer!"
     The country outside, I knew, was pretty, sunny, and clear, with patches
of  green  farming  country sticking like moss along the sandy banks of  the
little dry desert creeks. Yes, and I would like to climb out on top and take
a look at  it. I told the other three men, "Believe I'll roll me one of them
fags,  if ya don't mind, an' then git out on top an' watch  th' tourists  go
past."
     The owner of the tobacco handed me the sweaty little sack, and I licked
one together. Lighting it up,  I thanked him, and then I dumb up on top, and
soaked up the scenery  by ten million square miles. The fast whistling train
put up a  pretty stiff wind. It caused my cigaret to burn up like a flare of
some kind, and then a wide current  tore the paper from  around the tobacco,
and it flew  in  a million directions,  including my own face. Fighting with
the  cigaret, I  tilted my head in the wrong direction,  and  my hat  sailed
fifty feet up into the  air, rolled  out  across  the  sand,  and hung  on a
sticker bush. That was the last I seen of it.
     One of the men down on the hole hollered  out, "Havin<sup>' </sup>quite
a time up there, ain't you, mister?"
     "Quite a blow, quite a blow!" I yelled back into the hole.
     "Seein' much up there?" another one asked me.
     "Yeah, I  see enuff sunshine an' fresh air ta  cure all th'  trouble in
th' world!" I told them.
     "How fast we travelin'?"
     "I'd jedge about forty or forty-five.''
     The  land  changed  from  a  farming  country  into  a  weather-beaten,
crumbling,  and  wasted  stretch, with gully washes traveling  in every way,
brownish,  hot rocks  piled into canyons, and low humps  topped  with  irony
weeds and long-eared  rabbits  loping like army  mules to get  away from the
red-hot train. The hills  were  deep  bright  colors, reddish  sand,  yellow
clays,  and  always, to  the distance,  there stood  up  the  high, flat-top
cliffs, breaking again into the washing, drifting, windy face of the desert.
We followed a highway,  and  once  in  a  while a car  coasted past, full of
people going somewhere, and we'd wave and yell at one another.
     "Must be th' first time you ever crossed this country," the colored boy
hollered up at me.
     "Yeah it is." I blinked my eyes to try to wash the powdery dust  out of
them. "First time."
     "I been over this road so  many times I ought to tell the conductor how
to go," he said. "We'll be headin'  down through the low country before very
long.  You'll  run a hundred miles below sea  level and look up all at once,
and see snow  on the  mountains and then you'll start over the hump right up
to the snow. And you'll freeze yourself coming up out of all of this heat."
     "Mighty funny thing."
     "You can stay down in this  hole and keep  pretty warm.  If all  of  us
huddle  up and  cuddle up  and put our hand  in  each others'  pockets,  our
heat'll keep us from freezing."
     The coal dust and  the heat finally  got too  tough for me, so I  clumb
down. The low pounding of the wheels under us, and the swaying and quivering
of  the train,  got  so tiresome that  we  drifted right  off  to sleep, and
covered the  miles that would put us across  the  California line. Night got
dark, and we got closer together to keep warm.

     There is a little railroad station just east of Yuma where  you stop to
take on water.  It is still at desert altitude, so you climb down  and start
walking  around to  limber up a little. The  moon here  is  the fullest  and
brightest that you ever  saw. The  medium-size palm  plants and fern-looking
trees  are  waving real easy in the moonlight, and  the brush on the face of
the  desert throws black shapes and shadows out across  the  sand.  The sand
looks as smooth as a slick pool of crude oil, and shines up yellow and white
all around. The clear-cut cactus shapes, the brush, and the silky sand makes
one of the prettiest pictures that you ever hope to see.
     All of the  riders, seeing  how  pretty the night was, walked, trotted,
stretched  their  legs  and  arms  around,  moved their shoulders, and  took
exercise to get their blood  to running right again. Matches flare up as the
boys  light their smokes, and I could  get a quick look at  their  sunburnt,
windburnt faces. Flop  hats,  caps, or just bareheaded, they looked like the
pioneers that got to knowing the feel and the smell of the  roots and leaves
across  the early days of the desert, and it makes me want to  sort of  hang
around there.
     Voices talked and said everything.
     "Hello."
     "Match on yuh?"
     "Yeah--shorts on that smoke."
     "Headin'?"
     " 'Frisco--ship out if I can."
     "How's crops in South California?"
     "Crops--or cops?"
     "Crops. Celery. Fruit. Avacados."
     "Work's easy ta git a holt of, but money's hard as hell.''
     "Hell, Nelly, I wuz borned a-workin', an' I ain't quit yit!"
     "Workin', er lookin' fer work?"
     There  was a big mixture of people here. I could  hear the fast accents
of men from the big Eastern joints. You heard the slow, easy-going voices of
Southern  swamp  dwellers,  and  the  people from  the  Southern  hills  and
mountains.  Then another one would talk  up,  and it would be the dry,  nosy
twang of the folks from the flat wheat plains; or the dialect of people that
come  from  other countries, whose  parents talked another tongue. Then  you
would  hear the slow, outdoor voices of the men from Arizona, riding a short
hop to  get a job, see a girl, or to throw a  little celebration.  There was
the deep, thick  voices of two or  three Negroes,. It sounded mighty good to
my ears.
     All at once the men hushed up. Somebody nudged somebody else, and said,
"Quiet."
     Then  everybody  ducked  their  heads,  turned  around  and  whispered,
"Scatter out. Lay low. Hey! You! Get rid of that cigaret! Bulls a-comin'!"
     Three  men,  dressed  in hard-wearing railroad suits,  walked up to  us
before we could get gone.
     Flashing bright lanterns and flashlights on  us, we heard them  holler,
"Hey! What's goin' on here?"
     We didn't say anything back.
     "Where you birds headed for?"
     Still silence.
     "What's  wrong?  Buncha  dam  dumb-dumbs? Can't none  of  you  men  say
nuthin<sup>'</sup>?" The three men carried guns where it was  plain to  see,
and  hard  to overlook.  Their hands resting on the  butts, shuffling  their
lights around in their hands. They rounded us up. The desert is a good place
to look at, but not so easy to hide on. One or  two men ducked between cars.
A  dozen or  so stepped  out across the desert,  and slid down out of  sight
behind little bushes. The cops herded the rest of us into a crowd.
     Men kept scattering, taking  a chance of going against the cops' orders
to "halt." The few that stood still were asked several questions. "Where yuh
headed?"
     "Yuma."
     "That'll  be th' price of a ticket to Yuma. Step right into  the office
there and buy your ticket--hurry up."
     "Hell, fellers, you know I ain't got th' price of no ticket; I wouldn't
be ridin' this freight if I had th' money fer a ticket."
     "Search `im,"
     Each  man  was  shook  down,  jackets,  jumpers,  coats,  britches  and
suspenders, pants legs, shoes. As  the searching went on, most of us managed
to make a quick run for it, and get away from the bulls. Trotting around the
end of  the train,  thinking that  we'd  give them the dodge, we run head-on
into  their spotlights, and was face to face with them. We stopped and stood
still. One by one, they went through  our pockets looking for money. If they
found any money, whatever it was,  the man was herded into  the little house
to buy a ticket as far down the line  as his  money would carry him. Lots of
the boys had a few bucks  on  them. They felt pretty silly,  with nothing to
eat on, being pushed into buying "tickets"  to some town they said they were
heading for.
     "Find anything on you?" a man asked me.
     "Huh uh." I didn't have any for them to find.
     "Listen,  see that old boy right in  front  of you? Pinch 'im. Make 'im
listen to what I'm tellin' him. Ppsssst!"
     I punched the man right in  front  of me. He  waited a minute, and then
looked around sideways. "Listen," I said to him.
     The other rider commenced  to talk, "I just  found out"-- then  he went
down into a whisper "that this  train is gonna  pull out. Gonna try ta ditch
us. When I  holler, we're all  gonna make a break an' swing  'er.  This is a
hell of a place to get ditched."
     We shook our heads. We all kept extra still, and passed the word along.
     Then the train moved backwards a foot or two--and the racket roared all
out across  the  desert--jarring itself into the notion of  traveling again,
and all at once the man at my side hollered as loud as the high-ball whistle
itself, "Go, boy!"
     His voice rung out across the cactus.
     "Jack rabbit, run!"
     Men  jumped  out from  everywhere,  from between  the cars they'd  been
hanging  onto, and out from behind the clumps of cactus weeds, and the cops,
nervous,  and  looking in every direction, stuttered, yelled, and cussed and
snorted, but when the moon looked down at the train steaming out, it saw all
of us sticking on the  sides, and on the top, waving,  cussing, and thumbing
our noses back in the faces of the "ticket" sellers.

     Then it  got morning. A cold draft  of wind was sucking  in around  the
sides  of the  reefer lid.  I'd asked  the boys  during  the night how about
closing the  lid all of the way down.  They told me that  you had to keep it
wedged  open  a little  with the  handle of the  lock, to  keep from getting
locked  inside.  We stuck close  together,  using each  other  for sofas and
pillows, and hoped for the sun to get warmer.
     I asked them, "Wonder how heavy that big ol' lid is, anyhow?"
     "Weighs close to a hunderd pound," the  Negro boy said. He was piled in
the corner, stretched out, and his whole body was shaking with  the movement
of the train.
     "Be a  hell  of  a note if a feller wuz ta git  up there,  an' start ta
climb  out, an'  that  big lid wuz  ta fly down an' ketch his head," another
fellow said. He screwed his face up just thinking about it.
     "I knew a boy that lost a arm that way."
     "I know a  boy that used ta travel around  on  these dam  freights,"  I
said, "harvestin', an' ramblin' around; an' he was shipped back to his folks
in about a hundred pieces. I seen his face. Wheel  had  run right across it,
from his ear, across his mouth, over to his other ear. And I don't know, but
every day, ridin' these rattlers, I ketch myself thinkin' about that boy."
     " 'Bout as bad  a  thing as I can think of, is  th' two boys they found
starved to death, locked up  inside of one of these here  ice cars. Figgered
they'd  been in there dead 'bout a week or two when they  found 'em. One  of
'em wasn't more'n twelve or thirteen years old.  Jist a  little squirt. They
crawled in through the main door, an' pulled it to. First thing they knew, a
brakeman come along, locked th' door, dropped a bolt  in th' lock, an' there
they was. Nobody even knew where they's from, or nuthin'. Just as  well been
one of your folks or mine." He shook his head, thinking.
     The heat got  worse as the train sailed along. "Git out on top, an' you
c'n see Old Mexico," somebody said.
     "Might  as well ta git yer money's worth," I told  him, and in a minute
I'd scrambled up the wire net again, and pushed the heavy lid back. The wind
was getting  hotter. I could feel the dry,  burning  sting that  let me know
that  I  was  getting a windburn. I peeled off my  sweater, and  shirt,  and
dropped them  onto  the hot sheet  iron, and  hooked  my arm around an  iron
brace, and laid stretched out flat of my back, getting a good Mexican border
sunburn along with my Uncle Sam windburn. I get dark awful quick in  the sun
and wind. My skin likes it, and so do I.
     The  Negro boy  clumb up and set down beside me. His greasy cap whipped
in the wind, but he held the bill tight, and it didn't blow  off. He  turned
the cap around backwards, bill down the back of  his neck, and  there was no
more danger of  losing it. "Some country!"  he  told  me,  rolling his  eyes
across  the  sand, cactus, and crooked little bushes, "I guess every part of
th' country's good for somethin', if you c'n jist only find out what!"
     "Yeah," I said; "Wonder what this is good for?"
     "Rabbits,  rattlesnakes,  gila  monsters,  tarantulars,  childs of  the
earth,  scorpions, lizards,  coyotes,  wild  cats,  bob  cats, grasshoppers,
beetles, bugs, bears, bulls, buffaloes, beef," he said.
     "All of that out there?" I asked him.
     "No, I was  jist runnin'  off at th' mouth," he laughed. I knew that he
had  learned  a lot about  the country somewhere, and guessed that he'd beat
this trail more times than one. He moved  his shoulders and squared his self
on top of the train. I saw big strong  muscles and  heavy blood vessels, and
tough, calloused palms of his hands; and I  knew that  for the  most part he
was an honest working man.
     "Lookit that  ol'  rabbit  go!" I poked him  in  the ribs, and  pointed
across a ditch.
     "Rascal really moves!" he said, keeping up with the jack.
     "Watch 'im pick up speed," I said.
     "Sonofa bitch. See him clear dat fence?" He shook his head, and  smiled
a little bit.
     Three or four  more rabbits began showing  their ears above  the  black
weeds. Big grayish brown ears lolling along as loose and limber as could be.
"Whole dam  family's  out!" he  told me.  "Looks like it! Ma an'  pa an' th'
whole fam damly!" I said. 'Purty outfits, ain't they? Rabbits."
     He  eyed the herd  and nodded his head. He was  a  deep-thinking man. I
knew just about what he was thinking about, too.
     "How come you ta come out on top ta ride?" I asked my friend.
     "Why not?"
     "Oh, I dunno. Said somebody had ta go."
     "How'd it come up?" I asked him.
     "Well, I sort of  asked him for a cigaret, and  he said that  he wasn't
panhandlin'  for  nickels to get tobacco  for boys like  me. I don't want to
have no trouble."
     "Boys like you?"
     "Yeah,  I  dunno. Difference  'tween  you an'  me. He'd  let  you  have
tobacco, 'cause you an' him's th' same color."
     "What in th' Goddam hell has that got ta do  with  ridin' together?"  I
asked him.
     "He  said it was gettin' pretty  hot down in  th' hatch, you know, said
ever'body  was sweatin' a lot. He told  me th'  further away from each other
that we  stay th'  better we're gonna get along, but I knew what he meant by
if'
     "Wuz that all?"
     "Yeah."
     "This is one hell of a place ta go ta bringin' up that kinda dam talk,"
I said.
     The  train  drew  into El  Centre,  and  stooped  and filled her belly,
panting and sweating. The riders could be seen hitting the ground for a walk
and a stretch.
     Schwartz,  the  man with the sack  of smoking, come out  of  his  hole,
grumbling and cussing under his breath. "Worst Goddam hole on the train, and
I had to get  caught down in it all  night!" he told me, climbing past me on
his way to the ground.
     "Best ridin' car on th' rail," I said. I was right, too.
     "It's th' worst in my book, boy," Schwartz said.
     The fourth man from our  end of the car crawled out and dropped down to
the  cinders. All during the ride,  he hadn't mentioned his  name. He was  a
smiling man, even walking along by his self. When he walked up behind us, he
heard Schwartz say something else about how bad our  riding hole was, and he
said in a friendly way, " 'Bout th' easiest riding car I've hung in a many a
day."
     "Like hell it is," Schwartz  spoke up, stopping, and looking the fellow
in the face. The man looked down mostly at  Schwartz's feet and listened  to
see what  Schwartz would say  next.  Then Schwartz  went  on  talking at the
mouth, "It might ride easy, but th' Goddam thing stinks--see?"
     "Stinks?" The man looked at him funny.
     "I said stink, didn't I?" Schwartz ran  his  hand down  in  his pocket.
This is a pretty  bad thing to do amongst strangers, talking in this tone of
voice and  running your  hand in  your pocket. "You don't have to be afraid,
Stranger, I ain't got no barlow knife," Schwartz told him.
     And  then the other man looked along the cinders and  smiled and  said,
"Listen, mister, I wouldn't be the least  bit  afraid of a whole car load of
fellows just like you, with a knife in each pocket and two in each hand."
     "Tough about it, huh?" Schwartz frowned the best he could.
     "Ain't nothing tough about me, sort  of--but I don't make a practice of
bein' afraid of you nor anybody  else."  He settled his  self a  little more
solid on his feet.
     It  looked like  a good fist  fight  was  coming  off.  Schwartz looked
around, up and down the  track. "I bet you a dollar that most of the fellows
riding this train feel just about like I do  about riding in a hole  with  a
dam nigger!"
     The Negro boy made a walk toward  Schwartz. The  smiling man stepped in
between them. The  Negro said, "Nobody  don't hafta take my part, I can take
up for myself. Ain't nobody gonna call me--"
     "Take it easy,  Wheeler, take it easy," the other  man said.  "This guy
wants something to happen. Just likes to hear his guts crawl."
     I took the  Negro  boy by the arm, and we walked along talking it over.
"Nobody else thinks like that goof. Hell, let 'im go an' find  another  car.
Let 'im  go. They'll run him out of every hole on th' train. Don't worry. Ya
cain't help what ya cain't help."
     "You know, that's right," Wheeler told me.
     He pulled his arm  away from me, and straightened his button-up sweater
a little. We turned around and looked back at our friend  and Schwartz. Just
like you would shoo a fly or  a chicken down the road, our friend was waving
his  arms, and  shooing  Schwartz  along.  We  could  hear him  awful faint,
yelling, "Go  on, you  old  bastard! Get your gripey ass out of here! And if
you so much as even open your trap to make  trouble for anybody  riding this
train, I'll  ram my fist down your  throat!" It was a  funny thing. I felt a
little  sorry for the old boy, but he needed somebody to teach him a lesson,
and evidently he was in the hands of a pretty good teacher.
     We waited till  the dust had settled again, and men  our teacher friend
trotted up to where we stood. He was waving at bunches of  men, and laughing
deep down in his lungs.
     'That's that, I reckon," he was saying when he got up to us.
     The colored boy said, "I'm  gonna run over across th' highway an' buy a
package of  smokes. Be  back in a minute--" He left us and ran like a desert
rabbit.
     There was a faucet dripping water beside a yellow railroad building. We
stopped and drank all we  could hold. Washed our hands and faces, and combed
our heads. There was a long line of  men waiting  to use the water. While we
walked away, holding our  faces to the slight breath  of air that was moving
across the yards, he asked me, "Say your name was?"
     I said, "Woody."
     "Mine's Brown.  Glad ta  meet you, Woody. You know  I've  run onto this
skin trouble before." He walked along on the cinders.
     "Skin trouble.  That's a dam good name for it."  I  walked along beside
him.
     "Hard to cure it after it gets started, too. I was born and raised in a
country that's got all kinds of diseases, and this skin trouble is the worst
one of the lot," he told me.
     "Bad," I answered him.
     "I got sick  and  tired  of  that  kind of stuff when I  was just a kid
growing  up at home. You know.  God, I had hell with some of my  folks about
things like that. But, seems  like, little at a time,  I'd sort  of convince
them, you know; lots of folks I never could convince. They're kinda like the
old bellyache fellow, they  cause a  lot of trouble to a hundred people, and
then to a thousand people, all on account  of just some silly, crazy notion.
Like  you  can  help what color  you are. Goddam' it all. Goddamit all.  Why
don't they  spend that same amount of time and trouble