the Land of Sunshine and just plenty of Good Fresh Air. Having wonderful
tour. Yrs. trly. Wdy."
Pretty soon another cattle man offered me a ride on to the next cattle
town. He smoked a pipe which had took up more of his time in the last twenty
years than wife, kids, or his cow ranching. He told me, "This old Panhandle
country can be one mighty nice place when it's purty, but hell on wheels
when she gits riled up!" His truck was governed down to fifteen or twenty
miles an hour. It was a windy, brittle hour before we crept the fifteen
miles from Kings Mill over to White Deer. I was so cold when we got there
that I couldn't hardly get out of the truck. The flying heat from the engine
had kept me a degree or two above freezing, but stepping out into that wind
head-on was worse. I walked another mile or two on down the side of the road
and, as long as I walked, kept fairly loose and limber. A time or two I
stopped alongside the concrete, and stood and waited with my head ducked
into the wind--and it seemed like none of the drivers could see me. When I
started to walk some more, I noticed that the muscles in the upper part of
my legs were drawn up, and hurt every time I took a step, and that it took
me a few hundred yards' walking to get full control over them. This scared
me so much that I decided to keep walking or else.
After three or four miles had went under my feet, a big new model
Lincoln Zephyr stopped, and I got in the back seat. I saw two people in the
front seat. They asked me a few silly questions. I mean they were good
questions, but I only gave them silly answers. Why was I out on the highways
at any such a time as this? I was just there. Where was I going? I was going
to California. What for? Oh, just to see if I couldn't do a little better.
They let me out on the streets of Amarillo, sixty miles away from
Pampa. I walked through town, and it got colder. Tumbleweeds, loose gravel,
and dirt and beaten snow crawled along the streets and vacant lots, and the
dust rolled in on a high wind, and fell on down across the upper plains. I
got across town and waited on a bend for a ride. After an hour, I hadn't got
one. I didn't want to walk any more down the road to keep warm, because it
was getting dark, and nobody could see anything out there on a night like
that. I walked twenty-five or thirty blocks back to the main part of
Amarillo. A sign on a board said, Population, 50,000, Welcome. I went into a
picture show to get warm and bought a hot sack of good, salty popcorn. I
figured on staying in the cheap show all I could, but they didn't stay open
after midnight in Amarillo, so I was back on the streets pretty soon, just
sort of walking up and down, looking at the jewelry and duds in the windows.
I got a nickel sack of smoking, and tried rolling a cigaret on every part of
Polk Street, and the wind blew the sack away, a whiff at a time. I remember
how funny it was. If I did succeed in getting one rolled and licked down and
into my mouth, I'd strike up all of the matches in the country trying to get
it lit; and as quick as I got it lit, the wind would blow so hard on the
lighted end that it would burn up like a Roman candle, too fast to get a
good draw off, and in the meantime throwing flaked-off red-hot ashes all
over my coat.
I went down to the railroad yards, and asked about the freights. The
boys were hanging out in two or three all-night coffee joints, and there was
no lead as to where you could get a free flop. I spent my last four-bit
piece on a little two-by-four room, and slept in a good warm bed. If it had
cockroaches, alligators or snapping turtles in it, I was too sleepy to stay
awake and argue with them.
I hit the streets next morning in a bluster of gray, smoky-looking snow
that had managed to get a toehold during the night. It covered the whole
country, and the highway was there somewhere--if you could only find it.
This side of Clovis, fifteen or twenty miles, I met an A Model Ford with
three young boys in it. They stopped and let me in. I rode with them toward
New Mexico all day long. When they came to the state line, they acted funny,
talking and whispering among themselves, and wondering if the cops at the
port of entry would notice anything odd about us. I heard them say that the
car was borrowed, no ownership papers, bill of sale, driver's license--just
borrowed off of the streets. We talked it over. Decided just to act as blank
as possible, and trust to our luck that we could get across. We drove over
the line. The cops waved us past. The sign read: Trucks and Busses Stop For
Inspection. Tourists Welcome to New Mexico.
The three boys were wearing old patched overhalls and khaki work pants
and shirts that looked like they'd stand a couple or three good washings
without coming any too clean. I looked at their hair, and it was dry,
wind-blown, gritty, and full of the dust out of the storm, and not any
certain wave or color--just the color of the whole country. I had seen
thousands of men that looked just the same way, and could usually tell by
the color of the dirt where they were from. I guessed these boys to be from
the oil-field country back up around Borger, and asked them if that was a
good guess. They said that we could ride together better if we asked each
other less questions.
We rolled along, slow, boiling up the higher country, and cooling off
coasting down--until we hit the mountains on this side of Alamagordo. We
stopped once or twice to let the engine cool off. Finally we hit the top of
the mountain ridge, and traveled along a high, straight road that stuck to
the middle part of a flat, covered on both sides by evergreen pine, tall,
thin-bodied, and straight as an arrow, branching out, about thirty or forty
feet up the trunk; and the undergrowth was mostly a mixture of brown scrubby
oak, and here and yonder, bunches of green, tough cedar. The air was so
light that it made our heads feel funny. We laughed and joked about how it
felt.
I noticed that the driver was speeding up and then throwing the clutch
in, letting the car slip into neutral, and coasting as far as he could. I
mentioned this to the driver, and he said that he was running on his last
teacupful of gas, and it was twenty-five miles to the next town. I kept
quiet from then on, doing just what the other three were, just gulping and
thinking.
For five or six miles we held our breath. We were four guys out, trying
to get somewhere in the world, and the roar of that little engine, rattly,
knocky and fumy as it was, had a good sound to our ears. It was the only
motor we had. We wanted more than anything else in the world to hear it purr
along, and we didn't care how people laughed as they went around us, and
throwed their clouds of red dust back into our faces. Just take us into
town, little motor, and we'll get you some more gas.
A mile or two of up-grade, and the tank was empty. The driver throwed
the clutch in, shifted her into neutral, and kept wheeling. The speed read,
thirty, twenty, fifteen--and then fell down to five, three, four, three,
four, five, seven, ten, fifteen, twenty-five, and we all yelled and hollered
as loud and as long as our guts could pump air. Hooopeee! Made 'er! Over the
Goddam hump! Yippeee! It's all down hill from here to Alamagordo! To hell
with the oil companies! For the next half an hour we won't be needing you,
John D.! We laughed and told all kinds of good jokes going down the
piny-covered mountain--some of the best, wildest, prettiest fresh-smelling
country you could ever hope to find. And it was a free ride for us. Twenty
miles of coasting.
At the bottom we found Alamagordo, a nice little town scattered along a
trickling creek or two that chases down from out of the mountains around.
There you see the tall, gray-looking cottonwood sticking along the watered
places. Brown adobe shacks and houses of sun-dried brick, covered over with
plaster and homemade stucco of every color. The adobe houses of the Mexican
workers have stood there, some of them, for sixty, seventy-five, and over a
hundred years, flat. And the workers, a lot of them, the same way.
On the north side of town we coasted into a homey-looking service
station.
The man finally got around to coming out. One of the boys said, "We
want to swap you a good wrench for five gallons of gas, worth twice that
much. Good shape. Runs true, holds tight, good teeth, never been broke."
The service man took a long, interested, hungry look at the wrench.
Good tool. No junky wrench. He was really wanting to make the swap.
"Got as much as fifty cents cash money?" he asked.
"No ..." the boy answered him. Both forgot all about everything,
keeping quiet for a whole minute or more, and turning the wrench over and
over. One boy slid out of the door and walked through the shop toward the
men's rest room.
"Two bits cash ... ?" the mechanic asked without looking up.
"No ... no cash ..." the boy told him.
"Okay ... get your gas cap off; I'll swap with you boys just to show
you that my heart is in the right place."
The gas cap was turned, laid up on a fender, and the gas man held the
long brass nozzle down in the empty hole, and listened to the five gallons
flow into the tank; and the five gallons sounded lonesome and sad, and the
trade was made.
"Okay, Mister, you got the best of this deal. But that's what you're in
business for, I reckon; thanks," a boy said, and the old starter turned over
a few wheels that were gradually getting toothless, and the motor went over
quick, slow, and then a blue cloud of engine smoke puffed up under the
floorboards, and the good smell of burning oil told you that you weren't
quite walking--yet. Everybody heaved a sigh of relief. The man stood with
his good costly wrench in his hands, pitching it up and down, and smiling a
little-- nodding as we drove away.
My eyes fell for a short minute away from the healthy countryside, and
my gaze came upon an old tire tool on the floor of the car, a flat rusty
tire iron, an old pump--and a nice wrench, almost exactly like the one that
we'd just traded for gas; and I remembered the boy that went to the rest
room.
Uptown in Alamagordo, we stopped at the high, west end of the main
street. It was dinner time, but no money. Everybody was hungry and that went
without asking. I told the boys that I'd get out and hustle the town for
some quick signs, signs to paint on windows which I could paint in thirty
minutes or an hour, and we'd surely get enough to buy some day-old bakery
goods and milk to take out on the side of the road and eat. I felt like I
owed them something for my fare. I felt full of pep, rested and relieved,
now that there were five gallons of gas splashing around inside of our tank.
They agreed to let me hustle for a quick job, but it must not take too long.
I jumped out in a big rush, and started off down the street. I heard
one of them holler, "Meet you right here at this spot in an hour and no
later."
I yelled back, "Okie doke! Hour! No later." And I walked down through
the town. I peeled my eyes for an old sign that needed repainting, or a new
one to put on. I stuck my head into ten or fifteen places and got a job at a
shoe store, putting a picture of a man's shoe, a lady's shoe, and: Shoe
Repairing Guaranteed. Cowboy Boots a Specialty.
I had left my brushes in the seat of the car, so I made a hard run up
the main street. I got to the spot, puffing, grinning, and blowing like a
little horse, and looked around-- but no boys, and no car.
I trotted up and down the main street again, thinking that they might
have decided to come on down to where I was. But there wasn't the old Model
A that I'd learned to know and admire, not for being a champion at anything
but as a car that really tried. It was gone. So were my pardners. So were
all of my paint brushes. Just a little rag wound around some old brushes,
but they were Russian Red Sable, the best that money could buy, and about
twenty bucks of hard-earned money to me. They were my meal ticket.
Pulling from Alamagordo over to Las Cruces was one of the hardest times
I'd ever had. The valley highway turned into a dry, bare stretch of
low-lying foothills, too little to be mountains, and too hilly to be flat
desert. The hills fooled me completely. Running out from the high mountains,
they looked small and easy to walk over, but the highway bent and curled
around and got lost a half a dozen times on each little hill. You could see
the road ahead shining like a string of tinfoil flattened out, and then
you'd lose sight of it again and walk for hours and hours, and more hours,
and without ever coming to the part that you'd been looking at ahead for so
long.
I was always a big hand to walk along and look at the things along the
side of the road. Too curious to stand and wait for a ride. Too nervous to
set down and rest. Too struck with the traveling fever to wait. While the
other long strings of hitch-hikers was taking it easy in the shade back in
the town, I'd be tugging and walking myself to death over the curves,
wondering what was just around the next bend; walking to see some distant
object, which turned out to be just a big rock, or knoll, from which you
could see and wonder about other distant objects. Blisters on your feet,
shoes hot as a horse's hide. Still tearing along. I covered about fifteen
miles of country, and finally got so tired that I walked out to one side of
the road, laid down in the sun, and went off to sleep. I woke up every time
a car slid down the highway, and listened to the hot tires sing off a song,
and wondered if I didn't miss a good, easy, cool ride all of the way into
California. I couldn't rest.
Back on the road, I hung a ride to Las Cruces and was told that you
couldn't catch a freight there till the next day. I didn't want to lay over,
so I lit out walking toward Deming. Deming was the only town within a
hundred miles where you could catch one of them fast ones setting long
enough to get on it. I walked a long stretch on the way to Deming. It must
have been close to twenty miles. I walked until past midnight. A farmer
drove up and stopped and said that he would carry me ten miles. I took him
up, and that put me within about fifteen miles of Deming. Next morning I was
walking a couple of hours before sunup, and along about ten o'clock, got a
ride with a whole truckload of hitch-hikers. Most every man on the truck was
going to catch a freight at Deming. We found a whole bunch walking around
the yards and streets in Deming waiting to snag out. Deming is a good town
and a going town, but it's a good town to keep quiet in. Us free riders said
it was best not to go around spouting off at your mouth too much, or the
cops would pull you in just to show the taxpayers that they are earning
their salaries.
The train out of Deming was a fast one. I got to Tucson without doing
anything much, without even eating for a couple of days.
In the yards at Tucson, I didn't know where to go or what to do. The
train rolled in with us after midnight. The cars all banged, and the brake
shoes set down tight, and everything wheeled to a standstill.
I was hanging onto her, because she was a red-hot one, and had been
fast so far, and other trains had given her the right-of-way. I didn't want
to get off now, just for a cup of coffee or something. Besides, I didn't
have the nickel. I crawled down in a reefer hole--a hole in the top of a
fruit car where ice is packed--and smoked the makings with two men whose
faces I hadn't seen.
It was cold there in Tucson that night. We laid low for about a couple
of hours. After a while, a dark head and shoulders could be seen in the
square hole, set against the bright, icy moonlight night. Whoever it was,
said, "Boys, you c'n come on out--we're ditched on a siding. She ain't gonna
take these cars on no further."
"Ya mean we lost our train?"
"Yeah, we just missed 'er, that's all.''
And as the head and shoulders went out of sight above us, you could
hear men scrambling down the sides, hanging onto the shiny iron ladders, and
falling out by the tens and dozens all up and down the cinder track.
"Ditched. ..."
"Shore'n hell. ..."
"Coulda got'er if we'd of knowed it in time. I had this happen to me
before, right here in Tucson."
"Tucson's a bitch, boys, Tucson's a bitch."
"Why?"
"Oh--just is. Hell, I don't know why!"
"Just another town, ain't it?"
" Tain't no town, 'tain't no city. Not fer guys like you an' me. You'll
find out soon enough...."
"What's funny about Tucson?"
Men ganged around the black cars, and talked in low, grumbling voices
that seemed to be as rough as they sounded honest. Cigarets flared in the
dark. A little lantern started coming down the tracks toward where we were
ganged around talking. Flashlights flittered along the ground, and you could
see the funny shadows of the walking feet and legs of men, and the
underparts of the brake drums, air hoses, and couplings of the big, fast
cars.
"Checkers."
"Car knockers."
"Boys--scatter out!"
"Beat it!"
"And--remember--take an old 'bo's word for it, and stay th' hell out of
the city limits of Tucson."
"What kind of a dam town is this, anyhow?"
'Tucson--she's a rich man's bitch, that's what she is, and nothin' else
but."
Morning. Men are scattered and gone. A hundred men and more, rolled in
on that train last night, and it was cold. Now it's come morning, and men
seem to be gone. They've learned how to keep out of the way. They've learned
how to meet and talk about their hard traveling, and smoke each other's
snipes in the moonlight, or boil a pot of coffee among the weeds like
rabbits--hundreds of them, and when the sun comes out bright, they seem to
be gone.
Looking out across a low place, growing with the first sprigs of
something green and good to eat, I saw the men, and I knew who they were,
and what they were doing. They were knocking on doors, talking to
housewives, offering to work to earn a little piece of bread and meat, or
some cold biscuits, or potatoes and bread and a slice of strong onion;
something to stick to your ribs till you could get on down the line to where
you knew people, where you had friends who would put you up till you could
try to find some work. I felt a funny feeling come over me standing there.
I had always played music, painted signs, and managed to do some kind
of work to get a hold of a piece of money, with which I could walk in to
town legal, and buy anything I wanted to eat or drink. I'd always felt that
satisfied feeling of hearing a coin jingle across the counter, or at least,
doing some kind of work to pay for my meals. I'd missed whole days without a
meal. But I'd been pretty proud about bumming. I still hoped that I could
find some kind of short job to earn me something to eat. This was the
longest I had ever gone without anything to eat. More than two whole days
and nights.
This was a strange town, with a funny feeling hanging over it, a
feeling like there were lots of people in it--the Mexican workers, and the
white workers, and the travelers of all skins and colors of eyes, caught
hungry, hunting for some kind of work to do. I was too proud to go out like
the other men and knock at the doors.
I kept getting weaker and emptier. I got so nervous that I commenced
shaking, and couldn't hold myself still. I could smell a piece of bacon or
corncake frying at a half a mile away. The very thought of fruit made me
lick my hot lips. I kept shaking and looking blanker and blanker. My brain
didn't work as good as usual. I couldn't think. Just got into a stupor of
some kind, and sat there on the main line of the fast railroad, forgetting
about even being there... and thinking of homes, with ice boxes, cook
stoves, tables, hot meals, cold lunches, with hot coffee, ice-cold beer,
homemade wine--and friends and relatives. And I swore to pay more attention
to the hungry people that I would meet from there on down the line.
Pretty soon, a wiry-looking man came walking up across the low green
patch, with a brown paper sack wadded mp under his arm. He walked in my
direction until he was about fifteen feet away, and I could see the brown
stain of good tasting grease soaking through his sack. I even sniffed, and
stuck my nose up in the air, and swung my head in his direction as he got
closer; and I could smell, by real instinct, the good homemade bread, onion,
and salty pork that was in the sack. He sat down not more than fifty feet
away, under the heavy squared timbers of the under-rigging of a water tank,
and opened his sack and ate his meal, with me looking on.
He finished it slowly, taking his good easy time. He licked the ends of
his fingers, and turned his head sideways to keep from spilling any of the
drippings.
After he'd cleaned the sack out, he wadded it up properly and threw it
over his shoulder. I wondered if there was any crumbs in it. When he left, I
says to myself, I'll go and open it up and eat the crumbs. They'll put me on
to the next town. The man walked over to where I sat and said, "What the
hell are you doing settin' here on the main line ... ?"
"Waitin' fer a train," I said.
"You don't want one on top of you, do you?" he asked me.
"Nope,'' I says, "but I don't see none coming... .'' "How could you
with your back to it?" "Back?"
"Hell, yes, I seen guys end up like 'burger meat for just sueh
carelessness as that...."
"Pretty mornin'," I said to him. "You hungry?" he asked me.
"Mister, I'm just as empty as one of them automobile cars there, headed
back East to Detroit."
"How long you been this way?"
"More than two days."
"You're a dam fool-----Hit any houses for grub?"
"No--don't know which a way to strike out."
"Hell, you are a dam fool, for sure."
"I guess so."
"Guess, hell, I know so." He turned his eyes toward the better section
of town. "Don't go up in the fine part of town to try to work for a meal.
You'll starve to death, and they'll throw you in jail just for dying on the
streets. But see them little shacks and houses over yonder? That's where the
railroad workers live. You'll get a feed at the first house you go to, that
is, if you're honest, willing to work for it, and ain't afraid to tell it
just like it is." I nodded my head up and down, but I was listening.
Before he quit talking, one of the last things that he said, was, "I
been on the bum like this for a long time. I could have split my sack of
eats with you right here, but you wouldn't have got any good out of it that
way. Wouldn't learn you a dam thing. I had to learn it the hard way. I went
to the rich part of town, and I learnt what it was like; and then I went to
the working folks' end of town and seen what it was like. And now it's up to
you to go out for yourself and get you some grub when your belly's empty."
I thanked him two or three times, and we sat for a minute or two not
saying much. Just looking around. And then he got up sort of slow and easy,
and wishing me good luck, he walked away down the side of the rails.
I don't quite know what was going on inside my head. I got up in a
little while and looked around. First, to the north of me, then to the south
of me; and, if I'd been using what you call horse sense, I would have gone
to the north toward the shacks that belong to the railroad and farm workers.
But a curious feeling was fermenting in me, and my brain wasn't operating on
what you'd call pure sanity. I looked in the direction that my good sense
told me to go, and started walking in the direction that would lead me to
even less to eat, drink, less of a job of work, less friends and more hard
walking and sweating, that is, in the direction of the so-called "good" part
of town, where the "moneyed" folks live.
The time of day must have been pretty close to nine o'clock. There were
signs of people rustling around, moving and working, over around the shack
town; but, in the part of town that I was going toward, there was a dead
lull of heavy sleep and morning dreams.
You could look ahead and see a steeple sticking up out of the trees. It
comes up from a quiet little church house, A badly painted sign, crackling
from the desert heat and crisp nights, says something about the Brethren,
and so, feeling like a Brethren, you walk over and size the place up. There
in the morning sun so early, the yellow and brown leaves are wiggling on the
splattered sidewalk, like humping worms measuring off their humps, and the
sun is speckling the driveway that takes you to the minister's door. Under
the trees it gets colder and shadier till you come to the back door, and
climbing three rotted steps, knock a little knock.
Nothing happens. While you're listening through all of the rooms and
floors and halls of the old house, everything gets so quiet that the soft
Whoo Whoo of a switch engine back down in the yards seems to jar you.
Finally, after a minute or two of waiting, threatening to walk off, thinking
of the noise that your feet would make smashing the beans and seeds that had
fallen from the locust trees on to the driveway, you decide to stick at the
door, and knock again.
You hear somebody walking inside the house. It sounds padded, and
quiet, and far away. Like a leather-footed mountain lion walking in a cave.
And then it swishes through the kitchen, across the cold linoleum, and a
door clicks open, and a maid walks out onto the back porch, scooting along
in a blue-checkered house dress and tan apron, with a big pocket poked full
of dust rags of various kinds, a little tam jerked down over her ear, and
her hair jumping out into the morning breeze. She walks up to the screen
door, but doesn't open it.
"Ah--er--good morning, lady," you say to her.
She says to you, "What do you want?"
You say back to her, "Why, you see, I'm hunting for a job of work."
"Yeah?"
"Yes, I'm wondering if you've got a job of work that I could do to earn
a bite to eat, little snack of some kind. Grass cut. Scrape leaves. Trim
some hedge. Anything like that."
"Listen, young man," she tells you, straining her words through the
minister's screen, "there's a dozen of you people that come around here
every day knocking on this door. I don't want to make you feel bad, or
anything like that, but if the minister starts out to feed one of you,
you'll go off and tell a dozen others about it, and then they'll all be down
here wanting something to eat. You better get on out away from here, before
you wake him up, or he'll tell you worst than I'm telling you."
"Yes'm. Thank you, ma'am." And you're off down the driveway and on the
scent of another steeple.
I walked past another church. This one is made out of sandy-looking
rocks, slowly but surely wearing away, and going out of style. There are two
houses, one on each side, so I stood there for a minute wondering which one
belongs to the minister. It was a tough choice. But, on closer looks, I saw
that one house was sleepier than the other one, and I went to the sleepy
one. I was right. It belonged to the minister. I knocked at the back door. A
mean-tempered cat ran out from under the back porch and scampered through a
naked hedge. Here nothing happened. For five minutes I knocked; still nobody
woke up. So feeling ashamed of myself for even being there, I tiptoed out on
to the swaying sidewalk and sneaked off across town.
Then I come to a business street. Stores just stretching and yawning,
but not wide awake. I moseyed along looking in at the glass windows, warm
duds too high in price, and hot, sugary-smelling bakery goods piled up for
the delivery man.
A big cop, walking along behind me for half a block, looking over my
shoulder, finding out what I was up to. When I turned around, he was smiling
at me.
He said, "Good morning."
I said the same back to him.
He asked me, "Going to work?"
"Naw, just looking for work. Like to find a job, and hang around this
town for a while."
He looked over my head, and down the street as an early morning driver
ran a stop sign, and told me, "No work around here this time of the year."
"I'm generally pretty lucky at gittin' me a job. I'm a good clerk,
grocery store, drug store--paint signs to boot."
He talked out into thin air, and says, "You'll starve to death around
here. Or make the can."
"Can?"
"That's what I said, can."
"You mean, git in trouble?"
He nodded his head, yes. He meant trouble.
"What kinda trouble? I'm a good hand ta keep outta trouble," I went on
to say.
"Listen, boy, when you're not working in this town, you're already in
trouble, see? And there ain't no work for you, see? So you're in trouble
already." He nodded at a barber jingling his keys at a door.
I decided that the best play I could make was to cut loose from the
copper, and go on about my door knocking. So I acted like I was going
somewhere. I asked him, "Say, what time of the day is it, by the way?" I
tried to crowd a serious look onto my face.
He blowed some foggy breath out past a cigaret hanging limber on his
lip, and looked everywhere, except at me and said, "Time for you to get
going. Get off of these streets."
I kept quiet.
"Merchants gonna be coming down to open up their stores in about a
minute, and they don't want to think that I let a bird like you hang around
on the streets all night. Get going. Don't even look back."
And he watched me walk away, each of us knowing just about why the
other one acted like he did.
Rounding a warm corner, I met a man, that, to all looks, was a traveler
suffering from lack of funds. His clothes had been riding the freights, and
I was pretty certain that he was riding with them. Floppy hat, greasy
through the headband.
A crop of whiskers just about right for getting into jail. He was on
his way out of town.
I said, "Howdy. Good-morning."
"What'd the dick say to you?" He got right to the main subject.
"He was telling me how to clear Tucson of myself in five minutes flat,"
I told the man.
"Tough sonsaguns here, them 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. ТВ. 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 ТВ.
"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
ТВ, chemical ТВ from paint factories, rosin ТВ 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
tour. Yrs. trly. Wdy."
Pretty soon another cattle man offered me a ride on to the next cattle
town. He smoked a pipe which had took up more of his time in the last twenty
years than wife, kids, or his cow ranching. He told me, "This old Panhandle
country can be one mighty nice place when it's purty, but hell on wheels
when she gits riled up!" His truck was governed down to fifteen or twenty
miles an hour. It was a windy, brittle hour before we crept the fifteen
miles from Kings Mill over to White Deer. I was so cold when we got there
that I couldn't hardly get out of the truck. The flying heat from the engine
had kept me a degree or two above freezing, but stepping out into that wind
head-on was worse. I walked another mile or two on down the side of the road
and, as long as I walked, kept fairly loose and limber. A time or two I
stopped alongside the concrete, and stood and waited with my head ducked
into the wind--and it seemed like none of the drivers could see me. When I
started to walk some more, I noticed that the muscles in the upper part of
my legs were drawn up, and hurt every time I took a step, and that it took
me a few hundred yards' walking to get full control over them. This scared
me so much that I decided to keep walking or else.
After three or four miles had went under my feet, a big new model
Lincoln Zephyr stopped, and I got in the back seat. I saw two people in the
front seat. They asked me a few silly questions. I mean they were good
questions, but I only gave them silly answers. Why was I out on the highways
at any such a time as this? I was just there. Where was I going? I was going
to California. What for? Oh, just to see if I couldn't do a little better.
They let me out on the streets of Amarillo, sixty miles away from
Pampa. I walked through town, and it got colder. Tumbleweeds, loose gravel,
and dirt and beaten snow crawled along the streets and vacant lots, and the
dust rolled in on a high wind, and fell on down across the upper plains. I
got across town and waited on a bend for a ride. After an hour, I hadn't got
one. I didn't want to walk any more down the road to keep warm, because it
was getting dark, and nobody could see anything out there on a night like
that. I walked twenty-five or thirty blocks back to the main part of
Amarillo. A sign on a board said, Population, 50,000, Welcome. I went into a
picture show to get warm and bought a hot sack of good, salty popcorn. I
figured on staying in the cheap show all I could, but they didn't stay open
after midnight in Amarillo, so I was back on the streets pretty soon, just
sort of walking up and down, looking at the jewelry and duds in the windows.
I got a nickel sack of smoking, and tried rolling a cigaret on every part of
Polk Street, and the wind blew the sack away, a whiff at a time. I remember
how funny it was. If I did succeed in getting one rolled and licked down and
into my mouth, I'd strike up all of the matches in the country trying to get
it lit; and as quick as I got it lit, the wind would blow so hard on the
lighted end that it would burn up like a Roman candle, too fast to get a
good draw off, and in the meantime throwing flaked-off red-hot ashes all
over my coat.
I went down to the railroad yards, and asked about the freights. The
boys were hanging out in two or three all-night coffee joints, and there was
no lead as to where you could get a free flop. I spent my last four-bit
piece on a little two-by-four room, and slept in a good warm bed. If it had
cockroaches, alligators or snapping turtles in it, I was too sleepy to stay
awake and argue with them.
I hit the streets next morning in a bluster of gray, smoky-looking snow
that had managed to get a toehold during the night. It covered the whole
country, and the highway was there somewhere--if you could only find it.
This side of Clovis, fifteen or twenty miles, I met an A Model Ford with
three young boys in it. They stopped and let me in. I rode with them toward
New Mexico all day long. When they came to the state line, they acted funny,
talking and whispering among themselves, and wondering if the cops at the
port of entry would notice anything odd about us. I heard them say that the
car was borrowed, no ownership papers, bill of sale, driver's license--just
borrowed off of the streets. We talked it over. Decided just to act as blank
as possible, and trust to our luck that we could get across. We drove over
the line. The cops waved us past. The sign read: Trucks and Busses Stop For
Inspection. Tourists Welcome to New Mexico.
The three boys were wearing old patched overhalls and khaki work pants
and shirts that looked like they'd stand a couple or three good washings
without coming any too clean. I looked at their hair, and it was dry,
wind-blown, gritty, and full of the dust out of the storm, and not any
certain wave or color--just the color of the whole country. I had seen
thousands of men that looked just the same way, and could usually tell by
the color of the dirt where they were from. I guessed these boys to be from
the oil-field country back up around Borger, and asked them if that was a
good guess. They said that we could ride together better if we asked each
other less questions.
We rolled along, slow, boiling up the higher country, and cooling off
coasting down--until we hit the mountains on this side of Alamagordo. We
stopped once or twice to let the engine cool off. Finally we hit the top of
the mountain ridge, and traveled along a high, straight road that stuck to
the middle part of a flat, covered on both sides by evergreen pine, tall,
thin-bodied, and straight as an arrow, branching out, about thirty or forty
feet up the trunk; and the undergrowth was mostly a mixture of brown scrubby
oak, and here and yonder, bunches of green, tough cedar. The air was so
light that it made our heads feel funny. We laughed and joked about how it
felt.
I noticed that the driver was speeding up and then throwing the clutch
in, letting the car slip into neutral, and coasting as far as he could. I
mentioned this to the driver, and he said that he was running on his last
teacupful of gas, and it was twenty-five miles to the next town. I kept
quiet from then on, doing just what the other three were, just gulping and
thinking.
For five or six miles we held our breath. We were four guys out, trying
to get somewhere in the world, and the roar of that little engine, rattly,
knocky and fumy as it was, had a good sound to our ears. It was the only
motor we had. We wanted more than anything else in the world to hear it purr
along, and we didn't care how people laughed as they went around us, and
throwed their clouds of red dust back into our faces. Just take us into
town, little motor, and we'll get you some more gas.
A mile or two of up-grade, and the tank was empty. The driver throwed
the clutch in, shifted her into neutral, and kept wheeling. The speed read,
thirty, twenty, fifteen--and then fell down to five, three, four, three,
four, five, seven, ten, fifteen, twenty-five, and we all yelled and hollered
as loud and as long as our guts could pump air. Hooopeee! Made 'er! Over the
Goddam hump! Yippeee! It's all down hill from here to Alamagordo! To hell
with the oil companies! For the next half an hour we won't be needing you,
John D.! We laughed and told all kinds of good jokes going down the
piny-covered mountain--some of the best, wildest, prettiest fresh-smelling
country you could ever hope to find. And it was a free ride for us. Twenty
miles of coasting.
At the bottom we found Alamagordo, a nice little town scattered along a
trickling creek or two that chases down from out of the mountains around.
There you see the tall, gray-looking cottonwood sticking along the watered
places. Brown adobe shacks and houses of sun-dried brick, covered over with
plaster and homemade stucco of every color. The adobe houses of the Mexican
workers have stood there, some of them, for sixty, seventy-five, and over a
hundred years, flat. And the workers, a lot of them, the same way.
On the north side of town we coasted into a homey-looking service
station.
The man finally got around to coming out. One of the boys said, "We
want to swap you a good wrench for five gallons of gas, worth twice that
much. Good shape. Runs true, holds tight, good teeth, never been broke."
The service man took a long, interested, hungry look at the wrench.
Good tool. No junky wrench. He was really wanting to make the swap.
"Got as much as fifty cents cash money?" he asked.
"No ..." the boy answered him. Both forgot all about everything,
keeping quiet for a whole minute or more, and turning the wrench over and
over. One boy slid out of the door and walked through the shop toward the
men's rest room.
"Two bits cash ... ?" the mechanic asked without looking up.
"No ... no cash ..." the boy told him.
"Okay ... get your gas cap off; I'll swap with you boys just to show
you that my heart is in the right place."
The gas cap was turned, laid up on a fender, and the gas man held the
long brass nozzle down in the empty hole, and listened to the five gallons
flow into the tank; and the five gallons sounded lonesome and sad, and the
trade was made.
"Okay, Mister, you got the best of this deal. But that's what you're in
business for, I reckon; thanks," a boy said, and the old starter turned over
a few wheels that were gradually getting toothless, and the motor went over
quick, slow, and then a blue cloud of engine smoke puffed up under the
floorboards, and the good smell of burning oil told you that you weren't
quite walking--yet. Everybody heaved a sigh of relief. The man stood with
his good costly wrench in his hands, pitching it up and down, and smiling a
little-- nodding as we drove away.
My eyes fell for a short minute away from the healthy countryside, and
my gaze came upon an old tire tool on the floor of the car, a flat rusty
tire iron, an old pump--and a nice wrench, almost exactly like the one that
we'd just traded for gas; and I remembered the boy that went to the rest
room.
Uptown in Alamagordo, we stopped at the high, west end of the main
street. It was dinner time, but no money. Everybody was hungry and that went
without asking. I told the boys that I'd get out and hustle the town for
some quick signs, signs to paint on windows which I could paint in thirty
minutes or an hour, and we'd surely get enough to buy some day-old bakery
goods and milk to take out on the side of the road and eat. I felt like I
owed them something for my fare. I felt full of pep, rested and relieved,
now that there were five gallons of gas splashing around inside of our tank.
They agreed to let me hustle for a quick job, but it must not take too long.
I jumped out in a big rush, and started off down the street. I heard
one of them holler, "Meet you right here at this spot in an hour and no
later."
I yelled back, "Okie doke! Hour! No later." And I walked down through
the town. I peeled my eyes for an old sign that needed repainting, or a new
one to put on. I stuck my head into ten or fifteen places and got a job at a
shoe store, putting a picture of a man's shoe, a lady's shoe, and: Shoe
Repairing Guaranteed. Cowboy Boots a Specialty.
I had left my brushes in the seat of the car, so I made a hard run up
the main street. I got to the spot, puffing, grinning, and blowing like a
little horse, and looked around-- but no boys, and no car.
I trotted up and down the main street again, thinking that they might
have decided to come on down to where I was. But there wasn't the old Model
A that I'd learned to know and admire, not for being a champion at anything
but as a car that really tried. It was gone. So were my pardners. So were
all of my paint brushes. Just a little rag wound around some old brushes,
but they were Russian Red Sable, the best that money could buy, and about
twenty bucks of hard-earned money to me. They were my meal ticket.
Pulling from Alamagordo over to Las Cruces was one of the hardest times
I'd ever had. The valley highway turned into a dry, bare stretch of
low-lying foothills, too little to be mountains, and too hilly to be flat
desert. The hills fooled me completely. Running out from the high mountains,
they looked small and easy to walk over, but the highway bent and curled
around and got lost a half a dozen times on each little hill. You could see
the road ahead shining like a string of tinfoil flattened out, and then
you'd lose sight of it again and walk for hours and hours, and more hours,
and without ever coming to the part that you'd been looking at ahead for so
long.
I was always a big hand to walk along and look at the things along the
side of the road. Too curious to stand and wait for a ride. Too nervous to
set down and rest. Too struck with the traveling fever to wait. While the
other long strings of hitch-hikers was taking it easy in the shade back in
the town, I'd be tugging and walking myself to death over the curves,
wondering what was just around the next bend; walking to see some distant
object, which turned out to be just a big rock, or knoll, from which you
could see and wonder about other distant objects. Blisters on your feet,
shoes hot as a horse's hide. Still tearing along. I covered about fifteen
miles of country, and finally got so tired that I walked out to one side of
the road, laid down in the sun, and went off to sleep. I woke up every time
a car slid down the highway, and listened to the hot tires sing off a song,
and wondered if I didn't miss a good, easy, cool ride all of the way into
California. I couldn't rest.
Back on the road, I hung a ride to Las Cruces and was told that you
couldn't catch a freight there till the next day. I didn't want to lay over,
so I lit out walking toward Deming. Deming was the only town within a
hundred miles where you could catch one of them fast ones setting long
enough to get on it. I walked a long stretch on the way to Deming. It must
have been close to twenty miles. I walked until past midnight. A farmer
drove up and stopped and said that he would carry me ten miles. I took him
up, and that put me within about fifteen miles of Deming. Next morning I was
walking a couple of hours before sunup, and along about ten o'clock, got a
ride with a whole truckload of hitch-hikers. Most every man on the truck was
going to catch a freight at Deming. We found a whole bunch walking around
the yards and streets in Deming waiting to snag out. Deming is a good town
and a going town, but it's a good town to keep quiet in. Us free riders said
it was best not to go around spouting off at your mouth too much, or the
cops would pull you in just to show the taxpayers that they are earning
their salaries.
The train out of Deming was a fast one. I got to Tucson without doing
anything much, without even eating for a couple of days.
In the yards at Tucson, I didn't know where to go or what to do. The
train rolled in with us after midnight. The cars all banged, and the brake
shoes set down tight, and everything wheeled to a standstill.
I was hanging onto her, because she was a red-hot one, and had been
fast so far, and other trains had given her the right-of-way. I didn't want
to get off now, just for a cup of coffee or something. Besides, I didn't
have the nickel. I crawled down in a reefer hole--a hole in the top of a
fruit car where ice is packed--and smoked the makings with two men whose
faces I hadn't seen.
It was cold there in Tucson that night. We laid low for about a couple
of hours. After a while, a dark head and shoulders could be seen in the
square hole, set against the bright, icy moonlight night. Whoever it was,
said, "Boys, you c'n come on out--we're ditched on a siding. She ain't gonna
take these cars on no further."
"Ya mean we lost our train?"
"Yeah, we just missed 'er, that's all.''
And as the head and shoulders went out of sight above us, you could
hear men scrambling down the sides, hanging onto the shiny iron ladders, and
falling out by the tens and dozens all up and down the cinder track.
"Ditched. ..."
"Shore'n hell. ..."
"Coulda got'er if we'd of knowed it in time. I had this happen to me
before, right here in Tucson."
"Tucson's a bitch, boys, Tucson's a bitch."
"Why?"
"Oh--just is. Hell, I don't know why!"
"Just another town, ain't it?"
" Tain't no town, 'tain't no city. Not fer guys like you an' me. You'll
find out soon enough...."
"What's funny about Tucson?"
Men ganged around the black cars, and talked in low, grumbling voices
that seemed to be as rough as they sounded honest. Cigarets flared in the
dark. A little lantern started coming down the tracks toward where we were
ganged around talking. Flashlights flittered along the ground, and you could
see the funny shadows of the walking feet and legs of men, and the
underparts of the brake drums, air hoses, and couplings of the big, fast
cars.
"Checkers."
"Car knockers."
"Boys--scatter out!"
"Beat it!"
"And--remember--take an old 'bo's word for it, and stay th' hell out of
the city limits of Tucson."
"What kind of a dam town is this, anyhow?"
'Tucson--she's a rich man's bitch, that's what she is, and nothin' else
but."
Morning. Men are scattered and gone. A hundred men and more, rolled in
on that train last night, and it was cold. Now it's come morning, and men
seem to be gone. They've learned how to keep out of the way. They've learned
how to meet and talk about their hard traveling, and smoke each other's
snipes in the moonlight, or boil a pot of coffee among the weeds like
rabbits--hundreds of them, and when the sun comes out bright, they seem to
be gone.
Looking out across a low place, growing with the first sprigs of
something green and good to eat, I saw the men, and I knew who they were,
and what they were doing. They were knocking on doors, talking to
housewives, offering to work to earn a little piece of bread and meat, or
some cold biscuits, or potatoes and bread and a slice of strong onion;
something to stick to your ribs till you could get on down the line to where
you knew people, where you had friends who would put you up till you could
try to find some work. I felt a funny feeling come over me standing there.
I had always played music, painted signs, and managed to do some kind
of work to get a hold of a piece of money, with which I could walk in to
town legal, and buy anything I wanted to eat or drink. I'd always felt that
satisfied feeling of hearing a coin jingle across the counter, or at least,
doing some kind of work to pay for my meals. I'd missed whole days without a
meal. But I'd been pretty proud about bumming. I still hoped that I could
find some kind of short job to earn me something to eat. This was the
longest I had ever gone without anything to eat. More than two whole days
and nights.
This was a strange town, with a funny feeling hanging over it, a
feeling like there were lots of people in it--the Mexican workers, and the
white workers, and the travelers of all skins and colors of eyes, caught
hungry, hunting for some kind of work to do. I was too proud to go out like
the other men and knock at the doors.
I kept getting weaker and emptier. I got so nervous that I commenced
shaking, and couldn't hold myself still. I could smell a piece of bacon or
corncake frying at a half a mile away. The very thought of fruit made me
lick my hot lips. I kept shaking and looking blanker and blanker. My brain
didn't work as good as usual. I couldn't think. Just got into a stupor of
some kind, and sat there on the main line of the fast railroad, forgetting
about even being there... and thinking of homes, with ice boxes, cook
stoves, tables, hot meals, cold lunches, with hot coffee, ice-cold beer,
homemade wine--and friends and relatives. And I swore to pay more attention
to the hungry people that I would meet from there on down the line.
Pretty soon, a wiry-looking man came walking up across the low green
patch, with a brown paper sack wadded mp under his arm. He walked in my
direction until he was about fifteen feet away, and I could see the brown
stain of good tasting grease soaking through his sack. I even sniffed, and
stuck my nose up in the air, and swung my head in his direction as he got
closer; and I could smell, by real instinct, the good homemade bread, onion,
and salty pork that was in the sack. He sat down not more than fifty feet
away, under the heavy squared timbers of the under-rigging of a water tank,
and opened his sack and ate his meal, with me looking on.
He finished it slowly, taking his good easy time. He licked the ends of
his fingers, and turned his head sideways to keep from spilling any of the
drippings.
After he'd cleaned the sack out, he wadded it up properly and threw it
over his shoulder. I wondered if there was any crumbs in it. When he left, I
says to myself, I'll go and open it up and eat the crumbs. They'll put me on
to the next town. The man walked over to where I sat and said, "What the
hell are you doing settin' here on the main line ... ?"
"Waitin' fer a train," I said.
"You don't want one on top of you, do you?" he asked me.
"Nope,'' I says, "but I don't see none coming... .'' "How could you
with your back to it?" "Back?"
"Hell, yes, I seen guys end up like 'burger meat for just sueh
carelessness as that...."
"Pretty mornin'," I said to him. "You hungry?" he asked me.
"Mister, I'm just as empty as one of them automobile cars there, headed
back East to Detroit."
"How long you been this way?"
"More than two days."
"You're a dam fool-----Hit any houses for grub?"
"No--don't know which a way to strike out."
"Hell, you are a dam fool, for sure."
"I guess so."
"Guess, hell, I know so." He turned his eyes toward the better section
of town. "Don't go up in the fine part of town to try to work for a meal.
You'll starve to death, and they'll throw you in jail just for dying on the
streets. But see them little shacks and houses over yonder? That's where the
railroad workers live. You'll get a feed at the first house you go to, that
is, if you're honest, willing to work for it, and ain't afraid to tell it
just like it is." I nodded my head up and down, but I was listening.
Before he quit talking, one of the last things that he said, was, "I
been on the bum like this for a long time. I could have split my sack of
eats with you right here, but you wouldn't have got any good out of it that
way. Wouldn't learn you a dam thing. I had to learn it the hard way. I went
to the rich part of town, and I learnt what it was like; and then I went to
the working folks' end of town and seen what it was like. And now it's up to
you to go out for yourself and get you some grub when your belly's empty."
I thanked him two or three times, and we sat for a minute or two not
saying much. Just looking around. And then he got up sort of slow and easy,
and wishing me good luck, he walked away down the side of the rails.
I don't quite know what was going on inside my head. I got up in a
little while and looked around. First, to the north of me, then to the south
of me; and, if I'd been using what you call horse sense, I would have gone
to the north toward the shacks that belong to the railroad and farm workers.
But a curious feeling was fermenting in me, and my brain wasn't operating on
what you'd call pure sanity. I looked in the direction that my good sense
told me to go, and started walking in the direction that would lead me to
even less to eat, drink, less of a job of work, less friends and more hard
walking and sweating, that is, in the direction of the so-called "good" part
of town, where the "moneyed" folks live.
The time of day must have been pretty close to nine o'clock. There were
signs of people rustling around, moving and working, over around the shack
town; but, in the part of town that I was going toward, there was a dead
lull of heavy sleep and morning dreams.
You could look ahead and see a steeple sticking up out of the trees. It
comes up from a quiet little church house, A badly painted sign, crackling
from the desert heat and crisp nights, says something about the Brethren,
and so, feeling like a Brethren, you walk over and size the place up. There
in the morning sun so early, the yellow and brown leaves are wiggling on the
splattered sidewalk, like humping worms measuring off their humps, and the
sun is speckling the driveway that takes you to the minister's door. Under
the trees it gets colder and shadier till you come to the back door, and
climbing three rotted steps, knock a little knock.
Nothing happens. While you're listening through all of the rooms and
floors and halls of the old house, everything gets so quiet that the soft
Whoo Whoo of a switch engine back down in the yards seems to jar you.
Finally, after a minute or two of waiting, threatening to walk off, thinking
of the noise that your feet would make smashing the beans and seeds that had
fallen from the locust trees on to the driveway, you decide to stick at the
door, and knock again.
You hear somebody walking inside the house. It sounds padded, and
quiet, and far away. Like a leather-footed mountain lion walking in a cave.
And then it swishes through the kitchen, across the cold linoleum, and a
door clicks open, and a maid walks out onto the back porch, scooting along
in a blue-checkered house dress and tan apron, with a big pocket poked full
of dust rags of various kinds, a little tam jerked down over her ear, and
her hair jumping out into the morning breeze. She walks up to the screen
door, but doesn't open it.
"Ah--er--good morning, lady," you say to her.
She says to you, "What do you want?"
You say back to her, "Why, you see, I'm hunting for a job of work."
"Yeah?"
"Yes, I'm wondering if you've got a job of work that I could do to earn
a bite to eat, little snack of some kind. Grass cut. Scrape leaves. Trim
some hedge. Anything like that."
"Listen, young man," she tells you, straining her words through the
minister's screen, "there's a dozen of you people that come around here
every day knocking on this door. I don't want to make you feel bad, or
anything like that, but if the minister starts out to feed one of you,
you'll go off and tell a dozen others about it, and then they'll all be down
here wanting something to eat. You better get on out away from here, before
you wake him up, or he'll tell you worst than I'm telling you."
"Yes'm. Thank you, ma'am." And you're off down the driveway and on the
scent of another steeple.
I walked past another church. This one is made out of sandy-looking
rocks, slowly but surely wearing away, and going out of style. There are two
houses, one on each side, so I stood there for a minute wondering which one
belongs to the minister. It was a tough choice. But, on closer looks, I saw
that one house was sleepier than the other one, and I went to the sleepy
one. I was right. It belonged to the minister. I knocked at the back door. A
mean-tempered cat ran out from under the back porch and scampered through a
naked hedge. Here nothing happened. For five minutes I knocked; still nobody
woke up. So feeling ashamed of myself for even being there, I tiptoed out on
to the swaying sidewalk and sneaked off across town.
Then I come to a business street. Stores just stretching and yawning,
but not wide awake. I moseyed along looking in at the glass windows, warm
duds too high in price, and hot, sugary-smelling bakery goods piled up for
the delivery man.
A big cop, walking along behind me for half a block, looking over my
shoulder, finding out what I was up to. When I turned around, he was smiling
at me.
He said, "Good morning."
I said the same back to him.
He asked me, "Going to work?"
"Naw, just looking for work. Like to find a job, and hang around this
town for a while."
He looked over my head, and down the street as an early morning driver
ran a stop sign, and told me, "No work around here this time of the year."
"I'm generally pretty lucky at gittin' me a job. I'm a good clerk,
grocery store, drug store--paint signs to boot."
He talked out into thin air, and says, "You'll starve to death around
here. Or make the can."
"Can?"
"That's what I said, can."
"You mean, git in trouble?"
He nodded his head, yes. He meant trouble.
"What kinda trouble? I'm a good hand ta keep outta trouble," I went on
to say.
"Listen, boy, when you're not working in this town, you're already in
trouble, see? And there ain't no work for you, see? So you're in trouble
already." He nodded at a barber jingling his keys at a door.
I decided that the best play I could make was to cut loose from the
copper, and go on about my door knocking. So I acted like I was going
somewhere. I asked him, "Say, what time of the day is it, by the way?" I
tried to crowd a serious look onto my face.
He blowed some foggy breath out past a cigaret hanging limber on his
lip, and looked everywhere, except at me and said, "Time for you to get
going. Get off of these streets."
I kept quiet.
"Merchants gonna be coming down to open up their stores in about a
minute, and they don't want to think that I let a bird like you hang around
on the streets all night. Get going. Don't even look back."
And he watched me walk away, each of us knowing just about why the
other one acted like he did.
Rounding a warm corner, I met a man, that, to all looks, was a traveler
suffering from lack of funds. His clothes had been riding the freights, and
I was pretty certain that he was riding with them. Floppy hat, greasy
through the headband.
A crop of whiskers just about right for getting into jail. He was on
his way out of town.
I said, "Howdy. Good-morning."
"What'd the dick say to you?" He got right to the main subject.
"He was telling me how to clear Tucson of myself in five minutes flat,"
I told the man.
"Tough sonsaguns here, them 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. ТВ. 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 ТВ.
"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
ТВ, chemical ТВ from paint factories, rosin ТВ 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