Beggars of Life (3 page)

I watched him with fascinated interest. The man removed his cap and rubbed his rough hand over his smooth head, as though he were placing straggly locks in place.

The tramps laughed outright at the movement, and I joined them. The hairless tramp grinned crookedly as he looked at me.

“Whatsamatter, Red, you jealous?” he asked.

“No, I'd about as soon be red-headed as have no hair at all,” I replied.

“Was you born bald-headed?” asked a tramp.

“Nope, I had a fever, an' my hair come out. Some guy tells me to git it shaved an' it'd grow back in quicker.”

“Diden it never grow no more atall?” asked a hobo.

“If it ever did, it grew t'other way. I ain't never seen it.”

Suddenly there was great commotion outside, and the door was hastily opened. Two flashlights shone in our faces.

“Hands up, everybody,” said a rough voice behind one of the lights, as two policemen entered the shed. One of them was the officer who had drunk the coffee. We were lined against the wall and searched.

Our pockets searched, we were marched out of the shed to a spot where two other policemen stood stamping their feet in the snow. Then all four officers marched us to a patrol wagon which stood at the edge of the railroad yards. When we reached the wagon, a policeman said, “Jump in,” and all obeyed.

The wagon clattered over the rough streets until it reached the police station.

As it lumbered along, one tramp said to me, “You don't remember nothin' anyone said. Get me?”

“Gosh,” said one of the men who had lately slept on the sand, “I sure had a good snooze. Dreamt I was eatin' pancakes an' honey.”

The wagon drew up at the station and we were marched before the Chief of Police. That austere gentleman scanned us with a disdainful look on his face. “Take 'em away, an' bring 'em in one at a time,” he ordered.

We were taken to another room under the guard of two policemen. I was the first to be brought before the Chief, and I walked behind my captor with shaking knees, as though I were on the way to the gallows and had taken a last look at the world.

The Chief's eyes were small, and his face was heavy. He wore a big red moustache, and his whole appearance reminded me of the pictures of brigands I had seen in books of adventure.

“Well,” shouted the Chief, as he scowled at me, “what safe did you crack? How long you been out o' jail? Huh!”

I was scared beyond words, and the tears came to my eyes as I looked at the faces of my captors, who stood frowning.

“Talk up, lad, 'fess up. We'll let you off easy if you tell the truth,” said the Chief.

I blurted out the truth rapidly.

The Chief's face did not relax. “Did any of that bunch out there say anything about any jobs they'd done, or anything?”

“No, sir,” I answered.

“What did they talk about then?”

“Mostly about the weather, and one guy bein' bald-headed, and things.”

The questioning over, I was taken to a cell where I remained until all had been questioned and searched again.

Some money was found in the pocket of one of the hoboes, and we were taken through the deserted streets to an unpainted, frame building that was barely strong enough to face the winter winds. The policeman rang an old-fashioned doorbell, and presently the door was opened by the most withered old woman I have ever seen.

A garish light streamed behind her. Noticing the policeman, the old woman bowed obsequiously and bent her crooked back almost double.

“Come in, gentlemen,” she said, through teethless gums.

The drinker of vagabonds' coffee explained his errand, and gave the old woman the tramp's money, and hurried away with a parting farewell.

“Beat it out of here in the mornin'. If I ketch you 'round here to-morrow night I'll see that you get the Works. Lots o' room in the Work House for vags, you know.”

When he had gone, the woman's manner changed at once. Her servile smile disappeared, and hard lines crept around her withered mouth.

She picked up a small kerosene lamp, the globe of which was black with smoke on one side, and said. “Follow me.”

She held her gingham checked skirt tight about her fleshless ankles as she walked spryly up the stairs. We followed her until we reached the landing where she showed us many empty beds in an attic dormitory. Two kerosene lamps, fastened by brackets to the wall, burned dimly. The snores of sleeping men broke the silence.

There was but one small window in the attic room. It had four panes of glass, from which the putty had fallen away.

The old hag motioned us to the beds. She then held the lamp over her head and looked about the room. A man moaned in the bed next to me as he tossed uneasily on the mattress. The woman paused for a moment, and looked in the direction of the moaning man. She then turned toward the steps and went creaking down them.

The other sleepers had been undisturbed by our arrival from the street.

I lay awake and wondered what would become of the food which was left in the box. I thought of the one-eyed young tramp I had met so long ago. Many things passed through my mind, but still sleep remained far away as I listened to the whistling of a railroad engine that shrieked through the still night air.

Footsteps were heard on the rickety stairs, and presently the old woman's head appeared above the floor. She held the small lamp in front of her, and walked silently across the floor like a shrunken somnambulist. Two men followed her.

The old woman motioned the men to beds along the wall. Then, holding the lamp above her head, she peered about the room as before. The steps could be heard creaking as she descended them.

The men talked quietly for a few moments until they were ready for bed. One of them looked at the weakly burning lamp on the wall and said half aloud, “I think I'll douse this glim.” He walked over to the lamp and held his hand above the globe and smothered the flame.

The room was submerged in semi-darkness. The other lamp threw dark shadows on the wall at the other end of it.

The man in the bed next to me kept moaning, as though he found it difficult to breathe. “I wonder if he's sick?” I said to myself. I rose from my bed and leaned over him, gazing down into his face, which looked ghastly in the half light. I then walked across to the bed that held the man with the scarred face. He was lying with his hands across his chest, staring up at the ceiling.

“What's wrong, Kid?” he asked.

“I think the guy next to me's awful sick,” was my answer.

He jumped out of his bed at once, and found a match in his pocket with which he lit the lamp on the wall near him. He then followed me to the man's cot. His action aroused other vagabonds, who sat up in their beds.

The hobo shook the man's shoulder. “What's a matter, Bloke?” he asked.

“I'm a-l-l in,” was the weak reply.

The words travelled over the room, and brought several men from their beds.

“Bring me the glim,” commanded the tramp I had aroused.

A vagrant lifted it from the bracket on the wall, and handed it to him.

“Hold this glim, Kid,” he told me.

The light streamed over clots of blood on the soiled sheets of the bed. Two men lifted the form of the moaning vagabond, while two other rovers brought pillows and placed them behind him. Then he was gently placed against the pillows in a half-sitting position. “That might keep the red ink from flowin' outta his mouth,” said the scarred-face man. Turning to a staring hobo, he said, “Beat it down stairs and tell the old ghost that a guy's dyin' up here. Tell her to send for a croaker.” The man hurried down stairs.

The sick man doubled up in a convulsive heap. His ghastly eyes seemed ready to pop out of his head. He coughed so violently that the bed moved under him, as he tore his shirt from his chest in an effort to free his lungs. “Oh, oh,—oh,” he moaned.

“They ain't no air in the damn place. Open that window,” shouted someone. A tramp hurried to it. “It's nailed shut,” he announced. Another tramp hurried to the window with a shoe he had picked from the floor. He knocked out the dirty panes with the heel of it. The jagged glass cut his hand, and in a last blow he let go the shoe and it went hurtling through the broken glass.

“Damn it—there goes my shoe. I'll have to beat it outen the snow after it.”

The old woman came stumbling up the stairs. Her withered frame trembled with excitement. The rovers scurried for more clothing as she came.

The faded shawl fell from her shoulders as she stood at the foot of the bed and looked down into the face of the dying man.

“He's croakin',” blurted out a hobo. “Kin you phone a doctor?”

The lamp shook in the old hag's hand. “I have no phone,” she answered.

The man groaned louder and louder, and the blood oozed from his mouth, and trickled down the sides of his face, and fell upon his shoulders.

In another moment his frame became rigid. His eyes stared upward, like a thirst-tormented man who beholds a mirage in the desert. Then his arms stretched outward, and his jaws clamped together. There followed a racking spasm of coughing and the jaws clamped again. Then the lips parted in a half-cynical smile. The arms dropped on his chest; the shoulders fell backward. His throat rattled, his chest stopped heaving, and he fell back on the pillow as silent as a stone.

The old woman handed the lamp to a rover standing near her. The death-bed scene stilled every tongue. The woman spoke almost the first words she had uttered to the group of vagabonds. “It's too late for a doctor now,” she said, as she placed the sheet over the forever-silent wanderer.

I looked at the sheet which covered the dead man, and then clutched the arm of the hobo with the scarred face.

“It's hell, hey Kid,” said that rover. “The old boy's beat the train to the last division.”

“Yep,” said a tramp onlooker, “no more gettin' ditched, or nothin'.”

“It's the man-planter's turn now,” said another. “He'll git a hundred bucks fur throwin' him in a pine box.”

“Did anyone know him?” asked the old woman. No one answered.

“Where's his rags?” asked the man with the scarred face.

A tramp pulled them out from under the bed. The man with the scarred face searched them. He found a pocket-knife with two broken blades, a nickel, and three pennies. That was all.

“Give the eight cents to the man-planter fur a tip,” said a tramp.

“Nope,” said the man with the scarred face, “we'll give them to the landlady here.” The old lady reached out her withered and crooked hand. The nickel and three pennies fell dully into it. Her fingers closed over them.

“Who was he? Does anyone know?” quavered the old woman.

“Nobody knows, I guess,” answered the tramp who had broken the window panes.

“Well, it makes no dif. Who the hell cares 'bout a dead hobo?” said another vagrant.

“Maybe God does,” answered the old woman with a hard light in her eyes.

“Maybe He does,” said the man who had knocked the glass from the window, “but I'll go and tell the cops, so's they kin take him to the morgue. I gotta git my shoe anyhow outen the street.”

Within an hour two policemen came and carried the dead vagabond to a wagon below.

“He gits a free ride in the Black Mariah all to hisself,” said a tramp.

Then the dormitory became quiet once again.

I
N
five weeks it was spring.

I left the town in a box car one April morning and hoboed about Kentucky and Indiana for several weeks, and then secured a job with Amy, the Beautiful Fat Girl, whose side-show was the leading attraction with The One and Only Street Fair Company.

Amy weighed nearly five hundred pounds. Her act consisted of dancing upon a heavy glass stage while she held a long piece of white gauze across her shoulders. This was supposed to make her represent an angel. My job was to shift the differently coloured lights upon her as she danced.

An electric light shone under the small stage, which had not room enough under it for me to sit up. In a cramped position, I would shift green, yellow, blue, orange, and many other coloured pieces of isinglass above the light under the stage. The stage and Amy would take on the colour of the glass which I operated. I could hear the applause of the audience as Amy warmed up to her work of looking angelic. Her heavy feet would pound the stage directly above me, and I would always feel relieved when she moved away. Amy had once cracked one of the heavy glass pieces in the stage, and I, of course, hoped for the good of all concerned that she would not fall through it and break the electric globe.

Amy wore rings as large as bracelets. The diamonds in the rings were of many sizes. She had many chains. They ran like the ridges of mountains down to her throat. There was a small red valley between her throat and breasts, which rose like two mountains. They shook as she danced. She was quite the heaviest angel I had ever seen.

Amy drank liquor as no angel had ever drunk it before. Often, when the day's activities were over, she would get gloriously drunk and maudlin. At such times she would forget the strain of being a heavyweight angel and become immensely human.

Her “spieler,” as she called him, was not a man who could stand much liquor. He was called Happy Hi Holler, and in street fair circles he was considered the best side show barker in existence. He could have talked a ghost into seeing its shadow. But a few drinks sufficed for Happy Hi Holler. The first drink would make him melancholy, the second would make him sleepy, and the third would make him unconscious.

It was different with me. I was born with the gift of drinking. So, I became Amy's liquor secretary. It was my duty to see that she was always well supplied. This was a task which I found delightful. As the street fair always played a week in each town, and as those were the happy days when bootleggers did not exist, I had no trouble in supplying Amy with many quarts each day. At the end of each week, Amy would give me sixty dollars. This would relieve her of any worry about liquor for another week.

Amy had been a circus freak for years, and, strange to say, she had been a woman with many lovers. Happy Hi Holler had been her sweet-heart for over a year, but as he could drink very little, she found, as time went on, that they had less and less in common. Often when John Barleycorn had won another bout with Happy Hi, Amy would tell me of her affairs with men.

A Russian midget had loved her when she was with Barnum, but once in a quarrel, Amy had slapped him a trifle too hard, and almost dislocated his neck. After that Amy had insisted that her lovers be big men. I had learned something about women from those who had lived in Rabbit Town in the red light district of St. Marys. Old Raley had told me of their kindness, and whenever life treated me more harshly than usual, I would tell my troubles to them. All unconsciously they had helped me to understand the moods of Amy.

I never knew Amy to frame over three sentences in any conversation. She seldom talked unless asked a question directly, and then her answer was never one of over five words.

However, she liked people who talked, and I was gabbier when drunk than Happy Hi Holler was when sober. I remembered all the doggerel I had ever read, and nearly all the poetry. At that time I could remember almost the exact words of conversations held weeks before.

She had a favourite piece of doggerel, which was nearly endless. Verse after verse it gave in detail the history of one poor girl and her relatives.

Amy would listen to this doggerel for hours at a time and laugh loudly the while. Her many chins would pucker up as she laughed, and make her face as round as the full moon. Always the quart bottle of liquor was near her.

The seltzer bottle was always near the whiskey. Amy was fond of seltzer and whiskey high-balls. When she became particularly illuminated, she would act quite girlish, and pick up the seltzer bottle and squirt some of its contents in my face. I would join in the laugh, for Amy was my boss, and a generous one besides. I felt that she must have her fun, and though a trifle confused, I would keep on reciting doggerel while the seltzer itched in my eyes, and trickled down my face.

Amy's legs were as big as telephone poles, and her arms were larger than the legs of a big man.

She had all the vanities of her sex. Her cheeks were painted red like ripe Oregon apples all the time. Her shoes were always a size too small for her. She complained constantly about aching feet.

At about this time, one or two of the western states had decided to dispense with liquor. By taking such a drastic step they deprived their citizens of the opportunity of ever witnessing Amy do her angel dance. For Amy refused absolutely to travel with her caravan in dry territory. When I told her the result of one wet and dry election, I heard her speak the longest sentence I had ever heard her utter. “What the hell's the country comin' to?” she asked.

I was later to travel with a great circus through the south, and to wrestle a trick mule with a dog and pony show, but I was never to meet another person quite like Amy. And the parting day was close at hand.

Now, when the night comes down, the immense shadow of the big, free-hearted woman comes before me. She was a pagan with the simplicity of a child. She would swear terribly at me when the strain of her angel dance was upon her. And then, the elephantine woman would pet me when in her cups.

Her voice was as heavy as herself. She was not over thirty-five years old. Her hair was raven black. She combed it straight back from a forehead that sloped directly back from her eyebrows. Her nose was big and flat, and her nostrils were as large as pennies.

All her upper teeth were gold. “Damned nigger dentistry,” she called it. She would have no other women about. She seemed to wish nothing to remind her of daintiness, or grace.

The parting came in Sioux City. I was given sixty dollars to get the next week's ration of liquor. I fell in with some other men who had left the Street Fair Company. I became drunk, and was robbed of some of the money. Afraid to face Amy again, I left for Chicago.

I never heard of her again. But I remember. And I wonder if she does. It is not the first time that money has come between friends.