Beggars of Life (8 page)

“I
T'S
too late to bum any grub. Supper's over,” exclaimed Bill. “How much money you got, Pal?”

“Twenty cents.”

“Well, I got a dime. Let's find a saloon that's got a free lunch,” suggested Bill.

We found a place a few blocks away from the railroad. A crowd of workingmen stood at the bar, which was lined with large, heavy glasses filled, or partly filled, with beer.

We ordered beer, and helped ourselves to the free lunch without shame. Bill ordered two more glasses of beer with his last dime. If it had not been the law of the road, it would still have been Bill's law—to spend all and break even to the last.

“I got another dime, Bill. We'll go fifty-fifty with it,” I said.

“Nope, the devil with it. We'll get two more beers. A guy may as well be broke as have a nickel.”

“Better come with me, Bill,” I urged.

“Nope, I'll hit the stem and beg enough to get me to Chi on a street car. She's only 'bout thirty miles now.”

The two of us walked to the railroad yards where I was to take a freight for Davenport, and from there to the wheat country.

We made a strange appearance. I was hatless and coatless, and my shirt was badly torn across the back. Bill's shoes were held to his feet by small wires. His trousers were torn at the knees, and he was also coatless. But care walked not with us. We had just eaten, and we hummed a hobo ditty.

Thus humming, we reached the far end of the yards and waited for a train for Davenport.

It came at last, and I bade Bill a hasty farewell, and climbed aboard.

“See you in Chi in two months, Bill.”

“Sure thing, Kid. Be good. Watch for the bulls at Marion. They used to be hostile.”

“All right. So long, Old Scout,” I yelled.

The train curled like an immense dark snake before it straightened itself on the main track

As it rumbled along the rails, the engine whistle shrieking for crossings, I stood on the bumpers between two cars and dreamed of many things.

Now and then a languor came over me and my eyes became heavy. I gripped the iron brake-beam until my wrists ached and tiny particles of rust worked their way into the palms of my hands. The roaring train lashed through the air. The wind blew viciously between the cars. It nearly blew the torn shirt from my body. My hair was wind-tangled and full of cinders.

I had been told on the road that by long practice hoboes could sleep while standing up on the blind baggage of a mail train. I doubted this, as Bill had told me of a man who had been riding the Limited out of Cheyenne with him one bitter night. The man was half drunk, and all Bill's prodding could not keep him awake.

“You better git off the next stop. She's only twenty miles now. You kin never stand the gaff,” said Bill.

“All right, Mate. I'll vamoose at the next stop,” the man answered, and his bleared eyes half closed as he spoke.

In a short time, the train lurched quickly at a sharp curve, and a shriek went up like that of an animal in pain. Bill grabbed at the falling body of the man, and nearly fell under the train himself. He caught the tail of the man's coat. It ripped up the back, and in another second its owner had disappeared. Bill held a piece of the coat in his hand.

An aching came into my muscles, and my head went dizzy for a moment. It cleared and became lighter. I grew alarmed, but the train rolled on oblivious of a hobo kid with light head and aching muscles.

I wore a heavy leather belt several sizes too large for me. This I unbuckled and fastened around the center of my body and the brake-beam. Breathing easier after this, the fate of the unknown hobo passed from my mind.

A cold sweat came out on my forehead and body. The wind dried it quickly, and I grew chill.

After four or five hours, I reached Rock Island, across the Mississippi river from Davenport, Iowa.

Three cities are at this point of the river, Rock Island, Moline, and Davenport. The mighty river rolls, a sheet of turbid yellow water, a mile wide, between the Illinois and Iowa shores.

Too weary to go far in search of shelter, I slept in a lumber yard on some fresh pine boards until morning. The odour of the wood was not unpleasant, and I soon slumbered like a worn-out soldier at the end of a long day's march.

I was awakened in the morning by workmen moving lumber. A man wearing a carpenter's apron saw me crawl out from under the boards.

“Hello, Kid. On the turf, eh?”

“Sure thing.”

“Ain't you got no hat event?”

“No, I haven't,” I answered, as I ran my hands through my hair.

“There's one hanging up in the shed here,” said the man. “It ain't much, but it's better'n nothin'.”

I walked to the shed with the man, who handed me a white hat which he took from a nail on the wall. I placed it on my head, and it quickly fell to my ears and rested there.

The man laughed at the picture I made. “It's better'n nothin',” he repeated.

“Yep,” said I. “Thanks. It's better'n nothin'.”

I was soon out of the lumber yard and at the back door of a house on a side street. I had no luck in obtaining food there, and none at the next four houses. The woman at the sixth house invited me into the kitchen and warmed up the remainder of the family breakfast for me.

She wore a tightly fitting calico dress, buttoned down the front. Her face was intensely sharp, and her eyes danced nervously. Her hair had been artificially waved over her ears, and completely hid them from view. She wore a wedding ring that was several sizes too large for her shrivelling finger.

She kept up an endless chatter while she prepared the meal, and I, always reticent with those of whom I begged, was slightly confused. But that concerned the woman not at all. I was a good listener, and she was sorely troubled. “You know,” she said, “I never turn anybody away from my door, for I have a brother who is on the road somewhere, if he's alive, and I wouldn't like anyone to turn him away hungry.” I felt sorry for the woman, but at the moment I was quite glad that her brother was a tramp. She prepared me a “handout” as I ate at the table.

The woman noticed my torn shirt, and went into another room and returned with one several sizes too large for me. It was a black shirt with white stripes, of a type seldom worn by hoboes. The usual shirt worn by tramps is one made of black satine, and is called a “thousand-mile shirt” for the reason that it can be worn on a trip lasting hundreds of miles, or weeks at a time, if necessity arises.

Thanking her for the shirt and the small package of food, I walked out of the yard thinking of her wandering brother.

Near the river I met another hobo who looked as though he had been in a brawl.

“Which way, 'Bo?” I asked.

“Goin' down to scrub up. Come an' go 'long. I jist bummed a towel and some soap. Woman said her brother's a bum.”

“The devil she did. Was she a little skinny woman, gabbier'n a parrot?” I enquired.

“Naw, this jane's bigger'n a sprinklin' wagon,” answered the tramp.

“Gosh, they must all have brothers on the bum A woman told me that this morning, too,” said I.

“Zazzo? Well, I bumped into a nice little rumpus over'n Clinton t'other day. Some 'boes fastens a couple o' dicks to some trees wit' their own bracelers. I comes a whistlin' in there like a cattle train. I'd heard o' sappin' days in other states, but I never bumped into one in this ‘un before. Well, sir, they ketches four of us and makes us run the ga'ntlet, and believe me, I run. The natives stands on each side for a quarter of a mile or more. It seems like a thousand miles to me. They hit us wit' stones and whips. All them yaps could see was the bottom o' my feet hotfootin' it down between 'em. Some guy caught me wit' a rock here where you see this bump. One o' the bums fell down behin' me, an' they all crowds aroun' him and beats him up good. That give me a chance to get outta some o' the beatin'.

“I'll bet there was two hundred men there, an' a dozen women. I guess a bum deserves a beatin' up, but I didn't do nothin' to them people, an' I didn't even know that anybody beat them dicks up.”

The tramp's face was bruised and he grunted as he walked. He carried a ragged coat across his left arm. His sleeves were rolled above his elbows, and his right forearm was black and blue.

I walked with him until we came to a secluded spot at a bend in the yellow water, where we bathed.

The hobo's body was black and blue in spots. His face twitched as he rubbed the soap over it.

After we had bathed and dressed, we sat on the bank and watched a passenger boat ploughing slowly through the water in the direction of New Orleans.

“I went down this river from St. Paul to New Orleans in a canoe four years ago. Had the best time I ever had in my life,” said the bum with the bruised body.

“Have you been on the road long?” I asked.

“Dang near all my life,” was the reply. “I been darn near ev'rywhere in the world. I druv stakes wit' Barnum's circus all over Europe, Aziah, Aferca, and hell's half acre. I s'pose I'll stay on the road all the rest o' my life, 'less I run into a couple of more sappin' days.” There was a silence for some moments, which was followed by the hobo's question, “You been on the road long, Kid?”

“Not so long,” I replied.

“Ever have a jocker? You're a purty smart lookin' boy.”

I had long before heard what a “jocker” was in hobo life, a hobo who took a weak boy and made him a sort of slave to beg and run errands and steal for him. I had heard of boys who were called “punks” in hobo life, who were loaned, traded, and even sold to other tramps. The boys who become slaves to “jockers” are of the weaker and more degenerate type. Bill told me of a case where the boy was whipped by his “jocker” for the most trivial offense, and every day of the year he was forced to bring a dollar to him—which he begged.

The tramp always ruled the “punk” by fear. He practiced the same crude and brutal psychology that the pimp practised over the weak woman of the underworld. And always, the boy obeyed with a dog-like affection. Perhaps it was because he had nothing else in life, as, false sentimental reports to the contrary, hobo boys always come from the swollen ranks of poverty and degradation.

I was never able to learn the derivation of the word “punk,” as these boys were called, but years later, in more polite society, when I heard it spoken, I experienced a slight shock, as though I were listening to a bishop swearing out loud, or talking intelligently.

I thought of what the one-eyed youthful tramp had said to me so long ago in St. Marys.

“Nope, I'd bust a jocker on the nose that ‘ud try to make me out a sucker,” I blurted as though I had just happened to think of it.

The hobo looked sideways at me, and winced as he moved his bruised body. “'Course it's all right. Some kids like a ‘jocker,'” he stammered after a moment.

“What becomes o' the punk kids when they get big?” I asked.

“Oh, they turn out to be perfessional ‘jockers' themselves, an' then they gits kids to be their ‘punks,'” was the answer.

My mind turned to Bill and veered to other boys like him. I had heard an old tramp say that once a tramp always a tramp, and I wondered just how many ever left the road for good. I had read of the wanderlust in books, and how it drove men on to far parts of the earth. In spite of all the hardships through which I had recently passed, I found a charm about the road that I had not known elsewhere. I wondered vaguely then about the future, but it soon passed out of my mind, and the immediate problem of the day took its place.

“Is Davenport a good burg to scoff in?” I asked the other hobo.

“Sure thing,” replied the sapping-day victim. “There's lots of foreigners over there, and they allus give what they got. Then there's the red light district along the river. Them women'll feed anybody, and they're nuts about tramp kids with red hair. Lots o' times they give cash, too. Do you drink?” asked the tramp.

“Some,” I answered, “when I get it.”

“Well, get a few snoozers in you an' tell 'em stories and recite poetry to 'em. They fall for that like a yegg does for a safe.”

“Yeah, I know. I think I'll hunt 'em up.”

I walked slowly along the river with the bruised tramp until we came to the foot-bridge that crossed it. I then left him, and hurried for the water front at Davenport just as the sun reached the highest point in the sky.

A
SQUALID
row of houses faced the river in Davenport. No one moved in or out of them. The curtains were completely drawn. A card was inserted in each door, and above the card was a square opening, which was closed by a slide that operated from within.

I stopped at a house which had the title “Madame Lenore LeBrun” on the door. I hesitated a moment, and rang the bell. It clangoured through the house like a bell in a tomb. My knees shook as the slide was pushed back and a voice asked from within, “what you want?”

“Somethin' to eat,” I answered.

The door opened, and I walked inside.

A heavy and flabby woman stood under the red light in the hall. She wore a red Mother Hubbard gown. A string of pearls was about her neck, and her left hand was heavy with diamonds. Her eyes were puffed, and deep wrinkles ran from the corners of them. Her hair was artificially blond, and its youthful colour contrasted strangely with her middle-aged and dissolute features.

“So you're broke, huh, Kid?” she said.

“Yes, mum, I'm all out and down.”

“Don't mum me, Kid. Call me Lenore.”

“All right.”

“Nobody up but me. Big night last night. Elks' convention in town. Girls all stewed.” And then, “Where you from, Kid?”

“Ohio.”

“Damned good place to be from. Only I ain't goin' back. I used to run a joint there on George Street in Cincy. Cops wanted all the dough, so I left.”

A decanter, half-filled with brandy was on a highly polished table. Many glasses stood around it, the dregs of liquor still in them. The woman lifted one of the glasses, and noticed the imprint of the bottom of it on the polished table.

“None o' these cats care for a fellow's furniture. Never marry a sport, Kid. They're bum housekeepers. Will you have a shot?”

“Sure thing,” I blurted out. My ready answer astonished the woman, and her flabby hand shook as she poured the drink. I tossed it down like a politician. The woman stared incredulously.

“When d'you learn to drink like that?” she asked.

“Never had to learn. It just comes natural.”

“Well, it's a bum gift for a bum. Why don't you go to work?”

The brandy teemed in my head. “Why don't you?” was my comeback.

The woman stared. “Well, I'll be damned. The nerve of some people's brats. I belong to the oldest profession in the world. I'm a business woman.” Her eyes puckered together. “You're good, Kid. Have another shot. I get a kick out of seein' you drink.”

“And I get a kick drinkin',” I replied, as I took the proffered drink and downed it easily. The woman looked intently as before.

“Marvellous. You got a fine drunken future ahead o' you, Kid.”

The bell rang again. “That damn thing scares me every time it rings. It sounds like the bell on a lost cow,” said the woman. She looked hastily about the room, and up at the gilded-framed pictures of nude women on the walls. I picked up my hat, which lay on a leather lounge.

“Listen, Kid, here's two bucks. Beat it if I open the door.”

She pushed back the slide and asked some questions. Men's voices answered.

The door opened, and I walked into the street.

The sun glared fiercely down. There was hardly a ripple on the water of the river. It lay like a great yellow sheet of glass that had hardened before becoming completely smooth.

The door opened in a house nearby and I heard a player-piano turning out mechanical music. I walked into a restaurant on the corner.

The place reeked of the odour of beefsteak and onions. A waiter took orders with speed and accuracy. “Order of B. and O. (beefsteak and onions). Smother it.” A man ordered eggs on toast. “Two on a raft wit' their eyes open,” yelled the waiter.

After I had eaten, I walked along the river until I came to a shady spot that afforded a view of the Illinois shore. Two hard maple trees and an elm formed a triangle that sloped toward the water.

As the spot had been used by wanderers before, some paper-covered books and old magazines were in a box under the elm.

I tried to read, but my head was a whirl with a brandied dream… . I would go away to the west and make a fortune. I would come back to the town in Ohio and show the people there a thing or two. I would write a book. I'd go into Chicago and quit the road. To the devil with the harvest fields of South Dakota… . I finally dozed off to sleep and dreamed that I had made a million in Alaska, and that I had returned to devote my time to having a reporter write books which I signed.

Some ants bit me until I awoke and brushed them away. I turned over on my side and went to sleep again.

The sun was half-way down the sky when I awoke the second time. A heavy languor was upon me, and my muscles ached. A cold sweat was upon my forehead. The three trees danced like fantastic green bushes before my eyes. The river compressed itself into a tiny stream and swelled suddenly to a body of water as large as the Forty-Acre Pond near St. Marys.

A tired-looking negro sat under the elm. His shirt was open, and his rimless hat was beside him on the ground. His shoes were near the hat, and one lay on its side. I could see through the sole of it. The man was about forty years old, and very black. His eyes were yellow, large, and soft, with the beaten look of a stray dog's.

I started suddenly when I saw him, for he sat as silent as a black stone on a grave.

“I been watchin' you sleep, white boy, an' you suah slep' soun'.”

I held my forehead for a moment, then asked, “How long you been here?”

“'Bout a houh an' a half,” was the reply.

“You could of rolled me for my change, couldn't you? I was all in.”

“Not me, brotah. I don't roll no one. Dough's hahd enuff to git when you's all in, down an' out. Ah knows.”

“Well, listen, I got about a dollar and forty cents. I'll buy the grub and a half-pint of booze if you'll go after it,” I bargained.

“That'll be fine. I hain't had nuffin' to eat since mawnin',” replied the negro.

I then hesitated a moment. “Are you sure you'll come back?” and then, not waiting for an answer, I went on, “but I'll take a chance.” I handed the negro the money, and he hurriedly put his shoes on and walked gingerly toward the town.

I looked at the river until a languor overtook me, and then, forgetful of the river, the negro, and all, I slept again.

A hand shook my shoulder. The negro had opened the packages. Crackers and cold meats were spread upon a newspaper on the ground.

“Heah you is, white boy,” said the negro.

We ate the lunch in the gathering twilight.

A murky haze spread over the river, and dark and red splotches of colour appeared in the western sky. A gasoline yacht chugged through the water, its lights being visible long after the echo of its noise had subsided.

A quiet gathered around us and, as if in obedience to some deep inner law, we did not talk for some time. Finally, I broke the silence with the usual question of the road, “Which way, 'Bo?”

“Ah's goin' nawth, jist as fah nawth as I kin git,” answered the negro. “Ah've only bin outta jail seben month daown saouth. Ah do fifteen yeah, evah since I waz twenty-t'ree yeahs old. Ah pick enuff cotton and build enuff road, an' haul enuff cane to plug up that ol' riber.”

“What ‘ud they stick you in jail for?” I mumbled.

“I diden do nuffen. Anotheh niggah cuts me wit' a razah, an' I cuts 'im back, an' they soaks me five yeah. The otheh niggah doan even die.

“I serbes my time, an' about the last six months foah it's up, they hiahs me out to some big rich guy daown theah. He kep' me ownin' 'im so much I wuke ten yeahs for nuthin'.

“Ev'ry time I git a paih ova-alls, he charges me some moah, an' tells me I has to wuk it out. I ask him when I git free, an' he say he lynch me ah talk to 'im 'bout that.

“All the niggahs daown in Geoghia gits a dollah if they turns a runway niggah in. Ah know that, but ah takes a chance one time, and floats down the riber on a log. I has a old bull dog, but dey waz nothin' else to do but leabe him. I cried like a little niggah baby on that log, an Ah cries naow when I t'inks ob him. Poor ol' Moses wit' his eah all chawed up a runnin' up an' down the bank a barkin' foh me.

“I floats down the riber 'long time till I meets a niggah an' blabs ma tr'ubles to 'im, an' he wants to tuhn me in foh a dollah. You bet I doan do that no moah, niggah o' no niggah. Nobody t'all. Yu kain't trust niggahs neitha'.

“Ah makes ma way to Memfus, and gits a job, and woaks two month, an' who do Ah see one day but a drummah who sells ma boss stuff in Geoghia. He say, ‘Niggah, youh boss evah ketch you, he sure string you up, an' gibe the buzzahds some black meat. You bettah move on.' I was skeered white, an' I moved, too.

“I walks ‘way off to Kaintucky, an' I gits a job in Bowlin' Green. I stays theah fouh month, an' the man who I wouk foh laikes me, an' I go to school wit' lotta little kids ‘tree mont'. They all laughs 'bout me, great big niggah wit' dem chillun, but ah leahns to read a little. Den who does I meet but dat salesman agin, an' he tries to coax me to git drunk wit' him. Den he tells me he waz offehed two hunder' dollahs to git me back, 'cause I's a good woukin' niggah. I gits skeered and runs ‘way from theah an' doan say nuffin' to nobody, nohow. I just keep right on agoin'. Niggah tells me'n Dabenpoaht dat dey kain't takes you back 'less guvanah say so, but I knows bettah, 'cause I knows my old boss. He kills a niggah laike he woul' a snake. I knows—I see 'im do it. Niggah botha him one time, an' he shoot 'im, an' he say, ‘Take dat niggah ‘way dere,' an' I does. I bet he miss me, 'cause ah use to hitch up hawse an' take 'im church ebery Sunday. I'll say Ah's goin' nawth, an' Ah'll stay nawth, too.”

“You served fifteen years on a five-year's sentence!”

“You bet, an' I ain't goin' back neithah. Dey kin talk 'bout de souf all dey want to, de nawth's good 'nuff foh me.”

The colours left the sky. The stars came out. The moon burnished the river into gold.

I looked at the negro, who gazed silently at the water. His face was merged more or less with the night, but his yellowish-white eyes were distinct.

“You've had a devil of a time, haven't you, old boy?” I said.

“I suah has. A niggah ain't got no chance, no time, no wheah, nohow.”

“You've heard of Booker T. Washington, haven't you?”

“Yeah, white boy, I's heahd of Jawge and Bookeh both. Dat's 'bout all I knows 'bout 'em. I jist kin read a little in a primah, dat's all.”

Late into the night I told the child-like rover about the two Washingtons, and Toussaint L'Ouverture, the negro liberator whom the tricky Napoleon betrayed.

When early morning came, we separated after having coffee and rolls in a dismal restaurant.

I left for Chicago and the negro for Minneapolis.

“I won't forgit you, white boy.”

“Nor me you, neither. So long.”