Norwood (7 page)

“Have you got a dollar to help on the gas?”

The man looked frightened. “No sir, I sure don't. All I got is sixty cents and I was going to get my wife some ice cream with that. That's why I'm thumbing. I'm supposed to get a little check Friday.”

The bread man stopped the truck and nodded at Norwood. “Well, it wouldn't be fair to him if I let you ride. He paid his dollar.”

“I don't care,” said Norwood, “It's all right with me.”

But the bread man made no move to get the truck going again. He looked impassively into the distance.

“I tell you what, if you'll let me ride I'll try to do something nice for somebody else on down the road. I'll return the favor that way. I'll do somebody else a good deed and tell them to pass it on. . . . Maybe it'll go all the way around the world. . . .”

It was no use. The man got out with his sack of tomatoes after riding fifty yards. “Well . . . thank you anyway. . . . I'm sorry . . . if it was Friday I would have the money.” He was pained at having caused trouble. Everybody was right but him.

The bread man drove away and glanced at Norwood to see how he was taking it. “He wasn't going to do anything for anybody down the road. That was a load of crap.”

“I think he would have,” said Norwood. “You ought to let him ride.”

“You think so, huh? Why didn't you pay his dollar?”

“I didn't think about that. I guess I could have. . . . Let's go back and get him.”

“I'm not running a bus service. Anyway, I didn't like his personality.”

“You should of let him ride.”

“Maybe
you
don't like
my
personality.”

“I don't know you very well.”

“Maybe you think I have personality trouble.”

“I just don't know you.”

“That's not any kind of answer. Why don't you say what you think? You think I don't know that some people don't like me because of my personality? I know that. My wife wants me to take a course. They're giving one at the hotel next week that's supposed to help you in sales work. It makes people like you.”

“Why don't you take it?”

“What do you know about it? You're just a hitchhiker begging rides.”

“Well . . .”

“You saw me back there roughing up that bread, didn't you?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“I got nothing to hide.
They
started it. What do you want me to do?”

“It's none of my business.”

“You mighty right it's not. The Vita-White guys
step
on my bread. Mash it all in with their feet. No telling what kind of germs is on their shoes. They don't care. A little child's death don't mean anything to them.”

“I believe I'll get out along here, just anywhere.”

“I'm going on in to town.”

“I believe I'll get out anyway.”

“That's fine with me. I'll be glad to get rid of you. You're not friendly.”

He pulled over on the shoulder and stopped short. Norwood said, “much oblige,” and got out.

“You need to do something about your personality, hitchhiker. That's what you need.”

“What
you
need is about forty dollars worth of front end work on this truck,” said Norwood. “Some new kingpins.”

“I hope don't nobody pick you up.”

“No use in you hoping that. Somebody will.”

At a pool hall in Indianapolis a rack boy with a Junior Tracy haircut and a good opinion of himself told Norwood that if he was going to New York he wouldn't bother with hitchhiking, he would go out to the Pennsylvania yards and catch him a freight train. Norwood shot snooker with him most of the afternoon and lost $2.75, then downed two chili dogs and went out to the rail yards and wandered around in the dark.

He had never done this before. There were tracks and more tracks and empty flatcars and switch engines banging around and trains coming in and trains going out. The thing was to ask somebody. He walked over to the station and talked to a Negro man in coveralls who was pushing a mail buggy. The man pointed out a freight train that was being made up for Philadelphia and said be careful. Norwood circled all the way around to the end of the train—instead of just crawling over a coupling—and came back up the other side where it was darker. He walked along like an inspector giving all the boxcar hatches a shake, and finally found one he liked. It was a faded blue L & N car with a banged-up door that wouldn't close all the way. No one could lock that door on him. He slid it back and struck a match and looked in. Big sacks of flour, hundred-pounders, were stacked high at each end of the car, almost to the roof. There was an open space in the middle of the car. He pushed his bag and guitar in and climbed in after them.

It was pitch-dark inside and hot, close, airless. Well, he would be riding at night. It would be cooler when they started moving. The floor was nothing but splinters. He wished he had a flashlight. It was probably dangerous striking matches with all that flour. He pulled some of the sacks down and fashioned himself a place to sleep. It looked like a nest for some bird that never lived on this earth. He slipped his boots off and settled back into it and tipped his hat over his eyes range style. No. Better be ready for a fast move. Better put the boots back on. Like getting caught by the gooks in one of those sleeping bags that zipped only halfway down. A suicide bag. He ate a dime Payday and then peeled an orange and ate it and lay there quiet and watchful in that ghostly Pillsbury darkness until the train moved.

It started with a clanging jerk. Norwood was half asleep. He turned on his side and adjusted his hat. Drops of sweat ran across his back and tickled. He was sweating like a hog. Did hogs sweat? No. That's why they like mudholes. Mules did, and horses. Out in the sun they had shiny wet skins. He tried to remember what a hog's skin looked like out in the sun. He couldn't remember seeing a hog in the sun. For any length of time. Hogs didn't have to work. Had anybody ever tried to
make
one work? Maybe they tried it a long time ago in history, and just gave up. And told their sons not to bother with it any more. Better not leave the guitar out loose like that. All kinds of folks riding trains. He looped the shoulder cord around his wrist a couple of times. The bag was under his head, safe. Everything was secured. The head is secured. Some boot standing there at the door with a swab at port arms trying to keep you out. Even when it was secured for regimental inspection they had to keep one bowl and one urinal open. Everybody knew that. Why did they keep on trying to pull that swab on you? Norwood dozed and woke and blew flour out of his nose and slept and groaned and dreamed crazy dreams about Miss Phillips. The train stopped and started all night long. It seemed to last about three days.

The train was slowing for the block in Philadelphia when Norwood suddenly awoke. He was asleep one second and wide awake the next. A thin wall of sunlight was coming through the doorway crack, with a lot of stuff dancing around in it. Something was wrong. It was his feet. He felt air on his feet. He sat up and there wasn't anything on them except a pair of J. C. Penney Argyles. Somebody had taken his thirty-eight-dollar stovepipe boots right off his feet.
“Son of a bitch!”
He got up and climbed over the floor and pulled sacks this way and that way but there was no one to be found, and no boots.

Soon it was so thick with flour dust in the car that he had to slam one of the doors back and stick his head out for air. The trouble was, two of the sacks had broken. After he caught his breath he dragged them over and pushed them out. The second one snagged on the bad door and hung there for a moment blowing flour up in his face. Then he began
flinging
sacks out, good ones, till he got a cramp in his neck.

The train entered the yard with long blasts from the diesel horn and as it lurched in for a stop Norwood grabbed up his gear and bailed out in his sock feet. It stung. He squatted there and looked long and hard up and down the train, through the wheels, to see if anybody else was jumping off. Nobody. He dusted himself off, whacking his trousers with his hat, and decided to do some backtracking along the roadbed.

He couldn't walk far. The rocks and clinkers hurt his feet and he sat down on a stack of crossties to put on another layer of socks. While he was sitting there smoking a cigarette he saw two men in the distance coming up the tracks. One of them was wearing a luminous orange jacket. It was blinding. He might have had some job that required him to be easily spotted by aircraft. Norwood waited.

The one with the jacket was a tall whiskery man. He was also wearing a St. Louis Cardinal's baseball cap. By his side, stepping smartly along with a knotty walking stick, was a short angry little man with a knapsack on his back. He was covered from head to toe with flour, except right around his eyes and mouth.

“What happened to you, neighbor?” said Norwood.

“You should of seen it,” said the man with the Cardinal cap. “Some thug was throwing flour out of a boxcar and Eugene here was walking along not thinking about anything when one of 'em hit him. One of them sacks.”

“Was he hurt?”

“Well, it didn't hurt him, but it didn't help him none either.”

He wanted to stop and talk about it some more, the sexagenarian Cardinal, but his short chum kept moving. He didn't even glance at Norwood. He looked like a man who was going somewhere to report something. Norwood had to run around in front of him to stop him. “Hey wait a minute. I better have a look in that pack. Somebody got my boots last night.” The flour man looked up and fixed Norwood with two evil red eyes, but said nothing. The Cardinal did not like the turn things had taken. Maybe he could explain it again.

“We don't know anything about any boots. Eugene got hit with some flour, that's all. Some thug was throwing it off the train. I got hit with a mail pouch myself once but it wasn't anything like this. This was like a flour bomb went off.”

Norwood moved around behind the flour man and reached up to undo the straps on the knapsack. With that, the flour man went into action. He was like lightning. He was a tiger. He spun around and hit Norwood on the arms three or four times with his stick and when it broke he popped Norwood in the mouth with a straight left and then he jumped up on his back and stuck there like a small white bear. The knapsack on
his
back was like a yet smaller bear.

“Look out! Look out!” the Cardinal was saying. He had jumped back well clear of the action. “Turn him loose, Eugene! He's another Hitler!”

Norwood was dancing around jabbing at the man with his elbows trying to shake him off. He backed him up and bumped him against the crossties. The man's ankles were locked together in front and Norwood broke them loose but the man had a hold on his neck that wouldn't quit. “You better get him off before I bust his head open,” said Norwood, stopping to rest a minute. He was breathing hard. His upper lip was bloody.

The Cardinal moved in a little closer. Maybe something could be worked out now. “Eugene don't weigh very much, does he?” he said.

“I still don't want him on my back.”

“He's light enough to be a jockey. Of course he's way too old.”

“How long does he generally hang on?”

“I don't know. I never seen him do that before. . . . They say a snapping turtle won't let go till it thunders. That's what I've heard. I never was bit by a turtle. My oldest sister was bit by a mad fox. They didn't have any screens on their house and it come in a window one night and nipped her on the leg like a little dog will do. They carried that fox's head on in to Birmingham in some ice and said it was mad and she had to take all them shots. She said she hoped she never did get bit by nair another one.”

Norwood kicked his feet forward and fell backward on the flour man and they hit the deck in a puff of white. The flour man was squeezed between Norwood and the pack and it knocked the wind out of him. He made a lung noise like
gunh!
He turned loose and sat up and brushed himself off a little, still defiant but not fighting any more. Norwood opened the knapsack and poked around in it. There were rolled-up clothes and a cast-iron skillet and pie pans and a can of Granger and cotton blankets and copies of
True Police Cases
and a mashed store cake and crackers and cans of chili and lima beans and an insulated plastic cup and a bottle of 666 Tonic and a clock and an old five-shot top-breaking .32 revolver with a heavy fluted barrel and taped-on grips. No boots. But in one of the side pouches he did find some shoes.

They were old-timers' high tops with elastic strips on the sides. Norwood tried them on and walked around flexing them and looking at them in profile. They were plenty loose. Eugene didn't have feet, he had flippers. Norwood said, “I'll give you two dollars for these dudes.”

“Those are my house shoes,” said Eugene, speaking for the first time and the last.

“A man comes along and needs some shoes, you ought to want to help him. You already got some good shoes on.”

“Eugene doesn't want to sell his house shoes,” said the Cardinal.

“
You
stay out of this,” said Norwood.

“You international thug. You're just like Hitler and Tojo wrapped up into one.”

Norwood tried Eugene once more. “Look, you can get another pair of these dudes easy for six bits at the Goodwill Store. I'm offering you two dollars. What about me? I don't have any shoes. I lost some thirty-eight-dollar boots last night. They took 'em right off my feet. They didn't give
me
anything.”

“You better give Tojo what he wants, Eugene. He'll terrorize you if you don't. That's the way he does business.”