The Moth (17 page)

“Then—better luck next time.”

“Knocks it in the head for this season all right. But for next year, maybe it’s even better, as it gives us more time. You know what I mean, Jack? This way, we’ll have our feet on the ground and can do it right.”

“Right.”

“You’ll buzz me on it? First of the year.”

“Right.”

“I’ll be looking for you.”

“Right.”

Around November 1 I sold the car. It was a 1928 Buick, with only 80,000 miles on it. But the book said $170, and that’s what I had to take. I moved out of the Rosemary into a place out on Marietta Street that didn’t have any name. It was run by a Mrs. Pickens, and I took a back room, third floor, bath on the second floor, at $3.50 a week. Meals I ate in a drugstore. Ham on white, with mustard, mostly, and coffee. I got expenses down to $1.50 a day, and figured that with the $160 or so I had left from the sale of the car I might last till spring, with a little luck, and by then things might be different. But before Christmas it was gone.

“Two fifty.”

“My God, the suit cost forty bucks!”

“Two fifty.”

“Look, stop being funny. The suit cost forty, like I told you, less than six months ago, it’s hardly been worn at all—now make me an offer.”

“Two fifty.”

I handed it over and he gave me my ticket. It had been wrapped in paper because at Mrs. Pickens’s I was a week behind in my rent and both my suitcases had disappeared. So one by one I had taken both suits, the good suits I mean, the ones I could hock, and carried them out as bundles. The first one I took to a second-hand place, and they gave me $2.25. It made me sore, but I had to eat. The next one, two days later, I took to this hockshop and did two bits better. And still I looked for work, and still there was nothing to do. Then one day, when another week’s rent was due, I let myself in with my key, late, so I wouldn’t run into anybody, and tiptoed upstairs. The door to my room was locked.

“Mister, can you direct me to Terminal Station?”

“Keep right on down this street here till you come to the taxis all bunched at the curb, and that’s it. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you, sir... And could you give me a lift on a ticket to Meriwether? You see, I come from there, and I’ve got the offer of a job, if I can only—”

Some of them cussed me out for playing them a trick, asking my way to the station when I really meant to mooch, some of them gave me a dime, one gave me a nickel, and one gave me a quarter. This last guy looked pretty sore, and as he felt around in his pocket I wondered what I was going to do if he changed his mind and gave me a poke in the jaw. But all of a sudden, as he kept glaring at me, a bus stopped a few feet away, and who should get off it but Hank. I felt my blood turn to water. After all the big talk I had handed out to him, to be caught here on the street, with my hand out like a beggar, was more than I could stand. He didn’t see me. I turned and ran. I never wanted a touchdown as bad as I wanted a good, big, deep hole in the ground that day.

I didn’t decide to leave town, or have some reason that made sense, or figure an angle that would take me to some other place—I mean, if you’ve wondered why guys on the road move from one place to some other place, or why they think being hungry in Jacksonville is better than being hungry in Atlanta. I lammed out of Atlanta for the same reason I lammed out of a thousand places: I was just washed up there, that’s all. Harmon was one guy. There were two hundred and fifty others, guys I’d try to fool, guys it would make my face turn red to meet face to face, guys that had told me to scram, bum, scram, guys that had something on me, so I couldn’t take it any more, and had to have a fresh slate that might be bad, but not this bad. So instead of deciding anything I just kept on going. I couldn’t run very far, because by now I was getting a little weak. I had spent my last buck for a flop the night before and something to eat at a joint. Then, with everything I owned on my back or in my pockets, I had started out to bum a feed. That phony opening I didn’t think up particularly. At first I just put it on the line: “Mister, I hate to bother you, but could you—” And that was all. By then they’d be gone. I had to get them to stop, somehow. I thought asking my way to the station would do it. I kept at it all day, downtown and on side streets, but not on any good street. I don’t know why you hate it, that a guy with good clothes on might give you a snooty look, but you do.

I guess I was heading for New Orleans, and every time I’d hear something back of me I’d throw up my thumb. Nothing stopped. Then I saw some guys standing across the Southern yards like they were waiting for something. Then a string of gonds went past them, and banged into some flats. Then the engine would unhook and go down the yards, and I tumbled to what was going on. A freight was making up and these guys were waiting for it. I thought, me too. If that’s how you go, that’s how you go, and I should be here on the highway wasting my time on cars. It was, I would say, about five o’clock in the afternoon, just coming on dark with lights showing everywhere and fog hanging over. I went down in the ditch and up the other side and began crossing tracks. The guys looked up, and it was too far off to see them well, but the way they stared said there was something funny about it.

From down the yard I could see a light moving, and I guess I knew it was an engine, but as I said it was foggy, and you couldn’t see anything clear. Anyway it was over on the other side of the yards and didn’t seem to have anything to do with me. Then came a clanking, like a bunch of steel rods dumped down on concrete all at once. I mean it went
clank-clank-clank-clank-clank.
Then something hit me in the eyes, a glare that blinded me so I couldn’t tell where I was. I knew then I’d heard switches clanking from an electric control, so the crossovers made a diagonal line across the yards, and that the engine was coming right at me. I staggered back the way I had come, but it went through my mind I might as well stay put. There was no way to tell which track the thing had been switched to, and I could be racing right into it. I crouched down between tracks and waited. It got bigger and bigger in the fog, until it was right on top of me. Then it went by on the next track, a mile high, its firebox breathing hot on me.

W
HETHER IT WAS SIX
months after that or longer I couldn’t be sure, but it might have been a year, because I was catching one out of Chattanooga for the South, and that looks like winter coming on. A guy on the road, he goes plenty of places most of the time, but when the leaves begin to fall he heads for the Gulf. Anyway, there they were, about two hundred dirty buzzards squatting on the ties, spaced out along the Atlanta Division of the Southern, just outside the yards, waiting to hop on. Hardly anything was moving then, so it was the first through freight in a week, and they meant to get out of there. Nowadays they’d thumb the highways, and if a few ride the trains the crews hardly bother them at all, so they can hop one in the yards. But then the country was crawling with hobos, and nobody would give them a lift, let them on a train, or give them a break of any kind. If they wanted out, they hopped a moving train, so that’s why they were there, waiting. Not much was said. Hobos don’t mix, they don’t look at each other, and they don’t talk, something I didn’t understand at first, but was to get a clear idea of, later.

Pretty soon, from the yards, came the cough of an engine, then three more, spaced out slow, then a string of quick barks that meant she was spinning her wheels, starting a heavy train. The coughs and the barks kept on, and then there she was, pulling hard, showing the two green flags of a through train, the one we wanted. Everybody got up. She began going by and they began going aboard, on tanks, gonds, or whatever they could grab. Some refrigerators went by, or reefers, as the hobos call them, and six or eight guys made a dive, because the ice compartment is a pretty good place to ride. But then they began dropping off again, on other guys’ feet, and it was like cats fell on monkeys. A hobo, he grabs the front end of the car, because if he gets slammed, it’s against the side and there’s no great harm done. But on the rear if he get slammed it’s against the thin air between cars, and he’s almost certain to pitch down under the wheels, which isn’t so good. It was just dark enough that these guys hadn’t noticed the reefers were coupled with the ladder at rear, so they had no way to get topside to go down the hatch. So they had to pile on all over again, somewhere else. Me, I generally picked a flat, and that’s what I did now. It’s easy to board and easy to leave, and if it’s a little open to the breeze you can help that a little with newspapers, and at least nobody’s penning you in. I hated it, that I would have a system for such a miserable thing as life on the road, with a canteen on my hip, papers under my arm, and blue jeans over what was left of my clothes, but if you get cold enough, you’ll do what you have to do to get warm, whether you hate it or you don’t hate it.

I took the front end, where there was a little quiet air, and spread my papers out, two or three on top of each other so they were thick, and lay down on one edge. Then I rolled a little, so they were around me, and then I was warmer. Then, on my head, I felt something cold. Then I felt it again. Then I knew it was rain, and cussed myself out for not grabbing a reefer too. There wasn’t but one thing to do. Ahead was a tank car, so I rolled my papers up, stepped over, slipped under the tank, and lay there trying to keep as dry as I could.

Then, after some little time, the train checked speed. Then, away up front some place, I heard somebody yell. Then there was more yelling. Then it got closer, and I could tell it was guys on the right of way. Then we began to go by them, while they stood there and yelled curses, out there in the rain, the worst you could ever think of, at the train crew, at the railroad, at the country, even at God. And then I knew what the reason was: They had taken it up, here in the East, what they were already doing on Western roads, letting the mob hop on, as they pretty well had to, unless they were going to hire a private army to keep it off, but then, after they’d run a little way, cutting the speed of the train, so it was slow enough for guys to drop off, but too fast for them to climb back on. Then the bull would start at the tender, and come back doing his stuff. Maybe you don’t believe it, that they’d drop two or three hundred men off in the rain, with no place to go and no way to get there. Well, they did it just the same. It made your blood run cold, the things that were said, and your stomach turn sick, to realize why they were said, but however it made you feel, it was no great help when it came your turn to drop. I lay low, but the bull flashed his light, and when I didn’t answer his “hey” he got tough: “It’s O.K., Bud, if you want to lie there, but I’m telling you to get up and get off, because it would be just too bad if I decided you
were
some kind of a critter and began popping at you with this gun...

When my feet quit stinging from hitting the dirt, I stood there and cursed too. By now, I guess you know I’m not the yelling type, and in fact it might be better for me if I didn’t keep things bottled in me so tight. But there come times when you’ve taken all you can take. By the water that was running off my nose, by the hunger that was gnawing at my belly, by cold that was creeping into me, I knew I couldn’t get lower than I was that night. I was a human coffee ground, washing down the sink.

Pretty soon the yelling died down, and guys began pushing past me, slogging back to Chattanooga, some of them sobbing as they went. I started back with them, but then after a few steps I began to dope things out, and turned around. As well as I could figure, we were nearer Dalton by several miles than we were to Chattanooga, and I was taking a chance on it. It was just a small place, but it looked like, if I kept my mouth shut so I didn’t bring any gang with me, I might do as well, at least for something to eat and a place to flop, as in a bigger place.

The train, I guess, rolled nearly a mile while the bull was throwing the guys off to where he came to me, so the boss and I were passing each other for at least twenty minutes. Sometimes we’d bump, and they’d cuss, and maybe sock. But they generally had so little on the punch I didn’t sock back. After a while I passed what seemed to be the last of them, and then the rain began coming down to mean it, and I jammed the papers under my jeans, so if I needed them again they wouldn’t be so wet. Then I heard two guys talking, off to one side: “Come on, fellow! You can’t lay there like that! You got to get up and—”

“God damn it, I said let me alone!”

“But that’s no way to talk.”

“Then beat it.”

“If your foot hurts, then—”

“It’s shot. And I’m shot, and—”

“But there on the ground, on a night like this, you’ll die! You don’t know how cold it’s going to be! You—”

I made myself not hear it and went on. Off to the right there was rising ground, and I veered toward it to get out of the water in the path. I ran wham into something that sent me sprawling to the ground. I sobbed at how my toe shot fire up my leg, and jumped up and kicked at the thing. Then I went on. Then I almost ran into another one. Then it soaked into my head what I had run into. It was a couple of tool chests, six or eight feet long, with slanting lids on them. I thought of the guy back there, and how if he could get into one of these things he’d at least be out of the wet. I began telling myself to get on, or I’d be shot too. But before I got to the path again my foot hit something and I almost died at the pain in my toe that time. But my ear kept giving it to me, the clank I had heard, and then I went back. I felt around and found it was an open box of spikes. I kept mumbling to hell with the guy, to get on before I died too, but I took a spike and felt my way back to the first box and slipped it in under the hasp of the lid and pried. The staple flew out and off on the ground. I lifted the lid and felt around in the chest. It was empty.

“All right, grab his feet, get between them, and hold them so he can’t kick. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“I got ’em, big boy. Say when.”