Beggars of Life (2 page)

A
CROSS
a chasm of years the outlines of even the most vivid life are blurred. But impressions gained as a youthful hobo are likely to endure until the rover has wandered the last road home. I have often wished that Cervantes had written a tale of his wanderings on the sunlit roads of Spain, or that Goldsmith had written in matchless English of the days when he played a flute for bread, or that blind old Homer had left a few pages about his experiences while tramping the roads of Greece. The old minstrel might even have immortalized a Greek slave who fed him.

I made three unsuccessful journeys before I finally became even an amateur hobo. For it may be recorded here that hoboes regard their chosen profession seriously. There is much to learn in the game and more to endure.

During idle hours, I loitered near the railroad yards of an Ohio town from which I launched upon my tramping career. I met hoboes there, who nonchalantly told me strange tales of far places. One youthful vagrant had tramped all the way from California. He had served two months in a western jail for vagrancy. He was proud of his exploits, and told of them grandly. He made me ashamed of a humdrum life in a humdrum town.

We sat near a high trestle which spanned the St. Marys river. The boy threw stones into the lazy water below. I watched him closely. He was rough in speech and action, as a lad might well be who had tramped from California. One of his eyes had been knocked out while he was tramping in Arkansas. He wore a leather patch over the empty red socket. It was fastened by a shoe string that was tied at the back of his head. He was a brawny youth, and sunburned. The fingers of his right hand were yellow from holding many cigarettes. He was flippant in manner, and spoke of far countries with careless gesture instead of reverence.

He sailed a flat rock into the river. It skimmed along the water like a flying fish, and at last sank in a whirling ripple.

“What burg is this, 'Bo?” he asked.

“It's St. Marys, sir,” I humbly replied.

“Don't Sir me. Billy's my name,” he blurted. He looked toward the town and sneered, then snorted, “Hell, I wouldn't be found dead in a joint like this. It ain't a town; it's a disease. A guy's only in the world once. He may as well lamp it over while he's at it, even if he has only got one lamp.”

“Do you like it on the road, Bill?” I asked.

The boy turned his head slightly so as to get a square look at me with his one eye. “Sure I likes it. I wouldn't give it up for nothin'. They ain't nothin' in workin'. Only boobs work. Them old whistles blow ev'ry mornin'—an' they piles out like a lotta cattle. Not for Yours Truly.”

“I'd like to leave this burg,” I told him, “an' think I will. I darn near have to pay the factory to work there.” I explained my work and wages to the boy, who smiled at me disdainfully when I had finished.

“Chuck it, Kid, chuck it. Gosh, you can't do no worse. All you're doin' here's eatin'. You kin git that anywhere. A stray cat gits that. Besides,” and the boy's voice rose higher, “you're learnin' somethin' on the road. What the devil kin you learn here? I'll bet the mayor o' this burg don't know what it's all about.”

I pondered over this terrible philosophy for a moment as the boy lifted the black patch and scratched the red lid of his vacant socket. There was a long silence; I resolved to leave the town as soon as I could. But the resolution was not made without some qualms. For all the nondescript people in St. Marys were my friends.

One old drunkard had drifted there, from where, no one knew. He often talked to me about books. When drunk, which was nearly every day, he bragged of his past, a tortuous, winding road, full of many a weary bog. His name was Jack Raley.

The natives of the town would tease old Raley while they bought him liquor. Though a poverty-stricken drunkard, a cadger of drinks, a cleaner of cuspidors, a mopper of bar-room floors, he was still the wealthiest man I knew in that town;—for he carried a tattered volume of Voltaire in his pocket, and he talked to me about it. Raley had been a tramp printer for years until he came to the end of the trail at St. Marys.

While the one-eyed youth remained silent, I thought of the old man who wore a thin valise strap as a belt around his torn corduroy trousers. All his front teeth were gone but two. He could easily have dispensed with them, as he seldom ate. He was a magnificent drunkard, quite the greatest I have ever known. His eyes were yellow, and bloodshot, and many streaks of blood ran through them like tiny red rivers through yellow fields.

Finally I said, “I'll beat it out of here all right, but I hate to leave some of the people.”

Bill was aroused by the words. “Well, you can't take 'em wit' you. Forgit all that stuff. It's bunkerino.”

“Yes, I guess you're right,” I replied weakly.

Bill looked flabbergasted, as though amazed at the idea that any unwandered youth in a small town would question words of his. There was a challenge in his voice as he spoke, “Guess I'm right! I'll say I'm right. Huh! I know a few things. I wasn't born on Monday.”

I placated him by asking questions about hobo life. The ego of the youth rose to the occasion. He told me many things, the truth of which later experiences verified.

“If you ever go on the road, Kid, don't you never let no old tramp play you for a sucker. You know, them old birds're too lazy to scratch themselves when they're crummy. So they gits young kids and teaches 'em to beg. They know people'll feed kids quicker'n they will them, so they make the kids do all the beggin'. Lotsa people pity kids at back doors. The old tramps calls the kids their punks. There's a lot of punkgrafters on the road. Lotsa things I could tell you,” said the one-eyed youthful rover.

The whistle of an engine was heard in the west. Then the noise of rolling cars rumbled through the air. It vibrated along the rails of the trestle.

I watched the big engine come steaming down the tracks, with its red cars rolling behind it. A brakeman sat on top of a box car behind the engine. He held a stick in his hand, and gazed across the landscape. I envied him.

The youth pulled the leather patch more snugly over his eye, and throwing back his shoulders, he ran with the train. Shouting, “S'long, Kid. Be good,” he boarded it with a marvellous swagger, waving a cigarette-stained hand at me as the train rolled across the trestle toward Lima.

A
FEW
weeks later, I journeyed by freight to Muncie, Indiana, nearly seventy miles away. I paid my fare, if not to the company, at least to the train crew, by helping unload freight at each station.

All day I unloaded freight at every station at which the train stopped. It was one of those days so common in late winter throughout the Middle West. The atmosphere was murky green and neither cold nor warm. The animals huddled together in the fields, as though reluctant to break the warmth-giving habits of winter. Once I saw a feather-tossed robin perched on a wire fence along the tracks. By an odd quirk of memory I can see it to this day—it looked hopeless and woebegone—a strayed reveller who had left a warm climate too soon. The smoke from the engine rolled over it, but it did not move, and I remember thinking that perhaps the smoke made it warm.

I stood for long moments at the box-car door and gazed at the passing landscape. What did it matter though I lifted heavy boxes at every station—I was going somewhere. Over in the next valley were life and dreams and hopes. Monotony and the wretched routine of a drab Ohio town would be unknown. I, a throwback to the ancient Irish tellers of fairy tales, was at last on the way to high adventure. Sad and miserable men, broken on the wheel of labor, tired nerve-torn women too weary to look at the stars—these would not be inhabitants of the dream country to which I was going. What a picture I must have made—a heavy-jowled red-headed youth with a crooked smile and a freckled face, and clad in the cast-off clothing of more fortunate working boys. Everything seemed to pass through my mind—I was not a beggar at the gates of life—I would return to St. Marys a rich man. I would show the aristocratic girls who snubbed me on Spring Street that I was not what they thought I was, I would not come back until everybody had heard of me—and when I did come back and walked along the streets people would say—“There goes Jimmy Tully, he used to be a little drunkard and hang around Rabbit Town with the whores, and look at him now—huh—that shows what a fellow can do in this country if he works hard and saves his money.” Even then, dreaming of some day being a writer, I would write great stories and my name would be in all the magazines. Some day the natives in St. Marys would wake up and see my name spread across the front page of the
Saturday Evening Post
; by God, I'd show them, I would. As the train gathered speed my thoughts came more swiftly.

I thought of Edna——. Edna was, in my opinion, the prettiest little girl that ever sold her body in Rabbit Town. She used to charge the men a dollar each, and she once told me she had made forty-eight dollars one night. I glowed with satisfaction at the memory of Edna. I had first learned about sex from her. She never charged me anything. She told me that women liked red-headed guys. I saw her white body and the yellow corn-silk coloured hair falling over her shoulders and my own body thrilled with desire. Plainly it was no place to think about women—but I thought not of that. I remembered once when Edna and I were drunk in Rabbit Town that I stole four dollars from her. She discovered it and said, “Here, you damn thief's my last dollar—take it too,” and I did. But more of Edna later.

It became colder and murkier as the day wore on, but I felt glad to be wandering from St. Marys. The horror of the town and of my life there crept over me. The factory whistles every morning, calling men to labour, had always grated on my nerves like files on glass. I saw the many men hurrying to work, carrying battered dinner buckets. I saw girls, with run-down heels and calico dresses going to the woollen mill to work, I thought of my life during all the months—working for three dollars a week and paying two dollars of that for board. It was my bad luck to heat links for a drunken chain-maker and he often missed two and three days a week. Often, my sister, who earned a dollar and a half a week and her board, had given me twenty-five cents to keep my heart from breaking on pay-day. I thought long of my sister.

She had said to me once when she slipped me a quarter, “I don't mind a little bump now and then, Jimmy, but God sure slipped us more than our share!” I recalled the saying and wondered about God, and my heart was filled with a bitterness toward him. But I was an embryo poet, and I had no sense of humour.

I had a brother, Hugh; an ex-jockey, with the eyes of a life-whipped lamb, who could tell verbal tales better than I will ever be able to write them. I grew sentimental about my brother and sister, for I loved them dearly, though I had not bothered to bid them farewell. Anyhow, I would make a lot of money and send it to them. I'd put the whole damn Tully tribe on its feet—I would. Hugh loved horses, so when I made a lot of jack I would have him as my coachman. I had another brother, Tom, killed long since in old Mexico. He died, a skull-cracked adventurer and prospector at twenty-five. He was in Arizona at the time and I wanted to join him but he discouraged me. He wanted me to get an education. I wondered then why that loyal three always wanted me to go to school. I can hear the splendid dead rover still saying, “Jim boy, you're going to get somewhere some day just as sure as God put worms in sour apples. I just know it and I knew it when we were kids in the orphans' home. Don't you never give up, Jim, by God don't you never, you got it in you, and by God you show all the bastards who think the Tullys are a lot o' trash, just because dad was a drunken ditch digger.” I thought of the letter he had written me regarding his prospects of finding gold. The postscript was:

“If I win out in this country, Jim, you will share it with me—if I lose I will share it alone.”

I thought of Boroff, a maniac farmer who could neither read nor write and for whom I had slaved eighteen months. I recalled the time in Van Wert County when it was twenty-eight degrees below zero and my body had frozen blue because the tiller of the soil would not buy me underwear. I God damned him in my heart and swore under my breath that when I got big enough I would go back there and trounce hell out of him. I glowed with this thought and nursed it as the train rolled along. I wondered why people were so mean to kids. Nearly every kid I knew who had been sent to farmers from the orphanage had run away because they could not stand the treatment. “They're too tight to hire men—the bastards—so they get orphans and work hell out of them.” I again thought of Boroff and his daughter Ivy. Neither Ivy nor myself had reached the age of puberty though we had desire for each other. Boroff was a religious fanatic every winter and he would go to revival meetings and often take his half-crazy wife with him, leaving me with Ivy. Alone in the house, Satan would come to tempt us right near the large family Bible. While Boroff sang hosannas to his God I would lie in Ivy's arms, Ivy asked me not to tell, and I didn't, and neither did Ivy. She went to Sunday-school every Sunday and kept her secret well. I often smile when I hear people say that a woman cannot keep a secret.

Ivy was a lovely little girl. Her breasts were as round and hard as apples and her limbs were white as marble. I met her years later and she gave all she had tried to give as a child. But I digress. Women are such fascinating subjects. Ivy had long black hair and sharp and pretty features. Her cheeks glowed red and her breath was hot. She died later of quick consumption.

At one station, after we had finished unloading the freight, a trainman told a smutty story. He used words I did not like, and a revulsion came over me. Strange, down, far down in the gutters where nothing but the sludge and murk of life rolled by, I was never to overcome my revulsion from the filth of it all. If my clothing was lousy I watched clouds sailing across the moon and heard linnets chirping and larks singing.

Even though the dupe of destiny I was a lover of beauty and saw it everywhere. The present adventure clouded all other feelings backward save those of sentiment.

Thinking of all things under the murk-hidden sun, I reached the end of my first journey.

It took all day to make the trip, and we arrived in Muncie from the east at about the time a driving snow storm came from the west. The snow fell steadily for hours, and was driven by the wind in all directions. Finally the wind abated and the snow stopped falling. It became intensely cold. Darkness came. The train crew had long since gone to warm shelter, and supperless, I searched for a warm place, which I found in a sand-shed at the edge of the railroad yards.

The shed was crowded with hoboes. They lolled on boxes, and broken chairs, and in the sand, which was boarded up like loose grain in one-half of the place. A large, round stove was splashed cherry red with the heat. The warmth in the room melted the snow on the roof, and the water dropped through a small space above and fell with a monotonous clatter on a piece of tar-paper in a corner of the sand bin. Coffee boiled in a granite vessel on top of the stove. Some battered cooking utensils were in a store-box which also contained many varieties of food. There were some small lunches wrapped in paper, which the hoboes called “lumps” and “handouts.” These lunches had been given them by kind-hearted people at houses where they had begged.

“Hello, 'Bo,” said a derelict, as I entered.

The speaker's mouth sagged at one corner, where a red scar led downward from his lower lip, as though a knife had cut it. He wore a black satine shirt, and a greasy red necktie. His coat was too small for him, and his muscular shoulders had ripped it in the arm-pits.

A decrepit, middle-aged hobo sat near him. He wore a black moustache and several weeks' growth of beard. His collar was yellow and black, and much too large for him. His few remaining teeth were snagged and crooked. A half-dozen other men looked cautiously at me.

After I had greeted them, the first individual spoke again, “She's a tough night, Mate. I come in over the Big Four to-day from Saint Louie. I wanta make it to Cincy an' beat it south.”

“I met Frisco Red in Cincy t'other day,” said the yellow-collared tramp, “an' he tells me they're horstile down south. Pinchin' ev'ry tramp they see.”

“It ain't bad in New Ohleans. A guy kin allus git by there,” spoke up another.

“Believe me, 'Boes, I'll pick up a stake in some burg afore I hits it 'way south. Dynamite Eddie's in Chatnoogie. I'll turn a trick wit' 'im, an' stay down there. This God-forsaken jungle is only good for Eskermos.”

An engine stopped near the sand-shed. It could be heard puffing in the cold night air. The door was opened, and a man in grease-stained overalls entered with two buckets in which to shovel sand.

“Run outta sand!” asked a hobo.

“Yeah,” answered the man in overalls, who looked neither to right nor to left.

“Them engines sure use the sand nights like this,” said another hobo.

“Well, they gotta,” spoke up the man in the yellow collar. “They'd slide all over the tracks if they didn't.”

“Well, we'll let 'em,” said another tramp.

The man departed with the sand and soon the engine was heard puffing and straining down the track. Then quiet settled upon the shed in the railroad yards at Muncie. The crackling sputter of the coal in the red-hot stove, and the dropping of the melted snow on the tar-paper was all that broke the silence. The heat made some of the wanderers drowsy, and they stretched out on the sand and snored.

The man with the sagging mouth and the scarred chin offered me food and coffee, which I accepted greedily, as I had not eaten since early morning.

“You ain't been on the road long, Kid,” said one shrewd-looking vagabond. “It takes a lotta guts for green kids to beat it on a day like this. I'd beat it back home 'f I was you till the bluebirds whistle in the spring.”

Just then the door opened wide and a policeman stood framed in it. His flash-light shone clearly above the blurred light that glimmered through the smudgy globe of the kerosene lantern.

The hoboes in the shed were momentarily alarmed, while I was badly scared, as it was my first contact with the law.

The officer looked about the room, as if in search of a certain individual. “He ain't here, I guess,” he said, half aloud to himself, as he held the light in the faces of the group.

“That's all right, men,” he continued. “Flop here till mornin'—she's colder'n Billy-be-damned outside.”

He sniffed the aroma of the coffee—“Java smells good,” he commented, “gimme a cup.” The hoboes, anxious to fraternize with so much power, moved in unison to pour the coffee. One of them handed the hot liquid to the policeman, saying as he did so, “Sugar, Mister?”

“Nope,” said his blue-coated majesty, “this'll do. Thanks.”

The policeman handed back the empty cup, and said, “Lay low here—it's all right.”

“Thank you, Mister,” replied the grateful tramps in unison.

When the policeman had gone, a hobo said, “Some o' them cops are good guys.”

“You gotta watch 'em all,” returned another.

The tramps on the sand slept peacefully through it all.

“Them guys could a' been pinched an' they'd never knew it,” a vagrant said, as he nodded at the stretched-out forms of the rovers, who breathed heavily. “One time I got stewed in Chi, an' was thrun outta Hinky Dink's on my ear, and darned 'f I diden sleep right on Clark Street till mornin'.”

“That dynamite Hinky Dink sells 'ud make a hummin' bird fly slow,” volunteered the man in the yellow collar, and then continued, “I was runnin' for a freight in Pittsy, an' I fell over a switch light, an' got knocked out. She was rainin' cats wi' blue feathers an' green tails, an' I never woke up till mornin, an' I was wetter'n the river. Well, sir, I lays right between the tracks, an' the trains rolled all aroun' me. If I'd a stretched out my arms any they'd o' been on the rails, an' I'd a been a bum wit'out grub-hooks.”

He looked down at his grimy hands. His weather-beaten cap sat back on his head, which was smooth all over, and round as a billiard ball. He had no eyebrows. They had gone away with his hair. His eyelids fell away from his eyes and made small gaps, like red wounds, in his face. His rheumy eyes blinked constantly, while his forehead twitched above them nervously.