Fire and Steel, Volume 6

by Gerald N. Lund

  Benji screamed and started to lunge forward. Mose’s attacker stepped forward, sticking the muzzle of his rifle just inches from Benji’s nose. At the same moment, the man standing over Mose kicked him hard in the ribs, screaming profanity, his face a mottled purple. The other two laughed.

  “No!” Benji screamed. Then he launched himself at the one guarding him, who had turned his head to watch the others. He grabbed the muzzle of the rifle and swung it out and away from him, pulling it free from the man’s grasp. With a rage of his own, he swung the rifle like a club and his assailant went down. The man with the pistol reacted instantly. He swung around toward Benji, the pistol coming up fast.

  With a roar and astonishing speed, Mose leaped to his feet and hurled himself at the man.

  BLAM! The pistol fired at point-blank range. A blossom of red exploded across Mose’s shirt as he fell back, stumbling into Benji.

  Benji screamed, dropping the rifle, frantically grabbing for Mose. He never made it. The rifleman in front of them stepped forward and drove his rifle butt into Benji’s solar plexus. He dropped like a stone, frantically gasping for breath. He didn’t have time to protect himself, for the other three men dove on him, kicking, clawing at him, pummeling him with their fists, scratching at his eyes. Mercifully, a moment later, all went black.

  10:13 p.m.—Sacramento City Jail

  For what seemed like several minutes, Benji lay there, careful not to move, careful not to trigger the waves of pain that nearly made him pass out again. Finally, he slowly tried to open his eyes. One opened in a thin slit. The other didn’t open at all. Something was holding the eyelid shut, like it was glued to the bottom lid. He groaned again as the pain slammed into him. After a moment, he tried again. There was a dim light directly in front of him, but it wasn’t natural light. He turned his head to see better and screamed in agony as pain shot through his skull.

  Suddenly, a hand closed over his mouth. It panicked him, because he was having trouble breathing through his nostrils for some reason, and he started to struggle.

  “Stop!” a voice hissed in his ear. “You bring the guards in here and it’s only going to be worse for you, son.”

  Frantic, Benji tried to pull himself up. This time the pain was like a blow, and the blackness covered him again.

  10:41 p.m.

  When Benji regained consciousness, he felt pressure on his chest. To his surprise, his one eye mostly opened, and he saw a face looming over him. It was the face of an elderly man with deeply wrinkled skin, grey hair, and kindly eyes. He had a finger pressed to his lips. “Shh!”

  Benji tried to push the hand away but cried out as the stab of pain nearly made him pass out again. This time just a finger pressed firmly against his lips. “Damnation, man!” the voice whispered. “You don’t wanna be waking up the guards, or any of your cellmates either.”

  “I. . . . Where am I?”

  “Just lie back,” the man said gently. “You’re in jail, son. Understand?”

  Benji made an effort to relax. Jail! Slowly now he turned his head to look around. Several things registered in his mind at once. Though the ceiling and three walls of the room were made of grey cement, the front wall was made of black, steel bars. The light was coming from a single bulb out in the hall. Across the hall, he could see two other cells, though from this angle he couldn’t tell if they were occupied or not.

  Slowly he turned his head the other way and was dumbfounded to see that he and the old man were not alone. There were six or eight others with them. Most were laid out on the floor on thin, striped mattresses, with no blankets or pillows. A couple others had their backs up against the wall, arms crossed on their knees, heads down.

  Benji reached up to touch his eye and figure out why he couldn’t open it. Immediately, the old man grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand away. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Hold on a sec.” He started to get up but then stopped. “No noise, okay?”

  Benji watched as the man got to his feet and went over to a bucket that was on a shelf bolted to the wall. He removed a white rag from his back pocket and dipped it in the bucket. There was the soft sound of splashing water. When the man came back, he held a tin cup and the wet rag. “Hang on, son. This might hurt. But your eyes are all sticky with blood. I’m going to try to wash it off.” He set the cup down and bent over Benji.

  A moment later, Benji felt a coldness on his face. It felt wonderful. Very gently the man began to wipe at the eye he couldn’t open. “You’re not lookin’ real good, man. What did you do to get the bulls that mad at you?”

  That brought everything back with a rush. Benji tried to sit up but then yelped and fell back again.

  “Easy, easy,” the man hissed. “It’s all right.”

  “Mose?” Benji tried to turn his head. Again the waves of pain made him gasp.

  “Is he the black guy?” the old man asked.

  Benji managed to nod.

  “Sorry, partner. He didn’t make it. They said he was dead before he hit the ground.”

  June 13, 1934, 8:45 a.m.—Sacramento City Jail

  Benji waited until the two guards had ladled out bowls of a ghastly smelling soup along with hard bread that had spots of mold on it. As they finished, he moved over to the bars. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to the one who seemed to be in charge, careful to speak respectfully.

  “Yeah,” the older one growled. “Whaddya want?”

  Benji took a hold of the bars and leaned in, lowering his voice. “The law says that I am allowed one phone call. I’ve been here two days now. I was wondering when I could do that.”

  The guards looked at him as though he were daft. Then the older one turned to the younger. “You hear that, George?” he said, pretending to be deeply moved.

  George was grinning. “I did. What’s a phone call?”

  “No idea.” Then, quick as a flash, he grabbed the steel ladle from the soup pot and smacked it across Benji’s fingers. Benji howled in pain and jumped back.

  As the guards moved away, cackling in delight, Benji’s elderly friend, whom he knew now only as Carl, spoke up. “Get this in your head, kid. You aren’t in jail. You’re in hell now, son. That’s the long and short of it. So get used to it before you get us all in trouble.”

  June 24, 1934, 11:25 a.m.

  Benji was seated on his mattress with his back against the wall, thinking about home, wondering what his family would think if they knew he was in jail. He had been allowed no phone call and no writing paper, so as far as his family knew, he was an intransigent son too lazy to write to them. And with a ninety-day jail term to fill, it would be another ten or so weeks before he could contact them. Then a deeper sorrow filled his soul. And what of Mose’s wife and family? How did he write that letter? Especially when he had nothing more than the name of a small town in Georgia.

  “Westland!”

  Benji turned in surprise. “Here!”

  A guard appeared at the door. “Come with me.” He inserted a key in the door, growled at the man on the other bunk to stay back, and swung the door open.

  Totally taken aback, Benji got to his feet. “What’s this all about?”

  This guard was an older man, probably in his late sixties, with no teeth, a scraggly, grey beard, and age spots on his neck and hands. “Bring your stuff.”

  “I don’t have any stuff other than what I’m wearing. You guys took it all, remember?”

  “Well, be sure you bring it anyway.” The man cackled gleefully at his own joke.

  Benji quickly left the cell, stepping back until the jailer closed the door again. As they turned into a short hallway with a barred wooden door at the far end, he spoke. “What day is it today?”

  The old man turned his head. “Sunday. Why? You lookin’ to go to church?” His cackle echoed off the cement walls.

  “I meant what day of the month is it?”
<
br />   “June something or other.” And that was the last he spoke. A few moments later he opened the door, pointed for Benji to go through, and locked it behind him.

  Benji saw that he was in the front office of the jail, or the “Booking Room,” as a sign on the counter announced. He moved to the window. A man in a police officer’s uniform with three sergeant stripes on his sleeve was seated at a scarred and beat-up desk filling out a form of some kind. He glanced up. “Westland?”

  “Yes, sir.” Then Benji’s eyes widened. On a small table to his left were his bedroll and the flour sack that held his personal belongings. He felt his heart jump a little. Did this mean . . . ? He moved over so he stood directly in front of the sergeant. He didn’t speak as the sergeant continued to fill out the paper. Benji had learned that in here, speaking before you were spoken to could earn you a clap alongside the head. Or worse.

  The man before him was probably in his mid-fifties, with a grey mustache and mutton-chop sideburns. He wore rimless spectacles that rested near the end of his nose. After a moment, with a flourish of his pen, he signed the form and looked up. “You are being released for good behavior.”

  Benji nearly jumped. “I. . . . Really? Thank you, sir.”

  The man laid the paper on the counter, turning it around so that it was right side up for Benji. Benji saw it was a short list of his belongings. The man pointed to the table. “That’s your stuff over there. Check it out, then sign for it.”

  So he really was being released. The intensity of his relief made him a little dizzy. He moved quickly to the bench. To his surprise, the only things in his sack were another change of clothes and his wallet. No toothbrush, comb, or his other things. He picked up his wallet and opened it. There was nothing in it—not the five-dollar bill he’d had when they had come in, not his picture of his family, not his picture of Lisa, not the card with the edelweiss taped to it. His parents had given him paperback copies of the Book of Mormon and the New Testament. They were gone too. Benji slowly turned. “Sir?”

  “What?”

  “I’m missing several things.” He quickly listed them.

  The sergeant studied his list as Benji spoke. When he looked up, to Benji’s surprise there was a touch of sympathy in his eyes. “You surely had to guess the bulls would go through your things and take what they wanted?”

  “I. . . .” Then Benji had another thought. He turned and looked in his sack again. “I also had six personal letters. I don’t see them either. Why would they take those?”

  “I don’t know nothing about no letters, kid. I don’t check people in. I just check them out.”

  Benji took in a long, slow breath. He believed the man and understood very clearly that getting angry with him was not going to get any of it back. “And what about my friend’s things? He had a sack of stuff too.”

  “Your friend was killed, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then they wouldn’t bring his stuff here to the jail. Sorry.”

  “Ah,” Benji said slowly. Stupid not to have guessed that too.

  “I understand. Can I ask another question?”

  The man sighed and nodded.

  “Do you know where they buried my friend Mose?”

  The police officer shook his head. “Don’t you get it?” he snapped irritably. “Those bulls aren’t accountable to us. They do what they please. That’s the railroad’s way around here. They’re the biggest gun in town.”

  Benji took a slow breath, fighting back the temptation to leap over the counter and shake him. “Some of the other prisoners said that he might have been buried in the paupers’ cemetery. Can you tell me where that might be?”

  The man eyed him thoughtfully for a moment and then seemed to make up his mind. “U.S. Highway Fifty is about three blocks straight south of here. When you leave the jail turn right. You can’t miss it. Follow the highway about a mile to Riverside Boulevard, then turn left. The cemetery is one block to the left. The paupers’ section is in the northeast corner.”

  Benji signed the paper and picked up his things. “Thank you.”

  To Benji’s surprise, the man reached into his shirt pocket and retrieved a one-dollar bill and a small orange card. He tossed them on the counter.

  Benji stared at the card. On a line at the top his name was scrawled. Below that it read, “THIS PERSON HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY RELEASED FROM THE SACRAMENTO CITY JAIL.” And it was signed with what he assumed was the sergeant’s signature. Below that he saw a date and peered at it more closely. June 24, 1934. Benji held it up. “This today’s date?”

  The sergeant’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, what of it?”

  Benji shook his head. “Just wondering what day it was.”

  The sergeant’s expression softened a little and he glanced at the form Benji had signed. “You were brought in on the eleventh. So twenty-three days. Just over three weeks. You’re lucky, kid. Typical sentence for vagrancy is three months.”

  And if you’re black, the sentence is death? But Benji didn’t say that, of course. He picked up the dollar bill, not sure what to make of it. He finally looked up at the sergeant.

  “Ain’t much, but it’s all I got,” the sergeant growled. “Tough luck, kid. Sorry about your friend.”

  Touched, Benji nodded and pocketed the card and the dollar and then picked up his bedroll and the sack and slung them over his shoulder. With a quick nod he started for the door.

  12:52 p.m.—Sacramento City Cemetery

  For a long time, Benji stood there in the sun, hat in hand, staring at the rough letters he had scratched into the thin slab of wood.

  Moses Quincy. 47 years old. From Barnesville, Georgia. Died 6/11/34. A true friend. Some of his cellmates had told him that four men had been killed that day. There were four fresh crosses, so Benji had finally just picked the one farthest from the path. He had found a broken Coke bottle, and that had become his carving tool. The letters were not that deep, and he guessed that a month or two in the sun and the inscription would no longer be legible. And Mose would be gone forever.

  He desperately wanted to say something meaningful, to bury his face in his hands and cry uncontrollably. But he was long past tears now. Finally, he bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Goodbye, old friend. I will let your family know where you are. You have my word.” Then he replaced his hat, shouldered his bedroll, and turned south, wanting to be done with this place as quickly as possible.

  Chapter Notes

  The men hired by the railroads to keep the transients off their trains were commonly called “bulls” by the hobos. They were often toughs and hooligans with a reputation for being hard men without a conscience. The railroads hired them for that reason and often encouraged them to crack a few heads here and there as a deterrent to the transients. The big railroads were powerful institutions in society at this time, and local municipalities gave them a lot of leeway in controlling those who rode the rails. Supposedly, such actions were legal when done on railroad property, but the bulls frequently ignored such legal niceties and went after the transients in the hobo camps as well. Though it was rare, there were cases where men were killed by railroad guards without any serious consequences for the guards.

  The usual sentence for vagrancy was ninety days in jail. As the Depression deepened and continued, some hobos would deliberately get themselves arrested so they could get three months of free room and board. Because of that, some cities and towns would let them out after a few days simply because they couldn’t afford to feed them.

  August 3, 1934, 7:14 p.m.—Department Store,

  Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, California

  On his first day in the Sacramento City Jail, one of Benji’s fellow prisoners had sarcastically welcomed him to hell. By the time he finished his three-week stint there, he concluded that hell didn’t begin to describe his experience. Now, six weeks later, as he star
ed balefully at his reflection in the large department store window, his mind went back to his time behind bars. Not his finest hours, for sure, but at least he had enjoyed a roof over his head, three meals a day—though the food was barely edible—and they let him shower three times a week and gave him soap and a towel. Seemed almost more like heaven now.

  He barely recognized the reflection he saw before him and had to turn away, finding what he saw quite unbearable. Into his mind came the picture of a Neanderthal man from his eleventh-grade biology book. Now here that Neanderthal was, staring back at him. Tangled and matted hair down to his shoulders. Full black beard. Brooding expression. Sunburned face. Feral eyes beneath dark, bushy brows. Put a club in one hand and exchange the shirt for an animal skin and he could be the guy’s stand-in.

  Except for the muscular torso. Benji had no way of knowing, but he guessed that he was down by twenty pounds at least. His face was gaunt. His clothes barely hung on his frame, and he had finally put three new holes in his belt so that his pants didn’t slip right off his hips. What his reflection in the glass could not depict was the body odor, now strong enough to keep a dog at bay, and his breath that could knock a fly out of the air at twenty feet. Without soap, it didn’t matter how long you soaked in a river or how hard you scrubbed your clothes on a rock.

  Oh, yeah. When it came to hell, jail didn’t hold a candle to being on the road.

  A clicking sound to his left brought Benji’s head around. To his surprise, an attractive young woman was coming toward him. Probably in her mid-twenties, he guessed. She was slender and blonde, and stylishly dressed. She had a black patent-leather purse slung over one shoulder and high heels that matched. In one hand she carried a shopping bag. Her head was down as she walked swiftly toward him.