by Richard Ford
I got off in one of these towns once, a long time after the war, just to get a drink while the train changed engines. Everybody looked at me and by the time I got to a bar there were ten people on my trail. I was drinking a fast one when the sheriff came in the bar.
“What are you doing here?” he asks me.
“Just getting a shot,” I say.
He spit on the floor. “How long you plan to be here?”
“I don’t know,” I say, just to be nasty.
“There ain’t no jobs here,” he says.
“I wasn’t looking,” I say.
“We don’t want you here.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn,” I say.
He pulled his gun on me. “All right, coon, back on the train,” he says.
“Wait a minute,” I tell him. “Let me finish my drink.”
He knocked my glass over with his gun. “You’re finished now,” he says. “Pull your ass out of here now!”
I didn’t argue.
I was the night man. After dinner it was my job to pull the cloths off the tables and put paddings on. Then I cut out the lights and locked both doors. There was a big farm girl from Minot named Hilda who could take on eight or ten soldiers in one night, white soldiers. These white boys don’t know how to last. I would stand by the door and when the soldiers came back from the club car they would pay me and I would let them in. Some of the girls could make as much as one hundred dollars in one night. And I always made twice as much. Soldiers don’t care what they do with their money. They just have to spend it.
We never bothered with the girls ourselves. It was just business as far as we were concerned. But there was one dummy we had with us once, a boy from the South named Willie Joe something who handled the dice. He was really hot for one of these farm girls. He used to buy her good whiskey and he hated to see her go in the car at night to wait for the soldiers. He was a real dummy. One time I heard her tell him: “It’s all right. They can have my body. I know I’m black inside. Jesus, I’m so black inside I wisht I was black all over!”
And this dummy Willie Joe said: “Baby, don’t you ever change!”
I knew we had to get rid of him before he started trouble. So we had the steward bump him off the crew as soon as we could find a good man to handle the gambling. That old redneck Casper was glad to do it. He saw what was going on.
But you want to hear about Doc, you say, so you can get back to your reading. What can I tell you? The road got into his blood? He liked being a waiter? You won’t understand this, but he did. There were no Civil Rights or marches or riots for something better in those days. In those days a man found something he liked to do and liked it from then on because he couldn’t help himself. What did he like about the road? He liked what I liked: the money, owning the car, running it, telling the soldiers what to do, hustling a bigger tip from some old maid by looking under her dress and laughing at her, having all the girls at the Haverville Hotel waiting for us to come in for stopover, the power we had to beat them up or lay them if we wanted. He liked running free and not being married to some bitch who would spend his money when he was out of town or give it to some stud. He liked getting drunk with the boys up at Andy’s, setting up the house and then passing out from drinking too much, knowing that the boys would get him home.
I ran with that one crew all during wartime and they, Doc, the Sheik and Reverend Hendricks, had taken me under their wings. I was still a youngblood then, and Doc liked me a lot. But he never said that much to me; he was not a talker. The Sheik had taught him the value of silence in things that really matter. We roomed together in Chicago at Mrs. Wright’s place in those days. Mrs. Wright didn’t allow women in the rooms and Doc liked that, because after being out for a week and after stopping over in those hotels along the way, you get tired of women and bullshit and need your privacy. We weren’t like you. We didn’t need a woman every time we got hard. We knew when we had to have it and when we didn’t. And we didn’t spend all our money on it, either. You youngbloods think the way to get a woman is to let her see how you handle your money. That’s stupid. The way to get a woman is to let her see how you handle other women. But you’ll never believe that until it’s too late to do you any good.
Doc knew how to handle women. I can remember a time in a Winnipeg hotel how he ran a bitch out of his room because he had had enough of it and did not need her any more. I was in the next room and heard everything.
“Come on, Doc,” the bitch said. “Come on honey, let’s do it one more time.”
“Hell no,” Doc said. “I’m tired and I don’t want to any more.”
“How can you say you’re tired?” the bitch said. “How can you say you’re tired when you didn’t go but two times?”
“I’m tired of it,” Doc said, “because I’m tired of you. And I’m tired of you because I’m tired of it and bitches like you in all the towns I been in. You drain a man. And I know if I beat you, you’ll still come back when I hit you again. That’s why I’m tired. I’m tired of having things around I don’t care about.”
“What do you care about, Doc?” the bitch said.
“I don’t know,” Doc said. “I guess I care about moving and being somewhere else when I want to be. I guess I care about going out, and coming in to wait for the time to go out again.”
“You crazy, Doc,” the bitch said.
“Yeah?” Doc said. “I guess I’m crazy all right.”
Later that bitch knocked on my door and I did it for her because she was just a bitch and I knew Doc wouldn’t want her again. I don’t think he ever wanted a bitch again. I never saw him with one after that time. He was just a little over fifty then and could have still done whatever he wanted with women.
The war ended. The farm boys who got back from the war did not spend money on their way home. They did not want to spend any more money on women, and the girls did not get on at night any more. Some of them went into the cities and turned pro. Some of them stayed in the towns and married the farm boys who got back from the war. Things changed on the road. The Commissary started putting that book of rules together and told us to stop stealing. They were losing money on passengers now because of the airplanes and they began to really tighten up and started sending inspectors down along the line to check on us. They started sending in spotters, too. One of them caught that redneck Casper writing out a check for two dollars less than he had charged the spotter. The Commissary got him in on the rug for it. I wasn’t there, but they told me he said to the General Superintendent: “Why are you getting on me, a white man, for a lousy son-of-a-bitching two bucks? There’s niggers out there been stealing for years!”
“Who?” the General Superintendent asked.
And Casper couldn’t say anything because he had that cardboard box full of money still under his bed and knew he would have to tell how he got it if any of us was brought in. So he said nothing.
“Who?” the General Superintendent asked him again.
“Why, all them nigger waiters steal, everybody knows that!”
“And the cooks, what about them?” the Superintendent said.
“They’re white,” said Casper.
They never got the story out of him and he was fired. He used the money to open a restaurant someplace in Indiana and I heard later that he started a branch of the Klan in his town. One day he showed up at the station and told Doc, Reverend Hendricks and me: “I’ll see you boys get yours. Damn if I’m takin’ the rap for you niggers.”
We just laughed in his face because we knew he could do nothing to us through the Commissary. But just to be safe we stopped stealing so much. But they did get the Sheik, though. One day an inspector got on in the mountains just outside of Whitefish and grabbed him right out of that linen closet. The Sheik had been smoking in there all day and he was high and laughing when they pulled him off the train.
That was the year we got in the Union. The crackers and Swedes finally let us in after we paid off. We really stoppe
d stealing and got organized and there wasn’t a damn thing the company could do about it, although it tried like hell to buy us out. And to get back at us, they put their heads together and began to make up that big book of rules you keep your finger in. Still, we knew the service and they had to write the book the way we gave the service and at first there was nothing for the Old School men to learn. We got seniority through the Union, and as long as we gave the service and didn’t steal, they couldn’t touch us. So they began changing the rules, and sending us notes about the service. Little changes at first, like how the initials on the doily should always face the customer, and how the silver should be taken off the tables between meals. But we were getting old and set in our old service, and it got harder and harder learning all those little changes. And we had to learn new stuff all the time because there was no telling when an inspector would get on and catch us giving bad service. It was hard as hell. It was hard because we knew that the company was out to break up the Old School. The Sheik was gone, and we knew that Reverend Hendricks or Uncle T. or Danny Jackson would go soon because they stood for the Old School, just like the Sheik. But what bothered us most was knowing that they would go for Doc first, before any-one else, because he loved the road so much.
Doc was over sixty-five then and had taken to drinking hard when we were off. But he never touched a drop when we were on the road. I used to wonder whether he drank because being a Waiter’s Waiter was getting hard or because he had to do something until his next trip. I could never figure it. When we had our layovers he would spend all his time in Andy’s, setting up the house. He had no wife, no relatives, not even a hobby. He just drank. Pretty soon the slicksters at Andy’s got to using him for a good thing. They commenced putting the touch on him because they saw he was getting old and knew he didn’t have far to go, and they would never have to pay him back. Those of us who were close to him tried to pull his coat, but it didn’t help. He didn’t talk about himself much, he didn’t talk much about anything that wasn’t related to the road; but when I tried to hip him once about the hustlers and how they were closing in on him, he just took another shot and said:
“I don’t need no money. Nobody’s jiving me. I’m jiving them. You know I can still pull in a hundred in tips in one trip. I know this business.”
“Yeah, I know, Doc,” I said. “But how many more trips can you make before you have to stop?”
“I ain’t never gonna stop. Trips are all I know and I’ll be making them as long as these trains haul people.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “They don’t want to haul people any more. The planes do that. The big roads want freight now. Look how they hire youngbloods just for the busy seasons just so they won’t get any seniority in the winter. Look how all the Old School waiters are dropping out. They got the Sheik, Percy Fields just lucked up and died before they got to him, they almost got Reverend Hendricks. Even Uncle T. is going to retire! And they’ll get us too.”
“Not me,” said Doc. “I know my moves. This old fox can still dance with a tray and handle four tables at the same time. I can still bait a queer and make the old ladies tip big. There’s no waiter better than me and I know it.”
“Sure, Doc,” I said. “I know it too. But please save your money. Don’t be a dummy. There’ll come a day when you just can’t get up to go out and they’ll put you on the ground for good.”
Doc looked at me like he had been shot. “Who taught you the moves when you were just a raggedy-ass waiter?”
“You did, Doc,” I said.
“Who’s always the first man down in the yard at train-time?” He threw down another shot. “Who’s there sitting in the car every tenth morning while you other old heads are still at home pulling on your longjohns?”
I couldn’t say anything. He was right and we both knew it.
“I have to go out,” he told me. “Going out is my whole life. I wait for that tenth morning. I ain’t never missed a trip and I don’t mean to.”
What could I say to him, youngblood? What can I say to you? He had to go out, not for the money; it was in his blood. You have to go out too, but it’s for the money you go. You hate going out and you love coming in. He loved going out and he hated coming in. Would you listen if I told you to stop spending your money on pussy in Chicago? Would he listen if I told him to save his money? To stop setting up the bar at Andy’s? No. Old men are just as bad as young men when it comes to money. They can’t think. They always try to buy what they should have for free. And what they buy, after they have it, is nothing.
They called Doc into the Commissary and the doctors told him he had lumbago and a bad heart and was weak from drinking too much, and they wanted him to get down for his own good. He wouldn’t do it. Tesdale, the General Superintendent, called him in and told him that he had enough years in the service to pull down a big pension and that the company would pay for a retirement party for him, since he was the oldest waiter working, and invite all the Old School waiters to see him off, if he would come down. Doc said no. He knew that the Union had to back him. He knew that he could ride as long as he made the trains on time and as long as he knew the service. And he knew that he could not leave the road.
The company called in its lawyers to go over the Union contract. I wasn’t there, but Len Dickey was in on the meeting because of his office in the Union. He told me about it later. Those fat company lawyers took the contract apart and went through all their books. They took the seniority clause apart word by word, trying to figure a way to get at Doc. But they had written it airtight back in the days when the company needed waiters, and there was nothing in it about compulsory retirement. Not a word. The paddies in the Union must have figured that waiters didn’t need a new contract when they let us in, and they had let us come in under the old one thinking that all waiters would die on the job, or drink themselves to death when they were still young, or die from buying too much pussy, or just quit when they had put in enough time to draw a pension. But nothing in the whole contract could help them get rid of Doc Craft. They were sweating, they were working so hard. And all the time Tesdale, the General Superintendent, was calling them sons-of-bitches for not earning their money. But there was nothing the company lawyers could do but turn the pages of their big books and sweat and promise Tesdale that they would find some way if he gave them more time.
The word went out from the Commissary: “Get Doc.” The stewards got it from the assistant superintendents: “Get Doc.” Since they could not get him to retire, they were determined to catch him giving bad service. He had more seniority than most other waiters, so they couldn’t bump him off our crew. In fact, all the waiters with more seniority than Doc were on the crew with him. There were four of us from the Old School: me, Doc, Uncle T. Boone, and Danny Jackson. Reverend Hendricks wasn’t running regular any more; he was spending all his Sundays preaching in his Church on the South Side because he knew what was coming and wanted to have something steady going for him in Chicago when his time came. Fifth and sixth men on that crew were two hardheads who had read the book. The steward was Crouse, and he really didn’t want to put the screws to Doc but he couldn’t help himself. Everybody wants to work. So Crouse started in to riding Doc, sometimes about moving too fast, sometimes about not moving fast enough. I was on the crew, I saw it all. Crouse would seat four singles at the same table, on Doc’s station, and Doc had to take care of all four different orders at the same time. He was seventy-three, but that didn’t stop him, knowing this business the way he did. It just slowed him down some. But Crouse got on him even for that and would chew him out in front of the passengers, hoping that he’d start cursing and bother the passengers so that they would complain to the company. It never worked, though. Doc just played it cool. He’d look into Crouse’s eyes and know what was going on. And then he’d lay on his good service, the only service he knew, and the passengers would see how good he was with all that age on his back and they would get mad at the steward, and leave Doc a bigger
tip when they left.
The Commissary sent out spotters to catch him giving bad service. These were pale-white little men in glasses who never looked you in the eye, but who always felt the plate to see if it was warm. And there were the old maids, who like that kind of work, who would order shrimp or crabmeat cocktails or celery and olive plates because they knew how the rules said these things had to be made. And when they came, when Doc brought them out, they would look to see if the oyster fork was stuck into the thing, and look out the window a long time.
“Ain’t no use trying to fight it,” Uncle T. Boone told Doc in the crew car one night, “the black waiter is doomed. Look at all the good restaurants, the class restaurants in Chicago. You can’t work in them. Them white waiters got those jobs sewed up fine.”
“I can be a waiter anywhere,” says Doc. “I know the business and I like it and I can do it anywhere.”
“The black waiter is doomed,” Uncle T. says again. “The whites is taking over the service in the good places. And when they run you off of here, you won’t have no place to go.”
“They won’t run me off of here,” says Doc. “As long as I give the right service they can’t touch me.”
“You’re a goddamn fool!” says Uncle T. “You’re a nigger and you ain’t got no rights except what the Union says you have. And that ain’t worth a damn because when the Commissary finally gets you, those niggers won’t lift a finger to help you.”
“Leave off him,” I say to Boone. “If anybody ought to be put off it’s you. You ain’t had your back straight for thirty years. You even make the crackers sick the way you keep bowing and folding your hands and saying, ‘Thank you, Mr. Boss.’ Fifty years ago that would of got you a bigger tip,” I say, “but now it ain’t worth a shit. And every time you do it the crackers hate you. And every time I see you serving with that skullcap on I hate you. The Union said we didn’t have to wear them eighteen years ago! Why can’t you take it off?”