Somebody in Boots

by Nelson Algren

  Parrotwise, another repeated the warning. Cass sat up. “When ol’ Pugh say, ‘Come awn out, lousers,’ y’all say to Pugh right back, ‘Aw come awn up in, Tuffnuts,’—like that. Don’t fergit now.”

  Once the car leaped forward, front wheels two inches off the track, thunderously to lunge its steel into steel ahead; then it found the track again, wheeled with slackening speed toward the city. The men waited. Those lying, touched by sun and soot in sleep, rolled uneasily as they lay; they rumped each other suddenly as the long car buckled, and sat up blinking. Swearing then, and sweating from their sleep, they clung to walls, beams and boarding. The big man and the boy with the parrot’s cackle slammed the great doors shut. In the darkness heat crawled down Cass’s throat.

  “Half a mile to Marsh City now, boys. Better start tightenin’ up them guts, all you what’s gonna hold this man down. They’s gover’ment bulls here now beside Hank Pugh—but if y’ll stick right with me, we’ll sail right on through. They stops fo’ water in this pesthole, then they tear right on fo’ Shrevepo’t. That’s where ah got a job waitin’ fo’ me. Ah’m a Wob is why. It takes a old-time Wob to get jobs in these times.”

  From a dozen unwashed bodies a cloud of sweatstench rose into Cass’s nose. Bits of straw blew into his mouth, tickled his throat, and worked into the cracks of his body until he had to keep scratching himself as though he had lice. He felt like a scarecrow stowed away, in autumn, in some dark old barn.

  Jolt upon jolt, the car began slowing; then it jerked once and stopped, boards all quivering. All down the line behind him then, Cass heard each car buckle once and stop, beams all quivering. Sudden footsteps overhead warned that it was time to screw up courage. The men waited, till their car seemed still with waiting.

  “When Pugh says, ‘Come awn out, lousers,’” warned the parrot-voice, “Y’all say ‘Aw, come awn in, Tuffnuts’—like that. Now don’t y’all fergit.” Cass surmised that this must be a friend of the Wobbly’s.

  “They won’t cut this car off us here, will they, Mr Wobble?” someone asked. The Wobbly answered with contempt in his voice.

  “Marsh City ain’t no division point fo’ this train. Don’t yo’ know what yo’ ridin’, kid?”

  The kid didn’t know. “Mr Wobble” let in a beam of light that cleft his face from forehead to jaw. Cass, standing in a corner, saw it. It was a bulging forehead and a bulging jaw, with a chin like a jagged rock outthrust. Then somebody was coming, and the fellow closed the slit he had made in the darkness. Somebody in boots. Cass heard him crushing cinders as he advanced swiftly, stepping over ties and scuffing against the rails. The door was flung wide.

  Over the Wobbly’s shoulder the boys peered down at one small man peering up. A little man, with a pale pointy face. Someone in an awed undertone asked Cass if this were Hank Pugh, and Cass nodded his head that it was, although he did not know. The man did not stand as though lame, but his face looked ugly enough to be Pugh’s. When the little brakie spoke, the Wobbly only spread his legs wider in the doorway, folded his arms across his chest, and spat toward the earth.

  “How many crawdads you got in that hole, big fella?”

  “Oh they’s plenty more’n jest me in here, Buttons—nigh onto twenty men ah reck’n.” Behind him then as though to prove their numbers, the dozen-odd boys and men bestirred themselves noisily.

  The little man below smiled knowingly, and turned away; Cass heard his boots moving faster and faster, back over the same wooden ties over which they had come. Such boots were two despisers of small things; they were high-heeled, sharp-pointed, imbedded deeply with spikes, shining with sun or bright with rainwet. Stuart had kicked Bryan at the base of the belly, but that had been long ago.

  “Now, you ones what ain’t of a mind to stick close to me’d best hit the grit right now, whilst you still got a chanst. That little shack has went to git Pugh.”

  Two ragged waifs with fatuous eyes hopped out and left at a long gallop down the ties. Rags streaming in the wind behind them, they looked like two bounding black colts with upright tails. A lank fellow leaned out and grinned after the pair, pointing a finger out of an unclean sleeve.

  “Farm kids never do learn—they won’t git two mile afore they’re snatched. An’ they won’t be gittin’ back on the road agen so easy neither, what with Marion County payin’ sixty cents a day for every yokel in the jailhouse. No, them farmers won’t be runnin’ far, an’ they won’t be thrashin’ oats next August neither.” Hate like a sudden memory smothered his eyes and split the thin mouth into a snarl—“Goddamn ’em—Don’t I know?—Don’t I remember? Handcuffed me to the bars on my twenty-eight’ day and I held cold steel till the month was out. Ninety days I set in that hole, an’ for nothin’ at all so help me God. Them ninety days was ninety years an’ I’ll never get ’em back.”

  “Horse—. You ain’t never seen a real jail.” A Northern voice was speaking. “I got vagged in East Florida an’ got put to stompin’ sileage. Grits, gravy an’ cornbread every day an’ two meals by lantern-light. Eighty-five men in one room an’ not even a sheet of newspaper to sleep on. Hell, man, you ain’t seen a real jail till you’ve stood up in a East Florida sweat-box a spell.”

  Cass could not see the man who said this, but he had known about Florida, and he had not gone there. It seemed to him now that no one in the car was as afraid as he himself was—till a voice now familiar spoke again, and then he knew he was not alone in his fear.

  “When this Lame Hank Pugh says, ‘Come awn out lousers’ y’all want to say to him right back, ‘Aw come awn in, Tuffnuts.’ Don’t ya’ll fergit now.”

  It was the parrot-voiced boy.

  The men crowded the doorways, shoulders brushed, hands touched, electrically a pleasant current passed from man to man. Cass ceased to be afraid for a moment; behind him someone began singing “Casey Jones.”

  Then down the tracks came a tall man, limping. Immediately, to buoy sinking spirits, the men set up a chorus of jeers, catcalls and mockery.

  “Hulloo—thar come ol’ Casey Jones hisself, with his whole danged army an’ the town clown behind him, an’—”

  Ol’ Casey Jones was a son of a bitch

  He backed his engine in a forty-foot ditch

  The boiler busted, and the smoke-stack split

  The fireman farted and Casey . . .

  They broke off, for the detectives were now within hearing. Silently they waited now, those in front wishing that they had been a bit less impulsive, those behind edging uneasily back. In front of them all stood their leader, the big ugly Wob. But whenPugh came up it wasn’t the Wob who spoke first, it was his squeaky-voiced companion.

  “Will y’all let us ride, Mr Hank Pugh?” he pleaded, “We aint a-aimin’ at trouble ay-tall.”

  The tall man stood with his hands on his hips looking alert and unamazed.

  “Awright, boys, come awn down out now, an’ come out one at a time. Trespassin’ private proppity y’know,” he paused to smile warmly; “an’ when we’re all through y’all git breakfast uptown—how’d that strike all you boys?” He kept his smile.

  “Breakfast uptown”—the men knew what that meant, and those that moved at all moved only toward the car’s corners. For one moment the special agent’s eyes walked swiftly from face to boyish face; then they settled on the Wobbly’s, the only full-grown man he could see.

  “You-all come out first.”

  The Wob raised one eyebrow, and remained unmoving.

  “That’s right—stand still when I say come out! Don’t make a move when I tells ya to move! Stand gawpin’ like a figgin’ ijit at me! Well by Christ all you sons-of-bitches’ll wish you had of moved!” Pugh’s mouth snapped shut, he came swiftly forward and the boys heeled back. As though the wheels had leaped suddenly under their feet, they fell against each other in a rush for the corners; then the door whirred past and was locked from the outside.

  The boys laughed nervously, wondering why the agent had not come in after them; their other
door stood wide as daylight.

  “Don’t let ’em lock this door, kids,” the Wobbly warned, “that’s what he’s figgerin’ on. He ain’t got time to pull us out, so he figgers on keepin’ us in.”

  Above their heads the boys heard men clambering over the spine and coming down the sides. When they reached earth Cass saw that there were now five deputies. They looked like farmers and hill-men just come from their farms and hills; they bore clubs and their faces were hard.

  The Wobbly remained alone in the doorway, legs wide and arms akimbo. Although he spoke not a word, all there took his meaning as clearly as though he had said, “You’ll have to get me before this door comes closed.” From far ahead came two brief blasts, he braced his arms on the door’s jambs in the second before the wheels pulled forward. In that second’s fraction the man appeared like a great bird poised for flight over the heads of the little men threatening him from below. His arms seemed long dark wings outspread, and his shoulders hunched with tension. Then, like a gaunt buzzard, he was spinning downward through space. Cass saw him yanked head-first into the arms of the deputies. There had been no shot, only arm-wings flailing a brief pattern through sun, and legs flailing space into upreaching hands. Then there came hard laughter, and the sudden terrible rushing sound that is made when many men go swiftly against one. It was like a brief cold breeze, that sound. The door crashed past, the car jerked forward, and a small lock clicked as it jerked.

  Dark now, utterly dark. Pugh would telegraph ahead to Waskom, the next division point. There, unless they broke out in the interval, everyone in the car would be held for trespassing on private property, and for resisting the ofhcers. Or for vagrancy, or disorderly conduct, or, quite possibly, for vandalism or malicious mischief. Unless they broke out. “What a bunch of punks—to let Pugh git away with a stunt like that. Lawd, they aint ’nuf guts in this whole gang to stuff a . . .”

  The voice checked itself abruptly. It had sounded much like a woman’s voice. Men sucked in breath in an indrawn silence.

  “Say! That sounds like a woman back there!”

  In the darkness Cass heard an eager forward-jostling; then came silence again, till the car seemed rocking with its silence.

  “Damned if it ain’ft boys! Say—whyn’t you tell us afore, nigger gal? What y’all got in them pants anyhow, nigger gal?”

  “Nigger gal, fellas! Say, nigger gal, where’d y’all come from anyhow? How long you been ridin’, eh? Where y’all think yer goin’ to? What’s yore nasty name, nigger gal, anyhow?”

  The girl’s voice was a hung thing, oblique with thin fear.

  “Charlotte Hallem. Goin’t’ Noo Awlins. Comin’ f ’om . . .”

  “Whoops! She’s a-goin’ to Noo Awlins to work on Franklin Street—Step right up, gen’lmen, meet Charlotte, the little travelin’ girrul. Which way y’all taken it t’night, gen’lmen?”

  Simultaneously, two voices from different parts of the car struck up the same tune, wailing it out until others joined in,

  Oh Charlotte the harlot

  The queen of the whores,

  Scum of the east side

  Covered with sores.

  They sang this jeeringly over and over again; they all knew the tune of Long, Long Ago,—till a voice spoke out strongly to bring them back to realization of their predicament.

  “Get that nigger gal off yer mind, you kids. Start figgerin’ how yer gonna get out of this hole before we hit Waskom.”

  Cass thought: “That’s that derned Nawtherner again, talkin’ like he was the engineer. The air’s gittin’ kind of close all right though. Unless we staht workin’ last it’ll be ninety days fo’ me too, in Marion County jail.”

  “Okey, Yank,” someone said.

  In the whole ragged crew there was but one jack-knife, and that belonged to the Negress. But she gave it over when asked by the Northerner, and the baiting ceased for a time. Yet something of lust unquelled remained in the air.

  They took turns whittling at the wood; when one hand tired the knife was passed on. Came Cass’s turn, he expected to feel a deep hole in the two-inch boarding; instead there were only a few feeble scratches to show what had already been accomplished. The wood was too hard, the knife was dull as a tin spoon; in the hands of the boy who followed Cass the blade snapped in two. This was the boy who had aped the Wobbly’s orders; when the blade broke he said, as though its breaking had jogged his memory, “When they pulled John out sudden that way we should o’ got right out an’ pulled him back in. Then I would of said, ‘Aw come on up in, Tuffnuts’—jest like that.”

  Once in the night Cass woke, and did not know where he lay. Stooping gray figures came and went all about him, he felt as though he were caught somewhere, deep down. Then he remembered: he was lying on a creaking nightdoor with his cap for a pillow and straw for his bed, and Nancy was nowhere near at all.

  “Ah shouldn’t of said such words to sister that time,” he thought.

  And he slept once more, and he dreamed. He dreamed he was walking beneath a wall that stretched in a rising curve over prairie. It was evening, the end of the wall was dusk, and in vastness above him a great hawk wheeled; dimly, sweetly, from very far, a church-bell chimed and chimed toward night. Cass clung close to the long dusk-wall, he feared the wheeling hawk; it seemed that the bird had been searching for long, over the whole dark prairie for him. The church-chimes paused, there came the thunder of wings down-whirring, wing-thunder became the roaring of wheels—and he woke to his own heart’s pounding. In the corner men were piling something. He rose and saw that they were preparing to burn their way out. Rags and straw and paper were piled against the wall.

  “Aint y’all feared of it cotchin’ th’ other cars?” Cass asked of nobody in particular.

  “Naw, they’s a steel gondola ridin’ in front an’ a iron dumpcar in back,” the Northern voice replied, “an’ anyways the crew ought to see it ’fore it goes too far.” The man lit a match and leaned over; in the glare Cass saw that he had a hare-lip.

  “I burned outen a box once before,” the hare-lip moved, “on the Central of Georgia, outen a wood reefer. You got to be careful that it don’t spread.” The men stomped the flame down wherever it threatened to catch the floor.

  What a joke this would be on those Waskom bulls, when they opened the car to get a load of bums at two dollars a head—and found nothing inside but four charred walls! As they stomped the dame the little Negress came out of a corner and helped to beat dame back with her cap; her frizzly hair, brushing Cass’s cheek, excited him a little.

  “Ah hates fire,” she condded, “cause fire made me a widder oncet—an’ not so long ago neither.”

  It was long work, the work of burning out; the flame ate up air that they needed for breath. The men coughed. The black girl opened her collar, and her throat seemed darker than the night about them. Cass could see its outline in the dimness, black as a pillar of black baleen. When there was a hole in the boarding big enough to let two hands through, the Northerner and Cass tugged and yanked together, gradually loosening the boards. Then the train began slowing and they had to leave off out of fear of the shack. Cass heard the engine taking water far ahead, and heard the brakie testing the air. The shack would know where they were all right, and would listen and look as he passed. Being afraid that the man would see the ragged hole in the car’s side, the Northerner hung his cap over the hole until he had passed. Then the car rolled on again, and they yanked anew at the boarding. When fingers tired there was someone else’s to wrench and strain in turn. But three or four of the ’boes lay in sleep and did not care whether morning found them free or in a cell on a vag charge.

  Cass was tired. He was always tired now, and ready at a moment’s notice to doze anywhere. He didn’t know why he was always so tired; he only knew that his months on the road already seemed years. When he looked back in memory it seemed almost as though there had never been anything but the road, the long American road, all his life.

  His eyes h
ad scarcely closed when it seemed to him that some voice that had spoken now was still, or something that had been moving had stopped very quietly. He sat up and saw blue moonlight running through a crack in the boarding as high as his head. A low range of hills stood limned against night, prairie was rushing past like sea. The men were crowding toward the open place, anxious for the train to slow again in order to leap. Cass breathed in nightwind off those hills, the low range passed as he stood watching; a line of tall steeples came in its place. Like cathedral-skeletons against the breaking light. Oil wells. Far, far to the east, over the very brim of the veering world they stood. Then over a distance of half a mile the train began to slow and the men began to go off, one by one, the most daring first. They hit the dirt running, some staggered and fell; it was hard in the dimness to see just where one was jumping. The boy preceding Cass caught his foot against something just as he jumped, he fell head downward toward the wheels and saved himself only by sheerest luck, plus some presence of mind: he caught the last rung of the side-ladder as it swung by, and dragged, dangling, for seventy feet. Then he shoved himself free, and rose from earth with the knees gone out of his trousers and one side of his face raked with cinders in furrows. Cass jumped after. Then the black girl. Behind them for half a mile they saw dim shadow bums, walking slowly. Then someone pointed and someone called out: Cass turned his head toward the train they had left.

  Around a curve against black sky the moving boxcar in the night went blazing toward false dawn; tall flowers of fire spilled in the dark, orange-wanton blossoms burst the black. From the long curve then, as the whole train straightened, one flat and pointed sheet swept down. And in one moment the entire car was enwrapped in flame. So vivid was that long caravan, in that moment of straightening by dame silhouetted, that Cass could discern two of the train-crew moving microscopically down the spine of the cars toward the box that was burning.