Beggars of Life

by Jim Tully

  I started suddenly when I saw him, for he sat as silent as a black stone on a grave.

  “I been watchin’ you sleep, white boy, an’ you suah slep’ soun’.”

  I held my forehead for a moment, then asked, “How long you been here?”

  “’Bout a houh an’ a half,” was the reply.

  “You could of rolled me for my change, couldn’t you? I was all in.”

  “Not me, brotah. I don’t roll no one. Dough’s hahd enuff to git when you’s all in, down an’ out. Ah knows.”

  “Well, listen, I got about a dollar and forty cents. I’ll buy the grub and a half-pint of booze if you’ll go after it,” I bargained.

  “That’ll be fine. I hain’t had nuffin’ to eat since mawnin’,” replied the negro.

  I then hesitated a moment. “Are you sure you’ll come back?” and then, not waiting for an answer, I went on, “but I’ll take a chance.” I handed the negro the money, and he hurriedly put his shoes on and walked gingerly toward the town.

  I looked at the river until a languor overtook me, and then, forgetful of the river, the negro, and all, I slept again.

  A hand shook my shoulder. The negro had opened the packages. Crackers and cold meats were spread upon a newspaper on the ground.

  “Heah you is, white boy,” said the negro.

  We ate the lunch in the gathering twilight.

  A murky haze spread over the river, and dark and red splotches of colour appeared in the western sky. A gasoline yacht chugged through the water, its lights being visible long after the echo of its noise had subsided.

  A quiet gathered around us and, as if in obedience to some deep inner law, we did not talk for some time. Finally, I broke the silence with the usual question of the road, “Which way, ’Bo?”

  “Ah’s goin’ nawth, jist as fah nawth as I kin git,” answered the negro. “Ah’ve only bin outta jail seben month daown saouth. Ah do fifteen yeah, evah since I waz twenty-t’ree yeahs old. Ah pick enuff cotton and build enuff road, an’ haul enuff cane to plug up that ol’ riber.”

  “What ‘ud they stick you in jail for?” I mumbled.

  “I diden do nuffen. Anotheh niggah cuts me wit’ a razah, an’ I cuts ’im back, an’ they soaks me five yeah. The otheh niggah doan even die.

  “I serbes my time, an’ about the last six months foah it’s up, they hiahs me out to some big rich guy daown theah. He kep’ me ownin’ ’im so much I wuke ten yeahs for nuthin’.

  “Ev’ry time I git a paih ova-alls, he charges me some moah, an’ tells me I has to wuk it out. I ask him when I git free, an’ he say he lynch me ah talk to ’im ’bout that.

  “All the niggahs daown in Geoghia gits a dollah if they turns a runway niggah in. Ah know that, but ah takes a chance one time, and floats down the riber on a log. I has a old bull dog, but dey waz nothin’ else to do but leabe him. I cried like a little niggah baby on that log, an Ah cries naow when I t’inks ob him. Poor ol’ Moses wit’ his eah all chawed up a runnin’ up an’ down the bank a barkin’ foh me.

  “I floats down the riber ’long time till I meets a niggah an’ blabs ma tr’ubles to ’im, an’ he wants to tuhn me in foh a dollah. You bet I doan do that no moah, niggah o’ no niggah. Nobody t’all. Yu kain’t trust niggahs neitha’.

  “Ah makes ma way to Memfus, and gits a job, and woaks two month, an’ who do Ah see one day but a drummah who sells ma boss stuff in Geoghia. He say, ‘Niggah, youh boss evah ketch you, he sure string you up, an’ gibe the buzzahds some black meat. You bettah move on.’ I was skeered white, an’ I moved, too.

  “I walks ‘way off to Kaintucky, an’ I gits a job in Bowlin’ Green. I stays theah fouh month, an’ the man who I wouk foh laikes me, an’ I go to school wit’ lotta little kids ‘tree mont’. They all laughs ’bout me, great big niggah wit’ dem chillun, but ah leahns to read a little. Den who does I meet but dat salesman agin, an’ he tries to coax me to git drunk wit’ him. Den he tells me he waz offehed two hunder’ dollahs to git me back, ’cause I’s a good woukin’ niggah. I gits skeered and runs ‘way from theah an’ doan say nuffin’ to nobody, nohow. I just keep right on agoin’. Niggah tells me’n Dabenpoaht dat dey kain’t takes you back ’less guvanah say so, but I knows bettah, ’cause I knows my old boss. He kills a niggah laike he woul’ a snake. I knows—I see ’im do it. Niggah botha him one time, an’ he shoot ’im, an’ he say, ‘Take dat niggah ‘way dere,’ an’ I does. I bet he miss me, ’cause ah use to hitch up hawse an’ take ’im church ebery Sunday. I’ll say Ah’s goin’ nawth, an’ Ah’ll stay nawth, too.”

  “You served fifteen years on a five-year’s sentence!”

  “You bet, an’ I ain’t goin’ back neithah. Dey kin talk ’bout de souf all dey want to, de nawth’s good ’nuff foh me.”

  The colours left the sky. The stars came out. The moon burnished the river into gold.

  I looked at the negro, who gazed silently at the water. His face was merged more or less with the night, but his yellowish-white eyes were distinct.

  “You’ve had a devil of a time, haven’t you, old boy?” I said.

  “I suah has. A niggah ain’t got no chance, no time, no wheah, nohow.”

  “You’ve heard of Booker T. Washington, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, white boy, I’s heahd of Jawge and Bookeh both. Dat’s ’bout all I knows ’bout ’em. I jist kin read a little in a primah, dat’s all.”

  Late into the night I told the child-like rover about the two Washingtons, and Toussaint L’Ouverture, the negro liberator whom the tricky Napoleon betrayed.

  When early morning came, we separated after having coffee and rolls in a dismal restaurant.

  I left for Chicago and the negro for Minneapolis.

  “I won’t forgit you, white boy.”

  “Nor me you, neither. So long.”

  CHAPTER XII

  A TURN IN THE ROAD

  CHAPTER XII

  A TURN IN THE ROAD

  I CLIMBED into an empty gondola that had been used to carry coal, and the black dust was still in it. The trap-doors were open at the bottom, and I could see the road-bed below.

  A weariness was on me, and I longed for a quiet harbor away from the jangle and hunger of the road. I wondered where I could get a coat to fit me. The subject of the coat fascinated me, and then my mind became braver, and dreamed of a whole suit.

  A gust of wind came along and lifted my hat and carried it straight to the open trap-door. It rolled beneath the train.

  Unmindful of the loss, I walked to the end of the car and dozed in the sun.

  A rattling and bumping of the cars awoke me at a little town called Bryon. The sun was straight above me, and I decided to leave the train and hunt some dinner.

  New switches were being installed along the road. The camp of a grading outfit was a few hundred yards away. Many mules stood about near the camp. Unhitched from the scrapers, they were enjoying the noon-day rest.

  I walked straight for the camp and asked for something to eat. A round-shouldered man heard my request and seated me at a table around which the workmen were still gathered.

  They stopped talking long enough to greet me, and placed the food near my reach.

  The round-shouldered man had a head shaped like a canal boat. He had a long nose, very small ears, and eyes a washed-out blue. His suspender kept slipping off his round shoulder, and he seemed to be occupied half the time in putting it in place with his thumb.

  While I was eating he asked, “Would you like to go to work, Kid?”

  I thought of the new coat and answered, “Sure, what’ll you gimme a day?”

  “A dollar and your board,” was the answer.

  “All right. I’ll take it.”

  When the noon hour was over, I was taken to a small team of mules that were already harnessed. I drove them to the grade, where a man hitched them to an iron, instrument used to carry dirt from one point to another. This instrument was filled at one point and unloaded at another, so that my work consist
ed in driving the mules ten hours each day. The team could have almost made the trip without a driver, as I often held the lines an hour at a time without speaking to them.

  When six o’clock came the first night, I ate a light supper from the tin dishes on the pine table, and dragged myself to bed.

  The beds were old mattresses thrown upon the ground. Some of the men had wooden boxes near them. There were none of the ordinary necessities of civilized life. Neither tooth powder nor brush could be seen.

  All used the same comb and towel. They washed in basins which were placed on a long wooden bench. As they dipped the water to their faces with cup-shaped hands, they would make loud spluttering noises.

  None of the men had home ties, or anything to look forward to when the long grind of labour was over. The men talked of fine women as though they were far-off things, and not of this earth. Like most men, they idealized women too much. I did not learn until years later that both men and women were about the same either at the top or the bottom of society. But those poor devils have probably never learned it.

  The fellow is always in demand who can talk about women among men on the ragged edge of life. The poor sentimentalists in the grading camp listened to stories about women told by the round-shouldered man, whose suspender would slip from his shoulder as he talked. They seemed to believe all the stories he told, as they believed the stories of the harlots who robbed them in an hour of the money they had earned by months of tortuous labor.

  On the third day, my body ached until I could hardly drag one foot after the other. My forehead was hot as I touched it. The team danced before my eyes as the trees had along the river.

  The men were aroused each morning by the beating of a railroad spike upon a piece of iron hung from the branch of a tree near the kitchen.

  When it rang the fourth morning, I clambered from my mattress on the ground, and fell dizzily back into it again.

  The rest of the men answered the call to breakfast while I remained in bed. The round-shouldered man came in to see me. He looked to be twice as tall, and his shoulders were as broad as his length. My throbbing brain made my eyes flicker and caused the man to dance wildly before me. When he adjusted his suspender, his thumb seemed three feet long, and the suspender resembled the tug on a giant horse’s harness.

  He said, “Ain’t shammin’, are you, Kid? You’ll be all right by noon,” and danced out of the tent.

  I dreamed feverishly till noon. I was an Irish general shot to death by the English and dying alone in my camp. I was a poet who recited many verses aloud.

  As the trains thundered by, all the hoboes I knew waved wildly at me, and danced, a ragged crowd of madmen on top of the cars. I saw the top of a bridge dash their heads from the train. They still danced, ragged and headless, with immense eyes gazing fixedly from the centres of their breasts.

  The round-shouldered man came at noon and at evening. He was convinced that I was not shamming the next day, so he gave me two dollars and told me to go to a doctor. Though scarcely able to stand, I managed to crawl to the man of medicine.

  He gave me medicine, and talked of typhoid fever tactfully. I got his meaning. The round-shouldered man gave me another dollar, and I still had fifty cents left. Without bidding anyone good-bye, I boarded a freight for Chicago.

  I craved water on top of the hot train. My throat burned and my jaws ached. My head was in a vise, and spikes were being driven through it. I screamed with pain. But the train rattled on through the hot day. My head whirled, and the train seemed to run in a wild circle. I became dizzy, and saw rainbows through which clear water gurgled. I reached for water, and grabbed but empty space.

  Determined to leave the train and get a drink, I climbed down the iron ladder, each rung of which was as hot, burning steel.

  Only one thing saved me jumping to my death—the train shrieked for a point called Davis Junction and slowed up ever so little. I did not know it then, nor did I stop to consider the speed of the train. I jumped, and rolled on the ground. How long I lay there I do not know. I found a saloon near the track. How—I know not. I thought about a new coat that dripped with water. I drank a large quantity of it in the saloon.

  It nauseated me. The day wore on in blistering sun-scorched hours.

  Burning with fever, I was thankful when the sun went down and the heat had subsided.

  I still dreamed of the new coat, though my feet were on the ground, and my toes showed through the worn-out upper leather.

  I knew where Bill lived in Chicago. He would help me get a coat. I would take a fast cattle train and be in there by morning.

  How long I waited, I did not know. The boarding of the train, and many of the incidents at this time are still a blurred memory to me. A few stand out, burned into my brain with fever for ever.

  I lay flat upon the top of a cattle car. The cattle bellowed and the train roared, while I clung with hot, sweaty hands to the roof of the swaying car.

  The train stopped somewhere along the road, and a brakeman walked over it.

  “Git off, bum. Don’t let me see you on here again.”

  “All right, brakie,” I said, as the man walked on swinging his lantern across the cars. I did not move.

  The engine whistle blew twice, and the train rolled swiftly on. I turned giddily upon my back and tried to count the stars. Suddenly a light flashed across me, and I thought it a falling star. A voice said, “Thought I told you to git off this train.”

  I sat erect at the words. The man leaned down and grasped me roughly by the collar. I stood up under the pressure of the hand, as the man swayed me backward.

  “I’m all in, Mister, or I wouldn’t ride your damn train. I’m beatin’ it for a hospital in Chi.”

  The brakeman held the lantern full in my face, and looked away. He stopped a moment, then held the light at my face again. “Come with me,” he said.

  I followed him to the other end of the car. He jerked open a door above the iron manger that held hay for the travelling cattle.

  “Jump in here, Kid,” he said, “an’ I’ll wake you when we reach the end of the run. You kin take the mechanics’ train into town in the mornin’. It takes the round-house gang home. You won’t need a ticket, so just get right on the train.”

  I stretched out upon the hay in the narrow manger, and crooned with feverish joy. In some spots the cattle had eaten all the hay, and now and then a long horn would prod my fever-stricken body. My throat ached from thirst, and my tongue was as dry as a withered leaf. My lips stuck together, and my eyelids burned as though matches were being constantly lit under them.

  Now and then I would sleep fitfully, and the prodding of a horn would arouse me. I dreamed I had a new blue suit, a striped tie, and bright tan shoes. I dreamed about Bill, and the farm in Missouri. Then I thought of the mosquitoes and wondered if they had anything to do with my illness. Someone had told me that they gave people malaria.

  I chewed the hay to work the saliva in my mouth that I might alleviate my thirst.

  The notion seized me of going back over the train to the caboose and asking for a drink of water. I pushed the door open above me and the swift breeze fanned my burning forehead.

  A cattle train is one of the fastest that runs. It sidetracks only for mail and passenger trains, and sometimes not for them.

  I clambered up and stood erect on the lurching car. The engine ahead screeched through the night. White and black smoke rolled over the train and scattered in all directions. Hatless and coatless, with the wild wind blowing through my hair, I watched a blur of smoke trailing toward the sky.

  There were a dozen cars between me and the caboose. Death would be with me every step I took. I could fall sideways from the car, or make a mis-step and go down between them. Even my turbulently fevered brain figured all the chances.

  “I may as well die one way as the other. I gotta have a drink,” I decided, as I stumbled across the cars.

  The light in the top of the caboose danced like a maiden with
water before my eyes. My foot slipped once, and I grabbed the iron wheel of the brake-beam and worked my way to an erect position again.

  “Gosh, that was a close call,” I thought.

  I made the door of the caboose at last. The conductor opened it.

  “Mister, I’m dyin’ for a drink. Will you gimme one?”

  The conductor’s eyes went big at the picture I must have made before him. “Sure thing, Kid,” he said, as he handed me a tin dipper filled with water. I drank it without taking a breath, and asked for another. “You sure got a hot pipe, Kid,” said the conductor.

  “I sure have. My boiler’s burnin’ up,” I answered.

  Two brakemen stood near, one of whom had befriended me.

  As the train lurched, I fell sideways in the conductor’s arms. “Lie down here, lad,” said the conductor, as he helped me to a bunk in the car. “We’ll be at the yards in a jiffy now.”

  Dawn reached the end of the division the same time the train did. The brakeman walked with me to the workmen’s train, and saw me safely aboard. In a short time it was filled with all-night workers anxious to be home.

  I left the train at the end of the run at the far edge of Chicago.

  The saloons were open, and I walked into one close by and drank a large glass of beer. My stomach revolted, and I hurriedly left the place.

  A chill came over me as I walked along the street.

  Two teamsters sat drinking liquor out of a pop bottle. Seeing me, they offered me a drink. The liquor burned my throat and made me even sicker than before.

  I reached the elevated train somehow. I wanted to find Bill at the Newsboys’ Home, which was on the South Side.

  People stared at me. I was hatless and coatless. My face was grimed with the dirt of the road.

  A finely dressed woman stepped hastily out of my way as another woman gave me a seat near her. She was little and old and shrivelled, and black ear-rings hung from her ears, and the veins ran like swollen blue worms in her hands. By a curious freak of memory, I would know her this day if I met her on a country road.