The Longest Road

by Jeanne Williams

  The rabbit wouldn’t keep long and was intended for tonight’s supper, but there seemed to be no time in this boxcar rumbling across the plains, and no place, either. In this curious passage between real places where there were real times, it didn’t matter when they ate. Laurie offered the man the rabbit after handing Buddy a piece. By the time she’d put some biscuits and corn-bread on the pail lid, the rabbit had disappeared.

  It was stringy, Laurie told herself. Goodness, if the man was that hungry … She and Buddy ate a biscuit apiece while their guest demolished four and longingly gazed at the pail. Their food wouldn’t last to California at this rate, but she and Buddy had eaten big hamburgers that noon, and big breakfasts.

  Laurie got out some gingerbread, broke off a third for Buddy, and gave the man the rest before firmly putting the lid back on the pail and shoving it into her bundle between her new dress, which was rolled up inside her other pair of overalls and plaid shirt, and one of Mama’s quilts—not the one with birds, which Rosalie had put away in her trunk to keep it nice.

  A couple of washrags, an old towel, soap, toothbrush, comb, Mama’s New Testament, Morrigan’s harmonica—that was all Laurie had, and now the things she’d left at Grandpa’s seemed many and infinitely dear, the bird quilt, books, ruby dishes, and the little cedar chest with the lavaliere, grandmother’s tortoise-shell combs, and locks of hair.

  How she’d ached when she brought them from the Model T and put them in the apple crate, saw everything left of their home packed into that box to be kept under the bed! She’d have felt rich if she had them with her now, just as it wouldn’t have been quite so terrible to leave Prairieville if they could have taken the round table where the family had gathered for so many meals, and the carved rocker that had been Mama’s mother’s.

  If you moved enough, like these men, you soon wouldn’t carry any of the little things that made a home and reminded you who you were. Maybe some people, like Morrigan, could carry all they needed to stay real in their heads but most couldn’t. In order to believe they were who they thought they were, folks needed a home with things you couldn’t pack in suitcases—and a family, and a town or a piece of land.

  This was just one boxcar on one train. How many other trains all over the country were carrying men like this, men scattered from their roots like the dead, powdered dust of the prairies?

  “Can you play that mouth organ I saw in your stuff?” Way asked hopefully. Morrigan had ridden in many a boxcar. Certainly he must have played his guitar, and the harmonica, too.

  “I can’t play very well,” Laurie said.

  “It’ll sound better’n the wind howlin’ through the cracks and these guys’ dirty jokes and cussin’.”

  Laurie suspected that Way was more concerned with protecting her and Buddy’s ears than with the quality of her performance. That was nice of him. Besides, playing always summoned Morrigan, and that was the most comforting thing in the world.

  As she played, one of the drinkers stuck his bottle in his things and moved closer. A card game broke up. Before long, everyone in the car was listening, humming, or singing along to the songs they knew. When Laurie stopped to rest, they praised her and clamored for more.

  “You know ‘The Ludlow Massacre’?” Way asked.

  “No, but if you sing it I can probably get the tune pretty close.”

  “Ain’t got much of a voice, but it’s a song you’d ought to know ’cause it sure happened.” Way glanced around at the men. “You older fellers should’ve heard tell of Ludlow.”

  “Hell, yes,” shouted, one grizzled man over the chorus of assent. “That was when John D. Rockefeller hired scabs to break the miners’ strike up in southern Colorado in 1913—brought in gunmen and militia with tear gas and machine guns. Somethin’ touched off fightin’ and when it was over, there were thirty-three on the miners’ side shot dead or burned to death.”

  That had happened in the United States? Just over in Colorado? Daddy would have been about Buddy’s age then, but he’d never mentioned it. Well, maybe a person wouldn’t. Maybe it was something to forget as quick as you could.

  “Half of ’em were women and kids, and there was a hundred more hurt bad,” growled a big redheaded man in stained clothes that smelled like oil. “My uncle got shot in his tent, and his wife burned to a crisp when the camp caught fire.”

  “I was there, too.” Way held up his scarred hands and touched the pale scar on his face. “I was eighteen. Worked with my dad in the mine. We wanted shorter hours, wanted to buy groceries wherever they were best and cheapest, not at the company store. Wanted our union recognized. But John D., he said it was against his principles to do that. Wasn’t against his principles to kill us, though. Well, here’s the song.”

  It was long, it was bitter and Laurie still didn’t want to think such a thing could happen in this country. But she saw Way’s scarred hands and face, heard grief and rage in the thready, rasping voice, and had to believe, so she locked the words in her mind.

  A scrawny man in bib overalls who had a slower drawl than Oklahomans asked if she knew “Seven-Cent Cotton and Forty-Cent Meat.” After that, a chubby blond kid who said he was from Arkansas sang “Cotton Mill Colic” and they wound up with the songs colored folks had made to ease their hard times, “Ain’t Gonna Study War No More,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” “No More Mournin’”—all the ones Laurie knew and the others could remember.

  It had been dark a long time when Way said, “Larry’s tired, boys. Reckon it’s time to turn in.”

  Most of the men came up to thank her, looming shadows, who weren’t so scary now that they’d sung together. The music that had joined them for a while gave them weight and substance the way rain might gradually get that pulverized dust to cling to other pieces and turn into real earth again, earth that would stay where it belonged and grow things.

  A man she’d heard boast about the farm he used to have in Tennessee gave her a bottle of orange pop. One who’d talked about all the wheat he’d raised in Nebraska gave her a whole Milky Way candy bar. There wasn’t much of a way to brush teeth and Mama had trained them not to eat at night after that chore, so Laurie stowed the treats away in her bundle.

  She and Buddy each had a quart jar of water but they’d drunk most of it so Laurie didn’t squander any by washing. From the sounds, she knew men were going to the boxcar door and urinating. Way took Buddy over and held on to him so he wouldn’t fall out while trying to squirt past the train. Laurie couldn’t do that though she felt ready to burst. She’d just have to wait till she could get off the train.

  It was warm enough to do without cover so she doubled her quilt and Buddy’s, spread them on the floor, and mounded their extra clothes under the top quilt for pillows.

  After taking off her shoes, she lay facing the side, figuring that Way would bed down on between Buddy and the rest of the men, which, in fact, he did. Long after he was snoring, Laurie dozed only fitfully, afraid that if she really went to sleep, she’d lose control of her bladder.

  After what seemed forever, the train lessened its speed and churned to a jerky stop. Laurie tested each step before she put her weight down, making her way as quietly as she could to the door. A few lights far up ahead looked like a small town.

  She scrambled down to the cinders. Not daring to go far in case the train started, she let down her suspenders and squatted a little way from the door. Feeling much better, light enough to float, she got hold of the door, swung up one leg and dragged herself into the car as the train lurched into motion.

  Blessedly comfortable now, lulled by the sound and Way’s presence, she smiled to think of how glad Daddy would be to see them. Of course, he’d worry about not having a nice house for them, but once they were together, he was bound to see that was what mattered most. They’d be a family again, the way Mama wanted. Curling up with that thought, she slept more peacefully than she had since the night Morrigan camped with them.

  Sometimes the train pulled onto a siding
to let what Way had called a highball, a train with the right of way, thunder past. In different railroad yards, some cars were shunted onto sidings and others added. The population of the boxcar changed, too, as hoboes got off or jumped on. As it got light, Laurie saw that the way they got on a moving freight was to toss in their gear, run along by the car, and then grasp the door or ladder and spring aboard. One inexperienced boy tried to jump on from where he stood and was knocked backwards, sprawling in the cinders.

  “He’s lucky,” Way said at Laurie’s cry. “Could’ve gone under the wheels.”

  That started the men telling of gruesome deaths they’d seen along the railroads, men hanging between cars till their numb hands gave way and they fell, leaping from car to car and missing, catching a door wrong and getting jerked beneath. Laurie began to shiver. Way cut in at the next pause.

  “Say, any of you fellers ever attend the Hobo College in Chicago?”

  “I got a diploma from it.” A big, burly, white-haired man brought out a shabby wallet and carefully produced a ragged piece of paper that was split at the creases. “Why, I was on the debating team that whipped the team from the University of Chicago—what chance did those kids have against guys who lived by their wits?” He peered at the diploma though it was too dark to read. “Says right here I ‘attended the lectures, discussions, musicals, readings, and visits to art galleries and theaters.’”

  “Yeah,” drawled another man. “And you pledged yourself ‘to lead a clean, honest, manly life.’ That why you’re here, brother? How are bums like us going to abolish poverty and misery and build a better world?”

  The white-haired man folded up his diploma. “I’m still glad I had a chance to listen to those hotshot professors from the University of Chicago and read all those books and think about something besides just keeping alive. They didn’t have easy chairs at the college, sonny. You sat on hard benches with no backs and paid attention.”

  “I didn’t stay long enough for a diploma,” said Way. “But I lived at Ben Reitman’s Kingdom for Hoboes that one month it lasted before the landlord took it back.” His voice deepened. “Why, we had concerts and community sings—even the cops who hung around lookin’ for trouble joined in that singin’. Best I ever heard in my life.”

  “I didn’t live at the kingdom,” said the big white-haired man. “Worked for Mother Greenstein for my board and room, but I came to the concerts and singing.”

  “Mother Greenstein!” Way’s tone was reverent. “Don’t know how she kept that restaurant goin’. She fed anyone who was down-and-out—helped ’em get jobs or medicine or a place to stay. ’Member her Feast of the Outcasts she gave every Thanksgiving—a free dinner for—for—” The kinky eyebrows ridged. “She said it was for everyone the government, church, and society had forgotten. A saint she is.”

  “And Ben Reitman, how about him?” asked the graduate of the Hobo College. “A real doctor he was, and could’ve had a soft life, but he threw in with the hoboes, started the college, worked to give us a chance.”

  The younger man who’d derided the diploma took a swig from a bottle. “Never was in Chi but it sounds like some folks there had hearts—not like President Hoover and General Douglas MacArthur when us Bonus Marchers camped in Washington.”

  “Hey, I was there, too,” called a wiry little dark man in the corner. “Me’n my wife and kids slept in a packing case for two months that summer—thirty-two, it was—hopin’ Congress would go ahead and pay us the rest of the bonus veterans was voted in nineteen twenty-four. Last payment wasn’t due till nineteen forty-five, that’s so, but that was in the worst of the Depression, millions out of work and we figgered if Congress could send us overseas to fight, they could pay us our money sooner.”

  The man with the bottle laughed bitterly. “That was something to see in America—cavalry, tanks, infantry with tear gas and bayonets charging in there to run out men who’d fought for their country—kids and women, too—and then torching the shanties. Can’t have that kind of thing messing up Washington, D.C.! MacArthur, he was the big cheese, under orders from Hoover, of course, but there was a couple of majors mixed up in it, too, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Patton. Wonder if they’re proud of themselves?”

  “Hell, son, it’s always that way,” said the Hobo graduate. “I fought in the Spanish-American War. You’re a hero while the war’s on. Then if you can’t settle down or there’s no jobs, you’re a no-good bum—busted, disgusted, can’t be trusted.”

  “A hobo’s not a bum,” Way said. “He’ll work when he can get a job.”

  “Dandy jobs, ain’t they?” grunted the Bonus Marcher. “Hard, low pay, and they don’t last long. My wife and kids are livin’ with her folks while I flip freights lookin’ for a job of work.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve dug ditches, rolled logs, sunk telegraph poles, harvested, picked, pitched hay, pruned, plowed, cut wood, drove teams—longest I could ever stay in one place was a month. Most I ever got paid was two dollars a day.”

  “What this country needs is that one big union of workin’ stiffs Joe Hill talked about before that Utah firing squad shot him twenty years ago,” said the graduate. “Ought to be a way of gettin’ men and jobs together and fixin’ it so migrants can support their families and live decent. Migrants get treated worse’n most slaves ever did. Sho’, they’re free. Free to starve, with the sheriff and law hustlin’ them on when some crummy job’s finished.”

  “What we need,” said Way, “is the Big Rock Candy Mountains. You know that song, Larry?”

  Everyone else did. They sang it with gusto and after a couple of verses, Laurie could play the tune. Mama would have been scandalized at the words, but after all, Laurie wasn’t singing them.

  At the next stop, the Hobo graduate yelled, “Here come the bulls!” Men started jumping off, but Way shoved Buddy into Laurie’s arms. “Set tight!” he hissed. “Buddy, you just keep your eyes closed, and let me do the talkin’.”

  A big, stout detective with a pistol on his hip and a billy club in his hand swung into the car. “Pile out of here, you bums!” he shouted, threatening the remaining hoboes with the club. As they grabbed up their belongings and jumped down, the detective saw Way and the children.

  “Hey, you old bonebag! Up and out, or I’ll kick you all the way.”

  Way spread his hands. “Officer, my little grandson’s sick.”

  “He won’t get no better ridin’ a freight. You might as well get off here as anyplace.”

  “Beggin’ your pardon, officer, but we wouldn’t. We’re headin’ for my oldest daughter’s. She and her man got a vineyard close to Sedona.”

  The big man rubbed his wide jaw and squinted, bending to look closer at Buddy and Laurie. She held her breath and didn’t have to fake a look of distress. “How come you’ve got the kids?” he demanded.

  Way sighed and swallowed hard, brushing an arm across his eyes. “My woman and me raised Bud and Larry when their folks got killed in a wreck, but my poor old lady, she took pneumony and died last month after the bank foreclosed on our little farm. My daughter’ll give us a home.”

  The detective scowled. Way snuffled. “Please, officer. God’ll bless you for your kind heart.”

  “God don’t pay my wages.” The man hesitated. “You may be a lyin’ old scoundrel,” he said with a ponderous shrug. “But the kid does look done in. Reckon it won’t hurt to leave you be.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a package of gum and gave it to Laurie. “Take care of your brother, kid.”

  He grinned, lifted his club in farewell, and went out the door, bellowing. “Clear out of here, you deadbeats! No use hangin’ around! You ain’t goin’ to ride!”

  Feeling guilty over Way’s lie and for staying on when the others couldn’t, Laurie whispered, “Maybe we—we ought to get off.”

  “You daft?” Way squawked. “Wouldn’t help nobody and make it a sight harder on us. How’s about a stick of that gum? Not much of a breakfast but it kinda sweetens up your mouth.”
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  They had just passed a third night on the train. With Way’s assistance, the lard buckets had been emptied yesterday noon, but thanks to some new riders who’d appreciated Laurie’s songs, they’d had a supper of pork and beans, salmon, raisin bread, and a 3 Musketeers candy bar.

  There was some bread left. Laurie divided it, two slices apiece, and gave their shares to Way and Buddy along with a stick of gum. With no one being allowed on, they could get pretty hungry today, but according to Way, they’d be in Eden sometime tomorrow. And in California where you could pick fruit right off a tree! It was going to be so good to get off this boxcar after four days. She’d only gotten off to relieve herself. Way had taken charge of filling the water jars so that was one thing she hadn’t had to do. She didn’t grudge him food. He’d gotten rid of that awful jocker and he’d slept between them and the other men and made her feel a lot safer just by keeping them company.

  At the next siding, the car in front of them was unhitched and joined to another train. “Shuckins,” grumbled Way. “I picked this car ’cause it was between two loaded ones that’d hold it on the track. Now if we hook on to an empty—”

  They did, and Laurie quickly learned what a difference it made. The car jolted till it was impossible to lie down or sit up because you kept bouncing an inch or so into the air. “Try squatting,” Way suggested.

  That was better but still so rough that he showed them how to stand with their knees bent to absorb the shock. When Laurie got used enough to this posture to hope she wouldn’t fall down, she got out Morrigan’s harmonica and began to play the tune that chugged through her head with the revolving pistons.

  Gettin’ off in California, pickin’ fruit fresh off a tree;

  Out in California, life is fine and free.

  California! California! You’re the place for me!