by Ralph Moody
I don’t know what I’d have done with my money if I hadn’t had to go to the outhouse, for I hadn’t noticed till then how ripped-up and dirty my britches were. It was partly to buy some new ones, but mostly to get away from the fellows in the hotel lobby, that I went hunting for a drygoods store. And on the way I got an idea. When I went in I told the man I wanted the longest-legged, smallest-waisted pair of Levi’s he had. I was only twenty-six inches in the waist, but to get long enough legs, I had to take a pair of 32–36’s. Even though I’d worn a company outfit when I was taking the falls, my shirt was nearly as messed-up as my britches from practicing, and the man couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t buy a new one, but I didn’t think it would be good business to look too prosperous, so I just asked him if he had a place where I could change britches. When I came out with those new Levi’s on I looked more like a scarecrow than when I went in. I’d had to take half a dozen tucks under my belt, and I’d had to make four folds in the bottoms of the legs before my feet would show.
From the drygoods store I went to a bank and bought eight fifty-dollar bills—the oldest and softest ones the teller could find. Then I asked him if they had a washroom I could use. They did, but I used it for only about two minutes—just long enough to unfold one leg of my Levi’s, lay $420 against the bottom edge, and fold it up again. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need more than fourteen dollars for the next few days, and I was even surer that if anybody robbed me, he wouldn’t steal my britches or think to look inside the folds of the cuffs. With the bills being old and soft they wouldn’t rustle, and no one could feel them in there.
That seven hours I had to wait in Wickenburg seemed like a week. Even when I didn’t have to worry about being robbed I couldn’t rest comfortably on my bed, and it wasn’t much more comfortable to hobble around the streets. I went to all three restaurants to see if any of them had stewed chicken or poached fish, but they didn’t so I bought a can of salmon and a quart of milk in a grocery store and took them back to my room. Then I went to the depot and bought my ticket, just to kill time. While the agent was stamping the back of it I asked, “Is the bowlegged freight conductor who runs between here and Phoenix due in this afternoon?”
“Yep! Yep!” he told me. “That’ll be Jim Magee, and he ought to pull in ’long about three o’clock. How come you to ask?”
“He did me a good turn once,” I said, “and I just thought I’d like to say hello if I could find him again.”
“You ain’t alone,” the agent told me as he took my two dollars and picked the change out of the till. “Jim, he’s got a soft spot for down-an’-out cowhands—specially them that’s kids and a long ways from home. He didn’t get them bowlegs of his railroading. Didn’t go to braking freight till . . . ’98, if I recollect right . . . not till he was pretty well stove up. Time he was your age he was the bronc peelin’est cowhand in these parts. What did he, lend you a five?”
“No,” I said, “just did me a good turn when I needed it.”
If the agent hadn’t asked me about the five I’d have hung around the depot till the freight came in, then thanked Jim Magee again for bringing me out from Phoenix. But I got the idea that the old fellow must have lent many a five to boys who hadn’t been as lucky as I, and who had never been able to come back and repay him. I walked up and down the platform three or four times, just thinking about it, and the more I thought, the more I wanted to pay back the debt for one of those boys. But you couldn’t walk up to a man like Jim Magee and hand him a five-dollar bill, along with some goody-goody talk about wanting to pay somebody else’s debt. There was only one thing I could think of to do, so I went up to the main street, bought a box of ten-cent cigars, and was leaning against the end of the depot when Jim’s freight pulled in on the siding.
I stayed where I was until the engine had been uncoupled, then started across the tracks. The old man recognized me before I was halfway to him and called out, “Hi there, bub! See you done some ridin’ and come out all in one piece. Do any good?”
“Yep,” I said, “I was lucky, so I won’t be needing that straw car; I’m going to ride the cushions. Just came over to thank you for giving me a lift, and I brought along a few cigars I don’t have any use for. That one of yours looks kind of worn down.”
It looked as though the stump old Jim had clenched in his teeth was the same one he’d had when he brought me out from Phoenix. He took it out, tossed it away, and said, “Now that was right kindly of you, but you needn’t to have fetched along no cigars. Most generally the boys don’t bother to come back less’n they need another lift, and you a’ready thanked me once.”
The cigar box wasn’t wrapped, and I guess Jim had thought there’d be only two or three in it. When he took it he looked up quickly and said, “Lord A’mighty! A whole boxful! You didn’t go buy ’em, did you?”
I thought it would be better to tell him a white lie, so I just said, “Side bet, and I don’t smoke.”
“Lord! Lord!” he said as he looked the box over. “Ten-centers! Who’d you bet with—one of them Hollywood dudes? You must’a done all right! Where you headin’ for, Californy to see the sights? Most of the boys does when they make a stake.”
“No,” I told him, “I’m going back to Phoenix. I’ve got a buddy waiting for me there at the stockyards. He’s going to find us jobs with one of the drovers or cattlemen that brings stock in.”
Jim stood for a minute or two, looking down at the track and shaking his head slowly. “Doubt me he’ll do it,” he said at last. “Doubt me you’d find a job anywhere in a railroad town. Too many soldier boys coming back from the war that can’t find nothin’ to do. Swarming over the freights like a mess of ants. Most of the crews are kickin’ ’em off.”
“I know it,” I told him. “My buddy and I got kicked off a dozen times between Tucson and Phoenix.”
“Yep. Yep,” he said. “A man’s takin’ a risk to haul ’em—likely to get laid off if a spotter catches him.”
He looked up and grinned. “Was I bummin’ the railroads, I’d never bother with no freights. Blind baggage; that’s the safe place for a man to travel—and the fast one. Them mail trains will take a man further in one night than freights will in a week.”
I didn’t even know there were mail trains, and I had no idea as to what blind baggage might be. When I told Jim I didn’t, he looked up at me sort of questioningly. “Take it you ain’t been bummin’ long,” he said.
“No,” I told him, “only to get from Tucson up here.”
He turned the cigar box over in his hands and looked down at it for a couple of minutes, then he said slowly, “Well, I ain’t recommendin’ it to you, but if you was to get stuck bad—and broke—it might be a good thing to know.” Then he explained to me that the fast mail trains picked up and dropped off mail sacks on the fly, and made stops only at large cities or division points. He said the first car behind the engine was called the blind baggage because the front door was locked tight and the train crew didn’t have a key for it, so they couldn’t get through to see if a bum was riding in the doorway.
“About all a man’s got to do is to flip one of them blind baggages after the train gets to rolling right good,” he told me, “and he’s all set to the next division point anyways—maybe a couple of hundred miles down the line. Don’t make no difference if the engine crew spots you flippin’ on. They ain’t going to stop a train to kick you off, and they ain’t riskin’ a layoff if they get caught hauling you.”
I’d thanked him for telling me about the blind baggage, and was putting out my hand to shake with him and say good-bye, when he looked up and said, “Know what I’d do if I was a young fella in these times, and had made me a little stake, and was hunting for a cowhand job? I’d buy me one of them secondhand flivvers—a man could pick up a pretty good one for about a hundred dollars—and I’d take off into the back country. Any man with a grain of sense will hire a hand that’s got spunk enough to come hunting a job quicker’n he’ll take one of
them that’s hangin’ ’round the railroad towns and the stockyards. Now you understand, bub, I ain’t tellin’ you what to do; I’m just telling you what I’d do was I a young fella in times the like of this.”
After I’d thanked him again he stuck out his hand and said, “If you’re taking the four o’clock you’d best to pick up your bedroll pretty soon. She’s due in about six minutes. And if you get this way again, look me up. I reckon I’ll be around quite a spell yet.”
It was long after dark when I reached Phoenix, so I didn’t try to find Lonnie, but took a hotel room, about a block up from the depot. Then I found a little restaurant where the owner did the cooking and his wife waited on the counter. At first they thought I’d been beaten up in a fight, but when I told them about riding in the horse falls and about my diet, they were real friendly. They didn’t have much I could eat, but the man opened a can of spinach, heated it, and put on three poached eggs. He said he’d get in some cabbage and celery the next day, and would stew me a chicken. Then his wife said that if I’d bring her the flour and Mother’s recipe, she’d bake me some gluten bread. They were Swedish people, and I think they believed I was Swedish too, because my hair was blond and I had a New England accent.
The room I got was a good one, in a nice clean little hotel, and only a dollar a day. It was at the back of the ground floor, had a good bolt on the door, two large windows, and the best bed I’d slept in since I left home. Maybe it was just too good, and I was too tired. I went to sleep within two minutes after I crawled in, and I must have slept in the shape of a question mark. It was well after daylight when I woke up, and though I was warm enough, my back and hips were as stiff as if I’d been rolled into a ball and frozen. I wiggled around till I could get my legs over the side of the bed and sit up, but I could barely lean over far enough to get my legs into my britches, or straighten up enough to pull them on. I had to fish for my boots with my feet, then lie down to haul them on. Anybody who saw me going over to breakfast must have thought I was the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Those Swedish people at the little restaurant were as good to me as if I’d been their own folks. Mr. Larsen heated towels in the oven and put them on my back while I was eating. And after I’d finished, Mrs. Larsen phoned their doctor and sent me up to his office. She must have phoned him again while I was on my way. When I got there he knew all about my having ridden in the horse falls, and about the diabetes and my diet. Before he checked me over at all he made me tell him everything Dr. Gaghan and the specialists had said, and show him the diet list in my little book. Then he really did check me over. He stripped me as naked as a picked chicken, laid me out on a doctor’s table, took my pulse, temperature, and blood pressure, and poked his hands into my belly as if he were kneading bread dough.
“Miraculous! Miraculous!” he said three or four times as he poked at me. “No rupture of the spleen. That liver seems normal. Kidneys not badly enlarged. Any tenderness there? How about there?”
Every part of me was tender, but there was no sharp pain, so I kept shaking my head, and he kept poking and saying, “Miraculous.” After he had me kneaded to putty he put on his stethoscope and listened to my chest and heart. He picked a spot just above my wishbone and cocked his head like a robin listening for a worm. “Hmmm,” he said, “there’s the damage! Considerable regurgitation.”
“If that means a leaky heart,” I told him, “I’ve had it ever since I was ten.”
“Know the cause?” he asked.
“The doctor in Colorado said it was from riding too many rough horses,” I said.
“Did he tell you to quit riding?”
“Only the rough ones,” I said.
“Then you knew better than to go into any such escapade as this intentional falling.”
“I had to do it,” I told him. “I was broke and couldn’t find any other job.”
“Hm! It’s a wonder you weren’t broken in two! What’s your normal heartbeat?”
“Forty-eight.”
“Probably saved your life,” he said. “These slow hearts will stand more abuse than fast ones, but you’ve done yours no good. I want you to take a full week of bed rest, or at least confinement to your room. Of course, you can go out for meals, and I want to see you each day. After I’ve examined your specimen I’ll write a report to your doctor in the East. What’s his name again, and his address?”
Of course, I couldn’t let him write to Dr. Gaghan, and the only way I could keep him from it was by promising to do what he told me. I stayed in my room all day except when I went to eat, but it was one of the longest days I ever put in. He’d put some sort of plaster on my back that kept it from aching too much, but I was still bent over like a question mark, and I couldn’t be comfortable either lying down or sitting up. Then too, there was nothing but local news in the paper, and the magazine I bought had only one interesting story in it.
I think I might have been a little bit homesick that day if it hadn’t been for the Larsens. I didn’t go to lunch till well past noontime, so I wouldn’t be too much trouble to them, and when I got there Mr. Larsen had a chicken fricasseed for me, crisp celery stalks, and cabbage boiled with caraway seeds. Besides that, he’d got hold of some gluten flour, so Mrs. Larsen copied down Mother’s recipe and baked bread for me that afternoon. I think it would have been better than Mother’s if she hadn’t put in a big handful of caraway seeds—and, of course, I didn’t tell her I disliked them. Even with the seeds, my supper that night was the best I’d had in a long, long time. There was hot bread and butter, more cabbage and celery, and a whole broiled fish. I don’t know what kind it was, but it was fresh and it was good.
The next morning my back was a lot better and I could straighten up pretty well, but my legs were still so stiff that the muscles pulled at every step. After the doctor had smeared salve on my face and hands, he listened to my heart for three or four minutes, nodded, and said, “A slight improvement already. A week of complete rest should repair the damage fairly well.”
I’d been worried about not letting Lonnie know I was back in Phoenix, and I thought I might be able to work some of the kinks out of my legs if I went to find him, so I told the doctor, “I’ve got a buddy waiting for me down at the stockyards, and he’ll be worried if I don’t let him know I’m back in town. Would it be all right if I walked that far—very slowly?”
“Very slowly!” he told me. “This heart must have complete rest until Nature has had time to repair it. Otherwise you might be an invalid for the remainder of your life.”
I grinned and said, “Well, if the specialists were right, it won’t be a very long drag.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said, sort of questioningly. “That specimen I examined yesterday wasn’t as bad as I expected—under the circumstances. I’m rather inclined to agree with your family physician—that is, if you behave yourself, stick rigidly to your diet, and get as much sunshine as you can on your body. Nature is a wonderful healer, and there is no better medicine than sunshine.”
I waited until I had my shirt back on, then gave him one of the report cards to fill out for Dr. Gaghan, but I didn’t leave it for him to mail. When I checked it with the copy of the one I’d made out myself I found them almost exactly alike, so I knew I couldn’t have done myself too much damage in the horse falls.
On my way to the stockyards I poked along slowly, stopping to look at the old guns in pawnshop windows, or at anything else that would kill a little time, and I had one of the finest pieces of luck that I ever had in my life. In one of the windows there were a dozen or so brightly painted water jars, and inside the dingy little shop an old Mexican was shaping another on a potter’s wheel. The minute I saw him I knew I’d found exactly what I needed to take up my time during the week I’d have to stay in my room.
All the time I’d worked at the munitions plant I’d had a roommate who worked in the designing department. He was only a few years older than I, but before the war he’d been one of the better scul
ptors in New York City and had taught in one of the art schools. The reason I’d moved in with him was because he’d seen me whittling a horse’s head one noon after a bunch of us had eaten our lunches in the shade of a powder shed. Ivon had been sitting five or six feet up the line from me, but when the man beside me got up he came over and took the vacant place. He watched me for maybe ten minutes, then asked, “Where did you learn that?”
“I didn’t,” I told him. “I’ve whittled horses ever since I was a little kid.”
“Ever model them in clay?” he asked.
“I’ve tried to,” I told him, “but it’s no good. With clay the legs aren’t strong enough to hold the bodies up.”
“Don’t you know how to make an armature?” he asked.
“I don’t even know what one is,” I said.
“If you’d like to come up to my room after supper, I’ll show you,” he told me.
While I was telling him I’d like to come the whistle blew, so he scribbled down his address and room number on a card and we both hurried back to our jobs.
That evening when I went hunting for the address I found it to be one of the best apartment houses in Wilmington, with a beautiful lobby and an elevator. When I asked the elevator boy where I’d find the room number, he said, “Oh, that’s the artist—top floor in the rear.”
As I walked down the carpeted hall I felt about as much out of place as a catfish in a goldfish bowl. I hadn’t expected to find the man living in so fancy a place, so I hadn’t bothered to put on my good suit before coming. Even after I’d reached the door I had to stop a minute to decide whether to rap or to go back to my little eight-dollar-a-week room and put on my good suit. I was sure that any room in that building would be furnished like a palace, and I’d look like a ninny coming into it in my old working clothes. I’d just made up my mind to go back and change when the door opened and Ivon stood there in a dirty linen smock, holding a letter in his hand.