Вуди Гасри. Bound for glory (engl)
First Plume Printing, September, 1983
Copyright © 1943 by E. P. Dutton
Renewed copyright © 1971 by Marjorie M. Guthrie
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA:
Guthrie, Woody, 1912-1967.
Bound for glory.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: E. P. Dutton, 1943.
Scan, OCR & proofreadin': T.A.G. a.k.a. Copper Kettle, November
2002, Ekaterinburg
Орфография сохранена. Все грамматические ошибки - автора. Рисунки -
тоже.
Просьба не исправлять. Наслаждайтесь - это одна из лучших книг из тех,
что я прочел..
SO LONG, WOODY,
IT`S BEEN GOOD TO KNOW YA
Woody Guthrie, 1912-1967
One of Woody Guthrie's last songs, written a year after he entered the
hospital, was titled I Ain't Dead Yet. The doctors told him he had
Huntington's chorea, probably inherited, a progressive degeneration of the
nervous system for which there was no cure known. For thirteen more years he
hung on, refusing to give up. Finally he could no longer walk nor talk nor
focus his eyes nor feed himself, and his great will to live was not enough
and his heart stopped beating.
The news reached me while I was on tour in Japan. All I could think of
at first was, "Woody will never die, as long as there are people who like to
sing his songs." Dozens of these are known by guitar pickers across the
U.S.A., and one of them has become loved by tens of millions of Americans:
This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.
He was a short, wiry guy with a mop of curly hair under a cowboy hat,
as I first saw him. He'd stand with his guitar slung on his back, spinning
out stones like Will Rogers, with a faint, wry grin. Then he'd hitch his
guitar around and sing the longest long outlaw ballad you ever heard, or
some Rabelaisian fantasy he'd concocted the day before and might never sing
again.
His songs are deceptively simple. Only after they have become part of
your life do you realize how great they are. Any damn fool can get
complicated. It takes genius to attain simplicity. Woody's songs for
children are now sung in many languages:
Why can't a dish break a hammer?
Why, oh why, oh why?
Because a hammer's got a pretty hard head.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
His music stayed rooted in the blues, ballads and breakdowns he'd been
raised on in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Like Scotland's Robert Bums and the
Ukraine's Taras Shevchenko, Woody was a national folk poet Like them, he
came of a small-town background, knew poverty, had a burning curiosity to
learn. Like them, his talent brought him to the city, where he was lionized
by the literati but from whom he declared his independence and remained his
own profane, radical, ornery self.
This honesty also eventually estranged him from his old Oklahoma
cronies. Like many an Oklahoma farmer, he had long taken a dim view of
bankers. In the desperate early Depression years he developed a religious
view of Christ the Great Revolutionary. In the cities he threw in his lot
with the labor movement:
There once was a Union maid.
She never was afraid
Of goons and ginks and company finks
And the deputy sheriff that made the raids.
He broadened his feeling to include the working people of all the
world, and it may come as a surprise to some readers to know that the author
of This Land Is Your Land was in 1940 a columnist for the small newspaper he
euphemistically called The Sabbath Employee. It was The Sunday Worker,
weekend edition of the Communist Daily Worker. Woody never argued theory
much, but you can be quite sure that today he would have poured his fiercest
scorn on the criminal fools who sucked America into the Vietnam mess:
Why do your warships sail on my waters?
Why do your bombs drop down from my sky?
Why do you burn my towns and cities?
I want to know why, yes, I want to know why.
But Woody always did more than condemn. His song Pastures of Plenty
described the life of the migrant fruit pickers, but ends on a note of
shining affirmation:
It's always we've rambled, that river and I.
All along your green valley I'll work till I die.
My land I'll defend with my life if it be,
For my Pastures of Plenty must always be free.
A generation of songwriters have learned from him--Bob Dylan, Tom
Paxton, Phil Ochs and I guess many more to come.
As we scatter his ashes over the waters I can hear Woody hollering back
to us, "Take it easy--but take it!"
PETE SEEGER
A TRIBUTE TO WOODY GUTHRIE
The Secretary of the Interior
Washington
April 6, 1966
Dear Mr. Guthrie,
It gives me great pleasure to present you the Department of the
Interior's Conservation Service Award. In conjunction with this award we are
also naming a Bonneville Power Administration substation in your honor. It
will be known hereafter as the Woody Guthrie Substation in recognition of
the fine work you have done to make our people aware of their heritage and
the land.
You sang that "this land belongs to you and me," and you sang from the
heart of America that feels this about its land. You have articulated, in
your songs, the sense of identification that each citizen of our country
feels toward this land and the wonders which it holds. You brought to your
songs a heart as big as all outdoors, and we are fortunate to have music
which expresses the love and affection each of us feels, though we are
unable to express it so eloquently, toward this land . . . "from California
to the New York Island-- from the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters."
Yours was not a passing comment on the beauties of nature, but a
living, breathing, singing force in our struggle to use our land and save it
too. The greatness of this land is that people such as you, with creative
talent, worked on it and that you told about that work--told about the power
of the Bonneville Dam and the men who harnessed it, about the length of the
Lincoln Highway and the men who laid it out. You have summarized the
struggles and the deeply held convictions of all those who love our land and
fight to protect it.
Sincerely yours,
(Signed)
Stewart L. Udall
Secretary of the Interior
Mr. Woodrow W. Guthrie
Brooklyn State Hospital
681 Clarkson Avenue
Brooklyn, New York
CONTENTS
foreword: "So Long, Woody, It's Been Good To Know Ya" by Pete Seeger
vii
a tribute to woody guthrie by Stewart L. Udall, Secretary of the
Interior
xi
I
soldiers in the dust
19
II
empty snuff cans
37
III
i ain't mad at nobody
57
IV
new kittens
74
V
mister cyclome
82
VI
boomchasers
93
VII
cain't no gang whip us now
116
VIII
fire extinguishers
133
IX
a fast-running train whistles down
142
X
the junking sack
158
XI
boy in search of something
162
XII
trouble busting
179
XIII
off to california
191
XIV
the house on the hill
231
XV
the telegram that never came
245
XVI
stormy night
256
XVII
extra selects
270
XVIII
crossroads
290
XIX
train bound for glory
309
Postscript
320
BOUND FOR GLORY
Chapter I
SOLDIERS IN THE DUST
I could see men of all colors bouncing along in the boxcar. We stood
up. We laid down. We piled around on each other. We used each other for
pillows. I could smell the sour and bitter sweat soaking through my own
khaki shirt and britches, and the work clothes, overhauls and saggy, dirty
suits of the other guys. My mouth was full of some kind of gray mineral dust
that was about an inch deep all over the floor. We looked like a gang of
lost corpses heading back to the boneyard. Hot in the September heat, tired,
mean and mad, cussing and sweating, raving and preaching. Part of us waved
our hands in the cloud of dust and hollered out to the whole crowd. Others
was too weak, too sick, too hungry or too drunk even to stand up. The train
was a highball and had the right of way. Our car was a rough rider, called
by hoboes a "flat wheeler." I was riding in the tail end where I got more
dust, but less heat. The wheels were clipping it off at sixty miles an hour.
About all I could hear above the raving and cussing and the roar of the car
was the jingle and clink on the under side every time the wheels went over a
rail joint.
I guess ten or fifteen of us guys was singing:
This train don't carry no gamblers,
Liars, thieves and big-shot ramblers;
This train is bound for glory,
This train!
"We would hafta git th' only goddam flat wheeler on th' whole dam
train!" A heavy-set boy with a big-city accent was rocking along beside me
and fishing through his overhauls for his tobacco sack.
"Beats walkin'!" I was setting down beside him. "Bother you fer my
guitar handle ta stick up here in yer face?"
"Naw. Just long as yuh keep up th' music. Kinda songs ya sing? Juke-box
stuff?"
"Much oblige, just smoked." I shook my head. "No. I'm 'fraid that there
soap-box music ain't th' kind ta win a war on!"
"Little too sissy?" He licked up the side of his cigaret. "Wisecracky,
huh?"
"Hell yes." I pulled my guitar up on my lap and told him, "Gonna take
somethin' more'n a dam bunch of silly wisecracks ta ever win this war! Gonna
take work!"
"You don't look like you ever broke your neck at no work, bud!" He
snorted some fumes out of his nose and mashed the match down into the dust
with his foot. "What th' hell do you know 'bout work?"
"By God, mister, I work just as hard as you er th' next guy!" I held
the ends of my fingers up in his face. "An` I got th' blisters ta prove it!"
"How come you ain't drafted?"
"I never did get by those medical gents. Doctors and me don't see eye
to eye."
A blond-headed man about forty nudged me in the ribs with his elbow on
my left side and said, "You boys talkin' about a war. I got a feelin' you're
goin" to see a little spell of war right here in just a few minutes."
"Makes ya think so?" I looked around all over the car.
"Boy!" He stretched out his feet to prop his self back up against the
wall and I noticed he was wearing an iron brace on his leg. "They call me
Cripple Whitey, th' Fight Spotter!"
"Fight spotter?"
"Yeah. I can spot a fist fight on the streets three blocks before I
come to it. I can spot a gang fight an hour before it breaks out. I tip off
the boys. Then they know how to lay their bets."
"Ya got a fight spotted now?"
"I smell a big one. One hell of a big one. Be some blood spilt. Be
about ten minutes yet."
"Hey! Heavy!" I elbowed the big boy on my right. "Whitey here says he
smells a big fight cookin'!"
"Awwww. Don't pay no 'tention to that crippled rat. He's just full of
paregoric. In Chicago we call 'im P. G. Whitey'! I don't know what they call
him here in Minnesota!"
"You're a goddam lyin' rat!" The cripple got up and swayed around on
the floor in front of us. "Get up! I'll cave your lousy dam head in! I'll
throw you out inta one of these lakes!"
"Easy, boy, easy." Heavy put the sole of his shoe in Whitey's belly and
held him back. "I don't wanta hit no cripple!"
"You guys watch out! Don't you stumble an' fall on my guitar!" I eased
over a little. "Yeah! You're some fight spotter! If you spot a fight an'
then it don't happen just when you said, why, you just pitch in and start
one yer self!"
"I'll crack that box over your dam curly head!" The cripple made a step
toward me, laughing and smearing cement dust down across his face. Then he
sneered and told me, "Goddam right! Hell yes! I'm a bum! I gotta right ta
be. Look at that gone leg. Withered away! You're too dam low down an'
sneakin' to make an honest livin' by hard work. Sonofabitch. So you go into
a saloon where th' workin' stiffs hang out, an' you put down your kitty box
an' play for your dam tips!"
I told him, "Go jump in one of these lakes!"
"I'm settin' right there!" He pointed at my guitar in my lap. "Right,
by God, on top of you!"
I grabbed my guitar and rolled over three or four other fellows' feet
and got out of Whitey's way just as he turned around and piled down
backwards yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs. I stumbled through
the car trying to keep my balance and hold onto my guitar. I fell up against
an old man slumped with his face rubbing up against the wall. I heard him
groan and say, "This is th' roughest bastardly boxcar that I ever swung
into."
"Why doncha lay down?" I had to lean up against the wall to keep from
falling. "How come ya standin' up this a way?"
"Rupture. It rides a little easier standin' up."
Five or six guys dressed like timberjacks brushed past us cussing and
raving. "I can't stand this dust no longer!" "Out of our way, men!" "Let us
by! We want to get to the other end of the car!"
"You birds won't be no better off in th' other end!" I hollered at
them. The dust stung the roof of my mouth. "I tried it!"
A big husky gent with high boots and red wool socks rolled back on a
pair of logger's britches stopped and looked' me over and asked me, "Who in
the hell are you? Don't you think I know how to ride a boxcar, sonny? I'm
gettin' out of this wind!"
"Go ahead on, mister, but I'm tellin' ya, ya'll burn up back in that
other end!" I turned again to the old man and asked him, "Anything I can do
ta help ya?"
"Guess not, son." I could see by the look on his face that the rupture
was tying him up in knots. "I was hopin' ta ride this freight on in home
tonight. Chicago. Plumber there. But looks like I'll have ta get off at the
next stop an' hit the highway."
"Purty bad. Well, it ain't a dam bit lonesome in here, is it?"
"I counted sixty-nine men in this car." He squinted his eyes and
gritted his teeth and doubled over a little farther. "Might be, I counted
wrong. Missed some of th' ones layin' down or counted some of them twice.
Pretty close ta sixty-nine though."
"Jest like a car load of sheep headed fer th' packin` house." I let my
knees bend in the joints a little bit to keep the car from shaking me to
jelly.
A long tall Negro boy walked up and asked us, "You men know what's
makin' our noses burn?" He was wearing a pair of work shoes that looked like
they had seen Civil War service. "Eyes, too?"
"What?" I asked him.
"Cement dust. This heah cah wuz loaded down wid sack cement!"
"Shore 'nuff?"
"I bet I done sucked in three sacks of th' damn stuff!" He screwed his
face up and mopped across his lips with his hands.
"I've breathed in more'n that! Hell, friend! You're talkin' to a
livin', breathin' stretch of concrete highway!"
"Close as we is jammed an' packed in heah, we'z all gonna be stuck 'n'
cemented together time we git outta dis hot box."
"Boys," the old man told both of us, "I hope we don't have no trouble
while I'm in here. If somebody was ta fall on me or push me around, this
rupture, I know, it would kill me."
"I'll he'p see to it dat nobody don't push nobody on toppa you,
mistah."
"I'll break 'em of th' habit," I told both of them.
"What time of day is it? Must be fightin' time?" I looked around at the
two.
"Mus' be 'roun' about two or three o'clock," the Negro boy told me,
"jedgin' from that sun shinin' in th' door. Say! What's them two boys doin'
yondah?" He craned his neck.
"Pourin` somethin' out of a bottle," I said, "right by that old colored
man's feet. What is it?"
"Wettin` th' cement dust wid it. Strikin` a match now."
"Gasoline!"
"Ol` man's 'sleep. They's givin' 'im de hot foot!"
The flame rose up and burned in a little spot about the size of a
silver dollar. In a few seconds the old man clawed at the strings of his
bundle where he was resting his head. He kicked his feet in the dust and
knocked little balls of fire onto two or three other men playing some poker
along the back wall. They fought the fire off their clothes and laughed and
bawled the kids and the old man both out.
"Hey! You old bastard! Quit bustin' up our card game!"
I saw one of the men draw back to hit the old man. Another player was
grinning and laughing out to the whole crowd, "That wuz th' funniest dam
sight I ever seen!"
The two boys, both dressed in overhauls, walked back through the crowd,
one holding out the half-pint bottle. ''Drinka likker, men? Who wantsa
drinka good likker?" The boy with the bottle shoved it up under my nose
saying, "Here, mister music man! Take a little snort! Then play somethin'
good an' hot!"
"I been a needin' a little drink ta ease me on down ta Chicago." I
wiped my hand across my face and smiled around at everybody. "I shore thank
ya fer thinkin' 'bout me." I took the bottle and smelled of the gasoline.
Then I sailed the bottle over a dozen men's heads and out of the door.
"Say, stud! Who daya t'ink youse are? Dat bottle was mine, see?" He was
a boy about twenty-five, wearing a flop hat soaked through with some kind of
dime-store hair oil. He braced his self on his feet in front of me and said
again, "Dat bottle was mine!"
"Go git it." I looked him straight in the eye.
"Whattaya tryin' ta pull?"
"Well, since yer so interested, I'll jest tell ya. See, I might wanta
lay down after while an' git a little sleep. I don't wanta wake up with my
feet blistered. 'Cause then, dam yer hide, I'd hafta throw ya outta this
door!"
"We was gonna use dat gas ta start a fire ta cook wid."
"Ya mean ta git us all in jail with."
"I said cook an' I mean cook!"
Then my colored friend looked the two boys over and said, "You boys,
how long you been goin' 'roun' cookin' people's feet?"
"Keep outta dis! Stepinfetchit!"
"You cain't call me dat an' git by wid it, white boy!"
I put my shoulder against the colored boy and my hand against the white
boy's arm, and told them, "Listen, guys! Goddamit! No matter who's mad at
who, we jest cain't start a fight of no kind on this freight! These big
Burlington dicks'll jail th' whole bunch of us!"
"Yaaa. Skeerd!"
"You're a dam liar! I ain't afraid of you ner twenty more like ya! But
do you know what would of happened if these railroad bulls shook us down ta
look at our draft cards, an` found you with that bottle of gasoline on ya?
It'd be th' lockup fer you an' me an' all of th' rest of us!"
The old man with the rupture bit his lips and asked me, "Son, do you
suppose you could get one of the men to move up out of the door and let me
try to get a little breath of that fresh air? I feel like I've just got to
get a little air."
The colored boy held the old man up while I walked over to the door and
tapped a nice healthy-looking boy on the back. "Would you mind lettin' this
old man ride in yer place there in th' door fer a little while? Sick.
Rupture trouble."
"Not at all." The boy got up and set down back where the old man had
been standing. He acted friendly and hollered at us, "I think it's about
time we took turns ridin' in the doors. Let everybody have a whiff of that
fresh air!"
Almost everybody in the car rolled over or stood up and yelled, "Hell
yes!" "Turn about!" "I'm ready." "Too late, boys, I been dead an' buried in
solid cement for two hours!" "Gimme air!" "Trot out yer frash airr!"
Everybody mumbled and talked, and fifteen or twenty men pushed their way
through the others to stand close to the doors, hoping to be first.
Heavy walked through a bunch of them saying, "Watch out. Men, let this
Negro boy through with this old man. He's sick. He's needin' air. Back up a
little. Make room."
"Who'n th' hell are you? Tubba lard! Dictater 'round here?" one old boy
popped off.
Heavy started for the man, but he slipped back in through the crowd.
"All of you men get up! Let a new bunch get cooled off! Where's the old man
that the boys put the hot foot on a few minutes ago? There you are! Hey!
Come on! Grab yourself a hunk of this nice, fresh, cool climate! Set right
there! Now, who's to be next?"
A red-eyed vino drunkard took a man by the feet and pulled him along
the deck to the door. "My buddy. Ain't said a word since I loaded 'im in
last night in Duluth. Bummed th' main stem fer two bits, then he scooped his
flue."
A Mexican boy rubbed his head and got up from somewhere along the wall.
He drank half of a quart vinegar jug of water and then sailed the bottle out
the door. Then he set down and hung his feet out the door and rode along
holding his head in his hands vomiting into the wind. In each door there was
room for five men. The first ten being sick and weakly, we let them ride for
about half an hour. Then they got up and ten more men took their seat for
only fifteen minutes.
I was watching a bunch of men hold their fingers to their lips and
shush each other to keep quiet. Every one of them haw-hawing and tittering
under their breath and pointing to a kid asleep on the floor. He was about
twenty. Little white cap from the ten-cent store, a pair of old blue
washed-out pants, shirt to match, a set of dirty heels caked over with the
dust of many railroads, and a run-over pair of low-cut shoes. He was hugging
his bed roll and moving his lips against the wool blanket. I saw him dig his
toes in the dust and kiss the bundle.
I walked over and put my foot in the middle of his back and said, "Wake
up, stranger. Git ya some fresh air there in th' door!"
The men cackled and rolled in the dirt. They rared back and forth
slapping their hands against their legs. "Ddrrreeeeeeeaaaammming of youuuu
with your eyes so bluue!" One man was grinning like an ape and singing worse
than that.
"What's th' boy dreamin' about so purty, music man?" another
big guy asked me with his tongue in his cheek and eyes rolling.
"Leave th' boy alone," I told him back. "What th' hell do you dream
about, freight trains?"
I set down with my back against the wall looking all through the
troubled, tangled, messed-up men. Traveling the hard way. Dressed the hard
way. Hitting the long old lonesome go.
Rougher than a cob. Wilder than a woodchuck. Hotter than a depot stove.
Madder than nine hundred dollars. Arguing worse than a tree full of crows.
Messed up. Mixed-up, screwed-up people. A crazy boxcar on a wild track.
Headed sixty miles an hour in a big cloud of poison dust due straight to
nowhere.
I saw ten men getting up out of the door and I took my guitar over and
set down and stuck my feet out. The cold air felt good whipping up my pants
leg. I pulled my shirt open to cool off across my waist and chest. My Negro
friend took a seat by my side and told me, "I reckon we's 'bout due some
frash air, looks like."
"Jest be careful ya don't use it all up," I kidded back at him.
I held my head in the wind and looked out along the lake shoreline with
my ear cocked listening to the men in the car.
"You're a lyin' skunk!" one was saying. "I'm just as hard a worker as
you are, any old day!"
"You're a big slobbery loafin' heel!"
"I'm th' best dadgum blacksmith in Logan County!"
"You mean you use ta was! You look like a lousy tramp ta me!"
"I c'n put out more manly labor in a minnit then you kin in a month!"
"Hay, there, you sot! Quit spittin' on my bed roll!"
"Yeah! Yeah! I know! I'm woikin' stiff, too, see? But I ain't no good
here! Yeah! I woiked thirteen years in th' same weave room! Breakout fixer
on th' looms! Poil Harbor comes along. Big comp'ny gits alla de war orders.
My place is a little place, so what happens? Just like dat! She closes down.
An' I'm out on de freights. But I ain't nuttin' when I hit th' freights.
Takes it all outta me. Nuttin`. But a lousy, dirty tramp!"
"If you're such a good weaver, mister, you can come back here and sew
up my drawers! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
"Fancy pants! Whoooeee!"
"I plowed th' straightest row of corn in Missouri three year ago!"
"Yaaa! But, mister big shot, dey don't grown no corn in dese here
boxcars, see! Yaaa! Dat's de last bitta woik yez ever done!"
"No Swede cut much timber as me, Big Swede! I cutta 'nuff of that white
pine ta build up da whole town!"
"Quiet down! You dam bunch of liars, you! Blowin' off at yer head what
all you can do! I hear this talk all up and down these railroads! You had a
good job somewhere once or twice in your life, then you go around blabbin'
off at your mouth for fifteen years! Tellin' people what all kinds of
wonders you done! Look at you! Look at your clothes! All of the clothes in
this car ain't worth three dollars! Look at your hands! Look at your faces!
Drunk! Sick! Hungry! Dirty! Mean! Onery! I won't lie like you rats! An` I
got on the best suit of clothes in this car! Work? Me work? Hell, no! I see
somethin' I want, an' I just up an' take it!"
Looking back over my shoulder, I saw a little man, skinny, puny,
shaking like he had a machine gun in his hands, raise up on his knees from
the other end of the car and sail a brown quart bottle through the air.
Glass shattered against the back of the well-dressed man's head. Red port
wine rained all over me and my guitar and twenty other men that tried to
duck. The man in the suit of clothes keeled over and hit the floor like a
dead cow.
"I got my papers! I got my job already signed up!" The guy that slung
the bottle was tromping through the car patting his chest and preaching. "I
had a brother in Pearl Harbor! I'm on my way right this minute to Chicago to
go to work rollin' steel to lick this Hitler bunch! I hope the gent with the
nice suit on is restin` comfortable! But I ain't apologizing to none of you!
I throwed that bottle! Want to make anythin' out of it?" He shook both fists
and stood there looking at all of us.
I wiped my hands around over me where the wine was spilled. I saw
everybody else was picking chips of glass out of their clothes and mumbling
amongst themselves. "Crazy lunatic." "Hadn't ought ta done that." "Might of
missed 'im, hit one of us."
The mumble got loud and broke into a crack like zigzag lightning.
Little bunches of men circled around arguing. A few guys walked from bunch
to bunch preaching over other fellows' shoulders. At the side of me a
husky-looking man got up and said, "What all he says about Pearl Harbor and
all is okay, men, but still he hadn't ought to have thrown that wine bottle.
I'm going to walk back there and kick his rear good and proper just to teach
him a lesson!"
Then from somewhere at my back a half-breed Indian boy dove out and
tackled the husky man around the ankles and they tangled into a knot and
rolled around over the floor, beating, scratching, and clawing. Their feet
kicked other men in the face and other men kicked them back and jumped into
the fight.
"You're not gonna hurt that little fella!"
"I'll kill you, Indian!"
"Hey! Watch who th' hell you're kickin'!"
Heavy split through the car knocking men out of his way hollering,
"Hey! Cut it! Cut!"
"You fat pimp, keep outta dis!" A dirty-looking, dark-complected man
was pulling a little oily cap down over his eyes and making for Heavy.
Heavy grabbed him by the throat and busted the back of his head up
against the wall about a dozen times cussing, "I'll teach you that you
cain't call no decent man a pimp! You snaky-looking hustler!"
All down the line it started and spread, "You said I wouldn't work fer
my livin', huh? I'll bat your eyes out!"
"Who wuz it yez called da loafer?"
Shirts and pants ripped and it sounded like everybody was getting their
duds tore off them.
"I didn't lak ya dam looks frum da very start!"
Five and then ten other couples dove in.
"Where's that low-life bastid that called me a bum?"
Men walked up and down the car pushing other men off of their feet,
heaving others to one side, looking at the few that was still riding along
on the floor.
"They're goin' an' blowin'!"
'There ye air, ye foul-mouth cur, you!"
I saw six or eight reaching down and grabbing others by their shirt
collars, jerking them to the middle of the floor. Fists sailing in the air
so fast I couldn't see which fist was whose.
"I knowed you was nuthin' but a lousy chiselin' snake when I first seen
yuh climb on this train! Fight! Goddam yuh! Fight!"
Shoe soles cracked all around over the car and heads banged against the
walls. Dust flew up in the air as if somebody was dumping it in with trucks.
'I'm a tramp, am I?"
Men's heads bobbed around in the dust like balloons floating on the
ocean. Most everybody shut their eyes and gritted their teeth and swung wild
haymakers up from the cement and men flattened out on the floor. Water
bottles flew through the air and I could see a few flashes that I knew was
pocketknife blades. Lots of the men jerked other men's coats up over their
heads to where they couldn't see nor use their arms, and they fought the air
like windmills, blind as bats. A hard fist knocked a fellow stumbling
through the dust. He waved his hands trying to keep balanced, then fell,
spilling all kinds of junk and trash out of his pockets over five or six
other men trying to keep out of the fight. For every man who got knocked
down, three more jumped up and roared through the mob taking sidelicks at
any head that popped up.
"Boy!" My colored friend was shaking his head and looking worried. "You
sho' as hell bettah not git yo' music box mixed up in dis!"
"I've got kicked in th' back about nine times. 'Nother good poke an'
I'll sail plumb out this door inta one of them there lakes!" I was fighting
to get myself braced again. "Here, let's me an' you hook our arms together
so we can hold each other in th' dam car!" I clamped my hands together in
front of me holding the guitar on my lap. "Be hell of a thing if a feller
was ta git knocked outta this dern boxcar goin' this pace, wouldn't it? Roll
a week. Hey! Look! Tram's slowin' down."
"Believe she is at that." He squinted his eyes up and looked down the
track. "She's slowin' down ta make a switch."
"I been lookin' fer you, mister music maker!" I heard somebody talking
behind me. I felt a knee poking me in my back, each time hard enough to
scoot me a little more out the door. "So уa thought I'd forgot about da
bottla gas, huh? I t'ink I'll jist boot yez offa dis train!"
I tried to hold onto the colored boy's arm. "Watch out there, ya silly
dam fool! What're уa tryin' ta do? Kick me out? I'll git up from here an'
frail yore knob! Don't ya kick me again!"
He put his foot flat up against my shoulder blade and kicked me out the
door. I swung onto the Negro's arms with both hands, and the leather strap
of my guitar slipped out of my hold. I was holding both feet clear of the
cinders down on the ground. When my guitar fell, I had to turn loose with
one hand and grab it by the handle. The Negro had to hold onto the side of
the door to hold his own self in the car. I seen him bend backwards as far
as he could and lay down flat on the floor. This pulled me up within an inch
or so of the edge of the door again, and I was about to get one arm inside.
I knew he could pull me back in if I could make it that far. I looked down
at the ground going past under me. The train was slowing down. The Negro and
me made one more hard pull together to swing me back inside the door.
"Ноl' on! Boy!" he was grunting.
"No ya don't!" The young fellow bent down into a squatting position,
heaving at the Negro's shoulders with both hands. "I'll jist kick da pair of
yez out!"
The colored man yelled and screamed, "Hhhaaaayyy! Hheeelllpp!"
"Goddam it, donnn't!" I was about to lose all of my strength in the
left arm locked around the Negro's, which was the only thing between me and
the six-by-three grave.
"Dis is where da both of yez hits de cinders! Good-bye! An' go ta
hell!" He stuck his tongue out between his teeth and throwed every ounce of
his weight against the colored man's shoulders.
Slowing down, the train jammed its air brakes and jarred every man in
the boxcar off his feet. Men stumbled against each other, missed their
licks, clawing and swinging their fists through the air. Two dozen hit the
floor and knocked hide and hair and all off each other's heads. Blood flew
and spattered everybody. Splinters dug into hands and faces of men tromped
on the floor. Guys dove on their faces on top of strangers and grabbed
handfuls of loose skin in their fingernails, and twisted until the blood
caked into the dust. They rolled across the floor and busted their heads
against the walls, knocked blind by the jar, with lungs and eyes and ears
and teeth full of the cement. They stepped on the sick ones, ruptured the
brave ones, walked on top of each other with loggers' and railroaders' spike
shoes. I felt myself falling out of the Negro's hand hold.
Another tap on the brakes jerked a kink in the train and knocked the
boy loose from his hold on the Negro's shoulders. The jar sent him jumping
like a frog from where he was squatting, over me and the Negro both, and
over the slope of the steep cinder grading, rolling, knocking and plowing
cinders twenty feet to each side till like a wild, rolling truck tire he
chugged into the water of the lake.
I pulled the Negro friend over the edge with me and both of us lit
running with our feet on the cinders. I stumbled and took a little spill,
but the colored boy run and managed to stay on his feet.
I made a run for the door of the same boxcar again, and put my hand
down on an iron bolt and tried to run along with the train and swing myself
up again. Men's hands reached out the door trying to grab me and help me in,
but my guitar was going wild and I had to drop my hold on the bolt and trot
off to the edge of the cinders. I was giving up all hopes of getting back
in, when I looked behind me and saw my colored partner gripping onto the
iron ladder on the end of the car. Holding the ladder with one hand, he was
waving his other one in the air and yelling, "Pass me yo' guitah!"
As he went by me I got a running start on the cinders and held the
guitar up to him. He caught it by the neck and clumb up onto the roof of the
car. I swung the ladder and went over the top just at his heels.
"Hurry on up heah! You wanta see dat fella in th' lake?"
He pointed back down along the string of cars picking up speed again.
"Off at d' side of dat little clump of trees there, there! Wadin' out
yondah? See 'im? See! Boy, I bet you dat dip sobered i'm up!"
Both of us was standing side by side propping each other up. The roof
of the car moved and bounced rougher than the floor inside.
The Negro friend grinned over at me with the sun in his eyes. He still
hadn't lost his little greasy brown cap and was holding it down on his head
while the wind made a few grabs at it.
"Whoooee! Dat wuz a close one! Boy, you set fo' a good fas' ride on
top? Sho' ain't no way gettin' back down inside dat cah when this roller
gits ridin' ag'in!"
I squatted down cross-legged and took hold of the boards on the runwalk
on top of the car. He laid down with his hands folded back of his head. We
laughed at the way our faces looked with the cement all over them, and our
eyes watering. The black coal dust from the locomotive made us look like
white ghosts with black eyes. Lips chapped and cracked from the long ride in
the hot sun and hard wind.
"Smell dat cool aih?"
"Smells clean. Don't it? Healthy!"
"Me 'n' you's sho' in fo' a soakin', ourselves!"
"Makes ya think?"
"I knows. Boy, up heah in dis lake country, it c'n cloud up an' rain in
two seconds flush!"
"Ain't no rain cloud I can see!"
"Funny thing 'bout dese Minnesoty rain clouds. Evah cloud's a rain
cloud!"
"Gonna go hard on my guitar." I played a few little notes without
really noticing what I was doing. The air turned off cooler as we rolled
along. A second later I looked up and saw two kids crawl from an open-top
car just behind us: a tall skinny one about fifteen, and a little scrawny
runt that couldn't be over ten or eleven. They had on Boy Scout looking
clothes. The older one carried a pack on his back, and the little kid had a
sweater with the sleeves tied together slung around his neck.
"Hiyez, men?" The tall one saluted and dumped his pack down a couple of
feet from us.
The little feller hunched down and set picking his teeth with a rusty
pocket knife, talking, "Been wid 'er long?"
I'd seen a thousand kids just like them. They seem to come from homes
somewhere that they've run away from. They seem to come to take the place of
the old stiffs that slip on a wet board, miss a ladder, fail out a door, or
just dry up and shrivel away riding the mean freights; the old souls that
groan somewhere in the darkest corner of a boxcar, moan about a twisted life
half lived and nine tenths wasted, cry as their souls hit the highball for
heaven, die and pass out of this world like the echo of a foggy whistle.
"Evenin', gentulmen, evenin'." The Negro boy raised up to a sitting
position. "You gents is a little shade yo'ng t' be out siftin' th' cinders,
ain't you?"
"C'n we help how old we are?" The biggest kid spit away into the wind
without even looking where it would land.
"Me ole man's fault. Oughtta been bornt sooner," the little runt piped
up.
The big one didn't change the expression on his face, because if he'd
of looked any tougher, something would have busted. "Pipe down, squoit!" He
turned toward us. "Yez hittin' fer de slaughter-house er Wall Street?"
"I don't git ya." I looked over at him.
"Chi? Er N'Yok?"
I tried to keep from busting out laughing in the kid's face. And I
could see the colored boy turning his head the other way to hide a snicker.
"Me," I answered the kid, "me, I'm headed fer Wall Street, I reckin." Then I
thought for a minute and asked him, " 'Bouts you boys goin'?"
"Chi."
"On da fly."
"Kin ya really beat it out on dat jitter box dere, mister?"
"I make a rattlin' noise."
"Sing on toppa dat?"
"No. Not on top of it. I stand up and hold it with this leather strap
around my shoulder, or else I set down and play it in my lap like this,
see?"
"Make anyt'ing wid it?"
"I've come purty close ta starvin' a couple of times, boys, but never
faded plumb out of th' picture yet so far."
"Yeah?"
"Dat's bad."
I come down on some running notes and threw in a few sliding blues
notes, and the kids stuck their ears almost down to the sound-hole,
listening.
"Say ya hit da boog on dere, don'tcha?"
"Better boog all yez wants, sarg," the older kid said. "I dunno how dat
box'll sound fulla wadder, but we gon'ta be swimmin' on toppa dis train here
in about a minnit."
The Negro boy turned his head around toward the engine and whiffed of
the damp air. "About one minnit's right!"
"Will it wreck dat music box?" The biggest kid stood up and threw his
pack on his back. The coal dust had covered his face over in the days when
this railroad was first laid, and a few drops of the spit and moisture from
the lower streets of a lot of towns had been smeared like brushmarks in
every direction around his mouth, nose and eyes. Water and sweat had run
down his neck and dried there in long strings. He said it again: "Will de
rain wreck dat rackit box?"
I stood up and looked ahead at the black smoke rolling out of the
engine. The air was cool and heavy and held the big coil of smoke low to the
ground along the side of the train. It boiled and turned, mixed in with the
patches of heavy fog, and spun into all kinds of shapes. The picture in the
weeds and bushes alongside the tracks was like ten thousand drunkards
rolling in the weeds with the bellyache. When the first three or four splats
of rain hit me in the face I said to the kids, "This water won't exactly do
this guitar any good!"
"Take dis ole sweater," the smallest kid yelled at me, " 'S all I got!
Wrap it aroun' yer music! Help a little!" I blinked the water out of my eyes
and waited a jiffy for him to pull the sweater from around his neck where he
had tied the sleeves. His face looked like a quick little picture, blackish
tobacco brown colors, that somebody was wiping from a window glass with a
dirty rag.
"Yeah," I told him, "much oblige! Keep out a few drops, won't it?" I
slipped the sweater over the guitar like a man putting clothes on a dummy in
a window. Then I skint out of my new khaki shirt and put it on the guitar,
and buttoned the buttons up, and tied the sleeves around the neck. Everybody
laughed. Then we all squatted down in a little half circle with our backs to
the rain and wind. "I don't give a dam how drippin' I git, boys, but I gotta
keep my meal ticket dry!"
The wind struck against our boxcar and the rain beat itself to pieces
and blew over our heads like a spray from a fire hose shooting sixty miles
an hour. Every drop that blew against my skin stung and burned.
The colored rider was laughing and saying, "Man! Man! When th' good
Lord was workin' makin' Minnesoty, He couldn' make up His mind whethah ta
make anothah ocean or some mo' land, so He just got 'bout half done an' then
He quit an' went home! Wowie!" He ducked his head and shook it and kept
laughing, and at the same time, almost without me noticing what he was
doing, he had slipped his blue work shirt off and jammed it over into my
hands."One mo' shirt might keep yo' meal ticket a little bettah!"
"Don't you need a shirt to keep dry?"
I don't know why I asked him that. I was already dressing the guitar up
in the shirt. He squared his shoulders back into the wind and rubbed the
palms of his hands across his chest and shoulders, still laughing and
talking, "You think dat little ole two-bit shirt's gonna keep out this
cloudbu'st?"
When I looked back around at my guitar on my lap, I seen one more
little filthy shirt piled up on top of it. I don't know exactly how I felt
when my hands come down and touched this shirt. I looked around at the
little tough guys and saw them humped up with their naked backs splitting
the wind and the rain glancing six feet in the air off their shoulders. I
didn't say a word. The little kid pooched his lips out so the water would
run down into his mouth like a trough, and every little bit he'd save up a
mouthful and spit it out in a long thin spray between his teeth. When he saw
that I was keeping my eyes nailed on him, he spit the last of his rainwater
out and said, "I ain't t'oisty."
'I'll wrap this one around the handle an' the strings will keep dry
that way. If they get wet, you know, they rust out." I wound the last shirt
around and around the neck of the guitar handle. Then I pulled the guitar
over to where I was laying down. I tied the leather strap around a plank in
the boardwalk, ducked my head down behind the guitar and tapped the runty
kid on the shoulder.
"Hey, squirt!"
"Whaddaya want?"
"Not much of a windbreak, but it at least knocks a little of th'
blister out of that rain! Roll yer head over here an' keep it ducked down
behind this music box!"
"Yeeehh." He flipped over like a little frog and smiled all over his
face and said, "Music's good fer somethin', ain't it?"
Both of us stretched out full length. I was laying on my back looking
straight up into the sky all gray and tormented and blowing with low clouds
that whined when they got sucked under the wheels. The wind whistled funeral
songs for the railroad riders. Lightning struck and crackled in the air and
sparks of electricity done little dances for us on the iron beams and
fixtures. The flash of the lightning knocked the clouds full of holes and
the rain hit down on us harder than before. "On th' desert, I use this here
guitar fer a sun shade! Now I'm usin' the' dam thing fer a umbreller!"
'"Pink I could eva' play one uv dem?" The little kid was shaking and
trembling all over, and I could hear his lips and nose blow the rain away,
and his teeth chatter like a jack-hammer. He scooted his body closer to me,
and I laid an arm down so he could rest his head. I asked him, "How's that
fer a pillow?"
"Dat's betta." He trembled all over and moved a time or two. Then he
got still and I didn't hear him say anything else. Both of us were soaked to
the skin a hundred times. The wind and the rain was running a race to see
which could whip us the hardest. I felt the roof of the car pounding me in
the back of the head. I could stand a little of it, but not long at a time.
The guitar hit against the raindrops and sounded like a nest of machine guns
spitting out lead.
The force of the wind pushed the sound box against the tops of our
heads, and the car jerked and buckled through the clouds like a coffin over
a cliff.
I looked at the runt's head resting on my arm, and thought to myself,
"Yeah, that's a little better."
My own head ached and pained inside. My brain felt like a crazy cloud
of grasshoppers jumping over one another across a field. I held my neck
stiff so my head was about two inches clear of the roof; but that didn't
work. I got cold and cramped and a dozen kinks tied my whole body in a knot.
The only way I could rest was to let my head and neck go limp; and when I
did this, the jolt of the roof pounded the back of my head. The cloudbursts
got madder and splashed through all of the lakes, laughing and singing, and
then a wail in the wind would get a low start and cry in the timber like the
cry for freedom of a conquered people.
Through the roof, down inside the car, I heard the voices of the
sixty-six hoboes. There had been sixty-nine, the old man said, if he counted
right. One threw his own self into the lake. He pushed two more out the door
with him, but they lit easy and caught onto the ladder again. Then the two
little windburnt, sunbaked brats had mounted the top of our car and were
caught in the cloudburst like drowned rats. Men fighting against men. Color
against color. Kin against kin. Race pushing against race. And all of us
battling against the wind and the rain and that bright crackling lightning
that booms and zooms, that bathes his eyes in the white sky, wrestles a
river to a standstill, and spends the night drunk in a whorehouse.
What's that hitting me on the back of the head? Just bumping my head
against the roof of the car. Hey! Goddam you! Who th' hell do you think
you're a hittin', mister? What are you, anyhow, a dam bully? You cain't push
that woman around! What's all of these folks in jail for? Believing in
people? Where'd all of us come from? What did we do wrong? You low-down cur,
if you hit me again, I'll tear your head off!
My eyes closed tight, quivering till they exploded like the rain when
the lightning dumped a truckload of thunder down along the train. I was
whirling and floating and hugging the little runt around the belly, and my
brain felt like a pot of hot lead bubbling over a flame. Who's all of these
crazy men down there howling out at each other like hyenas? Are these men?
Who am I? How come them here? How the hell come me here? What am I supposed
to do here?
My ear flat against the tin roof soaked up some music and singing
coming from down inside of the car:
This train don't carry no rustlers,
Whores, pimps, or side-street hustlers;
This train is bound for glory, This train.
Can I remember? Remember back to where I was this morning? St. Paul.
Yes. The morning before? Bismarck, North Dakota. And the morning before
that? Miles City, Montana. Week ago, I was a piano player in Seattle.
Who's this kid? Where's he from and where's he headed for? Will he be
me when he grows up? Was I like him when I was just his size? Let me
remember. Let me go back. Let me get up and walk back down the road I come.
This old hard rambling and hard graveling. This old chuck-luck traveling. My
head ain't working right.
Where was I?
Where in the hell was I?
Where was I when I was a kid? Just as far, far, far back, on back, as I
can remember?
Strike, lightning, strike!
Strike, Goddam you, strike!
There's lots of folks that you cain't hurt!
Strike, lightning!
See if I care! .
Roar and rumble, twist and turn, the sky ain't never as crazy as the
world.
Bound for glory? This train? Ha!
I wonder just where in the hell we're bound.
Rain on, little rain, rain on!
Blow on, little wind, keep blowin'!
'Cause them guys is a singin' that this train is bound for glory, an'
I'm gonna hug her breast till I find out where she's bound.
Chapter II
EMPTY SNUFF CANS
Okemah, in Creek Indian, means 'Town on a Hill," but our busiest hill
was our Graveyard Hill, and just about the only hill in the country that you
could rest on. West of town, the wagon roads petered themselves out chasing
through some brushy sand hills. Then south, the country just slipped away
and turned into a lot of hard-hit farms, trying to make an honest living in
amongst the scatterings of scrub oak, black jack, sumac, sycamore, and
cottonwood that lay on the edges of the tough hay meadows and stickery
pasture lands.
Okemah was an Oklahoma farming town since the early days, and it had
about an equal number of Indians, Negroes, and Whites doing their trading
there. It had a railroad called the Fort Smith and Western--and there was no
guarantee that you'd get any certain place any certain time by riding it.
Our most famous railroad man was called "Boomer Swenson," and every time
Boomer come to a spot along the rails where he'd run over somebody, he'd
pull down on his whistle cord and blow the longest, moaningest, saddest
whistle that ever blew on any man's railroad.
Ours was just another one of those little towns, I guess, about a
thousand or so people, where everybody knows everybody else; and on your way
to the post office, you'd nod and speak to so many friends that your neck
would be rubbed raw when you went in to get your mail if there was any. It
took you just about an hour to get up through town, say hello, talk over the
late news, family gossip, sickness, weather, crops and lousy politics.
Everybody had something to say about something, or somebody, and you usually
knew almost word for word what it was going to be about before you heard
them say it, as we had well-known and highly expert talkers on all subjects
in and out of this world.
Old Windy Tom usually shot off at his mouth about the weather. He not
only could tell you the exact break in the exact cloud, but just when and
where it would rain, blow, sleet or snow; and for yesterday, today, and
tomorrow, by recalling to your mind the very least and finest details of the
weather for these very days last year, two years, or forty years ago. When
Windy Tom got to blowing it covered more square blocks than any one single
cyclone. But he was our most hard-working weather man--Okemah's Prophet--and
we would of fought to back him up.
I was what you'd call just a home-town kid and carved my initials on
most everything that would stand still and let me, W. G. Okemah Boy. Born
1912. That was the year, I think, when Woodrow Wilson was named to be the
president and my papa and mama got all worked up about good and bad politics
and named me Woodrow Wilson too. I don't remember this any too clear.
I wasn't much more than two years old when we built our seven-room
house over in the good part of Okemah. This was our new house, and Mama was
awful glad and proud of it. I remember a bright yellow outside--a blurred
haze of a dark inside--some vines looking in through windows.
Sometimes, I seem to remember trying to follow my big sister off to
school. I'd gather up all of the loose books I could find around the house
and start out through the gate and down the sidewalk, going to get myself a
schoolhouse education, but Mama would ran out and catch me and drag me back
into the house kicking and bawling. When Mama would hide the books I'd walk
back to the front porch, afraid to run away, but I'd use the porch for my
stage, and the grass, flowers, and pickets along our fence would be my crowd
of people; and I made up my first song right there:
Listen to the music,
Music, music;
Listen to the music,
Music band.
These days our family seemed to be getting along all right. People rode
down our street in buggies and sarries, all dressed up, and they'd look over
at our house and say, "Charlie and Nora Guthrie's place." "Right new."
Clara was somewhere between nine and ten, but she seemed like an awful
big sister to me. She was always bending and whirling around, dancing away
to school and singing her way back home; and she had long curls that swung
in the wind and brushed in my face when she wrestled me across the floor.
Roy was along in there between seven and eight. Quiet about everything.
Walked so slow and thought so deep that I always wondered what was going on
in his head. I watched him biff the tough kids on the noodle over the fence,
and then he would just come on in home, and think and think about it. I
wondered how he could fight so good and keep so quiet.
I guess I was going on three then.
Peace, pretty weather. Spring turning things green. Summer staining it
all brown. Fall made everything redder, browner, and brittler. And winter
was white and gray and the color of bare trees. Papa went to town and made
real-estate deals with other people, and he brought their money home. Mama
could sign a check for any amount, buy every little thing that her eyes
liked the looks of. Roy and Clara could stop off in any store in Okemah and
buy new clothes to fit the weather, new things to eat to make you healthy,
and Papa was proud because we could all have anything we saw. Our house was
packed full of things Mama liked, Roy liked, Clara liked, and that was what
Papa liked. I remember his leather law books, Blackstone and others. He
smoked a pipe and good tobacco and I wondered if this helped him to stretch
out in his big easy-riding chair and try to think up some kind of a deal or
swap to get some more money.
But those were fighting days in Oklahoma. If even the little newskids
fought along the streets for corroded pennies, it's not hard to see that
Papa had to outwit, outsmart, and outrun a pretty long string of people to
have everything so nice. It kept Mama scared and nervous. She always had
been a serious person with deep-running thoughts in her head; and the old
songs and ballads that she sung over and over every day told me just about
what she was thinking about. And they told Papa, but he didn't listen. She
used to say to us kids, "We love your Papa, and if anything tries to hurt
him and make him bad and mean, we'll fight it, won't we?" And Roy would jump
up and pound his fist on his chest and say, "I'll fight!" Mama knew how
dangerous the landtrading business was, and she wanted Papa to drop out of
the fighting and the pushing, and settle down to some kind of a better life
of growing things and helping other people to grow. But Papa was a man of
brimstone and hot fire, in his mind and in his fists, and was known all over
that section of the state as the champion of all the fist fighters. He used
his fists on sharks and fakers, and all to give his family nice things. Mama
was that kind of a woman who always looked at a pretty thing and wondered,
"Who had to work to make it? Who owned it and loved it before?"
So our family was sort of divided up into two sides: Mama taught us
kids to sing the old songs and told us long stories about each ballad; and
in her own way she told us over and over to always try and see the world
from the other fellow's side. Meanwhile Papa bought us all kinds of
exercising rods and stretchers, and kept piles of kids boxing and wrestling
out in the front yard; and taught us never and never to allow any earthly
human to scare us, bully us, or run it over us.
Then more settlers trickled West, they said in search of elbow room on
the ground, room to farm the rich topsoil; but, hushed and quiet, they dug
into the private heart of the earth to find the lead, the soft coal, the
good zinc. While the town of people only seventeen miles east of us danced
on their roped-off streets and held solid weeks of loud celebrating called
the King Koal Karnival, only the early roadrunners, the smart oil men, knew
that in a year or two King Koal would die and his body would be burned to
ashes and his long twisting grave would be left dank and dark and empty
under the ground--that a new King would be dancing into the sky, gushing and
spraying the entire country around with the slick black blood of industry's
veins, the oil--King Oil--a hundred times more powerful and wild and rich
and fiery than King Timber, King Steel, King Cotton, or even King Koal.
The wise traders come to our town first, and they were the traders who
had won their prizes at out-trading thousands of others back where they come
from: oil slickers, oil fakers, oil stakers, and oil takers. Papa met them.
He stood up and swapped and traded, bought and sold, got bigger, spread out,
and made more money.
And this was to get us the nice things. And we all liked the prettiest
and best things in the store windows, and anything in the store was Clara's
just for signing her name, Roy's just for signing his name, or Mama's just
for signing her name-- and I knew how proud I felt of our name, that just to
write it on a piece of paper would bring more good things home to us. This
wasn't because there was oil in the wind, nor gushers thrashing against the
sky, no--it was because my dad was the man that owned the land--and whatever
was under that land was ours. The oil was a whisper in the dark, a rumor, a
gamble. No derricks standing up for your eye to see. It was a whole bunch of
people chasing a year or two ahead of a wild dream. Oil was the thing that
made other people treat you like a human, like a burro, or like a dog.
Mama thought we had enough to buy a farm and work it ourselves, or at
least get into some kind of a business that was a little quieter. Almost
every day when Papa rode home he showed the signs and bruises of a new fist
fight, and Mama seemed to get quieter than any of us had ever seen her. She
laid in the bedroom and I watched her cry on her pillow.
And all of this had give us our nice seven-room house.
One day, nobody ever knew how or why, a fire broke out somewhere in the
house. Neighbors packed water. Everybody made a run to help. But the flames
outsmarted the people, and all that we had left, in an hour or two, was a
cement foundation piled full of red-hot ashes and cinders.
How did it break out? Where'bouts did it get started? Anybody know?
Hey, did they tell you anything? Me? No. I don't know. Hey, John, did you
happen to see how it got on afire? No, not me. Nobody seems to know. Where
was Charlie Guthrie? Out trading? Kids at school? Where was Mrs. Guthrie and
the baby? Nobody knows a thing. It just busted loose and it jumped all
through the bedrooms and the dining room and the front room--nobody knows a
thing.
Where's th' Guthrie folks at? Neighbors' house? All of them all right?
None hurt. Wonder what'll happen to 'em now? Oh, Charlie Guthrie will jist
go out here an' make about two swaps some mornin' before breakfast an' he'll
make enough money to build a whole lot better place than that. . . . No
insurance. ... They say this broke him flat. ... Well, I'm waitin' ta see
where they'll move to next.
I remember our next house pretty plain. We called it the old London
House, because a family named London used to live there. The walls were
built up out of square sandstone rocks. The two big rooms on the ground
floor were dug into the side of a rocky hill. The walls inside felt cold,
like a cellar, and holes were dug out between the rocks big enough to put
your two hands in. And the old empty snuff cans of the London family were
lined up in rows along the rafters.
I liked the high porch along the top story, for it was the highest
porch in all of the whole town. Some kids lived in houses back along the top
of the hill, but they had thick trees all around their back porches, and
couldn't stand there and look way out across the first street at the bottom
of the hill, across the second road about a quarter on east, out over the
willow trees that grew along a sewer creek, to see the white strings of new
cotton bales and a whole lot of men and women and kids riding into town on
wagons piled double-sideboard-full of cotton, driving under the funny shed
at the gin, driving back home again on loads of cotton seed.
I stood there looking at all of this, which was just the tail-end
section of Okemah. And then, I remember, there was a long train blew a
wild-sounding whistle and throwed a cloud of steam out on both sides of its
engine wheels, and lots of black smoke come jumping out of the smokestack.
The train pulled a long string of boxcars along behind it, and when it got
to the depot it cut its engine loose from the rest of the cars, and the
engine trotted all around up and down the railroad tracks, grabbing onto
cars and tugging them here and yonder, taking some and leaving some. But I
was tickled best when I saw the engine take a car and run and run till it
got up the right speed, and then stop and let the car go coasting and
rolling all by its own self, down where the man wanted it to be. I knew I
could go and get in good with any bunch of kids in the neighborhood just by
telling them about my big high lookout porch, and all of the horses and
cotton wagons, and the trains.
Papa hired a man and a truck to haul some more furniture over to our
old London House; and Roy and Clara carried all kinds of heavy things,
bedsteads, springs, bed irons, parts for stoves, some chairs, quilts that
didn't smell right to me, tables and extra leaves, a boxful of silverware
which I was glad to see was the same set we had always used. A few of the
things had come out of the other house before the fire got out of hand. The
rest of the furniture was all funny looking. Somebody else had used it in
their house, and Papa had bought it second hand.
Clara would say, "I'll be glad when we get to live in another house
that we own; then Mama can get a lot of new things."
Roy talked the same way. "Yeah, this stuff is so old and ugly, it'll
scare me just to have to eat, and sleep, and live around it."
"It won't be like our good house, Roy," Clara said. "I liked for kids
to come over and play in our yard then, and drink out of our pretty water
glasses and see our pretty flower beds, but I'm gonna just run any kid off
that comes to see us now, 'cause I don't want anybody to think that anybody
has got to live with such old mean, ugly chairs, and cook on an old nasty
stove, and even to sleep on these filthy beds, and. . . ." Then Clara set
down a chair she was carrying inside of the kitchen and looked all around at
the cold concrete walls, and down at the rock floor. She picked up a water
glass that was spun half full of fine spider webs with a couple of flies
wrapped like mummies and she said, "... And ask anybody to drink out of
these old spidery glasses."
Roy and Clara cooked the first meal on the rusty stove. It was a good
meal of beefsteak, thickened flour gravy, okra roiled in corn meal and fried
in hot grease, hot biscuits with plenty of butter melted in between, and at
the last, Clara danced around over the floor, grabbed a can opener out of
the cupboard drawer, and cut a can of sliced peaches open for us. The
weather outside was the early part of fall, and there was a good wood-smoke
smell in the air along towards sundown and supper time, and families
everywhere were warming up a little. The big stove heated the rock walls and
Papa asked Mama, "Well, Nora, how do you like your new house?"
She had her back to the cook stove and faced the east window, and
looked out over Papa's shoulder, and not in his face, and held a hot cup of
coffee in both of her hands, and everybody got quiet. But for a long time
she didn't answer. Then she finally said, "I guess it's all right. I guess
it'll have to do till we can get a better place. I guess we won't be here
very long." She run her fingers through her hair, set her coffee down to
cool, and the look on her face twisted and trembled and it scared everybody.
Her eyes didn't look to see anything or anybody in that house, but she had
pretty dark eyes and the gray light from the east window was about all that
was shining in her mind.
"How long we gonna stay, I mean live here, Papa?" Roy spoke up.
Papa looked around at everybody at the table and then he said, "You
mean you don't like it here?" His face looked funny and his eyes run around
over the kitchen.
Clara cleared away a handful of dirty plates off of the table and said,
"Are we supposed to like it here?"
"Where it's so dirty," Roy went on to say, "an' spooky lookin' you
can't even bring any kids around your own home?"
Mama didn't say a word.
"Why," Papa told Roy, "this is a good house, solid rock all over, good
new shingle roof, new rafters. Go take a look at that upper attic. Lots of
room up there where you can store trunks and things. You can fix a nice
playhouse up in that attic and invite all of the kids in the whole country
to come down here on cold winter days, and play dolls, and all kinds of
games up in there. You kids just don't know a good house when you see one.
And, one thing, it won't ever catch afire and burn down."
Roy just ducked his head and looked down at his plate and didn't say
any more. Mama's cup of hot coffee had turned cold. Clara poured a dishpan
of hot water, slushed her finger around to whip up the suds, cooled it down
just right with a dipper of cold water, and told Papa, "As for me, I don't
like this old nasty place. 'Cause it's got old cold dingy walls, that's why.
'Cause I don't like to sleep up there in that old stinky bedroom where you
can smell the snuff spit of the London family for the last nine kids. 'Cause
you know what kinds of stories everybody tells about this old house, you
know as well as I know. Kids swelled up in that old bedroom and died. Broke
out all over with old yellow, running sores. Not a kid, not in this whole
town, not a single girl I used to play with will ever, ever play with me
again as long as we live in this town, if we let them find out we've got the
London House seven-year itch!" Clara turned her head away from the rest of
us.
Papa wasn't saying much, just sipped his coffee and listened to the
others talk. Then he said, "I've got something to tell you all. I don't
know, I don't know how you're going to take it. Well, I'm afraid we're going
to have to live in this house for a long time. I bought this place for a
thousand dollars yesterday."
"You mean . . ." Mama talked up. "Charlie, are you trying to sit there
and tell me that you actually ... ?"
". . . Bought this place?" Clara said.
"A thousan' dollars for this old dump?" Roy asked him.
"I'm afraid so." Papa went ahead drinking his coffee and leaving the
rest of his dinner setting in front of him to get cold. "We'll pitch in and
fix it all up real nice, new plaster, and cement all inside. New paint all
over the woodwork."
Clara dried her hands on her apron and then pushed her curls back out
of her face and stepped over to the west back door, opened the door and
walked out onto the hill.
Roy got up and pushed the door shut behind her.
Papa said, "Tell your sister to come on in here out of this night air,
she'll take down sick after standing over that hot stove."
And Roy said, "Th' hot stove an' th' night air don't hurt us as...."
"Bad as what?" Papa asked Roy. And Roy said, "Bad's what Clara was
tellin' you about, that's what."
"Roy, you mind what I tell you to do! I told you to open up that door
and call Clara back in this house. You do it!" Papa gave his orders, and his
voice was half rough and tough, but halfway hurt.
"Call 'er in if you want 'er in," Roy told Papa, and then Roy made a
run around Papa's elbow and through the front room, and he mounted the
stairs outside and chased up to his bedroom and pulled the covers all up
over his head.
Papa rose up from his chair and walked over and opened up the kitchen
door and walked out to find Clara. He called her name a few times and she
didn't answer back. But somewhere he could hear her crying and he called her
again, "Clara, Clara! Where are you? Talk!"
"I'm over here," Clara spoke up, and when Papa turned around he saw
that he had walked right past her skirt on his way out the door. She was
leaning back against the wall of the house.
"You know your old Papa don't want anything to happen to you, because,
well, I get mean sometimes, and I treat all of you bad, but sometimes it's
just because I want to treat you so good that I'd.... Come on, let me carry
you back in the house. I'm your old mean Papa. You can call me that if you
want to." He reached down and took Clara by the arm, and gave her a little
pull. She let her body just go limp and limber, and kept crying for a
minute.
Then Papa went on talking, "I might be mean. I guess I am. I might not
stop often enough trying to work and make a lot of money to buy all of you
some nice things. Maybe I've got to be so mean trading, and trying to make
the money, that I don't know how to quit when I come in home where you are,
where Roy is, and where Mama's at."
Clara snubbed a little, folded her arm over her face, and then she
wiped the tears away from her eyes with the wrong end of her fist and said,
"Not either."
"Not either, what?" Papa asked her.
"Not mean."
"Why? I thought I was."
"Not either."
"Why ain't I?"
"It's something else that's mean."
"What else?"
"I don't know."
"What is it that's mean to my little girl? You just tell me what it is
that's even one little frog hair mean to my little girl, and your old mean
dad'll roll up his sleeves, and double up his fists and go and knock the
sound out of somebody."
"This old house is mean."
"House?"
"It's mean."
"How can a house be mean?"
"It's mean to be in it."
"Oh," Papa told Clara, "now, I see what you're driving at. You know how
mean I am?"
"Not mean."
"I'm just big and mean enough to pick you up just like a big sack of
sugar and put on my shoulder, like this, and like this, and then like this,
and ... see ... I can carry you all of the way in through this back door,
and all of the way in through this big, nice, warm kitchen, and all of the
way..." Papa carried Clara laughing and giggling under her curly hair back
into the kitchen. When he was even with the stove, he looked up and saw Mama
washing the dishes and piling them on a little oilcloth table to drain.
Clara kicked in the air and said, "Oh! Let me down! Let me down! I'm
not crying now! And besides, look what's happening! Look!" She squirmed out
of Papa's hold around her, and slid to the floor, and she sailed over into a
corner, brought out a mop, and started mopping up all around Mama's feet,
talking a blue streak.
"Mama, look! You're draining the dishes without a drain pan! The
water's dripping like a great big ... river ... down ..."
And then Clara looked over the hot-water reservoir on the wood stove
and nobody in the house saw what she saw. Her eyes flared open when she seen
that her mama wasn't listening, just washing the dishes clean in the
scalding water; and when her mama set still another plate on its edge on the
little table, Clara kept her quiet, and Papa took a deep breath, and bit his
lip, and turned around and walked away into the front room.
I found a new way to spend my time these days. I went across the alley
on top of the hill and strutted up and down in front of a bunch of kids that
spent most of their time making up games to play on top of their cellars.
Almost every house up and down the street had a dugout of some kind or
another full of fresh canned fruit, string beans, pickled beets, onions. I
snuck into one cellar after another with one kid after another, and saw how
dark, how chilly and damp it was down in there. I smelled the cankery dank
rotten logs along the ceiling of one cellar, and the hemmed-up feeling made
me want to get back out into the open air again, but the good denned-up
feeling sort of made me want to stay down in there.
The kid next door had a cellar full of jars and the jars were full of
pickled beets, long green cucumbers, and big round slices of onions and
peaches as big as your hat. So we pulled us up a wooden box, and took down a
big fruit jar of peaches. I twisted the lid. The other kid took a twist. But
the jar was sealed too tight. We commenced getting hungry. "Ain't that juice
larepin'?" "Yeah, boy, it is," I told him, "but what's larepin'?" So he
says, "Anything you like real good an' ain't got fer a long time, an' then
you git it, that's larepin'."
All of our hard wrestling and cussing didn't coax the lid off. So we
sneaked over behind the barn. The other kid squeezed his self in between a
couple of loose boards, stayed in the barn a minute, and came back out with
a claw hammer and a two-gallon feed bucket. "Good bucket," he told me. I
glanced into it, seen a few loose horse hairs, but he must have had a pretty
hungry horse, because the bucket had been licked as clean as a new dime.
I held the jar as tight as I could over the bucket, and he took a few
little love taps on the shoulder of the jar with his hammer. He saw he
wasn't hitting the glass hard enough, so he got a little harder each lick.
Then he come down a good one on it, and the glass broke into a thousand
pieces; the pewter lid and the red rubber seal fell first, then a whole big
goo of loose peaches, skinned and cut in halves slopped out into the bottom
of the bucket; and then the neck of the jar with a lot of mean-looking
jagged edges sticking up, and the bottom of the jar that scared us to look
at it. "Good peaches," he told me.
"Good juice," I told him.
We fingered in around the slivers of glass and looked each peach over
good before we downed it, pushing little sharp chips off through the oozy
juice; and the warm sun made the specks of glass shine up like diamonds.
"Reckon how much a really diamond sparks?" he said to me."
"I don't know," I said to him.
Then he said, "My mama's got one she wears on her finger."
And I said, "My mama ain't ... jest a big wide gold'un. Some glass on
yer peach, flip it."
"Funny 'bout yer mama not havin' 'cept jest one ring. Need a diamond
one too ta be really, really married ta each other."
'What makes that?"
"Diamonds is what ya put in a ring, an' when ya see a girl ya jest put
th' diamond ring on 'er finger; an' then next ya git a gold ring, an ya put
th' gold one on 'er finger; an' next-- well, then ya c'n kiss'er all ya want
to."
"Perty good."
"Know what else ya c'n do?"
"Huh uh, what?"
"Sleep with her."
"Sleep?"
"Yes sir, sleep right with 'er, under th' cover."
"She sleep, too?"
"I don't know. I never put no diamond on no girl."
"Me neither."
"Never did sleep with no girl, 'cept my cousin."
"She sleep, too?" I asked.
"Shore. Cousins they jest mostly sleep. We told crazy stories an'
laffed so loud my dad whopped us ta git us to go ta sleep."
"What makes yore dad wanta sleep unner th' covers with a diamond ring
an' a gold one on yer mama's hand?"
"That's what mamas an' daddies are for."
"Is it?"
"'At's what makes a mama a mama, an' a papa a papa."
"What about workin' together, like cleanin' up around th' yard, an'
cleanin' up th' house, an' eatin' together; how about talkin' together, an'
goin' off somewheres together, don't that make nobody a mama an' a papa?"
"Naww, might help some."
" 'S awful funny, ain't it?"
"My mama an' dad won't tell me nothin' about what makes you
a dad or a mama," he told me.
"They won't?"
"Naww. Sceered. But, I keep my eyes open wide, wide open; an' I stay
awake on my bed, an' I listen over onto their bed. An' I know one thing."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"What?"
"I know one main thing."
"What main thing?"
"That's where little babies come from."
"From mamas an' papas?"
"Yen."
"Ain't no way they could.''
"Yes they is."
"You got to go somewhere to a store, or down to see a doctor, or make a
doctor come an' bring a little baby."
"No, 'tain't ever' time that way. I hear my mama an' I hear my dad, an'
they said they slept together too much, an' got too many kids out from under
th' cover."
"You don't find little babies under covers."
"Yes you do. Once in a while you find one, an' he's a little boy or a
little girl. Then this little baby grows up big, an' you find
another'n."
"What's the next one?"
"Like you, or like me."
"I ain't no little baby."
"You ain't but four years old."
"But I ain't no little cryin' baby."
"No, but you was when they first found you."
"Heck."
" 'S purty bad, all right, but maybe that's why my mama or dad won't
tell me nothin' about th' covers. 'Fraid I might find some more little
babies in under there, an' mama cries a lot an' says we done already got too
many."
"If your mama didn't want 'em, why don't she just put 'em back in under
th' sheet?"
"Naww, I don't know, I don't think you can put 'em back."
"How come your papa don't want so many?"
"Cain't feed an' clothes us."
"That's bad. I'll get you somethin' to eat over at my house. We ain't
got so many covers, I mean, so many kids as you got."
"You know th' reason, don't you?"
"No, why?"
"Jest 'cause your mama ain't got no two rings, one gold one, an' one
diamond one."
"Maybe she did used to have a diamunt ring; an' maybe she got it burnt
up when our pretty big house caught afire an' burnt down."
"I remember about that. I seen th' people runnin' up that way that day.
I seen th' smoke. How big was you then?"
"I was just fresh out from under th' cover."
"Say, if I ask you a favor, will you tell me it?"
"Might, what?"
"Kids say your mama got mad an' set her brand-new house on fire, an'
burnt ever'thin' plumb up. Did she?"
I didn't say anything back to him. I sat there up against the warm barn
for about a minute, hung my head down a little, and then I reached out and
kicked his bucket as far as I could kick it; and a million flies that had
been eating the peachy juice, flew out of the bucket, and wondered what had
hit them. I jumped up, and started to throw a handful of manure on him, but
then I let my fingers go limber, and the manure fell to the ground. I didn't
look him in the face. I didn't look anywhere special. I didn't want him to
see my face, so I turned my head the other way, and walked past the pile of
manure.
I played around our yard some and talked to the fence posts, sung songs
and made the weeds sing, and found all of the snuff cans the London folks
had throwed out into the high weeds around the house for the last ten or
fifteen years. I found a flat board, and loaded the cans onto it, and
crawled on my hands and knees, pushing it like a big wagon, in and out and
all along under the weeds, and it made a road everywhere it went. I come to
deep sandy places where the horses had to pull hard and I cussed out, "Hit
'em up, Judie! Git in there, Rhodie! Judie! Dam yore muley hide! Hit 'em in
easy! Now take it together! Judie! Rhodie!" I was the world's best team
skinner with the world's best team and the world's best wagon.
Then I made out like I delivered my load, got my money, turned all of
my horses and mules out onto their pasture, and was going to see some of my
people. I slipped on loose rocks lying around the corner of our house, made
the white dust foam up when I stomped through our ash pile, and when I got
to the top of the hill, I saw the boy next door standing on top of his
manure pile watching more flies get fat on the slice of peach. When he seen
me be made a hard run down off of the pile, jumped up onto a sawhorse and
yelled, "This is my army horse!"
I dumb up in a broke-down wheelbarrow and hollered back at him, "This
is my big war tank!"
Then he sailed down off his sawhorse and tore up on top of his manure
pile, and said, "This is my big battleship!"
"War tanks can whip ole battleships!" I told him. "War tanks has got
fast, fast machine guns! Battleships cain't go less they're in water! I can
chase Germans on land!"
"But you cain't shoot but just a hunderd Germans! Yer оl' war tank,
ain't got as many bullets as my big battleship!"
"I can hide in my war tank, behind a rock, an' when ya start ta git off
of yore ship, I can kill ya, an' ya'll die!"
He ripped down off of the manure pile, darted behind his barn, and
after a little while, he poked his head out of the hayloading door up in the
top door. Then he hollered, "This is my big fort! I got my cannons an' my
ship tied up down here under me! Yer ol' war tank cain't even hurt me! Ya!
Ya!"
"Ya! Yerself! Yer ole fort ain't nothin'!" I pulled myself up out of
the wheelbarrow and dumb up onto the first limb of a big walnut tree. "Now I
got my airplane, an' ya don't even know what I can do to ya!"
"Cain't do nuthin'! Yore оl' airplane ain't even as high as my fort!"
"I can git up higher!"
"I'm still higher in my fort than yore оl' airplane! Cain't drop no
bumbs on me!"
I looked up above me and saw that I'd come to the high top of the tree.
The limbs was already swaying around so much that the ground below me seemed
like it was a rough ocean. But I had to get up higher. "I c'n git up as high
as I wanta! Then I c'n dump out a big bomb on toppa yer оl' crazy fort, an'
it'll blow ya all ta pieces, knock yer head off, an' yer arms off, an' yer
both legs off, an' ya'll be dead!"
The few limbs in the top of the tree weren't as big as a broomstick,
and the wind was whirling me around up there like I was the last big walnut
of the season.
Mama slammed our back door and I kept real quiet so she wouldn't see me
up in the tree. The kid's mama walked out of her back door with a bushel
basket full of old cans and papers, and my mama said, "Say, wonder where our
little stray youngins are?"
And his mama said, "I heard them hollering just a minute ago!"
They stood under my tree and asked each other little questions. "Ain't
these brats a fright?"
"I tell you, it's a shame to the dogs the way a woman's got to run and
chase and wear her wits out to keep a big long string of kids from starving
to death."
I looked down through the shady limbs and seen the tops of the women's
heads, one tying a hair ribbon a little tighter in the wind, the other one
holding her hair by the big handfuls. The sun shot down through my tree, the
light places hit down the back and shoulders of my mama, and the forehead
and dress of his mama, and the whole thing was traveling. I felt the sun
humming down hot and heavy on my head. It was a crazy feeling. The thing was
whirling, moving all around, and I couldn't get it to slow down or stop. I
grabbed a better grip on the little limber limbs, and ducked my head down
and closed my eyes as tight as I could, and I bit my tongue and lip to keep
from crying out loud. It was dark all over then, but my head was splitting
open, and everything in me was jumping and pounding like wild horses running
away with a big wagon with only one or two loose potatoes rumbling around in
it.
I yowled out, "Mama!" She looked all around over the lot. "Where 'bouts
are you?"
"Up here. Up in th' tree."
Both of the women caught their breath and I heard them say, "Oh! For
heaven's sakes! Hurry! Run! Go get somebody! Get somebody to do something!"
"Can't you just climb down?" Mama asked me.
"No," I told her. "I'm sick."
"Sick? For God's sake! Hold on tight!" Mama got up on the wheelbarrow
and tried to climb up to the first limb. She couldn't make it any higher.
She looked up where I was sticking like a 'possum in the forks, and said,
"It's a good twenty-five feet up to where he is! Oh, Lord,'goodness, God, I
wish somebody would come along! Wait! There's a bunch of kids yonder along
the road at the bottom of the hill! You stay here and talk to him. Tell him
anything, anything, but don't let him get scared. Just talk. Hey! You kids
down there! Wait a minute! Yes, you! Come here! Want a dime each one of
you?"
Five or six mixed colors of kids run up the hill to meet her, and every
kid was saying, "Dime? Golly, gosh, yes! Whataya want done? Work? Whole
dime?"
"I'll show you, here, down this alley. Now, I wanta know something. Do
you see that little boy hanging up yonder in the top of that tall tree?"
"Yen."
"Gosh."
"Shoot a monkey!"
"Cain't he get back down?"
"No," my mama told them, "he's hung up there or something. He's getting
sicker and sicker, and is going to fall any minute, unless we do something
to get him down."
"I can climb that tree after him."
"Me, too."
"Yeah, but you can't do no good; them little old weak limbs won't hold
nobody else."
Mama was pulling her hair. "You see, you see, you kids, don't you? You
see how much gray hairs and worry you pile on to your old mothers' backs!
Don't you ever sneak off and pull no such a stunt as this!"
"No ma'am."
"No'm."
"Yes'm."
"I wouldn't."
"I never would chase my folks up no tree."
"Shut up, ijiot, she didn't say that."
"Shh. What'd she say?"
"She said don't get hung up in no tree."
"I been hung up in every tree in this end of town."
"Shut up, she don't know that."
"Hey, guys! These lowest limbs is stout enough to hold us up! See here!
You just got to watch out and keep your feet in real close to th' top of th'
tree, an' not out on the limbs when you hit a fork! Okay, Slew, you're the
littlest, skin up in there far's you can; climb right up next to him!
Sawdust, you're next littlest! Flag it up in there and stop right under
Slew!"
Slew and Sawdust skint up into that tree. The little one's head was up
as high as my belly, and the next kid was right under him.
"We're up here! Whatta you wanta do next?"
"Buckeye, you got long arms and legs; you stand yonder a-straddle of
them two wide limbs!"
"I'm here 'fore you got it said."
"Thug, you set yourself down right here low to the ground. All of you
watch; maybe if he falls, you can at least make a grab and try to ketch
him'."
"What's th' rest of us gonna do?"
"Rabbit, an' you, Star Navy, you too, Jake--you three run yonder to
that lady's wellhouse, an' take yer pockit-knife an' cut that rope, an' git
back here in nuthin' flat!"
Three kids aired out over the hill, come out lugging a long piece of
rope.
"Okay, here, Thug, you hand this on up to Buckeye. Buck, you shoot it
on up to Saw, an' Sawdust, you wheel'er on in to Slew! Got a good holt on
'er, Slew?"
"Yeah! Whattaya want me ta do with it? Tie it around his belly?"
"Yeah! But, first, you'd better'd put the end, th' knot end, up over
that fork there where he's hung! That's her! Throw loop around his belly
now!"
"Okay! He's looped so's he never could git loose, even if he's ta try!"
Then the main foreman of the gang took off a little dirty white
flour-sack cap, and rubbed the dirt and sweat back off of his head and told
Mama and the other lady, "All right, ladies. Yore worryin' days is over.
Keep yer britches on. That kid'll live ta be a flat hunderd."
"The rope won't slip or break?" Mama asked him.
"Good wet rope." The kid was watching every move that the other kids
made.
"Okay! V'e're all set!" one kid yelled down out of the tree.
"We're ridin' high, an' settin' purty!" another one talked up.
Then the ramrod said, "Rabbit, Star, Jake, you three guys take th' tail
end of this rope, an' back off out across down th' hill yonder with it. Pull
it good an' straight. 'At's her. Okay!"
"She's straighter'n a preacher's dream."
"Thug, you, up there! Hold onto th' main rope! You grab 'er, Saw, you
too, Slew! Now, let me git a grip on 'er down here on th' ground! You three
kids down the hill there brace yer feet, dig yer heels, dig 'em in! You
wimmen folks jist rare back, take a big dip of snuff, an' tell some funny
stories! We ain't never dropped a kid yit, an' this is th' first time we
ever got paid a dime fer not droppin' one!"
"Look what you're doing."
"Okay! Worry Wart, you, Slew! Now! Lift his legs up loose from the
forks! Hey, help make him help you. Lift 'im plumb up! 'At'saboy! Jist let
'im hang down there!"
"Man's unhung much's he can be unhung!"
"You guys down th' hill! His weight's on this rope now! You let it git
tight, real slow, then as I feed th' rope through my hands, why, you three
birds come a-walkin' up th' hill, see? Like this, see, an' she slips a
little, an' you walk a little, an' she oozes a little bit more, an' you walk
up a little closter!"
"We're wheelin'!"
"An' a-dealin'!"
"Just walk along slow, keep a tight rope, take it easy. Okay, Slew,
he's down out of yore reach! Sawdust, keep th' rope stretched under th' pit
of yore one arm, an' guide th' gent down past you with the other arm!"
"He's slidin'! Easy ridin'!"
"Keep 'im slidin'! Easy on th' ridin'! Guide 'im on down ta where we
git th' six dimes! You ladies can be goin' to th' house ta git out yore
pockitbooks."
Mama said, "No, thank you, sir, I'll stay right here, if you don't
mind, and see to it that you get him down right. Are they hurting you,
Woody?"
"Not me!" I told her back. "This is lotsa fun. Got lotsa kids ta play
with now!"
"You hold on tight to that rope, mister fun-haver!" the other lady was
saying.
"I will!" I said to her. "Mama, do I get a dime, too?"
I come down past the last kid on the last limb and when I got both feet
on the ground, I forgot all about my headache and sun-stroke. I laughed and
talked with everybody like I was a famous sailor just back from sea. " 'At
wuz fun! Hey! I wanta do it all over agin'!"
Mama grabbed me by the shirt collar and pulled me home. I was fighting
every step of the way and yelling back, "Hey! Kids! Come an' play with me!
Come an' see my wagon road! I wanta dime, too, Mama!"
"I'll dime you!" she told me.
"You kids wait right there. I'll get your six dimes for you.''
"I wanta dime! I want some candy!" I was letting it out.
"We'll save ya a piece out of our candy an' stuff!" the head captain of
the kids yelled.
"An' we'll bring it over in a sack all by itself, first thing in th'
mornin'!"
Another kid said, "It was yore tree!"
"It's yore yard!"
"Yeah, an' it was even yer mama's dimes!''
And just as our back door flew shut with me halfway caught with my neck
sticking out, Mama grabbed a better handful of me, and I yelled, "It was my
sore head, it was my dizzy head!" And Mama jammed the door shut, and I
didn't see any more of the big bunch of awful good smart kids. Regular tree
unhangers.
Mama took my shirt and overhalls off, stripped me down to my bare hide
and spent about an hour giving me a bath.
"Come on, young sprout, I'm putting you off to bed. Come on,"
"I'm comin'; I feel good an' warm in my new clean unnerwear."
"Do you?"
"You know, Mama, I never do like for you ta do anything to me, like
make me mind, or make me stay home, or make me drink milk, or take a bath,
but I hate most of all to have you put a new pair of unnerwear on me. Then,
after ya do it, I like you a whole lot better."
"Mama knows every little thing that's taking place in that little old
curly head of yours. You're my newest, and my hardest-headed youngin."
"Mama, what's a hard head?"
"It means you go and do what you want to."
"Is my head a hard one?"
"You bet it is."
"What's a youngin?" I asked Mama. "Am I a youngin?"
And Mama told me, "Well, it means you're not very old."
She pulled the covers up around my neck and tucked me down into the bed
good.
"When I get up to be real big, will I still be a youngin?"
"No. You'll be a big man then."
"Are you a youngin?"
"No, I'm a big woman. I'm a grown lady. I'm your mama." I started
getting drowsy and my eyes felt like they was both full of dry dirt.
I asked Mama, "Wuz you good when you wuz first a little baby?"
And she rubbed my face with the palm of her hand and said, "I was
pretty good. I believe I minded my mama better than you mind yours."
"Wuz you just a little tiny baby, this big?"
"Just about."
"An' Gramma an' Grampa found you in under their covers?"
Mama's face looked like she was trying to figure out a hard puzzle of
some kind. "Covers?"
"That boy that clumb up on his barn door, he tol' me all about married
rings, an' all about where you go an find little babies. Youngins."
"What did you say?"
"All 'bout married rings."
"This ring is pure gold," Mama told me, holding up her hand for me to
see it. "See these little flower buds? They were real plain when your papa
and me first got married.... But why don't you ever go to sleep, little
feller?"
"You know who I'd marry if I wuz gonna marry, Mama?"
"I haven't got the least inkling," she said. "Who?"
"You."
"Me?"
"Uh huh."
"You couldn't marry me if you wanted to. I'm already married to your
papa."
"Cain't I marry you, too?"
"Certainly not,"
"Why?"
"I told you why. You can't marry your own mama. You'll just have to
look around for another girl, young man."
"Mama."
"Yes."
"Mama."
"Yes."
"Mama, do you know somethin'?"
"No, what?"
"Well, like, say, like what that little ole mean kid acrost th' alley
asked me?"
"What?"
"Well, he asked me how many married rings you had on.'
"And then?"
"So I told him, told him you didn't have but one gold one. No diamunt
glass one."
"And?"
"And he said ever'body in town would git awful, awful mad at you for
losin' yore diamunt 'un."
"Did he?"
"An' he said, 'Where did you lose yore diamunt `un at?' An' so, I told
him maybe it got lost in our big house fire."
Mama just kept listening and didn't say a word.
Then I went on, "An' he asked me how come it, our big perty house got
burnt up. An' then he asked me if--if you struck a match an' set it on
fire...."
Mama didn't answer me. She just looked up away from me. She looked a
hole through the wall, and then she looked out through my bedroom window up
over the hill. She rubbed my forehead with her fingers and then she got up
off the edge of my bed, and walked out into the kitchen. I laid there
listening. I could hear her feet walking around over the kitchen floor. I
could hear the water splash in the drinking dipper. I heard everything get
quiet. Then I drifted off to sleep, and didn't hear a sound.
Chapter III
I AIN'T MAD AT NOBODY
It was an Indian summer morning and it was crispy and clear, and I
stuck my nose up into the air and whiffed my lungs full of good weather. I
stood on the side of the street in the alley crossing and saw Clara drift
almost out of sight toward the schoolhouse. I turned around and ran like a
herd of wild buffaloes back down the hill, around the house, and come to our
front yard, skidding to a stop. I hollered in at the window to where Mama
was finishing up the breakfast dishes and said, 'Where's Gramma at?"
Mama slid the window up and looked out at me and said, "This is
Grandma's day to come all right, how'd you know?"
"Clara told me," I told Mama.
"And why're you so fussed up about Grandma coming, young sprout?" Mama
said to me.
"Clara said Gramma'd take me with her to trade her eggs."
"Who is she, might I ask you?"
"She's my big sister. She's bigga 'nuff ta tell me where all I can go,
ain't she?"
"And I'm your Mama. Could you tell me what I'm suppose to be able to
tell you?"
"You can tell me I can go with Gramma, too."
"Oh! Well, I'll tell you, you've been having a hard time getting used
to living in this old house. So I'll tell you what. If you'll come in and
wash your face and neck and ears real good, and get both of your hands clean
enough for Grandma to see your skin, maybe I'll be right real good to you
and let you go out and stay a few days with her! Hurry!"
"Is my ears clean?"
Mama took a good look at both of my ears and told me, "This first one
will do in a pinch."
"How long's Gramma been yore wife?" I asked Mama.
"T told you a thousand times Grandma is not my wife. She's your
Grandpa's wife."
"Has Grampa gotta husban', too?"
"No. No. No. Grandpa is a husband already, Grandma's husband."
"Nobody ain't my husban', is there?" I asked her.
Mama grabbed the washrag away from me and rubbed my hide to a cherry
red. "Listen, you little question box, don't ask me anything else about who
is kin to who; you've absolutely got my head whirling around like a
windmill."
"Mama. Know somethin'?"
"What?"
"I ain't never gonna git real mad at you."
"Well, that is good news. Why? Whatever made you say that?"
"I jist ain't."
"You're being awful, awful good for some reason or another. Nickel.
Dime. What?"
"Not really, really mad."
"You certainly will have to change your ways a lot. You get mad at your
old mama just about every day about something. You get awful riled up
sometimes."
"That ain't worst mad."
"What kind of mad do you mean?"
"Mad that stays mad. 'At's th' kind I'm tell in' ya about. You won't
ever git mad at me if I won't ever git mad at you, will ya?"
"Never in your whole life, young feller." Mama patted my naked hide
where the cakes of dirt had just been washed off and told me, "That's the
best thing that could ever happen to all of us. Your little old head has got
it all thrashed out."
"Thrashed where? What's thrashed mean?"
"Thrash. Thrash. Means when you whip something and beat it, and well,
like Grandpa does his oats."
"I got oats in my head! Oats in my head! Yumpity yay