Roughneck (8 page)

       I looked at the cards. I looked at him. "All right," I said. "I'll do what I'm supposed to..."

       In the deepest black there is some white; and among our several thousand customers there were a few hundred whom any store would have been delighted to have on its books. If one of them fell behind in his payments, a polite note from Clark would usually elicit a prompt remittance. At the worst, a word or two from a collector would turn the trick. There was no, or practically no, collection expense in dealing with these customers. The store made recognition of the fact by selling them reasonably good merchandise and at reasonably fair prices, and in other ways—insofar as it was capable of that figurative act—leaned over backwards to retain their good will.

       Collectors, naturally, love such clients...but they are not allowed to keep them. It is a collector's job to collect—not merely to accept payments. It is a manager's or credit manager's job to see that the collector devotes his expensive time to people who will not pay of their own free will. That is the rule. I, through Clark's fear-born stubbornness, became an exception to it.

       To use the contemptuous installment house term, I was handed a "milk route." I worked it (you should excuse the expression) well into the following spring.

       Occasionally, I would be called upon to take over some nominally uncollectible account—some deadbeat so completely lacking in scruples that I could feel free in abandoning my own—and then I would have to actually work. But most of the time I did nothing more arduous than write receipts and pocket payments.

       So Clark had his way; he proved himself right and me wrong. But his triumph was even emptier than it appeared. For now, with one corner of his life's mudsill secured, the others began to waver and give way.

       Clark had a saying, a ready retort for the collector who fell down on an account. "The guy's eating, isn't he?" he would say. "Well, if he's eating, he's got dough. He has to have, and by God you better get it!"

       It was a pretty conclusive argument. Or, rather, it had been in the past. But in the end—as the end approached—the collectors had an answer for it. They came in at night, dogged and sullen and sometimes battered, men driven as far as they could be driven. And they faced Clark almost pleasurably, anxious to reply to his stock question, to deliver the retort beyond which there could be no other.

       "Huh-uh. That's what I'm saying, Jud—they ain't eating. Ain't got a thing in the house but a pound or so of cornmeal."

       "What the hell you trying to hand me?" Clark would say, his voice furiously desperate. "Goddammit, everybody's got to eat! You think I'm going to swallow any goddamned story like—"

       "I'm telling you how it is, Jud,"—an indifferent shrug, perhaps a thinly disguised sneer—"Why don't you check on it yourself? Maybe you can get that cornmeal away from 'em."

       Each week the inflow of cash dropped to a new low. Even some of the best accounts began to go sour. One of the collectors was laid off, then another; finally only Durkin and I remained. The home office issued instructions that no merchandise should be sold except for cash.

       This last happening, Durkin told me, was the tipoff. It was all over now but the shouting. "The chain's getting ready to fold, Jim. It's finally sunk in on 'em that they can't beat this. They're just stalling for time, trying to grab off what they can without putting out anything more."

       I was sure he was right, but Clark, when I asked him about it, furiously denied that the company was on the verge of bankruptcy.

       He had grown quite thin in recent weeks. The flesh was drawn tight on his broad, strong face. He swayed a little as he addressed me, and his breath stank with the odor of rotgut whiskey.

       "That goddamned Durkin," he jeered. "A goddamned rube! What the—'hic!—'what the hell does he know? Why, Jim, Jim, ol' pal—" He leaned forward, confidentially, dropping a hand on my shoulder to steady himself. "I've 'seen' it, Jim, I know what I'm talking about. They got their own office building, hundreds, thousands of people workin' in it, an'—and they got their own factories and trucking lines an'—and warehouses that cover a city block. An' they got all these stores—stores in almost every state in the union, two'r three in some states. An'—'hup!—'they even control some banks, Jim. Just the same as own 'em. S-say our accounts are spread over a year's time, why they can take that paper to the banks an' get the cash on it. They got 'em by the balls, see? They crack the whip just like we do, an'—an' you know us, Jim. Long's the bastards've got a nickel to get, we—w-we—"

       He swayed, staggered, and lurched back against his desk. He sat there, nodding owlishly into space, and mumbling and muttering to himself.

       "G-got to be. S-saw it myself, didn't I? All the people'n the buildings'n the factories'n the b-banks'n the warehouses'n the...the everything. Didn't let 'em jus' tell me. Saw it m'self. Know it's there—g-gotta be there. Somethin's there it's 'there.' 'S'there an' thass all there is to it. Where—w-where the hell's it gonna be if it ain't there? What...where'n hell is anything gonna be?"

       Two weeks later the chain closed its doors.

I squeezed through the summer on a variety of odd jobs, anything I could get that would bring in a few dollars. Early in the fall, the radio store for which I had been making an occasional sale came out with a line of low-priced table models—a decided novelty in those days—and I made money hand over fist. I was convinced that I had the depression licked. So much so that I not only reenrolled for the college fall term, but I also got married. My wife had a good job. Our understanding was that, if I should be caught in a pinch, she could give me enough financial help to get through college. Meanwhile, until I was solidly on my feet and a better arrangement could be worked out, she continued to live with her family and I with mine.

       Alas, for the best laid plans of newly married couples. A horde of other salesmen jumped in on the radio bonanza. Within a few weeks, the depression-narrowed market was saturated and my earnings fell to nothing. I could find no other work. My wife's employers learned of her marriage (we had been keeping it secret), and having a no-married-women policy, they promptly fired her. Then, to further complicate the situation, she discovered she was pregnant.

       Mom and Freddie went back to my grandparents' home. I withdrew from school, gave the remitted tuition fees to my wife and took to the road.

       I think I must have hitchhiked the length and breadth of Nebraska ten times in looking for work. I found barely enough to buy myself an occasional meal; and finally I could no longer do that. It was late in November, in the city of Omaha, that I reached the end of my tether. I was light-headed from lack of food. Weeks of sleeping in fields and ditches had ruined my clothes. Cold water shaving and washing had left me smeared, scratched and sinister-looking.

       Night came on. Snow began to fall. Shivering, I got up from my park bench and wobbled up the street. I came to an empty doorway and took refuge in it, huddling back against the rusted dusty screen. The building was on the edge of the business district—a poorly lit, semi-slum section. On the corner, a few feet away, was a bus stop. A bus drew up, and a middle-aged, well-dressed man got off.

       He peered around in the darkness, frowning. Then with a muttered "Damn," he turned back to the curb. Apparently he had got off at the wrong stop and was now waiting for another bus. I stood staring at his pudgy, well-clothed figure. Never before had I had the nerve to bum anyone—to ask for money. I simply didn't know how to go about it. But I knew I'd better do it now unless I intended to freeze or starve. Perhaps, I thought, taking a preliminary gulp of my pride, it wouldn't be so bad. We were alone, he and I, and there would be no witnesses to my shame.

       I stepped out of the doorway, and walked up behind him. I said—well, I don't know what I said. But I suspect that discomfort and nervousness made me rather gruff. He could hardly be blamed if he construed my appeal as a demand.

       "Huh!" he grunted and looked startledly over his shoulder.

       He gulped and faced straight ahead again. His hand went into his pocket and came out with two one-dollar bills and a quantity of change. He thrust it backwards at me. And without turning around, and before I could thank him, he started across the street at a run.

       He dashed into a small cigar store, and I saw him speak excitedly to the proprietor. The latter snatched up a telephone, and...and the truth finally dawned on me.

       The guy thought I had held him up. He was summoning the police.

       I forgot all about being weak and giddy. For the next five minutes or so, I reclaimed the one athletic skill of my misspent youth—marathon running. When the cops arrived at the scene of the "holdup"—and they wasted no time about it—I was so far away that I could barely hear the frustrated whinings of their sirens.

       A good meal and a visit to a barber college did wonders for me. But that night, in a fifty-cent hotel room, I decided to clear out of Nebraska. There was nothing here for me. Perhaps there was nothing elsewhere, either, but I 'knew' there was nothing here.

       The next morning I hitchhiked back to Lincoln and said good-bye to my wife. It was not a pleasant occasion, much less so than it would have been ordinarily, since her elderly parents felt—justifiably, no doubt, from their viewpoint—that I had treated their daughter badly.

       Well, anyway. I walked down to the freight yards that night, and caught a train south. In the south, at least, a man could sleep out if he had to.

       There were two empty boxcars on the train (empty of paying freight, that is), and they were already filled with travelers like myself. So, believing that it would offer me sufficient protection from the cold, I settled down behind a tractor that was loaded on a flat car.

       I was wrong. As the train gathered speed, the sub-zero wind whipped and nipped at me from all directions. The snow piled on me and froze on me until I looked like something carved of stone.

       I knew that there was a division stop a couple hours out of Lincoln, and I decided to lay over there and thaw out. But apparently due to the cold and my weariness, I lost consciousness. When I came to it was daylight and I was still on the train, and so nearly frozen that I could barely move.

       I rode on into Kansas City. There, with the assistance of two other bums, I managed to unload.

       I stayed there for a week—I 'laid' there, I should say—in the weeds of the hobo jungles, freeezing and burning by turns, in the throes of pneumonia. Fortunately, I have a hereditarily tough constitution, and I was very lucky. I had fallen among old-time hoboes, men who had chosen the life of wandering workers, not the depression-born bums. We had been in many of the same places—the pipeline jobs, the "rag-towns" of the south and west. I was one of them, a guy who could talk knowingly of Four-Trey Whitey and the Half-A-Half Pint Kid, who knew how to filter canned heat through a handkerchief and rubbing alcohol through dry bread, who knew all the verses to the 'Gallows Song.' In a word, I was a brother in distress, and deserving of all the help they could give. And they gave it. I came out of my illness very weak, but, thanks largely to my hobo benefactors, I did come out of it.

       The first day I was able to travel I tramped across the city and walked up into the freight yards on the other side. It was night when I got there, and a train was making up for the south. I walked up and down the cars, looking for an empty box. Finally, becoming very weary, I settled for a gondola.

       It was loaded, although not quite full, with hardwood. I snuggled down at the end of the lumber. I was feeling quite pleased with my wisdom in boarding the train in its makeup stages. The other bums, who would hop in on the yard's outskirts, would not be able to choose their berth as I had.

       The train humped and jerked and began to move smoothly. There were two short blasts from the locomotive, and its speed increased. Then, with one long wavering blast, we really began to roll. Nervously, I stood up and looked over the side of the gondola.

       We were just coming out of the yards, and already our speed was a good forty miles an hour. Groups of men—bums—were standing back from the tracks, showing no interest whatsoever in the cars that whizzed past them. I looked up and down the freight as we shot past a lighted crossing and as far as I could see, every door was closed. I climbed up on the lumber and looked forward and backward.

       No one was there. No one riding the tops. And no one, apparently, riding the boxes. Shivering, I heard another long wavering blast from the locomotive—unmistakably a highball—and I knew I'd made one hell of a mistake.

       The gondola had fooled me; it had been my experience that open cars were not included in manifest freights. Nonetheless, this was a manifest—an express merchandise train—and tolerant as the railroads were in those days, they tolerated no super-cargo on manifests. These trains carried valuable freight. A man caught riding them was automatically presumed to be a thief, and he was treated as such.

       I stayed up on top of the lumber. After a time, I saw a light bob up at the head of the long line of cars, and back at the end another light. They came toward each other slowly, toward me; moving from side to side, now and then sinking out of sight. Those would be trainmen, guards, searching the freight from front to rear. How long would they be in getting to me? And when they did get to me...?

       I watched their progress. Longingly I watched the lights of villages flash past us in a blur of speed. The locomotive howled hauntingly, blasted the night with its highball demand for right-of-way.

       The speed-induced wind was near freezing, but I was dripping with sweat. A little hysterically, I wondered what the hell I had better do. I couldn't jump—not from a train traveling a mile or more a minute. Just as certainly, I couldn't stay where I was. I was very apt to be shot. At best, if the guards took a chance of my being unarmed, I would no doubt be clubbed insensible.