You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up (2 page)

WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA

W
hen I came down off the midnight shift I saw there wasn't any light in the restaurant window, And that was how I knew Lois had left me.

I knew it sure, just likel knew there'd be that note on the pillow.

When I read it I didn't smash anything, I just closed up the house and went up the hill to the restaurant again. I kept hoping that there'd be a light in the window and that everything would be all right again; but there wasn't.

It was all dark inside and when I looked through the window I could see from the streetlight that there was a wiping cloth on the counter where she had flung it. She hadn't bothered to clean up before she left.

I kept thinking she might have cleaned up, at least, even though it didn't matter. It was a good little place. Inside I had fixed it all up with signs like: We
Don't know Where Mom Is But We Have Pop on Ice
and
If Your Wife Can't Cook Keep Her
for a
Pet and Eat Here,
and things like that.

Outside I'd painted the front in blue and yellow squares like a checkerboard so that the truck drivers on the way down to Dallas would always remember it, and I'had a big swing-sign out that said:
Dick's Place, Lois's Cooking,
and I'd figured some day I'd get a neon light on it.

After a while I went on down the hill again. I didn't go in the restaurant. I knew it was no good; because I knew what had happened. I didn't think it out. It was just like something made me know as sure as if I'd been there and seen it all.

Lois must have quit the minute I'd gone to work that afternoon and she'd taken the two hundred and thirty dollars we'd saved out of the little safe. Then she'd dressed

Dickie in his best clothes and left me the note on the pillow and had hopped the 5:18 for the Coast.

I knew she'd gone there. Lois always was crazy for Hollywood. She had cousins in Los Angeles. I knew that was where she'd gone. Even though she said in her note I'd never find her, I knew I would. Her note said that she was leaving me because of my nagging and cruelty and because I never did want her to have any fun, so she was taking Dickie where he could grow up in some place better than this lousy Oklahoma mining town and I'd never find them because they were going far away. But I knew she'd gone to Hollywood because she was crazy to get in the pictures. I went down to the tracks and waited there in the dark and when the 3:20 westbound freight came through I hopped it. I got up on top of a box car and lay there, looking back. You could see the glow of the smelters a long way off, maybe fifteen miles.

I lay there, and it was cold, but I couldn't think about it. The way I felt I didn't care if school kept or not. That's the way I felt.

That night I came so near to freezing that when the freight stopped to water at Apache Gap round sun-up and I started to get down, I was so stiff with cold I couldn't hold onto the iron rungs and I dropped about ten feet smack on my can. A fellow said:

"Ola, que cosa
?"

“Nada,"
I said.

This Mex and I went down the line to a box car that was open. There was a bunch of floaters inside who were all heading for California because there was a man there going to be elected Governor who would take all the money away from the millionaires and give fifty dollars a week to every man without a job. They were kicking because the train was slow. They wanted to be out there in time.

When we got rolling again we just sat there with the car door open watching the flat country go by and listening to the train clicking over the ties. There was an old bum in a corner who was groaning. I asked what was wrong with him.

"He can't take it," a fellow said. Then he yelled at the old man, "Pipe down, lousy!"

"I'm hungry," the old man said, sitting up. He looked dirty as a goal.

"Well, for crissakes, you don't mean to tell me!" the fellow said. He said it mocking, in a high voice, like a daffodil.

"He's been like that for two days," the guy said.

"Well, we'll all eat when we get to California."

They all started off like a
bunch of clucks at a sewing cir
cle, talking about what they'd do with the first fifty dollars this Governor would give them. Then I lit a cigarette, and they all stopped talking and crowded round me like I was a drunken sailor in a hookshop, so
I passed out all I had.

That afternoon we stopped by a little jerk burg and I hopped off and bought twelve cans of beans for a dollar. When I got back and shared them round they raised hell with me for being a dummy and not getting a can-opener. But one man had a strong knife and we all punched the cans open; only when it came to the old man they pretended they'd lost the knife. He got so mad he cried and tried banging the can open. They kept pretending they'd lost the knife for a couple of hours before they let him have it. About dark we stopped at a switch and a bum came running up and said there were two girls in another car. They all went hopping out and running down the track for a chain ride, all except the Mex and the colored boy. The old man went, too, but just as we started up he came running back and said the others wouldn't let him in on account of he was too
Old.

That left just four of us in the car, the Mex, the colored boy, the old man, and me. We each picked a corner of the car and went to sleep. Once in a while the old man started moaning again, although he'd had his can of beans. I'd keep waking up and hearing him, but after a while he got to sleep too.

The next day we hit the range country, and it got hot; It was a hot country: nothing but cactus on the ranges and the stock was poor and thin, standing out in the heat. At one place I saw some cowhands with a blowtorch, burning the spines off the cactus so the cattle could eat it, but the stock seemed too far gone from the drought to care about eating any more. But I thought that was a clever stunt about the cactus. It was all right—if the stock would eat it.

That was sure a dry country—hot and dry, and we were dying for a drink. But there wasn't anything we could do about it but wait and hope we'd stop near a water tower.

It was some time the next night I woke up with the freight stopped by a tank and a big light shining strong in the dark. I jumped up to get some water, but a bull rapped my legs with a long billy and made me stay inside.

At first I thought they were railroad police and would pinch us, but they weren't pinching floaters any more. There were so many hobos the train crews were scared to tackle them, and the jails in the towns were so full the police wouldn't arrest any more. Instead they were driving them back on the freights and making them keep on going. They wouldn't let you get off in their county.

In this town they'd cleaned about fifty of the out of jail and were making them get on the freight. They hustled them to the box car I was in, and as each one climbed in, a bull would crack him over the behind with a billy, and he'd put everything he'd got into the wallop.

He walloped everyone except a big hobo who looked like Man Mountain Dean. This big bozo just turned around and looked at the cop. The cop stared back in a sort of ashamed way and then he laughed and pulled a gun quick and jabbed it in the big guy's belly. So the hobo got aboard, but the bull didn't whack his behind.

They crowded us in till the box car was jammed full. I knew
I
had to have a drink, so I called to one of the guys in a ten gallon hat and told him
I
hadn't had a drink in two days.

"That's no skin off my neck," he said.

"Look, I'll give you a dollar if you'll let me get a drink somewhere," I said.

"I can't let you get off," he said. "But give me the dollar and I'll bring you a drink."

I was so thirsty I had to take the chance, so I gave him the dollar but he didn't come back. The other bulls slid the door shut and we could hear them locking it. It was a dirty trick to lock that box car crowded tight full of men. The bums banged on the door and cal
led the cops bastards and every
thing they could lay their tongues to, but it didn't make any difference. And soon the train started away with a jerk and we all went sliding down, jammed and fighting, in the back of the car.

We got sorted out and after, a while we began to see a little bit in the dark. I could hear the old man beefing and moaning again, and the new bums told him to shut up. He kept it until the big hobo told them to dose his trap. I could hear them slugging him until he piped down.

That big hobo as a sort o
f king and the others did every
thing he told them.

I lay there in the comer that night thinking about Dickie and how I would get him back. I'd make a real man out of him, and send him to school and make him get plenty of education. I'd teach him to box and make a real man out of him.

I thought about that as long as I could. Then the king hobo told everyone to bring him their newspapers. They all had newspapers buttoned in their coats to keep them warm and
Some
had put papers over them for blankets. One hobo came to me in the dark, but
I
told him I didn’t have any newspapers.

Then the king hobo said he wanted a couple of coats. They took the coat off the old man and I could hear him moaning, real low. But it didn't do him any good.

A hobo came to me and told me to hand over my coat.

"Says who?" I asked.

"Says Big John.”

"Let him come and take it,"
I
told him.

I stood in the corner and waited. I'm not so little myself, and I was almost champion light heavyweight of the Marines once. And shoveling zinc ore eight hours a day doesn't make a man soft. And on top of that I was wanting to let loose on something what with everything that
’d hap
pened about Lois and all.

After a while the hobo came back and made out he was double-tough.

"Listen brother," he said. "Big john is waiting. He don't like to wait. Now a word to the wise is sufficient."

"Sure," I said. "And a sock on the foot is worth two in the jaw."

"Okay, punk. Like Grant took Richmond, that's how I need
you,"
he said.

"You stink," I told him. "Your father stinks. Your mother stinks, too. Your whole family stinks."

"Okay" he said finally. "If that's the kind of punk you want to be."

He went away and I could hear him talking to the colored boy. The shine knew he didn't have a chance among all those whites, so he was taking his coat off and saying "Yes,
suh!
Yes,
suhl"
and his voice was very soft and polite.

After a while they quieted down and we all slept, almost piled up on top of one another. I thought they might gang up on me, but I was too thirsty and tired to give a damn and I went to sleep.

After that I don't know much what happened. It's funny, when you're in the dark you can't get things very straight. Sometimes I knew it would be daytime, because I could see light through chinks in the boards. I tried to figure out when we'd get out, but I couldn't tell where we were. Sometimes I'd smell desert and alkali dust, and I'd think we were in Arizona. Then we'd feel them coupling on another engine and we'd be going up a mountain and we all like to froze to death because it went down to zero and only being crowded together kept us all alive.

I couldn't remember how many mountain ranges there were in New Mexico and Arizona, but finally it began to get hotter than it had ever been and I figured we were over the divide. And then being so many in the car made it worse instead of better and we all pulled off our shirts and lay half naked with the sweat pouring out of us and the guys that were strongest slugged the others so's they could get to cracks in the floor and lie with their mouths against them to breathe fresh air.

I lay there, trying not to move, and kept chewing my thumb to get my mouth wet; but it was no good and I could feel my throat dry and cracking far back down my gullet and my lips were split right open. And that's the way it was until all of a sudden we were stopped and the whole gang began howling and banging on the door. Then we heard someone at the lock and a fellow slid it open. We all stood there at first because we were blinded with the sunlight. And the fellow that had slid the door open said, pretending to be very cheerful and polite:

"All right, gentlemen. This is your stop. All out for sunny California."

And it was California
. We were on a sort of mountain
side, and down below us was a valley where you could see the palm trees in a long row, and orange ranches and houses—all looking pretty a
s a fiddler's floozie and smell
ing twice as good.

And when we could see in the sunlight again, we saw all that, and we saw the switch house and a water spigot beside it. And we all came off that train like a bunch of stampeding drought cattle that smells a river, and we went charging over that yard slugging and fighting each other like a bunch of wild animals
to get at the spigot, and every
one was fighting so much no one could drink because the minute anyone got to the spigot the others walloped him and pulled him away and they wouldn't even let Big John drink first. Everyone was fighting and I kept slugging away till I got to the spigot and held on to it and put my head under it and ran it all over myself, and I drank until they pried me loose.

Then I climbed up the bank to the highway and tried to straighten myself up. I was all wet and lousy and now I was out in the clear air again I was able to smell that I stank.