Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

Whether it was six months after that or longer I couldn’t be sure, but it might have been a year, because I was catching one out of Chattanooga for the South, and that looks like winter coming on. A guy on the road, he goes plenty of places most of the time, but when the leaves begin to fall he heads for the Gulf. Anyway, there they were, about two hundred dirty buzzards squatting on the ties, spaced out along the Atlanta Division of the Southern, just outside the yards, waiting to hop on. Hardly anything was moving then, so it was the first through freight in a week, and they meant to get out of there. Nowadays they’d thumb the highways, and if a few ride the trains the crews hardly bother them at all, so they can hop one in the yards. But then the country was crawling with hobos, and nobody would give them a lift, let them on a train, or give them a break of any kind. If they wanted out, they hopped a moving train, so that’s why they were there, waiting. Not much was said. Hobos don’t mix, they don’t look at each other, and they don’t talk, something I didn’t understand at first, but was to get a clear idea of, later.

Pretty soon, from the yards, came the cough of an engine, then three more, spaced out slow, then a string of quick barks that meant she was spinning her wheels, starting a heavy train. The coughs and the barks kept on, and then there she was, pulling hard, showing the two green flags of a through train, the one we wanted. Everybody got up. She began going by and they began going aboard, on tanks, gonds, or whatever they could grab. Some refrigerators went by, or reefers, as the hobos call them, and six or eight guys made a dive, because the ice compartment is a pretty good place to ride. But then they began dropping off again, on other guys’ feet, and it was like cats fell on monkeys. A hobo, he grabs the front end of the car, because if he gets slammed, it’s against the side and there’s no great harm done. But on the rear if he get slammed it’s against the thin air between cars, and he’s almost certain to pitch down under the wheels, which isn’t so good. It was just dark enough that these guys hadn’t noticed the reefers were coupled with the ladder at rear, so they had no way to get topside to go down the hatch. So they had to pile on all over again, somewhere else. Me, I generally picked a flat, and that’s what I did now. It’s easy to board and easy to leave, and if it’s a little open to the breeze you can help that a little with newspapers, and at least nobody’s penning you in. I hated it, that I would have a system for such a miserable thing as life on the road, with a canteen on my hip, papers under my arm, and blue jeans over what was left of my clothes, but if you get cold enough, you’ll do what you have to do to get warm, whether you hate it or you don’t hate it.

I took the front end, where there was a little quiet air, and spread my papers out, two or three on top of each other so they were thick, and lay down on one edge. Then I rolled a little, so they were around me, and then I was warmer. Then, on my head, I felt something cold. Then I felt it again. Then I knew it was rain, and cussed myself out for not grabbing a reefer too. There wasn’t but one thing to do. Ahead was a tank car, so I rolled my papers up, stepped over, slipped under the tank, and lay there trying to keep as dry as I could.

Then, after some little time, the train checked speed. Then, away up front some place, I heard somebody yell. Then there was more yelling. Then it got closer, and I could tell it was guys on the right of way. Then we began to go by them, while they stood there and yelled curses, out there in the rain, the worst you could ever think of, at the train crew, at the railroad, at the country, even at God. And then I knew what the reason was: They had taken it up, here in the East, what they were already doing on Western roads, letting the mob hop on, as they pretty well had to, unless they were going to hire a private army to keep it off, but then, after they’d run a little way, cutting the speed of the train, so it was slow enough for guys to drop off, but too fast for them to climb back on. Then the bull would start at the tender, and come back doing his stuff. Maybe you don’t believe it, that they’d drop two or three hundred men off in the rain, with no place to go and no way to get there. Well, they did it just the same. It made your blood run cold, the things that were said, and your stomach turn sick, to realize why they were said, but however it made you feel, it was no great help when it came your turn to drop. I lay low, but the bull flashed his light, and when I didn’t answer his “hey” he got tough: “It’s O.K., Bud, if you want to lie there, but I’m telling you to get up and get off, because it would be just too bad if I decided you were some kind of a critter and began popping at you with this gun...”

When my feet quit stinging from hitting the dirt, I stood there and cursed too. By now, I guess you know I’m not the yelling type, and in fact it might be better for me if I didn’t keep things bottled in me so tight. But there come times when you’ve taken all you can take. By the water that was running off my nose, by the hunger that was gnawing at my belly, by cold that was creeping into me, I knew I couldn’t get lower than I was that night. I was a human coffee ground, washing down the sink.

Pretty soon the yelling died down, and guys began pushing past me, slogging back to Chattanooga, some of them sobbing as they went. I started back with them, but then after a few steps I began to dope things out, and turned around. As well as I could figure, we were nearer Dalton by several miles than we were to Chattanooga, and I was taking a chance on it. It was just a small place, but it looked like, if I kept my mouth shut so I didn’t bring any gang with me, I might do as well, at least for something to eat and a place to flop, as in a bigger place.

The train, I guess, rolled nearly a mile while the bull was throwing the guys off to where he came to me, so the boss and I were passing each other for at least twenty minutes. Sometimes we’d bump, and they’d cuss, and maybe sock. But they generally had so little on the punch I didn’t sock back. After a while I passed what seemed to be the last of them, and then the rain began coming down to mean it, and I jammed the papers under my jeans, so if I needed them again they wouldn’t be so wet. Then I heard two guys talking, off to one side: “Come on, fellow! You can’t lay there like that! You got to get up and—”

“God damn it, I said let me alone!”

“But that’s no way to talk.”

“Then beat it.”

“If your foot hurts, then—”

“It’s shot. And I’m shot, and—”

“But there on the ground, on a night like this, you’ll die! You don’t know how cold it’s going to be! You—”

I made myself not hear it and went on. Off to the right there was rising ground, and I veered toward it to get out of the water in the path. I ran wham into something that sent me sprawling to the ground. I sobbed at how my toe shot fire up my leg, and jumped up and kicked at the thing. Then I went on. Then I almost ran into another one. Then it soaked into my head what I had run into. It was a couple of tool chests, six or eight feet long, with slanting lids on them. I thought of the guy back there, and how if he could get into one of these things he’d at least be out of the wet. I began telling myself to get on, or I’d be shot too. But before I got to the path again my foot hit something and I almost died at the pain in my toe that time. But my ear kept giving it to me, the clank I had heard, and then I went back. I felt around and found it was an open box of spikes. I kept mumbling to hell with the guy, to get on before I died too, but I took a spike and felt my way back to the first box and slipped it in under the hasp of the lid and pried. The staple flew out and off on the ground. I lifted the lid and felt around in the chest. It was empty.