right bad little town to ride into. That Boykin, right below it, was even worse. That toughest of all was any place that was anywhere in Georgia; if you were caught riding there you were put on a gang, and you worked on a pea farm from sunrise till sunset, sweating along in a chain for sixty-one days or until they caught someone else to take your place. But they gave you fifteen cents every week, and a plug of tobacco on Sundays besides. “So that part’s not so bad,” Cass thought.
He was a red-headed shaver in blue overalls and bare feet.
“Stay ’way from Waycross,” an old Wobbly warned him, “less you want to do ninety days in a turp camp.” And a young man sang an old tune for the boy, beating on a tin can in time with his song.
Turp camp down in Gawgia,
Cracker on a stump,
Big bull-whip he carries makes them blizzard-dodgers hump.
Watch ’em flag it out of Gawgia when they’ve done their little bump.
Oh boom the little saxophone, rap the little drums;
We’ll sing a little ditty till the old freight comes.
Southern Texas, but for Beaumont and Sierra Bianca, was simple; the Rio Grande valley was a downright cinch—you could ride blind down there without any penalty just so long as you got off on the side away from the depot when you got into McAllen. You could get through Alabama all right—provided you didn’t stand up on the tops like a tourist, so long as you stayed out of sight at division points, provided you stayed off the A. & W.P. Those A. & W.P. bastards utterly discouraged a man, for they made a point of putting you off at a spot in the woods forty-four miles northeast of Montgomery—a water-tank in the wilderness entitled Chehawee. And you walked to Montgomery then unless you had a fin. You could stay on for a fin, cash down on the barrelhead.
Look out for that town in Mississippi called Flomaton, ’cause that’s Mick Binga’s hole. Binga, even when he had both arms, was plenty-plenty tough. One night he licked two niggers for riding and they came back an hour after and shoved him under the wheels so that he lost his right wing—but he shot and killed both niggers while they were running away. Since then he’s a devil on whites, and death to blacks. Since then he’s killed and crippled so many niggers that even his railroad has lost count. Some say he’s killed twenty. Some say more, some less. Some say that when he gets fifty even he’s going to quit to give his boy the job. His boy is majoring in French philosophy now at Tulane, but everyone knows how well such stuff will pay him.
The roundhouse in Cheyenne is filled every night
With loafers and bummers of most every plight;
On their backs in no clothes, in their pockets no bills,
Each day they keep coming from the dreary black hills.
Look out for Marsh City—that’s Lame Hank Pugh’s. Look out for Greenville—that’s old Seth Healey’s. He’ll be walking the tops and be dressed like a ’bo, so you’ll never know by his looks he’s a bull. But he’ll have a gun on his hip and a hose-length in his hand, and two deputies coming down both the sides; your best bet then is to stay right still. You can’t get away and he’ll pot you if you try. So give him what you got and God help you if you’re broke. When he lifts up that hose-line just cover up your eyes and don’t try any back-fightin’ when it comes down—sww-ish. God help you if you run and God help you if you fight; God help you if you’re broke and God help you if you’re black.
Old Seth Healey at Greenville—there’s a real bastard for you. Someone ought to kill that old man one of these days. The only way you can tell he’s a bull as welt as a brakie is by his hat. He wears patched blue overalls and keeps his star hid. Lean as Job’s turkey and twice as mean. The hat’s a big floppy affair with three holes in the top, and it’s the only way you can tell that the fellow coming down the tracks is Healey. Sometimes he’s bareheaded, then you can’t tell for sure—till he cracks you over the side of the head with his pistol-butt. Then you’re fairly certain. He once hit a boy in the belly with his fist so hard that the boy died, in the grass by the tracks, half an hour after. A black boy. So look out for Greenville, it’s right above Boykin, and it’s Seth Healey’s town. Look out for Lima, too—that’s in Ohio. And look out for Springfield, the one in Missouri. Look out for Denver and Denver Jack Duncan. Look out for Tulsa, look out for Joplin. Look out for Chicago—look out for Fort Wayne—look out for St Paul, look out for Dallas—look out—look out—look out—LOOK OUT!
Most of the boys felt that they belonged. They were, definitely, underdogs. Between themselves and those above they drew a line for all to see. It was always “We” and “Them.” People who lived ample lives, who always stayed in one place, who always had a roof over their heads—these were “Them.” In judging a man, Cass learned, the larger question was not whether the man was black, white, or brown—it was whether he was a transient or “One of them ‘inside’ folks.” Inside of a house that was to imply.
Cass sensed the strong “we”-feeling among these men and boys. He learned that in jails where the food was inedible, as most often it was, the men bought their own food by levying upon each newcomer to the extent of whatever they could find on him. Kangaroo Court was held whenever a new vagrant was brought in, and assessment was always justified as being a fine imposed for breaking into jail without the consent of the inmates. Oldtimers always paid, if they could, and without hesitation; they understood the fine as a loose form of insurance. A man was assisting those of his own class, and when he himself was down his class would help him. But whether he was able to pay or not, he usually shared in the supplies bought outside the jail.
Kangaroo Court was an institution which pleased county judges and chief deputies, for it enabled them to pocket money which otherwise they might have been forced to spend on supplies. One jail in southern Louisiana had established a treasury with a fund of over two hundred dollars, so that the turnkey and sheriff were dined once a week by the prisoners. At the Grayson county jail in Sherman, Texas, the prisoners printed a weekly paper, The Crossbar Gazette.
All tales seemed strangely wonderful to Cass when he heard them told in the jungle. These men seldom spoke of the terrible hardships they endured. Hardship they most often bore in silence. It was of the infrequent and wholly accidental bits of good fortune they had happened upon of which they spoke: how one had found a new corduroy jacket with a wallet in the pocket when he had climbed down into a reefer one night in Carrizozo; how another had been taken into a Methodist minister’s home one time, and had been fed and clothed for three straight days; how another had come upon a drunken woman in an empty cattle car.
Of the pathetic effort to keep clean, merely to keep clean, they had nothing to say. They were always begrimed with coal dust and cinders, always begging soap from each other; and at every junction they sought water for washing so soon as thirst was quenched. They hung shirts to dry on fence-posts by the tracks or on bushes in the jungles; they put clothes on damp rather than dirty. Most carried combs, and pocket-mirrors and toothbrushes were not uncommon. Sometimes one would reveal a small fetish to Cass that he might not have shown a full-grown man: a woman’s glove or a woman’s handkerchief, found perhaps on a bench in a city park. One showed Cass a photograph of Mary Pickford and said, “Mary’s my aunt.”
Of the darker side Cass could not know, of this they did not speak. Of long cold nights when you walked unlit streets, hungry, ill, alone. When the wind cut so that you gasped with pain, and so tired you were you scarce could stand. When you knew you had either to beg or die; and the hate that is yellow and springs from shame rose within you and made numb your heart till you could think of nothing save how sweet
