he would kill him. Sydney feared for his life, so he kept quiet so that Earl would not find him.
Earl searched every car until he found Sydney. When he tried to board the train, Sydney threw a whiskey bottle, hitting him on the head. Earl fell to the ground and hit his head on a rock. Sydney grabbed him by his legs and dragged him to the furnace and burned him, making sure to heap more coal into the furnace.
When the time came for the train to pull out, Sydney was more than ready to leave behind the ridicule he suffered at the hand of Earl. He was excited to start a new life in Michigan, even though he knew that he had to fit in a new place. When the train arrived, several men got off along with him, to be met by their new foreman Walter. Walter was a short, obese bald man smoking a stubby cheap cigar. The first thing that he said to them was “I ain’t your daddy, your momma, or your friend. If you fuck up, your asses will be gone.” Then he said, “Find somewhere to sleep and have your ass in my office at 4:30 a.m.”
Leon Maddox was around the same age as Sydney, give or take a year. He was full of energy and talked nonstop all night—Sydney had enough of his useless chatter. That kid talked about his girlfriend back home who was expecting their first child. He told Sydney that once he made enough money, he planned to marry her and buy some land in Ohio. Sydney had very little knowledge about life, but he knew that it was unheard of a young black man owning land.
No one was aware of the fact that they slept past 4:30 a.m. because Leon kept them up telling wild stories about his life. Walter was walking through their camp, yelling, calling them sons of bitches because they were late to meet the train. He ordered them to get up and dressed and out the door. He told them that he was going to dock their pay. The railroad paid them once a month, but he said that he would issue their wages after two months to teach them to be on time. Leon stood up and told him that he needed his money because his girlfriend was having a baby, but Walter said, “I am the foreman, and if you don’t like it, get your nigger ass back on the train and go back to where you came from.”
Leon shut his mouth and went to the office with the other men to get his work assignments. Sydney tried to distance himself from Leon because he did not want to make any waves. All of his life he had been a loner, and he did not want to change now. It was welcoming news when he found out that he was assigned the south yard and Leon the north yard. Somehow he knew that if they were to work together, he would end up killing him.
Chapter 3
Sydney’s first day was very challenging. Although he was used to being watched, he still felt uncomfortable. No one spoke to him; all they did was stare and point at him. Henry George was the first to say what everyone else was thinking. He asked Sydney how he ended up there. He asked him how long he planned to work there because they didn’t want his kind around causing trouble.
Sydney only said, “I am here just as you, to make a living.”
Henry George was trying his hardest to provoke him, and he did not let up on Sydney all that day. Sydney knew that he had to stand up for himself if he wanted to be respected. There was no way he would let a man drive him to the brink of murder again. Deep down, he was afraid that people would begin to ask him questions about the fight he had with Earl. So far he was safe, but he continued to look over his shoulders. He had never let anyone get that close to him to choke him since he was a child in the orphanage. By the time their shift ended, no one could tell each other apart due to being covered in coal dust from head to toe. It was the perfect opportunity for Sydney to slip away unnoticed and head to his tent.
The next morning while he was at the creek fetching some water, he heard a lot of commotion coming from the yard. He could hear the men getting closer, so he ran behind some bushes and hid until they left. Somehow he felt that they may have been looking for him. On his way back, he saw Leon walking along the tracks with his duffle bags, a large one across his shoulder and a smaller one in his hand. A part of him was excited to see him go, but his curiosity took the best of him, and he walked alongside him and asked him where he was headed. Leon told him that he was late for shift change, so he was fired by Walter without pay.
Leon’s only thought was how he was going to tell his girlfriend and her father that he lost another job. He had lost four jobs that year. At the age of eighteen, he should have been more responsible in the beginning—he should not have gotten a thirteen-year-old girl pregnant. Lucille was the eldest of seven children. Her father was a share cropper, and he demanded that Leon get a job and marry his daughter before the baby arrived. He would have to send for her in order for her not to bring shame on her family. The way things were going for him, Sydney knew that it would never happen because Leon lacked self-discipline. He was more of a talker than doer who tried to impress people with fancy words. He was the only one in his family who had some education, although limited, but none the less he could read, write, and do basic math equations.
Leon told Sydney that he was not heading back home just yet. After walking several hours, the men sat on the tracks to rest for a while. They got lost in the time, and night was upon them. Sydney knew that he had to make his way back to the yard in order to make the shift change; he could not afford to lose his job.
As he stood up, Leon placed his hand on his shoulder and asked him to stay a little while longer. He looked up at him with tears ready to drop from his eyes and told him that he did not love Lucille, he said that he was in love with Edna May Jones. He said that Lucille was young, and she had never been with a man, so he felt proud to be her first. He did not think that he would become a father after one time.
Sydney told him that he was heading back and that he wished him luck, and he briskly walked the tracks, making sure to stay as close to them as possible because now it was close to midnight. He regretted that he did not let Leon go on his way. There was no way that he could make it back in time.
Suddenly, from a distance, he could hear the whistle of a train coming up behind him, so he decided that he would hop on board so he would not be late. Sydney ran as fast as he could so that when the train was near, he would jump on. He reached out his left arm to grab the door hand bar—the train was moving so fast that it almost pulled him underneath. Somehow he was able to get inside the railcar without getting hurt. Once inside, he fell unto his knees to catch his breath, all along shaking from fear, but he made it back in time to start his shift. The very train that he rode in on was the same one he had to unload.
Chapter 4
Michigan was not the place for Sydney. No matter how he tried to distance himself from everyone, they always seemed to find him. Not only did the men on the yard hate him, everyone in town also treated him like shit. Finally he had reached his boiling point and stood up to the biggest man on the yard to take him down. After getting his ass beat and thrown around like a rag doll, he took a deep breath and tackled Henry George to the ground and kept giving him blows to the side of his head until he lay motionless. After that day, no one bothered him again, which caused him to become the king of the yard. It had gotten to a point that they were afraid to look him in his eyes. Sydney liked the feeling so much because his name had traveled through the town. Women started to find him desirable and threw themselves at him; some of them gave him money and gifts just to be with him.
Barbara was the one he had his eyes on. She worked the night shift in her family’s diner down the street. She saw how the other women were throwing themselves at him, and she also knew that he killed a man in a fight, so she stayed clear of him. He offered to buy her things if she would have him, but she rejected him time after time. Her mother tried to convince her to go out with him even though she knew that she did not like him. Every time he came into the diner, her mother would make her serve him, which she hated, but she did it. No matter how mean she was to him, he would leave her a small tip, which she did not accept.
One
