The Longest Road (15 page)

“Yeah,” drawled another man. “And you pledged yourself ‘to lead a clean, honest, manly life.' That why you're here, brother? How are bums like us going to abolish poverty and misery and build a better world?”

The white-haired man folded up his diploma. “I'm still glad I had a chance to listen to those hotshot professors from the University of Chicago and read all those books and think about something besides just keeping alive. They didn't have easy chairs at the college, sonny. You sat on hard benches with no backs and paid attention.”

“I didn't stay long enough for a diploma,” said Way. “But I lived at Ben Reitman's Kingdom for Hoboes that one month it lasted before the landlord took it back.” His voice deepened. “Why, we had concerts and community sings—even the cops who hung around lookin' for trouble joined in that singin'. Best I ever heard in my life.”

“I didn't live at the kingdom,” said the big white-haired man. “Worked for Mother Greenstein for my board and room, but I came to the concerts and singing.”

“Mother Greenstein!” Way's tone was reverent. “Don't know how she kept that restaurant goin'. She fed anyone who was down-and-out—helped 'em get jobs or medicine or a place to stay. 'Member her Feast of the Outcasts she gave every Thanksgiving—a free dinner for—for—” The kinky eyebrows ridged. “She said it was for everyone the government, church, and society had forgotten. A saint she is.”

“And Ben Reitman, how about him?” asked the graduate of the Hobo College. “A real doctor he was, and could've had a soft life, but he threw in with the hoboes, started the college, worked to give us a chance.”

The younger man who'd derided the diploma took a swig from a bottle. “Never was in Chi but it sounds like some folks there had hearts—not like President Hoover and General Douglas MacArthur when us Bonus Marchers camped in Washington.”

“Hey, I was there, too,” called a wiry little dark man in the corner. “Me'n my wife and kids slept in a packing case for two months that summer—thirty-two, it was—hopin' Congress would go ahead and pay us the rest of the bonus veterans was voted in nineteen twenty-four. Last payment wasn't due till nineteen forty-five, that's so, but that was in the worst of the Depression, millions out of work and we figgered if Congress could send us overseas to fight, they could pay us our money sooner.”

The man with the bottle laughed bitterly. “That was something to see in America—cavalry, tanks, infantry with tear gas and bayonets charging in there to run out men who'd fought for their country—kids and women, too—and then torching the shanties. Can't have that kind of thing messing up Washington, D.C.! MacArthur, he was the big cheese, under orders from Hoover, of course, but there was a couple of majors mixed up in it, too, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Patton. Wonder if they're proud of themselves?”

“Hell, son, it's always that way,” said the Hobo graduate. “I fought in the Spanish-American War. You're a hero while the war's on. Then if you can't settle down or there's no jobs, you're a no-good bum—busted, disgusted, can't be trusted.”

“A hobo's not a bum,” Way said. “He'll work when he can get a job.”

“Dandy jobs, ain't they?” grunted the Bonus Marcher. “Hard, low pay, and they don't last long. My wife and kids are livin' with her folks while I flip freights lookin' for a job of work.” He took a deep breath. “I've dug ditches, rolled logs, sunk telegraph poles, harvested, picked, pitched hay, pruned, plowed, cut wood, drove teams—longest I could ever stay in one place was a month. Most I ever got paid was two dollars a day.”

“What this country needs is that one big union of workin' stiffs Joe Hill talked about before that Utah firing squad shot him twenty years ago,” said the graduate. “Ought to be a way of gettin' men and jobs together and fixin' it so migrants can support their families and live decent. Migrants get treated worse'n most slaves ever did. Sho', they're free. Free to starve, with the sheriff and law hustlin' them on when some crummy job's finished.”

“What we need,” said Way, “is the Big Rock Candy Mountains. You know that song, Larry?”

Everyone else did. They sang it with gusto and after a couple of verses, Laurie could play the tune. Mama would have been scandalized at the words, but after all, Laurie wasn't singing them.

At the next stop, the Hobo graduate yelled, “Here come the bulls!” Men started jumping off, but Way shoved Buddy into Laurie's arms. “Set tight!” he hissed. “Buddy, you just keep your eyes closed, and let me do the talkin'.”

A big, stout detective with a pistol on his hip and a billy club in his hand swung into the car. “Pile out of here, you bums!” he shouted, threatening the remaining hoboes with the club. As they grabbed up their belongings and jumped down, the detective saw Way and the children.

“Hey, you old bonebag! Up and out, or I'll kick you all the way.”

Way spread his hands. “Officer, my little grandson's sick.”

“He won't get no better ridin' a freight. You might as well get off here as anyplace.”

“Beggin' your pardon, officer, but we wouldn't. We're headin' for my oldest daughter's. She and her man got a vineyard close to Sedona.”

The big man rubbed his wide jaw and squinted, bending to look closer at Buddy and Laurie. She held her breath and didn't have to fake a look of distress. “How come you've got the kids?” he demanded.

Way sighed and swallowed hard, brushing an arm across his eyes. “My woman and me raised Bud and Larry when their folks got killed in a wreck, but my poor old lady, she took pneumony and died last month after the bank foreclosed on our little farm. My daughter'll give us a home.”

The detective scowled. Way snuffled. “Please, officer. God'll bless you for your kind heart.”

“God don't pay my wages.” The man hesitated. “You may be a lyin' old scoundrel,” he said with a ponderous shrug. “But the kid does look done in. Reckon it won't hurt to leave you be.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a package of gum and gave it to Laurie. “Take care of your brother, kid.”

He grinned, lifted his club in farewell, and went out the door, bellowing. “Clear out of here, you deadbeats! No use hangin' around! You ain't goin' to ride!”

Feeling guilty over Way's lie and for staying on when the others couldn't, Laurie whispered, “Maybe we—we ought to get off.”

“You daft?” Way squawked. “Wouldn't help nobody and make it a sight harder on us. How's about a stick of that gum? Not much of a breakfast but it kinda sweetens up your mouth.”

They had just passed a third night on the train. With Way's assistance, the lard buckets had been emptied yesterday noon, but thanks to some new riders who'd appreciated Laurie's songs, they'd had a supper of pork and beans, salmon, raisin bread, and a 3 Musketeers candy bar.

There was some bread left. Laurie divided it, two slices apiece, and gave their shares to Way and Buddy along with a stick of gum. With no one being allowed on, they could get pretty hungry today, but according to Way, they'd be in Eden sometime tomorrow. And in California where you could pick fruit right off a tree! It was going to be so good to get off this boxcar after four days. She'd only gotten off to relieve herself. Way had taken charge of filling the water jars so that was one thing she hadn't had to do. She didn't grudge him food. He'd gotten rid of that awful jocker and he'd slept between them and the other men and made her feel a lot safer just by keeping them company.

At the next siding, the car in front of them was unhitched and joined to another train. “Shuckins,” grumbled Way. “I picked this car 'cause it was between two loaded ones that'd hold it on the track. Now if we hook on to an empty—”

They did, and Laurie quickly learned what a difference it made. The car jolted till it was impossible to lie down or sit up because you kept bouncing an inch or so into the air. “Try squatting,” Way suggested.

That was better but still so rough that he showed them how to stand with their knees bent to absorb the shock. When Laurie got used enough to this posture to hope she wouldn't fall down, she got out Morrigan's harmonica and began to play the tune that chugged through her head with the revolving pistons.

Gettin' off in California, pickin' fruit fresh off a tree;

Out in California, life is fine and free.

California! California! You're the place for me!

Eden looked like a nice town from the glimpses Laurie caught of the dwellings on the slopes above the business district. Such grass, velvety rich green that didn't seem possible after parched Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas! White houses with red-tiled roofs sparkled amidst the first palm trees Laurie had seen outside her geography book and luxuriant bushes that flowered crimson, rose, and pink. It was so beautiful she simply stared, spellbound, as the train whistled and the clack of the wheels began to slow.

“We're a long way back from the passenger cars,” said Way. “Soon as this baby stops, jump down before any railroad bulls come snoopin'. The squatters' camp's over there by the river. Reckon that's the best place to start huntin' your daddy.”

Shacks of cardboard that would melt to sludge at the first rain; car fenders and doors wired to tree limbs; willow branches interwoven with scraps of carpet, old clothes, and cardboard. One family had fetched tin cans from the dump, flattened them, and nailed them to crooked boards and parts of orange crates.

Back in the bushes, canvas was draped here and there. A woman came out of one shelter, straightening her dress. Laurie glanced quickly away from a man squatting among the bushes. Flies that would crawl on babies' eyes and mouths swarmed around stinking places where folks who must have just completely lost all pride had gone outside their shelters. A scrawny child rising from beside a cardboard shack kicked a little dirt over his mess as a dog might.

There were more kinds of bugs than Laurie had known existed, crawling or buzzing everywhere—plain ordinary flies, great big green blowflies, gnats, beetles, caterpillars, millers, fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes like the one shrilling in her ear. She swatted at it.

“Watch you're steppin',” Way cautioned. “There's camps like this all over California. Scariest thing is these folks for the most part aren't shiftless bums or hoboes who like to drift. They're families who lived in houses, had farms or little businesses or worked steady for someone. They came out here to save money and get back on their feet, but they're lucky if they earn enough to eat and buy gas to the next job.”

“But Way, it's so dirty and awful!” Laurie whispered. Compared to this, the little house in Prairieville and Grandpa's sharecropper's shack were palaces. Daddy living like this! What would Mama have said?

“Some big growers say California's got to have peons—lots of cheap labor with no power or rights,” Way growled. “Well, the growers made peons of the Filipinos and Mexicans, Chinese and Japanese, and when that supply started to dry up because of emigration laws, here's the Okies.”

Keeping an eye out for Daddy but half-afraid now that they
would
find him here, Laurie said, “Daddy hoped he'd earn real well out here—enough to send for us and have a home again.”

“I sure hate to cast you down, but look at how it is. Only takes about twenty year-round workers to look after a big peach orchard that needs two thousand pickers as soon as the fruit's ready, and nary a one the minute the fruit's packed.” Way shook his head and went on bitterly. “No way migrant workers can ever belong to a community. Folk's who've been good members of the grange, who've always voted on local and state affairs, don't have a thing to say about how things are run. It's a—”

“Look!” cried Buddy. “There's our flivver!”

It was indeed, with a clothesline stretched between it and a tent, a patched, stained tarp held up by poles canted at odd angles to tie it down over waist-high walls of scrap metal and wood. Outside the tent, a thin, yellow-haired woman in a faded dress jounced a fretful little boy on her hip while she stirred something in a kettle set on an old car grill spanning the small fire that sputtered sullenly in a shallow trench. At the approach of strangers, the woman pinned a strand of hair into the knot at the back of her long neck, the curving, graceful kind you'd call a swan's neck if it hadn't been so thin.

At her questioning look, Laurie said, “Please, lady, we're looking for Ed Field. Are you Mrs. Halsell?”

The woman dropped the spoon and stared. “Oh, dear Lord!” Her face crumpled. She came blindly toward Laurie. “You must be Ed's kiddies. Your Daddy talked about you so much—”

Dread gripped Laurie. Her insides turned to water. “Is—isn't he here?”

The woman shook her head. “Children, I hate to tell you this. Your Daddy's—gone.”

“Gone?” shrilled Buddy.

“He—he drowned.” Mary Halsell began to sob. “He went in to pull our baby out, little Rob here. We—we tried our best but by the time we got him out, your daddy was gone. Didn't know how to get in touch with you, though he sure talked about you children a lot.” Her eyes widened and she studied Laurie. “Wasn't there—?”

A girl, she was going to say. Her woman's eyes had picked up what men's hadn't. Laurie gave her a warning look. Mrs. Halsell turned and pointed. “There's some big eucalyptus trees down the river—see, over there—and we buried him where he'd have shade and sweet air.” The haggard woman broke into tears. “Ed was such a good man! Can't tell you how much he helped us and now it's our fault he's dead. Bob thought I was watching the baby and I thought the kids were. Just no way to tell you how sorry we are.”

Sorry! Laurie felt as if she'd been kicked in the stomach and went all hot and sick. To come all this way …