Lonesome Traveler (9 page)

The conductor is in there hanging around waiting for his train orders—when he gets them he'll give the engineer the hiball sign, a little side to side wave of the palmed hand, and off we go—the old hoghead gives orders for steam, the young fireman complies, the hoghead kicks and pulls at his big lever throttle and sometimes jumps up to wrestle with it like hugely an angel in hell and pulls the whistle twice toot toot we're leaving, and you hear the first chug of the engine—chug—a failure like—chug a lut—zoom—chug CHUG—the first movement—the train's underway.—

SAN JOSE—because the soul of the railroad is the chain gang run, the long freight train you see snaking down the track with a puff puff en jyne pulling is the traveler the winner the arterial moody mainline maker of the rail—San Jose is 50 miles south of Frisco and is the center of the Coast Division chain gang or long road run activity, known as the horn because the pivot point for rails going down from Frisco toward Santa Barbara and L.A. and rails going and shining back to Oakland via Newark and Niles on sub lines that also cross the mighty main line of the Fresno bound Valley Division.— San Jose is where I should have been living instead of Third Street Frisco, for these reasons: 4 o'clock
in the morning, in San Jose, comes a call on the phone it is the Chief Dispatcher calling from 4th and Townsend in the Sad Frisco, “Keroowayyyy? it's deadhead on 112 to San Jose for a drag east with Conductor Degnan got that?” “Yeh deadahead 112 drag east right,” meaning, go back to bed and rise again around 9, you're being paid all this time and boy dont worry about a durg and doo-gaddm things, at 9 all's you gotta do is get ups and you already done made how many dollars? anyways in your sleep and put on your gig clothes and cut out and take a little bus and go down to the San Jose yard office down by the airport there and in the yard office are hundreds of interested railroad men and tackings of tickers and telegraph and the engines are being lined up and numbered and markered out there, and new engines keep rushing up from the roundhouse, & everywhere in the gray air tremendous excitements of movement of rolling stocks and the making of great wages.— You go down there, find your conductor who'll just be some old baggy-pants circus comedian with a turned up hatbrim and red face and red handkerchief and grimy waybills and switchlists in his hand and far from carrying a student big brakeman lantern like you's got his little old 10 year old tiny lantern from some old boomer bought and the batteries of which he has to keep buying at Davegas instead of like the student getting free at the yard office, because after 20 years on the rr you gotta find some way to be different and also t'lighten the burdens you carry around with yourself, he's there, leaning, by spittoons, with others, you go up hat over eyes, say “Conductor Degnan?” “I'm Degnan, well it doesnt look like anything'll bevore noon so just take it easy and be around” so you go into the blue room they call it, where blue flies buzz and hum around old zawful dirty couch tops stretched on benches with the stuffing coming out and attracting and probably breeding further flies, and there you lie down if it ain't already full of sleeping
brakemen and you turn your shoetops up to the dirty old brown sad ceiling of time there, haunted by the clack of telegraphs and the chug of engines outdoors enough to make you go in your pants, and turns your hatbrim over yr eyes, and go ahead and sleep.— Since 4 in the morning, since 6 in the morning when still the sleep was on yr eyes in that dark dream house you've been getting 1.90 per hour and it is now 10 A M and the train aint even made up and “not before noon” says Degnan so that by noon you'll already have been working (because counting from time of 112, deadhead time) six hours and so you'll leave San Jose with your train around noon or maybe further at one and not get to the terminal great chaingang town of Watsonville where everything's going (L.A. ward) till 3 in the afternoon and with happy mishaps 4 or 5, nightfall, when down there waiting for the herder's sign enginemen and trainmen see the long red sad sun of waning day falling on the lovely old landmark milepost 98.2 farm and day's done, run's done, they been being paid since down dawn of that day and only traveled about 50 miles.— This will be so, so sleep in the blue room, dream of 1.90 per hour and also of your dead father and your dead love and the mouldering in your bones and the eventual Fall of you—the train wont be made up till noon and no one wants to bother you
till
—lucky child and railroad angel softly in your steel propositioned sleep.

So much more to Jan Jose.

So if you live in San Jose you have the advantage of 3 hours of extra sleep at home not counting the further sleep on the blue room rot puff leather couch—nevertheless I was using the 50 mile ride from 3rd Street as my library, bringing books and papers in a little tattered black bag already 10 years old which I'd originally bought on a pristine morning in Lowell in 1942 to go to sea with, arriving in Greenland that summer, and so
a bag so bad a brakeman seeing me with it in the San Jose yard coffee shop said whooping loud “A railroad loot bag if I ever saw one!” and I didnt even smile or acknowledge and that was the beginning middle and extent of my social rapport on the railroad with the good old boys who worked it, thereafter becoming known as Kerouaayyy the Indian with the phony name and everytime we went by the Porno Indians working sectionhand tracks, gandy dancers with greasy black hair I waved and smiled and was the only man on the S.P. who did so except old hogheads always do wave and smile and sectionhand bosses who are old white bespectacled respectable old toppers and topers of time and everybody respects, but the dark Indian and the eastern Negro, with sledgehammers and dirtypants to them I waved and shortly thereafter I read a book and found out that the Porno Indian battle cry is Ya Ya Henna, which I thought once of yelling as the engine crashboomed by but what would I be starting but derailments of my own self and engineer.— All the railroad opening up and vaster and vaster until finally when I did quit it a year later I saw it again but now over the waves of the sea, the entire Coast Division winding down along the dun walls of bleak headland balboa amerikay, from a ship, and so the railroad opens up on the waves that are Chinese and on the orient shroud and sea.— It runs ragged to the plateau clouds and Pucalpas and lost Andean heights far below the world rim, it also bores a deep hole in the mind of man and freights a lot of interesting cargo in and out the holes precipitate and otherwise hidingplaces and imitative cauchemar of eternity, as you'll see.

SO ONE MORNING they called me at 3rd Street at about 4 A M and I took the early morning train to San
Jose, arriving there 7:30 was told not to worry about anything till about 10 so I went out in my inconceivably bum's existence went looking for pieces of wire that I could bend in such a way over my hotplate so they would support little raisin breads to make toast and also looking if possible for better than that a chickenwire arrangement on which I could sit pots to heat water and pans to fry eggs since the hotplate was so powerful it often burned and blackcaked the bottom of my eggs if by chance I'd overlook the possibility while busy peeling my potatoes or otherwise involved—I'd walk around, San Jose had a junk yard across the track, I went in there and lookt around, stuff in there so useless the proprietor never came out, I who was earning 600 a month made off with a piece of chicken wire for my hotplate.— Here it was 11 and still no train made up, gray, gloomy, wonderful day—I wandered down the little street of cottages to the big boulevard of Jose and had Carnation ice cream and coffee in the morning, whole bevies and classrooms of girls came in with tightfitting and sloosesucking sweaters and everything on earth on, it was some academy of dames suddenly come to gossip coffee and I was there in my baseball hat black slick oiled and rusted jacket weather jacket with fur collar that I had used to lean my head on in the sands of Watsonville riverbottoms and grits of Sunnyvale across from Westinghouse near Schukl's student days ground where my first great moment of the railroad had taken place over by Del Monte's when I kicked my first car and Whitey said “You're the boss do it pull the pin with a will put your hand in there and pull ‘cause you're the boss” and it was October night, dark, clean, clear, dry, piles of leaves by the track in the sweet scented dark and beyond them crates of the Del Monte fruit and workers going around in crate wagons with under reaching stuckers and—never will forget
Whitey saying that.— By same reminiscence of doubt, in spite and because of, wanted to save all me money for Mexico, I also refused to spend 75 cents or even 35 cents less for a pair of workgloves, instead, after initial losing of my first bought workglove while setting out that sweet San Mateo flower car on Sunday morning with the Sherman local I resolved to get all my other gloves from the ground and so went for weeks with my black hand clutching sticky cold iron of engines in the dewy cold night, till I finally found the first glove outside the San Jose yard office, a brown cloth glove with red Mephistophelean lining, picking it up limp and damp from the ground and smashed it on my knee and let it dry and wore it.— Final other glove found outside Watsonville yard office, a little leather imitation outside glove with inside warm lining and cut with scissors or razor at the wrist to facilitate putting it on and obviate yanking and yunking.— These were my gloves, I'd lost as I say my first glove in San Mateo, the second with Conductor Degnan while waiting for the all clear signal from the pot (working rear because of his fear) by the track at Lick, the long curve, the traffic on 101 making it difficult to hear and in fact it was the old conductor who in the dark of that Saturday night did finally hear, I heard nothing, I ran to the caboose as it leapt ahead with the slack and got on counting my red lamps gloves fusees and whatnots and realizing with horror as the train pulled along I had dropped one of my gloves at Lick, damn!—now I had two new gloves from off the ground pickied.— At noon of that day the engine still wasnt on, the old hoghead hadnt left home yet where he'd picked up his kid on a sunny sidewalk with open arms and kissed him the late red john time of afternoon before, so I was there sleeping on the horrible old couch when by god in some way or other and after I'd gone out several times to check and
climb around the pot which was now tied on and the conductor and rear man having coffee in the shop and even the fireman and then I went back for further musings or nappings on the seat cover expecting them to call me, when in my dreams I hear a double toot toot and hear a great anxiety engine taking off and it's my engine but I dont realize it right away, I think it's some slomming woeful old blacktrackpot whack cracking along in a dream or dream reality when suddenly I wake up to the fact they didnt know I was sleeping in the blue room, and they got their orders, and gave the hiball, and there they go to Watsonville leaving the head man behind—as tradition goes, fireman and engineer if they dont see the head man on the engine and they've gotten the sign, off they go, they have nothing to do with these sleepy trainmen.— I leap up grab lamp and in the gray day and running precisely over the spot where I'd found that brown glove with red lining and thinking of it in the fury of my worry and as I dash I see the engine way down the line 50 years picking up and chufgffouffing and the whole train's rumbling after and cars waiting at the crossing for the event, it's MY TRAIN!—Off I go loping and running fast over the glove place, and over the road, and over the corner of the junk field where I'd searched for tin also that lazy morning, amazied mouth-gagaped railroad men about five of them are watching this crazy student running after his engine as it leaves for Watsonville—is he going to make it? Inside 30 seconds I was abreast with the iron ladder and shifting lantern t'other hand to grab holt of and get on and climb, and anyway the whole shebang restopped again at a red to allow old I think 71 get through the station yards, it was I think by now almost 3 o'clock I'd slept and earned or started to earn incredible overtimes and this nightmare transpiring.— So they got the red and stopped anyway and I had my
train made and sat on the sand box to catch my breath, no comment whatever in the world on the bleak jawbones and cold blue okie eyes of that engineer and fireman they must have been holding some protocol with the iron railroad in their hearts for all they cared about this softheaded kid who'd run down the cinders to his late lost work

Forgive me o Lord

AT THE RICKETY FENCEBACK Del Monte Fruitpacking Company which is directly across the track from the San Jose passenger station there is a curve in the track, a curve shmurve of eternity rememberable from the dreams of the railroad dark I had where I'm working unspeakable locals with Indians and suddenly we come upon a great Indian caucus in an underground subterraneana somewhere right there in the vicinity of the Del Monte curve (where Indians work anyway) (packing the crates, the cans, the fruit in cans with syrup) and I'm with the heroes of the Portuguese bars of San Francisco watching dances and hearing revolutionary speeches like the speeches of the revolutionary sod squat down heroes of Culiacan where by the bark of the wave in the drearylit drolling night I have heard them say
la tierra esta la notre
and knew they mean it and for this reason the dream of the Indians revolutionary meeting and celebrating in the bottom lip cellar of the railroad earth.— The train goes around the curve there and gently I lean out of the grabiron darks and look and there's our little clearance and train order sitting in a piece of string which is stretched between the two train order bamrods, as the train passes the trainmen simply (usually the fireman) reaches out with whole arm so to make sure not to miss and hooks the string in passing (the string being taut) and off
comes the string and the two bows which are rigid sorta ping a little and in yr arm is looped the train orders on yellow onionskin tied by string, the engineer upon receipt of this freight takes the string and slowly according to years of personal habit in the manner of undoing train order strings undoes the string and then according again to habit unfolds the paper to read and sometimes they even put glasses on like great professors of ivy universities to read as that big engine goes chug chugging across and down the green land of California and Mexicans of railside mexshacks standing with eyes shaded watching us past, see the great bespectacled monk student in engineer of the night peering learnedly at his little slip in big grimy paw and it reads, date, “Oct 3 1952, Train Orders, to Train 2-9222, issued 2:04 PM, wait at Rucker till 3:58 for eastbound 914, do not go beyond Corporal till 4:08 and etc.” all the various orders which the train order dispatchers and various thinking officials at switch towers and telephones are thinking up in the great metaphysical passage of iron traffics of the rail—we all take turns reading, like they say to young students “Read it carefully dont leave it up to us to decide if there are any mistakes many's the time a student found a mistake that the engineer and fireman out of years of habit didnt see so read it carefully” so I go over the whole thing reading even over and over again checking dates the time, like, the time of the order should certainly be not later than time of departure from station (when I went loping over the junkfield with lantern and loot bag racing to catch my guilt late in the gray candy gloom) and ah but all of it sweet. The little curve at Del Monte, the train orders, then the train goes on to mile post 49.1 to the Western Pacific RR crossing, where you always see the track goes directly vertically across this alien track so there is a definite hump in the rail bed, but chickaluck, as we go
over, sometimes at dawn returning from Watsonville I'd be dozing in the engine and wondering just about where we were not knowing generally we were in the vicinity of San Jose or Lick and I'd hear the brock a brock and say to myself “The Western Pacific crossing!” and remember how one time a brakee said to me, “Cant sleep nights in this here new house I got here out on Santa Clara avenue for the clatter and racket of that damn engine out there in the midnight” “Why I thought you loved the railroad” “Well to tell you the fact of the matter, is the Western Pacific happens to have a rail running out there” and with such, as tho it was inconceivable that there could be other railroads than the Southern Pacific.— On we go across the crossing and there we go along the stream, the Oconee of old Jose the little blank blank Guadaloupe river dry and with Indians standing on the banks, that is Mexican children watching the train, and great fields of prickly pear cactus and all green and sweet in the gray afternoon and gonna be golden brown and rich when the sun at five flames flares to throw the California wine over the rearwestern licks into the pacific brine.— On we go to Lick, always I take my looks at favorite landmarks, some school where boys are practising football in varsity and sub varsity and freshman and sub freshman squads, four of em, under tutelage of raven priests with piping glad voices in the wind, for it's October of footingball heavening rooting root to you.— Then at Lick there is on a hill a kind of monastery, you barefly see the dreaming marijuana walls of it as you pass, up there, with a bird wheeling to peace, there a field, cloisters, work, cloisterous prayers and every form known to man of sweet mediating going on as we wrangle and back-giggle by with a bursting engine and long knocking space-taking-up half mile long freight any minute I expect a hotbox in, as I look back anxiously, fit to work.
—The dreams of monastery men up there on the hill at Lick, and I think, “Ah creamy walls of either Rome, civilizations, or the last monasterial mediation with God in the didoudkekeghgj” god knows what I'm thinking, and then and my thoughts rapidly change as 101 rears into sight, and Coyote, and the beginning of the sweet fruit fields and prune orchards and the great strawberry fields and the vast fields where you see far off the humble squatting figures of Mexican brazeros in the great haze working to pluck from the earth that which the America with his vast iron wages no longer thinks feasible as an activity yet eats, yet goes on eating, and the brass backs with arms of iron Mexico in the cactus plateau love, they'll do it for us, the railroad freight train and concomitant racks of beets is not even, the men on it, are not even mindful of how those beets or in what mood, sweat, sweetness, were picked—and laid to rest out of the earth in the steely cradle.— I see them their bent humble backs remembering my own cotton-picking days in Selma California and I see far off across the grapevines the hills to the west, then the sea, the great sweet hills and further along you begin to see the familiar hill of Morgan Hill, we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it's all there, all sweet the furrows of brown, with blossoms and one time we took a siding to wait for 98 and I ran out there like the hound of the Baskervilles and got me a few old prunes not longer fitten to eat—the proprietor seeing me, trainman running guiltily back to engine with a stolen prune, always I was running, always was running, running to throw switches, running in my sleep and running now—happy.