Roughneck (9 page)

       From my extensive travels in the Midwest, I knew we could not be very far from Fort Scott, Kansas, a railroad division point. But just how far, whether we would get there before the trainmen got to me, I didn't know. Neither could I be certain that the train would stop at Fort Scott, or even slow down sufficiently to let me hop off.

       The trainmen came nearer, one from the front, one from the rear. At last they were no more than three car lengths away. Leaning over the edge of the gondola, I stared ahead into the night.

       Lights. A lot of lights. It must be Fort Scott. And—and, yes, almost imperceptibly, the train was slowing down. But it wasn't slowing down enough; we weren't going to hit Scott soon enough. It was still several minutes away, and the guards were now only seconds away from me.

       They came over the last of the cars separating them from me. They saw me and yelled. I yelled back, holding my arms over my head. But they either did not see my gesture in the darkness, or, seeing it, still did not care to take chances. I heard a shout of "'Get the bastard!"' and they came forward at a lurching, menacing run. Each had a thick club thonged to his wrist. Each was wearing a gun belt and gun.

       They reached the end of their respective boxcars simultaneously, and started down the ladders. They jumped down to the gondola and advanced on me, clubs upswung...

       As a child, my maternal grandfather had used to tell me all sorts of wild stories, allegories thinly disguised as personal experiences. One of his favorites concerned a hunting dog, which, being attacked by a mountain lion, had climbed a tree and escaped. "But how could he?" I would protest. "Dogs can't climb tress." "All depends on the dog," Grandfather would retort. "This dog 'had' to climb one." Now, at last, after the passing of decades, I saw what he meant.

       We were just nearing the outskirts of Fort Scott. The train was still going at a terrifying clip. But I had to jump and a man does what he has to.

       I swung over the side of the gondola. I looked over my shoulder—stared down into darkness. And, then, as the guards' lanterns flashed in my eyes and their clubs descended, I jumped. I swung myself outward and backwards and let go.

       The tracks at this point were atop a high grade, and I seemed to fall for minutes before my feet touched the cinder-blanketed embankment. They barely touched, then bounced me into the air as though they were springs.

       I turned a complete somersault, landed on my feet, and was again bounced into the air. I came down on my shoulders and went into a long skid. Skidding on my shoulders and back, I wound up at the foot of the embankment. There was a strange shrieking in my ears, an almost animal keening. A minute or two passed before I realized that I was listening to myself, screaming in an agony of shock and pain.

       I laughed and sat up. I buried my face in my hands and rocked to and fro, laughing and sobbing, unable to believe that I was actually alive. After a time, I pulled myself together, climbed back up to the tracks, and limped into Fort Scott. There I was arrested for vagrancy, jailed for the night and floated out of town in the morning.

I have been pretty critical at times of my native state, Oklahoma. For one thing, I believe it is and always has been the rottenest, politically, in the country. But on the whole I am fond of it and proud of it, and I am quickly annoyed with people who speak disparagingly of "Okies" and make uninformed remarks about the state's "backwardness." Where politics is concerned, Oklahoma may be, to use the Brookings Institution phrase, "the heart of Balkan America." But in many ways it is so far ahead of the majority of the commonwealths as to make comparison pitiful.

       To cite a few statistics, it has more paved roads, more institutions of higher learning, and more playgrounds and parks per population than any state in the union. It has a really effective department of labor—not a mere letterhead conglomeration of spineless hacks. Its department of charities and corrections has long been held up as a model among penal and eleemosynary authorities. Unlike a certain state to the south, Oklahoma does not brag about its achievements—not nearly enough, anyway, in my opinion. Progressiveness, and the good life which is its objective, are considered a citizen's rightful due. Many of the state's wealthiest men came there broke and they have not lost touch with, nor sympathy for, those less fortunate than themselves.

       I hopped off a freight in Oklahoma City late in a bitter November night, a half-starved and filthy bum. And almost immediately I was taken into custody by two patrol-car cops. Naturally, I thought it was a pinch, and their kindly words sarcasm. But such was not the way of Oklahoma City cops. They drove me to a city shelter where I was fed and able to clean up. Then, they turned me over to another pair who chauffeured me into the downtown district. These last two offered me a choice of "hotels" for the night—the city jail, a section of which was open to homeless men, or one of the several city courtrooms which were also left open at night for the benefit of such as I. Their advice was that, due to overcrowding at the jail, I sleep on one of the courtroom benches. I followed this suggestion, and got my first good night's sleep in weeks. I had no bedding, of course, but the benches were clean and the room well-heated. When morning came, and I again took to the street, I felt wonderfully refreshed and hopeful.

       There were several soup kitchens about the city, such as the one I had been taken to the night before. But while I was a bum, and no better than any of the others, I winced at the thought of playing the "mission stiff"—of being drawn into the shabbiness and despair of men who had lost all initiative. I had had no choice last night. Now, being merely hungry instead of starving, I was determined to find some other way of procuring food, or to do without.

       I wandered over into the south part of town, up and down Reno and Washington streets which were then a kind of poor man's paradise. There were signs offering new shoes for a dollar, complete men's outfits ("slightly used") for two-fifty, clean hotel rooms for five dollars a month. There were stores and markets pleading with customers to buy butter at ten cents a pound, choice porterhouse steak at twelve cents a pound and high grade coffee at three pounds for a quarter. Eggs were six cents a dozen, milk a nickel a quart, bread three loaves for five cents. As for the restaurants—clean, wholesome-smelling places with their menus posted in the windows—they were practically giving their wares away.

       Three large hotcakes with sausage, butter and syrup and coffee—for 'five cents!' Roast beef dinner with four vegetables and beverage, for fifteen cents. Ham or bacon and eggs with French fries, hot buttered biscuits, marmalade and coffee, for ten cents. A little mental calculation told me that a man could live handsomely in Oklahoma City for considerably less than a dollar a day. Unfortunately, I didn't have a dollar, nor even the one-hundredth part of one.

       Mouth watering, I turned away from the menu I was studying, almost knocking down a brisk, bird-like little man who had taken up a position beside me.

       "Jim Thompson's boy ain't you? Sure you are, spittin' image of him." He bobbed his head, grinning at me happily. "What the hell you doin' in town? Your dad with you? Bet you don't remember me, do you?"

       I was about to admit that I didn't know him, but he was rattling on, introducing himself before I had the chance. He was a one-time saloon owner from Anadarko, my birthplace, where Pop had been a United States marshal and later sheriff. Now, he and his wife were operating a rooming house here in Oklahoma City, and nothing would do but that I, the son of the "best damned friend" he'd ever had, should move into their establishment.

       "I'd like to," I said. "I'm sure I'd be very comfortable, but I don't think I'll be staying in Oklahoma City."

       "Why not?" he demanded promptly. "Best damned city in the best damned state in the union. What you going to find anywhere else that you won't find here?"

       "Look," I said, "I can't rent a room anywhere. I'm broke, and I can't find a job and—"

       "Hell," he snorted, "you think I thought you was dressed up for a masquerade party? Sure you're broke. Sure you ain't workin'. Who the hell is?"

       I would feel perfectly at home at his place, he declared, for all of his other tenants were also broke. Now and then, they picked up an odd job and made a dollar or so, whereupon they paid him what they could. I could do the same and I must or he would feel highly insulted.

       So I went home with him, and his wife fixed me a whopping breakfast. And all day long, he and she were running in and out of the room they had assigned me—the best in the house—doing their humble utmost to be friendly and helpful. They dug me up an old suit which, while ill-fitting and worn, was splendid compared with the one I was wearing. They even brought me an old but serviceable typewriter and a quantity of paper.

       I have many sharp memories of that winter in Oklahoma City. Of writing two novels and selling neither. Of selling three hundred thousand words of trade-journal material and collecting on less than a tenth of it. Of distributing circulars at ten cents an hour, and digging sewer ditches at nothing per. Of being drawn into a wholesale swindle by Allie Ivers. And of a little streetwalker named Trixie.

       The sewer job was sponsored by the state, as a so-called "relief" program. But as I saw it, the only relief it gave was to a handful of political fatcats, the project "supervisors," and to the real estate owners. The supervisors got fancy salaries for doing nothing. The real estate boys got valuable improvements on their property for next to nothing. We, the men who dug eleven-foot sewer ditches under hazardous, backbreaking conditions—well, I shall tell you what some of us got.

       I was tipped off to the job by two former oil field workers, Jiggs and Shorty—of whom much more later—who were tenants at the place were I was living. Lacking carfare, we walked the eight miles back and forth to work. It was either raining or snowing throughout the time of our employment, and our clothes were never thoroughly thawed and dried out from one shift to the next. As for the project itself, I have never anywhere seen men treated with such cold-blooded shabbiness.

       There were no men left on top of the ditch to keep the dug earth moved back. Thus, as the ditch deepened, it was virtually impossible to throw the dirt up and out as far as it had to be thrown. You would load your long-handled spoon (shovel), grip it by the very tip of the handle, and hurl the soggy earth upward with all your might. It would reach the crest of the ditch and balance there hazardously. Then, slowly but surely, it would topple and slide, and a fourth of it would fall back in your face. Worst of all, however, was the fact that the ditches were unshored. There was no bracing to keep them from caving in, and being deep in saturated earth they caved in constantly.

       Those cave-ins were terrifying things. Just how terrifying you may understand if, like most people, you have a horror of being buried alive. There were two kinds of them, one a sudden bulging in on the sides which pinned you around the knees or the waist. In the other, the most frightening, the cave-in was from the top. The sky would suddenly disappear like a lamp blown out, and frenziedly you would hurl yourself forward, race madly away from the collapsing area. And a moment later, in the spot where you had been working, there was no longer a ditch. Only eleven feet of half-frozen mud.

       I don't know why the job was managed as it was, for having to do much of the same work twice was certainly poor economy. I suppose the wretched state of affairs was due not so much to bad management as no management. Generally, the supervisors knew little or nothing about construction work and made only token appearances on the job. The supervising, such as it was, was done by relief-roll straw bosses, men too fearful for their own paychecks to point out planning errors or demand better conditions for the workmen.

       When our two-week pay period ended—we were allowed to work only twelve days a month—Jiggs, Shorty and I tramped into town and presented our time numbers at the project offices. Our wage had been set at one dollar and a quarter for an eight-hour day, so each of us was entitled to fifteen dollars. But only Jiggs's check was for the full and correct amount. Shorty received five dollars and I drew a check for two-fifty.

       We protested, of course, but the well-fed gentleman behind the wicket waved us away indifferently.

       "Don't talk to me. All I do is hand out the checks. Go out and argue with your project timekeeper."

       "That's swell," I said. "And how long am I going to have to wait for a check after I get it straightened out?"

       "How do I know?" he shrugged. "I got nothing to do with it."

       Shorty and I argued a while longer, but it was a waste of breath. Finally we gave up, and the following morning we went back out to the job. Our timekeeper wasn't there. Like us—although he was drawing a much better salary—he also was working only two weeks a month. I managed to get his home address, and Shorty and I went out to see him. A young man—and not a very bright one—he listened to us with an air of absentminded virtue.

       "You must be mistaken." he said absently. "Your checks had to be for the right amount."

       "Look," I said, "maybe they had to be for the right amount, but they weren't. Are you sure you turned us in for the full twelve days?"

       "I did if you worked."

       "Well, don't you remember that we did work? Don't you know that we did?"

       "Can't remember everyone," he said sullenly. "All I know is that if you worked, I marked you down."

       Shorty, whose shoulders were almost as broad as he was tall, began to curse. He declared that he had ten dollars coming, and he intended to get it in cash or to collect it from someone's hide. Considerably alarmed, the timekeeper produced his records.

       "There you are," he pointed out placatingly. "J. Thompson—fifteen dollars. And here, I got your friend down for the same amount."