“How old are you, boy?” she said, her eyes suddenly round.
“Eleven,” I said. And it was as though I had fired a shot.
“Eleven! Git out of here,” she screamed, stumbling backward, her eyes wide upon me as she felt for the glass on the table to drink. Then she snatched an old gray robe from a chair, fumbling for the tie cord which wasn’t there. I moved, my eyes upon her as I knelt for my hatchet, and felt the pain come sharp. Then I straightened, trying to arrange my knickers.
“You go now, you little rascal,” she said. “Hurry and git out of here. And if I ever hear of you saying anything about me I’ll fix your daddy and your mammy too. I’ll fix ’em, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’m,” I said, feeling that I had suddenly lost the courage of my manhood, now that my bandage was hidden and her secret body gone behind her old gray robe. But how could she fix my father when I didn’t have one? Or my mother, when she was dead?
I moved, backing out of the door into the dark. Then she slammed the door and I saw the light grow intense in the window and there was her face looking out at me and I could not tell if she frowned or smiled, but in the glow of the lamp the wrinkles were not there. I stumbled over the packs now and gathered them up, leaving.
This time the dog raised up, huge in the dark, his green eyes glowing as he gave me a low disinterested growl. Buster really must have fixed you, I thought. But where’d he go? Then I was past the fence into the road.
I wanted to run but was afraid of starting the pain again, and as I moved I kept seeing her as she’d appeared with her back turned toward me, the sweet undrunken movements that she made. It had been like someone dancing by herself and yet like praying without kneeling down. Then she had turned, exposing her familiar face. I moved faster now and suddenly all my senses seemed to sing alive. I heard a night bird’s song; the lucid call of a quail arose. And from off to my right in the river there came the leap of a moon-mad fish and I could see the spray arch up and away. There was wisteria in the air and the scent of moonflowers. And now moving through the dark I recalled the warm, intriguing smell of her body and suddenly, with the shout of the carnival coming to me again, the whole thing became thin and dreamlike. The images flowed in my mind, became shadowy; no part was left to fit another. But still there was my pain and here was I, running through the dark toward the small, loud-playing band. It was real, I knew, and I stopped in the path and looked back, seeing the black outlines of the shack and the thin moon above. Behind the shack the hill arose with the shadowy woods and I knew the lake was still hidden there, reflecting the moon. All was real.
And for a moment I felt much older, as though I had lived swiftly long years into the future and had been as swiftly pushed back again. I tried to remember how it had been when I kissed her, but on my lips my tongue found only the faintest trace of wine. But for that it was gone, and I thought forever, except the memory of the scraggly hairs on her chin. Then I was again aware of the imperious calling of the horns and moved again toward the carnival. Where was that other scalped Indian; where had Buster gone?
Hymie’s Bull
We were just drifting; going no place in particular, having long ago given up hopes of finding jobs. We were just knocking around the country. [Just drifting, ten black boys on an L&N freight.] From Birmingham we had swung up to the world’s fair at Chicago, where the bull had met us in the yards and turned us around and knocked a few lumps on our heads as souvenirs. If you’ve ever had a bull stand so close he can’t miss, and hit you across the rump as you crawled across the top of a boxcar and when you tried to get out of the way, because you knew he had a gun as well as a loaded stick, you’ve had him measure a tender spot on your head and let go with his loaded stick like a man cracking black walnuts with a hammer; and if when you started to climb down the side of the car because you didn’t want to jump from the moving train like he said, you’ve had him step on your fingers with his heavy boots and grind them with his heel like you’d do a cockroach and then if you didn’t let go, he beat you across the knuckles with his loaded stick till you did let go; and when you did, you hit the cinders and found yourself tumbling and sliding on your face away from the train faster than the telephone poles alongside the tracks, then you can understand why we were glad as hell we only had a few lumps on the head. Especially when you remember that the Chicago bulls hate black bums ’bout as much as Texas Slim, who’ll kill a Negro as quick as he’ll crack down on a blackbird sitting on a fence.
Bulls are pretty bad people to meet if you’re a bum. They have head-whipping down to a science and they’re always ready to go into action. They know all the places to hit to change a bone into jelly, and they seem to feel just the place to kick you to make your backbone feel like it’s going to fold up like the old collapsible drinking cups we used when we were kids. Once a bull hit me across the bridge of my nose and I felt like I was coming apart like a cigarette floating in a urinal. They can hit you on your head and bust your shoes.
But sometimes the bulls get the worst of it, and whenever one is missing at the end of a run and they find him all cut up and bleeding, they start taking all the black boys off the freights. Most of the time, they don’t care who did it, because the main thing is to make some black boy pay for it. Now when you hear that we’re the only bums that carry knives you can just put that down as bull talk because what I’m fixing to tell you about was done by an ofay bum named Hymie from Brooklyn.
We were riding a manifest, and Hymie was sick from some bad grub he’d bummed in a little town a few miles back when the freight had stopped for water. Maybe it wasn’t the grub; maybe it was the old mulligan pot he’d cooked it in back there in the jungle. We liked that spot because sunflowers grew there and gave plenty of shade from the sun. But anyway, Hymie was sick and riding on top. It was hot and the flies kept swarming into the car so fast that we stopped paying them no mind. Hymie must have caught hell from them though because his dinner kept coming up and splattering the air. He must have been plenty bothered with the flies because we could see his dinner fly past the door of the car where we were. Once it was very red like a cardinal flying past in the green fields along the tracks. Come to think of it, it might have been a cardinal flying past. Or it might have been something else that smelled like swill from a farmyard.
We tried to get the guy to come down, but he said that he felt better out in the air, so we left him alone. In fact we started to play blackjack for cigarette butts and soon forgot about Hymie; that is, until it had gotten too dark in the boxcar to see the spots on the cards. Then I decided to go out on top to watch the sunset.
The sun was a big globe in the west that seemed to drop away like a basketball tossed into a basket, and the freight seemed to be trying to catch it before it got there. You could see large swarms of flies following the freight cars like gulls over a boat; only the noise they made was lost in the roar of the train. In the field you could see a flock of birds flying away into the sunset, shooting off at an angle to rise and dip, rise and dip, sail and pivot in the wind like kites cut loose from their strings.
I stood on top, feeling the wind pushing against my eyes and whipping my pants against my legs, and waved to Hymie. He had his legs locked around the open ventilator of a refrigerator car hooked next to ours. In that light he looked like a fellow propped in a corner with his hands and feet tied like in a gangster picture. I waved to Hymie, and he waved back. It was a weak wave. The train was going down-grade now, and the fields passed in a curve, and it made you feel like you were on a merry-go-round. When you tried to holler, your voice was small, like the sound you heard when you used to sit on the bottom of the swimming hole and knock rocks together. So we, Hymie and me, just waved.
I felt sorry for the poor guy out there alone. I wished there was something I could do for him, but they don’t have water on side-door Pullmans and I guess bums are too dumb to carry canteens. Then I thought, To heck with Hymie. A few miles down the road when we got South, he and the othe
r guys would go into another car anyway.
I stood there on top listening to the rhythm of the wheels bumping along the tracks. Sometimes the rhythm was even, like kids in Harlem beating empty boxes around a bonfire at nightfall as they play along the curbs. I stood there on top listening, bent slightly forward to keep my balance like a guy skiing, and thought of my mother. I had left her two months before, not even knowing that I would ever hop freights. Poor Mama, she had tried hard to keep my brother and me at home, but she fed us too long alone, and we were getting much too grown-up to let her do it any longer, so we left home looking for jobs.
It was now becoming almost too dark to see, when all at once the freight gave a jerk, and every boxcar in the train started racing every other car bumpty-bump down the tracks to the engine like they were meant to knock it into a faster speed when they got there. Then I looked down to where Hymie was riding, and there was a bull crawling toward him with a stick in his hand. I hollered for Hymie to watch out, but the noise swallowed up my voice and the bull was drawing closer all the time. You see, Hymie was asleep, his legs still locked around the ventilator, when the bull reached him. Then the bull grabs Hymie to yank him up and starts lamming with his stick at the same time. Hymie woke up fighting and yelling; I could see his face. The stick would land, and a scream would drift back to where I crawled, almost too excited to move. The freight streaked along like a long black dog, and up on top we were like three monkeys clinging to his back, like you see sometimes at a circus. The bull finally got his knees on Hymie’s chest and was choking him, the stick hanging from his wrist by a leather thong.
Sometimes he tried to break Hymie’s hold to throw him off the car, and sometimes he lammed away with the loaded stick. Hymie fought the bull the best he could, but he fumbled in his pocket with one hand at the same time. You could see the bull hit, measure and hit, and Hymie kept his left hand in the bull’s face and all the time he was fumbling in his pocket.
Then I saw something flash in the fast-fading light, and Hymie went into action with his blade. The bull was still hammering away with his stick when Hymie started cutting him aloose. You could see the knife flash up past Hymie’s head and then dive down and across both the bull’s wrists, and you could hear him scream because all the time you were coming closer and you could see him let Hymie go and Hymie raise himself, swing the blade around in half circles like a snake and the blade swing back around as though measuring just the right spot, then dive into the bull’s throat. Hymie pulled the knife around from ear to ear in the bull’s throat; then he stabbed him and pushed him off the top of the car. The bull paused a second in the air like a kid diving off a trestle into a river, then hit the cinders below. Something was warm on my face, and I found that some of the bull’s blood had blown back like spray when a freight stops to take on water from a tank.
It was dark now, and Hymie tore off his top shirt, and dropped it over the edge of the car, and crawled down the side. He hung there until the train hit an upgrade and slowed down. We were coming to a little town on a hill. Lights were scattered here and there like raisins in a cake, and drawing nearer I saw Hymie grow tense and fall clear of the car. He hit the dirt hard, rolled a few yards, and got up to his feet. By then we were too far gone to see him in the dim light. We rolled past the little town, and the whistle screamed its lonely sound and I wondered if that was the last I’d see of Hymie …
I heard later on that the shirt Hymie wore was found caught on a field fence and that his switchblade was still sticking in the bull. The bull had rolled from the cinders into the vines which lined the tracks, and lay there all bloody among the flowers that looked like tiger lilies.
The next day about dusk we were pulling into the yards at Montgomery, Alabama, miles down the line, and got the scare of our lives. The train had to cross a trestle before it could reach the yards. It was going slow, and as soon as it crossed we started getting off. All at once we heard someone one hollering, and when we ran up to the front of the freight, there were two bulls, a long one and a short one, fanning heads with their gun barrels. They were making everybody line up so they could see us better. The sky was cloudy and very black. We knew Hymie’s bull had been found and some black boy had to go. But luck must’ve been with us this time because just then the storm broke and the freight started to pull out of the yards. The bulls hollered for no one to get back on the train and we broke and ran between some cars on around to try to catch the freight pulling out at the other end of the yards. We made it. We rode up on top that night out in the rain. It was uncomfortable, but we were happy as hell, and we knew the sun would dry our clothes on us the next day, and we would grab something fast going far away from where Hymie got his bull.
I Did Not Learn Their Names
From The New Yorker, April 29 & May 6, 1996
It was chilly up on top. We were riding to St. Louis on a manifest, clinging to the top of a boxcar. It was dark, and sparks from the engine flew back to where we were riding. Sometimes cinders blew in our faces, and the thick, tumbling part of the blackness was smoke. The freight jerked and bumped, and sparks flew past, dancing red in the whirling darkness. It was chilly as hell, and we were traveling fast. The Santa Fe freight was highballing down a grade in the dark. Miles off to our left, an airport beacon carved the night. Up on top, it was cold for early fall, and the cinders struck our faces like sand awhirl in the wind.
“How soon’ll we make it to St. Louis?” I yelled to Morrie.
“Tomorrow noon, if she don’t jump the track. She’s running like a bitch with the itch,” he yelled in my ear.
Morrie was my buddy. I had met him in the sunflower jungle outside an Oklahoma town. He climbed off when the freight stopped and sat near me on the embankment. It had given me a queer feeling as I watched him roll up his trousers and take off his leg. The artificial leg had been flesh-white and the stump red and raw. He had lost his leg to the knee beneath the wheels of a freight, and the artificial leg had been given him by an insurance company. He told me he had been on the bum for five years. The next day, he had saved me from falling between two cars to the wheels below, and he got quite a kick out of having a Negro for a buddy.
An old couple was riding in the car below us. I had seen them climb quietly into the boxcar when the freight made its last stop at dusk. I had gone down to see the old man stripping the car of its brown-paper lining to make a bed for the old lady. It was an ingenious thing for him to do. I wondered why no one had thought to do it before. The floor of a boxcar is hard, and the paper used to line the walls of cars in which automobiles are shipped is the softest thing about them. When the freight hit a rough stretch of track, you usually stood up until it was passed. Or else you rested back on the palms of your hands and bounced with the bumps as though your arms were springs. The old man had saved his wife that indignity. It’s really a ridiculous position to assume: your hands palm down, your feet flat, and your tail held just high enough off the floor to get it spanked whenever the freight gave a hard jerk and bounced. You usually laughed when you did this, and I could not imagine the old lady in such a position and laughing.
I had gone back on top to join Morrie, but I went off to sleep and he woke me and I crawled down. It was pitch-dark in the car when I climbed down, and I could hear the old lady coughing. She could not sleep for the bumping and the chill. I didn’t wish to disturb them, and eased over and sat with my legs dangling out of the open door. I went to sleep that way, watching the lights of distant towns.
The freight started bumping, and I woke to see the line in the east turning red with the dawn. In the dim light, I made out the old man sitting with his back against the side of the car. He was nodding, and the old lady lay in his arms. Then the freight was blowing for a crossing and the whistle sounded lonely in the gray dawn, and I went to sleep again. When I awoke, the sun was in the fields and a flock of sparrows was spurting past the car. I had intended to climb on top before it was light enough for the old couple to see me, but when
I got up the old man was watching me from across the car. They were having breakfast.
“Good morning,” I said.
He nodded, munching a sandwich.
I stretched and started outside to find Morrie. I was sorry that I hadn’t wakened in time to save them embarrassment. In the dark, I was like all the rest who were on the freight and it didn’t make a difference. Now it did. I was very sorry. I was having a hard time trying not to hate in those days, and I felt bad whenever I found myself in a position that might have been interpreted that way. I still fought the bums—with Morrie’s help. But I had learned not to attack those who were not personally aggressive and who only expressed passively what they had been taught. And these were old folks. She was the oldest woman I’d seen riding the freights, much older than my own mother at home. They seemed kind, and I had not wished to cause them embarrassment.
I was nasty sometimes, because to be decent was to appear afraid and aware of a “place.” And since when you were decent they thought that you were afraid, and that you were expressing those qualities that even their schoolbooks said your race possessed, I was almost always nasty. Then Morrie had saved my life, and I tried to change.
As I started to climb up, the old man called me:
“Come here a minute.”
Probably wants to cuss me for being here, I thought. Probably thinks he owns the boxcar.
The freight was making a lot of noise, and he motioned for me to sit down. They had sandwiches in a small suitcase, and I sat down in front of it. There were two large red apples in among the sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. The old lady, seated cross-legged on her brown-paper cushion, looked sadly out on the morning. They were not the kind of people you usually saw on the freights, even in those days.