“How long did this go on?”
“I guess an hour.”
“And what did you do then?”
“What would you do? After a while, from being friendly and laughing and all that, she just sat there looking at me, then just sat there. I got up and pitched the five dollars in her lap and left... What the hell does it mean, Jack?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wanted her, bad.”
“You wanted the idea of a woman, bad.”
“Yeah, but that’s the main part of it.”
He sat there a long time, looking at his feet. It seemed a pity, much as it had been on his mind, that things should have turned out like they did. His face began wrinkling up. “What did Hosey mean?”
“If anything.”
“Jack, he meant more than he said. Nobody could get that hot under the collar for the reasons he said were his reasons. There’s something else.”
After our money ran out in Kansas City we swung off through Kansas and Colorado and then south, and everywhere we went it got tougher. I mean, on the trains they didn’t bother you so much any more, because the big mob was gone, but in the towns they treated you like a polecat with the itch, and meant get out and stay out. That was on account of the CCC. It drew guys off the road all right, but at the same time it gave people the idea things were under control and there was no need to mooch. It was under control, if you’d go home and get certified by your family, or establish residence somehow, to prove you were entitled to help. But that was something Buck and I wouldn’t do, and Hosey couldn’t do, for reasons that kind of seemed to be there, once you got thinking about them. We applied of course, all three of us, in Denver. But when we found out the terms, having to go back home I mean, Buck and I backed off, and Hosey got almost hystericaclass="underline" “It’s nothing but a stunt to get votes, that’s what it is. A guy ain’t no hungrier home than he is any other place, and he ain’t no better. But he’s on the books there, or can get put on the books, and if he affiliates right, he’s in. But how about them that can’t—”
If he hadn’t stopped so quick I don’t think Buck or I would have paid much attention, but when he went out like some radio that blew a tube, we looked at each other. Then we began to wonder if Hosey had done time, and if that was why he couldn’t get put on any books. And then pretty soon he began hinting around that if a man had made a mistake once and learned his lesson, was that a reason to shove him out in the cold for the rest of his life? Buck made a crack about work, but Hosey had a comeback: “Work — what work? Sitting on the onion bed, keeping them bullubs company while they grow? That’s all I see them CCC bastards doing. That and wait in line for the privy. That’s a sight for you. You want to know if it’s a government job you don’t look for a flag no more but only if it’s got a goddam green-and-white privy. What a country!” He got pretty bitter and talked so mysterious we began to wonder if the Communists had got him. They were in every mission by then, telling guys where to go to hear the dope handed out. But then we began to tumble that Hosey wasn’t talking about Russia, he was talking about grub, and was nothing like as hot for the law and keeping out of trouble like a real hobo does, as he had been.
All that, though, was before Albuquerque and what happened to me there, or didn’t happen, as it turned out. We were in the Santa Fe yards, getting ready to catch out West, for Arizona and maybe even California, if we could hang on that long. The shacks had said our train would leave around nine, so we parked on a flat while the yard engines slammed it together. When we saw three work cars pulled out, we got kind of excited, because if one of them was open and had bunks we might be able to have ourselves a trip. As I was the one that had mooched the supper Buck and Hosey said keep still, that they’d go see. So they went. It was quite a way, because the head of the train was half a mile away, so I got as comfortable as I could and began looking how bright the stars are on a New Mexico night. Then a passenger train pulled in. It made the station, then pulled out slow, with diner and club car going by, and me bitter as usual against people that were eating and drinking and reading and doing things I couldn’t do. Then some sleepers went by, mostly dark, but you could see porters in there making up berths. Then a sleeper began going by that was all dark, and then the train stopped. I was paying no attention until all of a sudden, not five feet from my face, a light went on. It was in a compartment, and who had turned it on was a girl. She was blonde, not too big, and with one of those shapes you see on a magazine cover. She switched around in front of the mirror, turned and twisted, and looked at herself from every angle there was. Of course that gave me an angle on every angle there was. Then she began to undress, and everything she took off she’d flirt with herself in the mirror again, and swing her hips from side to side like a dancer does. Pretty soon she hadn’t one stitch on, and I’d hate to tell you what she did then. Then the train began to move, and she was gone.
“What do you mean it did nothing to you?”
“What I say. Nothing, Buck.”
“Well, what the hell — with a window in between—”
“With a window in between or a whole glass mountain in between, for a guy to see that girl, what she was doing, and not have any reaction to it, don’t tell me it was just a little case of what-the-hell. There’s something funny about it.”
The work cars had been locked, but when the train began to move, Hosey stayed forward, in a sand gond that he liked, and Buck dropped off to join up with me. He kept calling my name so I wouldn’t go by without his seeing me, but I was so numb from what I had seen that I almost didn’t answer him. But I woke up in time to pull him aboard, and then when we got rolling I told him what had happened and what it didn’t do to me. He figured on it a while, then said: “You’ve forgotten something, haven’t you?”
“Like what, for instance?”
“Me and my Mex. And Hosey, how he carried on.”
“And what’s that got to do with it?”
“We just haven’t got it any more, that’s all. That’s what he was holding back. That’s what riled him like it did, and got him so excited he could hardly talk. That’s why a real hobo don’t have anything to do with women. It’s because he can’t. It’s not only that he stinks and they won’t have him and he wouldn’t even have the price of a bunch of flowers if they would, it’s because even if they would have him he can’t have them. He’s gone. Well, who the hell would expect any different if he thought about it awhile? That’s a life we lead, isn’t it? Sleep in some shed or tool chest or mission or boxcar or cattle chute, cold as hell, hard as hell, dirty as hell, and get the hell out before dawn for fear some bull will chase us. Shave out of that canteen cup of yours if we got any blades to shave with — shave every day with cold water, muddy water, any kind of water there is, till our face is raw or even got blood running out of it, because if we don’t shave we can’t mooch or even bum a ride or stay on a train without we get run in — because a guy without a shave, he’s just a bum that any judge would send up after one look at him. Then mooch a breakfast, whatever we can find, a bowl of soup with grease all over it or a bowl of grease with a little soup under it or six boiled potatoes from last night’s dinner or a cup of coffee and a piece of bread or whatever anybody’ll give us. Then work the stem a while if we’re clean enough to go on the stem, and if we’re not, find some goddam jungle under a railroad bridge where we can bring a can and some water and boil up our lousy clothes and hang our stockings up to dry and knock the mud off our shoes and hope the cops haven’t got orders to run us out while we’re sitting there naked with our knees up under our chin. Then into our clothes again and out on the stem again, and if we split it up right and Hosey finds a crate and you work the butcher shops and me the kitchen stoops, maybe we come up with enough for some mulligan, and if none of our stuff was rotten, we don’t get sick that night, but if some of it was, we spend half the night in some ditch before we start in town again trying to find another place to lie down and be warm and get some sleep. Next day we decide it’s the fault of the town and hop a freight and start all over again. You think that life puts anything in your bones that would be any use to a woman, you’re crazy. Glass, my eye. If there had been no glass there, nothing but a welcome sign, it wouldn’t have done you any good to go in. Would it?”