Out On The Road:
By Christopher Clagg
Sometimes, out on the road, it can get to where you don't even want to think. I never thought I'd hear myself say that. But it's true. Sometimes especially at night, my own thoughts haunt me.
Most of the time I think that's why it all happened, why it "had" to happen. But then I had no more choice in being there, than *They* did.
Sometimes, especially at night, when all the thoughts slip
away from me, there is a semblance of peace that comes down over my mind. I am grateful
for the respite. And that is when it is easy to see all the rest of the world, before I
had ever seen *Them*. It is easy to fall into the ebb and flow of that peace, that quiet
inside the mind, if only for a little while. To forget for a small time that there is
anything else.
* * *
Coming across the train tracks I can hear the whistle blowing in the distance. It's late and dark and easy to see the firelights of campfires huddled in irregular clusters in the open spaces just off the gravel edge of the rail slates. I wander into one, where an old black man and a dog look like they could use a handout from me, more than I from them. But the old man offers me dinner just the same. I smile and say thanks from the unexpectedness of it.
"I've got nothing to pay you back with." I say.
He laughs. "Don't matter none," he says and sweeps an arm in an offer of a seat in the dirt, "long time ago someone offered me a bite and I took it. I'm offering to you now, and one of these days you'll offer it to someone else. It works like that."
I laugh for what feels like the first time in months and sit down across from the fire. It is warm and reminds me of how cold some nights can get out in the open. It's a comfort to share the fire and the food and the talk that a fellow human being can bring into an empty night. For the second time tonight I can just move through time without thinking of it, and I am grateful for that.
"Heading east?" the old man asks, but I just look at him. Maybe the exhaustion in my face shows.
"Hadn't thought much about it one way or another." I say, and he grins as if there is something funny in that.
"Been there," and then he laughs outright. "Most of the time as a matter-of-fact. Go this way or that? Just as well toss a coin. But it's the stomache mostly though. Stay in a place 'til I get run out, then jump the nearest train heading where ever it's headed. Somewhere. Nowhere. Don't matter. Want some tea?"
The cup is tin, like something out of an old Steinbeck novel. Tea and biscuits. Black biscuits made of flour and water and burned on a pan over an open fire. The tea is hot and weak and the bisquits a mouthful of flour that almost have no taste at all. But it is good. And the company good.
"Don't mean to pry, only reason I'm asking at all is 'cause there's a slaughter house special coming through after midnight to Pittsburgh and Philly. That's a cattle car if you're new to this kind of life. It don't look like you got the rails in your blood yet."
It makes me laugh, the way he talks, with the easy manner and the wonder in his voice at the same time. "I'm fine for now, thanks." I manage to get out without either spilling the tea or choking on the biscuit.
For a while we don't talk. We just listen to the sounds the
world makes at night when no one is watching, and gaze at the stars. Out here it seems
there are no more *Them*, for a little while at least there is only the stars and the
sounds. It has been forever since I just ate and laughed and laid back on the ground and
counted the stars in the sky just to count them. Too long... it feels sometimes.
* * *
I must have fallen asleep, because it is after 4:00 A.M. when the old man wakes me.
"Rail guards." He whispers, gathering up the small pile of his lifes' meager belongings in one arm. I stand too quick and unsteady, it takes a moment to shake off the sleep. I pick up my things in the dark while the old man kicks dirt over the fire, then slips into the underbrush and is gone. I follow, my arm in front of my face. Trying to ward off the scratch of the sharp edged branches.
"They'll find the fire," he says, his voice low as he pushes forward. "They'll know someone was here, but they won't know how many. And they won't know how long ago 'cept it was tonight sometime. But they won't care none 'bout that. All they care about is that we don't jump the train that's coming up from Caitland. Don't matter the town 'tho, rail guards all the same any stretch anywhere in the country. But we'll jump her anyway. Just not right now, and not right here."
There is a small laugh in his voice as he says it. As he moves through the bush like he's spent the better part of his life in woods like these. And maybe he has.
I grip the handle of my bag and follow. Trying not to make too much noise. Trying to keep up with the old man that is out distancing me with no problem at all. I want to laugh. But I just kept pushing through the bush after him.
Dawn comes and goes before I hear the whistle again, five miles back and down from where we pushed through the woods to a creek and bridge that ran across it, and the rails that ran over the bridge.
"We'll catch her here," and then he grins. "Here pooch..."
He squats in the dirt, feeding small bits of black biscuit to his dog.
Raising a hand to his eyes to ward off the light he looks at me, still standing against the trees.
"Rail guards always check where you'd expect them to. Where it's easy. And never where guys like you and me have to be. Like here. Too much work for them, I guess."
I light a cigarette and wait with him. Wait for the sound of the whistle to die out behind us and make the turn, where ever it was going to make that turn, around and down and onto the bridge.
"Wanna smoke?" I ask him, but he just laughs back at me.
"Love to Sonny boy, 'cept black lungs got most of me, and I can't bear to part with any more of me, so I don't. But thanks anyway for asking."
I nod back and draw on the smoke distractedly. Something else has most of me. But it isn't smoking. Almost an hour passes. Standing there propped against the trees, my legs get tired.
"Better rest." He says and then glances away again. Feeding his dog and listening. Listening to the rush of wind and the heat that almost sizzles in the baking morning air. Afterwards he and the dog traipse up into the bushes for a small time to relieve themselves and then they come back down. And then the whistle blows. It is loud and hot and almost on top of us.
"Right on schedule. Get down now."
So we squat in the dirt and watch the train come.
It comes through the turn and out onto the bridge and doesn't slow down until it hits the turn on the other side where the trees melt back against the stone face of a hill.
Then it slows to about five miles an hour. The engine with the guards riding shotgun are first by, then box cars after that. And finally flat bed cars, rusting and withered in the spring sun.
The old man doesn't move until the engine clears the turn on the other side and there are only half a dozen cars left to finish crossing and the it will be gone. That is when he jumps up and runs.
"Come on!" he hollers and I run after him, like I haven't run since I was ten years old.
There is six feet of open space between the edge of the dirt, where it dips down toward the creek and the stanchions that the bridge and the rails that run over it run on. Six feet of open space that hangs in my throat like a man asking for a drink of water in the desert. Like something that is never going to happen.
But it does, just the same.
The grade is slightly declined. Not enough to lose your footing, but enough to be thankful it is going down instead of up. That old man runs. Like I've never seen old men or even kids' run in my life. Full of grace and sureness and certainty. And just before the edge where the ground breaks away, he jumps.
One arm full of a rolled up blanket, extra shirt, and pants. The other with his dog tucked up under his arm.
He jumps.
It was something to see. That graceful arc into silence with a
twinkle of sunlight dancing in the corners of his eyes. Out into empty space. Right down
on top of the next to the last flatbed car. Without thinking I jumped.
* * *
For a long time we simply lay on our backs with the sun blinding us as the train moves on. Neither one of us talk. I keep thinking of that jump and shaking my head to myself, but I don't say anything and after awhile the sun and clouds sort of bake the unbelievability of it all right out of me.
After awhile just the steady thump of the wheels on the rails
lulls me into a quiet inside myself. Just the sun and the rails and the quiet that lays
under those sounds.
* * *
"There was bears' in those woods." He says later, and I must look like I think he is crazy because he just laughs at me. "Saw the tracks right where we jumped," and he grins ear to ear, maybe just to see if I'll change colors at the mention of animals in the woods. "Hazards o' the profession." He laughs in the heat of the day that pours down on us. "But that's alright sonny, bears don't jump." He cackles like a old hen then, and I laugh at having my leg pulled, at the innocent and small humor that still exists in the world. When for a very very long time, I haven't remembered there were things like that to appreciate. We laugh all the way to Plattsburgh. Where the rails feed into the factories , where the blue skies turns brown from the smoke of them. Where the rails all run one into another and they all run straight into the train yards. Where we get off when night comes up.
The yards are cold. With dozens of engines pinging their way down the scales where after enough of the heat slips away from them they will go silent. Dozens and dozens of trains. And out of the smoke and the soot over a hundred men come. Mostly loaders and unloaders. Greased men in dungarees that go up and down the tracks form car to car, pulling out the crates and the pallets, the travel steamer trunks and boxes wrapped in tape and twine and rope that has been sent up from Caitland on the way to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Or a hundred other places west or east or north or south.
We roll off the back of the flatbeds as soon as dark comes down. The old man and his dog move as if they were afterthoughts that the loaders haven't thought of yet. I come behind as best I can, my skin is burned and tight across the back of my legs and arms and neck. I can feel the skin behind my knees tear when I hit the ground. I go down in a pile of woodchips and grease and dirt. Pulling myself to my feet and stand, slow at first with the sharp stab of the burn reminding me of each movement I make. The old man comes and stands over me, gives me a hand and helps me to my feet.
"You jump good, but only rookies burn. You'll remember
this next time you jump a train. He grins. "Come on." He puts an arm under mine
and leads me across the yard. The loaders don't say anything. Just kept moving crates and
pallets, glancing up for only a moment or two as we pass. Beyond the yards toward the city
lights.
* * *
We spend the night in a street village of sorts just off a factory down by the river. Trash cans burn, smelling of oil soaked cloth and wood. The trash cans serve as hearths and cook fires. Whatever it is these poor souls scraped together to cook.
As young man I'd often thought it all very romantic. The open road. All very Arlo Guthrie-ish to hitch a train. To ride the rails and see the country, pick cotton and strum a guitar out in the open sunlight with the smell of wheat on the air. And the sound of old black ballads in the back of my mind. To sling that guitar across my back and feel like some younger rendition of Elvis Presley or James Dean. To sleep in Hobo villages and cook marshmallows or hotdogs over open fires. To talk about rail guards the way that they talked about prison guards in all the old movies, drink a soda or maybe even a beer and settle into sleep out under the open stars.
But life isn't a movie, is it? Or we'd all buy tickets and have it all turn out just fine. Life wasn't easy, and if I hadn't learned that particular lesson in the last eighteen months I'd been running and searching, then I hadn't learned anything at all. This place isn't romantic, it is simply a pity. Something that you see every once in awhile in your life that makes you want to cry.
It is desolate. Old men and young men huddle against concrete walls with defeated looks pressed into their faces. Men and women. Even children running through the trash littered stretches that serve as walk-ways between the cardboard lean-to's where people sit and eat and sleep.
It is cold. Nobody I can see is wearing enough to ward off this kind of cold.
"People die here," he says , and he watches my face when he says it , "same as anywhere else, same as Beverly Hills. Only we lose a lot more." He doesn' t smile when he says it.
"Why'd you come here?" I ask him. He just nods.
"Nobody wants to die on the the road. Nobody, doesn't matter who they are, wants to die alone. I come for the company. For the eats and the kinship. To have a drink of hard liquor once in awhile and say hello to old friends. And goodbye to old friends. Nobody knows when it's going to be their turn."
We sleep with Annie, she has extra blankets and runs a sort of Mission in the middle of the litter of lean-to's. She feeda us. Soup that is more water than it is anything else. But it is something in the stomache, and in a place like this, that is one small fact to be grateful for indeed.
I sleep uneasily. And for the first time in a very very long
time that uneasiness comes from something other than my own life and the negatives.
* * *
"Morgan, you old freeloader, come sit down and take a load off."
It was morning and the old man had roused me, grinned as he stood over me and I had shaded my arm over my eyes just to see him. "Going fishing." is all he said. So with homemade reels we'd tramped down to the edge of the river to find a place where there 'might-still-be-some-fish-maybe-or -whatever-else' as he put it. Pooch trailed behind us, all spindly legs and snout and ears twitching. And that' s when the old oriental man in the Red cap had greeted us.
The old man nods back at Redcap and the two shake hands and hug like long-lost brothers who've been separated since birth.
"Henry, you old bugger. You still here?" And the two hold each other at arms length and regard the other. For a moment I'm not sure if they'll laugh or cry. They do both.
"Lots of places in the world to be, Morgan, but the best place is with friends." Morgan nods. "Who's your friend?" Redcap points to me.
"Tom, Tom Veil." I say and offer my hand.
"Good to meet you." And he smiles.
Children run, dirty faced and barely dressed up and down the rivers edge while a mile away the factory pumps black silt out over the riverbanks. Those same children splash in the greasy water with sores on their arms and legs while ancient twenty year old mothers watch. And I wonder why the world has to be this way.
I know its cliche to say this, to wonder this, but sometimes so much of life seems a cliche rather than cleverly written stories that never turn out the way you expect them to.
I wonder if the men, and the women that work in those factories, the people that own those factories would build their nice high-rise condos a mile down the rivers edge from the smokestacks? Lay out their sun chairs and umbrellas up and down this dirty beach? Would they dine on fillet of Sole and Mercury? Wear their Calvin Kline swim wear and splash in the greasy waters?
But those with choices don't. But not everyone has choices.
* * *
We fish most of the day. With Henry catching half a dozen brown fish that I don't recognize. Morgan and I help him clean them. At sunset we come back up to the lean-to's and the whole village, some sixty-odd people all turn out for a massive cookout with everyone pitching in. There was the fish. Ours and a half a dozen other fishermans' catches that ranged from fish to crayfish. Some bring old bread that is already hard and starting to turn, there are dented cans of hash and soup that I don't ask how they had come by.
Blondie is a girl without a name, a young waif with straw colored hair, that doesn't speak, and so they simply called her blondie. Not having a name is not all that uncommon in a place like this. She might have been a model in another life. In this one she was a malnourished thin girl in a tattered and worn yellow summer dress that might have also once been something else, something more. She doesn't speak, and those that speak to her speak in whispers. She avoids the men, moving in wide circles that finally dwindle down, almost as if from some natural law rather than any rational decision to do so. Finally seating herself next to the children.
She sits with them, twice as old as any of them, but like them in many ways. She touches their hands and they hold onto her fingers. But she doesn't smile, not even once. I wonder if she feels anything. But I don't know.
It might have been drugs, or booze, or rape or a lot of other things. Whatever it was that had made her like this. But those are pat-answers, aren't they? Too quick and easy on the tongue, quick reasons for anything. With little or no reality in them. Answers like those don't answer anything, they just make it easy for the rest of us to turn away.
Maybe she had been ignored, or abandoned, maybe? Maybe she wasn't very smart, and no one had ever taken the time to try and change that? Maybe she was plenty smart, except she had her heart broken? And what is left of anyone when they don't have a heart anymore? Maybe she'd been one of these children, like the children around her now? And this was all she had ever known, ever would know? I'm not sure.
I could ask, perhaps I should ask, but I don't. I don't think its my place to invade these peoples privacy. It isn't my place to ask them things they might not want asked. Or offer answers that might not be answers to anyone except myself. All I know is that it breaks my heart to look at her. Her wheat colored hair. And her eyes that are dull and don't reflect any light back at all.
I eat with them, share their meal, and talk. Many people talk. They talk about the day, about the heat and the wind that blows off the river that doesn't offer any sort of comfort. They talk about the night and the cold. About eating, and making love and listening to music. About their children and the people that have died and those that have gone away and never come back. They talk long and hard, as if they need to talk. As if they need to get it all out of them, out into the air and to someone else's ears. Because it is important. And because they need to share it. They talk long into the night, and then they fall asleep.
I stand at the waters edge and smoke a cigarette and remember what Morgan had said about the black lung. About how it had too much of him already and how he didn't want to give up anymore of himself. I stand with my back to a bridge piling and smoke and think of that. I think about the train yards and the rail guards and the villages that dot the countryside in cities like this, or even in cities unlike this. Except that there are people like this everywhere. People that I had never met until yesterday that shared their food and their blankets and everything that they had.
I have never been a religious man. It is hard for me to have hope when I don't see very much of it. But if there is a God, then I hope that there is a place for kind people like these poor souls to go to when all of it is done and the world passes away.
I light another cigarette, and the flame flares in the
darkness for a moment. I stand in the darkness by the water with my thoughts and the cold.
Until morning comes.
* * *
They come in the morning. Twenty-odd cars with sirens and lights and the rain in the early morning. Men in blue step out. And they carry sticks.
They move like farmers in a field, moving forward. They cut down everything that stands in front of them as they move. They beat in the lean-to's and scatter thin bodies out of paper blankets as vacantly as having a cup of coffee in the morning, I scream at them. I try to stop them until I am knocked down with their night sticks. I want to hate them . But it isn't that easy. This isn't Police Brutality. Once I am down they move on. It is Police indifference. They do their job and nothing more.
They scatter the people but do not beat them. They simply smash in the cardboard lean-to's and spill the trash cans out onto the ground. Stamping the fires out with their booted feet.
I want to hate them.
But they aren't easy to hate. There isn't any cliche evil that I can distinguish in their eyes. No hate settles into their faces like quick masks so that I can easily hate them. They move over the ground and they move quickly, silently over the village of cardboard lean-to's and scattered blankets. Their faces and eyes are dull and as emotionless as the young girl Blondies'. They don't say a word. When they are done they get back into their cars and go away.
I sit on the concrete nursing my arms from the bruises and cry. I don't have any broken bones. And they haven't beaten my skull in, or laughed and revelled in their destruction.
They simply did it.
It wasn't some easy cliche scene out of a movie designed to play on a persons emotions against another. It wasn't black and white. It wasn't simple.
They hadn't felt anything at all. And that is why I cry.
* * *
"It happens." Morgan says. I watch his face, his eyes. He says it like saying that it rains. Maybe he means it in the same way. Around us people collect the scattered pieces of their belongings and tie them into bundles with small tattered fragments of string. They pack in the early morning light. In the silence that is the only sound that still hangs in the air.
"So what happens now?" I ask him.
"They move. We move. Another place until it happens again, and then we move again."
"Is anyone hurt?" I ask and try to stand, but can't get my feet under me right. I sit back down hard on the concrete and look at the silhouette of him against the sky.
"You are. A woman that died last night of the cold. But they didn't beat her."
"You can let them do this to you?"
He almost smiles at me then, perhaps my ignorance, my naivete at the way his world works.
"County Ordinance says ninety days, and after that we'll have to move again."
I can't believe this, I fight back with all the things I can think of, which isn't very much I'm afraid.
"You can live like this? Starving, dying, getting your things scattered across the dirt and simply pack up and move to some other place like this has never happened? Like they won't come and do it again. To wait for them to come and do the same thing to you?"
"We've got no hope." He says softly. So softly that I have to strain to hear him, his voice was is low. "Look around you," he gestures with a sweep of his arms. "Sure there are druggies here, a few petty thieves and some wino's who are too scared to cra wl out of a bottle long enough to stare into the face of a good day. But the rest of us? We're just people that fell through the cracks in the world. Husbands who lost their wives and women that have lost their loves. We've lost our hope, our purpose, ou r meaning. We lost whatever it was that was in the world that was the world for us."
He sighs and puts a hand on my shoulder.
"We're not living," and he pulls his mouth down into a saddened frown. "We're just biding time. Waiting for it all to wind down and end."
He looks me in the eyes. "Me too." He says.
* * *
I don't say anything after that.
I just sit in the sun and hold my arms against my chest and watch as the people around me tie their lives into small paper wrapped bundles and walk slowly away.
My arms hurt, but that fades after a time. Then I stan and slowly get my bag from where it had been scattered with everything else. I find Annie and give her my camera.
"Pawn it," I tell her. "It should bring you something. Buy some food, maybe some blankets." She nods when I give it to her but says nothing. But I understand. I nodded back.
Then she turns and walks away. And some of the children walk
with her, and Blondie, holding hands with the children. With their bundles tucked up
underneath their arms.
* * *
Morgan is down by the river. He stands with Henry Redcap and they talk quietly.
"I don't have anything I can give you." I tell him, but he just shakes his head.
"Don't matter," and he smiles "the company' has been fine."
I shake his hand and Henrys'
"You going?" I ask.
"Yea." He says and I nod back.
"Going east?" He asks me, and then I smile. For what seems the first time in a very very long time.
"Hadn't really thought about it." I say.
But I turn and start east anyway. Down along the river,
towards the edge of the city. It is 10:00 a.m. in the morning. I hear a train whistle
blowing from the yards. But I keep on walking.
* * *
~ The End ~
//cc-5-7-96
Christopher Clagg
claggc@bellsouth.net