Chapter 11

Still undetected, I scrambled along an aisle between them and put myself away in a sort of life-preserver closet. Not till I had heard the familiar throb of the propeller in motion for a long time, did I come forth.

* * * * *

During the voyage of, I believe, eight days, I loafed about, lining up for rations with the boys ... no one questioned me. My engineer's clothes that I had taken, in lieu of part of my wages, from the slop-chest of _The South Sea King_, caused the officers of the marines to think I belonged to the ship's crew ... and the ship-officers must have thought I was in some way connected with the marines ... anyhow, I was not molested, and I led a life much to my liking ... an easy-going and loafing and tale-telling one ... mixing about and talking and listening ... and reading back-number magazines.

* * * * *

One day my friend the barber called me aside:

"Say, kid, I've been delegated to tell you that you've got lice." I flamed indignant.

"That's a God-damned lie! and whoever told you so is a God-damned liar, too! I never had a louse in my life."

"Easy! Easy!... no use gittin' huffy ... if it ain't lice you got, wot you scratchin' all the time fer? Look in the crotch of yer pants and the seams of your shirt, an' see!"

I _had_ been scratching a lot ... and wondering what was wrong ... my breast was all red ... but I had explained it to myself that I was wearing a coarse woolen undershirt next my skin ... that I had picked up from the slop-chest, also.

The barber walked jauntily away, leaving me standing sullenly alone.

I sneaked into the toilet, looking to see if anyone was about. I turned my shirt back. To my horror, my loathing,--the soldier's accusation was true!... they were so thick, thanks to my ignorant neglect, that I could see them moving in battalions ... if I had been the victim of some filthy disease, I could scarcely have felt more beyond the pale, more a pariah. I had not detected them before, because I was ignorant of the thought of having them, and because their grey colour was exactly that of the inside of my woolen shirt.

I threw the shirt away, content to shiver for a few days till we had steamed to warmer weather ... I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed myself.... I had, up to now, had experience with head-lice only ... as a child, in school....

I look back with a shudder even yet to that experience. During my subsequent tramp-career I never could grow callous to vermin, as a few others that I met, did. Once I met a tramp who advised me not to bother about 'em ... and you would soon get used to 'em ... and not feel them biting at all ... but most tramps "boil up"--that is, take off their clothes, a piece at a time, and boil them--whenever they find opportunity.

* * * * *

Manila. A brief adventure there ... a bum for a few weeks, hanging around soldiers' barracks, blacking shoes for free meals ... till Provost Marshal General Bell, in an effort to clear the islands of boys who were vags and mascots of regiments, gave me and several other rovers and stowaways free transportation back to America....

A brief stop at Nagasaki to have a broken propeller shaft mended: a long Pacific voyage ... then hilly San Francisco one golden morning....

* * * * *

All these ocean days I peeled potatoes and helped to dish out rations to the lined-up soldiers at meal-times ... one slice of meat, one or two potatoes, to a tin plate ...

For long hours I listened to their lying tales and boasting ... then lied and boasted, myself....

My most unique adventure aboard the _Thomas_; making friends with a four-times-enlisted soldier named Lang, who liked army life because, he said, outside of drills and dress parade, it was lazy and easy ... and it gave him leisure to read and re-read his Shakespeare. He was a Shakespearean scholar....

"It's the best life in the world ... no worries or responsibilities about food and lodging--it spoils a fellow for any other kind of life ... the officers are always decent to a fellow who respects himself as a soldier and citizen."

Lang and I became good pals. Day after day I sat listening to him, as, to the accompaniment of the rumble and pulse of the great boat a-move, he quoted and explained Shakespeare to me, nearly always without the book.

His talk was fascinating--except when he insisted on repeating to me his own wretched rhymes ... in which he showed he had learned nothing about how to write poetry from his revered Shakespeare ... it was very bad Kiplingesque stuff ... much like my own bad verse of that period....

Once Lang recited by heart the whole of _King Lear_ to me, having me hold a copy of the play, to prove that he did not fumble a single line or miss a single word ... which he did not....

Lang was a prodigious drunkard. At Nagasaki I rescued him from the water-butt. Coming back drunk on rice wine, he had stuck his head down for a cool drink, as a horse does. And in he had tumbled, head-first. If I had not seen his legs wiggling futilely in the air, and drawn him forth, dripping, he would have drowned, as the butt was too solid for his struggles to dump, and he couldn't make a sound for help.

* * * * *

As we neared San Francisco several of the boys spoke to me of taking up a purse for my benefit. Soldiers are always generous and warm-hearted--the best men, individually, in the world.

I said no to them, that they must not take up a collection for me ... I did not really feel that way, at heart, but I liked better seeming proud and independent, American and self-reliant....

Later on, at the very dock, I acceded ... but now I was punished for my hypocrisy. The boys were so eager to be home again, they only threw together about five dollars for me ... when, if I hadn't been foolish, I might have had enough to loaf with, say a month, at San Francisco, and do a lot of reading in the Library, and in books of poetry that I might have picked up at second-hand book stores....

However, I gathered together, before I went ashore, two suits of khaki and two army blankets, and a pair of good army shoes that afterwards seemed never to wear out.

And a young chap named Simmons, who had been sergeant, had joined the army by running away from home, took me to an obscure hotel as his valet ... he wanted to "put on dog," as the Indians say.

He had parents of wealth, back in Des Moines.

I served him as his valet for the two weeks he stayed at the hotel. He had been shot through the left foot so that a tendon was severed, and he had to walk with a cane, with a foot that flopped at every step.

He gave me fifteen dollars for wages. After he had departed I rented a cheap room for a week.

* * * * *

Standing in front of a store on Kearney Street, one afternoon, dressed in my suit of soldier's khaki, looking at the display in the window, I got the cue that shaped my subsequent adventures in California....

"Poor lad," I heard one girl say to another, standing close by, "he looks so sick and thin, I'm sorry for him."

They did not notice that my soldier's uniform had cloth buttons. Simmons had made me put cloth buttons on, at the hotel,--had furnished them to me--

"I don't want you going about the other way ... you're such a nut, you might get into trouble."

Mule-drivers and others in subsidiary service were allowed khaki with cloth buttons only ... at that time ... I don't know how it goes now.

* * * * *

The girls' taking me for a sick, discharged soldier made me think. I would travel in that guise.

* * * * *

With a second-hand Shakespeare, in one volume, of wretched print, with a much-abused school-copy of Cæsar, in the Latin (of whose idiomatic Latin I have never tired), an extra suit of khaki, a razor, tooth-brush, and tooth-powder--and a cake of soap--all wrapped up in my army blankets, I set forth on my peregrinations as blanket-stiff or "bindle-bum."

Where I saw I could escape without awkward questioning, I played the convalescent ex-soldier ... I thrived. My shadow-thinness almost turned to fatness. It would have, had there been any disposition toward obesity in me....

At times I was ashamed of doing nothing ... queer spurts of American economic conscience....

Once I worked, plowing ... to drive the horses as far as a tall tree for shade, at the end of the third day, sneak back to the house ... and out to the highway with my bundle and my belongings, kicking up my heels ecstatically, glad to be freed from work.

I plumped down in a fence corner and did not stir till I had read a whole play of Shakespeare, and a snatch of my Cæsar.

Once or twice, sheriffs who were bent on arresting me because I had no visible means of support, let me go, because it awed them to find a tramp reading Shakespeare....

"It's a shame, a clever lad like you bein' a bum!"

* * * * *

Tramps, though anti-social in the larger aspects of society (as, for that matter, all special classes are, from millionaires down--or up), are more than usually companionable among themselves. I never lived and moved with a better-hearted group of people.

By "jungle" camp-fires--("the jungles," any tramp rendezvous located just outside the city limits, to be beyond police jurisdiction), in jails, on freights ... I found a feeling of sincere companionship ... a companionship that without ostentation and as a matter of course, shared the last cent the last meal ... when every cent _was_ the last cent, every meal the _last_ meal ... the rest depending on luck and Providence....

* * * * *

Tramps often travel in pairs. I picked up a "buddy" ... a short, thick-set man of young middle age, of Scandinavian descent ... so blond that his eyebrows were white in contrast with his face, which was ruddy with work in the sun. He, like me, was a "gaycat" or tramp who is not above occasional work (as the word meant then--now it means a cheap, no-account grafter). He had recently been working picking oranges ... previous to that, he had been employed in a Washington lumber camp.

* * * * *

Together we drifted along the seacoast south to San Diego ... then back again to Santa Barbara ... for no reason but just to drift. Then we sauntered over to San Bernardino--"San Berdu," as the tramps call it....

* * * * *

It struck chilly, one night. So chilly that we went into the freightyard to put up in an empty box-car till the sun of next day rose to warm the world.

We found a car. There were many other men already there, which was good; the animal heat of their bodies made the interior warmer.

The interior of the car sounded like a Scotch bagpipe a-drone ... what with snoring, breaking of wind in various ways, groaning, and muttering thickly in dreams ... the air was sickeningly thick and fetid. But to open a side door meant to let in the cold.

Softly my buddy and I drew off our shoes, putting them under our heads to serve as pillows, and also to keep them from being stolen. (Often a tramp comes along with a deft enough touch to untie a man's shoes from his feet without waking him. I've heard of its being done.) We wrapped our feet in newspapers, then. Our coats we removed, to wrap them about us ... one keeps warmer that way than by just wearing the coat....

* * * * *

The door on each side crashed back!

"Here's another nest full of 'em!"

"Come on out, boys!"

"What's the matter?" I queried.

"'stoo cold out here. We have a nice, warm calaboose waitin' fer ye!"

Grunting and grumbling, we dropped to the cinders, one after the other. A posse of deputies and citizens, had, for some dark reason, rounded us up.

One or two made a break for it, and escaped, followed by a random shot. After that, no one else cared to be chased after by a bullet.

They conducted us to what they had termed "the calaboose," a big, ramshackle, one-roomed barn-like structure. Piled in so thick that we almost had to stand up, there were so many of us--we were held there till next morning.

But we were served, then, a good breakfast, at the town's expense. The owner of the restaurant was a queer little, grey-faced, stringy fellow. He fed us all the buckwheat cakes and sausages we could hold, and won every hobo's heart, by giving all the coffee we could drink ... we held our cups with our hands about them, grateful for the warmth.

"Say, you're all right, mister!" ventured a tramp to the proprietor, as he walked by.

"Bet your God-damned life I'm all right!... because I ain't nothin' but a bum myself ... yes, an' I'm not ashamed of it, neither ... before I struck this burg an' started this "ham-and" and made it pay, I was on the road same es all o' you!"

"Kin I have more pancakes, boss, an' another cup of coffee?"

"You sure can, bo!... es I was sayin', I'm a bum myself, an' proud of it ... and I think these here damn bulls (policemen ... who were sitting nearby, waiting for us to finish) have mighty little to 'tend to, roundin' up you boys, now the orange-pickin' season's over with, an' puttin' you away like this ... why, if any one of them was half as decent as one o' you bums--"

"Sh! fer Christ's sake!" I admonished, "they're hearing you."

"That's jest what I want 'em to do ... I don't owe nothin' to no man, an' it's time someone told 'em somethin'."

* * * * *

Breakfast over, we were marched off to the courthouse. We were turned loose together in a large room. We felt so good with the sausage, cakes and coffee in our bellies, that we pushed each other about, sang, jigged, whistled.

As we had walked in, I had asked, of the cop who walked by my side--who seemed affable....

"Say, mister, after all what's the idea?"

"We had to make an example," he returned, frankly.

"I don't quite get you!"

"Last week a bunch of bums dropped off here at our town, and they almost ran the diggings for about twenty-four hours ... insulted women on the streets ... robbed ice-boxes ... even stole the clothes off the lines."

"In other words, you mean that a bunch of drunken yeggs dropped in on the town, gutted it, and then jumped out ... and we poor harmless bums are the ones that have to pay."

"--guess that's about how it is."

I passed the word along the line. My companion tramps cursed the yegg and his ways....

"They're always raisin' hell ... an' we git the blame ... when all we want is not loot, but hand-outs and a cup o' coffee ... and a piece of change now and then."

The yegg, the tiger among tramps--the criminal tramp--despises the ordinary bum and the "gaycat." And they in turn fear him for his ruthlessness and recklessness.

He joins with them at their camp-fires ... rides with them on the road ... robs his store or house, or cracks his safe, then flies on, taking the blinds or decking on top of a "flyer." The law, missing the right quarry, descends on the slower-moving, harmless bum. And often some poor "fall-guy" gets a good "frame-up" for a job he never thought of ... and the majesty of the law stands vindicated.

* * * * *

The charge against us was vagrancy. We were tried by twos.

"Come on, buddy!... you an' your pal."

My companion and I were led in before, I think, a justice of the peace. The latter was kindly-disposed toward me because I was young and looked delicate.

When I began my plea for clemency I appropriated the name, career, and antecedents of Simmons, the young soldier whose body-servant I had been, back in San Francisco. The man on the bench was impressed by my story of coming of a wealthy family ... my father was a banker, no less.

The justice waved me aside. He asked my buddy to show his hands. As the callouses on the palms gave evidence of recent hard work, he was set free along with me. We were the only two who were let off. The rest were sent up for three months each, I am told....

And, after all that, what did my buddy do but up and steal my blanket roll, with all in it--including my Cæsar and Shakespeare--and my extra soldier uniform--the first chance he got!...

* * * * *

An American who had married a Mexican girl gave me work sawing and chopping wood. I stayed with him long enough to earn a second-hand suit of clothes he owned, which was too small for him, but almost fitted me ... civilian clothes ... my soldier clothes were worn to tatters.

* * * * *

I picked up another pal. A chunky, beefy nondescript. I was meditating a jump across "the desert." The older hoboes had warned me against it, saying it was a cruel trip ... the train crews knew no compunction against ditching a fellow anywhere out in the desert, where there would be nothing but a tank of brackish water....

My new chum, on the other hand, swore, that, to one who knew the ropes, it was not so hard to make the jump on the Southern Pacific ... through Arizona and New Mexico, to El Paso. He said he would show me how to wiggle into the refrigerator box of an orange car ... on either end of the orange car is a refrigerator box, if I remember correctly ... access to which is gained through the criss-cross bars that hold up a sort of trap-door at the top. It was in the cold season, so there was now no ice inside. These trap-doors are always officially sealed, when the car is loaded. To break a seal is a penitentiary offense.

I stood off and inspected the place I was supposed to go in at. The triangular opening seemed too small for a baby to slide through. I looked my chunky pal up and down and laughed.

"--think I can't make it, eh?... well, you watch ... there's an art in this kind of thing just like there is in anything."

Inch by inch he squeezed himself in. Then he stood up inside and called to me to try ... and he would pull me the rest of the way, if I stuck. He was plump and I was skinny. It ought to be easy for me. Nevertheless, it was the hardest task I ever set myself ... I stuck half-way. My pal pulled my shirt into rags, helping me through,--I had handed my coat in, previously, or he would have ripped that to pieces, too. It seemed that all the skin went off my hips, as I shot inside with a bang. And none too soon. A "shack" (brakeman) passed over the tops of the cars at almost that very moment. We lay still. He would have handed me a merciless drubbing if he had caught me, with my nether end hanging helplessly on the outside.

* * * * *

We squatted on the floor of the refrigerator box. When we reached Yuma my pal rose to his feet.

"Ain't yer goin' ta throw yer feet fer a hand-out?" he asked me.

"No, I'm going to stick in here till I reach El Paso, if I can."

"What's the fun bein' a bum, if you're goin' ter punish yerself like that!"

"I want to find a country where there's growing green things, as soon as I can."

"So long, then."

"So long.. don't you think you'd better stick till we reach Tuscon? Some of the boys told me the 'bulls' (officers) here have been 'horstile' (had it in for the tramp fraternity) ... ever since a yegg bumped off a deputy, a while back."

"Naw, I'll take my chances."

As I rode on, alone, I stood up and took in the scenery like a tourist ... there danced away, and gathered in, the shimmering, sun-flooded desert ... an endless flat expanse of silver sage and sentinel cactus. I saw bleached bones and a side-cast skull with whitened horns, poking up into the sky ... I saw a sick steer straggling alone, exactly like some melodramatic painting of Western life ... the kind we see hanging for sale in second-rate art stores.

* * * * *

I stuck till Tuscon was reached. There I was all in for lack of food and water....

A woman gave me a good "set-down" at her kitchen table. I was as hungry for something to read as I was for something to eat. When she walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone for a moment, I caught sight of a compact little Bible that lay on the leaf of her sewing machine. Two steps, and I had it stowed in my hip pocket, and was back innocently eating ... the taking of the Bible was providential. I believe that it served as the main instrument, later on, in saving me from ten years in the penitentiary.

* * * * *

I was glad enough to hop to the cinders at El Paso. But El Paso at that time was "unhealthy" for hoboes. They were holding twenty or thirty of us in the city jail, and mysterious word had gone down the line in all directions, that quick telegraph by word-of-mouth that tramps use among themselves, to avoid the town--that it was "horstile."...

* * * * *

Again rolling miles of arid country. But this time, like a soldier on a long march, I was prepared: I had begged, from door to door, enough "hand-outs" to last a week ... throwing away most of the bread ... keeping the cold meats and the pie and cake. I sat in my open box-car, on a box that I had flung in with me, reading my Bible and eating my "hand-outs" and a millionaire had nothing on me for enjoyment.

I was half-way to San Antonio when I fell in with as jolly a bunch of bums as I ever hope to see in this world ... just outside a little town, in the "jungles."

These tramps were gathered together on a definite plan, and I was invited to join them in it: the plan was, to go, _en masse_, from town to town, and systematically exploit it; one day one man would go to the butcher shops, the next, another man would take them, and the first would, let's say, beg at the baker's ... and each day a different man would take a different section among the houses. Then all the food so procured would be put together and shared in common.

As usual, there was among them an individual who held them together--the originator of the idea. He was a fat, ruddy-faced alcoholic ex-cook, who had never held a job for long because he loved whiskey so much.

Besides being the presiding genius of the gang, he also did all the cooking. He loved to cook. Each day he jumbled all the mixable portions of the food together, and, in a big tin wash-boiler which he had rescued from "the dump" outside of town, he stewed up quite a palatable mess which we called "slum" or "slumgullion," or, more profanely, "son-of-a-b----."

For plates we used old tomato cans hammered out flat ... for knives and forks, our fingers, pocket-knives, and chips of wood.

It was a happy life.

One afternoon mysteriously our leader and cook disappeared--with a broad grin on his face. Soon he returned, rolling a whole barrel of beer which he had stolen during the night from the back of a saloon ... and had hidden it nearby in the bushes till it was time to bring it forth....

We held a roaring party, and had several fights. ("Slopping up" is what the tramps call a drinking jamboree.) This was the first time I got drunk in my life. It took very little to set me off ... I burned a big hole in my coat. I woke lying in the mud near the willows ... and with a black eye ... a fellow tramp affectionately showed me his finger that I had bitten severely ... for a day we had bad nerves, and lay about grumbling....

We kept quite clean. The tramp is as clean as his life permits him to be ... usually ... the myth about his dirtiness is another of the myths of the newspaper and magazine world ... though I have seen ones who were extraordinarily filthy....

We "boiled up" regularly ... and hung our shirts and other articles of apparel on the near-by willows to dry....

After about ten days of scientific exploitation of them, the "natives" of the town on the verge of which we were encamping, began to evidence signs of restlessness.

So we moved on to another town by means of a local freight.