t. He's short-handed around here,  needs you pretty  bad. Don't
ever  let  him  back you down. I think he was born tough, and just naturally
likes to see everything tough."
     "New pickers?" He hollered out about fifty feet before he got to us. He
was  holding the  top wire of  a fence,  spraddling it, and he was sort of a
chunky built,  low-set man. You could  tell he had  to grunt and  stretch to
make it over the fence. "New hands?"
     The  mother said,  "Well, I  ain't so new  no more." She smiled  at the
boss, then she looked down at the deep dirt.
     "I mean you're new around here, ain't you?" He was  yanking at his belt
trying  to poke  his  two or three shirts down inside  his pants. Everything
about him seemed to be greasy, and bagging down to the ground.
     "New here," the mother said.  Everybody else was standing there waiting
for him or the  belt, one or the other, to come out winner. "Just blowed  in
on a bad tire."
     "Know yer Exter Selecks pretty well?"
     "We don't fool around with no thin' but the very best," I told him.
     "Well, far's that goes, I hope I don't ketch you foolin' around in this
orchard when the order comes in."
     "Order comes where?" the girl asked him.
     "Cann'ry order. Ain't come yet. Due today.  Very latest tomorrow. Well,
get  your  stuff all unpacked over yonder under those trees." He was looking
at  the old  car steaming  at  the  mouth. Then he turned around and started
walking away.
     I took a couple of steps behind him and said, "Say, boss, I don't think
these people quite understand all of this order business.  If we're goin' to
even eat, we gotta get some  work 'cause we ain't got  no money. Cain't wait
even another day."
     He stopped and turned around to me, and told  me, "Listen, I don't know
who you are, but you drive in here with a bunch of pickers.  You wanta work,
don't you?" He waved his hands around in the air so much that  he worked his
shirt out from under his belt again and fought with his  britches to try  to
keep them from falling down. "You don't act like you ever picked  an apricot
before! Or did you?" He eyed me up and down the front.
     "No, I never picked an apricot before, except to eat. I play  music for
a livin'. I  don't have to pick your dam apricots  for my livin'! Just these
other people.  That's their only way of eatin'! They've got a  busted  tire,
mister. This is far as they can get. No work, no eat!" I told him.
     "Come on down. Sign up."
     "Sign up? Where?" I asked him.
     "Store. Can't  you see that fillin<sup>'</sup>  station, big as it  is?
And store?" He was pointing ahead of himself and walking away.
     I took several steps alongside of him and then told him,  "I'm not with
these people, I cain't sign up for them. What is it we got to sign?"
     "Register  book," he told me. Then he stopped real quick  and asked me,
"You ain't with these folks? How come?" He  was giving  me  the real combing
down with his eyes. "How come you so interested in my business?"
     "I was just hitchin'. These people let me ride. I sing in saloons for a
livin'," I told him.
     "I guess I won't  need  you to work  for  me, then.  You can take  your
ukelelaydeehoo and beat it."
     "Well, I ain't in no awful big rush," I said to the man.  "I thought  I
might hang around till they get their tire fixed." Then  I turned around and
hollered to the people, "Say! Somebody's  got to come down to th' store  an'
sign some-thin'!"
     "Sign which?" I heard somebody say.
     "Register up! Sign somethin' or other!" I told them.
     "You better go, honey," I heard the old man say to the young girl. "You
got good eyes.  See  better'n  me. An' you  write  a  better hand  than  yer
brother's."
     So  the girl and me walked  along kicking  clods  apart  in  under  the
apricot trees. She was trying to fix her hair back over her ear some way and
saying, "I've signed a  lot of these  register books. Just to  keep track of
who's working, and how much you've  got coming, and all how  many's in  your
family and stuff like that. You can sign up, too."
     " 'Fraid I won't," I told her.
     "Not going to work?" she asked me.
     "Not pickin' apercots."
     "I was just thinking how much fun we'd have picking together.  We'd get
a lot more picked, even if you didn't pick a single apricot."
     "Hows that? Now?"
     "You play your guitar  and sing for us  out  in the  orchard, and we'll
work just that much easier and better. See, mister singin' man?"
     "You  know, you're  an awful, awful smart girl. You know what I'm gonna
do?"
     "What?"
     "I'm gonna get  you a real good  job. Best  job in th'  whole state  of
California!"
     "Movie star?"
     "Hell, no. Gov'nor!"
     "Me be gov'nor?"
     "We can tell everybody that you're gonna win this war quick!"
     "Lady be gov'nor, hey?"
     'Tell ever'body  you're gonna  take all th'  pretty red  an' green neon
signs an' all th' pretty  lit-up nickel phonographs out of th' road  houses,
an' cat houses, an' joints, an' put  'em around in  th' factories an' in th'
shops an' in th<sup>'</sup> fields!"
     "What's a cat house?"
     "Skip it."
     "Home for little cats?"
     "Some  of  'em  ain't  so  little.  Anyway,  then,  instead  of drawin'
ever'body from out on th' job down  to  th' saloon, see, it'd draw ever'body
from  th'  saloon out on to th' job.  An' we'd all have  such  a  good  time
workin' that we'd work 'bout three times harder."
     ''And win the war! Here's the sign-'em-up store,'' she said, and I held
her hand till she could jump across a puddle of oil  on  the ground close to
the porch.  We slammed in through an old screen door.  "So dark  in  here  I
won't be able to make  out where to sign my  name. Say, mister  boss man, do
you hang around this old dark hole much of your time?" she asked the owner.
     "How much of my time I spend inside my  own place of business is my own
affair, little lady.  Here. I suppose you can at least  write your name!" He
growled and his belly ached because he  was such an old growler.  "Sign  th'
name of every member of your family an' put a cross  by th'  ones that'll be
pickin'. Right down this list here."
     I watched her write the names of all four members of her family. "Four.
Used to be eight," she told herself almost, I guessed, by force of habit.
     "Who owns your car an<sup>'</sup> trailer?<sup>'</sup>' the storekeeper
asked her.
     She looked up at him. "My father. Why?"
     "Be needin' some things to cook an' eat, won't  you?" He  glanced  over
his specks at her.
     "Yes, I guess so."
     "Take this  security note down to your old man. Tell `im to sign it an'
bring it back an' you're good  for  twenty-five dollars worth of credit here
at th' store. Just a little piece of paper we all sign."
     I'd been walking  around over the store,  taking  a look  at  the price
tags. "Eagle Milk, two bits a can?" I asked him. "Goshamighty, never did see
Eagle Milk cost more'n eighteen cents, even in all of th' Texas an' Oklahoma
oil booms!''
     "If you don't want it, leave it on th' shelf!" He cut  his eyes over at
me.
     She let the pencil  drop. "Things are so awful high. I just don't quite
hardly see how we can even afford to eat  anything." She took me by the hand
and looked like she was sorry the boss had heard her.
     "Me, I wouldn't sign  th' dam thing if I starved plum to death," I said
to her. "But you folks, 'course, there's your whole family; bad tire;  sorta
stuck here."

     The girl carried the slip back to her folks and  we had  to shake hands
with  twenty-five or thirty other people around in the bunch before we got a
chance to  talk  about the  credit  business.  Gray-looking  clothes and old
floppy  sacks  and rags  everywhere. Broke-down cars and homemade  trailers.
People  smiled  and pointed to their own, bragging,  "Built 'er jist like  I
wanted 'er, my own way." "Yes sir, took me right onto six months of hard old
pinchin' an' savin' ta git th' money ta throw this'n together." "Our'n looks
like  th' Los  Angeles  junk heap headin' down th' highways, but them  slick
purty cars  duck  off ta  one  side  ta let  us  pass!" We'd all  laugh when
somebody told a  good one on their jaloppy or trailer. "Mine wants ta run so
fast I gotta keep it loaded fulla rocks ta keep it from jist takin' off like
a big bird!"
     "I just don't know. I just don't know," the old man was saying, rubbing
his hand  around over his face at the  same time.  "Mama, what do you think,
what you got to say about this here Goddem credit?" He looked around for his
wife, but she wasn't in the crowd. Then  he  asked his boy, "I dam me, if  I
know,  what do  you think?  Run a  big risk a-losin th'  whole business." He
looked at  the rest  of his family. "You helped  me, you helped me build th'
whole works. You got somethin' to say in  th' way things is  got an' got rid
of." Then  he asked another man there, "Hay, mister, do you know a dam thing
about this dam infernal credit slip?"
     "Do I know?"  A  tall gangling man thumbed his  overhall suspenders and
told the old man, "See this slip of mine? Just exactly like  yours. I advise
you not sign nothin' for nobody."
     "Much ablige," the old man said. "I wish to hell an' little  santypedes
I could find my wife! Runs  off  'n' hides. Cain't  find 'er high  ner  low!
Lory! Lorrry!  Where'n th'  hell are you hidin' at?" He was  calling through
his hands.
     "Go ahead and sign that thing, Pa." His  wife  was laying stretched out
on  an  old slice of  gray  canvas,  looking  up  through  the  limbs  of  a
wild-looking tree  of some  kind,  talking between the  leaves, right on out
into the open bright sky. "You know you'll sign it, anyhow. You'll think  of
ten thousand mean  things to say about the store man. You'll  think of  five
thousand things  wrong  with this orchard here.  You'll say  there's  a blue
jillion  things wrong with how th' country's run; but you'll sign it. You'll
cuss old mister Hitler  an' Mussolini and Kaiser Bill an' Father Coffin; an'
then you'll  think  about th'  soldiers fightin' Hitler, an' you'll say  you
just got to pick th' fruit for 'em; an' you'll  think  about yer  own little
hungry youngins, an' you'll sign it. ... If  it said bring your left eye an'
yer right arm down to that old store when  you  went to buy somethin', you'd
sign it I know what's  in back of that old head of your'n. Th' whole world's
fightin' to keep from bein' hungry. Yore own little family's standin' around
with their bellies crawlin'. Hand my man an endelible pencil, somebody. He's
goin' to write his name on a slip. Gonna lose all we got here. He's thinkin'
'bout all of them soldiers out yonder shootin' an' he's gonna write his name
down on a Comp'ny Credit slip. ..."
     The  sun  went down on everybody.  You could  hear the  jingle  of  the
four-for-a-nickel knives  and forks. "Smells like ever'body's a-eatin' 'bout
th' same supper 'roun' here," the father was saying.
     "Sow bosom  and  beans!"  The  girl  laughed  at my  elbow and her hair
touched my face when she took the tin plates away.  "But  when you've worked
real hard and are good and hungry, it smells good, don't it?"
     A lady from a car across from our trailer walked over with a tin bucket
in each hand and said, "I brung ye these rag buckits, bugs 'n' skeeters, `n'
all  kindsa bitin', stingin', 'n' jist arguin' vermits is a gonna make a big
land rush  f'r this place quick's we light these lanterns. Ye  jist strike a
match to these here rags, see, an' push 'em right back  down inta th' buckit
real tight, an' leave 'em smolder along. Makes a cloud of smoke almost's bad
as them fellers that usta sling tear gas at us 'fore th' war  come along an'
we quit our strikin'."
     "I'm one that's shore  glad we  quit that strikin'," the mother said, "
'cause  just  ain't right  for one  buncha people to up  an' quit  work, an'
another bunch to drive  down an' shoot you full of that old  tear gas, crops
of  all  kinds a-goin' to waste all  around.  That's a right  friendly lady,
ain't  she?  Just walked  off 'fore any of us had a chance to thank her  for
them buckets.''
     Her daughter eased around in the dark and  I felt her take a  good warm
seat beside me  on the beer case, and I  took her by the hand and said, "Yep
siree, you've got an awful honest hard-workin' set of hands on you."
     She squeezed mine a little and said,  "Could I, do you think, learn how
to play the guitar?''
     "If ya try, ya would. Want ta take lessons? Shucks, I could show ya th'
easy part in a little o' no time."
     "You two quit'cher flirtin'  an'  sing us  a  song. Happ'n  ta know th'
Talkin' Blues?"
     "I'll teach ya after th' dishes  an' stuffs all put away."  I was  just
catching  part of what  the  person talking was  saying,  "Huh? Th'  Talkin'
Blues? I know a few verses."
     "While you're  doing your Talking Blues,"  the girl  told me, "I'll try
not to make any noise, but I've just got to put these dishes back into their
boxes."
     "Okay," I said, then started playing and talking:

     If you wanta get to heaven,
     Let me tell you what to do,
     Just grease your feet in a mutton stew,
     Just slide out of the devil's hand
     And ooze over into the Promised Land!
     Take it easy. An' go greasy.

     Down in the hen house on my knees
     I thought I heard a chicken sneeze;
     Nothin' but a rooster a-sayin' his prayers,
     An' givin' out thanks fer th' hens upstairs.
     Rooster preachin'. Hens a-singin'.
     Little young chickens jest a-hopin'.

     Now I been here an' I been there,
     Rambled aroun' most everywhere,
     Purtiest little gal that I ever did see
     A-walkin' up an' down by th' side of me.
     Mouth wide open. Catchin' flies.
     Knows I'm crazy.

     Everybody  would snigger and laugh between verses.  I played the guitar
while several other  folks added  verses they'd picked up somewhere. A woman
with  a blue bonnet on held her  chin in one hand and fanned the  insects of
all kinds off her baby asleep at her feet on a old sack; she sung:

     Down in th' holler settin' on a log,
     Hand on my trigger an' my eye on a hog;
     Pulled that trigger, th' gun went 'zip';
     Grabbed mister hog with all of my grip.
     Cain't eat hog eyes. But I need greasin'.

     "Well, this singing is fine  and dandy!" The girl talked up at her work
with  the dishes.  "But this isn't getting these dishes clean! Mister guitar
picker, come on here, help me carry up a bucket of water from the river!"
     As  I followed her along I heard somebody  in the  crowd laugh out, "He
shore didn't hafta be coaxed none!"
     "You  know I  never  did  ask  you yer  name  yet." I  was talking  and
following  her along  a path under the trees down to the banks of the river.
"I s'pose ya got one, ain't ya?"
     "Ruth. I already know yours; I'll call you  Curley. Lordy, I wonder how
deep this  water runs along  in here. It's pretty and  clear. You can almost
see the fish swimming around.'' She  waded out barefooted and left her shoes
kicked off on the bank. She dipped up two buckets of water and made an awful
pretty picture standing  there  reflecting upside-down with all of the trees
and banks. "Pretty cold," she  was trying to  put her wet feet back into her
sandals.
     "Dry yer feet 'fore ya put 'em back in  yer  shoes!" I took the buckets
and set them on the ground a few feet from the path, and held her hand while
we walked back into the underbrush. We both dropped down on  some leaves and
I dried her feet one at a time with my handkerchief.
     "Feels good to have somebody kneel down and dry my feet!"
     "Makes 'em warmer. Yeah. It feels fine."
     "But  how do you know how it  feels,  it's  me that's  getting my  feet
dried."
     "Yeah, but it's me that's doin' th' dryin'."
     "My skin is  ail  sunburned and rough-looking. I'm always going without
stockings  and  scratching  the  hide off  on  twigs  and bushes.  They look
terrible."
     "Look all right to me. You got 'em wet plumb up above yer knees."
     "You mind?"
     "Naw, I don't  mind.  Fact,  I was just thinkin',  I sort of wish you'd
waded out deeper."
     "Teach me a guitar lesson."
     "Right now?"
     "Show me something real easy to do."
     I  put both arms around her and made a pillow with my hand out  of  the
leaves; then  I picked up a  handful of leaves and dropped them in her  hair
and said,  "This is easy to do." And I kissed  her four times and said, "And
this is easy, and this  is easy, and  this, and this." I put my face against
her  neck and felt her put her arms around  mine, felt her cheek warm up and
she told me, "Is this your first guitar lesson?"
     "This is what you call the first and easy steps."
     "You're warm and I'm all cold from wading the water."
     "If you had ice-cicles hangin' in yer hair, you'd feel warm ta me."
     "Teach me the next lesson."
     "Next  lesson is  mostly  learning how ta use  yer  hands  an' fingers.
Gettin'  th'  feel  of th'  instrument. Gettin'  use ta  th' strings that're
attached."
     "Strings attached?"
     "A few."
     "What?"
     "I want  me 'n' you ta be tied t'gether, sort of b'long ta one another,
an'  be  like  this  all  th' time. Jest like  we  are  now. An' you  c'n be
gov'nor."
     "Who's Governor?"
     "My gov'nor."
     "Teach me lessons on the guitar? Buy me penny candy twice a week?"
     "Penny candy, twice a week."
     "I'm thinkin' about it.''
     "You look mighty purty layin' here thinkin' 'bout it."
     "And you look good, too. Tell me  all about yourself. Tell me all about
where you've been. All about your guitar. I'll bet if it could talk it could
tell a lot."
     "It does talk."
     "Guitar talks? What does it say?"
     "Said it liked you. A whole big bunch."
     "All o' these  tree limbs full, an'  that river full, an'  two  buckets
over. That enuf?"
     "Gosh. Nobody ever did love me that much before!"
     "I did, but I jest didn't  see ya till now. I been a-lookin' fer you up
an' down a lotta roads--jest now  locatin' ya. I know. Tell it by lookin' in
yer eyes there, all over yer face, even behind yer ears there."
     "How does  it happen that  you've got  to play in saloons? I don't like
for you to sing in old liquor joints."
     "Oh, I  dunno,  goin' 'crost th' country,  ya know, saloons is handy on
th' side of th' road, make a nickel er two, an' light out ag'in."
     "Going where? Hunting what?"
     "This."
     "Maybe some  day you'll find better places to play. huh? Sing? Oh, like
on the stage or radio or something like that?"
     <img width="230" height="287" src="glory-22.png">

     "I like ta go where th'  big work jobs are, like buildin' dams, an' oil
fields, an' harvestin'  th' crops. Might find a steady job if you'd  push me
jest a little."
     We were silent for a while.
     "No,"  she said  in my  ear, "don't look. Don't watch  the sun go down.
Don't watch  it  get dark.  Don't  tell me any story about a sheet  of paper
called a  marriage license, no, don't tell me anything like that, just  stay
here and don't  make big  promises;  you're right  here  right now; tomorrow
you'll be up and gone; I know that; but for now, just say you'll think about
me, and wherever  you ramble off to, when you  get  tired  of rambling, just
think about this, huh?"
     "Okay." And I  heard her heart beat under my ear when I laid my head on
her breast.  "I'm  sorry I ain't no  very  good talker. Cain't think of much
worth sayin' right now. You talk awhile, I'll do th' listenin'."
     "Let's both just lay here and listen and think."
     Her skin felt  warm to the touch of my hands and my fingers  combed her
hair through the scattered leaves. Her lips were moist like damp earth under
the leaves there. She was a warmth and a movement and a life that no man can
live  good without. I blinked  my eyelashes in her ear, but she  just smiled
and kept her eyes closed like she was dreaming something.
     We lugged  the buckets of water up to the camp and I was walking behind
her, brushing leaves and twigs out of  her hair. We poured water and  washed
pots  and pans  together, and  listened  to the others.  Pretty  good  crowd
around.
     "Hey, mister!"  a boy about fifteen was saying  above the others, "ever
find that indelible pencil you was lookin' for?"
     "No,  never did. Why? You got one?"  The father  of  our bunch told the
boy. "Thank ye."
     Then a big fellow, wearing a  patched and re-patched shirt with a quick
sharp sound in his voice, spoke up, "Say, old  man,  want me to tell you all
there is to know about these slips?"
     "Wis't somebody would."
     "Okay." He put  his foot up on an apple crate and pointed his pipe  out
into the dark, and while he was talking the only three things that lit up in
the night was his pipe, a white button on  his shirt, and the light from the
fires of the ragpots shining in his eyes. "You're  gonna think it over. This
fruit  will  be set back  a  week or ten days on account of one dam thing or
another. Cannery order.  Weather. Market. What the hell. Anyway, you'll sign
that credit slip  tonight. You'll take  it  down  in the morning to buy your
stuff and go to work. You'll get a bill of goods and find out the crops have
been held  up a  few  days. So you'll buy a few more days.  You'll  buy shy.
Skimp. Do without a lot  of things  you  need. Try to keep your bill  down."
When this fellow  talked  I looked  him over; he was wearing rags, hit hard,
stuck  down.  He kept smoking his pipe and resting his wore-out  boot on the
box.
     "I'd buy light. We'd  try ta go  easy. Wouldn't we,  kids? Mama?" Their
papa  was holding his yellow  slip  in his hand  on  his knee, squatted down
cross-legged,  and every time he said a word he pointed his indelible pencil
around at everybody.
     "You'll get about ten days or two weeks behind at the store. Might be a
few scattered  'cots  to  pick, but not  half enough  to  feed and keep your
bunch. Then the  weather will warm up and force  the boss to pick the 'cots.
You'll go to work. Make enough to live on while you're working."
     "We c'n make that, all right, cain't we, Mama?"
     "You'll just barely make enough to keep you going while  you  work. But
you won't  make enough to be able to  pay the ten days' bill you owe. You'll
just be ten days behind the  world. Twenty  dollars, twenty-five. Ten  days!
Behind the world!"
     The crowd  drifted away  to  bed, everybody going his own way thinking.
Ruth and me set on the steps of the trailer and talked for an hour or two.
     Early next morning by the rising sun I was bending over washing my face
with water out of the filling  station hose, thinking I'd  get something off
of  the store boss even  if it was just free water. I saw the old  man  come
walking all by his self,  slow across the  orchard. I was drying my  face on
the tail  of my shirt when he walked  up  behind me and said, "Ain't you th'
guitar man?"
     I smiled up at him and said I was.
     "Early mornin' sun's right good on a man, ain't it?" he asked me. Then,
trying to hold the  little yellow slip behind his back so I couldn't see it,
he spit over into a little puddle of used oil and said, "I gotta step inside
of th' store here a minnit."
     I was thinking to myself that old man had come down a hard road, then I
heard  someone say, "Good-morning, Governor." I turned around  and there was
Ruth standing behind a little bush on the sunny side of the store,
     "What're   ya  hidin'  in  th'  flower  beds   about?"   I  asked  her.
"Eavesdroppin' on yer old man, huh?"
     She  was digging  four  holes with her  shoe heels in the  dirt of  the
flower bed, and saying,  "No. I don't have to sneak around  and eavesdrop on
that  old man of mine to  know what he's going  to do. He'll just  hand  the
Company  man  his  credit slip, and  won't  say  much. Maybe how pretty  the
morning  is. I'll tell  you a secret if you'll not tell." She got her fourth
hole dug and looked around to see if anybody was looking.  "I stole four  of
these  big pretty  yellow apricots.  I had them for breakfast.  And  now I'm
planting  them back here by the side  of this old store. Grow up  some  day.
Then I can rest easy knowing I paid him back."
     I lifted  her head up  and kissed  her and said, "Didja make a wish for
each one ya planted?"
     She shook her head "yes."
     "Any of 'em about you 'n' me?"
     "Yes."  She patted the ground with her foot  where she had  planted the
fourth seed. "First, I hope you go on with your rambling. Second, I hope you
get enough of it, and find out you don't like  it. Third, I hope you keep on
with  your music and  singing, because  you've got  it in you, and you think
you're some kind of a preacher or a doctor going around to saloons listening
to people's  troubles, and you think you can  lift  their spirits  a little,
make somebody feel a little  better. Fourth, I want to give you this mailing
address; it's a family of my kinfolks, they  always keep pretty close  track
of us and send all of our mail."
     We stood in the sun out  of  sight behind  a  bush and held each  other
close again, and I kissed her  eyelids while she said, "Both of us have been
looking for this very  thing for a  long time.  Both of us  have thought  we
found it somewhere before."
     "And somethin' happened an' busted it all up. I hoped a lot  when I was
a kid. Jest fast as one hope got tore up, I had all kindsa fun jest a-hopin'
somethin' new. But lately, I guess, my hopin' machine's been a little on th'
blink.  I think if you loved  me much's I love you, we could  sleep under  a
railroad bridge an' be all right."
     "You're one kind of a liar.'<sup>'</sup>
     "Liar?"
     "Yes. You've had better things. I can tell. So have I. Ten dozen times.
Then they go. You hit the road and stumble around from town to town, and all
along, you see pretty farms, pretty  cars, pretty people, pretty  towns, and
you don't think you can ever make enough money with your  guitar and singing
to  have all  of this, so  you lie,  you  lie to your  ownself, and you  say
'Everybody else in the whole world is all haywire,  all wrong, I  hate their
pretty  world,  because I can't  find a  hole  to break into  it!' And every
breath  you're  a liar.  Maybe a good guy, and maybe I love you, but still a
liar." She put her face on my shoulder.
     We sat down out of sight between a tall bush  and the side of the store
building, and for another hour talked low and thought together.
     "Yesterday, last night, I pot my  handkerchief all wet  dryin' yer legs
off; now, this mornin' I b'lieve ya got more water in yer eyes th'n there is
in th' river down yonder. Feel bad?"
     "Oh, no." She tried to smile. "You don't mind me calling you a liar? We
all lie some. I lie, too."
     "Yeah.  I know. I am a  liar. I know th' real things I'm a-lookin' fer.
Workin'. Makin'  money. Buildin' up somethin'. Little  house with ever'thing
in  it. An' you  there. I knew what I wanted. But I couldn't have none of it
if I didn't find my work. I  wanted ta pick out my own kinda work. I'll work
like a Goddam dog, but I aim ta pick out my work. I coulda got a job pushin'
a  truck  er  a tractor,  wheelin'  a  wheelbarrow, pullin' a cross-cut saw,
paintin' signs, er even doin' picture work;  but while I was  singin' on th'
radio  in  Los Angeles I  got more'n fifteen  thousan' letters tellin' me ta
keep on singin' them good Ïl' songs, makin' up new ones, tellin' tall tales,
jokes, an' singin' ta a whole ocean fulla folks I couldn't see. Letters from
guys on ships  at  sea; letters from  farm families, folks that trail around
pickin' crops; fact'ry workers all over th' country; desert rats pannin' fer
gold; even widders up in Reno there a gettin' on a beeline fer  their fourth
husban'.  People yell, an' laff, an'  cry, hug me, kiss me,  cuss  me,  take
swings at me,  in saloons an' likker joints. An' still,  th'  big shots that
owns them radio stations says I ain't got what folks wants. Ya see, I happ'n
ta know. An' I swore a long time ago  I'd stick ta my guitar an' my singin'.
But most radio stations, they won't let ya sing th' real songs. They want ya
ta sing pure Ïl' bull manure  an' nothin' else.  So I cain't never git ahold
of money an' stuff  it'd take ta keep you an' me in a  house  an' home--so I
been a-lyin' ta my own  self now fer a good long time,  sayin' I didn't want
no little house an' alla that.
     "But,  Ruth, I  think  I  know. I'm hittin' th' road ag'in. Right  now.
Right this minute. Don't know how far I'll hafta go till  I find out where I
c'n sing  what I want ta sing an' my brain's hangin' jest as fulla new ideas
fer songs as  a  tree  on Á hill  full of  all  colors o'blossoms. I'll sing
anywheres they 'll stand an' listen.  An' they'll  see to it  I don't starve
out. They 'll see to it that me an' you c'n be together."
     Her lips felt like butterflies lighting on mÕ face. The people from the
trailers and cars walked in twos and threes, kicking up the morning dust and
gathering all around the store, forty or  fifty all told, stomping from  one
foot to the  other  one, whittling  or digging under finger  nails with long
keen knives. "Man, howdy! Am I  just fairly itchin' to grab that fruit off'n
them old heavy limbs!"
     "I did`nt come out hyere t' Californiooo f'r no Goddam sunbath!"
     'Trot out yore work, mister!''
     "Hurry out here, mister orchard boss, read that tellygram that says for
me to exert my manly muscles in th' art of snatchin' apercots!"
     "I done had my ham `n' eggs, `n' or'nge joose! My veins is runnin' full
a vitaphones!"
     When  one  would  blast loose with a wisecrack,  the whole crowd  would
laugh and a little rumble would run through them like an earthquake.
     "Hey!  Guitar  man!" One old boy seen me and Ruth walk up from the side
of the  store. "Could you turn loose of  that  purty gal  this  mornin' long
enough to sing us a little song?"
     I said I reckoned as to how I could.
     "Play us somethin' 'bout all of us standin' 'roun'  here  waitin' to go
to work!"
     So I flipped a few strings to see if  the box was in tune, and I smiled
a little at Ruth watching me:

     I work in your orchards of peaches and prunes
     Sleep on the ground 'neath the light of the moon
     On the edge of your city you see us and then
     We come with the dust and we go with the wind.

     Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
     From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters come down
     Every state in this Union us migrants has been
     We will work in your fight and we'll fight till we win!

     They just kept quiet till I got  done. Then every single person  seemed
like they took a deep breath, started to say something, maybe; but I heard a
screen door slam behind me, and when  I looked around, I saw  Ruth's old dad
walk out  onto  the little porch, and the orchard  boss walked out with him.
The boss carried a piece of paper  in his hand, and he waved it in the  air,
meaning for all of us get quiet.

     "Quiet, everybody. Listen. Hhhhmmmmm. Won't bother  to read all of this
order.

     'dear sirs: due to cold weather of  THE PAST THIRTY  DAYS, THE  APRICOT
CROP WILL NOT BE RIPE ENOUGH TO BE SUITABLE FOR CANNING. THERE WILL BE A TEN
DAY WAITING  PERIOD TO  ALLOW THE FRUIT TO MATURE. PICKERS MAY  STAND BY AND
AWAIT ORDERS, AS  THE  WEATHER  MAY TAKE A WARM CHANGE AND RIPEN  THE  FRUIT
SOONER. USUAL CREDIT SLIPS MAY BE OBTAINED BY MAKING THE PROPER ARRANGEMENTS
at the company store'

     .... Hhhhmmm.  Yes. Anybody want to ask any questions?" He  looked  out
over the bunch.

     I  believe  this was  the  quietest crowd I was ever  in. A  kid  about
fifteen  asked his  mama, "What're  we alla gonna  do  now,  Mama?  Jes'  be
useless?" I  heard a little girl not more than nine crying, "Papa, why don't
we get in our car 'n<sup>'</sup>  leave this Ïl' place?" And  her daddy told
her,  "We ain't got no  gas,  honey. We sent it all to th' soldiers to fight
that old mean  Hitler man with." Everybody talked so quiet the  orchard boss
never heard a word. He thought  we was  all scattering out without a  sound,
like a herd of lost sheep.
     Ruth squeezed my hand.
     "Why don't ye come on back down to th' camp an' sing us  ten days worth
of  them there good songs?" Her dad was asking at my back. "We got ten days'
credit. Ye'll eat. Stay?"
     "Mighty nice of ya." I put my guitar back over  my  shoulder, then told
him, "Guess I'd better hit th' road. Keep goin'.  Lookin'. I hope  you folks
come outta this hard spot."
     "I don't mind the spots  getting hard!" Ruth  leaned up against the gas
pump. "War ain't fought with powder puffs." She was blinking her eyes fast.
     "I'd kind of like  ta stay here,  spend some time. I  feel like half of
me's stayin' an' half of me's goin'. Kinda funny," I told her.
     "Remember the four seeds  I planted and the  four  hopes I hoped?" Ruth
looked  me up and down. "I'm hoping another  hope,  we can get some  work to
help win this war."
     I shook the old man's hand. Then  Ruth's. And as I walked  off down the
road, the old man hollered out to my back:
     "I'm mailin'  all  my gas  'n'  tires on to my son!  Drives one of them
there <i>jeeps!"</i>
     <img width="178" height="201" src="glory-23.png">

        Chapter èVIII
     <i>CROSSROADS</i>

     There was big drops of sweat standing out on my forehead and my fingers
didn't feel like they was mine. I  was floating in high finances, sixty-five
stories above the ground, leaning my  elbow on a stiff-looking tablecloth as
white as  a runaway ghost,  and  tapping  my  finger  on  the side of  a big
fishbowl. The bowl was full of clear water with a bright red rose as wide as
your hand sunk down in the water, which made the rose look bigger and redder
and the leaves greener  than they actually  was. But  everything else in the
room looked this same way when you looked through the rose bowls of water on
the  other  twenty-five  or  thirty  tables.  Each  row of tables  was in  a
horseshoe curve, and each curve a little higher than the one below. I was at
the lowest. The price of the table for the night was twenty-five dollars.
     Sixty-five stories back to the world. Quite a little elevator ride down
to  where the human race was being  run.  The name of the place, the Rainbow
Room,  in  the city called  New York, in the building  called  Rockefeller's
Center,  where the shrimps are boiled in Standard Oil. I was waiting to take
an audition  to see  about getting a job  singing there. Classiest joint I'd
ever seen. I looked all around at the  deep rugs like a grassy lawn, and the
wavy drapes bellied back from the windows, and laughed to myself as I  heard
the other performers crack jokes at the whole works.
     "This  must be th' ravin' ward, th' way they got things all padded up."
A  sissy-looking little  man in a long tail coat was waiting for his time to
try out.
     "I just don't think they mowed th' upholst'ry yet this year," some lady
with a accordion folded acrost her lap was whispering.
     "An' them  tables," I almost laughed,  saying, "is jest like  this here
buildin, th' higher up ya git, th' colder it gits.''
     The man that had been our guide and got us up there in the first place,
walked  across the rug with his nose in the air like a trained seal, grinned
up at us waiting to take our tryouts, and said, "Sssshhh. Quiet, everybody!"
     Everybody slumped down and straightened up and set tight and got  awful
quiet  while three  or four men, and a  lady  or  two  dressed  to match the
fixtures, walked in through a high arch door from  the main terrace and took
seats at one of the tables.
     "Main  boss?" I  said  behind the back of my hand to the  others at our
table.
     Heads shook up and  down, "yes.''  I noticed that  everybody  put  on a
different face,  like wax people almost, tilting their  heads in the breeze,
grinning into the late afternoon sun that fell across the floor, and smiling
like they'd never missed a meal. This look is  the look that most show folks
learn pretty early  in the  game;  they paint it on their faces,  or sort of
mold it  on, so it  will  always smile  like  a monkey through his bars,  so
nobody will know their rent ain't paid up yet, or they ain't had no job this
season or last,  and that they just finished a sensational, whirlwind run of
five flops in  a row.  The  performers looked like rich customers shining in
the sun, and  the head boss with his table full of middle-size bosses looked
like they'd been  shot  at  and missed.  Through the water in the rose-bowls
everything in the  place had an upside-down look;  the floor looked like the
ceiling and the halls looked like the walls, and the hungry looked like they
was rich, and the rich looked like they was hungry.
     Finally somebody must of made a motion or give a signal, because a girl
in a gunny-sack dress got  up and  sung a song that told how she was already
going on  thirteen,  and  was getting pretty hot under  the collar, tired of
waiting and afraid  of being  an old maid,  and  wanting  to be a  hillbilly
bride. Heads  shook up and down and the  big boss and middle-size bosses and
agents and handlers smiled across the empty tables. I hear somebody whisper,
"She's hired."
     "Next! Woody Guthrie!" a snazzy-looking gent was saying over the mike.
     "Reckin that's  me," I was mumbling under my chin,  talking to  myself,
and looking out the window, thinking. I reached in my pocket and spun a thin
dime out acrost the tablecloth and watched it whirl around and around, first
heads, then tails,  and said to  myself, "Some difference 'tween that  there
apercot  orchard  las' June where th' folks  wuz stuck  down along th' river
bottom, an'  this here Rainbow Room on an August afternoon.  Gosh, I  come a
long ways in th' last few  months. Ain't made no  money  ta speak about, but
I've stuck my head in a lot of plain an' fancy places.  Some good, some just
barely fair, an' some awful bad. I wrote up a  lot of songs for union folks,
sung  'em all  over ever'where,  wherever folks got together an' talked  an'
sung, from Madison Square Garden to a Cuban Cigar Makers' tavern in  Spanish
Harlem an hour later; from th'  padded  studios of  CBS an'  NBC to th<sup>'
</sup>wild back country in  th' raggedy Ghetto. In some places  I was put on
display as a freak, and others as a hero, an' in th' tough joints around th'
Battery Park,  I wuz  jes' another shadow blund'rin' along with th' rest. It
had  been like this  here  little  ol' dime spinnin',  a whirl  of heads an'
tails. I'd  liked mostly th' union  workers, an' th' soldiers an' th' men in
fightin' clothes,  shootin' clothes, shippin'  clothes, or  farmin' clothes,
'cause singing with them made me  friends with them, an'  I felt  like I was
somehow in  on their work. But this coin  spinnin', that's my las' dime--an'
this Rainbow Room job, well, rumors are  it'll pay as much as seventy-five a
week, an' seventy-five a week is dam shore seventy-five a week."
     "Woody Guthrie!"
     "Comin'!" I walked up to the microphone, gulping and trying to think of
something  to sing about. I was a little blank in the head or something, and
no matter how dam hard  I tried, I just couldn't think up any kind of a song
to sing--just empty.
     'What will be your first selection, Mister Guthrie?''
     "Little  tune,  I guess, call'd New York  City." And  so  I  forked the
announcer out of the way  with the wiry end of my guitar  handle and made up
these words as I sung:

     This Rainbow Room she's mighty fine
     You can spit from here to th' Texas line!
     In New York City
     Lord, New York City
     This is New York City, an' I really gotta know my
     line!

     This Rainbow Room is up so high
     That John D.'s spirit comes a-driftin' by
     This is New York City
     She's New York City
     I'm in New York City an' I really gotta know my
     line!

     New York town's on a great big boom
     Got me a-singin' in the Rainbow Room
     That's New York City
     That's New York City
     She's old New York City
     Where I really gotta know my line!

     I  took the tune to church, took  it holy roller, shot  in  a few split
notes, oozed  in a fake  one, come down barrel  house,  hit off  a good  old
cross-country  lonesome note or two, trying to get that old  guitar to  help
me, to talk with me,  talk for me and say what I was thinking, just this one
time.

     Well this Rainbow Room's a funny place ta play
     Its a long way's from here to th' U.S.A.
     An' back ta New York City
     God! New York City
     Hey! New York City
     Where I really gotta know my line!

     The microphone man come running out  and waved me to a stop, asking me,
"Hhhhmmm, where does this particular song end, sir?"
     "End?" I looked over at him. "Jest a-gettin' strung out good, mister!'
     "The number  is  most  amusing. Exciting. Extremely  colorful.  But I'm
wondering if it would be suited to the  customers. Ahemm. To  our customers.
Just a couple of  questions. How do you  get out  to the microphone and back
again?"
     "Walk, as a rule."
     "That won't do. Let's see you trot in  through that arch doorway there,
sidestep when you come to that flat  platform, prance pretty lively when you
go down  those three stairs, and  then spring up  to the  microphone  on the
balls of your  feet throwing your weight on the joints of your ankles."  And
before  I could  say anything he  had run out and trotted  back, showing  me
exactly what he was talking about.
     Another one of the bosses  from the  table at the back wall yelled, "As
far as his entrance is concerned, I think  we can rehearse  it a week or two
and get it ironed out!"
     "Yes! Of  course,  his  microphoning  has  got to be  tested and lights
adjusted  to  his size,  but that can  come  later.  I'm thinking about  his
make-up.  What  kind of  make-up  do you  use, young man?" Another  boss was
talking from his table.
     "Ain't been  a-usin' none," I talked  into the mike. I felt the faraway
rattling and rumbling of freight trains and transfer trucks calling to me. I
bit my tongue and listened.
     "Under the lights, you know,  your natural skin would look too pale and
too dead. You  wouldn't mind putting on some kind  of make-up just  to liven
you up, would you?
     "Naww.  Don't 'spose." Why was I  thinking one  thing  in  my head  and
saying something different with my mouth?
     "Fine!"  A  lady nodded her head from the boss's  table. "Now,  oh yes,
now, what kind of a costume shall I get for him?"
     "Which?" I said, but nobody heard me.
     She  folded her  hands  together  under  her chin  and clicked her  wax
eyelashes together like loose shingles in a high wind, "I can just imagine a
hay wagon  piled high with singing field  hands, and this carefree character
following along in the dust  behind the  wagon, singing after the day's work
is done! That's it. A French peasant garb!"
     "Or--no--wait! I see  him as a Louisiana swamp dweller, half asleep  on
the  flat top  of a gum  stump, his  feet dangling in the mud,  and  his gun
leaning near his head! Ah! What a follow-up for the gunny-sack girl singing,
'Hillbilly Bride'!" A man losing a wrestling match with a four-bit cigar was
arguing with the lady.
     "I have it! Listen! I have it!" The lady rose up from her table  with a
look on her face like she was in a trance of some kind, and  she walked over
across the carpet to where I was  standing, saying, "I  have it! Pierrot! We
shall  dress  him in a Pierrot costume! One of those darling clown suits! It
will bring out the life and the pep and the giddy humor of his period! Isn't
that a  simply swell  idea?"  She folded her  hands under her chin again and
swayed over against my shoulder as I sidestepped to miss her. "Imagine! What
the proper costuming  will bring out in  these people!  Their carefree life!
Open  skies! The  quaint simplicity.  Pierrot! Pierrot!" She was dragging me
across the floor by the arm, and we  left the room with everybody talking at
once. Some taking tryouts said, "Gosh! Gon'ta catch on!"
     Outside, on a high glass porch  of some kind, where wild tangled  green
things growed all  along the floor by the windows, she shoved me  down  in a
leather chair by a plastic table and sighed  and puffed like she'd  done  an
honest day's work.  "Now,  let me see,  oh yes,  now,  my  impression of the
slight sample of your work is a bit, so to  say, incomplete, that is, as far
as   the   cultural   traditions   represented   and   the    exchange   and
interrelationships and  overlappings  of  these  same  cultural patterns are
concerned,  especially  here in America, where we have, well,  such a mixing
bowl of culture,  such a stew-pot of shades and colors. But, nevertheless, I
think  the  clown  costume will represent  a large portion of  the  humorous
spirit of all of them--and--"
     I let my  ears bend  away from  her talking and I let my eyes drift out
the window and down sixty-five stories where the town of old  New  York  was
standing up living and breathing and cussing and laughing down yonder acrost
that long island.
     I begun to pace  back and forth,  keeping my  gaze  out the window, way
down, watching the diapers and underwear blow from fire escapes and  clothes
lines on the back sides of the buildings; seeing the smoke whip itself  into
a hazy  blur  that smeared across the sky and mixed in with all of the other
smoke that  tried  to hide  the town. Limp papers whipped  and beat upwards,
rose into  the air  and fell  head  over heels,  curving  over backwards and
sideways, over and  over, loose sheets  of newspaper with pictures of people
and stories of people printed somewhere on  them, turning loops  in the air.
And it was blow little  paper, blow! Twist and turn and stay  up as long  as
you can, and when you come down, come  down on a pent-house porch, come down
easy so's not to hurt your self. Come down and lay there in the rain and the
wind and the soot and smoke and the grit that gets in  your eyes in the  big
city--and lay there in the sun and get faded and rotten. But keep  on trying
to tell your message, and keep  on trying  to be a picture of a man, because
without that  story and  without  that  message printed  on  you  there, you
wouldn't be  much. Remember, it's just maybe,  some day,  sometime, somebody
will pick you up and look at  your picture  and read your message, and carry
you in his  pocket, and lay you on his shelf, and burn you in his stove. But
he'll have your message  in his head and he'll talk it and it'll get around.
I'm blowing, and just as  wild and whirling  as you  are, and  lots of times
I've  been picked up,  throwed down, and picked up; but  my eyes has been my
camera taking pictures of the world and my  songs has  been messages that  I
tried to scatter  across  the back  sides and  along the steps  of  the fire
escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls.
     Still going like a Nineteen  Hundred  and Ten  talking machine, my lady
friend had said a whole raft of stuff that  I'd  not heard a single word of.
I'm  afraid  my ears had been running  somewhere down along the  streets.  I
heard her say, "So,  the interest  manifest by the manager is  not  at all a
personal thing, not at all, not at all; but there  is another reason why you
are so  certain to  satisfy the desires  of his customers; and I always say,
don't you always say, 'What the customer says is what we  all have to say'?"
Her teeth shined and her eyes snapped different colors. "Don't you?'
     "Don't I? What? Oh,  'scuse me jest  a minute, huh? Be  right  back." I
took one  good  long look all  up  and down the  red  leather seats  and the
plastic tables  in the  glassed-in room, and grabbed lmÕ  guitar by the neck
and said to a boy in uniform, "Rest room?"  And I followed where he pointed,
except that when  I got within a couple of feet of the sign that said "Men,"
I took a quick dodge down a little hallway that said "Elevator."
     The lady  shook her head and  nodded with her  back turned to me. And I
asked  the elevator man, "Goin' down? Okay. Groun' floor. Quickest way's too
slow!" When we  hit bottom I walked out onto the slick marble floor whanging
as hard as I could on the guitar and singing:

     Ever' good man gits in hard luck sometime
     Ever' good man gits in hard luck sometime
     Gits down an' out
     Dead broke
     Ain't gotta dime!

     I never heard my guitar ring so loud and so long and so clear as it did
there in them high-polished marble halls.  Every note was ten times as loud,
and so was  my singing. I filled myself full of free air and sung as loud as
the building would stand. I wanted the poodle dogs leading the ladies around
to stick up  their noses  and wonder what in the hell had struck that joint.
People  had  walked hushed  up and too nice and quiet  through  these  tiled
floors too long. I decided that for this minute, for this  one snap of their
lives, they'd see a human walking through that place, not singing because he
was  hired and told what to sing,  but  just  walking through there thinking
about the world and singing about it.
     She mortally echoed around and glanced across the murals painted on the
walls. And folks  in herds and  family groups stopped  looking in  the fancy
lit-up shop  windows  along the  corridors and listened  to  me  telling the
world:

     Old John Dee he ain't no friend of mine
     Old John Dee he ain't no friend of mine
     I'm a-sayin' Did John Dee shore ain't no friend of
     mine
     Takes all th' purty wimmen
     An' leaves us men behind!

     Little boys  and girls trotted up  alongside  of  me,  jerking out from
their  parents'  hands,  and  kept their ears and noses rubbing  against  my
guitar's  sounding  board.  While  I  was beating the blues  chords  and not
singing, I heard side remarks:
     "What is he advertising?"
     "Isn't he a card?"
     "Quaint."
     "A Westerner. Possibly lost in a subway.''
     "Children! Come back here!"
     I heard a cop say,  "Cut it! Hey! Yez cain't pull dat  stuff  in here!"
But  before he  could get at  me,  I'd  whirled  through a spinning door and
fought my way across some avenues  packed with traffic, and was lighting out
along  some sidewalks  and  not  even  paying much attention to where I  was
heading. A few hours could of went by. Or days. I wasn't noticing. But I was
'dodging  walking people,  playing  kids, and rusting iron  fences,  rotting
doorsteps, and my head was buzzing, trying  to think  up some reason why I'd
darted out  away from the  sixty-fifth story  of that big high building back
yonder. But something in me  must of knowed why. Because in a little while I
found myself walking along New York's Ninth Avenue, and cutting over another
long cement block to  come to the waterfront. I seen mothers perched on high
rock steps and out along the curbs on cane-bottom chairs, some in the shade,
some in the sun, talking,  talking, talking. Their gift  of the  spirit  was
talking, talking to the  mother or to the lady next to them, about the wind,
the  weather, the curbs, the sidewalks, the rooms, roaches,  bugs, rent, and
the  landlord, and  managing to  keep one eye  on  all  of  the hundreds and
hundreds of  kids  playing in the open street. As I walked along, no  matter
what they'd been talking about, I heard them first  to one side and  then to
the other, saying, "music man!" "Heyyy! Playa for ussa th' song!"  "Hi! Le's
hear ya tromp it!" "Would you geeve to us a museek?"  "Play!" "Ser'nade me!"
And so, not half caring, there in the last few patches of the setting sun, I
walked along winding my way through the women and young boys and girls,  and
singing:

     What does the deep sea say?
     Tell me, what does the deep sea say?
     Well, it moans and it groans,
     It swells and it foams
     And it rolls on its weary way!

     I  walked  along,  the day just leaving out  over  the tops of the tall
buildings, and sifting  through the old scarred chimneys sticking up.  Thank
the good  Lord, everybody, everything ain't all slicked up, and starched and
imitation. Thank God, everybody ain't afraid. Afraid in the skyscrapers, and
afraid in the red tape offices, and afraid in the tick of the little machine
that  never explodes,  stock market tickers,  that scare  how many to death,
ticking off  deaths, marriages  and  divorces, friends and  enemies; tickers
connected  and plugged in  like juke boxes, playing the false and corny lies
that are sung in the wild canyons of Wall Street; songs wept by the families
that lose, songs  jingled on the  silver spurs of the men that win. Here  on
the slummy  edges, people are crammed down on the  curbs, the  sidewalks and
the fireplugs, and cars  and  trucks and  kids and rubber balls are bouncing
through the streets.  I was thinking, "This is what I  call bein' borned an'
a-livin'; I don't know what I call that big high building back yonder that I
left.''
     I'd noticed a  quiet-faced young Mexican seaman  following along behind
my shoulder. He was of a small build, almost like a kid, and the sea and the
sun had kept his hair  oily and his smile smooth. After  a block or two we'd
got  to knowing each  other and he'd told  me,  "My name iss Carlos, call me
Carl." Outside of that Carl didn't say much; we just almost knew that we was
buddies  without making lectures on  the subject.  So  for about  an  hour I
walked along singing, while this man walked beside me, smiling right on down
through  the  wind,  not  telling me  no big  tall  tale  of submarines  and
torpedoes, no hero stories.
     A little  girl and boy  clattered on roller skates, and told me to sing
louder  so's they could hear me  above the noise. Other  kids quit  swatting
each  other and walked along listening. Mamas called  in  a hundred tongues,
"Kids, come back  here!"  The  kids would usually  follow along humming  and
singing with me for about a block, and then stand on the curb when I crossed
the street  and look for a  long time.  In each block a new  gang formed and
herded along, feeling of the wood of the guitar, and getting  their hands on
the strap, the strings. Older kids tittered and flirted in dark doorways and
pushed  each  other  around in  front  of  soda  fountains  and  penny-candy
hangouts, and  I managed to sing them  at least a little snatch, a few words
of the songs they'd ask  to hear. At times I stopped for a minute and  papas
and mamas and kids of all ages stood  around as quiet as they could, but the
whamming and  banging  of  big trucks, busses, vans, and cars made us  stand
jammed together real tight to be heard.
     It  got to be night, the kind of summer  night that pitches on the wind
and  dips in the white clouds and  makes  buildings  look like all kinds  of
freighters creaking along. Dark swarms of us sprawled  out along stone steps
and iron  railings, and I  felt that old feeling  coming back  to me. When I
reached the water front, the song I was singing over and over was:

     It was early in the spring
     Of nineteen forty-two
     She was queen of the seas
     And the wide ocean blue

     Her smoke filled the sky
     In that Hudson River's tide
     And she rolled on her side
     When that good ship went down

     Oh, the <i>Normandie</i> was her name
     And great was her fame
     And great was her shame
     When that good ship went down

     Folks joined  in  like one voice in  the  dark. I  could  vision on the
screen of fog  rolling  down a picture of  myself singing back yonder on the
sixty-fifth  floor of Rockefeller's  Center,  singing a  couple of songs and
ducking back into a dressing room to smoke and play cards for two more hours
until the  next  show, then more smoke and cards until the  next show. And I
knew that I was glad to be loose from that sentimental and dreamy trash, and
gladder  to be edging  on my way along here singing with the people, singing
something with fight and guts and belly laughs and power and dynamite to it.

     When Carl touched me on the arm  we  was throwing on our brakes in  the
green shiver of a neon sign that said, "Anchor Bar." We stood outside on the
curb and he grinned and told me, "This iss a nice place; always a good bunch
here."  By now we had a whole crew around us waving their heads in the wind,
singing:

     Oh, the <i>Normandie</i> was her name
     And great was her fame
     And great was her shame
     When that good ship went down

     I sung out by myself:

     So remember her sorrow
     And remember her name
     We will all work together
     And she'll soon sail again

     All kinds  of  hats, caps,  sweaters, and dresses stood  around tapping
shoes against the concrete, patting hands, like  getting new hope out of old
religion; and when my eyes  got a plainer look at the crowd,  I seen lots of
uniforms and sailor caps of all  kinds. Light  sifted through the  open door
and big windows of the bar, and hit against our backs and faces.
     "More!"
     "Sing!"
     "Crank up!"
     A funny little gang of us there on that curb.
     "Where'd ja pick up such songs at?" one lady asked me
     "Ohh," I told  her,  "jest bummin' aroun',  see stuff, make up a little
song about it."
     "Buy ya a drink if ya want it!" a man said.
     "Mister, I'll take Õa up in jest a minute! Cain't stop right now ta buy
no drink! I'd lose my crowd!"
     "What  th' hell you  doin'?"  he said back in  the  crowd  "Runnin' f'r
office with that whang-danger music box?"
     "Back in Oklahoma," I kidded him,  "I know  one Negro  boy that blows a
mouth organ, an' he's elected our las' four gov'nors!"
     There was a little laugh run through the listeners, and you could see a
pile  of  smoke  rising out  of our  huddle  from  cigarets  and  cigars and
ocean-going  pipes the people was pulling on. In the flare of the smoking, I
got looks at their faces, and when  I  seen how hard and  tough they was,  I
thought I must be in just about the best of company.
     A tall man  pushed through the rest, with both hands stuck  down in his
overcoat pockets, and said, "By  God an' by Jesus! Howya makin' out?" It was
my old friend, Will Geer, an actor playing the lead part of Jeeter Lester in
the  play, <i>Tobacco Road.</i> Will was a big  tall cuss, head  and shoulders over
the most of us, and I rocked considerably when he whooped me down across the
back and shoulders with his open hand. "You Ïl' dog! Howya been?"
     "Hi! Will! Dam yer hide! Lay yer head back, boy, an' sing!"
     "Go right on. Don't let me stop you." Will's voice had a dry crackle to
it that sounded like a stick  in the fire. "Mighta knew who 'twas when I saw
this big crowd here singin'! Keep it up!"
     "Carl, shake han's with Will there."
     "Meester Will? I am glad to know you."
     "Hey! Ever'body! Here's another frienda mine! Name's Will!"
     He stood with his long chin and square  jaw set against the dampness of
the  fog,  and  folded his  hands together and  waved them above our  heads.
Behind him the doorway of  the Anchor Bar  was filled  with three people  on
their way  out, the bartender leading a lady and a  man by the arm. She  was
about  fifty,  little and slight, leathery  skin like  wet  canvas  full  of
pulling wind, coarse  black  hair  all tangled  up with  the  atmosphere and
scenery, and a  voice  like sand washing  back into the ocean, "I don't need
your help! I wanta  buy another drink!" Then she looked up  at the crowd and
said, "Cain't insult a lady this-a way!"
     "Lady," the bartender  was pushing  the pair onto the sidewalk, "I know
you're a lady, an' we all know you're a lady; but Mayor La Gad-about says no
drinks after closin' time, an' it's after closin' time now!"
     "Honey, sweet thing," I could hear her husband talking, "don't hurt th'
man, don't, he just only works here."
     "Who  ask'd you f'r advice?"  She marched out onto the sidewalk  beside
us.
     "Put'cher coat  on!  Here, hold  still!"  He was tip-toeing around  her
trying  to get  the coat untangled. First he  held it upside  down  with the
sleeves dragging the sidewalk; then he  got  hold of the sleeves, but he had
the lining  on the  wrong side; and after a couple  of minutes, they had one
sleeve plumb on,  but she was still running her fist through the air feeling
for the last sleeve. She had a look on her  face like she was  searching the
waterfront for a man because she knew he had one sleeve of her coat,  and he
was  working  in the wind with  a serious look in his eye,  but always, just
about a foot or two south of where she was holding her arm up, fishing.
     Will walked  over and took her fist and jammed it through  the  sleeve,
and except for some mumbling and grumbling in the crowd nobody laughed. Will
lit up some kind of a long cigaret and took the pair by the arms and brought
them over to the bunch. "Meet ever'body!" He was smiling and saying, "All of
you, here, meet Somebody!"
     "Ever'body, gladta knowya!"
     "Somebody, hello! Join up!"
     "Don' mind  gittin' booted outa  that joint! We're  a-havin' a  lot th'
bes' time out here!"
     "Welcome ta our mists! Wahooo!"
     "What yez a-doin'? Sangin'? Oh! Lord Godamighty! I mortally luv ta hear
good sangin'! Sang! Make some racket!" The lady was  standing at my elbow in
the  middle  of the crowd.  We sung our song about  the  <i>Normandie</i> all  over
again, and her and her man both shook the wax out of their  ears in a minute
and started singing, and their voices sounded good,  like coal being  dumped
down into a cellar.
     I took  a  look over the heads  of the crowd  and  seen  the  bartender
standing just outside the door talking to a copper,  and  I knew our singing
had  cut off about  three fourths of his trade for  the night, so I  started
walking  with  my eyes up toward the stars, and the  little mob followed  me
along, filling the Hudson River's tide and the hulls of  the warehouses, the
markets, loading buildings, and all of the docks, and all of the ocean, with
good  husky  voices.  Some rasping,  some gasping,  some  growling  and some
rattling with whiskey, rum, beer, gin, tobacco, but singing all the same.
     We'd walked for  about  a block when we heard a tough talker  behind us
yell, "Hey, sailor!"
     We walked a few more steps singing, then it come again.
     "Hey, sailor!"
     "Keep on with th' singin'." A sailor was ducking at my ear saying, "Law
says he's got ta yell 'hey sailor' three times!"
     "Go on! Sing!" a second sailor said.
     "Keep it up!" a third one put in.
     Then it was, <i>"Heyyyy, sailor!"</i>
     And a dead still spell come over our whole gang. The Military Policeman
had yelled his third time. The sailors stopped and stood at attention,
     "Yessir, Off'cer."
     "Go to your stations, sailors!"
     "Aye, aye, Off'cer!''
     "At once, sailor!"
     "Goin', off'cer!"
     And the sailors walked away in good order, rubbing their eyes and faces
in the night air, shaking  their heads clear of tobacco smoke, and the dregs
of  beer. There in  a few steps,  they  seemed to  turn  into somebody else,
straightening up, fixing each other's shirts, blouses, ties, getting rigging
in order.  Low talk, laughs, thanks, and pats on the back was about all they
give me, but as  they  slipped off in their  different  directions for their
ships, some French, some British, some American, some Everything Else, I was
thinking, There goes th' best fellers I ever seen.
     "How'dya like ta be in th' Navy, Carl?" Will said.
     "I  would like  to  be  in the Navy just fine," Carl said, "but I don't
guess I ever can."
     "Reason?" I asked Carl.
     "I have a  leetle  something the matter  with my lungs.  Rosin.  ô÷.  I
worked  on  a shingle-saw a few years.  I'm in  4-F." His  eyes followed the
sailors  away in  the  dark, and then  he said, "The Navy,  yes, it would be
fine."
     A Military Policeman swung his club around doing tricks and said to us,
"Go ahead with y'r  party, by God, ya gotta perty dam good song there--'bout
that there <i>Norm'ndie"</i>
     Another cop  turned around  and walked away saying, "It's  jus' that we
gotta git our sailors ta werk on time. Those songs was doin'  them men a lot
o' good!"
     One or two of the bunch that was left  took off in different directions
and then three or  four shook my hand and told me, "Well, we had a  dam good
time." "Be  seem' ya." "Saved us money,  too!" And all that was left was  me
and Carl and Will and the lady  and her husband, standing there on the curb,
looking out toward the  waterfront, out across the big dark mountains moving
up  and  down  at their  docks, bigger than buildings, more alive  than  the
hills, sloshing at  the  portholes  and waterlines, floating still and quiet
like three women, the living <i>Queen Elizabeth,</i> the  breathing <i>Queen Mary,</i> and
the sleeping <i>Normandie</i> on her side.
     "Fellers  game ta go home  with me?"  the lady asked us. "Got a  great,
great big bottle, nearly almost half full."
     Her  husband  held his  hands in his pockets and  shook  his head after
every word his wife said, his little  hat rocking back and forth on his head
when he nodded.
     "Take us!" Will  told her, winking around  at us. "I haven't even had a
drink tonight!"
     We walked along just keeping our eyes on the red glare of  her cigaret,
first  bright, then dull, in the dark. The old  hard cobblestones was lit up
with the filtered neon light that leaks somehow or  other, some strange way,
down  into  all  of  the  big  town's  dirtiest  corners,  and  shines  like
million-dollar jewelry, even on the spitty, foggy stones.
     I seen the big hump-backs of five or six flat barges loaded full to the
brim. Heavy highway gravel. The tie ropes bucking and stretching, the waters
lapping and swelling and  falling  in the river with the up  and down of the
ocean's roll.
     "Fair  warnin'!" I heard the  lady holler  ahead of  us. "Walk careful!
Don't  want  hafta  waste my time fishin' no  land wallopers outa this slimy
warsh!"
     I followed  the  others across some narrow planks and I  held my breath
when I looked down under me at all of the moving, slurping water licking its
mouth under  my feet.  Finally, after  crossing  over more whitish loads  of
gravel and rocks,  we come to a little two-by-scantling shanty built  on the
head end of a creaking, heavy barge.
     "So this is your homestead, huh?" Will asked her.
     "I  ain't so  graceful out there much on that there solid  groun'." She
was fumbling with a lock at the door, and walked into the shack saying, "But
they ain't a  gal  in th' show  business c'n  foller aroun' over  these here
river boats!"
     She lit the lantern, lit the oil stove, and set a half a gallon  coffee
pot on the flame.  We all found chairs on boxes and  big lard cans; then she
said,  "Why not sing  me  a  song  about  somethin'  perty? While  this here
coffee's a-comin' ta a boirl? Likker goes  a lot  longer ways when ya mix it
with scaldin' hot coffee."
     "I'll make ya up one 'bout yer barge house here. Lemme think."

     My bottle it will soon be empty
     And I myself won't have a dime
     But I've hauled my freight from here to yonder
     A many, and a many, and a many a time

     While fishing under her tin-topped cupboard she chanted and sung almost
under her breath:

     I pulled this package from here ta Albanyyyyy
     From there ta Uticayyyyy
     From there ta Schenectadyyyyyy
     It's a many, an' a many, an' a many a time
     Ohhh yes
     A many, an' a many, an' a many a time

     The  only  thing  that  broke up her singing was the coffee pot spewing
over the sides and the fire barking at  the steam. Then she said, "Never did
ask me  my name. Dam that  stove  ta hell, anyhow! Boirl all  o'  my  coffee
away!" She grabbed a few cups from nails over the sink and poured  one  half
full in front  of  every  one  of  us.  Then she  popped a stopper out of  a
mean-looking bottle and poured the  cups the rest of the way full. "McElroy.
That's me! But don't tell  me your names," she said to all of us, " 'cause I
can't  remember  names  none  too  good   noway.  I'll  just  call  you  Mr.
Broadshoulders, an' you there, lemme see, I'll name you Eel Foot! Mister Eel
Foot;  an' next,  you  there  with  th' music  doin's,  I'll name  you--le's
see--Curley."
     She jammed the red-hot coffee pot  down on the table under my nose, and
a half a cupful sloshed out like melted lead and soaked the front part of my
britches.  I  jumped to the floor  and fought and fanned the spots where the
coffee was scalding  me, but  she  was laughing as loud as  the barge  would
stand it,  and yelling, while she downed her hot drink, "Whheeeww! Yipppeee!
Flappin' salmon! What's th'  matter, Hot Pants? Scorch you?" Her face turned
against the lantern  light and it was the first time I'd got a real look  at
her.  Weather-whipped  and  wind-blistered,  salt-soaked  and  frostbit  ten
thousand  times  just like the skim that  shines across  the  humps and  the
swells of  the  tidewaters. "Mister Hot  Pants! Yah! Yah! Yah!" she  laughed
while I fanned my legs to cool the hot spots.
     Her husband in the deal got up and stumbled ten or fifteen feet through
a little  partition, heaving like  a sick horse,  and I heard him  fall down
across some kind of a couch. I watched her drain her cup into her mouth, and
men she stuck out her tongue and  made a witchy-looking face out through the
window  at the  moon splashing  along  on the  clouds.  Will and Carl and me
tipped our cups together,  held our breath,  shut  our eyes, and sloshed our
mouths full of the fiery mixture.
     <img width="281" height="326" src="glory-24.png">

     While she  was waiting for us to fall over on the floor, we lit up some
smokes, and I sung her another made-up verse:

     I've freighted and barged it from New York and up
     I drunk my hard likker from a blistering cup
     And who was the pride of the brave river boys?
     A lass by the name of Miss McElroy.

     "Now ain't that  perty? Ain't that a slippery shame?'' She only had two
teeth in her head, one low and on the left,  one high and on the  right, but
she put a look  on her lace like she was a Freshman in a girls' school. "You
mighty rum-com-a-tootin'! I wuz th' only female she womern  up an down  this
Goddern slimy warsh! I wuzn't no dam house cat! No flower  pot! an' if I wuz
jus' twenty-five years  younger tonight, I'd give you gents a honest  ta God
run fer yer marbles!" Then she run the end of her tongue out over  her  pair
of mismated  teeth, and  tapped the oilcloth of the table, and  laughed; and
the whole string of barges rocked  in  the ooze  and the bellies of  the old
rafts pushed  against each other,  and  the waterfront  groaned  and  foamed
around the edges.
     Songs  rippled across the loads of  highway rock and dripped  off  down
across the edges, and such songs and such yarns and lies  and windy tales as
we pulled out of our minds  for  the  next hour or two  was  never before or
since topped by the humans on this planet.
     She said she'd had six children, that being pregnant so much had caused
her teeth to fall out. Four boys. Three alive. Two  girls, both up and gone.
She showed us picture post cards of  the places one daughter had worked as a
taxi-dancer.  The other girl lived across the  river  and come to see her on
Sundays. One son used  to  send picture cards, but he was a merchant seaman,
and she  hadn't heard  from him for  over  eight months. One son got in jail
four or five times for  little rackets; then he went out West to work in the
mines, and he never wrote much anyhow. Him and his pa was always a-scrappin'
when they'd get together, because the old man did believe in being honest as
the law allows. They'd of killed each other if the boy hadn'ta left. She was
glad he was gone.
     "What's this leave you with?" Will asked her.
     "Well," she smiled  around at all of us just a  speck  and let her eyes
fall  away to  one side,  "let me  see.  Thirty  years  o' river freightin',
twenty-six years  o' married ta  th' same man, if  ya wanta  call 'im a man.
This  old  rotten  barge here.  Three  nice gent  visitors, if  ya call  'em
gentlemen;  an'  well,  a  little  less  th'n a halfa bottle  o' perty  pore
whiskey. Plenty o' hot scaldin' coffee f'r th' nights run,  an' ta boot,  ta
boot,  ya might add, I liv'd  ta see th' day that by God, I gotta song wrote
up about me!"
     Will and me excused ourselves and walked out the door. We  stood on the
edge  on  the next-door  barge, and listened to the water  trickle into  the
Hudson River. The moon was pretty and scared-looking and the  clouds  chased
across  the sky like  early morning newskids. I could feel a  sticky veil of
fog settle over the wood and the strings of my guitar, and when I played it,
the tone was soft and damp and muffled  along the waters. I kept picking off
a little tune.
     "Been doin' last few days?" Will asked me walking along.
     "Awww, nuthin' very much. Singin' 'roun'."
     "Chances for any jobs?"
     "Yeah, few."
     " 'Bouts?"
     "Night clubs, mostly.''
     "Get on?"
     "Well, I, ah, that is, er, ah--I hadda big try-out ta day.
     Rockefeller's Center."
     "Rockefeller Center! Wow! Come out all right?"
     "I come <i>out,</i> all right."
     "Walk out on 'em?"
     "Goddammit! I jes' had ta walk out, Will! Couldn't take that stuff!"
     "Goin' ta keep pullin' them  one-man walkouts till you've ruined all of
y'r chances here in New York. Better watch y'r step."
     "Will,  you know me. You know  dam good an' well I'd  play fer my beans
an' cornbread, an'  drink branch  water, 'er anything else ta  play an' sing
fer  folks that likes it,  folks that knows it, an' lives what I'm a singin'
'bout. I'm all screwed up in my head. They try ta tell me if I wanta eat an'
stay alive, I gotta sing their dam old phony junk!"
     "You'd just naturally explode up in  that high society,  wouldn't  you?
But, money's what it takes, Woody."
     "Yeah.  I know." I was thinking  of a girl named  Ruth. ''Damit all  ta
hell, anyhow! Mebbe I jest ain't got brains 'nuf in my head ta see that. But
after alla th' hard luck I had, Will, I  seen money come, an' money go, ever
since I was jest a kid, an' I never thought  'bout nuthin' else, 'sides jest
passin' out my songs."
     "Takes money, boy. You want to make any kind  of  a  name f'r yourself,
well, takes all kinds of money. An' if you want to donate  to poor folks all
over th' country, that takes money." '
     "Cain't I jest sorta donate my own self, sort of?''
     Will grunted. "Can't you go back to the Rainbow Room? Not too late,  is
it?"
     I said, "No, not too late, I guess I could go back. I guess I <i>could!"</i>
     I looked up  at the  big tall building. The silence around us seemed to
be hollering at me--all right, whatcha gonna do? Come on, runt, make up your
mind. This is it! Christ, boy, <i>this is it!</i>

     A  little tugbout throwing  smoke plowed out from  ahead of us,  and  I
looked at it working in the smeared water like a black bug kicking up dust.
     "This barge a-movin'?" I asked Will.
     "Blieve  'tis." He walked a few  feet along the back end, made  a  jump
clearing a two-foot  gap, and landed back  on the McElroy barge. "That barge
you're on's  gettin' hauled  out by that  tug!  Better throw me y'r  guitar!
Jump!"
     I  didn't say anything right  then. Will walked  alongside where I  was
moving along and I stalled for a little time, saying,  "Looks like it really
is a-movin'."
     "Jump! Jump quick! I'll catch your  guitar! Jump!" He was  trotting now
at a pretty fair gait. "Jump!"
     I set myself down on the hind-end of the moving load of gravel, and lit
up a cigaret and blowed the smoke  up toward  tile  long,  tall  Rockefeller
Building.  Will had  a great big grin in his face there by  the light of the
moon, and he said, "Got any money on ya?"
     I flipped a rock  into  the  water and said, "Mornin<sup>'</sup> comes,
I'll feel in my pockets an' see!"
     "But, where'll ya be?"
     "I dunno."
     My old friend was left behind, panting and all out of breath. I drug my
thumb down acrost the strings of the guitar. In the river waters at my feet,
I could see the reflection of fire and kids  fighting their gang wars and  a
right young kid up  a tree and a mama cat hunting the squeezed-out bodies of
her kittens.  Clara  didn't look  burnt and Mama  didn't  look crazy in that
river water, but kind of  pretty. I seen the oil  on the  river and it might
have come from somewhere down in my old country, West Texas maybe, Pampa, or
Okemah. I seen the  Redding jungle camp reflected there too, and the saloons
along Skid Row except that they looked awful clean. But mostly I  saw a girl
in an orchard and how she danced along the mud bank of a river.
     Sail on, little barge, heave on, little tug, pound your guts out, work,
dig in, plow this river all to hell.
     It'll heal over.
     Chapter XIX
     TRAIN BOUND FOR GLORY

     The wind howled all  around  me. Rain blistered my skin.  Beating  down
against the iron roof  of the car, the sheets of rain sounded like some kind
of a high-pressure fire hose  trying to drill holes. The  night was as pitch
black  as  a  night can get, and it was  only when  the bolts  of  lightning
knocked holes in the clouds that you could see the square shape of the train
rumbling along in the thunder.
     "Jeez!" the kid was  laying up as close to me as he  could get, talking
with his face the other way, "I tink she's slowin' up."
     "I'm ready ta stop any old time," I was laying on my side with my  left
arm around his belly. "I'd like ta git cleaned up 'fore I git ta Chicago."
     I listened in the dark and heard somebody yelling, "Hey, you guys! Been
asleep?"
     'That you, John?" I yelled back at my Negro riding pardner.
     "Dis is me, all right! Been asleep?''
     "I been about half knocked out!"
     ''Me, too!" I heard the older kid yell out.
     "Youse boids is  softies!" the  kid I  was holding  grunted. "How's yo'
music box?" "Still wrapped up in them shirts! I'm 'fraid ta even think about
it!"
     "She's clackin' 'er gait! We'll be stoppin' heah in a few minnits!"
     "Hope so! Is this purty  close to Chicago?"  I  was  yelling loud as  I
could.
     The little kid put in, "Naaa. Dis ain't ennywheres near Chucago. Dis is
Freeport. Tink.<sup>"</sup>
     "Illinois?" I asked him.
     "Yaaa. Illinoy."
     "Son, is yore face got as much dirt an' cinders an coal dust  on  it as
mine's got?"
     "How can I tell? I cain't even see yer mug. Too dark."
     "I'd give a dollar fer a good smoke."
     "Come ta Chi, I'll git youse a smoke from me brudder."
     "Wonder if them guys got finished with their fightin` inside th' car?"
     "Shucks,  man!  Dey might of done  et each othah  up!" John slapped his
hand against the back of the kid he was holding.
     "I benna listinin' to 'em down through da rooof."
     "Shore 'nuff? What're they doin'?"
     "Banged aroun' a long time. Cuss'n. Been kinda quiet last few miles."
     "Sho'  been  still!  Man, I bet  dey jes' natchilly cut one `nothah  ta
pieces!"
     "I'm  jest  wonderin' how many we're gonna find that-away when this dam
train stops. These is good guys. Just outta work. You know how a feller is."
     John oozed along on his belly from the end of the car where he had been
riding with  his head to the wind. I felt him  lay down  at my side and hold
his arm  across my ribs to hang onto a plank  in the  boardwalk. "Seems like
dis heah rain jus' holds alla dis train smoke right down on toppa th' train,
don' it? I seen  'em befo'. Take  a buncha th'  bes'  workin' fellas  in th'
worl'.  Let  'em  jus' git down an' out. No kinda steady job.  Jus' makes ya
mean's all hell."
     "Me  ol' man  wuz datta way." I could hear the oldest kid talking while
he crawled up and laid down alongside of the little one. "He was okay, okay.
Man gits outta woik,  tho', goes  off on a  Goddam blink.  Wuz two diff'rent
fellas. I go upstate now an' visit me maw  when he ain't around. Slugged  me
'bout a month ago. Ain't seen 'em since." His voice sounded slow and dry  in
the banging and the rain.
     "None a ya mushy talk."
     "By gosh, little squirt, ya  know, I believe that you talk tougher than
that whole boxcar fulla railroad rounders."
     "Sho' do."
     "I say what I t'ink, see!"
     "Okay. Whatta yez men a-gonna do? Dere's de air brakes!"
     I lifted my head up and  looked over  the  top of my  guitar. I saw the
crazy  red glares from neon lights cutting against  the  clouds. Bushes  and
hedges  whizzing  past  with  nice warm smears  of electric lights  from the
windows  of houses.  Spotlights and headlights from other  locomotives  shot
around in the rain. Chug holes and vacant lots standing full of water shined
like new money when the  lightning cracked. I tried to  keep the  buckets of
water wiped out of my face long enough to see. "Edge of some town."
     "Freeport. Ain't I done told yez oncet?" The runty kid snorted rain out
of  his nose poking his head over the  guitar.  "I put  da bum on alla  dese
happy homes. Freeport."
     All four of  us got up  on  our  hands and  knees and  listened to  the
screaking and jamming  of the brakes  against the  wheels.  A red-hot switch
engine pounded past us. Heat flew from the fire box and every  single one of
us set  down and  held our hands out to warm  a little. The rain was falling
harder. Our car was wobbling along like a  crippled elephant. Red  and green
switch lights looked like melted  globs of Christmas candy. A purplish white
glare  was coming from  a danger  flare stabbed into a  cross tie across the
yards to the right. To  the left there I  could make out a lonesome dull red
electric  light  blinking  out  through  the  windows  of  a  burger  joint.
Headlights from fast cars danced  along the  highway past the chili  places.
Our  train  slowed  down  to a slow crawl, on both sides  nothing  but dirty
strings of every crazy kind of a railroad car.
     "Alla  dem  bright  lites  up  ahead, dat's de  highway  crossin'. Bull
hangout." The little kid was poking me and pointing.
     "Shore 'nuf ? This a tough town?''
     "Worse'n dat."
     "Hay, dere, Pee Wee. You'n me'd betta unload."  The  tall kid kept down
on his  belly and crawled over the  end  of the  roof. "We left our packs in
this open machinery car," he explained to me.
     "Wid ya."  The  little kid  slipped  along and  followed  him  down the
ladder.
     I eased along on my hands and knees and looked over the end of the roof
between the two cars. "Take  it easy." I was holding  my breath and watching
them slip down the  slick ladder.  The rain and the clouds made it so dark I
couldn't see the ground below him. "Watch out fer them wheels, big shot! All
right?"
     "Made 'er!" I heard him tell me. Then I saw his head and shoulders drop
down into  the end of the carload of machinery. Just then a bright streak of
light shot up along the car. Both  kids kept ducked down out of sight, but a
man trotted along on the cinders and kept his flashlight beamed on them.
     "Hey! Hey!" I heard him bellering out. He mounted the steps  of the low
car and shot his light over  the edge. "Stand up! Stand up!  Stand up there,
you! Well! I be Goddamed! Where do you senators think you're going?''
     The pair of kids' heads raised up  between the machinery and the end of
the car. Wet. Dirty with coal soot. Hats gone. Hair  tangled. Sheets of rain
pouring down on  them in the bright  glare of  the cop's light. They blinked
and frowned and wiped their hands across their faces.
     "Mornin', Cap'n," the little one saluted.
     'Tryin' ta git home," the big one was slipping his  canvas pack  on his
back.
     The little one grinned up into the flashlight and said, "Little rainy."
     "That's a dam dangerous place to ride! Don't you know wet weather makes
these loads  skid? Beat it!  Skat! Hit  th' ground!"  He  motioned  with his
light.
     Both kids slipped over the wall of the car and I rolled across the roof
to the right-hand side and waved my guitar over the side at them. "Hey, want
yer shirts back?" I swung down the ladder where the cop couldn't see  me and
hissed at the kids as they walked along beside our train. "Shirts? Shirts?"
     Both kids pulled up their britches, laughed a little, and said, "Naaa!"
     I swung there on the ladder  for a bit watching the little fellers just
sort of fade out. Rain. Smoke. All kinds of clouds. Night  just darker  than
hell. I felt a little funny, I guess. Then  they was gone.  I pulled  myself
back  up on top of  the  car  and said, "Well, John,  there  goes our ridin'
pardners."
     "Sho'  gone, all right. You still  got dem shirts  wrapped  'round  yo'
music box! Keep it dry?"
     "Naw."  I  patted my  guitar on  the sides.  "Couldn't be wetter.  They
wanted to give 'em to me, so I just took 'em."
     "Little tramps some day."
     "Well, one thing they gotta teach soldiers is how ta tramp."
     "I sho<sup>'</sup> wish't  I  could fine  me a good  fast  job of truck
drivin'. I'd sho' as hell quit dis trampin'."
     "Quiet! Duck down!"
     As we  oozed across the highway, a high-power spotlight shot its  beams
from  a black  sedan under a  street  light. The train pulled clear  of  the
highway and then stopped. The sedan  rolled up at the side of our car, a low
siren sounded  like a mean tomcat under a barrel. About a dozen harness cops
wheeled  the boxcar door  wide  open.  Flashlights played  around  over  the
sixty-six men while three or four of the patrol cops crawled in the door.
     "Wake up!"
     "Okay! Pile out."
     "Git movin', you!"
     "Yes, sir."
     "One at a time!"
     "Who're you? Where's your draft card?"
     "Whitaker's my name. Blacksmith. Here's my draft number."
     "Next! Dam!  What's  been going  on in  this car?  Civil  war? How come
everybody all tied up? Wrapped up?"
     "Greenleaf  is my name.  Truck  mechanic. Well, see, mister officer, <b>we</b>
was havin' a  sort of a picnic an' a dance in th' car here. Th' engineer hit
his air brakes  a little too quick. So quite a bunch of us got throwed down.
Bumped  our  heads up  against th'  walls. On th' floor. Ah.  Right here, My
draft card. That's it, ain't it? I cain't see with this rag over me eye."
     "I don't believe a word of it! Been some trouble in  this car! What was
it? Next! You!"
     "Here's my  card. Dynamite man. Lebeque. I broke my fist  all to pieces
when I stumbled."
     "Draft  card, bud! What  is this? Car load of  drunks? All of you smell
like liquor!"
     "Picolla.  There's  my  number. Oil  field driller.  Somebody  poured a
bottle of wine down my back while I was asleep!"
     "Asleep. Yeah! I see  they left the  chipped glass  all over your shirt
collar, too! Draft cards, men! Move faster!"
     "My name's Mickey the Slick, see! I won't lie to yez! I'm a gambler. Da
best. I wear good clothes an' I spent  good  money! I was lookin' all right,
new suit, an' ever'ting.  Den sombudy  popped me  with a quart wine  bottle.
Cracked my head. Ruint my suit! Here's my number, officer!"
     "Whoever  cracked this man, I wish to congratulate him! Move  on!  Fall
out the door, there! Line op over there by that patrol car  with the rest of
them!"
     'Tommy Bear. Quarter-breed Indian. Mechanic."
     "Hey, Cap!  Some of these birds are  all beat up! Trouble of some kind!
Every  single one of them has got a busted ear, or a  black eye, or a broken
fist,  or their  clothes ripped dam near off! Been a hell of a fight in this
car! About fifty of them!"
     "Herd 'em out! All in a bunch!" The captain stuck his head in the door.
"Match 'em out there under that street light! We'll make  'em talk! Any dead
ones?"
     "I  don't know!" The sarg shot his light around over  the car. "I see a
few that don't seem to be able to get up!"
     "Load 'em out! Git along,  you guys! Walk! All of you! Right here under
this light! Line 'em up! Finding any dead ones back there?"
     "Three or  four  knocked out! Don't think they're dead! Well pull  them
out in this rain and wake them up! Load that one right out through the door.
Shake him a  little. He looks like  he's still flickering. How is  this one?
His eyes are  still batting a little around the edges. Stick his face  up to
the  rain.  Bring them  other  two, boys. Help them along. Shake them  good.
Looks like  they  might  be salvaged.  God,  they  really must  have  had  a
knockdown dragout! Hold them up a litlle.
     "This boid's okay. Rain brought 'im aroun'."
     "March him on over  yonder to where  the captain  is. What's the matter
with you dam fool men, anyway? Is this all you've got to do? Fight! Beat the
hell out of each other! Why, dam me, I didn't think any of you had that much
spunk left in you! Why in the hell don't you spend that much energy working?
Walk  along, there,  stud horse! Walk! Here's these four, Cap. That's all of
them."
     "They look like a  bunch of dam corpses!" The captain looked the  crowd
over.  Then he  turned  toward the boxcar and hollered,  "Any more in there?
Look for guns an' knives around on th' floor!"
     "Here's a  pair!" A big tough looker stood up on  top of the car behind
John and me.  "Duckin'  outta sight, huh? Git movin' down  dat  ladder! Now.
Watcha got wrapped up dere, mister?"
     "This thing?"
     "Dat ting. Corpse a some kind?''
     "Guitar."
     "Aha. Yodel lay dee hoo stuff, eh?"
     "My meal ticket."
     "Where you headin', black boy?"
     ''Anywhere I c'n find some work."
     "Woik, eh? Where 'bouts is yer shoit?"
     "On his guitar."
     "Jeez! Christamighty. Do yez think more 'bout dat music box den yer own
back?"
     "Mah back c'n take it"
     "Drop down dere  on de groun'. Now git movin'.  Over dere where yez see
de whole gang 'round dat street light."
     I walked along, shaking the water out of my hair.
     John said, "Sho' some bad ol' stormy night,"
     "Here's de pair I caught up on toppa de car, capt'n."
     "You two line up. Where's your shirt?"
     "Ah done tole him,  Dis  boy heah got it wrapped 'roun' his  music box.
Rainin'."
     "You tryin' to  tell  me?  It's raining!  Men! Did you know  that? It's
raining! Any of you get wet?"
     The sarg was shooting his light in  our faces and saying, "Wash some of
the  blood off of this  bloody  bunch.  What  was the trouble,  fellows? Who
started it all? Who beat up who? Out with it Talk!"
     The last two officers trotted from the boxcar over to the gang. "Here's
their artillery," one of them said. He dumped a double handful of knives and
the necks of three wine bottles, "No guns."
     "No guns?" The captain looked the knives over. "You could cut a man all
to pieces with the  neck of  one of these  broken bottles. How  many  drunks
among them?"
     "Smell and see."
     "I don't think  you could  tell by smelling, chief.  Some bird  broke a
whole quart over another one's head. Then two or three other jugs got  broke
over other's heads. Everybody smells like liquor."
     We passed by in double file, the cops guiding us, watching us. The sarg
looked at one string of draft cards. The big chief looked at another string.
     "You  two  boys. No draft card? It's  th' jail  if you haven't got 'em.
Huh?" the chief said.
     "Too young. Sixteen," one boy said.
     "Seventeen," the next one nodded.
     "All look okay, chief?"
     "You, there! What you got wrapped  up there--a  baby?"  The chief asked
me,
     "Guitar."
     "Ohhh. Well. Why  not  take it out and  plunk us offa ditty? Like this.
Dum tee dum. Dum tee dum. Tra la la la la! Yodel layyy dee whooooo! Ha! Ha!"
He flumped his coat sleeve and danced around.
     "Too wet to play," I told him.
     "What th' hell do you  bring it out in this stormy weather for,  then?"
he asked me.
     "I didn't order this stormy weather.''
     "What's this all over you fellows?" the sarg asked us.
     "Cement dust," John talked up by my elbow.
     "With  all of this rain,"  the chief asked  us, "what's gonna happen to
all of you?"
     I said, "Gonna turn inta  statues. You can set us around in yer streets
an' parks, so rich ladies can see how purty we are."
     "No,  men. I ain't holdin' you  for nothin'." The chief looked us over.
"I  could jail you if I wanted to. But  I don't  know.  Vag. Disturbing  th'
peace. Fighting. Lots of things."
     "Riding the freights," the sarg put in.
     "Or just bein' here," I said.
     "Tell  you one  thing,  by  God. I never did  see such a  dirty, messy,
bloody, beat-up bunch of people in my whole life, and I've been a copper for
twenty years. I could toss you men in the jug if I wanted  to. I don't know.
You see, men...."
     A big eight-wheel driver locomotive pounded  across  the road, throwing
steam a hundred feet on  each side, easing along, ringing its bell, snorting
and letting out a four-time toot on its whistle, and drowned out the chief's
talking.
     "Westbound," John was telling me over my shoulder. "She's sho' a daisy,
ain't she?"
     "Mighty purty," I told him.
     <img width="275" height="324" src="glory-25.png">


     An old gray-headed  hobo  trotted  past  us in  the  dark, swinging his
bundle up  onto  his  back,  splashing  through  the mudholes and  not  even
noticing the patrol men. He got a glimpse of  all of us guys there under the
light  and yelled, "Plenty o'  work!  Buildin' ships! War's  on! Goddam that
thunder an' lightnin'  to hell!  Work, boys,  work!  I  gotta  letter  right
hyere!" He bogged on  a few yards past us, waving  a white sheet of paper in
the dark.
     "Work?" One guy broke and trotted hi after the old man.
     "Job?  Where  'bouts?" Another  man swung his bundle  under his arm and
started off.
     "Letter?"
     "Lemme see it!"
     "Where'd he say?"
     "Hey! Old man! Wait!"
     "Don't let dat  stuff fool yez, men. Tain't nuttin' but justa dam hobo,
wid a dam sheeta paper!"
     "Seattle ! Seattle!" I  heard the old man holler back through the rain.
"Work, worrrrrk!"
     "Crazy."
     "Yuh know, men, they ain't no work out at Seattle. Hell's bells, that's
more'n fifteen hundred miles west uv here!"
     "Out toward Japan!"
     "Th' old man had th' letter right there in his hand!"
     "Reckin he's right?"
     Three more men tore loose through the dark.
     "I know  them Seattle people. You cain't beat 'em. Mighty purty  women.
An', by God, 'they don't write letters, less they mean what they say!"
     "I slep' under ever' bridge in Seattle! That's a workin' town!"
     "You men going entirely nuts?" a cop asked us.
     "I want as close ta Japan as I kin git!" Another man drifted off in the
dark.
     "Ah wants a crack at that Horehouse Heato man own se'f!"
     "Pahdon me,  mistah poleese. Is dat train headin<sup>'</sup> to'd wheah
them Japs is fightin'?"
     Men  sloshed holes of water dry,  and bogged off  through the spray  of
wind and rain.  Cops stood  behind us  in the  street light, scratching  and
laughing.  I snuffed my nose and squinched my  eyes  to keep  the water from
getting me.
     "Risin' sun! Wahooo!"
     "See ya latah, offisssahh!"
     "Rain on, little storm, rain on!"
     More men  charged  after the moving  rain.  It  creaked along, the  wet
enamel flicking the  dim light from  the telephone pole where the cops stood
around.  Big iron wheels groaning along  on  the shiny rails. Slick ladders.
Slippery tin roofs, bucking first to one side, then the other, and the black
shapes of the men sticking  like waterbugs,  sucking on like snails, swaying
with the cars, everybody mumbling and talking and cracking jokes back at the
storm.
     "Did Mr. A. Hitler say we was a nation of sissies?"
     Four more men sidled off down and caught onto a boxcar right beside me.
Six more  slushed along  behind  them.  Eight  swung up the ladder  at their
heels. Whole boxcars littered with men talking and going to fight.
     "Read that letter, old man! Yippeee!"
     Ten more come up the ladder. Twenty behind them.
     I told the cop next to me, "Those boys are shore gonna need some music!
Let her rain!" And I shinnied up the iron ladder of the next car.
     I hunkered down on top of the car, with John setting right beside me.
     "Thunder! Let 'er crack!" An older man  was waving his arms like a monk
praying on top of a mountain.
     "Ain't you th' dam guy I split in th' mouth? I'm sorry, man!"
     "You broke a wine  bottle over my head? We won'  break de nex' wine! By
God, we'll drink it! Yah!"
     Men  rolled  around  and  laughed.  Rocked back and forth as the  train
picked up speed. Smoke rolled back down along the tops of the cars, blotting
them almost out. I looked  back  at the dozen cops standing around under the
street light.
     "Too bad we cain't  ride inside!"  I  was yelling  around  at the night
riders. "Gonna git wetter'n holy hell!"
     "Let 'er ripple! What th' hell d'ya want  in a war, boy, a big soft ass
cushion? Ha! Ha! Ha!"
     "Trot me out a ship needs a buildin'!"
     "Whooofff!"
     I was having a  hard time standing  up, blinking my eyes to try to  get
some cinders out. I looked around with my head ducked down into the wind and
smoke.
     And in that one blink of my one eye I got another look along the train.
Men. A mixed-up bunch of blurred shadows and train  smoke. Heard about work.
Just heard about it.
     "I'm da wattah boy!"
     I looked down at my elbow.
     "How. How'n th' hell come you two on this here train? I thought you was
a long time gone!"
     "Nawww. Nuttin' like  dat,"  the  little  runt spit out into  the rain.
"Nuttin' like dat."
     "This train's a-goin' ta Seattle! Fifteen hundred miles!"
     "Yeaaaa."
     John was riding  at my  feet, setting down  with  his bare  back to the
wind, talking. "Gonna be one mighty bad ol' night, boys. Rainy."
     "Yaaaa."
     "Stormy."
     "So whattt?"
     "We're  goin' out  ta th' West Coast ta build ships an'  stuff ta fight
them Japs with, if this rain don't wash us out before we get there!"
     "Wid ya. Wid ya."
     "Hell! We're fightin' a war!"
     "Cut de mushy stuff."
     I listened back along  the train  and my  ears  picked some low singing
starting  up.  I  strained in  the storm  to hear  what  the  song was.  The
whoof-whoof of the big engine hitting her
     <img width="230" height="289" src="glory-26.png">

     speed drowned the singing out for a minute, and the rattle and creaking
of the cars smothered it  under;  but  as  I listened as close as I could, I
heard the song coming my way and getting louder, and I  joined with the rest
of the men singing:

     This train don't carry no smoker,
     Lyin' tongues or two-bit jokers;
     This train is bound for glory
     This train!

     Wet wind curled in the drift of  the train and cinders stung against my
eyelids, and I held them closed and sung  out at the top of my voice. Then I
opened my eyes  just a  little slit, and a great  big cloud of black  engine
smoke pushed down over the whole string of cars, like a  blanket for the men
through the storm.
        the end
        POSTSCRIPT

     <i>Bound  for  Glory</i>  was first published in 1943.  Since that time  Woody
Guthrie and his songs have traveled from one end of America to the other.
     Woody Guthrie  wrote more  than 1,000 songs between 1936 and 1954, when
he became hospitalized, a victim of Huntington's Disease (chorea).
     The  songs and  ballads  of Woody Guthrie  have continued  to  grow  in
popularity. His songs have become as much  a part of  America as its rivers,
its forests, its prairies, and the people  whom Guthrie chronicled  in them:
'This Land Is Your Land,"  "Reuben James," "Tom Joad," "Pastures of Plenty,"
"Hard Traveling,"  "So  Long,  It's Been Good  to  Know Yuh," "Union  Maid,"
"Pretty Boy Floyd," "Roll On,  Columbia," "Dust Bowl Refugee," "Blowing Down
This Old Dusty Road," and 'This Train Is Bound for Glory."
     These songs and  dozens more  have been recorded by  Guthrie  and other
folk singers. Pete  Seeger, Joan Baez, Tom  Paxton, The Weavers, Peter, Paul
and Mary, Judy Collins, Odetta,  and Jack Elliott are  among those who  have
expressed their love and admiration through their loyalty to Guthrie and the
songs he wrote.
     Woody's  songs and his guitar made him a spokesman for  the downtrodden
everywhere,  but he also sang of the beauty  of  America, a beauty he viewed
from the  open  doors  of boxcars as  they sped across the  country.  He saw
America from the open road, and he knew its people firsthand.
     In 1943 he and his old friend the late folk singer Cisco Houston joined
the merchant marine and Woody saw war and the world beyond the oceans.
     After  the war he briefly  rejoined the Almanac  Singers, a  group that
included  Pete Seeger, Lee Hays,  Millard Lampell, and  others.  He  wrote a
second book, <i>American Folksong,</i> a collection of thirty songs and sketches. A
collection of  prose  and  poems by  him, <i>Born  to  Win,</i>  'edited by  Robert
Shelton, appeared in 1965. He was a member of People's Songs, also with Hays
and  Seeger.  This  group  was  described  as  a "new  union of  progressive
songwriters."
     In  the  early thirties Woody Guthrie  married  the  former  Mary  Esta
Jennings  and  in  1942 the former Marjorie Mazia  Greenblatt. Woody died on
October 3, 1967. He is survived by five children.