I was lying on my back, my right hand was loose in a puddle of mud, and I was staring up at a wall that held a bullfight poster. I saw the colors, and the word ARRUZA, and then read the sign very carefully three times before I fainted again.
When I came up the second time, someone was going through my pockets. I didn’t stop him. Not even when he pulled my watch off my wrist. I went under again, and when I came back the third time I was very cold, and shivering. I tried to get up, let my legs slide down the wall, where they rose above my head lying in the dirt, and tried to gain purchase on the brick wall. It turned to rubber and peanut butter.
I kept at it, and finally got to my feet.
The world was nowhere to be seen.
Then I realized both my eyes had swollen almost completely shut. I stumbled forward, my hands out before me like a blind man, and came out of the alley into the street. It was noisy and full of people. The lights hurt my eyes. I stared up, and caught a vista of the town, and it was an eye-numbing horizon of neon. I groaned.
A pair of buoyant Mexican girls swinging huge purses went by, and tittered to each other, saying something dirty, but saying it softly, in Spanish. I called them whores, ¡putas!
I walked the streets for hours, seeing nothing, only feeling a pain far worse than the ache that threatened to split my head open. I must have looked hideous, because I came around a corner suddenly, and came face to face with a heavyset Mexican whose eyes opened wide in amazement. He got a sick look and walked around me. I didn’t turn to see if he was still watching.
My pockets were empty, of course. All I knew was that I had to have a drink. My mouth was sandy and my stomach ached. Not entirely from the stomping I’d gotten. Oh, Jenny, oh, Fran!
I wandered into the Blue Fox, and there was a naked girl doing a nautch dance on the bar. Sailors in civvies were trying to grab her crotch. She kept twisting away from them. Then someone announced dinner was served and three broads came out, undressed, and lay down on the bar. Hors d’oeuvres. Three sickies jumped off their bar stools and went to fall down on the goodies. A bouncer tapped me on the shoulder and I left. I was sick.
I went into an alley and puked. Twice. When I was as empty as I was ever going to be, I tried to straighten myself up. I brushed off my clothes, raked my hair back out of my face with a hand, and went in search of a job.
There was a hustler looking for handbill boys at the Rancho Grande, a spieler for one nightclub told me, and I went over there. Three dollars and fifty cents for two hours’ work handing out handbills, putting them under the windshield wipers of parked cars. I asked for a half dollar advance and was handed a stack of handbills instead. I went off down the street like a trained monkey, handing pieces of paper to people, pressing them into the hands of strangers. I was giving of myself. It felt wonderful. I wanted to puke again, but that was ridiculous. I knew I was empty.
Finally, all the handbills were gone, and I went back to get paid. The man was gone, and the people at the club didn’t know where he could be found. I went looking for him. It took a long time, but I found another handbill-giver, a kid with wide, dark eyes, and told him the man was gone. He told me that was only because I was gringo. He grinned and told me where to find the man. I went to the Bum-Bum and there he was, hiring more boys in the service of his cause. I approached him and said pay me. He looked like he didn’t want to do it, but I started to make sandpaper noises and my hands became claws and I swear I’d have killed him right then if he’d refused. He’d have gone to his grave with my teeth in his throat. I was more than a little mad.
He pulled out a wad and started to peel off three singles. I reached in and took a ten, and walked away. He started to follow, and started to motion to another man, but I turned my bloody face to stare at them, and he shrugged.
I took the ten and went drinking. I bought a bottle of tequila. It seemed only fitting to drink the wine of the land. I finished the bottle almost by myself. The last dregs were taken by an old Mexican woman sitting in a doorway. She had her legs tied under her so she looked crippled, and her five-year-old son was selling pencils and switchblade knives just down the street while she begged. At one point a well-built but slovenly fifteen-year-old girl came by, swinging her hips, and the old woman told me in broken English that it was her pride, her daughter. “She make doce, twelf, doce doe-lahr night,” she beamed. They lived good. I shared some chili beans with her, and went away.
I was in another place, I think. It was a club. There was a fight and sirens and I ran away. Then I was in the Mambo Rock, and someone was yelling FIRE FIRE FIRE and I turned to see the whole wall blazing. An electrical short, and the whole block was in flames. Twelve feet in the air the flames ate the night sky, and I was helping a shopkeeper pull his bongos and wooden statues of Don Quixote and bead-shirts and serapes out into the street, and then there was a Mexican soldier, a member of the National Guard, a rurale, something…and he was spinning me around telling me to go away. They’d called in the army and half the town was on fire, and I was pulling a woman out of the flames, and her dress was on fire, and I gave her a feel as I beat out the flames with my bare hands. And then they were taking me to the infirmary, and swabbing my hands with cool, moist salve.
Then another place, and I was very drunk and sick and very tired. I walked up Avenida Constitución and saw 287 HOTEL CORREO DEL NORTE and bought a pack of Delicados for seven cents in the booth on the corner, and went back to the hotel.
My room was seventy-five cents for the night. The walls were plywood till they reached five feet, then chicken-wire to the ceiling. I slept with my shoelaces knotted together, so my shoes wouldn’t get stolen. I’d have put them under the end-legs of the bed, but I was so tired I knew the bed could be lifted off the shoes and I wouldn’t have known it. Someone tried to get in during the night and I screamed about death and snakes and they went away.
I dreamed of jackasses painted like zebras, and turistas getting their pictures taken in a cart pulled by the zebra-ass, on street corners, wearing sombreros with the name CISCO KID scrawled on the brim. It was a nice dream.
The sign said TÉLEFONO PÚBLICO, and I stood on Avenida Revolución.
I called the hospital, and somehow they found Rooney. She had been looking for me all the day before. I told her where I was, and she came and got me. I was crying, I think. They released Jenny’s body, and her parents came down to get it. I don’t think I could have borne carrying it back in the Magnette…not to Los Angeles. That was forever.
Rooney kept asking me where I’d been, but I couldn’t tell her. I wasn’t purged, for Christ’s sake, but I was tired, and that was almost as good.
Jenny was gone, and Kenneth Duane Markham was gone, and soon enough Rooney would be gone from me. All I wanted to do was get back to Los Angeles and try to be someone else. The taste of tequila was still strong in my throat, and I knew that would help a little.
—Tijuana and Hollywood, 1963
RIDING THE DARK TRAIN OUT
The freight car was cold, early in the morning.
He wore a filthy, ripped suit jacket, with pieces of newspaper and magazines stuffed against his skin, for extra protection; but the chill found him just the same, uncaring.
Feathertop Ernie Cargill brushed a trembling hand back through the silky, almost white baby-hair that tumbled over his forehead. Hair that was smooth, and the slightest breeze picking its way through the shuddering freight made it toss and rise. He cursed dimly, finger-raking it back for the thousandth time. He touched the bottle in his pocket, but did not remove it.
The cotton bales were soft, but the smell of pig shit was strong. He moved gently, making a deeper depression among the stocked bales.
He was a young man, an ex-musician, and down as down could get on his luck.
“No luck, no buck,” he would say, hugging himself tightly, shoving his fisted hands into his armpits to keep himself warm. His teeth chattered gently.
He was thin and tall, with a nose that skewed
sidewise from a clarinet case across the kisser during his thirty-five-minute gig with a symphony orchestra once. “Bastards,” he would say, “all I did was nice; I syncopated Vivaldi and the first chair clobbered me!”
Since then, and since the panther sweat had gotten him divorced from every decent—and even indecent—group from Greenwich Village to the Embarcadero, he had become a sucker-rolling freighter-jumper.
“There ain’t nothin’ faster, or lonelier, or more direct than a cannonball freight when you wanna go someplace,” Feathertop would say. “The accommodations may not be the poshest, but man, there ain’t nobody askin’ for your ticket stub, neither.”
He had been conning the freights for a long, long time now. Ever since the hootch, and the trouble with the Quartet, and Midge and the child. Ever since all that. It had been a very long time that had no form and no end.
He was—as he told himself in the vernacular of a trade no longer his own—riding the dark train out. Out and out and never return again. Till one day the last freight had been jumped, the last pint had been killed, the last measure had been rapped. That was the day it ended. No reprise.
The occasion of Feathertop Ernie Cargill’s first killing was an interesting story.
The freight car was cold, early in the morning.
He was pressed far back into the corner of the car on his cotton bales, the rattling and tinning of the wheels striking at the rails almost covering the sound of his ocarina.
He held his elbows away from his body, and the little sweet potato trilled neatly and sweetly as he tickled its tune-belly.
The train slowed at a road crossing, and the big door slid open.
The boy lifted the girl by the waist and slid her into the freight car. She pulled her legs up under her, to rise, her full peasant skirt drawing up her thighs, and Feathertop’s music pffft-ed away. “Now that is a very nice, a very nice,” he murmured to himself, back in his corner.
He took in the girl, in one sharp all-seeing look.
A little thing, but the right twist for the action that counted. Hot, that was the word, hot! Hair like a morning-frightened sparrow’s wings, with the sun shining down over them. A poet, yet! His thoughts for the swanlike neck, the full, high breasts, the slim waist, and the long legs were less than poetic, however.
Then the boy straight-armed himself up, twisting at the last moment so he landed sitting, where she had sat.
He was less to see, but Feathertop took him in, too, just to keep the records straight.
Curly hair, high cheekbones, wide gnomelike mouth, a pair of drummer’s blocky hands, and a body that said well, maybe I can wrestle you for ten minutes—but then I’m finished. Feathertop went back to the girl. With no regrets.
“We made it, Cappy,” the girl said sweetly.
A brilliant observation, thought Feathertop.
“Yeah, seems so, don’t it.” The boy laughed, hugging her close.
“Ah-ah!” Feathertop interrupted, standing up, brushing the pig shit from his dirty pants. “None of that. We run a respectable house here.”
They whirled and saw him, standing there dim in the slatted light from the boarded freight wall. He was big, and filthy, and his toes stuck out of the flapping tops of his shoes. He held the black plastic kazoo lightly.
“Who are you?” The boy’s voice trembled.
“Come sit,” said Feathertop, motioning them toward him. “The crap is softer over here.”
The girl smiled, and started forward. The boy yanked her back hard, tugging her off her feet. She landed with a stumbling plop next to him, and he gathered her into the crook of his arm, as he must have seen it done on the cover of some cheap detective magazine.
“Now stay with me, Kitty!” He sounded snappish. “I vowed to take care of you—and that’s what I’m gonna do. We don’t know this guy.”
“Oooo, square bit.” Feathertop screwed his face up. This guy was really out of it. But nowhere!
“What is with this vow jazz?” Feathertop smiled, lounging against the freight’s vibrating wall.
“We—we eloped,” Cappy said. His head came up and he said it defiantly. He stared at Feathertop, daring him to object.
“Well, congratulations.” Feathertop made an elaborate motion with his hand. These two were going to be easy pickings. They couldn’t have much dough, but then none of the freight-bums Feathertop rolled had much. And besides, the chick had a little something the others didn’t have. That was gonna be fun collecting!
But not just yet. Feathertop was a connoisseur. He liked to savor his meat before he tasted it. “Come sit,” he repeated, motioning to the piled cotton bales, over the pig leavings. “I’m just a poor ex-jazz man, name of—uh—Boyd Smith.” He grinned at them wolfishly.
“That ain’t your name, Mister,” the boy said accusingly.
“And you know—you’re right!” Feathertop aimed a finger at him. “That gets you the blue ribbon banana. But it’s safer for anyone riding the redball to know someone else as somethin’ other than what he is. Makes it easier all around.” He winked.
“Oh, come on, Cappy,” the girl said. “He’s okay. He’s a nice guy.” She started to move toward the cotton bales, dragging the reluctant Cappy behind her.
Feathertop watched the smooth scissoring of her slim, trim legs as she walked to the bales. She sat down, tucked her legs beneath her, smoothing the skirt out in a wide circle. He cleared his throat; it had been a long, hot while since he’d seen anything as nice as this within grabbin’ distance.
He had it all clocked, of course. Slug the kid, grab his dough—at least enough to get him to Philadelphia—and then have a ball with the doll.
“Where’d you come from, Mr.—uh—Mr. Smith?” Kitty inquired politely, as she maneuvered on the cotton bales. She smoothed the peasant skirt around her again, shaking it off at the same time.
“Where from?” He thought about it. “Out. I been riding the dark train out for a ways now.”
“Yes, but—”
Her boy friend cut her off peremptorily. “He doesn’t want to tell us, Kitty. Leave him be.”
She looked piqued and stepped-on, so Ernie cut in: “I came from Jersey originally. Been a long time, though.”
They lapsed into silence, and the freight wallowed up a hill, and scooted down the other side, shaking and clanking to itself like a hypochondriac.
After a while, Kitty murmured something to Cappy, and he held her close, answering, “We’ll just have to wait till we pull into Philly, honey.”
“What’s the matter, she wanna go the toilet?” Ernie found it immensely funny.
The boy scowled at him, and the girl looked shocked.
“No! Certainly not, I mean, no, that isn’t what I said!” She snapped at him. “I only said I was hungry. We haven’t had anything to eat all day.”
Joviality suffused Feathertop Ernie Cargill’s voice as he reached behind him, pulling out a battered carpetbag, with leather handles. “Whyn’t ya say so, fellow travelers! Why we got dinner right here. C’mon, buddy, help me set up the kitchen and we’ll have food in a minute or two.”
Cappy looked wary, but he moved off the floorboards and followed the dirty ex-musician to the center of the refuse-littered boxcar.
Ernie crouched and opened the carpetbag. He took out a small packet filled with bits of charcoal, a deep pot of thin metal, some sheets of newspaper, a book of matches and a wrinkled and many-times folded piece of tinfoil with holes in it. He put the charcoal in the pot, lit the paper with the matches, and carefully stretched the tinfoil across the top of the pot.
“A charcoal pit, man,” he said, indicating the slightly smoking makeshift brazier.
“Fan it,” he told Cappy, handing him a still-folded sheet of newspaper.
“Yeah, but what’re we gonna eat? Charcoal?”
“Fellah,” Ernie said, waggling a dirty finger at the younger man, “you try my mutherin’ patience.” He reached into the carpetbag once more and brought up a cello
phane-wrapped package of weiners.
“Hot dogs, man. Not the greatest, but they stick to your belly insides.”
He ripped down the cellophane carefully, and laid three dogs on the tinfoil. Almost immediately they began to sizzle. He looked up and grinned with a toothiness that belied his thoughts. Fattening them up for the kill. He blew through puckered lips and his baby hair flew up, only to fall back over his eyes again.
“A Krogers self-serve,” he explained. “I self-served.”
Kitty grinned and a small, musical laugh fell from her cupid’s bow lips. The boy scowled again; it was getting to be a habit.
When they had licked the last of the weiners’ taste from their fingers, they settled back, and Cappy offered Ernie a cigarette. Nice kid, Ernie thought. Too bad.
“How come you’re riding the rods, kids like you?” Ernie asked. “There’s damned little of that done these days, even by old stiffs like me. Most kids today never even been on a train.”
Cappy looked at his wide hands, and did not reply. But surprisingly, Kitty’s face came up and she said, “My father. He didn’t want us to get married. So we ran away.”
“Why din’t he want you to get hitched?”
This time even she did not answer. She looked down at her hands, too. After a few seconds, she said, “Dad didn’t like Cappy. It was my fault.”