An hour before midnight the man to Houston whistled past. Cass and Thomas Clay crouched under an embankment until the engine passed, and Cass ventured the guess that there would be but few empties in the string, judging by the engine’s hard straining. They could not find even a cattle-car unclosed; everything rolling was sealed. Cass became a bit afraid that the entire string would go by and leave them behind for another ten-hour wait; but Clay insisted on an empty, and Cass wanted companionship. Clay could not be hurried. “I’m kind of pooped out t’night,” he complained. “You kin grab anythin’ you feel like grabbin’, but me, I want an empty so’s I can sleep. These S. P. reefers feel like you’re settin’ ’top a wobbly waffle iron—Jeez, they make dents in my fanny so’s I can’t walk straight all next day.” An empty ore car came rolling by. Since the cab itself was but six cars behind this, Clay had to consent to hopping it. He went up first, and Cass ran with the car till Clay was on the last rung of the ladder before he himself hopped.
Clay clung to the side, peering down into the darkness. He would not jump till he could see into what he was jumping. He saw that the car was unloaded, that its sides sloped steeply to the center, and that there two chutes gaped wide. Beneath the chutes he caught the glint of rolling wheels; and he turned his head to say that they would have to find another car.
Cass was already coming up—when he reached the top he leaped past Clay, with a victor’s shout, and flung himself over the side onto the slant steel floor. Clay swung over swiftly, saw a white hand sliding downward in darkness, and mashed his shoe down on its knuckles. He felt Cass fumbling at his heel, felt him clutch his leg—and for three long miles it was thus they rode, the one clinging fiercely to the car’s steel side, the other clinging no less fiercely to the leg he could not see. In those brief minutes Cass saw the wheels below his toes, and remembered in terror a boy in a dark shirt sprawled in sand among cinders; he saw again a Mexican girl who had come for coal with a doll carriage.
When the train went into a hole for a passenger engine Clay gave him his hand, and Cass hitched himself up to safety. He was caked with coal dust, his face was bruised in a dozen places, he had lost his cap and skinned the knees out of his overalls; but he shouted, “Ah’m obleeged, fella.” The other made no reply. Cass began to laugh then, uncontrollably, at nothing at all; he laughed until his knees were shaking and his eyes were wet, and he could not stop even when he saw Clay looking at him in amazement. He became so weak with laughter that when Clay left him to seek another car he could not follow his friend for several minutes. By the time that he felt able to follow, Clay had disappeared somewhere down the spine. Cass was too shaken to follow far. He found an oil tanker, and sat all night with his back braced against the rounded side and his legs against a coupling, watching the Texas hills go by.
In the morning, in Houston, he found Clay once more; they went uptown to the Sally together. After eating they snuck out the rear entrance to avoid work, and returned to the Soupline tracks. Before dark they were on their way to New Orleans.
Cass could not sleep a wink that night for thinking of New Orleans. “Ah’ll bet there’s places to git tattooed on every corner, an’ showhouses an’ whorehouses with Creole gals.” Twice he saw small yellow lights gleaming in distance, and both times he had to rouse Clay, thinking he saw the lights of New Orleans. One city was about the same as another to Clay, however, and he merely rolled over, grumbling, “Fella, I’ve told you nine times now we can’t hit New Orleans before light. Them lights is still in Texas. You’d best be gettin’ yourself some rest whiles you still can get it.”
But Cass could not sleep. He sat in the open doorway of the swaying box, his legs dangling over the side, trying not to remember Nancy.
Great dim forests rose out of darkness, rose and fell to rise again; stretches of field where he smelled cane-soil, cone-shaped hills of high-heaped rice-husks that even in daytime would have looked like soft-coal mounds. The car roared through tiny hamlets darkened and steeping, and Cass fancied he smelled the wind off the Gulf. Sometimes sudden valleys opened beneath him—so deep that he drew himself back in brief fear; and just before dawn he grew very tired and curled up beside Clay to take a short nap. When he woke Clay was standing above him, sullenly digging him in the ribs with his toe.
The car was rolling very slowly. Cass blinked out into sun-lit fields. Then he jumped to his feet, brushed straw off his coat, and rolled a cigarette with Clay. How long he had slept! He saw by the sun that it was well past ten o’clock.
When they leaped to the ground Cass thought to see people—thousands of men and women, all rushing, all shoving and mauling and pushing each other; he thought to see towering buildings and streetcars roaring like trains through the midst of the press. But to his dismay he was still on the prairie, with only the long steel track ahead, and only the back end of a retreating caboose to amaze him. After walking a few miles they came to the houses of the Negro suburbs—little one-story shacks much like his own had been. Clay informed him that they now were in Gretna and that New Orleans lay west across the river. They turned down a pleasant street called Copernicus Avenue. A shaded, quiet little street lined by clean white cottages on either side; from porches and lawns Negro children paused in play to watch them as they passed.
“Goddamn,” Cass swore, “Ah nevah did see so many jigs in all mah life befo’—where ah come from we have lynchin’ bees to keep the population down.” He spoke loudly, in order that Clay would think he was tough.
Clay grunted assent. “Yep, niggers got all the jobs, everywhere, an’ that’s why you’n me is on the road. Up north they’s six dinges for every telygraph pole. A white man don’t stand a chance no more, anywhere.”
When they reached the ferry a nickel apiece was required. Clay paid for both without hesitation, but was irritated to see Cass take no apparent notice—Cass walked straight ahead onto the boat as though he owned half the wharf.
The truth was that Cass had really not seen, it had not even occurred to him that a fare might be required. And when they were half way across the river he turned to Clay and inquired, without even blushing from shame of ignorance, “Say, what ol’ river u this anyhow, fella?”
Clay looked at him to see if he were joking; he himself knew every large river from coast to coast. He saw that Cass was in earnest, and he saw too that Cass looked as dull as an ox with its jaw hanging open.
“The Hudson,” Clay said, and spat over the railing.
Cass only said “Oh.” He did not doubt for a moment, and did not sense the other’s contempt.
When the ferry docked Clay left him alone, walking off swiftly without a word. Cass was hurt, yet was not surprised. He merely thought to himself, “He just sees ah’m not like most others, that’s all. Reck’n ah’m a queer cuss one way or another.” It had happened often before, back in Great-Snake Mountain; so often there that he had grown up to expect others to go off from him, sooner or later. He did not understand this, he merely resigned himself to it.
He felt dreadfully alone.
He was not deeply concerned about eating or sleeping; yet he did wish to bathe, and he had no money. Seeing nothing which looked to him like a Sally, he asked the way of a fat fellow who stood about doing nothing. The fat one pointed silently straight down the street, and Cass went to a building bearing the sign: “Volunteer Prisoners’ Aid Society.” He could not read every word of this sign, and thought he was entering a Salvation Army home.. The man at the desk shook his head sadly—there was a fee here of twenty-five cents. If he didn’t have that he’d best go somewhere else. “Six blocks to the left and four down is a place. You’ll see the sign, bub.”
“Six blocks to the left and four down” proved to be twelve to the left, and ten down. Cass walked from one side of the city to the other before he finally found the place, and then recognized it only by a line of men waiting in front.
It was the Jesus-Saves mission.
Here he was given a little pile of something made from shredded cabbage and carrots, and a cup of cold chicory-coffee. While eating, he learned that there was a shower in the basement.