by Don Marquis
"That's funny," says I, out loud.
"What is?" asts the perfessor.
I showed him the bottle and told him how I was named after the companythat made 'em. He says to look around me. They is all kinds of glasswarein that room--bottles and jars and queer-shaped things with crooked tailsand noses--and nigh every piece of glass the perfessor owns is made bythat company.
"Why," says the perfessor, "their factory is in this very town."
And nothing would do fur me but I must go and see that factory. Icouldn't till the quarantine was pried loose from our house. But when itwas, I went down town and hunted up the place and looked her over.
It was a big factory, and I was kind of proud of that. I was glad shewasn't no measly, little, old-fashioned, run-down concern. Of course,I wasn't really no relation to it and it wasn't none to me. But Iwas named fur it, too, and it come about as near to being a fambly asanything I had ever had or was likely to find. So I was proud it seemedto be doing so well.
I thinks as I looks at her of the thousands and thousands of bottlesthat has been coming out of there fur years and years, and will befur years and years to come. And one bottle not so much different fromanother one. And all that was really knowed about me was jest the nameon one out of all them millions and millions of bottles. It made me feelkind of queer, when I thought of that, as if I didn't have no separateplace in the world any more than one of them millions of bottles. If anyone will shut his eyes and say his own name over and over agin fur quitea spell, he will get kind of wonderized and mesmerized a-doing it--hewill begin to wonder who the dickens he is, anyhow, and what he is, andwhat the difference between him and the next feller is. He will wonderwhy he happens to be himself and the next feller HIMSELF. He wonderswhere himself leaves off and the rest of the world begins. I been thatway myself--all wonderized, so that I felt jest like I was a meltingpiece of the hull creation, and it was all shifting and drifting andchanging and flowing, and not solid anywhere, and I could hardly keepmyself from flowing into it. It makes a person feel awful queer, likeseeing a ghost would. It makes him feel like HE wasn't no solider thana ghost himself. Well, if you ever done that and got that feeling, youKNOW what I mean. All of a sudden, when I am trying to take in allthem millions and millions of bottles, it rushed onto me, that feeling,strong. Thinking of them bottles had somehow brung it on. The bignessof the hull creation, and the smallness of me, and the gait at whicheverything was racing and rushing ahead, made me want to grab hold ofsomething solid and hang on.
I reached out my hand, and it hit something solid all right. It wasa feller who was wheeling out a hand truck loaded with boxes from theshipping department. I had been standing by the shipping departmentdoor, and I reached right agin him.
He wants to know if I am drunk or a blanked fool. So after some talkof that kind I borrows a chew of tobacco of him and we gets right wellacquainted.
I helped him finish loading his wagon and rode over to the freight depotwith him and helped him unload her. Lifting one of them boxes down fromthe wagon I got such a shock I like to of dropped her.
Fur she was marked so many dozen, glass, handle with care, and she wasaddressed to Dr. Hartley L. Kirby, Atlanta, Ga.
I managed to get that box onto the platform without busting her, andthen I sets down on top of her awful weak.
"What's the matter?" asts the feller I was with.
"Nothing," says I.
"You look sick," he says. And I WAS feeling that-a-way.
"Mebby I do," says I, "and it's enough to shake a feller up to find adead man come to life sudden like this."
"Great snakes, no!" says he, looking all around, "where?"
But I didn't stop to chew the rag none. I left him right there, with hismouth wide open, staring after me like I was crazy. Half a block away Ilooked back and I seen him double over and slap his knee and laugh loud,like he had hearn a big joke, but what he was laughing at I never knew.
I was tickled. Tickled? Jest so tickled I was plumb foolish with it. Thedoctor was alive after all--I kept saying it over and over to myself--hehadn't drownded nor blowed away. And I was going to hunt him up.
I had a little money. The perfessor had paid it to me. He had give me ajob helping take care of his hosses and things like that, and wanted meto stay, and I had been thinking mebby I would fur a while. But not now!
I calkelated I could grab a ride that very night that would put me intoEvansville the next morning. I figgered if I ketched a through freightfrom there on the next night I might get where he was almost as quick asthem bottles did.
I didn't think it was no use writing out my resignation fur theperfessor. But I got quite a bit of grub from Biddy Malone to make astart on, fur I didn't figger on spending no more money than I had toon grub. She asts me a lot of questions, and I had to lie to her agood deal, but I got the grub. And at ten that night I was in an emptybumping along south, along with a cross-eyed feller named Looney Hoganwho happened to be travelling the same way.
Riding on trains without paying fare ain't always the easy thing itsounds. It is like a trade that has got to be learned. They is differentways of doing it. I have done every way frequent, except one. That Igive up after trying her two, three times. That is riding the rodsdown underneath the cars, with a piece of board put acrost 'em to layyourself on.
I never want to go ANYWHERES agin bad enough to ride the rods.
Because sometimes you arrive where you are going to partly smeared overthe trucks and in no condition fur to be made welcome to our city, asDoctor Kirby would say. Sometimes you don't arrive. Every oncet in awhile you read a little piece in a newspaper about a man being foundalongside the tracks, considerable cut up, or laying right acrost them,mebby. He is held in the morgue a while and no one knows who he is, andnone of the train crew knows they has run over a man, and the engineersays they wasn't none on the track. More'n likely that feller has beenriding the rods, along about the middle of the train. Mebby he lethimself go to sleep and jest rolled off. Mebby his piece of boardslipped and he fell when the train jolted. Or mebby he jest natcherallymade up his mind he rather let loose and get squashed then get any morecinders into his eyes. Riding the blind baggage or the bumpers gives meall the excitement I wants, or all the gambling chancet either; otherscan have the rods fur all of me. And they IS some people ackshally saysthey likes 'em best.
A good place, if it is winter time, is the feed rack over a cattle car,fur the heat and steam from all them steers in there will keep you warm.But don't crawl in no lumber car that is only loaded about half full,and short lengths and bundles of laths and shingles in her; fur theyis likely to get to shifting and bumping. Baled hay is purty goodsometimes. Myself, not being like these bums that is too proud towork, I have often helped the fireman shovel coal and paid fur my ridethat-a-way. But an empty, fur gineral purposes, will do about as well asanything.
This feller Looney Hogan that was with me was a kind of a harmlesscritter, and he didn't know jest where he was going, nor why. He wasmostly scared of things, and if you spoke to him quick he shivered firstand then grinned idiotic so you wouldn't kick him, and when he talkedhe had a silly little giggle. He had been made that-a-way in a reformschool where they took him young and tried to work the cussedness out'nhim by batting him around. They worked it out, and purty nigh everythingelse along with it, I guess. Looney had had a pardner whose name wasSlim, he said; but a couple of years before Slim had fell overboardoff'n a barge up to Duluth and never come up agin. Looney knowed Slimwas drownded all right, but he was always travelling around lookingat tanks and freight depots and switch shanties, fur Slim's mark to befresh cut with a knife somewheres, so he would know where to foller andketch up with him agin. He knowed he would never find Slim's mark, hesaid, but he kept a-looking, and he guessed that was the way he got thename of Looney.
Looney left me at Evansville. He said he was going east from there, heguessed. And I went along south. But I was hindered considerable, beingput off of trains three or four time
s, and having to grab these hereslow local freights between towns all the way down through Kentuckey.Anywheres south of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi Rivertrainmen is grouchier to them they thinks is bums than north of it,anyhow. And in some parts of it, if a real bum gets pinched, heaven help'im, fur nothing else won't.
One night, between twelve and one o'clock, I was put off of a freighttrain fur the second time in a place in the northern part of Tennessee,right near the Kentuckey line. I set down in a lumber yard near therailroad track, and when she started up agin I grabbed onto the ironladder and swung myself aboard. But the brakeman was watching fur me,and clumb down the ladder and stamped on my fingers. So I dropped off,with one finger considerable mashed, and set down in that lumber yardwondering what next.
It was a dark night, and so fur as I could see they wasn't much movingin that town. Only a few places was lit up. One was way acrost the townsquare from me, and it was the telephone exchange, with a man operatorreading a book in there. The other was the telegraph room in the depotabout a hundred yards from me, and they was only two fellers in it,both smoking. The main business part of the town was built up around thesquare, like lots of old-fashioned towns is, and they was jest enoughbrightness from four, five electric lights to show the shape of thesquare and be reflected from the windows of the closed-up stores.
I knowed they was likely a watchman somewheres about, too. I guessedI wouldn't wander around none and run no chances of getting took up byhim. So I was getting ready to lay down on top of a level pile of boardsand go to sleep when I hearn a curious kind of noise a way off, like itmust be at the edge of town.
It sounded like quite a bunch of cattle might shuffling along a dustyroad. The night was so quiet you could hear things plain from a longways off. It growed a little louder and a little nearer. And then itstruck a plank bridge somewheres, and come acrost it with a clatter.Then I knowed it wasn't cattle. Cows and steers don't make thatcantering kind of noise as a rule; they trot. It was hosses crossingthat bridge. And they was quite a lot of 'em.
As they struck the dirt road agin, I hearn a shot. And then another andanother. Then a dozen all to oncet, and away off through the night awoman screamed.
I seen the man in the telephone place fling down his book and grab apistol from I don't know where. He stepped out into the street and firedthree shots into the air as fast as he could pull the trigger. And as hedone so they was a light flashed out in a building way down the railroadtrack, and shots come answering from there. Men's voices began to yellout; they was the noise of people running along plank sidewalks, andwindows opening in the dark. Then with a rush the galloping noise comenearer, come closet; raced by the place where I was hiding, and nigha hundred men with guns swept right into the middle of that square andpulled their hosses up.
