by Jim Tully
The sermon ended, the priest threw holy water over the long sleeping Sister Marie.
The body was borne out of the chapel, the convent girls following, and then the nuns, and then the priest and his altar boys. The palms of all hands were pressed tightly together, the fingers pointing upward, while the priest’s heavy voice could be heard above the musical girlish voices of Alice and her comrades in the beautiful Te Deum.
Sister Marie was placed in a square black hearse while her friends followed in dilapidated busses which rumbled over the yellow sand to a slight elevation dotted with palms, sagebrush and cactus. Far away the tops of mountains glimmered radiant white in the sun.
It was early spring on the desert. The immense yellow valley seemed a shining mirror upon which was painted green, yellow, red, and gold patches of wildflowers, soon to fade like Alice’s doll under the sun’s torrid flame. The vastness, the immensity, crept into Alice, which, combined with her repressed grief, made her silent for days—and gave her, for the rest of her life, a touch of greatness and understanding.
The priest looked about when the desert sand had finished rattling on Sister Marie’s coffin. Alice rushed up to him, breaking the stillness of the desert with a wail. “Father, father—she’s gone—oh, oh—she’s gone …” She sobbed violently, her cheek against his surplice.
The kindly and good man brushed the grey hair out of his eyes, as Alice, still sobbing convulsively, her beautiful young body shaking, now knelt before him.
Wind and sun-tanned nuns and girls budding into full life gathered about the two.
“It’s all right, Alice dear,” the gentleman said, “lean on me as you would on your Heavenly Father. She is not gone—all the rolling seas cannot wash her memory away—she is no more gone, Alice dear, than you are gone—that which God has made to live and breathe can never disappear. You see, dear child, we are merely serving Him here for a little while—then we too shall go away to take up our work elsewhere—with more love for beauty and service—on and on and on—eternally serving in our Master’s cause.” He placed his hand on Alice’s head. She rose with wet eyes and clung to him.
All silently returned to the convent.
Looking back in the direction of the cemetery Alice saw a great ship sailing high in the desert air above Sister Marie’s grave. A beautiful city and a golden port stretched miles to the west. Another and another ship joined the first. In each vessel were beautiful angels with faces pink and white, clear cut as cameos, and garlanded with flowers. And as she looked, another city formed in the sky. The streets were an indigo blue, and all the people, plainly seen, were more beautiful than the finest illustrations in her fairy books.
Immense trees grew everywhere and on their branches hung roses of every shape and color. Birds larger than condors, brilliant and many colored, flew lazily and majestically above the golden-green and blue cities.
And as Alice gazed, the birds formed in squadrons and darted downward to Sister Marie’s grave. It opened wide and there emerged a beautiful Indian girl a few years older than Alice. It looked to the girl like Sister Marie must have looked in the long ago.
Her limbs and body were as shapely as the statue of Saint Teresa in Father Maloney’s study. Her eyes were as radiant as the sun and her hair, a bluish black, rippled as though fanned by the wings of larks.
The girls waited until the young Sister Marie raised her arms. She was lifted suddenly and gracefully into the air and rested on the back of the most beautiful bird of all. Each bird stretched out its wings and made no other motion. Sister Marie, on the large bird in the centre, sat upright and waved her hands at Alice as all the birds, wings outstretched and motionless, sailed swifter than light above the streets of the golden cities.
“Father, Father,” exclaimed Alice, “I see Sister Marie! … she is very beautiful.”
The priest caressed the girl. “That is her soul, dear child, going back to God.” Then slowly, “The soul of Sister Marie was always beautiful.”
Alice no longer loved the convent.
Sister Marie had always been fond of Alice’s hair. She tried every method she could contrive to make it more beautiful. It reached to her knees.
At an amateur theatrical after Lent, in the convent, Alice appeared as the Moss-Haired Girl. The aged nun knew the nature of many herbs and wildflowers. By a process of her own, she had combined some concoction with two bottles of stale beer which the priest had discarded, and washing Alice’s hair with the solution, it was made to resemble moss. The other girls were mystified. Sister Marie gave the secrets of her formula to Alice who had occasion afterwards to use it often.
Alice always enjoyed seeing beautiful hair. Once, in the convent, after a young woman had taken her final vows, Alice climbed on a ladder and saw two nuns cutting away long strands of sunny blonde hair. Alice felt sad for days.
Two years later Father Maloney’s soul was borne away by the birds.
Alice left the convent and grew tired of her harsh mother in two months. More and more as she grew older did she revert to the ways of the Indian. With a good singing voice, she joined a carnival company. Life in a tent appealed strongly to her. Once, when too hoarse to sing, she washed her hair with the solution and became the leading attraction with the carnival.
And thus was born the beautiful Moss-Haired Girl, who delighted thousands of women twice ten years ago.
V: Murder for Pity
V: Murder for Pity
WE left ———, and traveled leisurely to ———. Our train literally crawled through the Ozark region of Missouri. Cameron stormed at the slow pace and feared we would arrive a day late.
“Let the old devil worry,” said Jock. “Maybe some other guy’ll get killed an’ he can cash in again.”
There were seven of us in the open door of a horse car. It was a happy time in our lives—an oasis that made our vagabond hearts pump fast. There would be no care and little work for thirty hours at least. Our food was assured and our lousy bunks were ready.
The sun dazzled over green fields, running brooks and distant hills in a section of the world that is second to none in beauty. Morons, cynical and brutal and bewhipt of life many of us were, we responded to the passing beauty and our moods were high.
Rosebud Bates had joined our group at the last stop. He had friends in Jock and myself. No man dared to be uncivil with Jock. He was a man who would have shoved Napoleon off the road. A dozen years on the race tracks as exercise boy and later a famous jockey, a murder in his pocket, twenty years in a penitentiary, and his body a sieve for morphine, he was, nevertheless, a strong and humane person.
The horses would whinny when he drew near. He would talk to them as though they were people.
“They never double-cross you, kid, an’ they give you more than they take. They call ’em dumb animals—it’s people that’s dumb—I know.”
Among us was Goosey, the elephant trainer. He was a man in the middle thirties with no chin. His face was bent like a quarter moon in the middle. His nose was abnormally long and hooked. It hung over his mouth like a beak. He was sensitive to the touch of a human hand on any part of his anatomy. If a finger was laid upon his body unexpectedly he would jump several feet. We called him Goosey, a nickname given men of his type in our world. The men often teased him. Jock would allow no man to touch Goosey in his presence.
Another fellow had joined us the day before. He had worked hard, and was here, there and everywhere when we loaded the circus. He was about six feet tall, immensely proportioned, a heavy face with deep hollows in his cheeks, and mouth which he closed like a vise. He had no coat. He wore a straw hat with half of the rim gone, and a heavy and greasy blue flannel shirt. Wide open at the throat, it showed a matted chest which the sun had burned a deep red. There was a battleship tattooed under the hair. He had the restless furtive look about his eyes which I early observed as a lad on the road—the eyes of men who never rested. Vagabonds all, their bodily and mental faculties may have been dead. But their
eyes were always alert, quickly noting everything that pertained to ways of vagabondage—theft, destitution and dirt. The wolf learns cunning to survive; the vagabond observation. I could tell by his manner that he was old in the ways of the road.
There was another indescribable little man with us. He was more ordinary than a weed on a farm. So negative was he that across the years I can barely see the blur of him in a pair of overalls.
“Well this beats bummin’ our way,” said the last man, glancing across a green field.
“Maybe so, maybe so, but I’ll jump the outfit before we hit where we’re goin’,” said the man with the tanned breast and blue flannel shirt. “The old road knocks hell outta you, but there hain’t nobody your boss,” he added, looking about him.
“Everybody’s your boss when you’re on the bum, Mate,” laughed Jock, “every woman you beg and every cop you see.”
Jock suddenly looked up at the sun. Three quarters down the sky, it drew many shafts of light from the clouded horizon, which made it resemble an immense half-wheel.
“God Almighty, ain’t that great,” he half-shouted. “Holy God,” his head shook with wonder. “It’s enough to drive you nuts.” Jock shifted about nervously. I knew that the urge for morphine was upon him. He threw his head far back, then rolled it from side to side as if to rest the base of his brain.
He went to another part of the car and sat quite still.
The vagabond in the blue flannel shirt sang:
We are two tramps, two jolly old tramps,
We’re happy as two Turks,
We have good luck in bummin’ our chuck
An’ to hell wit’ the man that works.
Finishing the verse, he turned to me.
“You people played the South, didn’t you?”
“Sure … we’ve been down through there,” I answered.
“So’ve I. I just came from that way myself. It’s damn hard ridin’, brother. They hain’t civilized down there yet.” He rubbed his matted chest, then took off his torn straw hat and scratched his head. “They stuck me six months down there, by God, damn near killed me. Got me under the platform in the Montgomery freight yards on the L. & N. It was colder’n hell and the wind blew through your whiskers a mile and a half a minute. A hundred an’ eighty days the judge soaked me—in a coal mine. I’d been in the navy, got soused in Birmingham an’ some bloke rolled me for all the dough I had. I had nothin’ on me at all. The desk sergeant books me on as D.S. (dangerous and suspicious), for I was a husky baby an’ they needed guys for the coal mines.
“We were all lined up before the judge who was a cockeyed little pimple of a man, squirtin’ tobacco juice all the time. He laughed in our faces, an’ there was about twenty of us. He had the cops sort us out, the big guys, the medium guys an’ the little guys. An’ he says to about five of the biggest of us, ‘You big fellows there, a hundred and eighty days each in the coal mines—hard labor. A hundred days for you medium guys—same thing. And you little guys’—an’ I watched ’em all stand up like they was goin’ to git off easy—‘a hundred an’ ninety days, cause you can’t do as much work as the other hoboes.’ The judge laughed out loud at his joke.
“I says under my breath, ‘You dirty dog.’ The cop says, ‘What’s that?’ an’ I thinks fast an’ says, ‘I was just figgerin’ up how long I’d be in.’ ‘You’d better be,’ says the cop.”
The vagabond scratched his breast again.
“Some day I’ll kill that God damn judge. I’ll go roamin’ through there wit’ a gat an’ shoot him at his table. He deserves a dose of lead to let the poison outta his black heart. I’ve been a bum all my life an’ joined the navy to see the world when Roosevelt had the ships go round it. By God, all I did was shovel coal in four shifts an’ was so damn tired when my relief come I couldn’t even see outta the port hole. I beat it away from the damn navy at Frisco an’ headed for New Orleans.
“I’d made too fast a time for them ever to get my mug up as a deserter. Believe me, boes, that join’ the navy to see the world’s like a wild woman dreamin’ o’ bein’ tame. It just ain’t done this year.
“Anyhow, I did the six months with another buddy. It drove him clean nuts. When he got out he thought he was Andy Carnay-gie an’ owned a steel mill, the poor devil. He kep’ sayin’ the day we got out, ‘Get to work there, men, get to work there. There ain’t nothin’ like work boys, nothin’ like work. An’ save your money, boys, save your money. Andy Carnay-gie, that’s me, always saved his money.’ I had to walk along the tracks so damn weary my knees knocked together and listen to this poor goof rave.”
We stopped at a siding. There was a lull. We heard a supper bell ringing far away.
“That bird’s got it on us,” said the indescribable vagrant. “He kin go in an’ sit down to a warm feed an’ sleep wit’ a woman in clean sheets that hain’t lousy. An’ he kin pat his little wife in the mornin’ an’ she’ll get up an’ cook him some ham an’ eggs—an’ all’s dandy for the day.”
“Yeah, hell,” snapped the man in the blue shirt, “he probably wishes he was us. Them damned clodhoppers hain’t no happier’n we are. They’re like a lotta cows.”
“Well, what happened to the nutty guy?” I asked as Jock joined us, his eyes dilated.
“Oh yeah,” resumed the man quickly. “Well, sir, you know, the dark and all that—it ruins your eyes. Six months of it, you know, by God. Purple things begin to dance in front of you. I kep’ mine closed much as possible.
“Well, bein’ up in the light the first day after six months nearly drove him nuts besides.” We all looked quickly at each other as he went on. “I don’t claim to have any heart. It don’t make a damn bit of difference. I had a notion to bump him off myself the first night. Then I changed my mind.
“He kep’ askin’ me, ‘if I git nutty, bump me off, won’t you Buddy, afore Alabama gits me agin. You’ll be doin’ me a big favor, honest you will. They’d only kill me and give me to kid doctors to cut up.’
“The next night he got worse an’ set a store on fire. I got him outta that scrape after knockin’ him cold by sloughin’ him on the jaw an’ carryin’ him four blocks to the railroad yards. I thought sure I’d cracked him hard enough to put him out till mornin’. So I snoozed off, and along about mornin’ I heard the damndest explosion in the world. It shook me where I lay. I jumped up off the box-car floor where we’d flopped, and my buddy was gone. Right away I ran down the track in the direction of a burnin’ box car. The yards were light as day. I saw a guy runnin’ away out at the edge of the tracks carryin’ a torch. All of a sudden there was another explosion an’ I was knocked to the ground. I jumped up, and, by God, there was another blast, an’ I don’t know whether I was knocked down or just plain fell flat. But I got up again an’ ran after the guy wit’ the torch. It was my buddy. When he saw me comin’ he yells:
“ ‘I’m gettin’ even with the God damn state of Alabama. I’m runnin’ to Montgomery to blow the damn judge up.’
“I kep’ laughin’ easy till I come up close to him. An’ then I let him have it right on the point of the jaw. It knocked him cold an’ the torch fell. I jumped on it quick an’ put it out. Then I grabbed my buddy and took him a coupla hundred feet back of an old shed that was used to store cotton.
“My buddy left his shoes in the car, an’ the explosion had scared me. An’, by thunder, I left mine too—an’ there we were both barefooted an’ a lot of burnin’ box cars makin’ the yards lighter’n hell. His ankles were bleedin’ from the chains that ’ad been on ’em six months, an’ I was scared they might track him by the blood.
“As quick as I could get my noodle workin’ I searched him.
“He had a blue gat shoved in his inside coat pocket, wit’ three bullets outta the barrel. This scared the livin’ hell right outta me. I knew if they caught me I’d swing for murder. I went off my nut for a minute an’ thought I heard a lotta bloodhounds bayin’ right outside. It all came to me in a flash. I’d remembered seein
’ a half dozen cars in the yards marked red on the cards tacked to ’em:
DANGEROUS
High Explosives
Keep Lights and Fires Away
I never thought my nutty buddy’d seen ’em, but he had. An’ mind you, he was near blind. Then I tried to figger out where he got the gat. An’ while I was sittin’ there thinkin’, I heard a noise outside.
“I gripped the gun an’ decided to shoot it out with any damn cop before he let the air through me. Soon everything got quieter an’ I sat there holdin’ the gun till it got so damn still you could hear a cricket walk. I’d been through so damned much that I musta dozed off, but I woke up quick wit’ somethin’ snarlin’ at me like a tiger. My arm was damn near broke across the wrist. My buddy’d cracked it wit’ a club an’ took the gun. I shoved in close to him so’s he couldn’t use it, an’ just got inside in time to push it down an’ she went off between my left armpit an’ my side. It stunned me for a second, an’ the old boy grabbed me by the throat an’ my tongue popped out. I thought I was a goner. I’m strong enough to knock a bull down, but that nutty old buddy o’ mine had me comin’ in second. He was after my throat an’ I was after the gun. Everything went black for a second, an’ I thought faster …”
The man with the matted chest stopped talking and sighed. Jock lit a kerosene lantern and hung it on a nail a few feet above the floor.
The man felt his throat nervously and resumed:
“Anyhow I’d made up my mind that if I was man enough to twist the gun around an’ pull the trigger on my nutty buddy I’d put him outta his misery, as it was him or me anyhow. Besides, if they’d of got him they’d of hung him or somethin’, an’ he was too nutty to do that with. So I just couldn’t help havin’ pity for him.
