In a Box Car

Wherein Is Told a Harrowing Adventure in the Early Life of an American Novelist

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

DO you want to know how men happen to kill each other? It is because they are irritated beyond endurance, sometimes by the other man, or women, sometimes just by the circumstances of their lives.

I was a young fellow then and out of work. It was winter, during a period of hard times and nearly all of the factories were closed. I was beating my way from one town to another and had crawled into an empty box car. There were many tramps abroad that winter. The crews of freight trains paid no attention to us but as long as we were quiet let us ride where we pleased.

No one paid any attention to us. We were just driftwood. What did it matter?

Three of us were in the box car and it was a bitter cold day. None of us had overcoats. Of course we could not build a fire in there. The door of the car was open. No one bothered to close it. When you are cold as we were a bit more cold makes no difference.

The other two men in the car were standing near the door when I climbed in. The train was slowly getting under way. They did not speak to me and I did not speak to them.

Soon the train was moving faster. I cannot even remember the name of the town we were leaving. I had tried to get work there without success. It was somewhere in the Middle West.

ELL. I moved back into the car and sat down on the floor. What is life worth? It may have been that I had a touch of fever. The two men near the door were of middle age, blue with cold, ragged and dirty. I think now they must have been dopes. One of them was a large, heavily built man and the other was thin and tall. Both wore half grown beards. You are always meeting such men when you are out of work and drifting about. They have a fixed, determined air about them. They hate each other and, in fact, hate every one.

The two in the car were silent for a long time. We had got out of town and were groaning along through the country at a fast rate. I heard some member of the train crew run over the top of the car, over our heads.

It is an odd sound, when you are half asleep. I remember thinking of my childhood. When you are very cold that way sleepiness always comes upon you. They say it is an easy way to die and perhaps it is. I may have been asleep and dreaming.

I was dreaming of one of my younger brothers running over the roof of our house in an Ohio town on a Spring day. Everything was quiet in the house. I even thought I heard my mother moving about downstairs. She would be cooking something—cookies, perhaps. We were a large family when we were all at home and Mother was always cooking.

And now I thought that the fragrant smell of cooking had come floating up the stairs to where I lay. Do you remember how cookies baking in the oven smelled when you were a boy? I felt warm and comfortable. Perhaps I was in bed with some childhood illness. I had always enjoyed such times when I was a child. It gave me a chance to lie in bed and read. Although we were poor there were always plenty of books in our house and Mother always managed to get materials to make cookies. Where the books came from I do not know. Father borrowed them perhaps. Everyone in town knew he was fond of books. They said he was a smart man but he could not make much money.

At any rate there I was and I was awakened from my dream by the two men in the car who had begun quarreling.

I straightened myself up, shivered and looked at them.

The men who are called "dopes" always have something determined in their characters. Well, they have an object in life—to get the "stuff." They are always seeking it. If they cannot get it in one town they drift on to another. It is because there are so many "dopes" that there are so many desperate crimes.

It isn't because such men are brave. It is because they are determined. They go from place to place seeking. They must have money but do not care for money. They cling together but do not care for each other. They are like Prometheus bound to rock. Wild birds are biting at their vitals. Such men carry about inside themselves always, except when they have got some of the stuff, a terrible, gnawing hunger.

It will not let them alone. The hunger is like drops of water falling from the roof of a cave, down under the ground. Silently, persistently something is being worn away. Cowardice is being worn away. When there is a hideous crime done somewhere, look for some such man. Look for a shrinking man with a pale face and trembling hands. He will have a queer determined look in his eyes. Sometimes his face twitches in an odd way. If you speak to him he will whine and fawn on you.

He will be slick in getting out of it. He is like a rat cornered. Watch his eyes. If you are a jailer do not take chances with him.

THE two men on the train were talking. They were quarreling. The question about which they were quarreling was an absurd one. Was the city of Buffalo larger than the city of T oledo ? What difference did it make to them ?

I saw their faces twitching as they glared at each other. They still stood near the open door. "Well, I lived in Toledo for a long time," one of them said. It was the larger one. "I was married there. Later I went to live in Buffalo. I know what I am talking about."

"You lie."

"You are a dirty liar yourself."

One of the men suddenly thrust out his hand. I dare say he intended nothing. As I was sitting in the darkness, back from the door, and they were in the light by the car door, I could see everything very clearly. The man who killed another man did not specially hate him. He did not care whether or not Toledo was larger than Buffalo. Perhaps he had been several days without a shot. I even fancied I could see a queer, wavering light in his eyes. I dare say I made that up.

He was just hungry for his dope. Thank God it was not my kind of hunger. I was hungry for food, a warm bed, a job. I wanted to get on. I dreamed of some day getting up in the world. Then perhaps some woman would want me as I sometimes wanted a woman. I used to go about the towns, when I was out of work, looking at pretty women, dressed sometimes in fine furs. I did not envy them the furs, the grand houses they lived in, the carriages in which they rode at that time. I envied the men who were with them, on whom they smiled.

I was hungry myself all right but not with the hunger of the men in the box car.

One of them had tried to fight off his persistent gnawing hunger. He thrust out his hand as though to push it away.

What he actually did was to push the other man, the tall, thin one, out through the open door of the car. As he fell I saw him clutch at the side of the door with his weak, trembling hands. He actually did hold on for a moment but his hand was cold. He hung and then fell.

I WAS sitting so that I could see his body bouncing along beside the train. The ground was stony there. Then he lay still. The fast moving train whirled us out of sight of the body. The second man was leaning out of the car door watching.

Well, that was that. He came back into the car and sat down on the floor near me but he did not speak to me. He began to cry. He was crying like a sick child.

Of course with me the question was one of getting away. As it turned out, none of the train crew had seen the body lying beside the tracks when the caboose passed. A farmer found it later the same day. I heard about it in the next town where I got off the train.

It seemed to me we were a long time coming to a town. The train was running too fast for me to get off. It is awkward, getting out at the door of a box car from a moving train. It requires a special technique—and when your hands are cold. . . .

The question in my mind was this—well, there was the fellow sitting between me and the open door. If he happened to think. I am sure now he was crying because, although he had killed another man, he had got no satisfaction from the deed. He had not specially wanted to kill him, was just filled with weak excitement. Killing someone meant nothing special to him.

On the other hand—if he thought. . . .

But such fellows do not think. What is life or death to them?

I remember that once he looked at me as though to say, "Well, who are you? What are you doing here?" He was a heavily built man. In a struggle such a man would have an advantage. If he pushed me out the door, killed me as he had killed the other fellow, it would make no. difference to him.

Continued on page 114

Continued from page 76

He would have the advantage of not caring.

Did he care to save himself by doing away with me? That was the question.

I have never been so absorbingly interested in another man's mind. But perhaps he had no mind. Hunger may have eaten it away.

He was sitting on the floor of the car, crying in an odd, hysterical way, not from remorse. It was because the hunger inside him would not stop. I remember watching his eyes. They did seem alive—in his pale, dead-looking face. I had determined that if the look in his eyes became—what shall I say? If the look in his eyes became normal, if it became human ... It would be human now for the man to try to push me through the car door, get me out of the way. I had seen what he had done. There was no one else who knew.

My chances lay in the fact that he did not care. I watched my chance. When the train began to slow down as we approached another town, I got up. I even made some silly remark. "It's going to snow", I said. He did not answer. He was not crying now. His face was twitching. To get to the car door I had to pass quite close to him. It would be quite possible for him, by catching hold of my leg, by tripping me . . .

He did nothing. To get out at the door of a box car when the train is moving it is necessary to drop to the floor. Then you squirm about until you get your legs out. You let yourself down as near the ground as you can. holding on all you can with your hands. Then you start your legs moving and drop. If you are lucky or know how to do it, you land right side up