The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-01-02

sweeping the brown drab prairie with his eyes.
'Feel as if | could spit cottonw
The truth was, he wanted the tobacco to steady
his nerves Like the others, he was quivering
internally with a rout of weird emotions. He
had lived for five years in steel house. behind
steel bars, in a routine that was enforced by men
with blackjacks and shotguns, and that was in
human and perfect as steel. Now he was free.
No one was watching him; he was strolling down
a hot country road, under the immense yellow
sky. He was back in the world CT free men and
free women; and he and the others with him
should have breathed deeply, kissed the earth and
reoiced; instead they seemed tense and worried,
little disappointed.
What had they expected? They could not have
said, but like all prisoners they had built up,
without knowing it, fantastic and exaggerated
notions Of the world outside 1t seemed little
ordinary to them now The sky was a dun vel
lowish waste with a sun shining thru it. The
wide dull prairie stretched on every hand like
the floor of some empty barn, with shocks of gray
rafting corn stacked in dreary rows, file after
file to the horizon. A dog was barking some
where. Smoke was rising from score of farm
houses, and they heard the whistle of a distant
freight train. There was dull burning silence
on everything the silence of the sun. The world
of freedom seemed dull; but prisons are tense
with sleepless emotions of hope and fear.
They were passing farmer in a flannel shirt,
plodding behind team of huge horses in a field
of stubble. His lean, brown face was covered
with sweat and fixed in grim, unsmiling lines as
he held down the bucking pillow and left path
of rich black soil behind him.
Clocks like guy in for~life, doesn't he ?" said
Brown, pointing to him with his thumb. 'Looks
like that murderer cell-mate of yours, doesn't he
Ramona"
The little Mexican cast a swift worried glance
with his black eyes at the dull fanatic behind the
plow
eyes," he said sharply, and stared back at the
road beneath his feet. V- -9ny - As
same Old goddamn corn, said Biaackie, grin grin
ming, as he kicked tin can out of the road, and
spat, all in the same moment "Same old god
damn, Hoosiers, raising the goddamn corn! Corn
and Hoosiers- why don't they raise car
rot once in a while?"
The others offered no answer to this American
cOndrum. They were moving on to fresh sights
in this new world they had, been thrust into
they were staring at the bend in the highroad
where the town street began, two miles away from
the prison. The ugly frame houses of the middle
west set among trees and smooth lawns, the troll
ley tracks, the stone pavements, then the stores
and shop windows when they came nearer the
heart of the tOwn-that was what they saw Up
and down the streets men and women walked in
the humdrum routine of life A grocer was
weighing out sugar in dark window. They
passed the little shop Of an italian cobber They
passed a white school building, from which came
the sound of fresh young voices singing. There
was line of Fords standing at the curb near the
railroad depot. There were more women and men
walking slowly about the square near the depot,
discussing housework, and the election for sheriff
and the price of corn and the price of hogs
This was the world.
II don't see no brass bands out to meet us
hOme," said Blackie, with his irrepressible grin
Glow do you account for that, Hill? Amt they
heard we're coming?"
Hill, the young husky quarterback with the
large green eyes seemed unable to say a word
He scowled at Blackie, it seemed, and shook his
head -rsb'@
whats the matter, HIP" that worthy quer-
led with an insolent grim saint we as good as
the boys who fought to make the world safe for
democracy"
saw, shut upw Hill Jones muttered, 'you get