The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-06-21
CHAPTER XIX

That was how Joe at long last came to let them know at home his whereabouts. He was forced to the step. He never saw Red again after that quick farewell at the mouth of the alley. He travelled for that night. and he saw nothing in the newspapers in another state about the shooting. What finally happen ed, he never learned. But he knew that the police of the nation were informed, and that the jungles, he camps, the highways and the yards, were being searched and dragged and watched for a thousand miles around.
 Joe made up presentable bundle out of canvas stuffed with rags and papers and tied with rope, all se- cured at city dump, and registered in cheap hotel on the strength of his baggage, and then wrote by air mail, telling the Murrays where he was, that he was in trouble and must lay low, and that he needed money to keep up the front. He gave no details; he said that he 0ol GU 11OO tLofCl Ol 1lC4uCllU OllC places of his kind until a storm blew over, and that they need only help him little while. And they must not talk.
 After the letter was dispatched, he spent four days in his room, going out only at night to SCOUT the back ways of the city for scrap of food.
 Money arrived on the fifth day. The letter was a quick scrawl, to lose no time. Most everything was as he had left it at home. Terry had given up her fiat and moved back to her home. They did not see so much of her now. Dad was fine, working steady, but less money. Irene was still locking. Tommy Withers was the lucky one: an ex- pert now, in charge of maintenance, and well off. Here was little money all that was at hand. More would follow. Did he want his carfare home? They could manage some- how. Wouldn't he be best at home, safest? He must write immediately, and good luck.
 It was a Sparton letter, without rebuke or tear; that was Mrs. Mur- ray writing.
 Joe wrote, thanking them all, but he stayed where he was.
 Joe's reasons were vague, not well defined, but valid. Going home was a sentimental thought, but useless. Going home was giving up. God knows, there was little to give up, but that little was too closely iden- tified with his manhood, somehow! He could bring himself to ask for their aid in trouble, but not for his daily keep. Maybe he'd find work; it was some time now since he had settled down and looked for it, to exhaustion.
 And so new way of life was launched. The hotel was an ancient institution on downtown street in a city that you would know very well indeed if named it. The hotel had long had it's day, to the extent that Joe's room cost him two and a half per week. Another dollar or two kept him in food, with a little skirmishing around to help out. The weather was coming warmer, and he was comfortable, if quickly and thoroughly disillusioned about work. Day after day, and the cops did not molest him-nor, he was to find, would they ever.
 What he missed those days was companionship. The city left him utterly alone. He found why the jungles were thronged and the yards and highways overrun. To be work ing and alone was bad; to be idle and alone was worse, and unneceS- sary. You could have companionship for the asking by taking to the road; the worse off you were, the closer the bond with your myriad fellows. It was huddling together of the doomed, but it was compan- ionShip.
 Joe was alone again, and a pris- oner this time. He saw many of his kind-you always did, in the cities: lone ones wandering endless side walks, unable to break away. There was a low street in this town, a street you may never have heard of, but which is unique in the nation, cheap, sordid, starving, but crowded, garish, noisy with hawkers, pitch men, medicine shows, dime restau- rants, dime burlesques, nickel the aters with people, all kinds and conditions. Old women with fixed staring eyes and bundles, old men mooching by. hung with scarecrow garments; young girls with bright eyes and unWaShed neckS, and young men strutting in patent leather shoes. Busy men and hard men and soft men and thieves.
 Here the lone ones came. to listen to voices and to brush elbows and to be accosted, cajoled, appealed to, harried-hungry for it. Most every one here was hungry, for food, for home, for money, for women .. starved for women, and staring emptily at pictures of burlesque beauties till the barker gave them an eye to move on. The street tan talized and fascinated them.
 Joe walked this street and he sat in his room. He looked for work, and he found none; he looked and looked, and he found none. So he walked this street and sat in his room. He walked by sunset or by dawn, indifferently, hoping only to earn respite of sleep. He was living