The Waterbury Democrat., 1938-06-18
CHAPTER XVII


 Terry sent him money out of what had been saved instantly she heard from him. It was railroad fare, in case he lacked it. Come home Come home, come home this minute to Terry!
 He went around with the money in his pocket, thinking, not an- swering. What he was thinking you might know without being told. Sinister thoughts, dangerous thoughts. Both of them jobless. Their home, finished. He back home again, back to the old home, a burden and a drain on them. She returning to her home, to the grim servitude it was. He would "call on her." visit her in that hos tile, triumphant household, while they begrudged him the air he breathed there.
 No! He would not! Once that had a meaning. Once he came bringing something; he had a strength and he shared it. There was a danger, and he averted it. There was small gay needful one, and he had willingly enough done for her what there was to do. There was no more any meaning in it, unless it be the measure of his uSelessness and his vain conceit.
 There was a boiling and bursting in Joe Murray. A berserk sundering of the bonds of im- potence. Be he wrong, be right, he could not go back. There was no clear duty to guide him, no sure responsibility to hold him. He did not scorn Terry's plead ing, but he had no means to grant her wish, to keep her at all. Life had taken her from him. If, in the ultimate shuttle and final deal, she was lost to him 1t were better for her. Even to Tommy Withers, who had money and substance, and whom Terry, now that she was a woman firmly on her feet, could surely and ade- quately handle. Even unto Tom my WitherS ..
 Joe put the money, excepting five dollars, into an envelope with note saying he was heading west to no known destination, and he wrote Terry's name and address on the envelope and mailed 1t. Then he went down to the railroad yards in the dusk and waited He waited an hour, and swung aboard an empty box car pulling out in freight train heading west.
 It was that night Terry arrived at his boarding house, to find him gone !.
 And yet another time the Mur- rays at home were to hear from their Joe from all parts of the nation. Infrequently, meagerly, word came from him, rarely with any real news, never with an ad- dress to reply to. He wrote merely to assure them he was alive, fairly well, still going, dutifully. He never made mention of Terry.
 How he lived no man can tell, even those who have done it themselves. It is one of those small miracles of existence. He found vast company over the land performing the miracle daily, even as he. He learned from them quickly what little he did not know.
 The way of the yards and jun gles; tiny fire in gully or un- der a culvert in the rain with a battered pot boiling . scraps of food garnered and begged and pilfered the company of cast offs of every degree through the night, huddled, with newspapers stuffed in the clothes close to the blaze. In the morning slow freight trundling through, or a long trek on the highway, with few speeding motorists risking lift. If haste were any matter, you might not wait till morning; you might take the desperate chance of freezing, of falling and dying instantly, of capture and a beating and a sentence, by riding the blind on a passenger train fly ing on express schedule through the night. The yard bulls ignored the empties on freight, but they were death on passenger trains And then when you arrived, hop ping off as the limited slowed down approaching the yard, all the chance was pointless, because the new town was no different from the last.
 The way of the cities: the chari- ties, bitter as gall to man who had walked where he willed in his strength, and was weak now with hunger . . the streets, where hard faces rebuffed so awkward a plea for cigaret, a meal the agencies, where spiders reveled in the dust and not even a pick and shovel stiff could take on any more for as much as a dollar a day. And then the cities and towns where they accosted you and asked questions and spotted you by the way you talked, and grew grimly hostile, as If you were foreigner and an enemy, and gave you one hour to get out of town back yonder where you came from. The towns where they asked no questions at all, but hauled you in on sight, with a poke and clip, and damned through hearing and sen tence, and put you to work for punishment with foul food and no pay when all a man wanted was work, honest work, and a chance to keep body and soul to- gether
 It was not easy to keep body and soul together with the cards stacked against you.
 Once on the national highway in a central state Joe approached a roadside gas station and lunch stand just about dusk. He had
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