was preaching from the other side in front of a grocery
store, "These here dem wild boom chasers is tearin' our whole town down!
They don't no more pay 'tention to th' law than if we didn't have laws!"
"You're a damned old liar! You old miserly crab!" a lady yelled out
from the crowd around him. "We're a-buildin' this town up ten dozen times
more'n you ever could of! We do more actual work in a minute than you do
settin' on yore rear a year!"
"If you wuzn't a lady, I'd resent that!"
"Don't let that hold you back, brother!" She knocked four or five
toughs out of her way getting to him. "As far as these laws go, who made
them up? You! And three or four more about like you! We come to this town to
work an' build up an oil field an' make it worth something! Maybe these boys
are a little wild and woolly. You've got to be to work like we work, an'
travel like we travel, an' live like we live!"
I laid down on the load of pipe and stretched my feet out and looked up
where the stars was. My ears still heard the babbling, yelping, swushing
along the streets, wheels rolling, horses straining, kids chasing and babies
screaming. The big trucks tooted their horns in the dark. I wanted to ride
there with my eyes closed, listening. I wanted to ride past the picture
show, gambling hall, whore house, drug store, church house, court house, and
the jail house and just listen to old Okemah growing up.
Okemah. She's a going, blowing oil boom town.
In the summer I played with other kids in the gang house. Our gang
house was built by a week's hard work of about a dozen kids of most every
sort, size, color, brand, trade mark, and style. It started when an old lady
told us a big long story, all about the howls and laughs you could hear if
you went very close to the old haunted house of the Bolewares. So I figured
my whole gang had ought to go spend a night in the old haunted house. I
rounded up about the whole dozen and over we went after it got dark. Nothing
but a stray goat come across the yard and some bats flew in and out of a few
broke windows. Right then we decided to haunt the house our own selves, and
we all moaned and groaned and tromped around in the dark, choking and
gurgling like we was being lynched, and stomping down with all of our weight
on the loose boards of the floor and the attic.
Next, one of us got the bright idea of carrying the loose boards across
town to an old sawed-down peach orchard on a side of the schoolhouse hill,
and put up a gang house to haunt. Every night we'd sneak out from home after
supper, some of us going to bed, creeping out from under covers and out of
windows to get away from our folks. Howls and screams from the Boleware
house caused neighbors to lock and bar their doors and windows; women stayed
in houses in bunches and sewed or knitted all night. As we kept haunting the
old house, rent come down to less than half what it had been on this street.
Dogs hung along under porches and whined with their tails pulled up real
tight between their hind legs. And then nothing but the very worst old
rotten boards were left on the outside of the house, and we'd hauled away
all of the nice inside boards. They went up like a big toadstool on
schoolhouse hill, and neighbors wondered what the hell. Last of all, we
wrote a sign with dim paint that we hung on the front side of the old
Boleware hull: "Haunted House. Stay Out." I heard two ladies walk past it a
month or so later and read the sign. My ears was like an old hound dog's,
and I heard one lady say, "See the sign on the front? 'Haunted House. Stay
Out'?" The other one said, "That landlord is a smart man. Doing that to
scare the kids away." And I thought, "Bull."
Pretty soon we had a regular early Oklahoma township a-going right
there on the lot around that old gang house. It was our City Hall, mail box,
court house, jail, picture show, saloon, gambling hall, church, land office,
restaurant, hotel and general store.
That shack was busier than our town depot. Each kid had a bin. In that
bin he kept his junk, whatever that might run into. Most of the kids would
take a gunny sack and go "junking'' about twice or three times a week. They
would come carrying in big sacks full of rubber inner tubes, brass faucets,
copper wire, light brass gadgets, aluminum pots and pans beat up into a
tight little ball. ThÅ city junk man bought them. That was money in our
pocket. We packed those sacks more than we did school books. We also
gathered up scrap iron, lead, zinc, rags, bottles, hoofs, horns, and old
bones, and you could put your own stuff in your own bin without being afraid
of somebody a-stealing it. We thought it was a mighty bad thing to steal
something somebody else had already stolen.
We had gang money made out of sheets of paper. Every time you brung in
a certain amount of junk, it was judged to be worth so much. You could go to
the bank and the banker would hand you out a school tablet or two cut up in
squares like dollar bills, and a few fancy marks around the edge, and signed
by the captain of the gang. Fifty cents worth of junk was worth Five
Thousand Dollars. You could cash your gang money in any time you wanted to,
and pack your junk down to the city junk yard and sell it for real money.
A kid named Bud run the gambling wheel. It was an old lopsided bicycle
wheel that he had found in the dumps and tried to even up. He paid you ten
to one if you called off the right spoke it would stop on. But there was
sixty spokes.
We rode stick horses, and some of the kids had nine, and all of the
nags named according to how fast they could run. Like if you was riding Old
Bay Tom, and Rex took in after you with a red handkerchief tied over his
face, why you'd switch horses right in the big middle of the road--and get
off of Old Bay Tom, and yell, "Giddyap, Lightnin'!"
We made horse-wrangling trips to the river and back, and gathered the
best of our stick horses, the long, keen straight and springy ones with lots
of fiery sap in them, and worth several hundred dollars each in gang money.
I jig-trotted the seven miles back from the river, with a big bundle of wild
broomtail Indian ponies tied up on both arms; and there was always such a
showing and swapping and training of horses on the side of that hill as
would outclass any horse-trading lot in the State of Oklahoma. A kid buying
a horse would first, of course, want him broke to saddle; and there was four
or five kids that made their whole living by busting bad ponies at ten
dollars a head. Two or three kids grabbed the horse's head and blinded his
eves while the rider mounted to the saddle, and then would holler, "Fan
`im!" The rider and the horse broke away, bucked and jumped all over the
place, beating the weeds to a frazzle, snorting, and nickering, and humping
into the air. Founding and spurring the bronco, the
kid frogged over sticker patches, whammed through can piles, flounced
down the hillside and sidestepped rocks and roots and stumps. Since a horse
was worth more if he was a wild one to break, the buyer would tip you an
extra fifty or maybe even a hundred, if you showed all of the other kids
that this was the snuffiest horse in the whole history of the hill. With
always two or three or four hoss tamers out there busting a mount at the
same time, you can just picture in your own mind how our hill looked--each
kid trying and straining every gut to out-buck, and out-nicker, and out-ride
the others. And then, to make a horse really in the dollar-a-year class, you
had to ride him till he quit bucking, and then run him through all of his
gaits; through the hard ones and easy ones, running as fast as he could
tear, till he slowed into a fast rough gallop, and then down to a slow easy
lope, pace him down the foot path, single-foot across the gang house yard,
fox trot up to the door, and then walk as nice and as easy as an old member
of the family till he was tied at the hitch rack, eating apples and sugar
out of everybody's hand.
And then you got your pay-off and somebody was the proud owner of
another pureblood. And not only did the horse get a good proud name, and
pedigree, and papers, but every little habit, onery streak, nervous spell,
and fear, along with all of his likes and dislikes, was known by his owner,
and there struck up between that stick horse and that kid a friendship,
partnership, and love. Lots of kids had rode their horses, talked their
troubles, winnings and losings, sick spells, and streaks of good luck, over
and over a thousand times--for two or three years.
In a patch of big high weeds, near the gang house, was an old oat
binder. We used it one hour for an airplane, and the next for a submarine.
The World War was on over in France, and the Americans had gone in. We
played war, war, war. We shot down weeds and trampled them into the dust,
and we licked the same weed army every day. We grabbed up sticks, and waded
out into the high weeds, fighting them hand to hand, cussing, sweating,
hacking them down. They surrendered every few minutes. Then they'd do
something mean to us again, and we'd get out and frail them back into the
notion of surrendering all over again. We'd walk up and grab each individual
weed by the coat collar, throw off his helmet, search him for Lugers, chuck
away his rifle, and say, "Surren'er?"
"Surrender!"
In the fall, when our school started, the kids got more excited about
fighting than about books. New kids had to fight to find their place on the
grounds, and the old bullies had new fights to settle who was still who.
Fights had a funny way of always ringing me in. If it was between two kids
that I didn't even know, whoever won, some smart aleck kids would holler,
"Yeah, yeah, I bet ya cain't lick Ïl' Woody Guthrie." And before long I'd be
somewhere out across the playgrounds whaling away and getting whaled, mostly
over something I didn't know a thing about. I went around with some part of
me puffed up all of the time, and the other parts just going down.
There was four of us that more or less respected each other, because we
was the fightingest four around there, not because we wanted to fight, not
because we was brave, or had it in for anybody, but just because the kids in
school had us picked out to entertain them with our broke fists and noses,
and they would carry tales and lies and cuss words back and forth like a
messenger service just to keep the old fires going and the pot boiling and
the skin a-flying.
But Big Jim Robins and Little Jim Whitt was the only two of the
round-town four that fought amongst their selves.
They beat half of the weed patches back into a cloud of hot, white,
cement-looking dust, every school season, and the kids would all gang up and
foller Big Jim and Little Jim home every afternoon when school was out, just
to get them to fighting, which wasn't a hard job, since they never could
agree just who'd got the best of it. Big Jim was a head taller than Little
Jim. I was about the same size as Little Jim. Big Jim was red-headed,
speckle-faced, snaggle-toothed, and broad through the shoulders, with great
big flat feet. His hands was like hog quarters, and his arms was six inches
longer than anybody else's in school, and he walked around in a hunch,
slouched down careless, and he picked up snipes. He was the big Luis Firpo
around that schoolhouse, and depended alone on his main strength and
awkwardness to keep him in the Round Town Four Fist Fighting Association.
His dad was a carpenter, his brother a grocery man. But Big Jim was the
toast of the town, the natural-born comic, the loud-mouth insulter, and
yelled at everybody that come along. His great big size scared the living
daylights right out of most of the little kids. When it come to a fight, Big
Jim seldom won, but he roared so loud, snorted so big, and kicked up so much
dust and fine splinters that the kids would holler and laugh, and cheer for
him, because wherever Big Jim had a fight, there you saw a complete
two-feature show with two comedies and short subjects added on.
Little Jim was mostly the opposite. Light whitish hair that looked like
frog fuzz, a slim, scary face and eyes that blinked and batted at everything
that rustled in the wind. He was famous for going around dirty and slouchy,
and when the kids would tease him, he would blow between his teeth like a
train starting, and kick back dirt with his toes. Little Jim was quiet when
he was left alone, and would walk ten blocks out of his way to keep out of a
fight; but the kids liked to watch him sneer and blow, and so they headed
him off across vacant lots, and pushed him into fights.
One day it was Trades Day, with sermons on the streets, singers in the
saloons, and plotters and politicians lying on every corner. The town was
alive, booming with the mixed voices of Negro farmers, the broke-down,
hungry, dirt farmers, and the talking of the Indians that sometimes took on
a high note, when some buck pointed away out yonder with his hand, and made
a big curving motion, so that you could tell that he was talking about the
whole country, the whole thing, the whole problem and, probably, the whole
people. The white folks talked of this and that, hogs, horses, shoes, hats,
whiskey, dances, women, politics, land, crops, weather and money. Everybody
stood around with a long string of red tickets, for one of the merchants was
aiming to give a new buggy away. It was a-standing out yonder in the middle
of the street right where everybody could see her set there in the dusty sun
and try her best to shine a little. Kids of all three colors, and an
occasional mixture of each, crawled, walked, run, chased loose chickens,
took in after cur dogs, dumb poles, fell across wagon tongues, and slipped
down on the sidewalk with a brand-new pair of shoes on. Ice cream cones was
waving around up and down the streets.
Down about the middle part of town, Big Jim and Little Jim was playing
marbles on a flat, dusty place by the side of the drug store. Already they
had attracted a couple of hundred folks down there to see the big Dominecker
Rooster and the right little Game Cock commence kicking the pants off of
each other.
The crowd mumbled, laughed, roared, and talked, some taking sides with
Big Jim, and some with Little Jim. It was a game of agates up. Agates up was
about as high as you could get in Okfuskee County politics without being an
adult.
Little Jim was shooting, Big Jim watching him like a hawk, and both
hollered every five seconds, "Dobbs!" "Venture Dubbs!" "You go ta hell, you
bastard, you!"
When the fight started, even the few idle wanderers who had tried for
the buggy soon come running down the street to see what was going on. They
spied the big noisy crowd, and they knew it must be an awful good fight. The
dust flew, and the skin, too, and you could see Big Jim's red head bobbing
and weaving in the middle of the crowd. He was taking long haymaker swings
at Little Jim's blond, silken-haired head, and hitting about once out of
every nine swings. Little Jim was faster and surer. He laid it into Big Jim
like a young mule kicking a clumsy old cow, and his fists seldom hit out
without landing in the neighborhood of Big Jim's nose.
He hit straight. But time was passing. Months rolling by. Big Jim was
getting bigger and bigger. He had completely outgrown Little Jim. Head and
shoulders he raised up above his little opponent, and lumbered down like
thunder and slow lightning, crushing when he landed a blow. Little Jim
fought faster. He fought much better. Barefooted in the hot dirty ring, he
pranced around, punching the big hulk of Big Jim, but just naturally not
doing one ounce of damage. He fought long. He got tired. Dust choked him
down. It choked Big Jim and the whole crowd, but Big Jim wasn't having to
spend his energy. It looked as if he couldn't decide what he wanted to do,
so he just made his hands sail around in the air to put on a show for the
people. But after a while, he wore Little Jim down, and gave him the best
beating that he had ever laid onto anybody. He brought blood running out of
Little Jim's nose, thumped his head and ears till they swelled and stung.
Beat his cheeks till you could see blue spots and red bruises. Little Jim
Whitt lost his standing in the fist-fighting game that day, right then and
there.
The town went wild. A decision had been reached. Little Jim had lost.
Two other fights as to which kid had won started out in the crowd among men
betting. But Big Jim was the stud buzzard in our town that day.
The school kids yelled when the fight was over. Their voices hummed so
fast that it sounded like a chant, like a wave swelling out across the
ocean.
"Where's Woody?" "Betcha cain't lick Ïl' Woody!" "Woody ain't here!
Where's Woody? He was down here in town early this mornin'--he's gone!"
Kids took out down the road like traveling preachers, by ones and twos,
and the others lit out through streets and alleys like a couple of dozen
little Paul Reveres. Grown men even strolled off up the hill to hunt me up,
and to give Big Jim time to rest up, and to rig us into a fist fight. Bets
mounted high. The crowd moved around like a big bunch of bugs on top of a
hole of water. It always stayed together, but it moved.
I was across town. I was up on Main Street, climbing the rafters and
braces of a big sign just across the street from the jail house. When a
couple of kids seen me climbing up on top of that signboard, they hollered,
"Hey, here he is! Here he is! Here's Woody! Bring on Big Jim!"
Oklahoma has had runs. Land runs and whiskey runs. But that crowd took
out in such a hard run up that hill that they jammed the streets where they
crossed, shoved each other down the boardwalks, skint their shins on the
concrete curbs, tore off the wooden corner posts of grocery stores, pushed
over stacks of chicken coops, turned the chickens loose, made the feathers
fly, slipped and fell across sacks of horse and mule feed, crawled over
wagons and buggies parked in the road, made the hay fly, lost their kids,
dropped plugs of tobacco, laughed, yelled, whooped, and caused teams to
break and run away.
Like I said, I was getting closer and closer to the top of that
sign-board, and when I heard that big crowd coming up the steep street
raising so much cain, I didn't know what the devil was going to happen. They
was yelling my name, and running full blast. I hit the top of the signboard,
and throwed one leg across, just as the crowd scraped a coat of old paint
off of the corner of the court house, crowding past it, to gather all around
the signboard and yell all kinds of things, like: "Come on down! Lick Big
Jim!" "Little Jim just got beat up!" "Whataya say, boy? Coward?" "Git 'im,
Yallerback!" "Come on down offa there! You ain't no dam eagle!"
Well, I just hunkered over and made myself right real comfortable and
set up there. I knew then what it was all about. Just another one of them
dam fool fights all rigged up and fixed up before you know what it's all
about. I knew how tired Big Jim must be. Just had one fight. Now they wanted
to sic him onto me and see another one. I must of killed a full five minutes
just setting up there. They tried every kind of a trick to get me down. Kids
and men dumb halfway up to where I was. They lured me and baited me. They
promised me dimes. But I didn't come down. Then they fell back onto the one
and only dare that I couldn't stand. They yelled, "Old man Charlie Guthrie's
a fighter! Old Charlie Guthrie would come down to fight!"
Something inside of me went out and something come in. I set there
about two or three seconds, my face went sort of blank, and I gritted my
teeth; and then I slid down off of the frame of the sign, and dumb like a
monkey down through the braces, and the crowd was in an uproar.
The crowd got around me. There was so much noise I couldn't do nothing.
It was just some kind of a roaring ocean rising and falling in my head. I
couldn't see Jim. It was too crowded. I saw every kind of a face but that
big speckled one. The crowd squared off, and they cleared out the usual
three-foot hole in the middle, which was big enough for two kids to knock
off twenty-five square foot of hair and hide in. I couldn't see Jim.
Something hit me right square between the horns. It was a big outfit of
some kind, a team of wild bay mares, or a wagon load of cotton seed--anyway,
it knocked me blind. I shook my head, but I couldn't see. After a minute it
hit me again, Kkkkkkkeeeeeeebblllllooooooom!!!!!!
Sometimes, you know, when you're fighting, it's a funny thing, one lick
will knock you blind, and the next one will knock you to where you can see
again. I could see Big Jim right there in front of me. I was tired and my
head was like a bread pan full of dry dough. I was sick. Couldn't get my
breath good. My face was all numb. I never had been hit that hard, I didn't
know how to fight this way. But I was in a good spot to learn. I didn't know
of but one way to beat Big Jim. I knew that he was tired. He was big and he
was slow. But many more of them piledrivers, and I'd be slower than that.
I'd been still. Big Jim couldn't fight a running fight. I was bigger than
Little Jim, by a pound or two, but not near as big as Big Jim. I had to bust
loose with everything that I ever had or ever hoped to borrow. I had to beat
my fists to pieces over his big red head. I didn't know why. Just had to.
Jim had busted me twice in the face. He didn't know why. Just done it.
I started. I started walking, swinging, ducking, dodging. I couldn't
even quit, not one split second. He wasn't used to that kind of fighting.
Kids usually danced and wasted a little time. Some of them waste all of the
time. I had fought that way some, it was all right then, but it wouldn't
work now. I kept my fists sailing to and from Jim's head without even a
letup. It was a fistic sweatshop. And with low pay. I wasn't mad at Jim. I
was mad at this kind of stuff. Mad at the men that started the fight. At the
kids that had been taught to yell for it. At the women that gossiped about
it, and spread lies about it. I hated fighting my home-town kids. I was
throwing my fists at Big Jim, but I was really fighting these crazy notions
that folks get and keep in their heads.
Jim was going backwards. He didn't have time to haul off and wind up.
He didn't have time to get his big feet to working. He just didn't have time
to do anything. He rained big haymakers down across my back and over my
head, and it was like beating me up with a fire hose. I wasn't doing so good
myself. I fired away like sixty. I got in close, inside Jim's big arms,
inside his reach, and fought like a wild dog drunk on slaughterhouse blood.
I only wanted it to be over.
Jim was stumbling backwards trying to get balanced long enough to break
my whole body with one of his fire-engine arms and fists, but it didn't
work. He stumbled over a wagon tongue. He got up and fell over it again. He
raised up and fell back against the front wheel, and braced his self by
holding onto the spokes.
He was just standing there using one arm to sort of wave and push me
aside with, but I couldn't let him stand there and get his breath and get
the dust wiped out of his eyes, and get rested up. Then he would take good
aim and knock my head to rolling down Main Street. I hit him as fast as I
could and as hard. I really didn't think I had that much power. He caved in
a couple of times, and he laid back against the wagon wheel. He propped his
big shoulders up against the rim. He couldn't fall. He plowed into my face.
I felt it turn numb. My whole jaw was just hanging there. It didn't know
why. All at once and for no good reason that the crowd could see, Big Jim
stopped fighting, he held up both hands. He quit.
I said, "Ya done?"
Jim said, "--can't go."
"Gotta 'nuff?"
"--reckon so--gotta stop."
The crowd hollered and jumped and screeched like a bunch of maniacs.
"Big Jim's hollered calf-rope!"
"He's all in an' down!"
"Downed 'im three times!"
"Whoopee!"
"Tough titty!"
Jim let his body sink down a little bit, rubbed his hair and forehead
with one hand and propped his self up on the wheel with the other. He set
there for a few minutes, but the crowd wouldn't let him rest. I stepped in
close beside him and said once more to make double sure, "Gotta 'nuff, Red?"
"I said I had ta quit. I'll see you later--"
"I don't want it ta be later. I want it ta be settled right here once
an' fer all. I don't want it ta hafta take place ever' Goddam day. You wanta
go some more------er say, let this be th' end of it fer me an' you both?"
"All right--this ends it."
Poor old Jim was fagged completely out, and so was I. "I'm--I've gotta
'nuff," he said.
And I sort of whispered in his ear, "So've I."
Men handed me dimes. Others slipped me two-bits pieces. I got over a
dollar. I run down the street to where Jim was walking along. He looked bad.
I said, "Ice-cream cone, Jim?"
"Naww. You git yore own self one."
"How 'bout you one, too?"
"Naww."
"'C'mon. T' hell with all of 'em. We ain't mad at nobody-- nobody but
them dam guys that keeps us a-fightin' amongst ourselfs."
"Bastards."
"Cream cone, Jim?"
"Yeahhh--might."
What kind did he want.
"Strawberry," he told me, "how much ya git?"
"Lemme see, dollar, fifteen, twenty-five."
He handed me a dime. This wasn't a new thing. We done it everytime we'd
fought before. Split up the money or part of it. He'd raked in a dollar and
a half.
"How much ya got now?" Jim asked me.
"Dollar thirty-five."
"I gotta nickel more'n you."
" 'At's all right."
He held the new-looking buffalo nickel out in the palm of his hand and
the sun hit down against it, and Jim was setting down and thinking on the
ground.
"Know who I'm gonna give that exter nickel to?"
"Huh uh." I shook my head.
"Little Jim."
The fire whistle moaned out across the town like a panther moaning in a
canyon. Dogs whined and run tucktail. The whistle kept blowing and every
time it went low and high I counted the wards on my fingers so I would know
which part of town to run to and see the fire.
That's a funny fire whistle. It just keeps blowing. Okemah hasn't got
that many wards. It's still blowing. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen times.
Looks like everybody is running up South Third Street there. Wagons.
Cars. Buggies. People on horseback. I'll run with this bunch of kids coming
here. "Hey! Where's th' fire at?"
'Foller us!"
"We'll show ya!"
"I don't see no flare in th' sky!"
"It ain't here in town! Look over south yonder, way out of town. See
all of that red?"
"Oil field fire?"
"Yeah! Whole town!"
"Which one?"
"Cromwell! We can see it when we hit th' top of th' hill there!"
Several hundred people crowded up the hill talking and gasping, short
of wind. Little bunches of men and women trotted along and talked. Horses
snorted and jumped all over the road. Dogs barked at weeds and pieces of
paper blowing in the dark. All along in under the locust trees people tore
as hard as they could run.
"There she is!" I heard some guy talking and pointing.
"Whew! Plain as day! That's a mean-lookin' fire!" I was saying to some
kids along the top of the hill.
"Seventeen miles away."
"Flames jumpin' up higher th'n th' tops of th' trees!"
"I know how high them trees is!"
"Me too. I been there a lot of times!"
"Yeah, me, too. I go a-swimmin' right in this side of there all th'
time. Them Cromwell kids is really tough. Wonder how much of th' town's on
fire?"
"Plenty of it," a man was saying.
"Five or six houses all at once, huh?"
"About a hunder houses all at once," the man said.
"Them old flames is really clawin' and' scratchin', ain't they?"
Another man talked up.
"I know a lot of people are clawing and scratching, trying to get out
of there."
"Them little old tar-paper shacks burn up just like paper!'' an Indian
kid was saying.
I walked along the hill listening to the people talk.
"Is it th' oil wells er th' houses?"
"Some of both, I would guess."
"I reckon there are already a couple of hundred people on their way
from Okemah out there to help fight the fire."
"I hope there is. That's a bad blaze."
"Spreading all in through the timber there. Lots of folks losing their
houses in that fire tonight."
"All of their belongings."
"But th' people!" A lady spoke out. "It's the' little kids, an' th'
mothers, an' people sleepin' and sick people in bed, an' everything else in
those shacktowns. I've got a feeling that lots of people are just caught
like moths in a bonfire."
I laid down on the grass and listened to folks talk for an hour or so.
Then, by families, and little bunches, and one at a time, they took their
last long look at the flames and turned around walking and talking and going
home to bed.
I laid there by myself for about another hour. Cromwell was one of the
biggest oil field towns in the whole country. I've seen the boxcar shacks
stripped over with tar paper lots of times, the oak trees and the sandy land
and the fishing creeks and swimming holes.
That night Okemah watched Cromwell crackle and roar and dance in the
wind and fall into a flat bed of red-hot cinders.
Fire is a funny thing. It helps you and it hurts you. It builds a town
up and it eats it down.
What could be left of those little old lumber houses with all of the
boards as dry as powder and running full of rosin?
What could be left of a family caught asleep and choked down in the
smoke? What could be left of a man that lost his family there?
I forgot all about the cold dew and went to sleep on the top rim of the
hill just thinking about it.
Chapter VII
CAIN'T NO GANG WHIP US NOW
A new tribe of boomchasers hit town every day, families with kids, kids
looking for work and play. The gang-house kids made a law that new kids
coming in couldn't have any say-so in how the gang was run, so the new kids
got mad and moved a little farther on down the hill. I was sore at the old
gang and went and hooked up with the new one. And trouble had got so hot
between the two gangs that it looked awful dark.
"Woody, did you write that war letter, like we said last night?" The
captain of our new gang was saluting and nodding to several kids as they
come out for the day's playing.
I read out:
To the Members of the Old Gang:
Dear Captain and Leaders and Members:
We told you why we are fighting this war. It is because of your leaders
mostly. Most of us kids is new here in town and we ain't got no other place
except at your gang house, You made us work but you didn't let us vote or
nothing like that when it was time.
The only way out is to let all of us kids own the gang house together.
We was always fighting the other way. One gang against the other one. It
will always be this a-way unless we change it, and you don't want us to
change it, but we aim to anyhow. Both gangs has got to join up together and
be one gang.
We will come to see you at eight o'clock, and if you still try to keep
us split up, we will start a war.
It will not be a play war. It will take place with sling shots and
flint rocks. It will be a real war and it will last till one side or the
other wins out on top.
The Boom Town Kids,
Thug Warner, Chief.
Woody Guthrie, Messenger.
"Sounds okay."
"Purty fair letter."
"It'll do." Our captain pulled a big dollar watch out of his
overalls pocket. "Fifteen minnits, then war's on!" Then he said, "Okay,
go on, read 'em th' letter."
"Yessir." I touched the bill of my corduroy hunting cap I always wore
in a hard fight. I put a white handkerchief on my arm and went to the old
gang house.
"Git back thar, trater!" I heard a couple of highway flints zoom past
my ears.
"Quit shootin'! I'm a mess'nger! Ya c'n see this white rag on my arm!"
The door opened up and Colonel and Rex stepped out into the open.
Colonel had his early morning chew of scrap tobacco pretty well limbered up,
and spit three or four long squirts while he gritted his teeth and read the
letter.
Rex read over Colonel's shoulder, "A real war ... till one side or the
other wins out on top." He flipped his lip with his fingers and looked up
across the hill. "What chance you fools think you got 'ginst our gang house
shootin' with flint-rock Sling shots?"
"You'll see." I turned my corduroy hat around so the bill protected the
back of my head and neck. "You guys has seen me wear this cap backwards
before, haven't ya? Ya know that means fight, don't ya? I don't feel funny
fightin' on th' new kids' side, 'cause, ya see, men, I jes' happen ta
believe they're right an' you're wrong."
"You an' yore letter, an' yore pack of mangy curs! Boom town rats!"
Colonel tore the war letter up into a hundred little pieces and slung them
into my face like a quick snow.
Rex shut the door and latched it. "Okay, fellas," I heard him tell his
fighters inside, "it's war! Everybody ready? Rocks easy to reach? Keep out
of shootin' range of these open windows!" Then he stuck his head out the
window that had been the jail and yelled at me, "You yeller-bellied quitter!
Git movin'!"
I expected a rock to whack me in the back any time as I run back up the
hill, but nothing hit me. "I guess you seen what happened ta our letter!" I
told the captain.
"Three minnits, boys. Then she's war!" Thug turned to me and winked and
said, "Round up th' men. Bring all of 'em right here in th' alley."
I whistled through my teeth and waved my hand in the air as a signal
for all of the kids on our side to follow me. Everybody stood in the alley
above the trash pile at the top of the hill.
"You four go with Slew." Thug pointed out the squads. "You four foller
Woody through the trash pile. You three fight here in the middle with me.
Git to yer places!"
"Fire away, boys!" some kid yelled out.
"Hold yer fire!" Thug bawled him out. "If we shoot one second ahead of
eight o'clock, they'll go aroun' lyin' that we sneaked up on 'em, an' didn't
give 'em a chance!"
"How long, Thug?"
" 'Bout ten secinds!"
"Places ever'bodyyyy! Gitt reaeeeedyyy!"
We ripped and tore and yelled on our way to our places. Three kids
pulled homemade coaster wagons loaded to the hub with good shaped
sling-shots rocks. The gang house was built on a flat place dug out of the
hill. A patch of weeds about three foot high run along the upper part where
we stood and was the only thing that would hide us from the rock fire of the
fighters in the house. Kids eyed one another, patted the old trusty stocks
and rubbers of their sling shots. Then all eyes centered on Thug.
He looked at his big dollar watch and hollered, "Chaaarrge!"
"Down on yer bellies!" Slew yelled out to the whole line. He was as
good a fighting captain any old day as Thug. "Crawl inta these weeds! Save
your rocks! Keep crawlin' down th' hill! Let's put that guy in th' lockout
tower out of order first!"
Thug was standing on the north end of our line. He drawed back his
rubbers so tight they sung a bugle call in the bard wind, and whizzed a rock
through the jail-house window. Inside some kid with the first punk knot of
the war, hollered, "Ooohhhh!"
Trick doors the size of a cigar box slid open, first here, then there,
all over the front side of the house. Hands of a dozen kids stuck from
underneath and around the edges of the windows, rubbers stretched, and rocks
howled through the air.
"Hot rocks! Red hot! Feel that!" Claude was cussing next to me,
touching the end of his finger to an agate-looking flint that had dug the
grass roots a couple of inches from his head. "Heatin' 'em on that dam stove
they got inside!"
I bit my bottom lip and pasted one into the lookout nest that
splintered a sliding trap door to shavings. A red-hot rock flew back out of
the tower and glanced off of my shoulder blade, leaving a burnt red welt,
about six inches long. Claude heard the thump and felt me roll over against
him moaning.
"Looky here!" Claude pointed to the rock laying between us in the
grass. "Simmerin'. Scorchin' th' grass!" He tried to pick it up and load it
into his sling, but jerked his fingers back saying, "Wowie! Boy! Howdy!
Hotter'n a bitch!"
I put my hand up to my mouth and ducked low and yelled back at our
bunch, "Hot rocks! Watch out! Hot rocks!"
I seen Thug crawling through the weeds toward me, wearing a flop felt
hat a couple of sizes too big, folded full of newspapers, for a helmet. He
jumped to his feet and run through the weeds, pointing at a couple of kids
in charge of our ammunition wagons. "Hey! You two! Git plenty of good
firewood! Them birds'll be awful sorry they ever started this hot-rock
fightin'!"
Before many minutes a new fire was crackling on the side of the hill
behind our lines. The two kids lifted tin buckets from a wagon, each bucket
piled brim full of round flints, and set on a two-foot sheet of corrugated
roofing tin. Papers, sticks, and weed stalks blazed underneath. The fire got
hotter and, before long, there was a tin bucket of the hot rocks within easy
reach of every kid on our side.
"How'dya take a-holt of 'em ta shoot, without blistering yer hands?" I
asked a kid when he set a bucket down between Claude and me. I could feel
the heat from the bucket of rocks striking my skin from two feet away.
"Red-hot mommers!"
The ammunition boy grinned at me and said, "Gotta par o' gloves on ya?"
"I ain't got none here." I dodged a foot to one side and seen a rock
knock a hole the size of a horseshoe track. It buried itself a good inch in
the grass roots and shot sizzling hot steam from the damp ground under the
dead grass. "Kill a man if it'd hit 'im jest right,"
"We got two pairs o' gloves fer our whole bunch. Thirteen of us. So,
here, here's a left-handed glove. Ya gotta load an' shoot real quick, so's
ya don't git burnt." He dropped a glove between me and Claude.
I pulled on the glove, fished a nice juicy roasted rock out of the
bucket, slipped it into the leather of my sling shot, stretched the rubbers
as far as they would go, and felt the heat of the rock burning the tips of
my fingers when I let go. The shot knicked a handful of splinters off of the
side of the house. "Trouble is, ya don't shoot as straight with a glove on."
"Clumsy. Yeah." He finished digging his little hole. "Think we might
oughtta switch back to just plain rocks, an' shoot straighter? More of 'em?"
"We gotta use 'em hot. See, them guys in th' house knows that we cain't
crawl around on our bellies if they lay a lot of heated rocks all over this
weed patch. One of these here rocks'll stay hot fifteen 'er twenty minnits.
Step on 'er, lay down on one, or come down on one with your knee, boy, it'd
dam near it put ya outta commish'n!"
"Halfa our kids is goin' barefooted, too." Claude squinted his eyes up
and said, "See that little window up yonder in that there lookout tower?
Watch it."
"Got 'er kivvered." I heard Claude's rubbers sing like a big airplane
motor. "Like a bat goin' home ta roost," I laughed when the rock clattered
inside the crow's-nest window.
Zuuumm. Another kid from the weeds