“I was meaning to say, friend or dough?” smiling kind of fiercely now and holding out his hand for a bribe. “Told you. I’m dead broke except for these potatoes.” The guard became enraged. He took a pipe and whistle out of his pocket, and put the pipe in his mouth and whistle in his ear. Then he blew. Smoke came out of the pipe but nothing out of his ear. He blew much harder. All the ashes and tobacco came out of the pipe and the whistle popped out of his ear. He put the whistle back in his ear, faced the wall and began kicking it faster and faster till I couldn’t see his feet moving. But he got a whistling sound from his ear this time and the pipe fell out of his mouth. Three guards ran into the room. They went straight to the wall the first guard was at and began kicking it so hard and fast that I also couldn’t see their feet moving. One of them was chewing a cigar, another was sucking a taffy stick and the third had an apple between his teeth. But they all got whistling sounds out of the whistles in their ears once their feet got kicking fast enough, and whatever was in their mouths flew to the floor. The noise from the four whistles was so loud and sharp that Crow forgot he was holding me and covered his ears with his hands. I fell to the floor, rolled over a few times as I thought a sack of potatoes would, and watched Crow run screaming out of the warehouse. I wanted to get up and follow him. Or crawl to the back room to try and free the other people trapped in the phone booths. But then the guards wouldn’t have thought I was a sack of potatoes. “Well, that wraps up case number three hundred two thousand and four,” the first guard said, picking me up. “One of you guys care for a sack of potatoes?” “Sure hate to see good food go to waste,” another guard said. “But my family will only eat the frozen French-fried kind.” “Now if that were a fifty-pound bag of potato chips,” a third guard said, “I might just take you up on your offer.”
“Especially if they were onion-flavored,” the fourth guard said.
“Hot-pepper-flavored is my favorite,” the first guard said, dumping me in a garbage can and clamping on the lid. That night, after the phone workers and guards had left and the building had been locked up, I shook the garbage can back and forth till it fell over and the lid came off. A janitor heard the noise and ran into the room and stared at me waving for him to help me out of the can. “Wally gee,” he said, “this is the first time I ever did see a sack of potatoes waving at me from a garbage can.” “I’m not a sack of potatoes but a man who’s maybe at the end of his road if he doesn’t get something to eat.” He helped me out of the can and gave me a sandwich from his lunch pail. Then he said “Wally gee, this is the first time I ever did share an egg salad sandwich on rye with a sack of potatoes. Or really any kind of sandwich on any kind of bread, though not the first time I ever picked up a sack of potatoes.”
“How can I be a sack of potatoes if I talk?” “That’s another thing this is the first time of for me with a sack of potatoes. Wait till I tell my wife,” and he started sweeping the floor. “Listen,” I said, “you really got me out of ajam when I needed to, so how about my helping you clean this room?” “This will be the first time a sack of potatoes ever helped me clean a building. And surely the first time any kind of sack volunteered for the job. But sure — be my guest. Not that I can’t do my job, but just so I can later say how I cleaned up a building with a sack of potatoes.” He gave me a broom and thermos of milk. As I swept and drank, he said “Do all sacks of potatoes clean up buildings as good as you?” “I’m not a sack of potatoes.” “And a good thing for me too. Because you work so quickly and well that you’d be putting us older janitors out of business in no time. Though you did miss a pinch of dirt behind you, sack. And another one over there — the pinch you’re now standing on.” Eating and drinking again made me feel healthy so fast that I swept through two rooms and continued sweeping down the hallway and up the stairs and into the back room where the abandoned phone booths were. I freed the trapped people in there by turning their booths right side up, got my typewriter and came back downstairs and said goodbye to the janitor. “Let me take a picture of you first,” he said. He clicked his camera at me a few times. “Only reason I never took a picture of a sack of potatoes before is I never found one interesting enough till now. Butlookithere,” when he saw the people I’d freed dragging themselves downstairs. “More sacks of potatoes. Must be a regular cold cellar upstairs I never known about. Let’s get a group shot.” He lined us up in a double row and said “Will you sacks in front please crouch down so I can also get the shorter sacks standing behind? I bet when I show these photos around my friends will say ‘Why’d you ever want to take so many shots of fifty-pound sacks of potatoes for?’ So maybe I better undo these pictures and take them of things my friends will appreciate more.” He wound back the film in his camera to the first picture and began snapping shots of his mop and dust pan and water bucket and the socket string of the ceiling light bulb. Most of the people I freed crawled out of the building and around the corner. A few crawled into the phone booths in front of the telephone building and immediately got trapped inside. I felt that until phone service improved in this country, I’d be unable to call you without running into one difficulty after another. The only way I’d be sure of speaking to you again in the near future is to travel to Palo Alto and see you face to face. I’ll start out to see you as soon as I finish this letter and drop it in a mailbox. The way my luck’s been changing for the better lately, I might even reach you before the letter does. If I do, then maybe I should stick the letter in my pocket so it can at least reach you at the same time. Truth is, I think this letter has a much better chance of reaching you first. I could try and help myself get there before it by addressing the envelope wrong and not putting on a stamp. But that might ruin the letter’s chance of ever reaching you, and then you wouldn’t know I was on my way to see you. What I could do is give myself a head start on the letter by waiting till I got halfway across the country before I dropped it in a mailbox. And to get an even bigger lead on the letter, I could double back to New York once I got halfway across the country, and then drop the letter in a mailbox. But maybe after getting halfway across the country and doubling back to New York with me, the letter will get discouraged that it will ever reach you or maybe keel over from traveler’s fatigue and drop out of this race against me. Or I might get tired and be the one to drop out, which will mean I won’t get to California. And if I don’t get there and this letter also drops out of the race, you’ll never know we were in a race to get to you unless I send another letter telling you about it. I can even send this same letter inside the envelope of another letter, if it’s still too tired or discouraged to make it across the country on its own. But to give this first letter and me an even chance to get to you, I better just stick it in a mailbox and start out to see you myself right away.