John D. MacDonald
That Old Grey Train
After a long, long time, they unlocked the gate for me and they let me go. I stood in the warden’s office and felt the cloth of the cheap suit where my hands hung next to my thighs, and he said, “Washburn, you did your stretch like a man and I don’t think you’re going to get into any more trouble.”
There were so many things I couldn’t say to him — I couldn’t tell him how my folks had wanted to educate one of the kids and sent me to Howard University, thinking they were going to have a colored boy that could make a living with the books in a white man’s world. I was a junior when the dough got low, and I found a way to make some money. In those days I was lean and tough and fast. I did me some boxfighting, and the big trouble was, I was too good at it. If only I’d met a real good boy when I was first fighting.
You remember me. First they called me Young Washburn, then I got the name of “Singer” Washburn. I’d be in there with a good boy, the fight would be tough and then the music of it would get to me, the rhythm of it, and somewhere deep in my throat would start a tuneless chant, a heavy throbbing that must have been some kind of cousin to the war chants back in Africa. I know I’ve got some Senegalese blood in me and they’re supposed to be pretty hard boys.
I quit school the week I turned pro. It wasn’t until the year later than Johnny Rye bought my contract from Stevie. Maybe if Johnny Rye had been around when I turned pro, he wouldn’t have let me quit school. He’s that kind of a guy — one of those white men that can feel what it’s like to be a Negro and be up in that ring with the crowd yelling, “Kill that eight ball! Murder that shine!”
Maybe because Johnny Rye was a very good welter in his day, he knows these things. Maybe it’s just because he’s a good man all the way through.
Anyway, he taught me all the professional tricks of the trade, and he brought me along slow to where I was ready for a shot at the light heavy title and it happened. You read about it. It hurt me and it hurt my race. I found out the gal I wanted to marry was cheating, and with that deep chant in my throat I went after the man and I tried to kill him with my hands. I would have, too. They stopped me. It took four of them to stop me — but I’m not proud of that. It shows you how crazy I was. Johnny did all he could, but I’d made the mistake of pulling it in a very tough state and they gave me ten. Good behavior cut it down to six.
I was twenty-five when I went in; thirty-one when they opened the gates. It’s funny. At first I was crazy wild to get out. Then the years chugged along like a slow train, taking me right past the place where I could have been champ, right on past the years I would have been defending my title, right on by the thirty mark where I’d planned to retire with the dough I’d saved from the fights I didn’t have.
The old train, he chugged along and he slowed down and let me out, and by then I didn’t want to get off. I wanted to keep right on riding in that grey train, with the grey cells and the bars and the tin plates and the shaved heads. You see, I was afraid to get off. What could I do? I was too old for the only trade I knew, and I hadn’t finished my education. Life had given me just a little taste of big cars and good liquor. I’d managed to forget that on the grey train, but I knew that back out in the bright world Id see it all again and start wanting some. Without being able to get myself any. I couldn’t figure on what to do with myself and that old open door to the world had me licked.
The warden, he says, “What you going to do with yourself, Washburn?”
Even my name sounded funny to me. All those years being called seventy-nine two thirty-two. I couldn’t answer him.
He said, “I tell you what to do. You forget about the cities, boy. You take yourself right on down to the deep south and get yourself a share cropping job, get a healthy wife and raise a cabin full of kids. Then you can forget all this.”
I didn’t hate him for it. He was a well-meaning man and he thought he knew what was best. But you can’t put shoes on a Nigra, get him used to them, and then tell him to go put his toes back in the dirt. Never.
I wandered on out with the silly feeling that the sky was going to fall right on my head and I couldn’t stop looking around over my shoulder. I walked all one day, walking on the wrong side of the road so that nobody would want to give me a ride. I had a lot of walking to catch up on.
And when the five dollars the warden gave me was just about gone, I got me a job sweeping out a building and taking care of the lawn out in back.
They found out about me when the probation man came around and pretty soon I was walking again, heading toward the south. But all the time I walked, I knew I wanted to go see some fights. I wanted to smell the ring and see that spray of water under the lights when a man comes out from the corner and collects that Sunday punch that knocks the water off his hair.
After a while I did, and I hung around the dressing rooms; when they asked me who I was, I said my name was Johnson. I got me a few bucks helping out in the corner and I was a lonely man. I weighed one ninety and there wasn’t a bit of fat on me, but I knew the old steam and snap were all gone. No chance to try again, I helped them out one night, and went in with a white boy for the final bout when the other bum didn’t show. It was funny to stand up there in the cigar smoke and hear that old bell clang out, to turn and touch gloves and drop back into the old game of figuring how you can hit the other boy without getting hit yourself.
I had my orders not to win and there was twenty-five bucks in it for me. That white boy sure was clumsy. He gave me a clean shot at the jaw in the second round and I dropped him. I stood in that neutral corner and prayed he’d find the guts to get back up on his feet. He made it, and I carried him around until he woke up. Then I let him slam me with a left and I made the fall look good. I stayed right there on my face and waited until the count of eight before I started to stir. He was a clumsy boy and even as slow as I was, he couldn’t have licked me with a brick in each hand. His name was Sonny Vine.
I came out of the shower about fifteen minutes later and went back to the locker they give me to put my clothes in. I was still wearing that suit I came out of the prison in.
Johnny Rye stood by my locker, his foot on the bench, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, the grey smoke curling up past his wide red face, his stone grey hair. All I could do was stop and stare at him.
He snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and said, “Washburn, you’re one dumb nigger!” He scowled at me but there was something in his eyes that brought a big old lump into my throat. I couldn’t say a word.
He said, “I found that you’d been let out and I waited for you to get in touch with me, I come down here to look this punk, Vine, and what do I find. I find you taking a lousy dive for him. Is that the way I taught you?”
“Mister Rye, you don’t want me for anything. I’m all through. Too much time has gone by.”
He walked over to me and his face got redder. “What the hell do you mean, I don’t want you? Sure, you’re all washed up as a fighter. But you know more about the business than any punk I got in the stable. I need you, Washburn, and, damn it, you’re going to come back with me and work for me until I damn well tell you that I don’t need you any more. And I intend to stay in this business for a long, long time.”
He taught me right then what it is to have a friend, I knew he didn’t need me at all, and I knew I had a job for life. Right then, as I fumbled for the handle on the locker, I knew that if he told me to cut both hands off at the wrist, I’d grin and do it. Some- how I had come home again and the lonely days were over.