Free Half of Paradise by James Lee Burke Page A

rubber and gasoline from the automobiles; the Salvation Army band on the corner, with their high-collar blue uniforms and homely faces and loud brass instruments and tambourines and shrill voices, singing “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks We Stand”; and the missions where the bums could get a meal and a cot if they would sit through a sermon on salvation and Jesus Christ.
    J.P. closed his eyes and let his head sag to one side. He
didn’t
know the cab had stopped at the station until the driver woke him. The redcap carried his bag into the waiting room; he sat down on oneof the pewlike benches, put his guitar case beside him, and read the train schedule on the opposite wall. There were a few people in the waiting room. A porter slept in a chair by the platform door. J.P. took out his tickets and looked at them. Hunnicut had put him in a chaircar. He went to the ticket window and talked with the stationmaster and tried to get reservations on a Pullman. The stationmaster told him that there were no more reservations to be had, and he would have to ride in the chaircar.
    His train was announced over the loudspeaker, and he carried his bag and guitar case out on the platform. The ice and baggage wagons rumbled over the wood planks. The trainmen opened the vestibule doors of the coaches and put down the stepstool for the passengers. Men in overalls moved along the cinder bed by the side of the train with copper oil cans. J.P. walked down the platform and found his car. The conductor looked at his ticket and helped him up into the vestibule.
    The car was crowded and the air was thick with smoke. He made his way down the aisle, bumping people with his guitar case, and took a seat at the end of the car. A soldier snored loudly next to him. J.P. pushed back the seat and tried to relax. His legs were cramped and he couldn’t stretch out. A child close by began to cry. The train hissed and joltedand moved slowly out of the station. The lights in the car went down, and J.P. felt the darkness go over him.
    The telegraph wires are weaving through the air outside the window and I’m going to Nashville Tennessee for Big Jim Lathrop Big Jim sends bread and butter checks to the state capitol the train is rocking back and forth rocking and I lean back and sleep in the dusty smell of old cushions and the train rocks me down past the dust of the cushions to where it is cool like sheets against my back and then the hot wetness of her on top of me I felt the bone in Doc Elgin’s hand and I had to look away when he stared at me and he give April something in a package because I seen it in her drawer and she covered it over with a slip when she seen me looking at it she has small blue marks on her arms
    Hunnicutt said You can start back to the tenant farm and chop cotton like a nigger for three dollars a day but he don’t know nothing about chopping cotton the hoe goes up in the air and thuds down in the dirt and I see the shadow of my straw hat on the ground I never been in Tennessee Troy is from Memphis he ain’t picked cotton for two cents a pound none of them knows how to drag the half-full burlap sack through the rows with one hand and pick the white puff with the other and put it in the sack
    they were singing On Jordan’s Banks and the bums stood in line to get inside because it was night and they had to find a place to sleep I heard them singing in the camp back home
and they slept on army cots and mixed lighter fluid with orange juice and I seen one trade his overcoat for a quart jar of moon they put up the cots around a big iron stove and their faces looked like corpses sticking out from under the blanket sometimes I watched the evening train run across the sun and stop by the water tower and they would crawl out of the rods and that night I heard them singing hymns in the camp like the nigger funeral marches they’re not niggers their faces are white like ash under the blanket and they take off their coats and wrap them around their