"Вуди Гасри. Bound for glory (engl)" - читать интересную книгу автора

231
XV
the telegram that never came
245
XVI
stormy night
256
XVII
extra selects
270
XVIII
crossroads
290
XIX
train bound for glory
309

Postscript
320
BOUND FOR GLORY

Chapter I
SOLDIERS IN THE DUST

I could see men of all colors bouncing along in the boxcar. We stood
up. We laid down. We piled around on each other. We used each other for
pillows. I could smell the sour and bitter sweat soaking through my own
khaki shirt and britches, and the work clothes, overhauls and saggy, dirty
suits of the other guys. My mouth was full of some kind of gray mineral dust
that was about an inch deep all over the floor. We looked like a gang of
lost corpses heading back to the boneyard. Hot in the September heat, tired,
mean and mad, cussing and sweating, raving and preaching. Part of us waved
our hands in the cloud of dust and hollered out to the whole crowd. Others
was too weak, too sick, too hungry or too drunk even to stand up. The train
was a highball and had the right of way. Our car was a rough rider, called
by hoboes a "flat wheeler." I was riding in the tail end where I got more
dust, but less heat. The wheels were clipping it off at sixty miles an hour.
About all I could hear above the raving and cussing and the roar of the car
was the jingle and clink on the under side every time the wheels went over a
rail joint.
I guess ten or fifteen of us guys was singing:

This train don't carry no gamblers,
Liars, thieves and big-shot ramblers;
This train is bound for glory,
This train!

"We would hafta git th' only goddam flat wheeler on th' whole dam
train!" A heavy-set boy with a big-city accent was rocking along beside me
and fishing through his overhauls for his tobacco sack.