Miles

Miles July 1, 1930 My name is Shaun Anthony, but the hobos that know me call me by Jumper because I aint afraid to jump from car to car even while the thangs moving. It’s been about a year I recon since I was back home in Stillwater Oklahoma. The old Jungle Buzzards swear I’m lying when I tell them that I’m only fifteen, they say I got the arms and legs of a young lumber jack. In these towns out west, people will always find something for me to lift or some kind of labor for me to do. The man I travel with, most often guesses that I get all the damn jobs because of my strength and height. His name is Miles and I met him after my first stop in Missouri. This was only a few weeks after I left home, in those days I was starved and freezing because I didn’t really know how thangs worked out here on the road. Miles took me on my first job and showed me how to keep away from the bulls at night. I’ve learned how to be quite well out here riding the trains. Everybody remembers the day they left home and their first couple of weeks on the road. The day I left home I was up in my room playing with my little brother and all we heard was our heavy front door slam as father came home from work early. Sure enough when I went into the family room, it was my Papa. At this moment I knew something was wrong because this was the first time that I heard the sound of a grown man’s cry. That was the most awful type of a sound that I’ve heard in all of my years. My Paps said to me in a weak unstable voice, “I aint got no work for us boy.”There was a silent pause as I took one last look into his red watery eyes, and then I darted into my room to gather my things. I wasn’t goanna stay around doing nothing, I needed to go out and at least carry my own weight if not to try and provide a little for my family also. I knew I had to do it because my best friend that lived in the next house a quarter mile down the road had already left because his daddy made em. I left with one change of under wear, socks, a canteen, and my wallet with the five dollars that I saved. I spent all me money on the first day because that was when I had a damn good appetite and I was used to eatin well. What can I say, I was a clueless rook at the time. Until I met Miles I spent a whole six days I recon, curled up in a box car shivering without nothing to eat for a whole six days. Those just might have been the worst six days of my life. Miles came on to the train along with a kid that couldn’t have been older than eleven. Miles came over to me in the corner of the box car and shook me multiple times. I was scared, I didn’t know who this grown man was so I acted like I was sleeping. He put a blanket on me and then placed something on me hip, “eat this”, he said as he climbed outside of the car with the small boy. After he left I got up and grabbed the thang on my hip, it was a big sandwich. I ate that sucker faster than a hungry dog with a piece of steak. Miles continued to give me little food and water that he would get from the jungles as we were stopped. After a week I was up and learning how to stay on the top of the trains and Miles taught me how to catch a moving train. He said that I was the most athletic kid he’s ever seen on the road and we instantly became good friends. I noticed that the small boy was gone so I asked Miles about the twerp. Miles explained to me that the boy was suffocated from the trains smoke in a tunnel a ways back. H e said without no emotion in his face or voice, just like this stuff happened all the time. Many months went by and me and Miles promised that we would always travel together and work in the same towns. About a week ago we were just coming off of a job in Texas and we were stationed on the side of the rails waitin for a damn train. Miles convinced me to take him back to Oklahoma so we could see my family. We had to be careful of the bulls or cops seeing us, it was around a day before we saw that train. It was moving fast, so we both ran out from the bushes as fast as we could. As we came out we saw to lights coming up from behind us. It was the damn bulls and we could not get caught because we both had bad hobo records. I’ve never seen a 40 year old man run like Miles was, he was right behind me when I jumped onto the side of the box car. I thought he jumped to but when I looked to my side he wasn’t there this time. I turned around as I heard a terrible moan to only see Miles’s bag on the side of the track and the blanket get repeatedly run over by those God awful wheels. I cried more that night even more than the night I left home.