The Rumbling, Rambling Blues

I had been working in the railroad diner in Des Moines about five months when one night an old Negro hobo came to my counter.

He was an old southern Negro hobo and he came from those swamps. I was curious about the story of his life but he wouldn't talk about himself, just sang. In his pockmarked black skin, all white bristles, there gleamed enormous eyes that had grown larger since he left home. The bayou was his home town, the world was madder to see, he had been around, all 48 states, Canada and Mexico several times. He scared me when he first came in -- not all customers spend three hours in the dark watching from across the street, as he did before he slid the doors in an empty hour to join me in a spate of time.

He made a strange remark about my secretest thoughts, which were about leaving Des Moines because I'd been there too long, only I was short of money and kept hesitating.

"You settle down this town, native boy? Or is you just goin'!"

"You mean if I don't live here, no."

"And is you goin' someplace, or just goin'!" He showed me yellow teeth and wheezed a remanent laugh.

"No sir, Pop, I guess I'm just going." I said it too anxiously. He wrapped himself up in an evil old smile and didn't believe it.

Like the grimy white brakemen who came in to eat their gloomy meals, he was a man possessed of a suffering that was seamed into the flesh, face and neck; but who sang about it, made no bones; after all had suffered just a little more than they did, by a shade exactly; and whose suffering compared to mine was as the rings of an age-oak and the rings of a sapling tree. Worse, a thousand winters had caked his skin, and summers cracked it. Around him the fog was a palpable shroud; its cold, gray exhalations seemed to breathe about his mouth; so were it not for his warm eyes he would have shrove his songs and put a blanket round him. But he walked the American night just as he was: the burlap pants, the rope, and the shapeless tarpaulin apron, all greasy and dark like Beelzebub in hell, fit for every jail that (continued on page 71)Rambling Blues(continued from page 57) gives no supper: and the saddest, best old bum of all old bums I've seen.

He had one lead nickel for a coffee. I picked at the chopped meat and rolled him a hamburger dinner, with the works, free. With this I gave him a strawberry shortcake I paid for on the sly. He said it was the best dinner he ever had and sat content.

He sat, or half-sat, at the very end of the counter, near the door, so no newcomer could accuse him of really frequenting the dining room, and if so, the door was his. From that position, which I did not quarrel for, he began singing like he knew I would really enjoy it and for his own reminiscive pleasures. His songs were those mysterious rumbling, rambling blues that you hear with low-register guitar and unknown words rising out of the Deep South night like a groan, like a fire beyond the trees. He pronounced his words so darkly I had to ask him what they meant: "nine-tunny-na," that was nineteen twenty nine, "polan-may" was Portland, Maine, "tunsee" Tennessee, so on. Print can't read like he sounded, so mournful, hoarse and swampy-like. He started with a record of what evidently was his youth.

Left Louisiana

Nineteen twenty nine

To go along the river

'Thout a daddy-blame dime.

Up old Montana

In the cold, cold Fall

I found my father

In a gam-balin hall.

Father, father,

Wherever you been?

Unloved is lost

When you so blame small.

Dear son, he said,

Don't a-worry 'bout me,

I'm 'bout to die

Of the misery.

Went south together

In an old freight train

Night my father died

In the cold, cold rain.

I counted the years and figured he left home for the first time when he was almost 30, to go look for his father up the river, and he said that was so, adding, pointing, "He was way up that river, yander Big Muddy go."

Then he sang the general lament of his life and I died to hear it.

Been to Butte Montana

Been to Portland Maine

Been to San Francisco

Been in all the rain

Lord, Lord,

I never found no li'l girl.

Cross the Brazos river

Cross the Tennessee

Cross the Niobrara

Cross the Jordan sea

Lord, Lord,

I never found no li'l girl.

Home in Opelousas

Home in Wounded Knee

Home in Ogallala

Home I'll never be

Lord, Lord,

I never found no li'l girl.

He suddenly said to me, "Slim, you's a river log ain't rolling."

"What do you mean?"

He only said he had a song for me that nobody had ever heard except a few witch doctors and himself. "Witch doctor sing this when he feel sad and gotsa leave the bayou. It's a sign." He grunted.

Down -- yum -- down

Down -- yum -- down

Roll -- faw -- log

Roll -- faw -- log

Well -- tha -- snake

Well -- tha -- snake

Lookat!

He whistled shrilly through his teeth, and smiled to show the song was over. Suddenly his gnarled finger was pointed at me in advice. "In N'awleans the log roll faw way from the top-big-muddy that ain't got Caught in a snag where witch doctor lie down with the snake."

I understood those logs he was talking about -- I had seen them from the decks of ships in New Orleans at night. wandering logs all riven, water-heavy, sunken and turning over that come with the Missouri rushing hugely into the floods of the Mississippi all the way from top-big-muddy, which is lonely old Montana in the North, Odyssiac logs, stately wanderers, moving slowly with satisfaction and eternity down wide night shores out to sea -- but I never knew what he meant about the witch doctor and the snake. He wheezed that laugh.

It was a prophetic night for me. I watched him go across the railyards -- said he was going to "Sanacisca" right soon, or "Awg'n," which are San Francisco and Ogden, in Utah, I know -- a tarpaulin ghost aimed for the nearest empties on the track, to fold inside the dryest reefers or find his bed of paper, in any old gondola, any box, even the rushing cold rods themselves, "Just long as they ball that jack!" as he yelled when he left. So he was gone.

In the morning I collected my pay, packed my old torn bag, and rode a bus to the edge of town. I'd never get caught, I'd roll far too. I got on that old road again. I knew I would see him somewhere at least once more.