Atlas Shrugged [424]
"Oh, running away? A fugitive from the law, are you?"
"Not as you'd mean it in the old days, ma'am. But as things are now, I guess I am. I want to work."
"What do you mean?"
"There aren't any jobs back East. And a man couldn't give you a job, if he had one to give-he'd go to jail for it. He's watched. You can't get work except through the Unification Board. The Unification Board has a gang of its own friends waiting in line for the jobs, more friends than a millionaire's got relatives. Well, me-I haven't got either."
"Where did you work last?"
"I've been bumming around the country for six months-no, longer, I guess-I guess it's closer to about a year-I can't tell any more-
mostly day work it was. Mostly on farms. But it's getting to be no use now. I know how the farmers look at you-they don't like to see a man starving, but they're only one jump ahead of starvation themselves, they haven't any work to give you, they haven't any food, and whatever they save, if the tax collectors don't get it, then the raiders do-you know, the gangs that rove all through the country-
deserters, they call them."
"Do you think that it's any better in the West?"
"No. I don't."
"Then why are you going there?"
"Because I haven't tried it before. That's all there is left to try. It's somewhere to go. Just to keep moving . . . You know," he added suddenly, "I don't think it will be any use. But there's nothing to do in the East except sit under some hedge and wait to die. I don't think I'd mind it much now, the dying. I know it would be a lot easier. Only I think that it's a sin to sit down and let your life go, without making a try for it."
She thought suddenly of those modern college-infected parasites who assumed a sickening air of moral self-righteousness whenever they uttered the standard bromides about their concern for the welfare of others. The tramp's last sentence was one of the most profoundly moral statements she had ever heard; but the man did not know it; he had said it in his impassive, extinguished voice, simply, dryly, as a matter of fact.
"What part of the country do you come from?" she asked.
"Wisconsin," he answered.
The waiter came in, bringing their dinner. He set a table and courteously moved two chairs, showing no astonishment at the nature of the occasion.
She looked at the table; she thought that the magnificence of a world where men could afford the time and the effortless concern for such things as starched napkins and tinkling ice cubes, offered to travelers along with their meals for the price of a few dollars, was a remnant of the age when the sustenance of one's life had not been made a crime and a meal had not been a matter of running a race with death-a remnant which was soon to vanish, like the white filling station on the edge of the weeds of the jungle.
She noticed that the tramp, who had lost the strength to stand up, had not lost the respect for the meaning of the things spread before him. He did not pounce upon the food; he fought to keep his movements slow, to unfold his napkin, to pick up his fork in tempo with hers, his hand shaking-as if he still knew that this, no matter what indignity was ever forced upon them, was the manner proper to men.
"What was your line of work-in the old days?" she asked, when the waiter left. "Factories, wasn't it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What trade?"
"Skilled lathe-operator."
"Where did you work at it last?"
"In Colorado, ma'am. For the Hammond Car Company."
"Oh . . . !"
"Ma'am?"
"No, nothing. Worked there long?"
"No, ma'am. Just two weeks."
"How come?"
"Well, I'd waited a year for it, hanging around Colorado just to get that job. They had a waiting list too, the Hammond Car Company, only they didn't go by friendships and they didn't go by seniority, they went by a man's record. I had a good record. But it was just two weeks after I got the job that Lawrence Hammond quit. He quit and disappeared. They closed the plant. Afterwards,