Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [10]
I continued to smoke and drink but reluctantly stuck with running. Pete made me train after school. Much to my disgust he ran behind me with a switch and whacked my butt to keep me moving. I protested but it worked. My running improved. In subsequent races I came in second, third again, and finally won. I couldn’t believe it! Then I won another and another and made the all-city finals. I came in fifth but was number one in my school. I got a little bronze button to pin on my sweater. I felt like the button was made of gold.
WHEN SCHOOL LET out, my parents wanted me to do work around the house, and it just bugged me no end. I got itchy feet again.
Johnny and I jumped a freight train for Northern California. I still remember the balmy summer night, lying on top of a catwalk, looking up at the stars while we rolled through the San Joaquin Valley.
We didn’t have more than a few dollars, so we stole food from orchards. By the time we got to San Francisco we were hungry and miserable, and the weather had turned bad. Summer rain can be cold up north. I snatched a can of beans from a nearby hobo camp and ran for it. We ate them cold, our bodies drenched.
During “dinner” I spotted a passenger train pulling out, heading south. I could see the people inside, warm and cheerful. When the dining car rolled slowly by I noticed everyone dressed for the meal, sitting at tables covered with white cloths. They drank from crystal glasses, ate from covered platters, and looked so satisfied. I’d never been in a dining car, let alone on a passenger train. I turned to Johnny and said, “Boy, are we dopes.”
He tapped at the bottom of the can to get the last few beans.
“Look at those people, riding in style,” I said. “That’s the life. Someday I’m going to be in one of those cars. Someday I’m going to have the works.”
Johnny said he wished he had more beans.
I shut up then because I didn’t want Johnny to think I’d gone soft. But inside I knew: whatever it took, I would improve myself. I wanted to never again be cold, hungry, dirty, and on the outside looking in.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
WE FINALLY FOUND a southbound train, climbed into an open boxcar, and hid in the corner from the railroad dicks. One came by, did a quick inspection, but didn’t see us. He slammed, locked, and sealed the door.
We woke up the next morning to find the interior hotter than blazes. And we weren’t moving. I tried the door, but it was still locked. I noticed a trapdoor in the ceiling, but I had no idea how to get it open until I spotted a broken steel-ladder rung, the kind that goes up the side of a boxcar, in the corner. Johnny held me on his shoulders while I worked at prying the trapdoor open with the edge of the rung. It took hours, and even then it wasn’t cracked all the way. I had to force my head out, which cut my big ears and scraped my chest. But I made it, dropped over the side, and opened the door to let Johnny out.
Turned out we were sidetracked near Tulare and had to walk two miles to the little town just to get some water. We also found a small restaurant. In those days you could get a T-bone steak for about thirty-five cents. We pooled our resources and dug in, then walked back to the freight yard and hopped another southbound train.
Too late, we realized a railroad dick was aboard. We found a load of corrugated culverts, about twenty inches wide and thirty feet long, stacked up pyramid-style, and squeezed inside the uppermost one. I lay silent and still, listening as the guy poked around. I thought we were high enough that he wouldn’t bother to look, but he was thorough. He ran the butt of his .38 revolver along the corrugated metal, and the sound inside the pipe was deafening. Then he stuck his gun in our faces and demanded we immediately leap from the train. Even though we were moving about thirty miles an hour, we jumped without hesitation and rolled into a landing.
After hiking along the track for about three miles, we