He shuffles around in front of the Clinton Street employment agency. The
signs say: "Pick men wanted, section hands wanted, farm laborers wanted."
A Mexican stands woodenly against the window front. His eyes are open but
asleep. He has the air of one come from a far country who lives upon
memories.
There are others--roughly dressed exiles. Their eyes occasionally study
the signs, deciphering with difficulty the crudely chalked words on the
bulletin boards. Slav, Swede, Pole, Italian, Greek--they read in a
language foreign to them that men are wanted on the farms in the Dakotas,
in the lumber camps, on the roadbeds in Montana. Hard-handed men with
dull, seamed faces and glittering eyes--the spike-haired proletaire from a
dozen lands looking for jobs.
But this one who shuffles about in a tattered mackinaw, huge baggy
trousers frayed at the feet, this one whose giant's body swings loosely
back and forth under the signs, is a more curious exile. His Mexican
brother leaning woodenly against the window has a slow dream in his eyes.
Life is simple to his thought. It was hard for him in Mexico. And
adventure and avarice sent him northward in quest of easier ways and more
numerous comforts. Now he hunts a job on a chilly spring morning. When the
proper job is chalked up on the bulletin board he will go in and ask for
it. He stands and waits and thinks how happy he was in the country he
abandoned and what a fool he was to leave the white dust of its roads, its
hills and blazing suns. And some day, he thinks, he will go back, although
there is nothing to go back for. Yet it is pleasant to stand and dream of
a place one has known and whither one may return.
But this one who shuffles, this giant in a tattered mackinaw who slouches
along under the bulletin signs asking for section hands and laborers,
there is no dream of remembered places in his eyes. Dull, blue eyes that
peer bewilderedly out of a powerful and empty face. The forehead is
puckered as if in thought. The heavy jaws protrude with a hint of ferocity
in their set. There is a reddish cast to his hair and face and the backs
of his great hands, hanging limply almost to his knees, are covered with
red hair.
The nose of this shuffling one is larger than the noses in the city
streets. His fingers are larger, his neck is larger. There is a curious
earthy look to this shuffling one seldom to be seen about men in streets.
He is a huge creature with great thighs and Laocoön sinews and he towers a
head above his brothers in front of the employment office. He is of a
different mold from the men in the street. Strength ripples under his
tattered mackinaw and his stiff looking hands could break the heads of two
men against each other like eggshells while they rained puny blows on his
dull face.
And yet of all the men moving about on the pavement in front of the
Clinton Street bulletin boards it is this shuffling one who is the most
impotent seeming. His figure is the most helpless. It slouches as under a
final defeat. His eyes are the dullest.
He stops at the corner and stands waiting, his head lowered, his shoulders
hunched in and he looks like a man weighed down by a harness.
* * * * *
A curious exile from whose blood has vanished all memory of the country to
which he belongs. A faraway land, ages beyond the sun-warmed roads of
which his Mexican brother dreams as he stands under the bulletin boards. A
land which the ingenuity of the world has left forever behind. This is a
land that once reached over all the seas.
For it was like this that men once looked in an age before the myths of
the Persians and Hindus began to fertilize the animal soul of the race. In
the forests north of the earliest cities of Greece, along the wild coasts
tapering from the Tatar lands to the peninsula of the Basques, men like
this shuffling one once ranged alone and in tribes. Huge, powerful men
whose foreheads sloped back and whose jaws sloped forward and whose stiff
hands reached an inch nearer their knees than today.
This giant in the tattered mackinaw is an exile from this land and there
is no dream of it left in his blood. The body of his fathers has returned
to him. Their long, loose arms, their thick muscles and heavy pounding
veins are his, but their voices are buried too deep to rise again in him.
The mutterings of warrior councils, the shouts of terrible hunts are lost
somewhere in him and he shuffles along, his sloping forehead in a pucker
of thought as if he were trying to remember. But no memories come. Instead
a bewilderment. The swarming streets bewilder him. The towering buildings,
the noises of traffic and people dull his eyes and bring his shoulders
together like the shoulders of some helpless captive.
* * * * *
He returns to the employment office and raises his eyes to the bulletin
boards. He reads slowly, his large lips moving as they form words. In
another day or another week he will be riding somewhere, his dull eyes
gazing out of the train window. They will call him Ole or Pat or Jim in
some camp in the Dakotas or along some roadbed in Montana. He will stand
with a puny pick handle in his huge hands and his arms will rise and fall
mechanically as he hews away along a deserted track. And his forehead will
still be puckered in a frown of bewilderment. The thing held in his fists
will seem like a strange toy.
"Farm laborers in Kansas," says the bulletin board as the clerk with his
piece of chalk re-enters the office. The Mexican slowly removes himself
from the window and the contemplation of memories. Kansas lies to the
south and to the south is the way home. He goes in and talks to the man
behind the long desk.
An hour later the clerk and his piece of chalk emerge. The exiles are
still mooching around on the pavement and the shuffling one stands on the
curb staring dully at the street under him.
"Section hands, Alberta, Canada, transportation," says the new bulletin.
There is no stir among the exiles. This is to the north. It is still cold
in the north. But the shuffling one has turned. His eyes again trace the
crudely chalked letters of the bulletin board. His lips move as he tells
himself what is written.
And then as if unconsciously he moves toward the door. Alberta is to the
north and the voices that lie buried deep under the giant's mackinaw
whisper darkly that to the north--to the north is the way home.