On a cold winter day I went to the freight yard and boarded a boxcar to Bakersfield. I coughed violently. I remembered bitterly my years of flight across the continent. I had been young and strong then. Now I felt tired and old. There were no hoboes any more. The unemployed men of another decade had gone. I felt my whole youth slipping away from me.
I sat in the dark corner of the boxcar and reviewed my life. The cold could not touch me any more. It came to me that poverty was the thread of my life, that it gave it a rounded meaning. It was toward midnight when I arrived in Bakersfield. I went to Chinatown hoping to find someone I knew. The gambling houses were closing and the farm workers were returning to their camps.
I was cold and hungry. I went to a Mexican beer joint. I sat in an empty booth, close to a gas heater. I must have dozed off, because when I looked up a man in a large overcoat stood near me. I was startled when I saw him. It was my brother Amado! My heart sank, not because of his sudden appearance, but because of his condition. He had grown old and haggard. There was a long scar on his left hand. He looked as though he had been roughly handled.
“Amado!” I said.
He looked down at me. “What are you doing here, Carlos?”
“I just arrived by freight from Los Angeles,” I said.
“I thought you were dead,” he said tonelessly. “I heard that you had died at the hospital.”
“It was a false alarm,” I said. “I’m not dead yet. Not yet. I’ll let you know when the time comes.”
“I was in Los Angeles at the time of your last operation,” he said. “I gave a pint of my blood and left.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “I knew that some man gave his blood for me.”
“I told the doctor not to tell you. I wanted to see you when you were better, but later I heard that you were dead. So I left Los Angeles and wandered here and there.”
“You should have told me,” I said.
“It’s all right now,” he said. “Let’s go to my room.”
We walked three blocks to an old building, and climbed up the dark stairway. It was the smallest room I had ever seen, probably six feet by five. We sat on the cot. When I mentioned that I had not yet eaten, Amado looked down at his hands and fell silent. I saw the length of scar on the back of his hand.
As though he wanted to justify himself, Amado looked at me pleadingly. He said: “This room is only fifteen cents. I have to have a place to sleep. I can’t stand the cold any more, Carlos! I’ve been away in a cold, hard place—” His voice trailed off in a whisper.
“You shouldn’t have sent me the money when you were in Arizona,” I said.
“Did you send it to mother as I told you?” he asked.
“I did. But it was too late. Luciano was already buried when the money reached Binalonan. Mother gave it to his children.”
“I’m glad,” Amado said. And then: “I cough at night. There is something tight in my chest when it is cold.”
I was angry with myself again. I wished I had not come upon him. When I fell suddenly asleep on the cot, Amado covered me with an old army blanket. He slept in his ragged overcoat on the floor. In the morning we agreed to meet at a gambling house. I went to several Filipino camps near by. When I met him at our rendezvous, Amado was jubilant. He had two dollars. We rushed to a chop suey house and ordered enough food to last us for two days.
When the feast was over we sat in the sun. At three in the afternoon, when the gambling houses opened, I took his last twenty-five cents. I almost lost it, but after two hours of careful playing, I made one dollar. Amado pulled my arm vigorously. He wanted me to stop. But I played on until I had five dollars. I began to believe that if I took up gambling as a profession, I could probably be a great success.
In the evening, on my way to the freight yard, I told Amado about Macario.
“I’ll look for a job, Carlos,” Amado said seriously. “If you say Macario is ill, I’ll go to Los Angeles and look for a job.”
“I’m glad you feel that way,” I said. “Here is the rest of the money. Go to Los Angeles now.”
He grabbed the money and looked at me as though he wanted to cry. His mouth trembled.
“Thank you, Carlos,” he said. “Thank you for being my brother.”
I saw him in the pale light waving his hand with the long scar. He was weeping—not because I was going away from him, but because of the swift, frightening years. His eyes, when he looked at me for pity and understanding, were haunted with the terror of those years. They were the same eyes that had looked at me kindly in the heavy rain of Mangusmana. They were the same eyes that had looked startled when my father had struck him sharply across the face—the same eyes that cried with a deep brotherly love when he shouted to me in the heavy rain, “Goodbye, Allos!”
It seemed so long ago that Amado had waved his hand to say good-bye. When I remembered him waving at me with his mud-caked hand, I was startled when I discovered that it was now scarred. All my hate and bitterness had turned to pity for him. When I told myself that I had gone out of his life entirely in Hollywood, when I asked him to help Macario go to college, I was angered only by my own inability to help either of them. But now I knew that in a strange way we were together again—that no terror could ever make us hate each other.
When I arrived in Portland snow was falling. I phoned Nick at the office of the UCAPAWA, where he was still secretary-treasurer. He came immediately and drove me in his car. We went to his room. I was eager to know about his work, but he was very quiet. Finally, when I had pressed him, he confessed that the CPFR had completely disintegrated in Portland.
“It’s dead, Carl,” he said.
“There is no hope then?” I asked.
“We need new men to work with us,” he said. “Our forces are deeply entangled in the labor movement. We need new men, that’s all.”
I felt that it was true. But I stayed on in Portland hoping to proceed to Seattle. One night, on our way back to Nick’s room from a meeting of John Reed College students, who were members of the Young Communist League, an avalanche of snow fell upon the car. It took us hours to dig it out, but it was not damaged. We cursed the dark sky and drove on, feeling desolate with cold.
When I woke up in the morning to put some wood in the stove, I was stricken by a fit of coughing and began to hemorrhage. My chest ached. My eyes were bloodshot. Nick was alarmed: he walked ten blocks to get me something to eat. Then he rushed to his office, coming back again in the afternoon to give me what I needed.
Was this it? The doctor had told me it would be five years. Was this to be the end of my life? I was not afraid to die, but there were so many things to do. Every day for a month Nick ran back and forth between his office and the room. I thought I should never live to see California again.