Read Education Of a Wandering Man (1990) for Free Online

looked good. In those days, boxing in California was limited to four rounds per fight, and he had been told he would do well out there, with his style. We sat in the door of an empty boxcar and talked of fights and fighters, and of many of the good black fighters, including Tiger Flowers, a middleweight out of Georgia who was one of the best in the game, as long as he could stay away from Jack Delaney, a light heavyweight who had his number and knocked him out twice.
    In El Paso our machinist friend went his way while I bought a few Little Blue Books, including "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and some shorter pieces by Coleridge.
    The black fighter got off there, too, after seeing a poster advertising a fight. He was hoping they might need another boxer in the event that someone failed to appear, as was sometimes the case.
    Inadvertently I found myself in the company of a young steelworker who had never been away from home before and never out of a job. He had only himself to worry about, but was overwhelmed with self-pity. When I told him of the machinist he was not impressed. The only tragedy he could grasp was his own, and he seemed to feel the world out there should have been waiting for him with open arms.
    A tough railroad detective put us off the train in the desert on a lonely siding at night. Hustling around, and with no help from the young man, I found some fragments of wood and a few mesquite branches and started a fire.
    Several times in the bitterly cold night I awakened to add fuel to keep our fire going.
    My traveling companion never stirred, and it was so cold I could not get back to sleep.
    The same thing happened on the third night, but on the morning following, a train was sidetracked to allow a passenger train to pass and we scrambled aboard, finding an empty car where we could keep out of sight. For the rest of the day he complained and I read Coleridge. In Deming, New Mexico, we were again put off the train and found the town filled with drifters like ourselves who had been put off trains and were unable to get out.
    Every possible job had been done long ago and there was no chance for work. What money I had I kept out of sight. I watched for a chance to leave town, and hoped to leave my traveling companion behind, but he clung to me like lint to a blue serge suit, and when I finally got out west of town and snagged a westbound freight, he was right with me.
    Each night in Deming we slept out, and each night I built the fire and kept it going, and each night, once awakened by the cold, I found it virtually impossible to get back to sleep. My traveling companion never so much as budged.
    Somebody, he was sure, would take care of him. He was his mother's boy and somebody always had.
    The end came at Stein's Pass, New Mexico. We were put off the train there and ducked into the small station, where there was a potbellied stove, glowing and red, and we were cold. The station agent and telegrapher let us huddle close to the fire until the time came for him to close up.
    "I'd like to let you stay, boys, but I've got to lock up."
    Reluctantly, we went out into the cold wind and found our way into a hollow near the tracks. There, with little help, I gathered some coal from along the track, some scraps of wood, and built a fire.
    "Look," I told him. "Night after night I've kept the fire going and you've slept. Several times you told me you'd wake up and you haven't. Now I'm dead tired.
    I'm ready to drop. Tonight you've got to wake up."
    He promised he would. I added coal to the fire and we lay as close to it as we could without burning.
    At four o'clock in the morning I awakened, my teeth chattering. The fire was out, and the ashes were cold. Neither of us had another match, but he slept peacefully, blissfully. For a moment I thought of kicking him awake and knocking him down when he started to get up, but then I was afraid he would follow me when I went away. So I left him sleeping peacefully and walked away