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Jackson’s Luck

By John R. Bolton

Early March 1919
Southbound on the I.C. (Illinois Central Railroad)

Willie Jefferson and Jackson Black rode in the colored car sharing a pint bottle of whiskey in a paper sack. They were in a celebrating mood and bound for home after Willie had achieved his dream of recording his songs in Memphis.

Willie was so happy and self satisfied he would just start chuckling and
then tilt his head back and cackle. Jackson told Willie, “Tone it down,
man. You’ll get us in troubles. Our good luck can turn to shit real fast.”

Willie just laughed again and replied, “Maybe you’s right Jackson.
I feels a head ache comin’ on. Gots to lay off this good liquor.”

It was more than a head ache. Soon Willie’s back ached and then his whole body. His throat hurt and he was starting to sniffle and cough. As the train slowed for the home station, Willie said, “Man, I hopes this shit aint the Spanish flu.”

Jackson helped Willie get home and was met there by Willie’s daddy, who told him, “Better get on home Jack. Your momma’s real sick.”

Word of the flu had been spreading faster than the flu itself. Jackson prayed it was just a bad cold going around. That prayer was not answered the way he wished. His momma barely woke when he got home. She told him weakly, “Stay back Jack. I don’t want you getting what I got.”

“Too late, Momma. I think I gots it too.”

Jackson did a little for his mother and then Miss Ethel, the old midwife and plant doctor, stopped in and checked on them both. Jackson soon felt like he had been run over by a team of horses. Every muscle ached and every cough made it worse. He had the chills and shakes and could not get warm. He laid on his pallet of blankets and coughed and suffered.

Miss Ethel came by in the morning and let herself in. Jackson’s momma
who was only thirty six years old, had passed away. Two days later Jackson lost his best friend. Willie passed too.

Miss Ethel came by twice a day to put mustard plasters on Jackson’s chest and back and to admonish him to take ten deep breaths an hour and hold them in for a count of three so’s he would not get pneumonia. Jackson did that and was able to attend his mother’s burial in the colored cemetery. There were more fresh graves than he’d ever seen

His mother’s funeral was a blur to him. He was physically better for Willie’s funeral. Willie’s daddy played the old hymns on his fiddle and the right Reverend Johnson said the eulogy. Willie thought Jackson would have wanted him to play, but there was no way he could sing or blow his harp without coughing.

* * *

Two weeks and two paydays later, Jackson packed his momma’s satchel with a wool blanket, his spare pair of trousers, two spare shirts, socks his momma made, underwear and a picture his momma holding him when he was just a button.

The neck of Willie Jefferson’s cigar box guitar poked out one end of the satchel, covered with an oil cloth. Jackson wore a good second hand suit, and a good hat cocked to the side. He carried two harmonicas in his pockets. These were the harps he had played for Willie’s record. He wished Willie’s daddy had given him the store bought guitar instead of the cigar box. He might need to stand on the corner and play for change like he’d seen done in Memphis. You never knew.

Jackson was bound for Chicago and the hope of more opportunities and a better life. Friends walked him to the station, laughing and joking and wishing him well. He was taking that Cannonball train north. The freedom train. Leaving Mississippi in style.

Leaving Mississippi in style was a bit of a sham he put on for his friends. He departed the passenger train at the first stop in Tennessee. His ticket would take him no further. He had money enough to ride to Chicago. But he thought it could take time to find work and he wanted to get there with money in his pocket.

Jackson was both excited and afraid. He had never stolen a thing in his life excepting produce that he ate while working the fields and fruit off a tree here and there. Now he planned to steal a ride north on an IC freight train.

He’d heard stories about how to do it. Never take a car with any whites. Hop aboard a slow moving train on a curve so there would be less chance the engine crew or the brakeman would see you. No matter what, don’t get locked in a box car. Don’t ride in a car full of grain or it might suck you down and suffocate you.

Jackson’s first ride could not have started much better. He hopped on a flat car and tucked in snug and out of the wind behind a load of wooden crates marked for a destination in Chicago. Jackson could not believe his good luck when he read the destination.

Hours later the freight was shunted to a side track in Effingham, Illinois in a rail yard to the side of the downtown area. Jackson read the town name rolling in, but had no good idea where he was except still short of his destination.

It was late evening and dark. The train sat there. After a while Jackson pulled out his blanket and wrapped up in it. He managed some sleep, but woke up cold and hungry in the late dawn. He was peeking around wondering what he should do and how long the train might sit. Someone unseen shouted out, “Hey! There’s a nigger on that flat car!”

Jackson grabbed his satchel and scrambled off the side of the car away from the voice. He sprinted then loped toward a small timber in the direction away from town. As he reached the timber’s edge he looked back and was relieved to see no pursuit.

He smelled wood smoke and spotted a white man sitting by a fire. The man called out, “Over here Bo,” and beckoned him with an arm. It took a bit more urging on the man’s part, before Jackson warily approached. On closer inspection, the white man looked old. Around sixty, Jackson guessed. The old man asked, “Headin’ north or south?”

“North,” Jackson replied. “Chicago, I hopes.”

The man told Jackson to call him ‘Dollar Dick’. Dick was a hobo. He explained to Jackson that tramps work when they are forced to, and bums don’t work at all. “Hobos,” he said, “Are workin’ men who travel, who ride the rails between jobs.”

Dollar Dick was heading for Minnesota by way of Chicago. He said, “That rattler you rode in on is leavin’ here at 12:30. When the noon whistle blows we walk up the track a piece and away we go.”

Dick shared hard boiled eggs with Jackson and spent the wait and later the ride asking Jack about his life and taking him to school on how to ride the rails, find work in the city and just plain get along. They parted as friends in Chicago, Illinois.

Around suppertime, Jackson stood at the bar of a crowded tavern in a colored section on the south side of Chicago. He’d taken the edge off his hunger with free crackers, cheese and hard boiled eggs in the tavern. He had a cold beer in his hand and he was drinking with a friendly, big Louisiana man named Dupree. Dupree had a place Jackson could sleep and would help him get him work a loading dock.

Jackson could not believe his good luck. He wished Willie could see him. He wished his momma could see him. That caused him to wipe away a tear.

Dupree bought him a beer for the road. It was Jackson’s fourth. They strolled off toward Dupree’s place. They walked a few blocks and Jackson marveled at all the houses, buildings and people. They hit a dark patch and an alley in the middle of a block. Dupree suddenly rushed Jackson and knocked him down sprawling. The next thing he knew, there was a shiny revolver in his face and Dupree was snarling, “Gimme your money, you dumb Mississippi nigger.”

Jackson hesitated and then started to struggle. Dupree, shoved Jackson’s face with the heel of his hand and slammed him in the side of the head with the pistol. Things went red and dark in an explosion of pain.

The next thing Jackson clearly knew was that Dupree was gone and blood was rapidly oozing from a gash in the side of his head and down his neck. His satchel was there, its contents strewn on the ground. His shoes were off and that left him stunned and puzzled. Did Dupree steal his shoes?

He held a hand to his bleeding head and groped around with the other hand. His money was gone. His good hat was gone. But his shoes and every other possession were there. He thought to himself, ‘I’m still lucky. If he’d a took my shoes I would be in a real bind.’

Through the kindness of a stranger, his head was sewn up. Six nice stitches with red thread, done by a kind woman from Jackson, Mississippi. But she had children on her floor and no room for Jackson. He slept on her porch that night. Or tried to sleep.

He had no success finding any kind of a job that next day. He did not look or feel his best. Late in the day his stomach was gaunt and it sounded like it was calling him every bad name it knew.

He found a tin can for tips and stood in front of a shoe repair place near 35th and State Street. He played the cigar box guitar and the harps and made enough to eat that night and had twenty cents held back for breakfast.

Funny thing. Jackson still felt lucky.

* * *
Historical Notes

Spanish Influenza was a nearly worldwide pandemic from 1918 to 1920. Approximately 25% of the world population was infected and about 3% of the world population died from the flu. Unlike most epidemics, most of those who died were young adults.

The Great Migration: 6 million blacks moved out of the southern United States between 1910 and 1970 ~ leaving the rural south for urban industrial cities of the northeast, midwest and later the west.