I just want to let it be stated before I start that Jethro Jenkins, better known to me as Junkin, was one of the best friends I ever had, and it makes me sad he’s dead, but that’s not why I decided to write this essay. What I want to write about is who Junkin was and the meaning of his death, because most people will say that life is about finding your talent or about doing better than others or finding comfort in things, and that’s about as far removed from Junkin’s philosophy of life as you can get. I just wanted to let that be known so that it can be kept in mind as I tell the rest.
I first met Junkin during the trampin days. He wasn’t a tramper though but a railroamer, by which I mean a free hopper, someone who got around the country on trains without paying, or what today you might call a vagrant or a tramp or a bum. He didn’t have any things except those on his back and in his trampin sack, which he called Gizmo, and he sure as hell didn’t want them. He had one book, the Bible, and a harmonica which he played when he was alone.
I was young then, orphaned you might say, hunger pained and cowering from just about everything, and Junkin helped me get on my own two feet. He taught me how to look for food, where to find shelter, how to keep warm and dry, and how to avoid the realnasties. He did this because he loved people, not because he got anything material out of it, and he helped a lot of people in his time. Some of them went off their own ways but a lot stayed, riding the rails with him awhile or meeting up once in a meantime to hear Junkin give his speeches, which he called sermons, and which reached quite a popularity during the Depression.
The sermons were largely lessons from the Bible, except Junkin didn’t tell them like a preacher but like a friend, and he always emphasized that the worth of a man was measured not in what he achieved but what he could have achieved but didn’t, because achievement was always measured against fellow men, and to be better than your fellow was a sin. I said earlier that many people believe life to be about finding what you’re good at and doing it. Junkin called this the False Idol of Talent. He believed that rather than be worshiped, talents should be suppressed because they were weaknesses through which the Devil made you lust for domination and the humiliation of others. Talent offered false triumph, by which he meant triumph over others, rather than the true kind, being triumphant over your own imperfections.
I tell you this not because I want to spread Junkin’s philosophy but because you need to understand it to understand the significance of the two events in Junkin’s life I’m about to tell you about: the raising of the Capital Railway Company, and the death of Jethro Jenkins, both of which were decidedly not as reported in the Kansas City Chronicle by the liar, Will Morrissey.
The raising of the Capital Railway Company was the most shameful moment of Junkin’s life. It involved a strike by the railwaymen of the aforementioned company, one of the three largest in the country at the time, and the decision by its leadership to break the strike by sending mercenary troops in armored train cars to open fire on the workers at every strike location in America. It was to be a brutal, coordinated and decisive attack that would not only end the strike but strike the fear of Capital into the hearts of all future labor leaders. Needless to say, this did not happen. According to the account of Will Morrissey and others of his ilk, what kept the bloodshed from happening was a sudden and mass failure of the company’s railway equipment. They would have you believe that by some mix of socialist sabotage and sheer bad luck, none of the armored cars reached their destinations and all were destroyed. That is not a misreading. That is the news itself, which you can read in the Kansas City Chronicle, archived on microfiche at the Kansas City City Library, and similar newspapers from around the country.
What actually happened is this: when Junkin heard about the mercenaries in the armored train cars, for the only time during which I knew him, he lost his temper. He took his harmonica and went off to sit by himself and play, but instead of the peace usually caused by his music, there spread across the sky an anger and a vengeance. We all felt it. It was like a rain of drought, or a fog of ash, or a stumbling at night into a field of cabbages where each head of cabbage was a man’s head, wilting, and with rotting voices they all hissed the same horrible word, “Wrath,” upon whose upward force all of the Capital Railway Company’s railway cars rose into the sky above America, and don’t ask me how but we saw them all—before plummeting back down to Earth, utterly destroyed.
When next I saw Junkin, he was on his knees weeping and praying to God to forgive him for the despicableness of having lost control and given in to the Devil’s temptation.
The Capital Railway Company never recovered from the catastrophic loss of most of its assets and soon after collapsed.
The second event I want to tell you about may seem less dramatic, but to me it is much more significant. It is the death of Jethro Jenkins (reported by Will Morrissey in the Kansas City Chronicle under the headline “Vagabond Dead After Beating Over Empty Sack” with usual disregard for factual accuracy.)
It transpired outside a railway yard where Junkin and I had been scavenging for discarded parts. We were sitting then, sharing a stale quarter-loaf of bread when three realnasties confronted us. They had sticks with nails hammered through them and were threatening to use the nailed ends on us. After demanding our bread, which Junkin willingly handed over, they told us to give up everything else we had. The problem was we had nothing else except the rags on our backs, the boots on our feet and Gizmo, in which Junkin kept his harmonica and Bible, and Junkin told them so, but either they didn’t believe us or were otherwise offended because one of them whacked Junkin on the head with his stick. I got up, but Junkin motioned for me to sit.
“Fellows,” he said, “why do you turn to violence? You’ve come to us for a sharing and we’ve shared with you everything we have. You ask for more, but we’ve nothing more to share.”
“What’s in the bag?” one of them barked.
“The Good Book and a harmonica,” said Junkin calmly, wiping blood from his cheek.
“Do ya believe him?” one of the realnasties asked the others.
“Don’t,” answered another.
“Bet sure as Hell they got money and pornographies in there,” said the third.
“Toss it here,” said the first realnasty, meaning Junkin’s bag.
Junkin did.
The realnasty tore through it, then in disgust threw first the harmonica then the Bible into the dirt, and spat and stomped on both.
Then, as if he knew what was about to happen, Junkin turned to me and, smiling, said, “Be at peace with it, Norm,” and before I could grok the meaning, one of the nail sticks got him in the head, followed by another in the ribs.
He fell over, wheezing.
The realnasties grabbed him by the hair and pulled him across the dirt, leaving a trail of upturned earth. There was a fury in these men, a fury I cannot properly describe but that caused a chill in me because it was alien, daemonic.
They surrounded him and beat him without mercy, and all the while I didn’t raise a hand to help him, and he did not raise a hand to help himself, and after a period of the pounding of the nail sticks he didn’t move and I knew that he was dead.
The realnasties stood over him a minute, breathing heavily, covered in his blood and in their own hot sweat, before scattering. There was a thick dust in the air and they disappeared into it. When they were gone I crawled towards him and cradled his pulped body in my shaking arms. He had been one of my best friends. He had saved me, and God I loved him.
He, who had raised a railway company into the air and wrecked it, had let himself be killed, and in the former was his shame and in the latter his supreme triumph over his own sublime abilities. He was a man, if that is what he was.
At some point I looked over at where the realnasties had torn open Gizmo. The harmonica was still on the ground, shattered by a realnasty boot, but the Bible had disappeared. Although I am not one to propose interpretations I couldn’t help but feel that something then had changed, and if there’d been a God, and He was present, now, though He may still endure, His spirit no longer dwelled among us.
Sometime after his death I learned that Junkin’s legal name was Jethro Jenkins, that he was the firstborn son of an oil magnate and heir to a family fortune that he renounced one day by leaving his home and never coming back. I will leave it to you to decide whether that means anything, everything or nothing at all.
I will also leave you with this:
A bag is judged not by what’s in it but by how much it can carry. Whether empty or full, its capacity does not change. Some bags are small and filled with money. Others are empty but large enough to carry the entire world.
Once I saw a bag lifted by the wind.
Light, it danced.
And the wind—the wind carries us down the road.