Fic, Lost: I Ain't Got No Home, PG13 (Sawyer, Jack, others)
I don't have the slightest idea of where this came from. I swear. It just came. I sincerely hope it's decent.
Title: I Ain't Got No Home
Rating: PG13
Characters: Sawyer, Jack, mentions of lots of people, some Sawyer/Cassidy but, well..
Word counting: 5300 or something.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine and Ain't Got No Home is Woody Guthrie's.
Summary: Sawyer is a rambling musician during the Dust Bowl.
A/N: for Lost Riffs day 2 at lostsquee. Of course it's totally AU but once the idea bit.. that said, the period has always interested me though my principal resource for it is The Grapes of Wrath and Steinbeck stuff in general, I did some research but probably not as much as I should have. I just hope I haven't messed up anything and made up implausible stuff. The song Sawyer plays is this one and well, I cheated because it was written in 1938 but it's called poetic license ;) Unbetaed. Every typo, blame on my Italian word corrector. Won for Best AU Fic at lost_fic_awards, January 2008.
Springfield, Colorado, January 1936
James Ford, who once went under the name of Sawyer and who goes under the same name now for other reasons, has long stopped believing he’s ever going to walk a road which isn’t cluttered in red dirt.
His heavy, worn boots which still resist after he has walked half of West America in them, raise a cloud of dust with each step he takes and he’s thankful that the wind is blowing from behind him and not from the front, messing up his blond hair which looks more dirty-blond than it should be. His mouth is covered with a handkerchief, he doesn’t really want to get much more dust in his lungs when he’s been breathing it since 1930. His jeans are ripped in a couple of places but they keep him warm nonetheless and his shirt, the one he wore at his wedding, isn’t white anymore but reddish, even if it’s clean. It’s got its good share of dust too, all this time. His thick leather jacket is probably the only item he’s wearing that is worth more than three dollars. It was his old man’s and it’s the only useful thing he left him. Well, his old man died in the war in Europe and his ma had followed him by 1924, and by then there really wasn’t much more to leave.
--
Once he lived in the East and he was a con man, not a very good one but good enough to make a living and he never felt one bit sorry for it.
He was born in Tennessee one clouded day in January 1905; his father, when he still was there, always said there was a storm that day and that it was the worst goddamn one he’d seen all his life. They had a farm, not too big, but not too small either; he remembers living there sometimes. The winter was always cold, the summer always too hot and he hated every possible kind of work that included using his hands, which was difficult to avoid in a farm really, but looking back at it, they had been some good thirteen years there. He didn’t have siblings, he was the first son and he knew that when he was three or four his ma should have had another but something went wrong and from then on no one talked about having other children.
His father didn’t seem unhappy when he left for Europe. He said it was a duty, he even voted that President, he sure wasn’t going to chicken out and not serve his country.
One day at the beginning of 1918 the letter came and from that year on he never celebrated his birthday.
His ma and him had to sell everything and go to Nashville, it wasn’t like they couldn’t maintain that kind of property without anyone else. Or maybe they could have, but he knew there were debts even before his old man left.
His ma died a year after she started coughing blood and it wasn’t like the money around was enough to get a proper doctor; in 1924 he was nineteen, owned only his old man’s leather jacket and all the family money consisted in ten dollars and fifty six cents.
He took a train to the East and arrived in Massachussets on September 24th, 1924; he used the money to buy himself a decent suit and rent a room for a month. His first job was as a bartender in a place which served alcohol and he lied about his age; two months later he ended up in prison for the first and last time, even if it lasted barely a month.
Messing with alcohol wasn’t going to pay him off, so he stayed clear of it. The day he turned twenty he conned the sister of a senator out of pure desperation presenting himself as Sawyer, like the hero of his favorite book. Two days later he was on his way to New York with too much money in his bag and adrenaline shaking his body.
There was plenty of money in the East, he figured, and until the end of 1925 he just went from city to city on the East coast, choosing a good target every time and leaving her short of at least fifteen grand; then he met Cassidy.
She was, to be true, one of his targets; her late husband, recently passed away, left her a six hundred thousand dollars from his constructions business and he really was meaning just to console her for a week and leave with no less than one fifth of it, but he should have listened to his mother when she told him that love bites you when you expect it less.
Cassidy wasn’t exactly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but she had two gorgeous brown eyes, big and sincere and sparkling when she saw him; she was just a few years older than him but hadn’t reached her thirties, just as tall as he liked a woman to be, dark curly hair and soft skin. She always smiled at him like he was the best thing that ever happened to her and every time she did it, he felt his knees go weak. The week became a month, then the month became three months and by then he was sure she was the right woman for him and he couldn’t keep on lying to her anymore.
On March 4th, 1926, he told her the truth and offered to disappear from her life, but added that he really was in love with her and for once he wasn’t lying. He was sure he earned the slap she gave him after, but she didn’t leave the room. He proposed to her while his cheek was still burning and she said yes as long as he stopped and learned to live with the idea that she would be the one providing the money.
His pride didn’t hurt a little.
Clementine Ford was born on May 23rd, 1928, and she was the prettiest little girl the world had ever seen. Cassidy was disgusted at the name, but My Darling Clementine was his old man’s favorite song and he didn’t want to hear any reasons. She really was his carbon copy, blond hair and blue eyes, though the shape was definitely Cassidy’s. It lasted a year and a half.
On October 29th, 1929, the world became a much worse place to live in.
In a week there wasn’t money anymore; some rich people managed to save their properties, but Cassidy’s money was gone in a heartbeat. Sawyer still had some which he had been saving from his con man days, but suddenly even finding something to eat or a place to live was too difficult and it was the start of the queues for food and for a temporary job that never came. He knew it was more difficult in the Midwest, he read newspapers, but still, even in a big city like Boston there wasn’t a single place who offered a steady job and it didn’t take long for Sawyer to understand that they couldn’t go on with living in a basement with ten other people.
He set out with Cass and Clementine on January 3rd, 1930, hoping to find something in a factory or in some field; California was too far but Tennessee wasn’t and he knew where to search for some cabin there. There were cotton fields in Tennessee and he guessed that a dollar a day was better than nothing. Unfortunately, he had lived through bad times there and adjusted quickly enough; his wife and daughter didn’t and the first time Cassidy, who lost too much weight in too little time, coughed blood too, he knew she got what his ma had.
Doctors weren’t an option. The only option was trying to break his back more than he already did, but Clementine caught the fever too and he never even witnessed it. He went out at five in the morning and came back at nine in the evening, with never more than two dollars per time. Sawyer didn’t witness it, really. On July 16th, his daughter died in her mother’s arms while he was picking cotton. On July 23rd, he was burying Cassidy too and shed the last tears of his life until now, except for the ones that the dust caused.
He left the cabin the day after Cassidy died, his jacket on, a backpack with a change of clothes and a guitar under his arm.
The guitar came from one guy he worked back to back on the cotton field, an ex architect named Michael who also lived in the East before but now had to go back to the roots to send money home. He had some boy, Walt, Sawyer couldn’t have forgotten the name even if he wanted since it was everything Michael talked about, who was special or something like that, but Sawyer knew it was all exaggeration and hell, weren’t all kids special to their parents?
Michael had this battered old guitar which was his grandfather’s or something like that and that he always hoped to sell, never finding anyone crazy enough to have it.
He gave it to Sawyer the day he left saying it was the better use of it he could think of and Sawyer took it because what good would refusing have done?
Sawyer headed West, to Oklahoma; sometimes he found a ride but feet were always more reliable.
That was when the dust came.
The roads were always filled with red dirt, the fields seemed dead and rows of people started leaving them, going on the road heading to California and Sawyer randomly followed them. He always found someone sharing something to eat and more often than not he slept in empty houses doomed to a short destruction. The first time he decided to see if he could still play the guitar, which he hadn’t done since he his old man died, he was someplace near Oklahoma City and just decided to give busking a try.
He played My Darling Clementine first, cranky choice as it could be, and people actually listened to him and gave him something; he went through some other folk classics or stuff and by the end of the day he had enough to buy a hot meal and afford a decent bed.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, rambling around playing music. It just happened and it had been like this until now.
In five years his boots walked for miles and he played in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, in the government camps in California, near the people picking fruit until someone kicked him out, in every possible local he could find. At first they were just folk songs re-arranged as suited.
One day he was on a dusty back road out of a small town in Nebraska, humming some tune he couldn’t place even if it wasn’t of his own making for sure, and met this woman walking with her ten year old child, both of them in torn and worn out clothes, two big backpacks and too thin for his own good. The woman spoke with a strange accent and after a few questions Sawyer got that they hadn’t eaten for two days.
He played some little club the evening before and invited them to have something at the first place that sold something to eat. He had to buy them a couple of loafs of bread an some fruit because the owner wouldn’t trust them with their money and they ate, all three, sitting on the dusty road outside the shop.
The woman’s name was Danielle and she came to America with her husband Robert after the war ended in France. They had Alex, the little girl, in New York, a few days after they landed; then they bought some land in Nebraska and everything was fine until the dust came.
Robert had died while working a late shift in the only factory that was still open in the whole county and they were expropriated. Now they were going to California trying to find some job.
Sawyer didn’t tell them that he had been there just a few months before and there really wasn’t anything, much for two women.
But he wished them good luck and gave Danielle whatever money he had left, he was bound to play somewhere else that night and he was going to fix himself a meal someway.
That night he took that damn tune and improvised a song on it; in his head he called it French Woman Blues, though he never said it was the official title, and it was quite well received. Some guy with a guitar learned it too and four months later, in Kansas, he heard someone play it on the street except that it wasn’t a French woman anymore but a Kansas girl. He didn’t care for it truly.
--
There are some people he meets at least twice every three months and some places he’s grown fond of visiting.
The most peculiar is a Scottish ex-monk guy, Desmond, who spends his evenings in bars not playing music but reading books and he usually has a crowd around him, even if Sawyer doubts half of the people understand that accent. Once he asks what the hell he is doing there in America since the first time he saw him was well after the Depression started. Desmond answers that he was in love with this beautiful girl, Penny Widmore, in Scotland. Sawyer knows the name, her father had been a great shares owner in California, a big name in the stock market or something like that. He came to America when Sawyer was still in his conning days. Desmond confirms it and says he didn’t want his daughter to marry him, but Desmond had promised her to come to search for her as soon as he could. Too bad that when he found the money for the trip it was early 1930 and Mr Widmore’s fortune didn’t exist anymore. When Desmond arrived in New York he found it impossible to track him down but he was positive that Penny was still out there.
Sawyer asks him if he had been traveling six years eating dust to find a woman among millions of people, Desmond calmly answers that she was worth it and Sawyer just shrugs and wishes him good luck every time their paths cross. Sometimes he plays some Scottish ballad and has Desmond singing it. Sawyer doesn’t understand a word himself but he notices that all the Irish people around, and they are always a good number, go crazy for music from the Old Continent and so goes with it.
When he passes in Iowa he always goes to a small local in a village near the Nebraska border. There is a girl named Kate who serves there and with whom he is always sure to pass a few nice hours. She has been in jail for something he never asked and started working there in 1932 or something when half of the village had left and the owner couldn’t complain too much about who he got to stay working there. Everyone who wants to go to Nebraska has to pass there anyway and so they manage to survive, even if the alcohol is the worst Sawyer ever tasted and the food isn’t anything special. He likes Kate well enough, they had been to the same place anyway, and she doesn’t expect anything from him like he doesn’t expect anything from her. The deal goes just fine for both of them.
There’s a camp in California where he always stops to see a couple who partially runs it. The husband’s name is Bernard and he was a dentist before the Depression, while the wife is Rose and she cooks the best pork in the whole state, whenever they get meat; he is white and she is black and it's not like it's the easiest situation ever, not really. They got their fair share of trouble and still have it, but in their specific place no one really cares, after all they do help providing decent means of surviving, and they always welcome as much people as they can and as government permits. He always plays for them and they always dance, well, most of the time all the camp dances, and he always gets a decent night’s sleep. But he never stays in one place for more than three days.
Whenever he’s near Monterey he goes to a gambling house. The owner is named Hurley, he’s probably the only person in the whole country who has managed to stay overweight (and it’s not a small accomplishment, really) and it’s probably the only gambling house ever existed where it’s impossible to cheat. Mostly because he doesn’t know how Hurley does it but everyone around him likes him a lot and the place isn’t that battlefield gambling houses usually are. Sawyer never plays poker, he’s shit at it, but gets paid quite some for two hours of performing and he never turns it down.
There’s a guy in a wheelchair which almost lives there, name is Locke, who once worked in a box company which didn’t exist anymore after February 1930; he only plays chess and backgammon and he never bets, so Sawyer doesn’t mind a game once in a while. He always loses. Locke says he’s impulsive and doesn’t think about his moves, but Sawyer’s point is never really to win.
Shannon is only 22, but already runs a whorehouse on her own in Colorado, near the Kansas border; she is blond, has the most beautiful legs Sawyer has ever seen and sees her profession just as plain business. She has three or four girls there with her and when he feels too lonely and Iowa is too far he pays Shannon a visit and usually gets away with playing Buffalo Gals to the clients.
Shannon’s step-brother, Boone, is even prettier than she is and Sawyer wonders how those two’s looks don’t seem affected by the obvious lack of food in that forgotten place. When he doesn’t work in the nearest refugee camp at the border where he’s a kind of improvised nurse since he was studying medicine before the blow came, he stays at a run-down shack where he sleeps at night and where almost everyone who has to pass the night in town stays with his benefit.
Sawyer always goes there after he plays at Shannon’s and Boone reserves him a decent mattress. It’s better than many people can afford.
--
This evening he is in Springfield where there’s another of the places where he’s always welcomed to play.
The owner is a blond woman, her name is Juliet and her husband was a well-known doctor in Denver, but it’s rumored that he committed suicide after losing all of his money in the Black Tuesday. No one knows for sure, but she just left and opened a hotel there, ten rooms, a gambling hall and lots of good whiskey, which is the main reason for which even if these are hard times it’s always full.
He stands in front of the door, the red dust sweeping across the road; he hears people inside laughing, he smiles and putting his guitar in a better position over his shoulder he steps in.
It’s less crowded than last time he has been here, but the atmosphere is always the same. His boots creak on the wooden floor while he passes through the tables and the clouds of smoke around him. He reaches the counter and Juliet, dressed in black like always, blond hair tied strictly, smiles at him and brings directly a bottle of Jack Daniels.
“See you ain’t forgettin’ my tastes, Hot Lips.”
“You really should stop calling me like that. Here, on the house. You’re playing, right?”
“Sure thing. Wanna hear somethin’ in particular?”
“No, but you’ve got a fan.”
“A fan?”
“Sure. Here he is.”
“Bloody hell, you are James Sawyer Ford?”
Sawyer turns at his right where he sees a blond guy, a good two inches shorter than him, dressed as badly as all the other people he sees, with two warm brown eyes and a red guitar under his shoulder.
“And who the hell are you?” he asks with the bottle still in his hand. If he hasn’t got the accent wrong, the kid is English. What do foreign people actually hope to find in America?, he wonders.
“Oh. Sure. Sorry, I should have presented myself sooner, hey, I’m the one harassing you, right?”
“Damn well.”
“Well, my name’s Charles Hieronymus Pace, you can call me Charlie to make things short, and well, I was born in old England...”
“Hell, how old are you anyway? Are you even legal?”
“Sure thing, mate. I was born in 1916, for your information.”
“Then you ain’t legal.”
“Almost. Hey, does it count?”
“Guess it doesn’t. Your folks came here after the war?”
“Yeah. But they died. Fever, you know?”
“Yeah,” he answers not explaining. The hell he’s going to.
“Anyway, I’ve always been fairly good at playing and so I started to go around and well, you’re a bloody legend!”
“Me?” asks Sawyer with some doubt.
“Sure, the one who played that song about the French woman for the first time! Mate, that was wonderful. And that one about the blond girl owning the whorehouse? That’s...”
“Okay, okay, gotcha. Want me to sign your guitar?”
“No, Claire’s okay like that.”
“You named her?”
“Sure. Like my girlfriend. I lost touch after we left home in Idaho, but... anyway, you wanna play something with me?”
Sawyer shrugs. It’s not like he has ever been that great musician that can pretend he’s good enough he doesn’t want his precious voice mixed with others.
“Sure thing, if you want it so badly.”
“Just two songs, though. I’m closing early,” says Juliet, and Sawyer nods.
Sawyer likes Juliet’s stage well enough and the kid, Charlie, isn’t as bad as he looks. On the contrary, he’s actually really good. He plays fast and steady, possibly better than Sawyer does, but hey, the kid has probably studied it. Sawyer goes by ear, he never learned the theory. The crowd cheers and Juliet decides she might as well close later, so they play three songs. Sawyer is sincerely tired of My Darling Clementine, but likes John Henry well enough and Charlie insists for singing some English Lord Randal thing. Sawyer listens to the tune for a bit and says sure, he can carry it, so they play it, Charlie sings and looks like he has fulfilled his life’s dream.
Kid’s happy with a little, Sawyer thinks, but in these times it’s better not to wish for too much.
Now it’s his turn and his fingers aren’t too happy of another song, but people ask and he complies. The bar’s full now and he guesses Juliet isn’t too unhappy when he comes. He sets on one he doesn’t play much because it kind of hurts, but today he feels like it and as he starts playing and his fingers move on the fret he lets a breath and starts to sing.
“I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round, just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town, and the police make it hard wherever I may go, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore...”
The bar falls silent after the first verse and he keeps on. It always has this effect, but Sawyer likes it once in a while.
“My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road, a hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod... Rich man took my home and drove me from my door, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore...”
He keeps his voice low, almost whispering, feeling it almost croak like it always does on these lines. His throat hurts a bit and he breathes cigarette smoke, but it’s alright. It’s that song, it always is like this.
“Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor, my crops I lay into the banker's store, my wife took down and died upon the cabin floor, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore...”
He looks down at his fingers, picking at the old strings, some dust still over them. He thinks he isn’t ever going to shake dust off him should he live a hundred years.
“Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see, this world is such a great and a funny place to be, oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor, and I ain't got no home in this world, anymore, I ain’t got no home in this world anymore..”
The song ends and he puts the guitar down. People starts to clap and scream for a bis but he smiles and says he’s tired. Hell, he never plays it because it’s damn hard, he’s sure not going to play it again.
Sawyer reaches the counter and Juliet smiles slightly.
“I’m sure you want another shot.”
“Hell yes.”
Sawyer turns his head while waiting and looks at the guy next to him, who’s got a hand on his eyes. He’s dressed with a shirt which looks much like Sawyer’s, maybe a bit cleaner but always red with dust. The jeans he wears are still in one piece, but his shoes should really be replaced. Except that there aren’t much spare shoes to find. His shoulder hitch a bit. He’s probably crying.
“Everything alright?” he asks without even knowing why. Hell, he never gets trusty with complete strangers. It’s really not a good idea.
The guy passes the back of his hand on his eyes and turns to him, eyes red from crying like he suspected, but apart from that Sawyer’s got to admit he looks good, for the times they’re in.
The eyes should be of a warm brown shade, if he isn’t mistaken; guy’s got a nice, regular shaped face, a shadow of stubble, short dark hair, thin and soft lips. Most of all, Sawyer notices, he’s got some hands; they’re lean, strong and strangely not worn out. Sawyer’s are all calloused, his right even more than his left since he’s left handed and plays the guitar likewise. But after almost a year spent picking cotton it isn’t a wonder he doesn’t have a piece of skin which isn’t calloused. They are rough and he likes them like this. But this guy’s really look soft and taken care of. And it’s really strange.
“Yeah. Sorry, it’s just that song. It touched some issues.”
“Don’t you tell me,” he mutters taking the glass from Juliet and still staring at the guy’s hands.
“You want to know something?” he asks.
Sawyer figures a question won't hurt.
“Wonderin’ how come your hands are so nice. Usually, men’s hands are not. Or women's, for that matter.”
“Oh. The hands. Well, I am... I was... I don’t know anymore. Let’s say I am a doctor. I don’t actually practice, y’know.”
“Lost your job recently?”
“Three months ago. Not only my job.”
“Your girl?”
“Yes.”
“She dead?”
“No. She left me.”
To Sawyer this doesn’t make sense. Six years passed, almost seven. How the hell does one stick seven years after that shit and then leave? If he had money and lost it she’d probably have gone much before, experience taught him.
“How come now?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Might write a song ‘bout it. Looks interesting.”
“Not that much. I worked at a hospital in Los Angeles. I was actually very good, reached a good position.”
“Don’t tell me, you had a lot of money and you didn’t want to invest it in stocks but in material goods.”
“How did...”
“Hey. I’ve been travelin’ through this country since ’30, I’ll know somethin’ when I see it.”
“Right. Anyway, after it happened it... didn’t feel right staying there, you know?”
“At the hospital?”
“Yeah. I just... quit and went working in the refugee camps around California. I came home once per week and Sarah.. she didn’t like it, but as long as there was money she never said a thing.”
“You wanna tell me that money ended three months ago and she left you?”
“You said it.”
The guy took a sip of his drink and Sawyer almost spit his.
He never was one that actually helped because there are really more helpful things he could do more than playing music, but he’s got no problem saying he admires whoever does it.
And he’d never resent someone for doing it.
“What a bitch!” he says without even thinking about it.
The other laughs, not much but laughs, and ducks his head on his right shoulder.
“You can say that. And anyway, at least we should, I don’t know, introduce? I’m Jack.”
“Well, real name’s James, though I guess y’know how I go these days.”
“Mark Twain fan?”
“Always got my copy with me,” Sawyer answers eying his backpack on the ground. “So you work in camps still?”
“Yeah. But before it was without payment, now I ask for something but you know, I probably earn less than they earn picking fruit.”
“But shouldn’t you be in Cali?”
“Thought I could use changing air a bit. I went by bus to Denver and I ended up here. Don’t ask me how. I don’t think I was sober enough to remember it.”
“Fair enough. I wasn’t when I first started goin’ ‘round.”
“Well, you are fairly famous.”
“Guess I earned my share. Though I don’t think I am east of Omaha.”
“Well, you are on the whole other side.”
“True enough. Wanna toast?” he asks seeing that there was still a shot in both of their glasses.
“Why not. I’d say to music. I loved your song.”
“And I’d say that too.”
They toast and Sawyer drinks his whiskey, then looks at Juliet.
“Since I filled your sorry place tonight, you got me the same room?”
She shakes her head with some resignation and nods.
“It’s ready. Send your ass upstairs and I don’t want to see you for the next month.”
“However you like, Hot Lips.”
Sawyer raises his hand waving at the crowd before heading upstairs and doesn’t notice Jack slightly smiling when Sawyer turns his back.
--
Next morning, he’s out at dawn. The sun is raising and the pink light creeps through a cloud of grey dust hovering on the road, making it seem red. It almost looks like blood and Sawyer doesn’t like it one bit but he’s used to it.
“Are you leaving?”
He turns, guitar slung on his shoulder, and Jack is behind him. He’s got a jacket which once belonged to a suit and a backpack bigger than his. Sawyer guesses there’s some doctor tools in it.
“Yeah. Never stay in one place for two days and never for one when I play that song.”
Jack nods and smiles ducking his head that way again. Sawyer is starting to think it’s actually cute.
“Where are you going?”
“Dunno. East, probably. I come from Cali and I haven’t been on the other side for a while. Could visit a couple of friends. You’d like one.”
“Really? Who are they?”
“One’s a girl. Prettiest girl in Colorado, owns a place where you could forget your bitch of a wife. Other one’s half a doctor and works on a camp. You’d have some topics to discuss, I guess.”
“Seems nice.”
Sawyer doesn’t know what the hell’s passing through his head, but he’s been traveling alone for almost seven years. One can use some company, once in a while.
“Doc? You got somewhere to go?”
“Me? I ain’t got no home,” Jack answers smiling slightly.
“Wanna come? It’s all walkin’ though. Maybe two weeks, if we don’t find any ride.”
“That’s alright. Yeah, why not? One could try.”
Jacks joins Sawyer’s side and looks at him.
“Which way so?”
“That one,” Sawyer answers without hesitation. They start walking, dust raises from the road and engulfs them in a cloud that looks less red, now that the sun has set.
End.
Title: I Ain't Got No Home
Rating: PG13
Characters: Sawyer, Jack, mentions of lots of people, some Sawyer/Cassidy but, well..
Word counting: 5300 or something.
Disclaimer: Lost is not mine and Ain't Got No Home is Woody Guthrie's.
Summary: Sawyer is a rambling musician during the Dust Bowl.
A/N: for Lost Riffs day 2 at lostsquee. Of course it's totally AU but once the idea bit.. that said, the period has always interested me though my principal resource for it is The Grapes of Wrath and Steinbeck stuff in general, I did some research but probably not as much as I should have. I just hope I haven't messed up anything and made up implausible stuff. The song Sawyer plays is this one and well, I cheated because it was written in 1938 but it's called poetic license ;) Unbetaed. Every typo, blame on my Italian word corrector. Won for Best AU Fic at lost_fic_awards, January 2008.
Springfield, Colorado, January 1936
James Ford, who once went under the name of Sawyer and who goes under the same name now for other reasons, has long stopped believing he’s ever going to walk a road which isn’t cluttered in red dirt.
His heavy, worn boots which still resist after he has walked half of West America in them, raise a cloud of dust with each step he takes and he’s thankful that the wind is blowing from behind him and not from the front, messing up his blond hair which looks more dirty-blond than it should be. His mouth is covered with a handkerchief, he doesn’t really want to get much more dust in his lungs when he’s been breathing it since 1930. His jeans are ripped in a couple of places but they keep him warm nonetheless and his shirt, the one he wore at his wedding, isn’t white anymore but reddish, even if it’s clean. It’s got its good share of dust too, all this time. His thick leather jacket is probably the only item he’s wearing that is worth more than three dollars. It was his old man’s and it’s the only useful thing he left him. Well, his old man died in the war in Europe and his ma had followed him by 1924, and by then there really wasn’t much more to leave.
--
Once he lived in the East and he was a con man, not a very good one but good enough to make a living and he never felt one bit sorry for it.
He was born in Tennessee one clouded day in January 1905; his father, when he still was there, always said there was a storm that day and that it was the worst goddamn one he’d seen all his life. They had a farm, not too big, but not too small either; he remembers living there sometimes. The winter was always cold, the summer always too hot and he hated every possible kind of work that included using his hands, which was difficult to avoid in a farm really, but looking back at it, they had been some good thirteen years there. He didn’t have siblings, he was the first son and he knew that when he was three or four his ma should have had another but something went wrong and from then on no one talked about having other children.
His father didn’t seem unhappy when he left for Europe. He said it was a duty, he even voted that President, he sure wasn’t going to chicken out and not serve his country.
One day at the beginning of 1918 the letter came and from that year on he never celebrated his birthday.
His ma and him had to sell everything and go to Nashville, it wasn’t like they couldn’t maintain that kind of property without anyone else. Or maybe they could have, but he knew there were debts even before his old man left.
His ma died a year after she started coughing blood and it wasn’t like the money around was enough to get a proper doctor; in 1924 he was nineteen, owned only his old man’s leather jacket and all the family money consisted in ten dollars and fifty six cents.
He took a train to the East and arrived in Massachussets on September 24th, 1924; he used the money to buy himself a decent suit and rent a room for a month. His first job was as a bartender in a place which served alcohol and he lied about his age; two months later he ended up in prison for the first and last time, even if it lasted barely a month.
Messing with alcohol wasn’t going to pay him off, so he stayed clear of it. The day he turned twenty he conned the sister of a senator out of pure desperation presenting himself as Sawyer, like the hero of his favorite book. Two days later he was on his way to New York with too much money in his bag and adrenaline shaking his body.
There was plenty of money in the East, he figured, and until the end of 1925 he just went from city to city on the East coast, choosing a good target every time and leaving her short of at least fifteen grand; then he met Cassidy.
She was, to be true, one of his targets; her late husband, recently passed away, left her a six hundred thousand dollars from his constructions business and he really was meaning just to console her for a week and leave with no less than one fifth of it, but he should have listened to his mother when she told him that love bites you when you expect it less.
Cassidy wasn’t exactly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but she had two gorgeous brown eyes, big and sincere and sparkling when she saw him; she was just a few years older than him but hadn’t reached her thirties, just as tall as he liked a woman to be, dark curly hair and soft skin. She always smiled at him like he was the best thing that ever happened to her and every time she did it, he felt his knees go weak. The week became a month, then the month became three months and by then he was sure she was the right woman for him and he couldn’t keep on lying to her anymore.
On March 4th, 1926, he told her the truth and offered to disappear from her life, but added that he really was in love with her and for once he wasn’t lying. He was sure he earned the slap she gave him after, but she didn’t leave the room. He proposed to her while his cheek was still burning and she said yes as long as he stopped and learned to live with the idea that she would be the one providing the money.
His pride didn’t hurt a little.
Clementine Ford was born on May 23rd, 1928, and she was the prettiest little girl the world had ever seen. Cassidy was disgusted at the name, but My Darling Clementine was his old man’s favorite song and he didn’t want to hear any reasons. She really was his carbon copy, blond hair and blue eyes, though the shape was definitely Cassidy’s. It lasted a year and a half.
On October 29th, 1929, the world became a much worse place to live in.
In a week there wasn’t money anymore; some rich people managed to save their properties, but Cassidy’s money was gone in a heartbeat. Sawyer still had some which he had been saving from his con man days, but suddenly even finding something to eat or a place to live was too difficult and it was the start of the queues for food and for a temporary job that never came. He knew it was more difficult in the Midwest, he read newspapers, but still, even in a big city like Boston there wasn’t a single place who offered a steady job and it didn’t take long for Sawyer to understand that they couldn’t go on with living in a basement with ten other people.
He set out with Cass and Clementine on January 3rd, 1930, hoping to find something in a factory or in some field; California was too far but Tennessee wasn’t and he knew where to search for some cabin there. There were cotton fields in Tennessee and he guessed that a dollar a day was better than nothing. Unfortunately, he had lived through bad times there and adjusted quickly enough; his wife and daughter didn’t and the first time Cassidy, who lost too much weight in too little time, coughed blood too, he knew she got what his ma had.
Doctors weren’t an option. The only option was trying to break his back more than he already did, but Clementine caught the fever too and he never even witnessed it. He went out at five in the morning and came back at nine in the evening, with never more than two dollars per time. Sawyer didn’t witness it, really. On July 16th, his daughter died in her mother’s arms while he was picking cotton. On July 23rd, he was burying Cassidy too and shed the last tears of his life until now, except for the ones that the dust caused.
He left the cabin the day after Cassidy died, his jacket on, a backpack with a change of clothes and a guitar under his arm.
The guitar came from one guy he worked back to back on the cotton field, an ex architect named Michael who also lived in the East before but now had to go back to the roots to send money home. He had some boy, Walt, Sawyer couldn’t have forgotten the name even if he wanted since it was everything Michael talked about, who was special or something like that, but Sawyer knew it was all exaggeration and hell, weren’t all kids special to their parents?
Michael had this battered old guitar which was his grandfather’s or something like that and that he always hoped to sell, never finding anyone crazy enough to have it.
He gave it to Sawyer the day he left saying it was the better use of it he could think of and Sawyer took it because what good would refusing have done?
Sawyer headed West, to Oklahoma; sometimes he found a ride but feet were always more reliable.
That was when the dust came.
The roads were always filled with red dirt, the fields seemed dead and rows of people started leaving them, going on the road heading to California and Sawyer randomly followed them. He always found someone sharing something to eat and more often than not he slept in empty houses doomed to a short destruction. The first time he decided to see if he could still play the guitar, which he hadn’t done since he his old man died, he was someplace near Oklahoma City and just decided to give busking a try.
He played My Darling Clementine first, cranky choice as it could be, and people actually listened to him and gave him something; he went through some other folk classics or stuff and by the end of the day he had enough to buy a hot meal and afford a decent bed.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, rambling around playing music. It just happened and it had been like this until now.
In five years his boots walked for miles and he played in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, in the government camps in California, near the people picking fruit until someone kicked him out, in every possible local he could find. At first they were just folk songs re-arranged as suited.
One day he was on a dusty back road out of a small town in Nebraska, humming some tune he couldn’t place even if it wasn’t of his own making for sure, and met this woman walking with her ten year old child, both of them in torn and worn out clothes, two big backpacks and too thin for his own good. The woman spoke with a strange accent and after a few questions Sawyer got that they hadn’t eaten for two days.
He played some little club the evening before and invited them to have something at the first place that sold something to eat. He had to buy them a couple of loafs of bread an some fruit because the owner wouldn’t trust them with their money and they ate, all three, sitting on the dusty road outside the shop.
The woman’s name was Danielle and she came to America with her husband Robert after the war ended in France. They had Alex, the little girl, in New York, a few days after they landed; then they bought some land in Nebraska and everything was fine until the dust came.
Robert had died while working a late shift in the only factory that was still open in the whole county and they were expropriated. Now they were going to California trying to find some job.
Sawyer didn’t tell them that he had been there just a few months before and there really wasn’t anything, much for two women.
But he wished them good luck and gave Danielle whatever money he had left, he was bound to play somewhere else that night and he was going to fix himself a meal someway.
That night he took that damn tune and improvised a song on it; in his head he called it French Woman Blues, though he never said it was the official title, and it was quite well received. Some guy with a guitar learned it too and four months later, in Kansas, he heard someone play it on the street except that it wasn’t a French woman anymore but a Kansas girl. He didn’t care for it truly.
--
There are some people he meets at least twice every three months and some places he’s grown fond of visiting.
The most peculiar is a Scottish ex-monk guy, Desmond, who spends his evenings in bars not playing music but reading books and he usually has a crowd around him, even if Sawyer doubts half of the people understand that accent. Once he asks what the hell he is doing there in America since the first time he saw him was well after the Depression started. Desmond answers that he was in love with this beautiful girl, Penny Widmore, in Scotland. Sawyer knows the name, her father had been a great shares owner in California, a big name in the stock market or something like that. He came to America when Sawyer was still in his conning days. Desmond confirms it and says he didn’t want his daughter to marry him, but Desmond had promised her to come to search for her as soon as he could. Too bad that when he found the money for the trip it was early 1930 and Mr Widmore’s fortune didn’t exist anymore. When Desmond arrived in New York he found it impossible to track him down but he was positive that Penny was still out there.
Sawyer asks him if he had been traveling six years eating dust to find a woman among millions of people, Desmond calmly answers that she was worth it and Sawyer just shrugs and wishes him good luck every time their paths cross. Sometimes he plays some Scottish ballad and has Desmond singing it. Sawyer doesn’t understand a word himself but he notices that all the Irish people around, and they are always a good number, go crazy for music from the Old Continent and so goes with it.
When he passes in Iowa he always goes to a small local in a village near the Nebraska border. There is a girl named Kate who serves there and with whom he is always sure to pass a few nice hours. She has been in jail for something he never asked and started working there in 1932 or something when half of the village had left and the owner couldn’t complain too much about who he got to stay working there. Everyone who wants to go to Nebraska has to pass there anyway and so they manage to survive, even if the alcohol is the worst Sawyer ever tasted and the food isn’t anything special. He likes Kate well enough, they had been to the same place anyway, and she doesn’t expect anything from him like he doesn’t expect anything from her. The deal goes just fine for both of them.
There’s a camp in California where he always stops to see a couple who partially runs it. The husband’s name is Bernard and he was a dentist before the Depression, while the wife is Rose and she cooks the best pork in the whole state, whenever they get meat; he is white and she is black and it's not like it's the easiest situation ever, not really. They got their fair share of trouble and still have it, but in their specific place no one really cares, after all they do help providing decent means of surviving, and they always welcome as much people as they can and as government permits. He always plays for them and they always dance, well, most of the time all the camp dances, and he always gets a decent night’s sleep. But he never stays in one place for more than three days.
Whenever he’s near Monterey he goes to a gambling house. The owner is named Hurley, he’s probably the only person in the whole country who has managed to stay overweight (and it’s not a small accomplishment, really) and it’s probably the only gambling house ever existed where it’s impossible to cheat. Mostly because he doesn’t know how Hurley does it but everyone around him likes him a lot and the place isn’t that battlefield gambling houses usually are. Sawyer never plays poker, he’s shit at it, but gets paid quite some for two hours of performing and he never turns it down.
There’s a guy in a wheelchair which almost lives there, name is Locke, who once worked in a box company which didn’t exist anymore after February 1930; he only plays chess and backgammon and he never bets, so Sawyer doesn’t mind a game once in a while. He always loses. Locke says he’s impulsive and doesn’t think about his moves, but Sawyer’s point is never really to win.
Shannon is only 22, but already runs a whorehouse on her own in Colorado, near the Kansas border; she is blond, has the most beautiful legs Sawyer has ever seen and sees her profession just as plain business. She has three or four girls there with her and when he feels too lonely and Iowa is too far he pays Shannon a visit and usually gets away with playing Buffalo Gals to the clients.
Shannon’s step-brother, Boone, is even prettier than she is and Sawyer wonders how those two’s looks don’t seem affected by the obvious lack of food in that forgotten place. When he doesn’t work in the nearest refugee camp at the border where he’s a kind of improvised nurse since he was studying medicine before the blow came, he stays at a run-down shack where he sleeps at night and where almost everyone who has to pass the night in town stays with his benefit.
Sawyer always goes there after he plays at Shannon’s and Boone reserves him a decent mattress. It’s better than many people can afford.
--
This evening he is in Springfield where there’s another of the places where he’s always welcomed to play.
The owner is a blond woman, her name is Juliet and her husband was a well-known doctor in Denver, but it’s rumored that he committed suicide after losing all of his money in the Black Tuesday. No one knows for sure, but she just left and opened a hotel there, ten rooms, a gambling hall and lots of good whiskey, which is the main reason for which even if these are hard times it’s always full.
He stands in front of the door, the red dust sweeping across the road; he hears people inside laughing, he smiles and putting his guitar in a better position over his shoulder he steps in.
It’s less crowded than last time he has been here, but the atmosphere is always the same. His boots creak on the wooden floor while he passes through the tables and the clouds of smoke around him. He reaches the counter and Juliet, dressed in black like always, blond hair tied strictly, smiles at him and brings directly a bottle of Jack Daniels.
“See you ain’t forgettin’ my tastes, Hot Lips.”
“You really should stop calling me like that. Here, on the house. You’re playing, right?”
“Sure thing. Wanna hear somethin’ in particular?”
“No, but you’ve got a fan.”
“A fan?”
“Sure. Here he is.”
“Bloody hell, you are James Sawyer Ford?”
Sawyer turns at his right where he sees a blond guy, a good two inches shorter than him, dressed as badly as all the other people he sees, with two warm brown eyes and a red guitar under his shoulder.
“And who the hell are you?” he asks with the bottle still in his hand. If he hasn’t got the accent wrong, the kid is English. What do foreign people actually hope to find in America?, he wonders.
“Oh. Sure. Sorry, I should have presented myself sooner, hey, I’m the one harassing you, right?”
“Damn well.”
“Well, my name’s Charles Hieronymus Pace, you can call me Charlie to make things short, and well, I was born in old England...”
“Hell, how old are you anyway? Are you even legal?”
“Sure thing, mate. I was born in 1916, for your information.”
“Then you ain’t legal.”
“Almost. Hey, does it count?”
“Guess it doesn’t. Your folks came here after the war?”
“Yeah. But they died. Fever, you know?”
“Yeah,” he answers not explaining. The hell he’s going to.
“Anyway, I’ve always been fairly good at playing and so I started to go around and well, you’re a bloody legend!”
“Me?” asks Sawyer with some doubt.
“Sure, the one who played that song about the French woman for the first time! Mate, that was wonderful. And that one about the blond girl owning the whorehouse? That’s...”
“Okay, okay, gotcha. Want me to sign your guitar?”
“No, Claire’s okay like that.”
“You named her?”
“Sure. Like my girlfriend. I lost touch after we left home in Idaho, but... anyway, you wanna play something with me?”
Sawyer shrugs. It’s not like he has ever been that great musician that can pretend he’s good enough he doesn’t want his precious voice mixed with others.
“Sure thing, if you want it so badly.”
“Just two songs, though. I’m closing early,” says Juliet, and Sawyer nods.
Sawyer likes Juliet’s stage well enough and the kid, Charlie, isn’t as bad as he looks. On the contrary, he’s actually really good. He plays fast and steady, possibly better than Sawyer does, but hey, the kid has probably studied it. Sawyer goes by ear, he never learned the theory. The crowd cheers and Juliet decides she might as well close later, so they play three songs. Sawyer is sincerely tired of My Darling Clementine, but likes John Henry well enough and Charlie insists for singing some English Lord Randal thing. Sawyer listens to the tune for a bit and says sure, he can carry it, so they play it, Charlie sings and looks like he has fulfilled his life’s dream.
Kid’s happy with a little, Sawyer thinks, but in these times it’s better not to wish for too much.
Now it’s his turn and his fingers aren’t too happy of another song, but people ask and he complies. The bar’s full now and he guesses Juliet isn’t too unhappy when he comes. He sets on one he doesn’t play much because it kind of hurts, but today he feels like it and as he starts playing and his fingers move on the fret he lets a breath and starts to sing.
“I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round, just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town, and the police make it hard wherever I may go, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore...”
The bar falls silent after the first verse and he keeps on. It always has this effect, but Sawyer likes it once in a while.
“My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road, a hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod... Rich man took my home and drove me from my door, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore...”
He keeps his voice low, almost whispering, feeling it almost croak like it always does on these lines. His throat hurts a bit and he breathes cigarette smoke, but it’s alright. It’s that song, it always is like this.
“Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor, my crops I lay into the banker's store, my wife took down and died upon the cabin floor, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore...”
He looks down at his fingers, picking at the old strings, some dust still over them. He thinks he isn’t ever going to shake dust off him should he live a hundred years.
“Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to see, this world is such a great and a funny place to be, oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor, and I ain't got no home in this world, anymore, I ain’t got no home in this world anymore..”
The song ends and he puts the guitar down. People starts to clap and scream for a bis but he smiles and says he’s tired. Hell, he never plays it because it’s damn hard, he’s sure not going to play it again.
Sawyer reaches the counter and Juliet smiles slightly.
“I’m sure you want another shot.”
“Hell yes.”
Sawyer turns his head while waiting and looks at the guy next to him, who’s got a hand on his eyes. He’s dressed with a shirt which looks much like Sawyer’s, maybe a bit cleaner but always red with dust. The jeans he wears are still in one piece, but his shoes should really be replaced. Except that there aren’t much spare shoes to find. His shoulder hitch a bit. He’s probably crying.
“Everything alright?” he asks without even knowing why. Hell, he never gets trusty with complete strangers. It’s really not a good idea.
The guy passes the back of his hand on his eyes and turns to him, eyes red from crying like he suspected, but apart from that Sawyer’s got to admit he looks good, for the times they’re in.
The eyes should be of a warm brown shade, if he isn’t mistaken; guy’s got a nice, regular shaped face, a shadow of stubble, short dark hair, thin and soft lips. Most of all, Sawyer notices, he’s got some hands; they’re lean, strong and strangely not worn out. Sawyer’s are all calloused, his right even more than his left since he’s left handed and plays the guitar likewise. But after almost a year spent picking cotton it isn’t a wonder he doesn’t have a piece of skin which isn’t calloused. They are rough and he likes them like this. But this guy’s really look soft and taken care of. And it’s really strange.
“Yeah. Sorry, it’s just that song. It touched some issues.”
“Don’t you tell me,” he mutters taking the glass from Juliet and still staring at the guy’s hands.
“You want to know something?” he asks.
Sawyer figures a question won't hurt.
“Wonderin’ how come your hands are so nice. Usually, men’s hands are not. Or women's, for that matter.”
“Oh. The hands. Well, I am... I was... I don’t know anymore. Let’s say I am a doctor. I don’t actually practice, y’know.”
“Lost your job recently?”
“Three months ago. Not only my job.”
“Your girl?”
“Yes.”
“She dead?”
“No. She left me.”
To Sawyer this doesn’t make sense. Six years passed, almost seven. How the hell does one stick seven years after that shit and then leave? If he had money and lost it she’d probably have gone much before, experience taught him.
“How come now?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Might write a song ‘bout it. Looks interesting.”
“Not that much. I worked at a hospital in Los Angeles. I was actually very good, reached a good position.”
“Don’t tell me, you had a lot of money and you didn’t want to invest it in stocks but in material goods.”
“How did...”
“Hey. I’ve been travelin’ through this country since ’30, I’ll know somethin’ when I see it.”
“Right. Anyway, after it happened it... didn’t feel right staying there, you know?”
“At the hospital?”
“Yeah. I just... quit and went working in the refugee camps around California. I came home once per week and Sarah.. she didn’t like it, but as long as there was money she never said a thing.”
“You wanna tell me that money ended three months ago and she left you?”
“You said it.”
The guy took a sip of his drink and Sawyer almost spit his.
He never was one that actually helped because there are really more helpful things he could do more than playing music, but he’s got no problem saying he admires whoever does it.
And he’d never resent someone for doing it.
“What a bitch!” he says without even thinking about it.
The other laughs, not much but laughs, and ducks his head on his right shoulder.
“You can say that. And anyway, at least we should, I don’t know, introduce? I’m Jack.”
“Well, real name’s James, though I guess y’know how I go these days.”
“Mark Twain fan?”
“Always got my copy with me,” Sawyer answers eying his backpack on the ground. “So you work in camps still?”
“Yeah. But before it was without payment, now I ask for something but you know, I probably earn less than they earn picking fruit.”
“But shouldn’t you be in Cali?”
“Thought I could use changing air a bit. I went by bus to Denver and I ended up here. Don’t ask me how. I don’t think I was sober enough to remember it.”
“Fair enough. I wasn’t when I first started goin’ ‘round.”
“Well, you are fairly famous.”
“Guess I earned my share. Though I don’t think I am east of Omaha.”
“Well, you are on the whole other side.”
“True enough. Wanna toast?” he asks seeing that there was still a shot in both of their glasses.
“Why not. I’d say to music. I loved your song.”
“And I’d say that too.”
They toast and Sawyer drinks his whiskey, then looks at Juliet.
“Since I filled your sorry place tonight, you got me the same room?”
She shakes her head with some resignation and nods.
“It’s ready. Send your ass upstairs and I don’t want to see you for the next month.”
“However you like, Hot Lips.”
Sawyer raises his hand waving at the crowd before heading upstairs and doesn’t notice Jack slightly smiling when Sawyer turns his back.
--
Next morning, he’s out at dawn. The sun is raising and the pink light creeps through a cloud of grey dust hovering on the road, making it seem red. It almost looks like blood and Sawyer doesn’t like it one bit but he’s used to it.
“Are you leaving?”
He turns, guitar slung on his shoulder, and Jack is behind him. He’s got a jacket which once belonged to a suit and a backpack bigger than his. Sawyer guesses there’s some doctor tools in it.
“Yeah. Never stay in one place for two days and never for one when I play that song.”
Jack nods and smiles ducking his head that way again. Sawyer is starting to think it’s actually cute.
“Where are you going?”
“Dunno. East, probably. I come from Cali and I haven’t been on the other side for a while. Could visit a couple of friends. You’d like one.”
“Really? Who are they?”
“One’s a girl. Prettiest girl in Colorado, owns a place where you could forget your bitch of a wife. Other one’s half a doctor and works on a camp. You’d have some topics to discuss, I guess.”
“Seems nice.”
Sawyer doesn’t know what the hell’s passing through his head, but he’s been traveling alone for almost seven years. One can use some company, once in a while.
“Doc? You got somewhere to go?”
“Me? I ain’t got no home,” Jack answers smiling slightly.
“Wanna come? It’s all walkin’ though. Maybe two weeks, if we don’t find any ride.”
“That’s alright. Yeah, why not? One could try.”
Jacks joins Sawyer’s side and looks at him.
“Which way so?”
“That one,” Sawyer answers without hesitation. They start walking, dust raises from the road and engulfs them in a cloud that looks less red, now that the sun has set.
End.