Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/97

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 84 but Chester registered. All of them got the same time in prison.

I walked around that morning asking for work at each farm. Around noon a Japanese farmer gave me as much watermelon as I could eat. Later on I ate some peaches at another farm, and ended up by eating cantaloupe. Just about dark I met a young Molokon who had read my Tolstoy "THOU SHALT NOT KILL" booklet, while in conscientious objector camp. I put my sleeping bag under the trees in his yard. Next day I worked for his uncle in the harvesting of beet seed. It was very hot and I drank plenty of water and had only melon for breakfast. After three days I worked on a farm in the middle of the desert cleaning ditches for ten hours a day, at sixty cents an hour. Then I walked for miles seeking another job. Finally I got a job in a dairy. After I had worked two months, the farmer sold his cows, so I had to look for another job.

I slept at the home of a friend in Phoenix and got up early before daylight, went down to the slave market at Second and Jefferson, and jumped on the first truck going out of town. I did not know if I was going east, west, north, or south. I worked in a field for a big produce company and at night asked where I could find a cabin to stay. Shacks were only for Mexicans and not for white men. I walked down the road and met a Molokon who said he had a shack up the road which I could live in, free of charge. I was soon sleeping on an old spring mattress. I got an old stove and fixed the place up. I worked day by day for the produce company at sixty cents an hour.

I worked at different kinds of weeding in the fields, and one Saturday the man across the road asked me to cut wood at seventy-five cents an hour. One day I was working with an old man over seventy years of age. He was illiterate and when we signed our names to our checks he made an X mark. When he saw another fellow mark his check with an X he thought his signature was being forged. He asked me, "Have you got the mark of the beast?"

I knew what he meant by this question but asked him. "Has the gov'ment got your number; did you give them your name and get a number on a social security, ration or draft card? For if you did you have the mark of the beast which in these last days seeks to corrupt all of God's children."

I answered that I had used a social security card for three months, but since a tax had been withheld from my pay I had stopped working where it was necessary to have a social security card; that was the reason I was now working on a farm. I had used a ration card for a time, but had refused to register for the draft and did not intend to take any old age pension.

The old man answered; "I have nary a card. Guess they thought I was too old to register for the war and didn't bother me. All of my family made blood money during the war and now my wife and brothers have the mark of the beast again, for they accept old age pension. I will work until I drop before I take money from the beast; from the gov'ment that makes bombs!" And he added "Yes, in these days they number the babies in hospitals when they are born; get boys, and even girls, numbered up for war as they grow up; pester them with numbers when they die. The Mark of the Beast is everywhere. The Bible says that people will be divided, for folks who witness for the Lord can't be a part of numbering and voting and war. If their families prefer blood money then such