Faith

Dashiell Hammett

Not only is Dashiell Hammett regarded as one of the greatest of all pulp writers, he is often recognized as one of the most important and influential, as well as popular, American writers of the twentieth century. His work has never been out of print, being reprinted again and again in many parts of the world. His stories have been anthologized more frequently than such Nobel laureates as Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Mann, Pearl S. Buck, and John Galsworthy.

How rare it is, then, to be able to offer a story that you cannot have read before. “Faith”

appears in print here for the very first time anywhere.

The copy of the typescript from which the story was set has Hammett’s address, 1309 Hyde Street, San Francisco, on it. It provides an unusual opportunity to see a story in the form in which it was originally mailed out—before e‐mail and before agents worked as middlemen. It is clean, with a few minor corrections made in his hand, a few words crossed out.

Candidly, it is not his greatest story, a bit thin when compared with “The House on Turk Street” or “Dead Yellow Women.” Still, it’s more than just a literary scrap, providing a searing look at hobo life in the Great Depression. These men lived on the roughest fringes of society, stealing when they had to, drinking when there was money, brawling with each other and with railroad security guards and other elements of the law enforcement community.

Were they criminal? Was the protagonist of “Faith”? You decide.

Faith

Dashiell Hammett

SPRAWLED IN A LOOSE evening group on the one would say “the seraphim”—demanded.

river bank, the fifty‐odd occupants of the “You think this is a good dump?”

slapboard barrack that was the American

bunkhouse listened to Morphy damn the

The chuckler wriggled, scratching his

canning‐factory,

its

superintendent,

its back voluptuously against a prong of uptorn

equipment, and its pay. They were migratory stump that was his bolster, and withheld his workingmen, these listeners, simple men, and answer until it seemed he had none. He was a they listened with that especial gravity which newcomer to the Bush River cannery, one of the the simple man—North American Indian, Zulu, men hurried up from Baltimore that day: the or hobo— affects.

tomatoes, after an unaccountable delay in

ripening, had threatened to overwhelm the

But when Morphy had finished one of normal packing force.

them chuckled.

“I’ve saw worse,” the newcomer said at

Without conventions any sort of group last, with the true barbarian’s lack of life is impossible, and no division of society is discomfiture in the face of social disapproval.

without its canons. The laws of the jungles are “And I expect to see worse.”

not the laws of the drawing‐room, but they are

as certainly existent, and as important to their

“Meanin’ what?”

subjects. If you are a migratory workingman you

may pick your teeth wherever and with

“Oh, I ain’t saying!” The words were

whatever tool you like, but you may not either light‐flung, airy. “But I know a few things. Stick by word or act publicly express satisfaction with around and you’ll see.”

your present employment; nor may you

disagree with any who denounce the conditions

No one could make anything of that.

of that employment. Like most conventions, this Simple men are not ready questioners.

is not altogether without foundation in reason.

Someone spoke of something else.

So now the fifty‐odd men on the bank

looked at him who had chuckled, turned upon The man who had chuckled went to work in the him the stare that is the social lawbreaker’s lot process‐room, where half a dozen Americans everywhere: their faces held antagonism and as many Polacks cooked the fresh‐canned suspended in expectancy of worse to come; tomatoes in big iron kettles. He was a small physically a matter of raised brows over blank man, compactly plump, with round maroon eyes, and teeth a little apart behind closed lips.

eyes above round cheeks whose original

ruddiness had been tinted by sunburn to a

“What’s eatin’ you?” Morphy—a big

definite orange. His nose was small and merrily

bodied dark man who said “the proletariat” as pointed, and a snuff‐user’s pouch in his lower lip, exaggerating the lift of his mouth at the

corners, gave him a perpetual grin. He held would be crazy enough to do it, do you? What himself erect, his chest arched out, and bobbed for? What would it get Him?”

when he walked, rising on the ball of the

propelling foot midway each step. A man of

A freckled ex‐sailor, known to his fellows

forty‐five or so, who answered to the name as Sandwich, was frowning with vast Feach and hummed through his nose while he ponderance over the cigarette he was making, guided the steel‐slatted baskets from truck, to and when he spoke the deliberation in his voice kettle, to truck.

was vast.

After

he

had

gone,

the

men

“Well, you can’t always say for certain.

remembered that from the first there had been Sometimes a thing looks one way, and when a queerness about Feach, but not even Morphy you come to find out, is another. It don’t look tried to define that queerness. “A nut,” Morphy like there’s no God. I’ll say that. But—”

said, but that was indefinite.

Feach,

tamping

snuff

into

the

What Feach had was a secret. Evidence considerable space between his lower teeth and of it was not in his words only: they were lip, grinned around his fingers, and managed to neither many nor especially noteworthy, and his get derision into the snapping of the round tin silence held as much ambiguity as his speech. lid down on the snuff‐can.

There was in his whole air—in the cock of his

round, boy’s head, in the sparkle of his red‐

“So you’re one of them guys?” he

brown eyes, in the nasal timbre of his voice, in challenged Morphy.

his trick of puffing out his cheeks when he

smiled—a sardonic knowingness that seemed to

“Uh‐huh.” The big man’s voice was that

mock whatever business was at hand. He had of one who, confident of his position’s for his work and for the men’s interests the impregnability, uses temperateness to provoke absent‐minded, bantering sort of false-an assault. “If somebody’d show me there was a

seriousness that a busy parent has for its child’s God, it’d be different. But I never been affairs. His every word, gesture, attention, showed.”

seemed thinly to mask preoccupation with

some altogether different thing that would

“I’ve saw wise guys like you before!” The

presently appear: a man waiting for a practical jovial ambiguity was suddenly gone from Feach; joke to blossom.

he was earnest, and indignant. “You want what

you call proof before you’ll believe anything.

He and Morphy worked side by side. Well, you wait—you’ll get your proof this time, Between them the first night had put a hostility and plenty of it.”

which neither tried to remove. Three days later

they increased it.

“That’s what I’d like to have. You ain’t

got none of this proof on you, have you?”

It was early evening. The men, as usual,

were idling between their quarters and the

Feach sputtered.

river, waiting for bed‐time. Feach had gone

indoors to get a can of snuff from his bedding.

Morphy rolled over on his back and

When he came out Morphy was speaking.

began to roar out a song to the Maryland sky, a

mocking song that Wobblies sing to the tune of

“Of course not,” he was saying. “You

“When the bugle calls up yonder I’ll be there.”

don’t think a God big enough to make all this

“You will eat, by and by,

In that glorious land they call the sky— rumble awakened Feach. He pulled on trousers,

‘ Way up high!

shoes, and shirt, and left the bunk‐house. In the

Work and pray,

north, approaching clouds were darker than the

Live on hay.

other things of night. He walked toward them,

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die. “

breathing with increasing depth, until, when the

clouds were a black smear overhead, his chest

Feach snorted and turned away, walking was rising and falling to the beat of some strong down the river bank. The singer’s booming rhythm.

notes followed him until he had reached the

pines beyond the two rows of frame huts that

When the storm broke he stood still, on

were the Polacks’ quarters.

a little hummock that was screened all around

by bush and tree. He stood very straight, with

upstretched arms and upturned face. Rain—fat

By morning the little man had recovered his thunder‐drops that tapped rather than poise. For two weeks he held it—going jauntily pattered—drove into his round face. Jagged around with his cargo of doubleness and his streaks of metal fire struck down at ground and bobbing walk, smiling with puffed cheeks when tree, house and man. Thunder that could have Morphy called him “Parson”—and then it began been born of nothing less than the impact of an to slip away from him. For a while he still enormous something upon the earth itself, smiled, and still said one thing while patently crashed, crashed, crashed, reverberations lost in thinking of another; but his eyes were no longer succeeding crashes as they strove to keep pace jovially occupied with those other things: they with the jagged metal streaks.

were worried.

Feach stood up on his hummock, a short

He took on the look of one who is kept man compactly plump, hidden from every view waiting at a rendezvous, and tries to convince by tree and undergrowth; a little man with a himself that he will not be disappointed. His pointed nose tilted at the center of the storm, nights became restless; the least creaking of the and eyes that held fright when they were not clapboard barrack or the stirring of a sleeping blinking and squinting under fat rain‐drops. He man would bring him erect in bed.

talked aloud, though the thunder made nothing

of his words. He talked into the storm, cursing

One afternoon the boiler of a small God for half an hour without pause, with words hoisting engine exploded. A hole was blown in that were vilely blasphemous, in a voice that the storehouse wall, but no one was hurt. Feach was suppliant.

raced the others to the spot and stood grinning

across the wreckage at Morphy. Carey, the

The storm passed down the river. Feach

superintendent, came up.

went back to his bunk, to lie awake all night,

shivering in his wet underwear and waiting.

“Every season it’s got to be something!”

Nothing happened.

he complained. “But thank God this ain’t as bad

as the rest—like last year when the roof fell in

He began to mumble to himself as he

and smashed everything to hell and gone.”

worked. Carey, reprimanding him for over‐

cooking a basket of tomatoes, had to speak

Feach stopped grinning and went back three times before the little man heard him. He to work.

slept little. In his bunk, he either tossed from

side to side or lay tense, straining his eyes

Two nights later a thunderstorm blew through the darkness for minute after minute.

down over the canning‐factory. The first distant

Frequently he would leave the sleeping‐house “There’s the moon, and the sun, and the stars, to prowl among the buildings, peering and flowers, and rain, and—”

expectantly into each shadow that house or

shed spread in his path.

“Pull in your neck!” The big man spit for

emphasis. “What do you know about them

Another thunderstorm came. He went things? Edison could’ve made ‘em for all you out into it and cursed God again. Nothing know. Talk sense. Why has there got to be a happened. He slept none after that, and God?”

stopped eating. While the others were at table

he would pace up and down beside the river,

“Why? I’ll tell you why!” Feach’s voice

muttering to himself. All night he wandered was a thin scream; he stood tiptoe, and his arms around in distorted circles, through the pines, jerked in wild gestures. “I’ll tell you why! I’ve between the buildings, down to the river, stood up to Him, and had His hand against me.

chewing the ends of his fingers and talking to I’ve been cursed by Him, and cursed back.

himself. His jauntiness was gone: a shrunken That’s how I know! Listen: I had a wife and kid man who slouched when he walked, and once, back in Ohio on a farm she got from her shivered, doing his daily work only because it old man. I come home from town one night and required neither especial skill nor energy. His the lightning had came down and burnt the eyes were more red than brown, and dull house flat—with them in it. I got a job in a mine except when they burned with sudden fevers. near Harrisburg, and the third day I’m there a His fingernails ended in red arcs where the cave‐in gets fourteen men. I’m down with ‘em, quick was exposed.

and get out without a scratch. I work in a box‐

factory in Pittsburgh that burns down in less’n a

On his last night at the cannery, Feach week. I’m sleeping in a house in Galveston came abruptly into the center of the group that when a hurricane wrecks it, killing ever’body awaited the completion of night between house but me and a fella that’s only crippled. I shipped and river. He shook his finger violently at out of Charleston in the Sophie, that went down Morphy.

off Cape Flattery, and I’m the only one that gets

ashore. That’s when I began to know for sure

“That’s crazy!” he screeched. “Of course

that it was God after me. I had sort of suspected

there’s a God! There’s got to be! That’s crazy!”

it once or twice before— just from queer things

I’d noticed—but I hadn’t been certain. But now

His red‐edged eyes peered through the I knew what was what, and I wasn’t wrong twilight at the men’s faces: consciously stolid either! For five years I ain’t been anywhere that faces once they had mastered their first surprise something didn’t happen. Why was I hunting a at this picking up of fortnight‐old threads: the job before I came up here? Because a boiler faces of men to whom exhibitions of busts in the Deal’s Island packing‐house where I astonishment were childish. Feach’s eyes held worked before and wiped out the place. That’s fear and a plea.

why!”

“Got your proof with you tonight?”

Doubt was gone from the little man; in

Morphy turned on his side, his head propped on the quarter‐light he seemed to have grown one arm, to face his opponent. “Maybe you can larger, taller, and his voice rang.

show me why there’s got to be a God?”

Morphy, perhaps alone of the audience

“Ever’ reason!” Moisture polished the

not for the moment caught in the little man’s

little man’s face, and muscles writhed in it. eloquence, laughed briefly.

“An’ what started all this hullabaloo?”

he asked.

After Sandwich had left him Feach lay still on his

bunk, chewing his fingers and staring at the

“I done a thing,” Feach said, and

rough board ceiling with eyes that were

stopped. He cleared his throat sharply and tried perplexed in a blank, hurt way. As he bit his again. “I done a thi—” The muscles of throat fingers he muttered to himself. “It’s something and mouth went on speaking, but no sound to have stood up to Him and not give in… He came out. “What difference does that make?” wouldn’t forget… chances are it’s something He no longer bulked large in the dimness, and new… He wouldn’t!”

his voice was a whine. “Ain’t it enough that I’ve

had Him hounding me year after year? Ain’t it

Presently fear pushed the perplexity out

enough that everywhere I go He—”

of his eyes, and then fear was displaced by a

look of unutterable anguish. He stopped

Morphy laughed again.

muttering and sat up, fingers twisting his mouth

into a clown’s grimace, breath hissing through

“A hell of a Jonah you are!”

his nostrils. Through the open door came the

noise of stirring men: they were coming in to

“All right!” Feach gave back. “You wait

bed.

and see before you get off any of your cheap

jokes. You can laugh, but it ain’t ever’ man

Feach got to his feet, darted through the

that’s stood up to God and wouldn’t give in. It door, past the men who were converging upon ain’t ever’ man that’s had Him for a enemy.”

it, and ran up along the river—a shambling,

jerky running. He ran until one foot slipped into

Morphy turned to the others and a hole and threw him headlong. He scrambled laughed, and they laughed with him. The up immediately and went on. But he walked laughter lacked honesty at first, but soon now, frequently stumbling.

became natural; and though there were some

who did not laugh, they were too few to rob the

To his right the river lay dark and oily

laughter of apparent unanimity.

under the few stars. Three times he stopped to

yell at the river.

Feach shut both eyes and hurled himself

down on Morphy. The big man shook him off,

“No! No! They’re wrong! There’s got to

tried to push him away, could not, and struck be a God! There’s got to!”

him with an open hand. Sandwich picked Feach

up and led him in to his bed. Feach was

Half an hour was between the first time

sobbing—dry, old‐man sobs.

he yelled and the second, and a longer interval

between the second and third; but each time

“They won’t listen to me, Sandwich, but

there was a ritualistic sameness to word and

I know what I’m talking about. Something’s tone. After the third time the anguish began to coming here—you wait and see. God wouldn’t leave his eyes.

forget me after all these years He’s been riding

me.”

He stopped walking and sat on the butt

of a fallen pine. The air was heavy with the

“Course not,” the freckled ex‐sailor

night‐odor of damp earth and mold, and still

soothed him. “Everything’ll come out all right. where he sat, though a breeze shuffled the tops You’re right.”

of the trees. Something that might have been a

rabbit padded across the pine‐needle matting There was no flame. He felt his trousers; they behind him; a suggestion of frogs’ croaking was were damp with dew. He threw the match too far away to be a definite sound. Lightning-away, took out another, and ignited it on the

bugs moved sluggishly among the trees: yellow inside of his vest. Squatting, he held the match lights shining through moth‐holes in an against the frayed end of a wall‐board that was irregularly swaying curtain.

black with gasoline. The splintered wood took

fire. He stepped back and looked at it with

Feach sat on the fallen pine for a long approval. The match in his hand was consumed while, only moving to slap at an occasional to half its length; he used the rest of it starting a pinging mosquito. When he stood up and tiny flame on a corner of the tar‐paper roofing turned back toward the canning‐factory he just above his head.

moved swiftly and without stumbling.

He ran to the next hut, struck another

He passed the dark American bunk‐

match, and dropped it on a little pile of sticks

house, went through the unused husking‐shed, and paper that leaned against the rear wall. The and came to the hole that the hoisting engine pile became a flame that bent in to the wall.

had made in the store‐house wall. The boards

that had been nailed over the gap were loosely

The first hut had become a blazing thing,

nailed. He pulled two of them off, went through flames twisting above as if it were spinning the opening, and came out carrying a large under them. The seething of the fire was gasoline can.

silenced by a scream that became the whole

audible world. When that scream died there

Walking downstream, he kept within a were others. The street between the two rows step of the water’s edge until to his right a row of buildings filled with red‐lighted figures: naked of small structures showed against the sky like figures, underclothed figures— men, women evenly spaced black teeth in a dark mouth. He and children—who achieved clamor. A throaty carried his can up the slope toward them, male voice sounded above the others. It was panting a little, wood‐debris crackling under his inarticulate, but there was purpose in it.

feet, the gasoline sloshing softly in its can.

Feach turned and ran toward the pines.

He set the can down at the edge of the Pursuing bare feet made no sound. Feach pines that ringed the Polacks’ huts, and stuffed turned his head to see if he were being hunted, his lower lip with snuff. No light came from the and stumbled. A dark athlete in red flannel double row of buildings, and there was no drawers pulled the little man to his feet and sound except the rustling of tree and bush in accused him in words that had no meaning to the growing breeze from southward.

Feach. He snarled at his captor, and was

knocked down by a fist used club‐wise against

Feach left the pines for the rear of the the top of his head.

southernmost hut. He tilted the can against the

wall, and moved to the next hut. Wherever he

Men from the American bunk‐house

paused the can gurgled and grew lighter. At the appeared as Feach was being jerked to his feet sixth building he emptied the can. He put it again. Morphy was one of them.

down, scratched his head, shrugged, and went

back to the first hut.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he asked the

athlete in red drawers.

He took a long match from his vest

pocket and scraped it down the back of his leg.

“These one, ‘e sit fire to ‘ouses. I see

candelabra among the pines, and as he looked

‘im!”

his chest arched out and the old sparkling

ambiguity came back to his eyes.

Morphy gaped at Feach.

“Maybe I done it,” he said complacently,

“You did that?”

“and maybe Something used me to do it.

Anyways, if it hadn’t been that it’d maybe been

The little man looked past Morphy to something worse.”

where two rows of huts were a monster