The Narrator of “Hymie’s Bull” Character Analysis

We were just drifting; going no place in particular, having long ago given up hopes of finding jobs. We were just knocking around the country. Just drifting, ten black boys on an L & N freight.

Bulls are pretty bad people to meet if you're a bum. They have head-whipping down to a science and they're always ready to go into action. They know all the places to hit to change a bone into jelly, and they seem to feel just the place to kick you to make your backbone feel like it's going to fold up like the old collapsible drinking cups we used when we were kids. Once a bull hit me across the bridge of my nose and I felt like I was coming apart like a cigarette floating in a urinal. They can hit you on your head and bust your shoes.

Now when you hear that we're the only bums that carry knives you can just put that down as bull talk because what I'm fixing to tell you about was done by an ofay bum named Hymie from Brooklyn.

I stood there on top listening, bent slightly forward to keep my balance like a guy skiing, and thought of my mother, I had left her two months before, not even knowing that I would ever hop freights. Poor Mama, she had tried hard to keep my brother and me at home, but she fed us too long alone, and we were getting much too grown-up to let her do it any longer, so we left home looking for jobs.

Hymie pulled the knife around from ear to ear in the bull’s throat; then he stabbed him and pushed him off the top of the car. The bull paused a second in the air like a kid diving off a trestle into a river, then hit the cinders below. Something was warm on my face, and I found that some of the bull’s blood had blown back like spray when a freight stops to take on water from a tank.

The next day about dusk we were pulling into the yards at Montgomery, Alabama, miles down the line, and got the scare of our lives. […] All at once we heard someone hollering, and when we ran up to the front of the freight, there were two bulls, a long one and a short one, fanning heads with their gun barrels. They were making everybody line up so they could see us better. The sky was cloudy and very black. We knew Hymie’s bull had been found and some black boy had to go. But luck must've been with us this time […] we broke and ran between some cars on around to try to catch the freight pulling out at the other end of the yards. We made it.

We were just drifting; going no place in particular, having long ago given up hopes of finding jobs. We were just knocking around the country. Just drifting, ten black boys on an L & N freight.

Bulls are pretty bad people to meet if you're a bum. They have head-whipping down to a science and they're always ready to go into action. They know all the places to hit to change a bone into jelly, and they seem to feel just the place to kick you to make your backbone feel like it's going to fold up like the old collapsible drinking cups we used when we were kids. Once a bull hit me across the bridge of my nose and I felt like I was coming apart like a cigarette floating in a urinal. They can hit you on your head and bust your shoes.

Now when you hear that we're the only bums that carry knives you can just put that down as bull talk because what I'm fixing to tell you about was done by an ofay bum named Hymie from Brooklyn.

I stood there on top listening, bent slightly forward to keep my balance like a guy skiing, and thought of my mother, I had left her two months before, not even knowing that I would ever hop freights. Poor Mama, she had tried hard to keep my brother and me at home, but she fed us too long alone, and we were getting much too grown-up to let her do it any longer, so we left home looking for jobs.

Hymie pulled the knife around from ear to ear in the bull’s throat; then he stabbed him and pushed him off the top of the car. The bull paused a second in the air like a kid diving off a trestle into a river, then hit the cinders below. Something was warm on my face, and I found that some of the bull’s blood had blown back like spray when a freight stops to take on water from a tank.

The next day about dusk we were pulling into the yards at Montgomery, Alabama, miles down the line, and got the scare of our lives. […] All at once we heard someone hollering, and when we ran up to the front of the freight, there were two bulls, a long one and a short one, fanning heads with their gun barrels. They were making everybody line up so they could see us better. The sky was cloudy and very black. We knew Hymie’s bull had been found and some black boy had to go. But luck must've been with us this time […] we broke and ran between some cars on around to try to catch the freight pulling out at the other end of the yards. We made it.