The Hope Chest (6 page)

When the blast came, Hobie grabbed them each by a hand and darted onto the steel platform behind the engine so quickly that Violet caught her foot on the edge, stumbled, and almost fell onto the tracks. Hobie grabbed the collar of her middy blouse and pulled her back.

“Steady, Angelina!” he said.

They sat facing backward on account of the cinders, which flew back from the smokestack as the train gained speed and filled the air with the smell of coal smoke.

Violet and Myrtle sat huddled together, trying not to look at the ground whizzing by beneath them. The train jolted about as it picked up speed, and there was nothing to hold on to. The platform had no walls. One good jolt, Violet thought, and all three of them would fly off into the landscape that was zipping past.

Hobie was unperturbed. He leaned back and told them about his adventures. He was twelve years old, he admitted, and had been riding the rails on and off for two years.

“Where do you come from?” Myrtle asked.

“Tennessee. Copperhill, Tennessee. Up in the Blue Ridge. But there ain't hardly nowhere I ain't been,” Hobie bragged. “Been all over Hobohemia.” He swept his arm to indicate the scenery they were passing, which they couldn't see very well because they were squinting to keep the cinders out of their eyes.

It seemed to go on forever. What if she'd just stayed home, Violet thought—what would she be doing right now? It was night. She would have already read to
Stephen. Dinner would be over, including the nightly endurance of table manners and impossible rules (like eating everything on your plate, even horrible gristly fat pieces of meat, or you'd have to eat it for breakfast tomorrow). She'd be alone in her room, in her bed, under the green chenille bedspread, rereading one of her Oz books by the bedside lamp.

Instead, she was hunched over on the vibrating iron platform, breathing smoke and nearly deafened by the clatter of wheels on rails, so she could hardly hear Hobie. He seemed to be saying that he didn't need to go to school because he was going to be educated at some Hobo College that some rich man was starting.

It must've been nearly midnight, Violet guessed, when they reached Philadelphia. They walked across numerous tracks to a freight yard.

“We can catch a fast freight from here to Baltimore,” Hobie said. “But it ain't here yet. I'm going over to the jungle to get some hobo stew.” He indicated a clump of trees from which a thin column of smoke was rising. Violet and Myrtle started to follow him, but he held up a hand to stop them. “No, you Angelinas stay here. This is a bad jungle. Too many of the Johnson family, you know what I mean? Too many profesh.”

“I guess he means criminals.” Violet stopped and looked at Myrtle. “Oh no, do I look as bad as you do?”

“Probably,” said Myrtle. “If I look that bad.”

“You do,” Violet assured her. Myrtle looked as
though she had taken a bath in charcoal. Her dress was no longer blue-and-white-striped but coal-smoke black, and her formerly white mobcap and apron matched.

They sat down on the gravel of the roadbed. It was very uncomfortable. Violet wondered if there was anywhere nearby where they could buy something to eat, anywhere that wouldn't mind serving people who looked like they had been swept out of the bottom of a fireplace. And if anyplace was even open at this hour.

“What time do you think it is?” Violet asked.

Myrtle shrugged. “Really late. I think it was around ten at night when we left New York.”

Hobie brought them two tin cans full of what he said was stew. Violet was too hungry to be particular. They drank and ate the stew as best they could with their grimy fingers. It was full of vegetables Violet didn't recognize and bits of meat it was best not to examine too closely. But it tasted all right.

“We'll sleep here tonight,” said Hobie. “But not in the jungle. I didn't tell the yeggs you were here—some of them don't know how to act proper around ladies. We'll sleep over there in one of them broke-down cars. There's a through freight to Baltimore tomorrow.”

So that was what they did. Hobie told them more of his adventures as they fell asleep under a covering of newspapers on a wheelless flatcar. Violet looked up at the stars and wondered if she would really see Chloe tomorrow. When the newspapers fluttered and rustled in
the breeze, she thought about her green chenille bedspread, but she didn't wish she was back in Susquehanna. She was having an adventure, and Myrtle was a good person to have an adventure with, just like Flossie would have been. It was funny, but Violet felt as if there was some part of her that had been locked up since Flossie's death—even more locked up than the rest of her was— and that it was being set free. As for Hobie, she was getting used to him. The main thing was not to look at him directly so that you didn't have to realize he was just a kid when he kept talking like he was his own grandfather. As Violet drifted off to sleep, Hobie was talking about how he wanted to go to Florida, one of the few places he admitted he'd never been.

It had been easy for Myrtle to decide to leave the Girls' Training Institute in New York. In her mind she'd left it the moment she arrived, a year ago, when she was nine. Myrtle didn't know where her life was going to take her, but she was ready for it to take her somewhere else, and she didn't intend to be anybody's maid.

Myrtle wasn't tough like Hobie, but she wasn't soft like Violet either. Still, she woke up in the morning stiff and achy. The rough wooden floor of the flatcar was even less comfortable than the lumpy cots at the Girls' Training Institute, which were said to be left over from the Civil War. She and Violet ate some stale doughnuts Hobie brought from the jungle and drank bitter chicory coffee
from tin cans. Violet made a face over the coffee, and when Myrtle asked her if she'd never had chicory coffee before, she admitted she'd never had coffee before at all.

Hobie was wrong about one thing—boxcars were a lot more comfortable than riding the blinds. They rode in a deadhead (an empty boxcar) on the through freight to Baltimore. When they got to Baltimore, the railroad police (whom Hobie called bulls) chased them away from the blinds, so they had to take another freight. They were jouncing along in an empty boxcar, sitting on the wooden floor, watching tobacco fields pass by and listening to Hobie talk about the Rocky Mountains, when there was a loud wooden thump and a white man in a blue coverall landed on the boards in front of them.

Myrtle leapt to her feet and backed away from him.

His hands were balled into tight fists, and he advanced on them menacingly. “Stealin' rides, eh? Should I turn you in to the bulls or just throw you off the train?”

Hobie got to his feet and folded his arms. “It's your train, is it?”

“It sure ain't yours,” said the man. “So what's it gonna be? Do I ditch you or are you ready to throw?”

“I don't have any money,” said Hobie defiantly. “So ditch me.”

The man clearly didn't like this idea. “How about one of the Angelinas, then?” He reached out and grabbed Myrtle.

He stank of sweat and soot. Myrtle struggled. His
hand dug painfully into her arm. He lifted her into the air and grabbed her ankle in his other hand. The floor and the walls lurched crazily past and Myrtle couldn't catch her breath to scream. He swung her—he was going to throw her out the open door.

“You ready to see her hit the grit?” The white man's voice seemed to lurch too. He swung Myrtle again—she saw the ground whizzing beneath her, terrifyingly close and fast.

“I have money!” Violet screamed. Myrtle saw a flash of grubby pink skin as Violet tried to grab the man's arm. “I have money! Put her down, right now!”

The man set Myrtle down, jarringly. If he hadn't been gripping her arms tight behind her, she would have fallen. “Mix me the hike, then,” he ordered.

Violet scrabbled in her blouse and drew out a pinned handkerchief. She had started to hand it over when Hobie grabbed her arm. “Don't,” he said.

“Are you crazy?” Violet snapped.

“Fifteen cents,” Hobie said. “He gets fifteen cents.”

“Thirty,” said the criminal, twisting Myrtle's arms a few inches for emphasis. It hurt horribly. Myrtle felt dizzy with pain. She saw Violet wince with sympathy.

“Fifteen,” said Hobie. “That's the hike.”

“Ten cents per hundred miles,” said the criminal. “Each.”

“We ain't going no hundred miles,” said Hobie. “We're going to Washington, and that ain't but half that.
Give him fifteen, Angelina.” Myrtle couldn't believe he was arguing about money with this madman.

Violet handed the criminal three nickels. He grabbed them and let Myrtle go with a kind of disgusted shove. She fell on the floorboards.

“Are you all right?” Myrtle felt Violet's hands on her arms. “Myrtle, say something!”

Myrtle didn't want to say anything, because she thought if she opened her mouth, she might be sick. She wasn't normally a person to get dizzy easily, but then, nobody had ever swung her out the open door of a moving train before.

When she could see clearly again, the man was gone.

Hobie looked after him philosophically. “Don't think he's been a brakeman too long, that fella. You hardly ever see a braky who's still got both hands.”

“A brakeman?” Violet stared at Hobie. “You mean that criminal works for the railroad?”

“Yup,” said Hobie, casting a disgusted look out the open door.

“How … how did he get in here?” Myrtle asked shakily.

“Roof,” said Hobie, nodding upward. “Brakies can climb all over the outside of a moving train, doesn't bother them none.”

“I would th-think,” said Violet, who Myrtle saw was starting to tremble now, “that they would fall off.”

“Oh, they do. All the time. Die like flies,” said Hobie.
“They're not all like that,” he added fairly. “Most of them don't care if the brothers and sisters want to grab an armload of boxcars.”

Myrtle had gotten used to Hobie's talk enough to figure out that that was another way to say “catch a ride.”

It was evening when they arrived in Washington.

When they got off the train in Washington, Hobie stayed on it. “Think I'm gonna ride this as far as it goes,” he said. “Might make it to Florida.” He seemed to have no interest in actually
being
in any of the places that trains went to, Myrtle thought, but only in getting to them.

Myrtle had met kids like Hobie before. New York was full of them—grown-up kids who had been out on their own for years. She didn't really blame Hobie for being tough enough to argue with a brakeman who was threatening to throw her out of a train—toughness was what kept such kids alive. But the next thing he said shocked her.

“There are bound to be a lot of brakemen between Washington and Florida,” Violet said. She reached for her pinned-up handkerchief of money and tried to give it to Hobie. He wouldn't take it.

“I have money,” he said.

“You what?” Myrtle squawked. “You have money?” “You were going to let that brakeman throw Myrtle out of the train when you had money to pay him with?” Violet demanded.

“No, of course I wasn't,” said Hobie. He did not elaborate. “You Angelinas take care, now.”

Myrtle didn't know whether to believe him or not— about the money and about whether he would have let the brakeman throw her off the train. She decided she had to believe he wouldn't have. The alternative was too awful. She took a deep breath.

“You take care too, Hobie,” she said.

“Yes—and thank you,” said Violet.

They waved to him as the train pulled out.

It All Comes Down to Tennessee

V
IOLET COULD SEE THE HIGH NEEDLE OF THE
Washington Monument in the distance as they picked their way across the gravel bed of the rail yard and stepped over rails and railroad ties. The smell of coal smoke and axle grease hung over everything. Rows of empty boxcars loomed on every side, and Violet could see smoke rising from a clump of trees where there must be a hobo jungle. It wasn't how Violet had imagined Washington would look. The important thing, though, was whether she would be able to find Chloe here. Violet was glad Myrtle was from Washington—she would know her way around.

“Do you know where to find the suffragists?” Violet asked Myrtle.

“Before we find anything, we better get cleaned up,”
Myrtle said. “Or anybody we find is gonna scream for the cops.”

Myrtle led Violet out of the rail yard and down a cobblestone street with automobiles parked on it here and there. They turned down an alley and then down another alley that led off it. The alley was only just wide enough for a wagon to pass through. Brick and wooden houses lined both sides of it. The houses looked as if someone had built them in a great hurry fifty years ago and then fled. Probably to escape the fury of the people who had to live in them, Violet thought. The houses had no windows that Violet could see. To make up for this lack, there were a few holes where chunks of wall had fallen off.

Heaps of uncollected garbage overflowed from garbage cans and filled the corners, and the reek of rotten vegetables and mold mixed with a stench of raw sewage. A well-fed-looking rat ambled out from a pile of trash, looked at the girls thoughtfully, and waited for them to pass by.