Two Roads Page 4

  I suspect he must know there’s a passel of us knights of the road waiting outside his yard, but he is either lazy enough or cautious enough to not stray far from the open tracks.

  “ALL ABOOOOOAAARRD,” is carried to us on the morning wind.

  We’re ready. I can feel the tension in the men around us. They’re all on this side of the tracks because of the hillside rising on the other side. The grade here keeps the rate of the train at just the right speed for a man to lope along next to it, then grab a handrail. My breath is deeper, my heart pounding heavy and strong. About to latch on to the power and speed of a train. About to be part of it. I love this feeling. Wild and free!

  I don’t know if there’s a better feeling than this. I can see why Pop chose this life before he met my mom and decided to settle down. I can understand why he has come back to it. Unlike a good many of those millions of folks who became homeless when all the banks failed, Pop had already experienced the hobo life and didn’t have to struggle to adjust to it. I’ve seen men wearing rags that once were tuxedos. I’ve also seen sections of hobo camps that are all made up of boys who ran away from the hard times on their farms or got separated from their parents somehow. A lot of those kids look sad and lost. Unless they have a grown-up looking after them they might get taken advantage of. Have what few goods they’ve got taken, get beaten up. Some don’t survive. But more and more keep coming. Pop showed me a story in a newspaper a few months back. It said that of the countless people now on the roads, there’s thousands who are teenagers.

  I’m glad to be with Pop, glad he chose to take me with him. And glad I am lanky and strong like Pop.

  Pop says he’s never seen anyone learn the ins and outs of being on the road as fast as I have. There’re men who’ve been hoboing for years, he says, who haven’t picked up as much as I have in the two years since Mom’s passing. I feel proud about being complimented that way, but I don’t tell Pop what I think may be the real reason I’ve absorbed so much in such a short time. It’s not just that I’m a natural fast learner—as my teachers said back at school. It’s that losing Mom left such a hole in my heart that I needed to fill it up as soon as I could. Otherwise my whole life might have run out like water from a leaky pail. But everything about being a knight of the road seemed the perfect way to plug up that aching spot in my chest. That and having Pop always by my side, as constant as the sun coming up every dawn.

  The train is almost to us, not picking up much more speed because it is just hitting the uphill stretch that carries it over the hill. We’re well concealed from sight by a mulberry bush thirty feet from the track.

  Pop pats me on the shoulder. It means I am to go first, a few yards ahead of him. It makes me proud that I have his trust. I crouch like the sprinter I was during my last year in Garrison Elementary School, when my coach told me he never saw a boy with a faster start.

  A real Jim Thorpe, Coach McGunty said.

  I might be running for that school now and not getting set to run after a train were it not for the fact that it’s no more. I love to run and I know I’m good at it. I would wager that I’d have won a few races. But Garrison closed down for good around the same time we lost our little farm. Our crop had failed right after Mom died. That meant we couldn’t make the payments on the mortgage, and the bank was not willing to carry us. All we could do was watch as the marshals came and took everything—house and barn, tools and furniture, livestock and all—leaving us just the clothes on our backs.

  Pop’s decision for us to ride the rails together was easier to make then, both of us being so unencumbered. Me of school, Pop of what earthly goods he’d owned, and both of us no longer having Mom, the one loss that truly broke our hearts.

  We had both cared for her the best we could.

  “You two are my good luck,” she would say, with that smile of hers.

  Pop spent everything he could on the doctor and the medicines. But she just kept getting sicker.

  “And here is my bad luck again,” she’d say about that, shaking her head and making it sound like a joke.

  Even when she was sick, Mom kept her sense of humor. She was beautiful, too. Tall, taller than Pop, with wide shoulders that—before her illness—seemed strong enough to hold the weight of the world. Strong as my father is, he always said that if it came down to a wrestling match she’d beat him. Sometimes when she hugged him she’d pick him right up off the ground. She had long dark hair that came to her waist and the biggest darkest eyes I’ve ever seen—eyes that could see into my mind and know when I was happy or hurting and then also know just what to say on either occasion.

  “Those lovely, soulful Armenian eyes,” Pop used to say, almost singing it.

  Their being Armenian was the only thing Mom knew about her family—who died right after coming to America.

  “My bad luck,” she’d say about that.

  Which was how she ended up in the New York Foundling Hospital and then, at the age of ten, on one of those trains that carried thousands of orphans like her west. There in Nebraska the Wilsons, an older Polish couple with no children, adopted her.

  “And that was my first good luck,” she’d say about them. “They were so kind.”

  I never met those adopted grandparents. The influenza of 1918 took them both when she was eighteen.

  “My bad luck again.”

  They left her a little money. It was not enough for her to stay in school to be a registered nurse, but she did get work as a practical nurse. That was how she met Pop. She was working in the Veteran’s Hospital when Pop—who’d been riding a train that crashed—was brought in.

  “It was love at first sight,” Pop would say.

  “Mine first,” Mom would add, “seeing as how your father’s eyes were bandaged up when I first saw him. But I fell for that cleft in his chin.”

  “You and me we are getting married, mister,” she told him the week the bandages came off. “And we are getting us a place.”

  And that is just what they did.

  “How could I say no?” Pop used to say whenever they told me the story of how they got together. “She was bigger than me.”

  Then Mom would grab him by the arm or the shoulder and pretend she was going to beat him up before they ended up laughing together in a hug that always included me.

  Mom’s money added on to what Pop had managed to save while working odd jobs as he was hoboing was enough to make the down payment on our farm. And a year later I was born.

  She tried to keep taking care of us. But then, halfway through doing something like making supper, it would happen. She’d stop, press her hand against her side where it was hurting. Then she would have to lean against something.

  “I wish my body could stay as strong as my love for you two,” she’d whisper as Pop and I would come to steady her.

  “My darn bad luck,” she’d say then. “I’m such a burden now.”

  “No burden I would not bear,” Pop would reply. “I would gladly carry you from here to France and back again.”

  Then Mom would smile and let Pop and me help her to bed.

  “What now, Pop?” I asked as we walked away from what had been the only home I’d ever known.

  Pop was silent for a good half mile. Then he began to pick up the pace, me right behind. Pretty soon we were running full out. Even though Pop limped as he ran, he was still faster than most men. It felt good to be running like that. It wasn’t like we were running away from anything or running with any destination in mind. We were just running for the sake of running the way Pop and I had done since I was old enough to run. It was something he said was in his blood, something his own father used to do with him. Running. I loved it.

  We went a good three or four miles before we slowed down to a walk. Neither of us was winded, but I could see that Pop had begun limping more. Plus I sensed he was ready to talk now. He stopped, sat on a
log by the roadside and patted it for me to join him.

  “There’s one thing that comes to mind for us, Cal,” he said. “At least for now.”

  “Whatever you say, Pop,” I replied, lifting my head. “I am up to it.”

  “I believe you are,” Pop said.

  But now the sound of the engine passing pulls me out of that memory.

  The engineer sees all of us from his elevated perch and nods. Like many of the men who drive those big machines he holds no grudge against those of us looking to ride. Keeping his train free of hoboes is not his job.

  One after another, three passenger cars clickety-clack by.

  “Now,” Pop says.

  I bolt from behind the bush half a second before all the others around us. Out of the corner of my eye I quickly count a dozen men rising up like those soldiers who grew from dragon’s teeth in the old Greek story. I have always been quick at tallying up and taking note of such things. So it does not break my concentration as I focus on the rail I intend to grab. There’s no competition for that handhold. Pop and I have got the jump on all the others. The other ’boes most likely will mass together at one or the other of the next boxcars with doors that’ll be swung open by the first to arrive. Those who’ve hopped in first will reach out their hands for the rest. Helping one another. That’s part of being true knights of the road.

  My feet pounding on the loose stones along the track, I swing up my left arm—closest to the train—to grab the ladder side rail. A second later my right hand takes firm hold of the rail parallel to it. Then and only then do I lift my feet.

  Never try to jump up with a single handhold. That was one of the things I learned during our first week on the road. Not having a firm hold is a recipe for being swung under those unforgiving steel wheels that’ll lop off a leg as easy as a knife cutting through butter.

  My feet find the rung and I reach up one hand after the other, climbing the ladder quick as a squirrel scrambling up an oak, making space behind me for Pop to follow. Despite that lame leg, he’s managed a swift seesawing sort of run, fast as most men with two sound limbs. The vibration of the ladder below me tells me he has caught hold and heaved himself up.

  As soon as I get atop the car I take a firm grip with my left and reach my right hand back. Not that Pop needs my help. Offering aid is just the proper thing to do. He takes my hand, shaking it as much as using it to assist him onto the roof. Then, with the grace of a dancer, he spins down into a sitting position next to me.

  We stay there for a while atop that car. The wind feels good in my face. Although the strongest smell that comes to my nose is the coal smoke from the engine five cars ahead of us, I can also catch another scent in that wind.

  “Magnolia. Scent of the South,” Pop says, reading my mind. “Almost as sweet as the prairie.”

  I nod, trying not to show any sadness in my face as I do so. Our little farm was far to the west of where we are today. Sometimes I miss that place so much it hurts. Though I would never say that to Pop. Out there in Kansas, the sky just goes on forever and you can hear meadowlarks singing in the spring. There is sage there and grasses you do not see in the East or the South, grasses the old buffalo herds grazed on before they were all killed off.

  There were Indians back then following those buffalo herds. Pop says there are still Indians there. I never saw any around our farm or in the little nearby town. I suppose I have yet to meet one. The government keeps them cooped up on reservations to the north of where we lived, according to Pop.

  Maybe, though, I might have seen an Indian or two and not recognized him. Pop says they don’t look like the ones in the dime novels anymore. The government makes them dress like white folks and talk English.

  “Indians nowadays,” Pop says at times, a kind of catch in his voice for some reason, “they’re hard to distinguish from sunburned farmers.”

  There were Indians, he told me, with the Expeditionary Force.

  “Reliable,” Pop said once. “Good men.”

  That leads me to believe that while over there he was friends with an Indian or two. But he’s never said more about them and I’ve never asked.

  Unless he starts reminiscing of his own accord, asking Pop anything about the Great War is not a good idea. Asking almost always produces one of three results.

  First, which is least frequent—scarce as hen’s teeth—is that he might actually answer. An answer usually short as a rabbit’s tail, but a real answer nonetheless.

  Such as, “It was shrapnel.”

  End of answer to my question about what caused the wound that left a thick line of red scar tissue wrapped round his knee like a snake.

  Second result is nothing at all. No words, nothing. Just a silence so deep that you could drown in it. An uncomfortable silence, thick and heavy as a wool horse blanket that makes me wish I had kept my trap shut. Like the time I asked him about what it was like in the trenches.

  Third result is the one I dread. It makes me bite my lip. That is when a certain look comes over Pop’s face. It’s followed by a curse escaping from his lips like a hurt bird bursting from a cage. Then a black mood comes over him, and he clenches his fists and turns away. He has never struck me, but seeing him like that makes me feel as if I have been punched in the gut.

  The last time he got that way was when I asked him why he and other men who served over there didn’t get treated better after they came back home.

  That black mood can last a minute, an hour, or even a day. And woe betide any man who should cross Pop’s path then and do or say anything that might be taken amiss. Like that one huge railroad bull back in Omaha a month ago who came out from behind a little shed, a shed that bore the sign reading JOBLESS MEN KEEP GOING. He raised his club to hit me. Pop—who had been two paces behind me—was on him like a hawk on a fat rabbit. It all happened so fast that to this day I cannot describe what Pop actually did. But he left that big bully out cold and bleeding, his broken club on the ground next to him. I think my father might have killed him if I hadn’t grabbed his arm and yelled “Pop, don’t!”

  As soon as I did that, the look on his face changed. His shoulders drooped and his head dropped as he let me drag him away. He seemed dazed, as if he didn’t know what to do. It was almost as if for a moment I was the father and he was the son. When I told him we’d better hop the next freight, he just nodded and let me lead him across the yard over to the track where they were putting together a line of empty boxcars. We climbed into the last empty reefer humped off the main. Me taking care of him.

  We ride the roof for a spell until the heat of the sun begins to get a bit much for us. Pop looks over at me, raises an eyebrow, and looks down. I nod. The two of us walk along the top of the boxcar till we are over an open door. Side by side, we both lean over to look inside. It’s occupied, but there’s plenty of room. Like circus acrobats, we each get a good hold and swing down to land light on our feet inside the car.

  “Whoa!” says the ’bo closest to where we land. He’s a man who appears middle-aged, with a neat little goatee and a clean white shirt. “Who might you gents be, falling from the sky like the winged Mercury himself?” His voice is pleasant and there’s a bit of a chuckle in it as he speaks.

  Before Pop can answer, a second man, bone-thin with pants so short they leave his shins exposed and a cigarette dangling from his lip, speaks up. “It’s Injun Joe,” that man says, his voice raspy from smoking.

  Injun Joe?

  I look over at Pop, who’s now staring straight at the thin smoker.

  “Boney,” Pop says. That’s all, but it’s enough, especially when Pop uses that dangerous tone of voice.

  The thin man takes a step backward, plucks the cigarette from his mouth. He holds his arms out to the side—looking even more like a skeleton when he does that.

  “Sorry,” he rasps. “Didn’t mean nothing by it, Will. No offense?”<
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  Pop says nothing. He turns to the older man with the goatee, holds out his hand.

  “Professor,” he says. “Nice to see you.”

  “Railroad Will,” the professor says. “Couldn’t make out your visage, turned away as you were when you came catapulting in. But I should have discerned it from the dramatic manner of your entrance.”

  Pop smiles, looks toward me. “You haven’t met my boy, Cal.”

  I shake the professor’s hand. His grasp is firm, but he’s not trying to prove how tough he is by squeezing till it hurts. I make eye contact for a moment noting how clear and blue those eyes of his are, how amused they look because of the way Pop put Boney in his place with a single word.

  I’m glad Pop did that. There is no way anyone should ever link my father with one of the worst characters in that novel by Mr. Twain. Injun Joe, indeed. How could anyone ever picture my pop as a murderous drunken half-breed?

  “Pleased, sir,” I say as I let go of his palm and step back.

  “My, my,” the professor says. “Quite the conversationalist, are we not?” Then he chuckles. “Take not my jesting in the wrong light, my lad. I am, indeed, pleased to meet you as well. Any son of your father’s must be worthy of respect.”

  Pop rests a hand on my shoulder. “The professor,” he says to me, “was indeed that before the war. A professor of literature.”

  “But now,” the professor adds, “I am but another foot soldier in the growing army of the unemployed—one who found his place in the university taken by younger men.”

  The professor looks at me again. “There’s the bright light of intelligence in this lad’s eyes,” he says. “Correct me if am errant in my judgment, Will.”

  “You could say that,” Pop replies, a bit of pride in his voice. “And quite the reader. Never without a book in his bindle.”

  “But not in school,” the professor says.

  Pop shakes his head. I know that bothers him at times.

  “A boy as smart as you, Cal, there’s no limit to what you might do with the right education.” That’s what my father said more than once in the time we’ve been knights of the road together.