“Where are you
heading, young’un?”
The voice that wakes Hubert up from
his nap among the crates in the rickety boxcar comes from a man in his early
thirties. He is wearing a torn pair of
trousers, a ratty button-down shirt, and shoes that are held together by
bailing twine. Only his hat is without
blemish: a new, tan fedora that the man wears cocked slightly to the
right. Hubert wonders where the hat came
from.
“Wherever this train is going,
mister,” Hubert replies.
“Where did you come from?” the man
asks.
“Poplar Bluff.”
“You’ve been on this train the whole
time?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Son, that had to been almost
twenty-four hours ago. This is
Arkadelphia. When was the last time you
ate anything?”
“I brought some apples with me,”
Hubert says.
“You need something cooked. Come with me, before the railroad police see
us talking up here.”
Hubert takes the man’s hand and
jumps down from the boxcar. The sun has
passed its noontime apex and is taking a southern route in its journey across
the sky. Even though it is a warm autumn
day, the sun-filled sky is cooler and more pleasant than the closed up,
stifling boxcar that has been Hubert’s home for the last twenty-four
hours.
Hubert has exited the freight train
into a small switchyard much like the one in Poplar Bluff that marked the
beginning of his adventure.
“I seen the conductor open the door
of that car you was in,” the man tells Hubert, “and I seen you moving around
inside, trying to hide. You was lucky
the conductor didn’t see you. He’d a
called the railroad police on you. You
don’t want to be messing around with them.”
Hubert says nothing. He just keeps following the man through the
switchyard. They pass the traffic
control tower and cross a street, leaving the rail yard. On the other side of the street, the man
lifts up a broken down barbed wire fence and motions for Hubert to crawl
underneath it. Hubert stoops down and
steps beneath the fence. When Hubert is
through, the man lets go of the fence and steps over it.
It is a junkyard. Hubert sees scraps of metal everywhere: old
ice boxes, parts of automobiles, carriages from broken down train cars. On the southern end of the junkyard there is
a fire burning. Several men sit around
the fire. Each of the men represents a
different stage of grimy body and shabby dress.
Some of the men are cooking things on the fire. Some are asleep.
The man motions for Hubert to sit
down by the fire.
“I don’t think I caught your name,
young’un.”
“My name’s Robertson, sir. Hubert Robertson.”
“Well, Hubert Robertson, welcome to
the hobo camp.”
` The man takes a can out of his knapsack
and opens it. With his pocketknife he
punctures a hole in the can, and he fits the end of a sharpened stick into the
hole. Then, holding the stick in his
hand, he places the can into the fire.
When the contents of the can start to pop, the man takes it off the
fire. One of the other hobos hands him a
loaf of bread, and the man cuts two slices with his pocketknife. He pours some of the contents of the can onto
one of the slices, and he places the other slice over it. He hands it to Hubert.
“Bean sandwich,” the man says.
“Thank you, sir,” Hubert responds.
“By the way, my name’s Morris.”
“Thank you, Mr. Morris,” Hubert
says.
“Eat up, son, and then you get some
rest. We’re going to have to figure out
how to get you back home.”
“No sir,” Hubert says. “I’m never going back home. I’m going to ride the rails. Ain’t nobody out here to make me work or tell
me what to do.”
“Just what are running away from,
boy?” Morris asks.
No comments:
Post a Comment