Heavenly Hoboes

by Bob Brewer

The Salvation Army Center was made up of two buildings separated by an alleyway. The first building housed the Thrift Store and repair shop while the second contained the dining facilities and offices. It was in this second structure that Captain Hedges was trying out his new plan. Abe passed up the Thrift Store, crossed the alleyway and stopped at the door that Ezra Taft had pointed out to him earlier in the day.

  A resounding, brassy vibrato resembling a form of music escaped the door’s weather-stripping and broke the silence of the empty street. Abe pressed his face against the door-glass, but a window shade had been pulled down making it impossible to see inside. “The sleeping room is upstairs to the right,” he whispered, filling McDougal in on what Ezra had told him. “But we’ve got to get by Peon Titus first. He’s supposed to sign everybody in, but I can’t see if he’s at his desk.”

  McDougal reached past him and tried the doorknob. “It’s not locked.” He pushed the door open so a thin slit of light fell on Abe’s face.

  “That’s far enough,” Abe said, stopping him from opening it further. He put his face against the glass again. He still couldn’t see the assistant’s desk, but the small group of musicians was facing the opposite way and seemed very busy trying to follow their bandleader's directions. Taking a chance, he slowly pushed the door open a little further and popped his head around its edge to get a clear view of Peon's work area. “He’s not there,” he whispered back to McDougal. “Follow me.” He opened the door just enough to squeeze through, put his back to the wall and tiptoed over to the stairwell.

  Before McDougal could get through the opening, Horace slipped past his legs and bounded over to Abe. “Shhh!” Abe warned him as loud as he dared, but it wasn’t enough. Horace sat down and ‘woofed’. “Oh, gees!” Abe gasped, and started up the stairs. “Come on,” he called lightly, and waved McDougal onward.

  A few steps into the dark sleeping room Shorty bumped into Abe. “I’m sorry but I can’t see a thing. Is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” Abe whispered. “Just give your eyes a minute to clear up. Is Horace back there?”

  “I told ya I’m blind as a bat. I don’t feel him, though.”

  “Horace?” Abe called lightly. “Where are you?”

  Horace, taking advantage of his superior night vision, had promptly struck out to find a likely place to sleep. While the men were trying to refocus he was sniffing around in the darkness where the legitimate guests were already tucked in for the night.

  “What are you doing, Horace?” Abe called again when Horace didn’t respond. He turned back to Shorty. “Where is he?”

  McDougal tugged at Abe’s arm. “Is that a light down there?” he asked, and stepped around Abe. A faint glow of bluish light shone from a doorway at the opposite end of the long room. “I’m thinkin’ it must be the loo. Do ya think we ought to ferget about the dog and begin with the cleansin’ right away?”

  “You’re right, Mr. McDougal. He didn’t say we could wait ‘til tomorrow, did He?”

  “No, it’s fer certain He didn’t. His exact words were ‘Right away’ I believe.”

  “That’s what He said,” Abe agreed. “Let’s go while we still can.”

  “Good,” Shorty said, and led the way to the communal bathroom and shower at the far end of the long row of beds.

  The nightlight in the bathroom was so tiny its luminescence was barely perceptible, but not wanting to disturb the other occupants of the room, Abe and Shorty decided to prepare for their showers without turning on the main light. There were no seats other than the toilets for them to sit on so they stood and leaned against the shower wall as they undressed. Abe began by removing his jacket, shirt and under-vest while McDougal started just the opposite by taking off his pants.

  “How many pairs of trousers do you wear at the same time?” Abe asked when McDougal removed the second pair.

  “Three as a normal rule,” Shorty stated. “It keeps ‘em from gettin’ so wrinkled in me bag, don’t ya see?”

  Abe nodded and loosened his belt. Just as he started pulling a leg out of his pants, a horrifying scream broke the tranquility of the sleeping room. “Horace!” Abe yelled.

  McDougal jerked upright from his bent over position where he had been tugging at the leg of his thermal underwear. The knitted fabric around the ankle had gotten hung up on his tennis shoe. He couldn’t stand all the way up, and the out-of-kilter underwear wouldn’t allow his foot to contact the floor. He bent back down to rectify the situation at the same time Abe bent over to grab onto his own pants so he could go out and check on Horace. Their heads collided. Abe fell to the floor and Shorty stumbled backwards and wound up sitting on the toilet.

  From somewhere in the darkened room, Horace barked and the bloodcurdling scream shattered the silence again.

  “Ya’d better be gettin’ yer dog!” Shorty warned.

  “I’m trying to,” Abe said, grasping at his pant-leg. “It’s stuck to my shoe.”

  McDougal shoved his foot back through the cuff of his underwear and tried to give Abe a hand getting the wire from his shoe-sole untangled from his pant-leg. They just about had the problem solved when every light in the sleeping room clicked on.

  “What in the world is going on up here?” the worried voice of Captain Hedges rang out, bringing a halt to all the chaos. Hedges stood at the top of the stairwell, appearing almost as tall as Abe but much huskier in build. His square jaw-line and thin lips were set as if he expected more trouble than was really there.

  “There’s a huge, hairy creature in my bed, Capt’n!” a man cried out. The distressed George was sitting in the middle of his cot with all his dirty clothes on and only his feet under the green army blanket.

  Hedges walked over to the cot. “Now, George,” he soothed. “There’s nothing in your bed except you. Just turn around and take a look.”

  George’s face gave every indication he was going to cry. “I know he’s there, Capt’n. Big and hairy and stinkin’!” He crossed his arms in front as a protection against the monster.

  “Go on, George, turn around. There’s nothing there but your pillow.”

  “And his eyes were this big.” George described the creature by holding his thumbs and fingers in exaggerated circles.

  As Hedges was reaching to pat George on the shoulder, Abe saw Horace’s tail sticking out from under the cot next to George’s. He touched McDougal’s arm and nodded towards the giveaway trail of red hair. “You’ve got to do something,” he begged. “I can’t stand up ‘til I get my shoe loose.”

  Shorty quickly got to his feet, and pulling his long-johns up as he went, he staggered out of the bathroom and down the row of cots, hiccupping and acting very much drunk. “I tell ya, Capt’n, the man’s as honest as the black of night,” he slurred. “I was on me way to the loo, there, when it jumped right out in front of me.” He brought up his fists and struck a Marquis of Queensbury pose. “Oh, it was an awful fight we had. Big as a house and mean as a bull, he was.”

  At the familiar sound of McDougal’s voice, Horace peeked out from his hiding place. McDougal stumbled toward him and threw a foot at his protruding nose. Horace plowed back under the cot, and McDougal continued with his monstrous lie about the harmless old dog. “Ya couldn’t imagine the awfulness of it, Capt’n.”

  Hedges laid an arm over the Irishman’s shoulder. “Why don’t you both just go back to sleep? I’m sure everything will look much brighter in the morning,” he said, in an effort to console them. Then he walked to the stairwell and put his hand up to the light switch.

  “Oh, Capt’n?” McDougal called. “Could ya be leavin’ the light on fer just a wee bit?”

  Hedges nodded. “For a while. Go on back to bed.”

  When the Captain disappeared into the stairwell, McDougal turned to George and helped him lie back down. “Ya ought not to drink so much before goin’ to bed,” he advised the trembling man. “It raises a terrible ruckus
with yer mind.”

  “He stunk something awful,” George said.

  “I know, but it’s gone now. I threw him out of the window there meself.”

  George looked up at the tiny window above his cot and shook his head.

  Seeing that George wasn’t convinced, Shorty added, “If it was still here, wouldn’t ya think it’d be botherin’ everyone else?” He pointed to the other three men who had slept through the entire episode. “Now, why don’t ya just close yer eyes and I’ll take the cot next to ya and keep an eye out fer it.”

  Shorty sat down on the cot next to George’s and watched him for a few minutes to make certain he had fallen back to sleep before he pulled Horace out from under the cot. “What did ya have in mind by doin’ that?” he scolded the old dog. “Come on, now.” He led the cowering Horace to a cot near the bathroom doorway, pushed him onto the mattress and pulled the army blanket up to cover his head. “You stay there,” he ordered in as harsh a voice as he could muster. Horace didn’t move.

  Having satisfied himself that Horace and George would cause no further trouble, Shorty switched off the lights and rejoined Abe who was repairing the shoe he had unwired to clear it of his pant-leg.

  “That was a nice bit of work you did, Mr. McDougal. But you know we shouldn’t be doing that kind of thing anymore.”

  “True enough. But until we get ourselves cleaned up, I’m thinkin’ the Lord might be overlookin’ a few small indiscretions. At any rate, it was yer dog that caused me to do it.”

  Abe didn’t answer. Instead, he finished getting undressed and got into the shower. He turned on the warm water and they lathered up better than either of them had in several weeks.

  With the initial phase of their cleansing done they crawled into bed for the first time in a long time cleaner than the covers they pulled up around themselves. Seconds later the mothering hand of exhaustion lulled them into the same sound sleep Horace had found twenty minutes earlier.

  One of Captain Hedges’ rules during the trial run of his new program was a mandatory six a.m. wake-up call. Not relishing the thought of facing the sometimes rancid smell of the sleeping room at that time of day, Hedges assigned the reveille duty to his assistant, Leroy Titus, Peon as he was better known. Hedges, himself, took the liberty of sleeping in until seven.

  Peon, a sliver of a man with a hawkbill nose and a chin that receded nearly to his Adam’s apple, was running late the following morning. In his haste, he didn’t bother to turn on the lights before going about his chore of rousting out the sleepers. “Wake up, wake up,” he ordered as he moved down the aisle stopping at each cot to jostle the men awake.

  When he reached the cot occupied by Horace he, by necessity, had to go to the head of the bed to shake out the still sleeping guest. All the other men had been tall enough to waken them by jogging a foot, but this little fellow was not that tall. In order to complete his mission of emptying every bed, Peon had to shake the midget awake by grabbing a shoulder.

  Titus moved up to the head of the cot, reached down and with a loud voice and a firm grip, he ordered, “Wake up.”

  The green army blanket, covering Horace from head to tail, rose up like a wire from the ceiling had jerked it. Then Horace’s head shot out from under it, his teeth snapping at whatever got in their way. In an instant the left sleeve of Peon’s pretty gray jacket was hanging in ribbons. His mouth dropped open but the scream of horror never came. He backed up, fell over the cot behind him then scrambled on all fours to the stairwell and out of sight. The petrified Horace tore out of the room right behind him.

  “Did you see it? Did you see it?” George was yelling and flogging the air as Peon and Horace scrambled out of the room. “I told you there was a big, hairy thing in here last night!” He jumped off his cot and ran to the stairwell for a closer look but Horace had already disappeared.

  When George came back shaking his head and scratching his chest through a hole in his shirt the other men were awake, sitting on the edges of their cots holding their heads and staring at the floor. “What was it?” he asked them, but none of the three answered him.

  Shorty helped George sit back down on his cot. “Maybe ya ought to consider takin’ it a bit easier on the booze. If yer not careful, they’ll be haulin’ ya off, lad.”

  Abe nodded his agreement when George looked up at him.

  “Well, it’s time fer us to be runnin’ along,” McDougal said, and laid George down. “You just stay here and think about it fer a while and we’ll be seein’ ya later.”

  With the counseling session over, Abe and Shorty gathered up their belongings and went downstairs for breakfast.

  Unlike at the Mission, where a twenty-minute sermon delayed every meal, Captain Hedges normally delivered a simple blessing and the food was served. But, because of the illegitimate entries and the incident involving Horace, this was not a run-of-the-mill day.

  Peon was standing at the right of Captain Hedges with his shredded jacket still on. He was looking rather pale when the master of the house began to speak. “It seems we had an unregistered, unwelcome guest in our midst last night,” Hedges began. “In fact, we had actually three unregistered guests.” He stopped and pointed at Abe and Shorty. “I’d like to see you two gentlemen immediately after breakfast." He took a sip of water, glanced at Peon, then let out a deep breath. “Let it suffice to say that from now on we’ll be policing and enforcing the house rules with much greater precaution. Now, let us pray.”

  Abe and Shorty ate their breakfasts in silence and each of them filled a pocket with scraps before leaving the table to face whatever punishment the Captain had in store for them. At the door to Hedges’ office they removed their hats, and Abe knocked lightly.

  “Come in,” Hedges’ voice carried through the paneling of the door. Abe opened it.

  Hedges was sitting at a desk behind a tall stack of papers. He laid the sheet he was reading aside, took off his glasses and looked up at the pitiful sight of the two bedraggled men. One rather tall, one definitely short, both with filthy clothes on and both looking extremely guilty. “Come in, gentlemen,” he asked rather than ordered.

  Shoulder to elbow, Abe and McDougal entered the room in unison. They stopped in front of the desk and lowered their eyes.

  Hedges put his pencil down. “About this secretive entrance in the middle of the night,” he started.

  Abe glanced up. “I want to apologize for that, Captain Hedges,” he started but McDougal interrupted him.

  “Well, ya see,” the little man explained, “we noticed you was pretty involved with the orchestra and all.”

  Hedges nodded. “That’s right, I was, wasn’t I?”

  “You were,” said Abe.

  “Well,” Hedges said with a sigh. “I guess I’ll have to watch my door a little better in the future. But…” he started to say something else then changed his mind. “That’ll be all, gentlemen,” he finished.

  McDougal breathed out a deep sigh and started to turn, but Abe stopped him. “Captain Hedges?” Abe asked, and Hedges acknowledged him. “About your sign, Mr. McDougal and I would like to work for you if you have something we could do. We’d like to clean ourselves up and change our ways like your sign says.”

  Hedges rested his reading glasses on the desk and put on a pair with extremely thick lenses. “I don’t know,” he said after a moment spent studying them.

  “It wouldn’t have to be anything permanent ya understand,” McDougal said. “Just a little somethin’ to tide us over, ya see?”

  “I see,” the Captain said with a smile. “And what kind of wages would you be willing to accept?”

  “Oh, three, four…” Shorty started, but Abe shut him up with a quick jab in the ribs.

  “Actually, Captain, what we had in mind was getting some decent clothes to wear.”

  “And maybe just a wee bit of cash to sort of cover the necessities,” McDougal added.

  Captain Hedges
’ expression changed to one of doubt. “You mean you’re out of money and out of drink?” he said in a somber tone.

  “Oh, no, Capt’n.” McDougal said. “We’ve sworn off the stuff.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s the truth, Captain,” said Abe. “You see, me and Mr. McDougal were at this celebra…” He stopped short when Shorty jabbed him this time and gave him a look that said ‘shut up’. But, Hedges was curious now. He asked Abe to go on.

  “Well,” Abe confessed. “We made a promise, sort of, between those of us at the celebration that we wouldn’t drink anymore.”

  “And I can guarantee ya that we’ll be keepin’ the promise,” McDougal said.

  Captain Hedges squeezed his lips together in thought. “I don’t know whether to believe you or not,” he said. “But I’m tempted to give you a chance.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Abe said. “We won’t let you down.”

  “Just don’t let yourselves down,” Hedges said. “Okay, you’ve got the jobs. Go out and tell Leroy to come in, would you?”

  Abe gave him a puzzled look. “Tell who?”

  “Leroy,” Hedges repeated. “Ah, er, Peon.”

  “Oh,” Abe replied, and nodded. “We’ll send him right in. Thank you, Captain.”

  Hedges smiled at them. “You can thank me by keeping your word.”

  “We will,” McDougal said, and they marched out to find Peon.

  “Ya almost spilt the beans to the Capt’n in there,” McDougal said when they sat down at a table to wait for Peon to come out of Hedge’s office.

  “I thought he might believe us,” Abe answered. “Maybe if we’d come here first instead of going to Brother Elkins we’d know what to do now.”

  Shorty ran his fingers over the side of his face. “Ya might be right, ya know. The Capt’n does seem to be an understandin’ sort. Maybe we oughtta just come right out and tell him the whole story.”

  Abe shrugged. “Maybe we should get finished with the cleaning up first. You know, get the clothes and everything.”

  A brightness shone in the Irishman’s eyes. “Yer right again, Mr. Douglas. After we get our new clothes and all, we can be askin’ the Lord sort of directly what we oughtta be doin’.” He paused and took out his snap purse to look inside it.

  “What are you thinking of doing?” Abe puzzled.

  “I was just wonderin’ if we had enough money left to buy the clothes instead of havin’ to work fer ‘em. But we ain’t, unless ya’ve got some put away yerself.”

  Abe shook his head. “I’ve got a few dollars.”

  “If ya recall,” McDougal said, tapping the purse. “I could be getting’ us what we’re needin’ in a hurry. That beautiful stick is probably still over at Carson’s place.”

  “Shorty!” Abe shouted before he realized the name he had used. “Oh, gees, I’m sorry, Mr. McDougal. I don’t know why I called you that. I’m really sorry.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Douglas,” McDougal said, shrugging it off. “I know ya meant it in a friendly way.”

  “It’s just that you can’t do that anymore. I think we’d better take whatever job the Captain has and earn the money to buy them.”

  Shorty shoved his purse back under his collar. “I suppose that’d be best,” he admitted halfheartedly. “I’m just hopin’ the work’s not too tryin’.”

  “I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Abe said, and nodded in the direction of Hedges’ office.

  Leroy was walking towards them, his hawkbill nose in the air, his chicken lips tightly closed. He had cut both sleeves of his pretty jacket off at the elbows and he didn’t look too happy about it. “Follow me,” he said flatly when he reached the table. “You’ll be working in the warehouse.”

  Abe and Shorty followed his lead as he took them across the alleyway and through the garage-type doors into the receiving room of the Thrift Store. Bypassing the stacks of donated furniture and household items Titus directed them to a huge mound of clothing. “This is your work station,” he said with as much authority as he could muster. “You go through these items and separate them. Ladies over here, men’s over there, boys over there, girls over there, and babies over here. Got it?”

  “Oh, me everlovin’ mother,” McDougal moaned.

  “Will some of the other guys be helping us?” Abe asked.

  “Nope,” Titus answered with a beaming smile that brought his chin up into an almost normal place. “You two are the first ones in the new program, and there’s no volunteers scheduled today. So, it’s all yours. Ladies over here, men’s over there…”

  “We’ve got it,” said Abe, cutting him off in mid-sentence.

  “Well,” Peon huffed. He straightened what was left of his jacket. “I’ll be back later to check on you,” he said, and swaggered off to tend to his other duties. At the door he turned. “By the way, Captain Hedges said to tell you that…that…” he stammered, searching for the right word. “That beast of yours doesn’t have any tags.”

  Horace had crouched out of sight near the garage door to wait for the dreaded Peon to leave. When Titus did depart, the old dog came slinking in and stopped behind a bank of mattresses. He sat there and whimpered to attract some attention.

  Abe had walked around to the far side of the huge pile of clothing to see how big it actually was, and McDougal had bent over to retie the long strings of his tennis shoes. Neither of them saw the dog.

  When the men took no notice of him he crept a bit closer and ‘woofed’.

  “Well, top of the mornin’ to ya, me boy,” McDougal said with a chuckle as he remembered the fiasco in the sleeping room. “I was thinkin’ ya’d left the country.”

  Horace lifted his muzzle and sniffed the aroma emanating from McDougal’s pocket. He broke into his body wagging show of friendliness and wriggled closer.

  “Would ya be interested in a fine new wardrobe,” Shorty jested as he held up a purple and orange colored sweater. “Or perhaps it’s a nightie that’d be strikin’ yer fancy,” he said, dropping the sweater and picking up a piece of ladies’ lingerie.

  “It’s probably your coat pocket he’s interested in,” Abe said as he walked back around the pile. He dug into his own pocket and took out the breakfast scraps of toast and bacon. “Is this what you want, Horace?” He held the handful of breakfast out to the old dog.

  Horace leapt over the edge of the pile, and Abe dropped the food. The old dog snapped most of it up before it hit the floor, then turned quickly to the Irishman and ‘woofed’ again. McDougal quickly grabbed the morsels out of his own pocket and threw them on the floor. “George may not have been all that wrong about him,” he said, jumping backwards to get out of Horace’s way as the starving dog charged at the scattering bits of toast.

  Horace flashed around the floor like a vacuum cleaner until he was satisfied that he had routed out the last tiny piece. Then he looked up at McDougal and curled his lips into a grin.

  “You’d better be good to him. Mr. McDougal,” Abe joked. “Just look at the size of those teeth.”

  McDougal backed up a bit more. “Ya know, I’m thinkin’ he’s a fine dog, Mr. Douglas.” He bent over and picked up a garment. “Now was that ladies stuff over here, or over there?” he asked reluctantly.

  CHAPTER 10