Two Roads

by Joseph Bruchac

  PART 3

  A DIFFERENT ROAD

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ONE HAND ON THE RAIL

  It’s ten miles by road to the rail yard at the edge of town. But only seven cutting across the prairie as we’ve done. We haven’t been at full gallop all the way, but still moving along at a good clip, Dakota’s breathing easy and relaxed beneath me.

  I slow him to a walk as we approach the depot. His long, tireless strides brought us here even quicker than I’d expected, quick enough to outdistance any pursuit, assuming anyone saw me going. Which is not likely. It’s so early, just before dawn, that no one other than us is stirring. The streets are empty. I look up at the station clock.

  If I have remembered the schedule right, there’ll be a freight train here soon. It’s not a passenger stop, but it has a mail car. So it will be slowing down to a near halt to drop off one mailbag and grab the other waiting on the platform.

  I tie Dakota’s reins to the hitching post near the watering trough in front of the livery stable. It’s where Pop and I brought him and the other horses back in early April. So much has happened since then. Thinking about it all just about makes my head spin. But there’s no time for cogitating now. I’ve a train to catch.

  I run my hands along the big horse’s sides, pat him a couple of times. He’s not lathered up from his run. Seven miles is nothing for a cavalry mount. He should be okay without being rubbed down. He lowers his head down so I can stroke his forehead.

  “Good boy,” I say.

  I push myself away from him and shift the pack on my shoulder.

  Dakota is dipping his head to drink from the trough.

  You’ll be okay. They’ll bring you back to the school. Don’t know if I’ll see you again. But I’ll be remembering you.

  I haven’t yet heard a train whistle, but from the position of the hands on the station clock the freight I’m counting on should be here soon. I bend to place my left hand on the nearest iron rail, feel the vibration of the metal.

  Yes!

  I walk down along the tracks, staying low to keep from being seen. I almost trip over a pile of tools, left by some careless workmen—a five-foot-long claw bar, a track chisel, and a wrench. A hundred yards on, I stop, position myself in the brush at just the right place to make the run alongside the train and swing myself up onto a freight car before it picks up too much speed.

  The screech of the train whistle cuts through the still dawn air. So loud it would make most men jump, but not an experienced knight of the road like me. I can’t quite see the train yet, but its smoke is visible, rising high in the blue morning sky. The clacking of its wheels is getting louder and louder, so loud as it comes into sight that almost nothing else can be heard.

  The freight’s almost reached me. I turn and start to run. The engine passes me, its driver looking straight ahead. I let the coal car pass, then another freight car.

  My feet are pounding on the loose stones along the track. Now! I reach my left arm—the one closest to the train—to grab the ladder side rail. My right hand takes firm hold of the rail parallel to it and I lift my feet.

  I climb up three rungs, fast as a squirrel scooting up an oak tree.

  I’m on my way.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  WOUNDS

  I don’t look back as the train picks up speed. I make my way across the top of the car, then swing down through the open door of the boxcar. As my feet hit a slippery spot on the floor, I slip backward. A nail sticking out of the wall catches my shirt and rips it. But it doesn’t stop my stumble. Arms flailing, I’m about to fall out through the open door.

  “Watch it, young fella!” A strong hand with long, slender fingers has just wrapped around my wrist and pulled me back.

  I look up into the face of the tall person who’s just saved me. It’s a dirty face, but a pleasant one. It’s framed by long gray hair topped with a bowler hat.

  “Thank you, sir,” I say, surprised at how weak and cracked my own voice sounds.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Huh?”

  “Ma’am, young fella.” The middle-aged woman I took for a man doesn’t let go of my wrist. She flicks the cigar she was smoking out the door, then reaches her right arm forward to grasp my shoulder. “Come on over here.”

  She guides me to a corner where a bedroll and a few other things, including a large bag have been set up behind a row of packing crates. I smell food cooking and in the first light of dawn coming in through the door I notice a little camp stove set up with a pot of stew atop it.

  “Take a seat,” she says in a raspy voice, pointing at a crate. “Good thing I was just having me a smoke, otherwise you might have just tumbled head over teakettle out that door, sonny.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I reply.

  I sit on the small crate with a cloth over it the woman has set up as a stool. I’ve never met her before, but I’m not all that surprised to find myself in the presence of a woman hobo. There are more than a few women riding the rails in these hard times, though ours is largely a male society.

  “Gale,” she says.

  “Huh?” I’m slow on the uptake because it’s so early.

  “That’s my moniker, sonny. Gale, like the wind. And in whose presence do I now find myself?”

  “Cal,” I reply.

  “Hmmm,” she says, half to herself. Then she dishes out a plateful of mush and hands it to me. As I eat I take note of what’s in that half open bag. There’s bandages and a bottle of Witch Hazel in the top. I realize that I’m in the presence of an Angel of Mercy. A hobo doctor.

  Pop told me about them. Knights of the road who make it their mission to care for other hoboes. Most are men, some of them former physicians. What they do is out of the kindness of their heart. After having lost everything material, they’ve still kept and shared their skills. Though I am not going to ask her, I would bet this gray-haired woman knight named Gale has a story that is an interesting one.

  “Your grub okay?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Fine,” she rasps. “And you’re a polite one, too, ain’t you, Cal?”

  I nod.

  “And about as talkative as a clam, eh? So where you headed?”

  “D.C.,” I reply.

  She reaches out to grasp the torn fabric of my shirt.

  “Peel that off,” she says as she turns to push aside the bandages to root deeper into that bag.

  “Here, this’ll fit you.”

  She hands me a shirt she’s just extricated from its depths. It smells a little musty, but as I put it on, I find that it fits pretty good.

  “Good,” she says, eyeing me up and down. “So what’s in D.C. for you, Cal? Going to visit old evil Hoover in his pretty White House?”

  “My pop,” I say. “He’s with the Bonus Army.”

  Gale settles back onto the floor. “More power to him and them as is like him in the B.E.F.,” she says. “But it is going to be getting right hot down there, you know? And I do not mean the tempachur. Been readin’ the papers?”

  “Some,” I reply.

  Gale nods. “Comin’ to a head now,” she says. “Old evil Hoover and that general of his—MacArthur is his name—they are seeing Reds everywhere. When mostly it is just honest men who served asking for their due. Thousands of vets in and around the city. But not only that. There’s women and children as well. Whole families. Most in the big camp cross the Potomac at Anacostia.”

  She snorts a laugh. “You ought to see how some is living there. Some in boxes and barrels. One fella is even sleeping in a coffin with a big sign on it reading MY HOME IN WASHINGTON IS A BURIAL CASE. Everyone as peaceful as can be, but all of ’em asking for that bonus to be paid.”

  Gale shakes her head. “Powers that be are not tak
ing kindly to all those former doughboys setting up camp so close to the White House. There’s close to two thousand in the old Armory building alone on Pennsylvania Avenue. Most of them are boys of the Sixth who served in France. Camp Glassford they call it, right within sight of the Capitol. Which makes Treasury Secretary Mellon and all his rich cronies right unhappy. They been planning to build a whole new Federal triangle there where the vets been billeted.”

  I’m listening with my mouth open. This gray-haired generous lady is like a walking fount of information. I’ve learned more from her in ten minutes about the Bonus Army than I’ve gotten from the last two months of reading papers and listening to the radio. And she’s not done yet!

  Gale looks out the door of the car at the morning prairie rushing backward, the sun turning the grass gold.

  “For a while it looked good, you know. House passed the bonus bill. Even though old evil Hoover squawked like a wet hen about it. But the Senate sneaked out of town without even voting on it. And now that Congress is not in session, Hoover and his pet generals figure it is past time to get the BEF cleared out of the city. Next thing you know, it’s martial law and blood being shed. You be careful, young Cal! You might just be walking into a war zone.”

  I shake my head. Despite the dream I had at Challagi where I saw Pop in mortal danger, it’s hard for me to believe.

  How could American soldiers be called upon to attack veterans?

  “Were you there?” I ask.

  Gale nods. “I’d be there still. Except I got word my daughter’s sick. Which is why I am on this freight going to Kansas City. Fell asleep and missed my connection. So I am backtracking. Lucky for you, eh, Cal?”

  I nod. Lucky for me for sure.

  “Now, you just sit back and rest while old Gale fills you in on what to expect when you get to this land’s biggest Hooverville.”

  I do just that, listening for an hour or more until Gale’s voice and the rhythm of the train and the exhaustion I can’t fight any longer conspire to make me drift off.

  The last thing I hear before I fall into an exhausted sleep is Gale’s voice.

  “I’ll be changing lines at the next stop. But you just stay in this car. And may the road be good to you.”

  When I wake up, the train has stopped. We’re at the Kansas City rail yard. Gale and her belongings are gone. Nothing around me but empty boxes. I hear voices. Railroad bulls checking the cars. I slip inside one of the wooden boxes and wait.

  The door is slid open a few feet and a ray of light shines in.

  “Nobody here,” a gravelly voice says from outside.

  “Not like last month when we had them vets filling every car,” another deeper voice answers. Then the door is rolled shut again.

  The scrunch of the bulls’ feet on the gravel of the roadbed fades away. The car jolts as the train starts moving again. I crawl out of the box and sit in front of the door. We’re passing houses, farms, and fields, rolling alongside a river.

  But I’m hardly aware of that. I’m seeing the scenes Gale described. All those men and their families in those camps. My father’s there among them. Suddenly there’s fire everywhere. People are screaming. “Tanks! Tanks are coming.”

  I’m hearing the rumble of heavy metal treads, the thudding of boots, the cracking of rifles. I’m seeing and smelling blood flowing in the streets.

  I open my eyes. I’m back in the car, but that vision is still with me. And I know it’s going to keep coming back every time I close my eyes until I can reach my father’s side.

  July 27th.

  I’ve been traveling for two days. After Kansas City I spent the night near a hobo jungle at the edge of St. Louis. I looked in at the camp from the shadows without seeing anyone Pop and I knew. Being alone and just a kid, I figured I would be safer on my own. Not every hobo lives up to the ethical code. Without Pop to protect me I might get robbed of what little I have or worse. I slipped back into the woods and set up a cold camp.

  And now this train on the Baltimore and Ohio line is taking me toward my final destination. I am hoping I’ll get there in time.

  Although I’m focused on what lies ahead of me—on finding Pop and making sure he is safe—I’ve had time alone for the first time since arriving at Challagi. Now that I’ve had time to think, I realize something. I’ve left behind the best friends I’ve ever had. In point of fact, aside from Pop, the only real friends I’ve ever had.

  Before going to Challagi I thought I knew who I was. I thought I knew what road I was on. But now I know there’s another road besides riding the rails and dreaming about having a farm again with Pop. Now there’s the road of my being an Indian, a road I’m going to be traveling for the rest of my life whether I’m with Pop or not.

  Until I got to Challagi, it was always just Pop and me. During the time I was in my old school there were kids I’d been friendly with. But none of them were like Possum or Little Coon or Deacon. No one I could really rely on other than my father. No one I could tell my dreams to. No one I’d trust with my life.

  Thinking of them and the things we’ve done together brings a smile to my face. Does that mean I’m missing Challagi? That thought confuses me. I’m sure as shooting not missing most of the teachers, or the stupid rules, or the backbreaking work they had us do for pennies a day, or the dumb marching, or the way they treat us.

  But I am missing our Creek gang. I belonged with them in a way I never belonged before. I miss the freedom of the woods and fields, the joking, the stomp dancing. I miss having learned I’m not just Indian. I’m Creek. Even though I’ve only known about it for a short time it’s like I’ve found a part of myself that was always there, but just hidden. I’m seeing myself—and Pop—in a different light. It’s kind of like I’ve been growing up without ever having looked into a mirror and recognizing myself.

  What will I do when I find Pop? And where will we go after that? What road will we be on?

  I shake my head. Right now it’s my turn to take care of him. All I should think about is finding him. Soon.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  TANKS ON PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE

  Washington. It took me two more days on the road to get here.

  Part of me is in awe of the crowds of people. Every sort of person you could imagine seems to be here. People in suits and ties, women in nice dresses, others just in casual clothes or their shirtsleeves. There are mothers with baby carriages, young couples arm in arm, shoppers with their arms full of packages. It’s a busy place.

  Another part of me is in even greater awe of the mammoth buildings that make you feel small. Like the huge spike of the Washington Monument where I stood for a moment craning my neck to look up to its top. Or the Treasury Building with its huge columns next to me here where Pennsylvania Avenue turns the corner.

  Right now I’m looking at the White House. There’re police cars all around it and traffic has been cut off. Patrolmen in tall black boots are everywhere. There are chains on the gates to the marble building set back behind broad, neatly mowed lawns.

  “Old Hoover’s in there,” a familiar voice says from behind me. “Locked himself up safe from all us Bonusers.”

  I turn to look up at the dark, handsome face of Corporal Esom Dart, the man Pop and I helped to escape the sheriff months ago at the hobo camp. I can’t stop a big grin from coming to my face. What luck! It’s not just that I’m glad to see that he’s okay. It’s also that I’ll bet he knows where I can find Pop. He’s a sight for sore eyes.

  He’s in full army uniform, the Croix de Guerre and half a dozen other medals pinned on his chest. There’s also a wet bandanna around his neck. Water’s dripping from it onto his jacket. A canteen hangs on his belt.

  “Still got that medal I left you, pal?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, patting my shirt pocket with my left hand as I hold out my right to take his.


  “So,” Corporal Dart says, shaking my hand, “what you doing here in this powder keg about to blow?”

  “Pop,” I say. “I gotta find him.”

  Esom Dart nods. “Come looking for your father? Not staying safe at that school where he left you?”

  I shake my head.

  Corporal Dart’s serious face breaks into a smile and he laughs out loud. “Pal, you never do waste a word, do you?”

  “Guess not,” I reply, smiling back at him.

  “Well,” the corporal says, “I left your father not an hour ago. I was out on recon and need to report back. Let’s go.”

  “What’s happening?” I ask as we turn away from Hoover’s fortress toward the Capitol Building.

  “Too much to tell, pal.”

  We push our way along Pennsylvania Avenue. Thousands of civilians fill the sidewalks here. Police are stationed in the street, keeping folks from crossing to the other side occupied by veterans and their families. Seeing all those grim-looking cops puts a knot in my stomach.

  “Police came an hour ago,” Corporal Dart says. “Chief Glassford on his motorcycle, warning everyone troops were coming. Told us Bonusers to leave. But how can a man go back to his home when he don’t have any home to go to?”

  Some of the men on the other side are holding signs. BONUS NOW. MY CHILDREN ARE STARVING. One man’s head is wrapped with a white cloth that’s stained with blood. They’re white, but return the salute Corporal Dart gives them.

  “Camp Glassford men,” Corporal Dart says. “They were there this morning when the police tried to evict them. Two got shot dead. Some left and went across the river. That’s where most of us, like your Pop and me, have set up our billets. Over the Anacostia River drawbridge to Camp Butler. There’s seven thousand vets and about six hundred women and children there. Black and white all together. Streets laid out, sanitation in place, regular patrols to keep order.”

  We’re passing another group of men, both Negro and white, standing on the opposite sidewalk singing.