The Hope Chest

by Karen Schwabach

  “I'm afraid Miss Mayhew isn't here,” said Mr. Martin. “She isn't in New York, actually.”

  Violet felt as if she'd just been punched in the stomach. That Chloe wouldn't be in New York was a possibility that hadn't occurred to her.

  “But I have letters,” she protested, starting to reach for them and then remembering that they were in her bloomers, not really a place you could reach for in a public parlor. “I thought she lived here.” She could feel tears starting in her eyes and fought valiantly to keep them from spilling out. A lady never cried in public. She felt someone touch her and looked with surprise to see Myrtle's hand resting on her arm.

  Mr. Martin leaned forward, looking concerned. “I'm sure your sister is in excellent health, Miss Mayhew; she's simply not in New York. Please don't worry.”

  Violet tried to smile to reassure him and accidentally jarred one of the tears loose. It trickled down beside her nose.

  “She went to Washington, D.C., over a year ago to work with the National Woman's Party on the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. She drove off in that alarming machine of hers.” He smiled fondly. “Chlo—Miss Mayhew said that she loved nursing but that winning the vote for women was more important right now.”

  Violet had managed to get control of her tears. “Chloe's been a suffragist ever since she was in high school,” she said. “Even then she worked on petitions and things.”

  “Well, it's a very worthwhile cause,” said Mr. Martin.

  Violet looked at him, surprised. “You think so?”

  “Of course. Denying equal suffrage to women is a terrible injustice.”

  Violet was astonished. She had heard people say this before—Chloe chief among them—but she'd never heard a man say it. She hadn't really thought a man could want votes for women. Father certainly didn't. And none of the men from the bank that he invited for dinner, Mr. Russell and Mr. Rice and Mr. All-the-rest-of-them, did. As for Stephen—she hadn't really known Stephen that well; he'd been away since she was little, first at Cornell University and then at the War. For the last three years he hadn't voiced any opinions, even though Father had made Mother dress him up so he could take him to the polls to vote on Election Day just the same.

  “My father says woman suffrage is a damn-fool crazy idea,” Violet blurted, then clapped her hand to her mouth. “I beg your pardon.”

  Mr. Martin smiled. “Every great advance in human society started out as a damn-fool crazy idea.”

  “Er, yes,” said Violet, feeling the conversation was getting off track.

  Myrtle apparently thought so too, because she said, “Do you have an address for Miss Mayhew in Washington, sir?”

  “An address? Now wait a minute.…” Mr. Martin put his book down. “Are you in New York with your parents, Miss Mayhew? And what about you, Miss Davies? Where have you sprung from, and don't they miss you there?”

  Violet and Myrtle glanced at each other, alarmed. Mr. Martin had been speaking so normally that Violet, at least, had forgotten that he was an adult and likely to be interested in these sorts of details. She was trying to think of an evasive answer to this while still not looking at Mr. Martin's missing fingers or his scar when Myrtle said, “She just wants an address to write to, I think, Mr. Martin.”

  Mr. Martin still looked suspicious, so Violet hastily agreed. “Yes, just to write to. My father and mother don't … That is, they and Chloe had an argument.…”

  Mr. Martin frowned. “And you, Miss Davies?”

  The door opened inward halfway and a woman's voice called, “Theo! Come help me get these boys out of the chimney.”

  “Excuse me,” said Mr. Martin, standing up again. “I'll just be a minute. Please wait right here.”

  As soon as he had left the room, Violet said, “We'd better go,” at exactly the same moment that Myrtle whispered, “Let's get out of here.”

  Violet smiled in spite of her anxiety. She and Flossie used to say the same thing at the same time too. She looked out into the hallway. There was no sign of Mr. Martin or anyone else. They rushed out the front door, careful not to slam it behind them.

  When they were out in the street again, Myrtle said, “That Mr. Martin was going to trot me over to the institute, and then put you on the first train back to Pennsylvania. What are you gonna do now? Should we go to Washington to find your sister?”

  Violet had been thinking just that, though she had no idea how to get there. “Don't you have to go back to your training institute?”

  “I told you. I try not to spend too much time there.”

  “But don't they want you there?” Violet still wasn't sure exactly what a girls' training institute was, but if it was anything like a school, they would.

  “Yes,” said Myrtle unconcernedly. “Do you have enough money for the train to D.C.?”

  “I don't think so,” said Violet. “How far is it?”

  “A long way,” said Myrtle. “More than two hundred miles.”

  Violet didn't have to do the math. At two cents a mile, she did not have enough money. “How will I get there?”

  “We'll find a way,” said Myrtle. “Let's go to the train station and see what we can figure out.”

  “But what about your school?” Violet persisted. She couldn't believe Myrtle was just going to wander away.

  “It isn't a school,” said Myrtle testily. “It's a training institute. A school would be a place where you learned stuff from books so that you could do something important in the world. My mama sent me to a school when she was alive. She didn't want me to go to someplace where we study ironing and dusting and knowing our place. Mama didn't mean for me to know my place.”

  Myrtle had started out this speech sounding cranky, but at the end there was a dangerous squeak in her voice, and Violet was afraid she was going to start crying. She never knew what to do when people started crying. Fortunately, Myrtle didn't.

  “Come on,” Myrtle said. “Let's go to the train station.”

  Hobie and the Brakeman

  THEY WOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN TO WASH-ington if Hobie the Hobo hadn't shown them how to frisk a head-end blind. He was about Violet's age, she was sure. He wore knee britches and the same sort of ankle-high black boots that Myrtle and Violet had, but his face wore a studied expression of world-weariness that made him look at least forty. He had a plug of tobacco fixed firmly in his left cheek and talked around it in fluent hobo slang.

  “You Angelinas lookin' to catch a blind?” he said as Violet and Myrtle stood on the platform in Penn Station, wondering what their chances were of boarding a train without tickets and not being caught.

  “What?” said Myrtle.

  “Are you blind baggage?” he said.

  “Er, I don't think so,” said Violet firmly, in an attempt to end the conversation. Hobie looked exactly like the Wrong Sort of People that her mother was always talking about.

  “Too bad. You should be, if you want to make the miles. Hopping the freights is for rubes,” said the boy. “Too slow—even if you get on a five-hundred-miler, who wants to spend all their time on the drag line? And you can get your legs sliced off riding the rods. You gotta ride the blinds, you wanna make any miles.”

  Violet moved away, but to her distress, Myrtle was looking at the boy with interest. “Can you get us onto a train?” Myrtle said.

  “Thought you'd never ask, Angelina. Name's Hobie. Hobie the Hobo.” He extended his hand.

  Myrtle shook it. Then he stuck his hand at Violet. She wanted nothing to do with this boy, but she was too polite not to take his hand and shake it. His hand felt rough and callused.

  “A lot of the brothers and sisters of the road won't come into the Big Burg,” Hobie said. “Too many bulls in New York. But it ain't hard if you stay away from the freight yards and know how to catch a blind.”

  “We need to get to Washington,” said Myrtle. “Can you show us how?”

  “Washington.” Hobie swept his hair back from his forehead and rocked back on his heels, thinking. “Gonn
a catch the Bum's Own, then the Ma and Pa. Those are railroads,” he added. “Gonna change in Philly and Baltimore. Stay off the hot boxes unless you can catch a hot-shot.… Aw, you Angelinas don't know anything about riding the rails, do you?”

  “No, nothing,” said Myrtle.

  But it soon became clear that Hobie knew everything, at least about hoboing, and he intended to tell it to them. As he talked, Violet drew Myrtle aside and tried to whisper that they needed to lose Hobie, quickly.

  Myrtle wouldn't even let her start. “He's going to help us,” she said, shrugging Violet away.

  Violet was annoyed. She didn't want to be thought a coward. She liked that Myrtle was a person who was willing to just take off and do something, like leave her school—institute—and go to Washington. It reminded her a little of Flossie, who was always ready to try something new without a whole lot of discussion and worrying and planning. Violet wondered if she'd changed so much since Flossie's death that she'd become a worrier and fraidy-cat that Flossie wouldn't even like anymore. It was a horrible thought.

  She listened to what Hobie was telling them.

  To be blind baggage meant riding in the blind spot between the engine and the baggage car of a passenger train. The trick was to duck in just after the highball—the two short blasts on the whistle that meant that the train was about to leave—and after the conductors had all stepped onto the train.

  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?”

&nbs
p; “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.