A Tyranny of Petticoats (32 page)

WHEN THERE’S FOOD AROUND, A hobo jungle is like a high-school wiener roast — everybody huddled into groups, laughing and eating and talking about each other. Pretending the real world isn’t out there, just beyond the tree line and across the tracks.

This world feels as small as my little Nebraska town did, but in this ragged piece of shade on the banks of the Columbia River, I am a misfit.

I’m not the youngest — there’s a handful of teenage boys by the fire, and I’ve got Billy waiting for me way back near a thicket of huckleberries — but I am the only girl. To look at me, none would call me feminine, but I can feel the men watch as I pass.

I saw two of them at the orchard this morning. They got into a dustup because only ten pickers were hired and there were thirty of us. They’re all friends now, though, bolstered by alcohol squeezed from Sterno cooking gel.

There’s no work here and I’ve got nothing to add to the pot of mulligan stew — not even an onion — so I need to get Billy and get out. I don’t want to be around when the canned heat fuels more than just loud voices and swagger.

I don’t see Billy or his bindle, and worry rises in my throat, dry as the dust bowl winds. Billy’s just a kid and as annoying as all get-out, but we stick together.

There’s someone else back by the huckleberry thicket, though. I know him for a hoaxter as soon as I spot him, sitting on a fallen tree with his legs stretched out, deliberately nonchalant. His pants are pressed, and though his shirt’s unbuttoned at the collar, it’s clean. He’s got a hat pulled low on his forehead and the thinnest mistake of a mustache I’ve ever seen.

He thinks he’s Clark Gable in
It Happened One Night.

A flash of blue and brown catches my eye before Billy catches me right in my midsection and knocks me to the dirt.

“Where’ve you been?” he cries. “I’ve been waiting!”

I bite back an uncharitable reply and hug him quick till I see Gable watching. Then I push Billy off. He’s little, but he’s twelve. When I was twelve, I was already taking care of my three sisters, before they got scattered to relatives.

He can’t replace them.

“I got something,” he says, his dirty, blond hair flopping right into his eyes.

“You need a haircut.”

He pulls it back with one hand so I can see his baby blues and the smear of dirt across his forehead. “I like it this way.” He sets his chin like Celia used to at home.

I shrug and stagger to my feet, bone weary from hard traveling.

Billy coughs but grins around it. He’s the reason we’re heading west, toward the ocean. Toward Seattle. Hopefully toward work. Away from the dust that brings on his asthma.

Billy unwraps his bindle carefully, like what he’s got there is precious.

And it is. It’s a feast. Bread and apples and cheese and something that looks suspiciously like —

“Roast beef,” Billy says proudly.

My mouth waters.

We can’t eat it here. Much as I’d like to add to the mulligan, this beef would cause a riot. I glance over my shoulder. No one’s looking — not even Gable. I wrap the food quickly and stuff it back into the bindle.

“How did you ever do it?” I whisper. The men at the orchard said times were hard. No work. No money. No food.

“I went into town just like you said,” he rattles. I try to quiet him, but there’s no hushing Billy once he starts talking. “I stood on a street corner. There’s folks everywhere. And just like you said, when I saw a lady wearing gloves, I sat down on the curb and I put my head in my hands and I told her the story you said to tell.”

“It’s your story, Billy.” I look over at Gable again. He’s studying his fingernails.

“The way you tell it is better.” Billy puts on a sad, mewling voice that makes him sound younger.
“We lost our farm in . . .”—
he hesitates —
“foreclosure, and my pop just up and left. He fought in the War and thought he could get his bonus and find some work and feed us all, but he never came back from Washington.”

I nod. He’s doing pretty good. Laying it on a little thick.

“So I came out to find work!” he crows.

I rub his head, making the hair flop back into his eyes, and he grins up at me like I’m better than roast beef, and for a second things don’t seem so hard. Then someone starts clapping.

I spin around, keeping Billy and his treasure behind me.

Gable stands up, all knobs and limbs, one side of his mouth turned up and his hat still riding low, and he’s slapping his hands together like he’s not applauding but condemning.

“Excellent performance.” He touches his fingers to his hat but doesn’t tip it. Doesn’t remove it.

He watches me to see if it stings that he didn’t acknowledge me as a lady. I don’t let him see that it does.

I left home in skirts and saddle oxfords but quickly learned that you can’t jump a moving train with all that fabric flapping about or keep your feet warm in handsome shoes. Now I wear pilfered dungarees and a dead boy’s boots.

Billy huddles behind me, hands on my waist, forehead dug deep into the center of my back. He tries to hide it, but Billy cries at night, trying to cuddle close because I’m quiet and soft and have never once given him a backhand smack like some of the men do. Like he’s some rangy cur trying to snatch food from under their noses.

I can’t let him get close and I can’t let him cuddle, so I step away. Just because I’ve got soft curves doesn’t mean I can get soft.

“It wasn’t a show.” I don’t let my gaze waver from Gable’s.

“Oh, yes, it was,” he says with a foxy smile.

I feel utterly exposed. I don’t look to see if the drunks with the greasy beards and hands stained pink with Sterno are watching us.

“It’s the truth!” Billy says. “My pop was in the army. He fought in the War. And old Hoover would’ve just let him starve.”

When Billy sticks up for himself, he sounds like me. Like he’s sixteen and already weary of the world. Shame he can’t keep his presidents straight.

“Roosevelt’s president now,” I remind him.

“I know that.” Billy frowns at me. “
Hoover
would have let us starve. It’s why we lived in a
Hooverville.
”

I knew that Billy’d had it rough, but I hadn’t realized his family had lived in one of those cardboard shantytowns. It makes me wonder what else I don’t know about him.

Gable stoops to look Billy in the eye. “Telling a true story in a way that pulls heartstrings is a fair talent.” He turns to me. “I should know. I’m a journalist.”

The way he says it makes me laugh. All serious, like he really believes it.

“You’re a newsboy?”

His mouth twists. “I’m a reporter.”

That makes me laugh harder.

“I work for the
Wenatchee World
.” He steps too close, his jaw clenched like he’s ready to fight.

I’m not afraid of this showboat, but I take a step back anyway. “There’s grown men in this jungle can’t find work breaking their backs to build a dam. And you’re telling me you earn a living with your words?”

He bites his lip. Only for a second, but long enough to tell me I’ve caught him in a lie.

“I have an article due next week,” he says. I don’t know if it’s me he’s trying to convince or himself.

“Bully for you.” I raise an eyebrow to let him know I’m not impressed.

He stills. Suddenly, like a thought just struck him. He cocks his head to one side, looking more like Clark Gable than ever, and looks at me appraisingly.

“I’m investigating the migrant workers,” he says.

Investigating
doesn’t sound good. I can already see the slander-ridden story he’ll write for his rag, all about how we get fat and lazy on roast beef earned by sob stories while the rest of the country is hard at work.

“Migrant workers.” I snort, trying to sound like I don’t care. “You mean hobos.”

“My dad —” He curses under his breath. “My
boss
wants to know what they’re doing here.”

There’s the lie. He doesn’t have to earn a living. But I can’t begrudge anyone getting a job from his father. I’d be washing towels and sweeping hair in my dad’s barbershop if he hadn’t lost it in this damned depression. My dad, with his badger hair shaving brush and straight razor, covering his customer’s face with sandalwood foam.

“Better get on with it, then,” I mutter.

“There was an article about . . . about hobos in the
New York Times.
”

“And you think you can do better?”

“It says there’s a million men out on the rails in America.” He’s nothing if not persistent.

“A million men, eh?” I turn away. “Well, you’ve no need to talk to me.”

“I want a different angle. You could tell me what it’s like for a girl.”

I could. I could tell him exactly what it’s like for a girl. The lewd propositions and surreptitious pinches. The skepticism and mistrust. But that would just give him what he wants — a sordid headline with me as the poor featherheaded victim.

“I’d like to get a quote from this little man too.” Gable ruffles Billy’s hair.

I thought Billy was shielded behind me, but here he is, grinning up at this swindler like he’s God’s own mouthpiece. My throat pinches up tight.

“You want to pull your readers’ heartstrings,” I say to Gable.

He nods and shrugs, copping the blame.

“We were just on our way out.” I push the parcel of food into Billy’s chest and keep going, clutching his elbow when he stumbles a little.

“Don’t you want the whole world to know your story?” Gable calls. He hasn’t moved. He thinks we’ll sell our souls for a few lines of print.

“You mean the
Wenatchee World
?” I turn to look him right in the eye.

This time he colors. I’d taken him for twenty, but he can’t be more than eighteen. That little mustache is just a few well-tended hairs.

He clears his throat. “Pull on the right heartstrings and you might change your circumstances.”

I’d leap at the chance if it were possible. But bad luck is as much a part of chance as good. Just like a freight train, you have to trust before you leap.

I shrug. “I have my own ways of changing my circumstances.”

His gray eyes narrow, and the skin around them crinkles like he’s smiling — or judging. “And what are those?”

The train answers for me — a lingering, forthright blast of the whistle.

I nod my head in the direction of the tracks and grin. “There’s my summons.”

I grab Billy’s hand and walk away.

“Just let me ask you a couple of questions.”

I’ll be John Browned if he’s not following us. “Ask away,” I toss over my shoulder.

“Can you at least hold still?”

“No, sir, mister!” Billy shouts, catching on to my game. “We’ve got a train to catch!”

The westbound freight idles in the yard. The men at the orchard said it was due, and for once, luck is with me. There’s even a boxcar with its door wide open in welcome, waiting right in front of us.

And there’s no one inside.

Billy scrambles in and I follow, turning around to catch Gable staring, open-mouthed. “You want me to hop a train?” he asks.

“If you want this story,
you
want to hop a train.” I pull a hammered spike out of my pocket and wedge it under the runners of the door.

Gable watches me, his hands on the boxcar floor, his feet still firmly on the ground.

“The spike keeps it from closing,” I tell him. “You never know when it will open again. Besides, a moving door could take a man’s arm off.”

He plucks his hands back like he’s been burned and tucks his chin.

Good.

Though it would have been nice to talk to someone besides Billy for a change.

I tell myself Gable’s just like the boys back home. All swagger and charm, pitying my stupidity and innocence because I’m a girl with nothing in my curly-haired head but fashion and romance. But I know more than this so-called reporter. I’m more worldly-wise. More brave.

He doesn’t walk away. He takes a breath — I see his chest rise — and looks at me.

“If I do this, if I take this train with you, I need you to agree to answer my questions.” He’s so serious. “My job depends on it.”

But not his life. “Even if it’s your father’s paper?”

He presses his lips together. Looks away. “He can’t afford a reporter who doesn’t pull his weight.” His chest rises again and his gaze meets mine. “He says it’s time I make my own way. I don’t get this story, I might as well stick with riding the rails.”