A Tyranny of Petticoats (33 page)

I don’t know if it’s truth or if he’s spinning a tale, but two toots of the train’s whistle tell me we’re about to move, so impulsively I stick out my hand. He stares at it for a thin slice of a second, and I can read on his face the backwardness of it all. Then he takes it, warm and sure, and neatly makes the leap into my domain.

We settle back into the dark corner of the boxcar as the engine starts to roar. I met one old hobo who said he loved the sound of the engine picking up every car, the shudder that runs the length of the train with each one. I’ve always felt like it was the footsteps of an approaching giant, thunderous and threatening.

When the train’s under way, Gable takes out a little notepad and pen. “So what do they call you?”

No one asks that. They ask what kind of work I do. Why such a pretty little thing is out here. Wonder in their minds if I sell myself in pieces.

None of them ask my name.

It’s been so long since I’ve said my own name, I can’t find the sound of it on my tongue.

“What do they call
you
?” I retort.

“Lloyd.”

I don’t tell him he looks like Clark Gable.

“Curls.”

My hated hobo moniker. It calls to mind soft things. Sickly-sweet things. Like Shirley Temple and velvet ribbons. Who I was then, not who I am now.

“It suits you.”

I glare at him. “Unlike your mustache.”

He lays the tips of his fingers along his upper lip, and I feel something almost like conscience.

“I’m Billy!” He pushes himself between us. “Billy the Kid.” He stares at Lloyd’s pen and paper, waiting for his name to be written down in all its glory. Lloyd looks over Billy’s head at me and winks.

“And why are you out here?” When Lloyd smiles, it’s like Billy’s the only person he’s ever wanted to talk to. Like he’s been waiting his whole life for it. He’s suited to his profession — his smile could make folks confess any manner of secrets.

“Hard times, mister!” Billy says. “Hard times!”

It’s what all of us say. Why else would you risk life and limb, blowing across the country and back? Risking railroad bulls who would throw you headfirst off a moving train and sheriffs who’d sling you in jail till even your mother forgets your name? There’s some out here who seek adventure, I suppose, though I can’t find sense in that.

“Why are you here?” I ask. I could spend all night just tossing Gable’s questions back at him. “You’re not looking for any old story, are you?”

“My father thinks the migrants are a menace,” Lloyd says. “That they’ll bring fighting and robbery, that the . . . the women of Wenatchee won’t be safe to walk the streets. He wants me to write a story to convince the city council to raze the campsite where you all stay.”

“The jungle,” I correct him, fearful for the men celebrating food, unaware the town will destroy them, leaving behind nothing but a chalk-drawn symbol warning others it’s yet another place where it’s not safe to stay.

“What do
you
think?” I look at him directly. His gray eyes turn blue just at the center. I find myself holding my breath.

“I asked for the job.”

My breath comes out in a rush. “Did you talk to the men?”

Lloyd looks away. “No,” he says. “I was afraid of them.”

This unvarnished truth makes me squirm. Part of me wants to reach out to comfort him, like I would with Billy. The other part knows fear is like fire. It only takes a spark — like a newspaper article — to create a conflagration.

“They’re desperate,” I say finally. “No work. No food.”

His pen is poised. Ready. “Are you scared?”

All the time.

But I can’t say it, even in the wake of his confession, because it would mean admitting that the men are dangerous, deserving of fear, when all they want is a chance.

“No. We’re all the same.”

Lloyd studies me and I stare back. The longer he looks, though, the softer his face gets, until suddenly his eyebrows pinch forward and he looks down at Billy.

“I’ve heard that most ride the rails for six months,” Lloyd says. “Then they go home. How long have you been out here?”

Billy looks up at me. Time isn’t his strongest suit.

“I met Billy seven weeks ago,” I say. “I’ve been out here eight. I think your information is wrong. Nobody can go back to how it was. The dust bowl dried us all up bitter as seeds and spat us out all over the land, and none of us yet has taken root.”

Lloyd looks up from his pen, eyes wide.

“Can I use that?” he asks. “What you just said?” He clears his throat. “As a quote, of course.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s good. The way you said it. That’ll grab their attention. Make them care.”

I shrug, but warmth grows in my chest at his praise.

“And what is a girl doing out here?” he asks, looking up at me quick and then back down at his pen.

I wonder if he means
what kind of girl?

I look back on the one I was — carefully modulated hair skin skirt shoes voice — and it’s like she’s not even me. The one who dreamed of being a teacher right up to the day the school ran out of money and closed its doors. There was nothing left to teach because hardship took it all.

I want to tell him that the bank took Dad’s shop and his will to live. That Mama needed more money and fewer mouths to feed and that my leaving has only achieved one of those things. But I say nothing, because I don’t want pity.

Out here on the rails, I’ve learned to keep my secrets close and my tongue still.

Lloyd glances around the boxcar, and his eyebrows pinch again. He must take my silence for refusal, because his questions change direction. “Where are you going?”

“There’s no work here, so we’re heading west.”

“Seattle?”

“Maybe there’s more in the city.”

“Maybe there’s just Skid Road.”

That’s a chance I have to take. “What do you care, as long as you get your story?”

“What about the New Deal programs? The CCC? Building dams and bridges and national parks?”

I snort. “It’s for young
men
. There’s many of us that don’t qualify.”

Billy shifts between us. It’ll be five years before he can work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, and by then things will be better.

We hope.

Billy shifts again. Tugs my sleeve. “I’m hungry.”

If we eat, we’d have to share. If not, I could spin a story, tug on Lloyd’s heartstrings. Billy’s used to hunger, but I bet Lloyd isn’t. He could take that back to his readers.

But Billy dives into his bindle, pulling out meat and bread with a flourish, like he’s a tuxedoed waiter in a Busby Berkeley movie instead of a scruffy kid in too-short pants. He tears off a hunk of meat and stuffs it in his mouth.

Inside, I cringe, but I keep my voice steady when I turn to Lloyd. “Join us. Hobos share when they can.”

“You didn’t back there.” He jerks his head at the open door. At the men we left behind. To him, we’re nothing but a couple of grifters, little better than thieves.

“Sorry, Rosie,” Billy mumbles. “Forgot to share.”

I close my eyes. Billy revealed our treasure and my real name in one fell swoop.

“It’s all right,” I tell him, and then mutter in Lloyd’s direction, “We haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

Billy swallows. “No,
I
ate, remember? There was a potato left in the fire at the jungle before this one. You gave it to me this morning.”

Now Lloyd’ll think I’m soft. Why can’t he just tell the
truth
in his blasted paper?

I divide the food into threes, but Lloyd puts a hand on my arm. It’s warm, his touch gentle. “I’ve eaten.”

I don’t look at his gray-blue eyes when I force a piece of bread at him. “You don’t know when you will again.”

Darkness envelops us as we climb higher into the night. Billy answers all of Lloyd’s questions, elaborating on the old stories. I only correct him when he fibs outright. Lloyd must know some kind of reporter shorthand so he can scrawl in the dark. He just lets Billy talk.

No one just lets Billy talk.

I turn my smile to the open door. The cold October wind gets colder, biting through the thick knit of my sweater — the one Mama made for Dad last Christmas. The din of the wheels on the tracks has the rhythm of a rope-skipping rhyme.

It builds the same kind of anticipation in me — that I’ll make it to the end. That maybe something magical will happen if I do. Perhaps it’s Lloyd’s suggestion that talking to him could change my circumstances, but I’m starting to hope we’ll find a place where I can stop moving.

“My aunt runs a boardinghouse in Ballard,” Lloyd says. It takes me a second to realize he’s talking to me.

“That near Seattle?” I ask. I try to sound casual. Like maybe I’ll get a job. Like maybe I can afford a boardinghouse.

“It’s
in
Seattle.” Lloyd chuckles and I want to smack him. Like a girl from Nebraska would know that. “It’s a neighborhood. She rents out mostly to fishermen. Scandinavians. She says it’s . . . it’s a hard life.”

“Sounds like the jungle.”

“She’s getting overworked,” he says. “Arthritis. She asked my father last time they spoke if he knew of someone who might help her run the place. Keep it clean, do the shopping and the cooking. It’s not much, only room and board.”

The thoughts stagger into my mind and I grasp at them.
His aunt. Boardinghouse. Looking to hire help.
It breathes life into that little spark of hope.

I lean toward him. “What are you saying?”

With a hollow
whoosh,
we’re sucked into a profound darkness. The noise of the train is magnified, ringing back at us from all directions, like living inside the engine itself.

Billy wraps himself around me.

“It’s a tunnel!” I shout, trying to disentangle him. He’s been through tunnels before. They terrify him. I lean farther over, hoping Lloyd can hear me too. “We’ll be out soon!”

But we’re not. The train slows, still going up the mountain, but we’re inside it. The air thickens with smoke and soot.

I reach into my back pocket for my bandanna. “Cover your face!” I shout to Lloyd. He scrambles beside us. I’m sure he has a handkerchief. He’s just the type. I wonder if it’s monogrammed. “Breathe through your bandanna!” I call into Billy’s ear.

He lets go of me long enough to search for it, his movements getting more and more frantic. It’s like a tunnel in a nightmare, deceitful and never-ending.

“I don’t know where it is!” Billy screams. He’s panicking, his little lungs like bellows beneath my hand.

I pat him down, searching his pockets, feeling through his bindle, fingers stumbling.

“Here!” I shove my bandanna over his nose as I crawl around him, finding dirt and sawdust, the paper-thin skins of onions that must have filled the boxcar before, the slick leather of Lloyd’s shoe.

Lloyd’s hand wraps around my wrist and drags me toward him. I pull back, but I’m off balance and I fall into his lap, a tangle of limbs and humiliation. I sit up quick and haul off to punch him when he covers my mouth with his handkerchief.

It smells like sandalwood. Like home.

“I’ll be fine!” I push it back at him. “We’ll be out before we know it.”

He pulls me closer so he can talk in my ear without Billy hearing. “We’re in the Cascade Tunnel.” His voice is tight — no arrogance or judgment — and there’s no smile in it at all. “It’s the longest rail tunnel in North America.”

A chill wraps around me.

“How long?”

He doesn’t answer.

“Tell me!”

“Eight miles.”

At the rate we’re going, that could take a lifetime.

“Keep that over your face, Billy!” I shout, and pull him into me, as if my body will protect him. He’s still coughing. Not wheezing yet.

Lloyd thrusts his handkerchief at me again, and this time I take it. I can’t see him in the dark, but he’s jostling, all elbows and quick movements. It’s only when his shirt flaps against my face that I realize he’s taken it off.

I’m reminded of
It Happened One Night
. Billy and I sneaked into the cinema somewhere in Idaho to see it. The real Clark Gable takes off his shirt, and the crowd was shocked into raucous outrage, which made me and Billy laugh like loons. We’d seen that and more in the jungles.

This is different.

Intimate.

Lloyd leans into me, his bare arm kissing my cheek.

“Use this instead!” he shouts. “It’s thicker!”

He presses his shirt to my nose. It’s warm and smells like coffee and Oxydol laundry soap — like radio serials and better times. I want to bury myself in it.

I cradle Billy between my knees, pressing the shirt to his face as well. Each breath he takes is a struggle I feel in my own chest. They come in time with the chug of the train, like the effort it takes is what’s pulling us up the mountain. I count them, hoping to tick away the miles, feeling more helpless than I did the day the bank came knocking. More helpless than when I found my dad with the straight razor at his own throat.

Billy starts to wheeze.

“What’s the matter with him?” Lloyd shouts.

“Asthma.”

“Oh, God,” Lloyd curses. “He’s going to die in here.”

He drops his forehead to my knee. Just another scared kid.

“He is
not
!” I shout.

I wrap my arms around both of them. Billy chokes on each teaspoon of air. The train shudders, howling with the effort to crawl its way out of this hole.

I think of the kids who came into Dad’s shop for their first haircuts, screaming bloody murder in his cracked leather chair.

My dad talked to them the way you would a wild animal. Sat them still. Made them trust him.

That’s the voice I find inside me.

“Breathe.”

And we do.

“Breathe.”

Even Billy.

The train launches from the mouth of the tunnel with a gasp like a drowning man, and the air freshens between gusts of soot and brimstone.

In the light of the fresh-risen moon, I can see Billy’s face, the dark hollows of his eyes.

“Am I going to die?” He gasps.

“Not if I can help it.”

And he believes me. He believes me enough to keep breathing.