The Hope Chest (21 page)

The men peered at the can intently. “Not a bomb. Just a can of tuna fish,” one of them announced. “Cover him, Hank. I'm gonna put the cuffs on him.”

The man who had spoken moved over behind Mr. Martin, grabbed his hands, and jerked them down behind Mr. Martin's back. Myrtle winced in sympathy. It was what that evil brakeman had done to her on the freight train.

“Don't try nothing funny,” said Hank. “Nobody cares if we shoot dangerous alien radicals.”

“I'm not an alien,” said Mr. Martin. “I'm a U.S. citizen.”

“Uh-huh. And just when did you become a U.S. citizen, Arpadfi?”

“My name is Theodore Martin, and I was born in the United States.”

“Let's drop the Martin bushwa, okay? You're Sandor Arpadfi, you were born in some European hellhole or other—”

“Hungary,” the other agent put in.

“Hungary, then, around 1892, and you came to the United States in 1897. You lost three fingers in an industrial accident in 1898 and your left eye in a knife fight in 1916.” The man who was holding Mr. Martin's arms—he had handcuffs hanging at his belt, Myrtle noticed, but he made no move to get them—traced the scar from Mr. Martin's eye downward with his finger. It must be a glass eye, Myrtle realized. Mr. Martin jerked his head away.

“Resisting arrest,” the agent commented, twisting Mr. Martin's arms more tightly behind his back.

“It wasn't a ‘knife fight,’” said Mr. Martin through clenched teeth. “The other man had a knife. I did not. And I am a U.S. citizen.”

“Right, you became a citizen in 1913,” said the agent. “In other words, after you'd already become a radical. A radical can't become a U.S. citizen. I think the courts will find that your citizenship oath is null and void.”

“That's insane!” Mr. Martin protested. Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead. Having his arms twisted
must have hurt a lot, but he was trying not to show it. That was being brave, Myrtle supposed, but she wished he would cry out in pain so that his captors would be satisfied and stop hurting him.

“In your position, I wouldn't go calling the laws of the United States of America insane,” the agent suggested.

“I don't believe that is the law,” Mr. Martin panted. “And if it is the law, then it is insane.”

“Did you hear that, Hank?” the agent asked.

“Sure did, Christopher,” said Hank. “Anything else you want to tell us about the laws of the United States, Arpadfi?”

Mr. Martin glared at both of them and would have liked to say a lot of things, Myrtle could tell. “Only that I'm as much a citizen of the USA as you are, and I know my rights.”

“You're a member of a radical organization and you don't have no rights,” said Hank smugly.

“I'm a member of a labor union,” said Mr. Martin. “It's my”—he gasped in pain and Myrtle winced again— “First Amendment right.”

“The International Workers of the World is a labor union the way the Boston Tea Party was a tea party,” Christopher said. “Quit arguing with us or we might notice you pulled a knife on us. You see how he had that knife out when we came in, Hank?”

He kicked at the open pocketknife where it had fallen on the floor. Myrtle would have liked to grab it and put
it away, but then they'd probably say she'd pulled it on them.

“Sure did,” said Hank. “You gonna come along quietly, Arpadfi, or should we report you pulled a knife on us?”

Mr. Martin looked deflated, the same way he had on the train when he'd argued with the conductor, Myrtle thought. “What choice do I have? I am coming along quietly.”

He looked at Myrtle as if he was about to say something. Myrtle shook her head and put a finger to her lips to silence him. It was better for both of them if Myrtle remained invisible.

In spite of the fact that Mr. Martin was coming along quietly, the agents seemed to find it necessary to do quite a bit of kicking and shoving to get him out the door. Myrtle turned away. She picked up the knife Mr. Martin or Arpadfi or whatever his name was had dropped, folded it, and stuck it in the pocket of her blue dress next to her picture of Mama and Daddy. She went to the cot where she slept and grabbed her toothbrush. She was just heading out the door when she bumped into Mrs. Ready coming in.

“Got him, did they?” said Mrs. Ready. “Thank the good Lord. Child, now that you're free of that horrible man, I'm taking you to Mrs. Frankie Pierce. She's a colored suffragist leader who's done wonders in finding institutions that will take in wayward colored girls, and I'm sure she'll find—”

Mrs. Ready was packing up Myrtle's bundle as she said all this, and Myrtle didn't wait around to hear the rest of it. She didn't know if Mrs. Ready had turned in Mr. Martin—lots of people could have done it, he'd been so careless about staying hidden—and she wasn't about to ask her. If Mrs. Ready had done it, then she'd have to hate Mrs. Ready, and she really didn't have time for that. She ran out the door.

The Hope Chest

“W
HY WOULD THEY RUN AWAY?”
V
IOLET
asked as she and Chloe dashed back down the stone steps of Capitol Hill. “If they're against the amendment, why not just vote ‘no’?”

“Because they promised us their votes,” Chloe explained breathlessly. It was much too hot for all this running. “And it's easier to run away than to go back on a promise.”

Fortunately, the Hope Chest started after a few turns of its crank. Violet was just climbing into the passenger seat when Myrtle came running up, out of breath and holding a toothbrush in her hand.

“Violet! Miss Chloe! Mr. Martin!”

“Calm down, dear,” Chloe suggested.

Myrtle shook her head. “They've arrested Mr. Martin!”

Chloe went pale. “Who?”

“Agents,” said Myrtle. “They hit him and told him he wasn't an American.”

“Violet, turn the car off and wait here,” Chloe said. She followed Myrtle, and both of them went charging off down Union Street.

Violet watched them go. Should she follow them? No. She was worried about Mr. Martin, but whatever there was to be done for him, Chloe and Myrtle were going to do. Chloe had told Violet to wait here. But someone had to search the highway for Blotz and Credwell. The Suffs were counting on Chloe and Violet to do it.

Could she do it? She'd only driven the Hope Chest once before, with Chloe sitting next to her to tell her what to do. Well, never mind—she could do it. She had to.

It was a good thing the Hope Chest was still running, because Violet doubted she could have started the thing by herself. She moved over into the driver's seat. She sat as tall as she could so that she could see over the hood, and she stretched her legs to reach the pedals. She breathed in the smell of burning gasoline. She looked down at the pedals on the floor.
R
for reverse. She kicked the pedal. The Hope Chest gave an anguished cough, as though it was about to stall, and Violet grabbed the throttle and gave it some gas. The car shot backward. A horse whinnied in fear. Violet stamped on the pedal marked
B
for brake and grabbed at the steering wheel. Terrified, she turned and looked behind her. The horse was making
good its escape, its rider clinging to its back, but she'd come within an inch of hitting a parked Hupmobile.

Violet gripped the steering wheel so hard that if it had been alive, it would have screamed. Resolutely she stamped on the clutch to move the car forward and then, carefully, touched the throttle and gave it some gas. The Hope Chest lunged like a racehorse breaking from a starting gate. Several pedestrians scattered out of Violet's way.

She didn't remember the car going this fast when she drove it with Chloe. But the paved street offered less resistance than the grassy field. The car surged down the street. Violet clasped the steering wheel tightly and concentrated on staying in the exact middle of the street. She knew you were supposed to drive on the right, but that looked too difficult. There were so many things a person could hit on the side of the road, cars and lampposts and people. She thudded over the trolley tracks. The thing was going much too fast, and she wasn't even touching the throttle. She half stood, trying to see the road better. She seemed to be hurtling at things and people on both sides, and each time she cranked the steering wheel to avoid something, something else sprang up in her path. She couldn't imagine why anyone would want to drive a car—this was horrible, like a nightmare.

She was supposed to turn left up here, she knew, to get to the highway. But how did you slow down to turn? She cranked the steering wheel to the left and the Hope Chest
veered wildly, rocking onto two wheels and then hitting the pavement again hard.

“Reduce the spark!” a woman screamed at her from the sidewalk. Out of the corner of her eye, Violet noticed that a lot of people were staring at her.

Violet looked down to find the lever on the steering wheel that controlled the spark, and the Hope Chest climbed up onto the sidewalk. People fled, screaming.

“I'm sorry!” Violet yelled as she got the car back onto the road and got the spark down. Now the Hope Chest was much quieter and didn't seem to want to go as fast. It coasted slowly to a stop, coughed, belched out a cloud of burned-smelling black smoke, and almost stalled before Violet grabbed the throttle lever and it jumped forward again. This time she kept her eyes on the road and kept driving right down the middle.

“I don't care what anyone says,” she heard a woman on the sidewalk say. “There ought to be a law against children driving those things.”

She had the hang of it now. The important thing was to keep moving, because otherwise the Hope Chest might stall and she knew she couldn't start it again. And that none of the agitated crowd on the sidewalk would help her.

“Which way to the highway?” she called.

Several people pointed, and someone called, “Left at the corner and take your second right!”

Behind her, Violet heard a bell clanging angrily. It was
a trolley car. Violet was driving right down the trolley track in the middle of the street. She looked over to the side, where she was supposed to drive, but the space looked too dangerously narrow. Well, the trolley would just have to follow her.

Soon Violet had left the trolley track and the city behind, and the Hope Chest was bouncing merrily along a rutted dirt road into the country. Violet could see why Chloe liked the Hope Chest so much. This was glorious. It made you feel free. As if you had no bonds at all. Nothing to hold you back from going wherever you wanted and doing whatever you felt needed to be done.

She saw a car up ahead on the edge of the dusty highway. She took her hand off the throttle and slowed down.

A cream-colored Oakland Sensible Six was stopped beside the road, and a man was kneeling in the dust beside it, staring at a rear wheel. Violet pulled up beside the Oakland and stopped the Hope Chest carefully, not letting it stall.

The man looked up. He was in his forties and had rather the seedy look of a drummer, perhaps because he'd left his hat on although he'd taken off his jacket and pulled his sleeves up under his sleeve garters.

“Are you Mr. Credwell or Mr. Blotz?” Violet called to him.

“Beg pardon?” said the man, standing up and brushing dust off his knees. “You'll have to turn that thing off. I can't hear you.”

With a sigh of regret, Violet let the Hope Chest stall. “Are you Mr. Credwell or Mr. Blotz?”

The man tipped his hat politely. “Credwell. Got a flat. And me without a spare.”

Well, that was one of the runaway legislators found, anyway. “Where's Blotz?” she said.

“I don't know,” said Mr. Credwell, shrugging.

#x201C;The committee's about to meet to vote on whether to send the ratification bill to the floor,” Violet said. “You're supposed to be there to vote!”

“Oh, is it?” Mr. Credwell looked off into the middle distance. “I guess it was in my memorandum book, but I must've forgotten to look at it.”

Violet almost pounded the steering wheel in frustration. Did this man have no idea how much his vote mattered to Chloe? And to women who had to wait in train stations for their son's coffins to come home from France and to a few million other people, including, now that Violet thought about it, herself? “Mr. Credwell, please come back to town at once.”

Mr. Credwell shuffled his feet in the dust with the guilty look of a boy caught skipping school. “Sure. I was just headed back.” His car was pointed the other way.

Mr. Credwell chivalrously offered to turn the crank to start the Hope Chest. Violet worked the levers. It took them quite a while to get the thing started, because she didn't have a good ear for it yet.

“You know why they call it a runabout, don't you?” said Mr. Credwell.

Violet had heard this one before, but they were all supposed to do their best to keep the legislators in a good mood, so she said, “Why?”

“Because it'll run about a mile before it breaks down, ha ha!” said Mr. Credwell.

Violet smiled politely. “Ha ha. Please get in, Mr. Credwell.”

“Do you, er, mind if I drive, Miss, er …”

“Miss Mayhew,” said Violet. “And yes, I do.”

Mr. Credwell humbly climbed into the Hope Chest and permitted himself to be driven back into town. He asked Violet to stop at a garage so he could get a spare, so Violet did. But once he'd got it, she went right on driving back to the capitol.