After while I got my suitcase and walked into the regular air and stinking smells of Flint.
That library door closing after I walked out was the exact kind of door Momma had told me about. I knew that since it had closed the next one was about to open.
I went back under my tree and before I knew it I was asleep.
SOMETHING STEPPED on a little stick. As soon as the twig cracked my eyes snapped open and I was wide awake. I held my breath and kept as still as I could. Whatever it was that was sneaking up on me knew I’d woked up ’cause it stopped moving and kept as still as it could too. Even though my head was still under my blanket, I could feel two eyes staring at me real hard, and I knew these weren’t critter eyes, these eyes made the hair on the back of my neck raise up the way only human bean eyes can do.
Without wiggling or jiggling around too much under my blanket I got my fingers wrapped around my jackknife. Right when I was ready to push the covers off of me and start running or stabbing, whoever it was that had been watching jumped right on top of me. I was as trapped as a roach under a dishrag!
I tried to guess the exact spot that the person’s heart was at, then pulled my knife back. A voice said, “If you ain’t a kid called Bud from the Home I’m really sorry about jumping on you like this!”
It was Bugs!
When I tried to talk it felt like I had to suck all the air out of Flint, I finally got breathing right and said, “Doggone it, Bugs, it is me! You nearly scared me to death!”
He got off of me and I threw the blanket over to the side. “You don’t know how lucky you are, I was just about fixing to stab you in the heart!”
Bugs looked like he knew he’d just had a real close call. He said, “I’m sorry, Bud, I didn’t mean to scare you, but everybody knows how you like to sleep with that knife open so I figured I’d best grab holt of you so’s you wouldn’t wake up slicing nobody.”
Shucks, even though it was Bugs who’d come real close to getting his heart poked, I was the one who was still having trouble catching my breath.
I asked, “How come you aren’t back at the Home?” But before he had a chance to answer I knew. “You’re on the lam.”
Bugs said, “Yup, I’m going back to riding the rails. When I heard about you beating that kid up so bad that you had to take off I figured it was time for me to get going too. I thought you might be hanging around the library so I come down to see if you wanted to go with me.”
“Where you heading?”
“There’s always fruits to be picked out west, I heard we can make enough money to get by out there. There’s supposed to be a train leaving sometime tomorrow. Did you really beat that kid up in the foster home?”
I said, “Uh-huh, we kind of had a fight. How long’s it take to get out west?”
Bugs said, “Depends on how many trains you got to hop. Was he really two years older than you?”
“Uh-huh, he was twelve. Is it fun to hop a train?”
“Some of the time it is, some of the time it’s scary. We heard he was kind of big too, was he?”
I said, “He was pretty big. I can’t see how we can hop on a train, they look like they’re moving pretty doggone fast.”
Bugs said, “Most times you don’t hop them when they’re going fast, most times you try to climb on one when it’s sitting in the train yard. Did the guy cry after you whupped him?”
“Well, kind of, he looked real scared, then told his momma to keep me away from him. They even said I was a hoodlum. Will we be sleeping on the train and everything?”
“Sure we will. Some of the time the train don’t stop for two or three days. Man, I always try to tell people that just because someone’s skinny it don’t mean they can’t fight, you’re a hero now, Bud!”
“Naw, I didn’t really do nothing much. Well, how ’bout the toilet? How we going to use the toilet if the train doesn’t stop?”
Bugs said, “You just kind of lean out of the door and go.”
“When the train is still moving?”
“Yeah. You get a real nice breeze.”
“Oh, man! That sounds great! Count me in, I can’t wait!”
Bugs spit a big glob of slob in his hand and said, “I knew I could depend on you, Bud.”
I spit a big glob in my hand and said, “We’re brothers forever, Bugs!”
We slapped our hands together as hard as we could and got our slobs mixed up real good, then waved them in the air so they’d dry. Now it was official, I finally had a brother!
Bugs said, “We’ll go down to the mission. There’s bound to be someone there that knows about where we can hop this train, then we’ll be on the lam together!”
WE FOUND OUT that we’d have to go to a city called Hooperville just outside of Flint. The only trouble was nobody knew exactly where Hooperville was. It was dark before we found out the right direction. I’d never heard of a city that was so doggone hard to find.
We walked on a trail through some woods that run right up against Thread Crick. We could tell we were getting close to Hooperville ’cause we heard somebody playing a mouth organ and the smell of food cooking was getting stronger. We kept walking in the direction that the sky was glowing with a orangeish light.
When we could hear the music real clear, and folks talking to each other and the sound of sticks cracking in a fire, we started cutting through the trees. That way we could peek into Hooperville first.
We looked out from behind a big tree and saw that a big wind or even two or three big wolves huffing and puffing real hard could blow Hooperville into the next county. It was a bunch of huts and shacks throwed together out of pieces of boxes and wood and cloth. The Amoses’ shed would’ve looked like a real fancy house here.
Right near our tree was the big fire that had been lighting up the sky. It looked like a hundred people were sitting around it, watching things burn or waiting for the food cooking in three big pots set up in the fire.
There were two littler fires burning in Hooperville. One had a pot that was big enough to boil a whole person in it. A man was stirring things in the pot with a big stick and when he raised the stick up he’d pull some I britches or a shirt out and pass it over to a white man who was hanging the clothes on a line to dry. There was a mountain of clothes on the ground next to him waiting on their turn.
The other fire in Hooperville was real small. It was off to the side, by itself. There were five white people sitting at this fire, two kids, a man, and a woman holding a little wrapped-up baby. The baby sounded like all those new sick babies at the Home, it was coughing like it was a half-dead little animal.
Bugs whispered, “Shoot, this ain’t no city, this is just another cardboard jungle.”
“A what?”
“A cardboard jungle, somewhere you can get off the train and clean up and get something to eat without the cops chasing you out of town.”
I said, “Well, what’re we going to do? We can’t just go busting into this city and expect someone to feed us, can we?”
Bugs said, “One of us has got to talk to them, let’s flip for it.”
“OK.”
Bugs rumbled around in his pocket and found a penny. He rubbed it up against his britches and said, “Heads I win, tails you lose.”
“OK.”
He flipped the penny up into the air and caught it, then slapped it down on the back of his left hand.
He peeked underneath his right hand to see and a big smile cracked his face. Shucks!
Bugs said, “Tails. You lose.”
“Dang! So what should I say?”
“Ask them if this is Hooperville, see if they got any extra food.”
I moved out from behind our tree and walked over toward the biggest fire, I waited until some folks noticed me, then said, “Excuse me, is this here Hooperville?”
The man who was playing the mouth organ stopped and everyone else around the fire looked up at me.
One of the white men said, “What is it you looking for?”
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I said, “A city called Hooperville, sir.”
They all laughed.
The mouth organ man said, “Naw, son, what you’re looking for is Hooverville, with a v, like in President Herbert Hoover.”
I said, “Oh, is this it, sir?”
The man said, “This is one of them.”
I said, “One of them?”
He answered, “They’re all over the country, this here is the Flint version.”
“And all of them are called Hooverville?”
“That’s right, Mr. Hoover worked so hard at making sure every city has got one that it seems like it would be criminal to call them anything else.”
Someone said, “That’s the truth!”
I said, “Well, how’re we going to know if we’re in the right one?”
The mouth organ man said, “Are you hungry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you tired?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you scared about what’s going to happen tomorrow?”
I didn’t want anyone to think I was a baby so I said, “Not exactly scared, sir, maybe I am a little bit nervous.”
The man smiled and said, “Well, son, anyplace where there’re other folks in need of the same things that you are is the right place to be. This is exactly the Hooverville you’re looking for.”
I knew what the man was trying to say. This was the exact same kind of circle-talking and cross-talking that Momma used to do. Bugs hadn’t had that kind of practice, he came from behind the tree and said, “I don’t get it, you said there were Hoovervilles all over the place, what if we was looking for the Hooverville in Detroit or Chicago, how could this be the right one to be in?”
The man said, “You boys from Flint?”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
The man waved his mouth organ like a magic wand and pointed it all over the little cardboard city.
“Boys,” he said, “look around you.”
The city was bigger than I thought it was. The raggedy little huts were in every direction you looked. And there were more people sitting around than I first thought too, mostly it was men and big boys, but there were a couple of women every now and then and a kid or two. They were all the colors you could think of, black, white and brown, but the fire made everyone look like they were different shades of orange. There were dark orange folks sitting next to medium orange folks sitting next to light orange folks.
“All these people,” the mouth organ man said, “are just like you, they’re tired, hungry and a little bit nervous about tomorrow. This here is the right place for y’all to be ’cause we’re all in the same boat. And you boys are nearer to home than you’ll ever get.”
Someone said, “Amen, brother.”
The mouth organ man said, “It don’t matter if you’re looking for Chicago or Detroit or Orlando or Oklahoma City, I rode the rails to all of them. You might think or you might hear that things are better just down the line, but they’re singing the same sad song all over this country. Believe me, son, being on the road is no good. If you two boys are from Flint, this is the right Hooverville for you.”
Someone said, “Brother, why don’t we feed these boys? That one looks like he ain’t et in two or three months.”
Shucks, he didn’t have to point or nothing, everyone knew who he meant.
But I didn’t care, the food that was bubbling up in those three big pots even sounded delicious.
The mouth organ man said, “You’re welcome to join us, but we all pitch in here, so’s unless either one of you is carrying one of them smoked West Virginny hams in them bags, it looks like you’ll be pulling KP tonight.”
I said, “Pulling what, sir?”
He said, “KP, Kitchen Police, you do the cleanup after everyone’s had their fill. There’re a couple of other young folks who’ll show you what you have to do.”
Me and Bugs both said, “Yes, sir!” This seemed like a real good trade.
A woman handed me and Bugs each a flat, square, empty tin can. “That, m’lords, is your china. Please be careful not to chip it.”
My china had the words JUMBO A&P SARDINES stamped into the bottom of it.
She handed us two beat-up old spoons and said, “Don’t be shy, you two just about missed supper, you’d best hurry up.”
She took us over to one of the big pots and filled up our tin plates.
“You’re lucky,” she said, “it’s muskrat stew and there’s plenty left over tonight, eat as much as you can.”
The stew was made out of dandelion greens and a couple of potatoes and some small wild carrots and some crawdads and a couple of little chunks of meat. It tasted great! We both even got seconds!
When we were done, the woman told us, “You boys leave your bags here, it’s time to do the dishes now.”
Uh-oh. “Ma’am, I like to keep my suitcase with me wherever I go.”
“I promise you your suitcase will be safe here.”
I remembered the Amoses had promised the same thing. I said, “You’ll watch it yourself, ma’am? You’ll make sure no one looks inside of it?”
She said, “Son, we don’t have no thieving in here, we all look out for each other.”
I said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and put my suitcase down near the woman’s feet.
Me, Bugs, a little white boy and a little girl loaded a whole mess of dirty tin cans and spoons and a couple of real plates and forks into a big wooden box and lugged them down to Thread Crick.
The little girl had been in Hooverville the longest so she got to tell the rest of us what to do. She said, “I don’t suppose neither one of you new boys knows how to do dishes the right way, do you?”
Me and Bugs had done tons of dishes in the Home so I said, “Sure we do, we used to be real good at cleaning up.”
Bugs said, “Dang, girl, you act like this is the first cardboard jungle I’ve been in, I know how you do dishes out here.”
She said, “OK then, we’ll split them up, you and you”—she pointed at Bugs and the other kid—“can do half, and me and this boy can do the others. What’s your name?”
I said, “Bud, not Buddy.”
She said, “I’m Deza Malone.”
Deza handed Bugs and the other little boy some rags and some soap powder and they started splashing the dishes in the water.
Me and the girl walked a little farther up the crick and started unloading the rest of the dishes. “You dry, I’ll wash,” she said.
She handed me a rag and just as soon as she’d splashed one of the tin cans in the water and give it to me I’d dry it and stick it in the wooden box.
She said, “Where you say you was from?”
“Flint, right here.”
“So, you and your friend come down here to get on that train tomorrow?”
“Where’s it going?”
“Chicago,” she said.
“Is that west from here?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then yup, that’s where we’re heading,” I said. “Where you from?”
“Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”
“You going to take the train too?”
She said, “Uh-uh. My daddy is. Folks say there’s work out west so he’s going to try again.”
“So you’re going to wait here for him?”
“Uh-huh.”
She was real fast at washing the dishes but I noticed she got kind of slow and was touching my hand a lot when it came to giving them to me.
She said, “Where’s your momma and daddy?”
“My mother died four years ago.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“It’s OK, she didn’t suffer or nothing.”
“So where’s your daddy?”
“I think he lives in Grand Rapids, I never met him.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Shucks, she held right on to my hand when she said that. I squirmed my hand a-loose and said, “That’s OK too.”
Deza said, “No it’s not, and yo
u should quit pretending that it is.”
“Who said I’m pretending anything?”
“I know you are, my daddy says families are the most important thing there is. That’s why me and my momma are going to wait together for him to come back or write for us to come to him.”
I said, “My mother said the same thing, that families should be there for each other all the time. She always used to tell me that no matter where I went or what I did that she’d be there for me, even if she wasn’t somewhere that I could see her. She told me . . .”
Shucks, there’re some folks who’ll have you running your mouth before you know what you’re doing. I quit talking and acted like I was having a real hard time drying the tin can she’d just handed me.
“What’d she tell you, Bud?”
I looked at Deza Malone and figured I’d never see her again in my life so I kept shooting off my mouth. “She would tell me every night before I went to sleep that no matter what happened I could sleep knowing that there had never been a little boy, anywhere, anytime, who was loved more than she loved me. She told me that as long as I remembered that I’d be OK.”
“And you knew it was the truth.”
“Just as much as I know my name’s Bud, not Buddy.”
She said, “Don’t you have no other kin here in Flint?”
“No.”
“I guess I can’t blame you for wanting to ride the rails. My momma says these poor kids on the road all alone are like dust in the wind. But I guess you’re different, aren’t you, Bud? I guess you sort of carry your family around inside of you, huh?”
“I guess I do. Inside my suitcase, too.”
She said, “So you been staying in a orphanage since your momma died?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, you’re kind of skinny, but I can tell by the way you talk and the way you act that you haven’t been out on the road for very long. You still look young.”
I said, “Shucks, I’m not all that young, I’m going to be eleven on November fourteenth, and I’m not skinny, I’m wiry. Some folks think I’m a hero.”