six

 

 

YOU WANT TO find a hobo, the best place to go looking is near the railway. I followed the tracks into town and saw nary a soul on my walk. Of course, that just meant that everyone else in Miami County was a damn sight saner and smarter than me.

I saw some hint of road folk, but only by their language. Symbols painted on, or carved into the rail signs. Nothing that matched the marks on the Professor’s wagon, but obviously meant to be seen and understood. A picture of a train. A series of circles with arrows coming off of them. A circle with a slash through it. And one that bore some strong resemblance to a duck.

When I hit the first signs of Peru, Indiana, I left the track in favor of Wabash Road. Soon enough, Patrick’s Boarding House came into view. Fact of the matter was, you couldn’t miss the thing if you were a blind man. The seat of hospitality sported bright green wood slats and orange shutters. The eaves were bright blue, and the door an unfortunate shade of red most often reserved for certain dens of impropriety.

A crude drawing of a cat had been drawn in the snow, and carved discreetly into the wood of the porch.

I beat the sludge off my boots with a few blows of my cane. As is the way with frozen limbs, my remaining foot complained as if I’d stabbed the thing with a hundred tiny needles. I hobbled up the stairs, then wiped my feet on the worn mat.

The door flew open before I’d had the chance to knock.

The woman standing there was a wisp of a thing, with withered brown skin that hung from her bones like leather. Her iron-grey hair was pulled back into a tight bun, though bits of it tried mightily to escape. She eyed me with a fierce curiosity.

“Well, son?” she croaked.

I took off my cap. “Ma’am, I do apologize for troubling you, but I was hoping I could buy a cup of coffee and rest a bit before I get back on the road.”

She nodded. “You won’t be needing a bed?”

“No, ma’am.”

“And you’ve got money, you say?”

“I’ve got a few aces.”

She yanked the door wide and warmth swam out of the house. “Get your damn fool ass in here now, boy. You look half-frozen and I’ll have no one dying on my doorstep on account of this terrible cold.”

“Much obliged,” I said with a smile.

I stepped inside and chafed my hands as she shut the door behind me. The inside of the boarding house was no less unique than the exterior. The proprietress appeared to have a particular fondness for doilies and anything with the slightest hint of a pink rose on it. The ewer on the sideboard, a framed picture on the wall, curtains and table cloths; all of them were decorated with floral sprays of varying severity. The armchair in the adjacent parlor was striped blue silk while the walls were papered with a dusty red damask.

“I’m Elise Patrick,” she said, her words clipped. The lady smoothed her apron before whisking past me and leading me through the hall. “But that’s Miss Patrick to you. There is no Mr. Patrick. There never was and never will be. I will not accept disrespect in this house. You treat me the way you’d treat your favorite auntie and no worse, and you can stay as long as you need.”

We turned a corner into a gleaming white kitchen. A pot was on the boil, presumably for the evening’s meal. A man twice the height of Miss Patrick—and at least twice her bulk—stood chopping tubers.

“Julius,” Miss Patrick called, “this one needs some joe and a bit of that broth in him before I’ll turn him back out into this weather.”

The man looked up and I saw he had the face of a soot-stained cherub, little more than an overgrown boy. Julius nodded fervently. “Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Patrick crooked her finger at me and led me into the dining room. She pulled out a wooden chair and pointed to its seat. “Sit you down, boy. Get off that leg before it becomes a problem.”

You don’t argue with a scowl like that woman wore. I put my better end in the chair tout suite. She gave me a firm, approving pat on the shoulder and set to putting cream, sugar and a small plate of cookies on the table.

“Now what’s your name, son, and what brings you this way?”

“Jim Walker.” I put a cookie in my mouth so I could think of what to tell Miss Patrick. Though the Wonder Show tried its best to keep good with the townfolk, and Peru was no stranger to rovers like ourselves, I never knew how one would react to housing a carny, something I’d become in a matter of months.

Julius came along just in time with a cup of coffee and a piping hot bowl of broth—chicken, by the smell of it. He only stayed long enough put down his wares before returning to the kitchen and his potatoes.

“Thank you,” I said, wrapping my cold hands around the mug of coffee.

Miss Patrick leaned in closer to me and sniffed the air. I caught a whiff of my own funk—reefer and the odor of having walked a few miles with one leg. Her plum-colored lips pursed disapprovingly.

“What are you about, Mr. Walker?” she asked.

“Ma’am?”

“You ain’t local, but you’ve got no bags. You’re too clean to be a railman, but you smell like the Devil’s sweat.”

I swallowed a mouthful of coffee and let it stoke my insides to warmth. Perhaps truth would be best. Some of it, anyway. “I take up with the Soggiorno Brothers’ show that’s made camp about five miles east of this very table.”

Her smile was wry, revealing a gap in her yellow teeth. “A circus boy, eh? You gonna juggle for your supper, Mr. Walker?”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am. I don’t perform, I just help on the lot.”

“What’s a job like that pay a man?”

“Three dollars a week and ever-changing scenery.” I stretched out my prosthetic leg and massaged the ache in my thigh. As I thawed out, the pain began to seep into my muscles something fierce.

She heard the metallic joints clatter, Miss Patrick, and looked down. Her face showed the slightest panic, so I tugged up on the fabric of my pants to let her see that she needn’t fear the metal rod that served as my tibia.

She fixed me with her watery eyes and seemed to stare into my mind. Her withered lips trembled. “The war?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Patrick nodded solemnly. “And you walked all the way here from that circus camp?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She swatted me on the head as she passed by into the kitchen. “Damn fool boy, you need a sandwich now, too.”

 

 

AFTER SETTING WATCH on me until I’d eaten as much as man can hold, Miss Elise Patrick refused to take my money. I’d held the coins out to her, but she put a hand over mine and pushed it back to my chest.

“You done paid for your meal, soldier.”

I nodded my gratitude and pocketed the cash. Miss Patrick sat down beside me. “Now tell me, Mr. Walker, what brings a gentleman like you here on a day like today?”

Reaching into my coat, I produced the papers Crash had scribbled on and laid them on the table. “I need someone who can tell me what these are.”

Miss Patrick retrieved a pair of spectacles from her apron pocket and looked down her nose at the drawings. “Look like something Flapjack would write on the wall.”

“Flapjack?”

“One of my regulars. When he’s road-weary, Flapjack comes back this way and stays—no longer than a fortnight, y’ understand. But he draws things like this. Messages to other tramps and bindle stiffs like him.”

“Do you know what they say?”

She shook her head. “They’re not meant for me to read.”

Disappointed, I stuffed the papers back in my coat.

“Don’t look so glum, soldier. Flapjack’s in residence. I’m sure he could help a fella out.”

My smile turned to a wince as I stood up. “Lead on, Miss Patrick.”

The lady of the house made her way up a set of old, creaking stairs. Pictures lined the walls, some photographs gone yellow and faded. As if it was a script she couldn’t help but repeat, Miss Patrick said, “We have five rooms upstairs—that’s five beds for payin’ folk. Julius and I quarter in the attic. Each room has its own bed, linens and light. There’s a radio in the parlor downstairs, and a bathroom at the end of the hall. A man staying here will make use of the bath before bedding down or I will have Julius take the hose to him. I’ll not have my sheets spoilt.”

“You run a tight but accommodating ship, ma’am.”

She knocked on the third door on the left and called to the room’s occupant. “Mr. Hilton? Flapjack, are you decent?”

A rumble answered.

“Mr. Hilton, I’ve a man out here that could greatly use your knowledge of the roads.”

The lock clicked and the door swung open. A shaggy head poked out into the hall. “Alright.”

Miss Patrick smiled. “Flapjack, this here is Mr. Walker. Be good to him. Oh, and when you’ve a mind to it, wash up and come down for some vittles.”

Bleary as a bear woken in January, Flapjack Hilton waved a paw at Miss Patrick’s retreating form. Shuffling back into his room, he grumbled, “Come on.”

I followed him in and found the room precisely as advertised. A bed; a small dresser with fresh linens and a lamp atop it. In comparison to the rest of the house, the room was remarkably plain. Cream walls and soft, blue blankets. Flapjack’s luggage—consisting of a large leather bag like the one Crash used for mail carrying—rested on the floor next to a pair of boots. A jacket hung on the hook on the wall.

Flapjack pulled back the heavy curtains and daylight poured in. He was a stooped fellow, his shoulders arched with a neck that jutted out, suspending his head perilously in the open air. He wore a stained undershirt, trousers, and a pair of socks that desperately needed darning.

His hair was long, shaggy. What might have once been blonde was grey and looked as though it’d been cut with the dull edge of a knife rather than proper shearing. His beard wasn’t much fairer. Patches of silver grew through the thick mass of hair. When Hilton faced me, I saw the leathery texture of his cheeks, the reddish tinge to his nose. He’d been outdoors more than in, it seemed. A glimpse of his watery blue eyes made the breath catch in my chest. This was a man weary to his bones. Haunted.

“Mr. Hilton,” said I, “I won’t keep you long.”

When all I got from him was a grunt, I reached into my pocket and offered him the pages of scribbling. He took them and laid the barest of glances over them before tossing them to the floor at my feet.

“What of ’em?” he snarled.

I sighed and picked up the papers. “Do you know what they mean?”

“Look like a kid drew ’em with ’is own drool. Why should I know?”

“Remind me of something I saw on the road once. Not too different from the cat I saw drawn outside this very house.”

“Ask plain, spook, or stop wasting my time.”

I bristled at the slur. “Are these road signs, and if so can you tell me what they mean?”

“What’s it to you if they are?”

“They were carved into the flank of a horse and a man’s home. Whoever did it put a young girl in danger. I’d like to make sure she stays safe.”

“She dark as you?”

“I don’t see that it matters one way or the other, Mr. Hilton,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “She and her guardian have asked me to look in on the matter as a personal favor. I’d take it as a kindness if you could answer my questions.”

Flapjack’s eyes narrowed and a sneer oozed over his face. His right hand made a move for his waistband, and a familiar hot, pricking sensation flooded my body, just beneath the skin. The acid taste of adrenaline tingled at the back of my throat.

I raised my cane just quick enough to knock the thrown knife to the floor. Its tip sank into the boards with an ominous thunk. The sinewy hobo lunged for me, arms raised and fingers curled as if to take out my throat. He spat out slurs, invoking the ugliest of words for a man of my complexion as if he’d invented the damn things.

I stepped to the side and tripped up Hilton with a well-placed blow of my metal leg. As his shin went out from under him, I shifted my weight just so and whacked him one on the back of the neck with my cane. Like a choreographed dance I’d learned long ago, it came bubbling up in my memory. In a few movements and a dash of seconds, I had Hilton on his back, the cane in my left hand pressed to his throat and his own knife kissing his lowest rib. Though he put up some struggle, Flapjack soon found that it was growing difficult to breathe, let alone speak or call out for help. Or use any more of those epithets of which he was rather fond.

I brought my mouth down to his ear. “This is the quickest way to a man’s heart,” I hissed. “Up under the ribs. A single poke and I’d have your blood all over Miss Patrick’s lovely floor. I’d rather not do that, you understand? Nod and tell me you understand.”

Hilton nodded feverishly, his thrashing calming down.

“Good. Now, you’re going to help me and this little girl out, friend. You’re going to be quite the hero. So tell me. Are those pictures I showed you hobo signs?”

He nodded.

“Was that so hard? No. Now, tell me kindly, what do they mean?”

I eased up the pressure with the cane so that he could take a breath. Through gritted teeth, he growled, “First two are road speak.”

“Go on.”

“One of ’em’s ‘orphan.’ The other’s ‘murder.’”

“What about the third?” He shook his head. I pressed the cane to his chin, forcing his head back against the floorboards. “What about the third?” I repeated.

“I don’t know!” he spat. “Never seen it before.”

“Mr. Hilton?” Miss Patrick called through the door. “Is everything alright?”

I shifted my weight off him and Flapjack didn’t need an invitation to roll away from me. I palmed his knife and—with a move I’d learned from Crash—slid it into the waistband of my trousers. As Miss Patrick opened the door, all she saw was her new friend lifting himself off the floor, papers in hand, with the aid of his trusty cane.

“Mr. Walker, are you alright?”

“Just dandy, ma’am,” I sang cheerfully. “Mr. Hilton here was quite helpful. I was just on my way out when I took a bit of a tumble. Happens from time to time with this old thing.” I tapped my cane on the metal leg.

She ushered me out the door and I saw no more of Flapjack Hilton.

“Julius!” Miss Patrick called. “Julius, boy!”

The large lad met us at the bottom of the stairs, a potato in one hand and a small knife in the other. “Yes, Auntie Elise?”

“Put down that potato and see to Mr. Walker here. He’s got no business walking back to his homestead on a leg like that.”

Julius nodded and returned to the kitchen, but only briefly. As Miss Patrick guided me to the foyer once more, her arm looped through mine, she chided me about not taking care of myself. “Don’t you be making trips like that on your lonesome, boy. What if you’d fallen out in the snow by the tracks? No, I’ll just not have that on my conscience. Julius is going to take the Packard and see that you get safe home.”

I smiled with relief. “Ma’am, you are too kind.”