The Hope Chest by Karen Schwabach Read Free Book Online Page A

ten at night when we left New York.”
    Hobie brought them two tin cans full of what he said was stew. Violet was too hungry to be particular. They drank and ate the stew as best they could with their grimy fingers. It was full of vegetables Violet didn't recognize and bits of meat it was best not to examine too closely. But it tasted all right.
    “We'll sleep here tonight,” said Hobie. “But not in the jungle. I didn't tell the yeggs you were here—some of them don't know how to act proper around ladies. We'll sleep over there in one of them broke-down cars. There's a through freight to Baltimore tomorrow.”
    So that was what they did. Hobie told them more of his adventures as they fell asleep under a covering of newspapers on a wheelless flatcar. Violet looked up at the stars and wondered if she would really see Chloe tomorrow. When the newspapers fluttered and rustled inthe breeze, she thought about her green chenille bedspread, but she didn't wish she was back in Susquehanna. She was having an adventure, and Myrtle was a good person to have an adventure with, just like Flossie would have been. It was funny, but Violet felt as if there was some part of her that had been locked up since Flossie's death—even more locked up than the rest of her was— and that it was being set free. As for Hobie, she was getting used to him. The main thing was not to look at him directly so that you didn't have to realize he was just a kid when he kept talking like he was his own grandfather. As Violet drifted off to sleep, Hobie was talking about how he wanted to go to Florida, one of the few places he admitted he'd never been.
    It had been easy for Myrtle to decide to leave the Girls' Training Institute in New York. In her mind she'd left it the moment she arrived, a year ago, when she was nine. Myrtle didn't know where her life was going to take her, but she was ready for it to take her somewhere else, and she didn't intend to be anybody's maid.
    Myrtle wasn't tough like Hobie, but she wasn't soft like Violet either. Still, she woke up in the morning stiff and achy. The rough wooden floor of the flatcar was even less comfortable than the lumpy cots at the Girls' Training Institute, which were said to be left over from the Civil War. She and Violet ate some stale doughnuts Hobie brought from the jungle and drank bitter chicory coffeefrom tin cans. Violet made a face over the coffee, and when Myrtle asked her if she'd never had chicory coffee before, she admitted she'd never had coffee before at all.
    Hobie was wrong about one thing—boxcars were a lot more comfortable than riding the blinds. They rode in a deadhead (an empty boxcar) on the through freight to Baltimore. When they got to Baltimore, the railroad police (whom Hobie called bulls) chased them away from the blinds, so they had to take another freight. They were jouncing along in an empty boxcar, sitting on the wooden floor, watching tobacco fields pass by and listening to Hobie talk about the Rocky Mountains, when there was a loud wooden thump and a white man in a blue coverall landed on the boards in front of them.
    Myrtle leapt to her feet and backed away from him.
    His hands were balled into tight fists, and he advanced on them menacingly. “Stealin' rides, eh? Should I turn you in to the bulls or just throw you off the train?”
    Hobie got to his feet and folded his arms. “It's your train, is it?”
    “It sure ain't yours,” said the man. “So what's it gonna be? Do I ditch you or are you ready to throw?”
    “I don't have any money,” said Hobie defiantly. “So ditch me.”
    The man clearly didn't like this idea. “How about one of the Angelinas, then?” He reached out and grabbed Myrtle.
    He stank of sweat and soot. Myrtle struggled. Hishand dug painfully into her arm. He lifted her into the air and grabbed her ankle in his other hand. The floor and the walls lurched crazily past and Myrtle couldn't catch her breath to scream. He swung her—he was going