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

to throw her out the open door.
    “You ready to see her hit the grit?” The white man's voice seemed to lurch too. He swung Myrtle again—she saw the ground whizzing beneath her, terrifyingly close and fast.
    “I have money!” Violet screamed. Myrtle saw a flash of grubby pink skin as Violet tried to grab the man's arm. “I have money! Put her down, right now!”
    The man set Myrtle down, jarringly. If he hadn't been gripping her arms tight behind her, she would have fallen. “Mix me the hike, then,” he ordered.
    Violet scrabbled in her blouse and drew out a pinned handkerchief. She had started to hand it over when Hobie grabbed her arm. “Don't,” he said.
    “Are you crazy?” Violet snapped.
    “Fifteen cents,” Hobie said. “He gets fifteen cents.”
    “Thirty,” said the criminal, twisting Myrtle's arms a few inches for emphasis. It hurt horribly. Myrtle felt dizzy with pain. She saw Violet wince with sympathy.
    “Fifteen,” said Hobie. “That's the hike.”
    “Ten cents per hundred miles,” said the criminal. “Each.”
    “We ain't going no hundred miles,” said Hobie. “We're going to Washington, and that ain't but half that.Give him fifteen, Angelina.” Myrtle couldn't believe he was arguing about money with this madman.
    Violet handed the criminal three nickels. He grabbed them and let Myrtle go with a kind of disgusted shove. She fell on the floorboards.
    “Are you all right?” Myrtle felt Violet's hands on her arms. “Myrtle, say something!”
    Myrtle didn't want to say anything, because she thought if she opened her mouth, she might be sick. She wasn't normally a person to get dizzy easily, but then, nobody had ever swung her out the open door of a moving train before.
    When she could see clearly again, the man was gone.
    Hobie looked after him philosophically. “Don't think he's been a brakeman too long, that fella. You hardly ever see a braky who's still got both hands.”
    “A brakeman?” Violet stared at Hobie. “You mean that criminal works for the railroad?”
    “Yup,” said Hobie, casting a disgusted look out the open door.
    “How … how did he get in here?” Myrtle asked shakily.
    “Roof,” said Hobie, nodding upward. “Brakies can climb all over the outside of a moving train, doesn't bother them none.”
    “I would th-think,” said Violet, who Myrtle saw was starting to tremble now, “that they would fall off.”
    “Oh, they do. All the time. Die like flies,” said Hobie.“They're not all like that,” he added fairly. “Most of them don't care if the brothers and sisters want to grab an armload of boxcars.”
    Myrtle had gotten used to Hobie's talk enough to figure out that that was another way to say “catch a ride.”
    It was evening when they arrived in Washington.
    When they got off the train in Washington, Hobie stayed on it. “Think I'm gonna ride this as far as it goes,” he said. “Might make it to Florida.” He seemed to have no interest in actually
being
in any of the places that trains went to, Myrtle thought, but only in getting to them.
    Myrtle had met kids like Hobie before. New York was full of them—grown-up kids who had been out on their own for years. She didn't really blame Hobie for being tough enough to argue with a brakeman who was threatening to throw her out of a train—toughness was what kept such kids alive. But the next thing he said shocked her.
    “There are bound to be a lot of brakemen between Washington and Florida,” Violet said. She reached for her pinned-up handkerchief of money and tried to give it to Hobie. He wouldn't take it.
    “I have money,” he said.
    “You what?” Myrtle squawked. “You have money?” “You were going to let that brakeman throw Myrtle out of the train when you had money to pay him with?” Violet demanded.
    “No, of course I wasn't,” said Hobie. He did not elaborate. “You Angelinas take care, now.”
    Myrtle didn't know whether to believe him or not— about the money and about