Arther Moonlight On Better Worlds

Sunflowers - Somerset County, PA - Photo by [Maris], 2001

When hoboes eulogized their friends, there were usually precious few people around to hear them. Such was the case in August 1938, when Unshakably Morose Flo, Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, Knee-Brace Kenny, and Laura Delite gathered between the railroad tracks and a field of sunflowers, just east of Gallitzin, Pennsylvania to remember Mad or Sad Judd (no one could tell), at the invitation of Arther Moonlight. Judd had died five weeks before, having jumped or fallen (no one could agree on that, either) from a bridge into the Susquehanna River at Harrisburg.

"No one else is coming?" Asked Arther Moonlight, so named for both his love of staring at the moon and his impossibly pale skin - and because hoboes didn't know how to spell Arthur.

"I don't think so," Laura said. "Pretty sure it's just us."

"Nuts."

"Hey - five is a pretty good crowd for one of these things," Kenny reasoned.

"Can we make this quick?" asked Unshakably Morose Flo. "I hate these things. So sad."

Arther smiled. "Don't worry - I don't have much to say."

"Were you and Mad or Sad Judd very close?" Laura asked.

"Nope."

"Oh for Pete's sake!" Ol' Barb spat. "None of us really knew him, either! What are we doing, here?"

"Every hobo deserves a respectful goodbye, Barb-- Don't stab me! You know it's true. Let's just bury his stick and bindle, say something nice, and be on our way, okay?"

"Fine."

"Friends," Arther began, "we gather here today to say something nice about our fellow 'bo, Mad or Sad Judd, who caught the westbound last month--"

"He jumped," Flo said. "I heard he was planning to swim down the Susquehanna, down the Chesapeake Bay, and all the way to Europe, to start a new life."

"No way," Knee-Brace Kenny said, "That's dumb."

"YOU'RE dumb!"

"Shush!" Arther shushed. "She's probably right about that, though. I only met Mad or Sad Judd once - he was sad, by the way, not mad. Our only meeting had a profound impact on my life. I was seventeen years old, less than a year into my life as a hobo, and as usual I was standing by the tracks in the middle of the night, staring at the moon. I was considering going back to Baltimore, to try to start over with a job at the port or something. My parents were long-since dead and buried, but I had an uncle with connections at Locust Point, so..."

Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick snorted. "Gee whiz, Moonlight - you sure know how to put the you in eulogy."

"I told you I didn't know him that well!" Arther snapped. "Let me finish. So, this older fella walks up and stops and stands there next to me for a minute, looking up at the moon with me. I said hello, and something about it being extra bright that night, and he laughs and says, 'There are better worlds, kid. That ain't one of 'em, but there are surely better worlds.' I didn't know what to say. I just stared at him for way too long, and in that extra-bright moonlight I could see a sadness in his sunken eyes that shook me something awful. He wasn't just sad. He wasn't just tired, or suffering, or any of those things we all know so well. He was broken - shattered, really. And he shook my hand, and all that stuff I just seen in his eyes came charging into my hand, like I grabbed an electric fence. I was flummoxed. This beat-down, crushed tin can of a man had just said the most hopeful thing I had ever heard. And he turned and walked away. I only found out who he was a few days later, when a yard cop came asking if I'd seen him."

"What's so great about that? 'Better worlds exist?' So what?" Unshakably Morose Flo said. "We're stuck on this world. If anything, I think knowing that there are better ones - well, that would just make it worse, wouldn't it?"

"Not for me," Arther said. "For me, it meant that I shouldn't ditch the path I was on. It meant, 'Keep looking, kid - don't give up.' That was a good fifteen years ago, and I still say it every day. Better worlds exist, and I'm gonna find me one - and if I can't find me one, I'm gonna make one..."

"You're going to make one?" Ol' Barb sneered. "How do you think you're going to do that?"

"I'm gonna do the best I can, that's how. Today, I'm gonna bury this here bindle sack in the earth, and say a prayer for Mad or Sad Judd, and wish you all well. And tomorrow, I'll look for work again, and take whatever this world gives me, and keep on walking."

"Sounds about right," Knee-Brace Kenny said, grabbing a piece of metal from a trackside scrap pile. "Let's do it. I'm happy to lead the prayer, if you'd like..."

"I appreciate that," Arther said, "but I'll handle the prayer."

"I'll drink to that," Barb declared, pulling a flask (really just an old cough syrup bottle) from her bag. "Here's to you, Mad or Sad Judd - better worlds exist, and I hope you find yours."

"Hear, hear!" the assembled hoboes chorused.

-- for Mary --

When Unshakably Morose Flo Met Happy Horace Noosemaker At The Hobo Christmas Party

 

One's Happy. One's Unshakably Morose.

Deep in the woods near Glencoe, hugging herself against the Pennsylvania chill, Unshakably Morose Flo was relieved to find Knee-Brace Kenny, not so much for his company, but for his knowledge of the location of this year's Christmas party. "I don't know why I bother with this nonsense," she groused as they walked. "I won't know anyone there but you and Laura Delite - and Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, of course."

"Barb said you'd say that," Kenny laughed. "That's why she sent me out here to make sure you don't change your mind and keep walking clear to Pittsburgh or some such. Also, I'm supposed to remind you that by the time you're halfway through a cup of Laura's famous hobo eggnog, you'll be best friends with every last merry-maker present."

"When has that ever happened?" she groaned. "Alcohol only amplifies my misery, and makes me want to drag everyone else down with me. Remember last year?"

"Listen you," Kenny barked with a stomp of his ratty boot in the snow, "I'm on a goodwill mission, here. If I show up without you, Barb will literally stab me."

"I'm not sure that qualifies as goodwill."

"Be that as it may, you're coming with me. Barb's hobo Christmas party jamboree and hootenanny is the event of the year in these parts. Plus, she has a new man friend she wants you to meet..."

It probably goes without saying that Flo had not always been unshakably morose - or any other kind of morose - but see if that stops me. Flo had not always been unshakably morose - or any other kind of morose. Half of her life ago, when she was thirteen and still called Florence, she had been a well-adjusted girl with a normal life in the suburbs of Chicago. She went to school and to church, played with her friends, respected her elders, and loved America. 

That was 1921. In the span of that year, her existence lurched from girlhood to hobo-hood. First, someone convinced her father that when the Chicago River ran green on St. Patrick's Day it was because the city had replaced the water with colored beer. He dove into the cold water, started drinking great gulps of the stuff, and managed to drown. Florence's father was a bit of dullard. Then, a few months later on a trip to the beach, her mother went for a swim in Lake Michigan and disappeared beneath the waves. Her body was never found, save for a foot that washed up near Waukegan. As so often happened with the 700 Hoboes, orphanages and boarding schools didn't agree with young Florence, and she joined the wanderers and vagrants of the hobo nation. And she was morose. Unshakably so.

She stopped in the snowy woods of south-central Pennsylvania and glared at Knee-Brace Kenny with equal parts sadness and anger. "A new what?"

"Man friend," Kenny said.

"She wants me to..."

"Meet," he said matter-of-factly. "Come on. It's Christmas Eve. Goodwill! Festiveness! Whatnot!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming," she growled. "But I ask you again - do none of you people remember last year? Wasn't there a man friend for me to meet last year, as well?"

"There was."

"And did it go well?"

"It did not."

"I'll say it didn't. Barb ended up stabbing the guy."

Kenny laughed. "This guy's really nice. He's been here all day, helping us get ready. Happiest man I've met since before the depression started."

"Ugh. What's his name? What's his story? What's wrong with him?"

"They call him Happy Horace Noosemaker, and nothing's wrong with him. He's a nice man."

"Noosemaker? As in, nooses? For the hanging of people by the neck? Until dead? Well, that's just swell," Flo sighed.

"No, no. He just makes nooses. I think it's the only knot he knows how to tie, so he makes them all the time. I'm pretty sure his belt is just an oversize noose."

"And why is he Happy Horace? What is there to be happy about, anyway?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Flo. The guy's just happy. He's been through all the same noise the rest of us have - death and poverty and dirt and violence and hunger and cold and hardship - the whole nine yards, but he says his soul is happy, so there you go."

Flo shook her head. "Fine. I'll try to keep an open mind. Say - how'd his folks die?"

"Who said his folks died? Why do you always ask that? Maybe they're alive and well, and living in Topeka," Kenny offered.

"They're not, are they?"

Kenny coughed. "Well, no. Horace's old man worked for Henry Ford, and he was killed on the assembly line one day when a bear got into the plant."

"Marvelous. And his mother?"

"I think his mother is in a nursing home in Detroit, actually. He mentioned going to see her for New Year's." 

"Really?"

Kenny paused and studied his shoes for a moment. No, not really. Look - we're here. Be nice. It's Christmas."

Fifteen minutes later, after two cups of Laura Delite's famous hobo eggnog, Unshakably Morose Flo was introduced to Happy Horace Noosemaker.

It did not go well.


The preceding Christmas drivel was prompted ("Goodwill") by friends old and new at Our Write Side, in their weekly feature Two Word Tuesday.