Constantly Sobbing Forrester Has A Moment

Point of Rocks - E. Baldwin, Architect - photo by Joe

Constantly Sobbing Forrester was lost. Again. He had been striding confidently along the B&O tracks through Harpers Ferry, across the Potomac and southward into Brunswick. He turned left onto Maple Avenue and was about to take the next left at Potomac Street, where he knew of a church that never failed to provide a bite to eat and a glass of milk to a hungry hobo.

Suddenly, he had no idea if left was the way to go, or right. Or was it straight for another block, up the hill to "A" Street? He stood there on the corner, turning slowly and studying the street and its buildings and storefronts, and just when he thought he had his bearings, a terrible panic buzzed through him. Not only could he not discern which was the right direction to go to reach the - what was he looking for? Diner? Hobo jungle? Church? Before he could come to terms with not remembering that, a second, heavier panic wave hit him, nearly knocking him off his feet. How did I get here? I can't even retrace my steps, he thought. I can't remember ANYTHING. He sat on the curb and sobbed.

At sixty-one, Forrester was impressively old, for a hobo. It was October of 1940, and he'd been a card-carrying member of the nation's wandering poor (note: they did not carry cards) for twenty years. He was born to a Civil War vet - would never divulge whether Union or confederate - and his nurse-turned-bride, in 1879. He carried with him vivid memories of ice skating on a frozen pond, and wintertime trips to the outhouse, and the sound of chalk on slate. Clear as day, he saw his mother, young and strong, showing him how to blow out the candle on his birthday potato pancake. He could still feel the sting of his father's belt, from that time when he unthinkingly swiped a few bits from the collection bowl at church. He was so little, and he saw coins, and grabbed them. Why? Why did that warrant such an assault. Things were never quite the same, after that.

He knew every curve of the B&O tracks, from DC and Baltimore to Cleveland and beyond. He could tell you what kind of train was coming - and the name of the engineer - from the signature of its whistle as it echoed off the hills of the Potomac Highlands. But he couldn't tell you how he got to this intersection, in this town he'd visited a hundred times. Lately, he was sobbing more often than not. His body was still strong - well, strong enough - but his mind had gone. He could see his childhood and his mum and his pretty, doting sisters with sparkling clarity, but he couldn't remember the steps leading from the train tracks to this spot, a hundred yards away. 

It was beyond cruel. Forrester sobbed, and sobbed. After that, he went on sobbing. After an hour - or maybe forty-five seconds - a strong but caring hand on his shoulder.

"Friend," a voice said, neither a question nor a statement.

"Sob," Forrester sobbed.

"Friend, you seem lost," said the stranger. "Let's get you back on track, before trouble finds us both..."

"Okay..." Forrester felt himself rise to his feet.

"This way," the stranger said. "Back to the tracks. I saw you earlier. Looks like you were headed south..."

Forrester shrugged.

"Toward Baltimore? Or maybe DC?"

Forrester knew those words. Those were cities. Small, but with many trains. He nodded.

"Let's go," urged the stranger. "Are you okay? Can you walk?"

Walk, thought Forrester. I know what walk means. I understand! He nodded again.

The stranger led the old hobo back to the railroad, and they walked southward (which here, in railroad terms, is "east") for two hours, past the east end of Brunswick yard, and along the Potomac past Catoctin creek and round the big curve to Point Of Rocks. He asked the old man questions, and the old man shrugged or said "I don't remember." 

Forrester sobbed off and on, as they trudged onward. He knew that these rails were his home. He knew what a hobo was, and that he was counted among them, but for a million dollars he wouldn't have been able to tell you how he had come to join their ranks - or why.  But then they rounded the rocky outcrop that demarked the north end of Point Of Rocks, and he saw in the distance the churchlike structure that was its train station.

"Baldwin," Forrester managed to say, between sobs.

"Beg pardon?" said his new friend.

"That's Point Of Rocks station," Forrester declared, wiping away some tears, "Designed by Ephraim Francis Baldwin. You can tell by the roofing, and the way it looks like a church. Devout Christian, he was. I'm not - but I can feel his faith in his designs. He did Kensington and Bryn Mawr and all kinds of other stations. I remember this place."

They walked on in silence until they reached the bricked passenger platforms of the station, and Forrester stopped and gazed up again at the church-y train station, illuminated by an autumn sunset, with a pile of cottony clouds behind its spire. "I know this place," he said. "I don't know how I got here, but I know where I am. This is good."

The stranger looked up at the structure and tried to see what the old hobo, who was once again sobbing, although now somewhat differently, could see.

"This is good," he agreed.

Troglodytic Amory Funt's New Roommate

Scram, Norfolk & Western - this is a B&O story! Photo by Joe

"Did hoboes ever establish a kind of home base," I'm never asked. If only someone - preferably someone pretty and/or young - would ask me that. I would then have the life's-trajectory-altering opportunity to say, "Yep." Or maybe, "Oh, you betcha, ya."

Amory Funt's road from boy to hobo was just like most others of his time. We've heard it repeated so often, it's hardly worth mentioning. Fourteen-year old boy wakes in his family's Adamstown, Maryland farmhouse to find a note from his parents, curtly informing him that they and his sisters are fed up with his constant throat-clearing and have left him there. "Don't try to find us," the note closes, followed by the post-script: "Oh, and you'll need to find a place to live, as the bank will be foreclosing on the house any minute, now. Bye!" 

Sound familiar? That's what I thought.

So he gathered his stuff and went. But his family left a lot of their belongings behind, and even at fourteen he understood the utility of a couple of pots and pans, some extra blankets, and tools and oil lamps and candles and all sorts of whatnot. He knew that as soon as he left the house, all those useful things were fair game. It was 1930, and if opportunistic poor folks didn't find this trove, the bank would be there soon enough. So he found a cave in a hard-to-reach spot near the confluence of Catoctin Creek and the Potomac River, and he spent the next 72 straight hours hauling cartloads of household materiel to his new home. On his final visit to the house, there was a new note, informing him that his parents had returned to retrieve some of their belongings, and something about wanting to talk about it. He scribbled "Don't try to find me," across the page and was gone.

For the next two years, Amory was technically not a hobo. He wandered the Baltimore and Ohio, from Sykesville to Point of Rocks on the old main line, and from Harpers Ferry down to Barnsville, on the new metropolitan branch, but he wasn't truly homeless. He just lived in a cave. It was the best-furnished and equipped cave on the eastern seaboard, but it was still a cave. He told other hoboes he encountered that he sheltered in a cave, but was careful not to give away the location, and was doubly vigilant about ensuring he was never followed there. He also sold its contents, so for a while he wasn't even poor. He would sell an old lamp or woodworking tool, and then eat for a month or more. This system worked for him, and helped to ease his transition to real hobo-ing.

There weren't a lot of other hoboes along this stretch of the B&O, and most of the few he met were "city 'boes," from Baltimore or DC or Rockville, so Amory Funt found it difficult to relate to them. But in 1934, about two years after he'd sold the last of the things he was willing to sell (he kept a pitcher and two glasses, a pot, an iron skillet, a couple of blankets, cooking utensils, and a tree saw), he met Fossilwise Opie Fingernail. Opie had heard of Amory, and it was he who was the first to share with Amory the hobo moniker he didn't even know he had.

"Do you get sore when people call you 'Troglodytic Amory Funt,'" he asked, almost in passing, as they walked the tracks between Tuscarora and Point of Rocks, not two hours after they'd met, further down the line in Dickerson.

"WHAT??? Troglodytic - as in like a neandertal or something?" Amory demanded.

"Not exactly. It's just that you always tell folks you have a cave that you kinda live in, is all. So they figure it's like you're a cave man, I suppose. You know - in the literal sense."

"Ah. I see. That's fair. I don't love it, though. So, how'd you get tagged with Fossilwise Opie Fingernail, and what's your story, friend?"

"Name really is Opie. Last name was Huffnail, but I have fingernails that could dig through the walls of Alcatraz..."

"What's Alcatraz," Amory interrupted.

"It's a prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay. Thick stone walls. No one's ever escaped. Anyhow, I grew up on a farm in Lusby, near Calvert Cliffs, down on the Chesapeake. Starting in second grade, I loved fossils, and I read every book I could find about them. Every chance I got, I was down on the beach near the cliffs, looking for shark's teeth and anything I thought might be a fossil. I became an expert on the subject. I still have about two pounds' worth in my bindle sack. Hence the name Fossilwise."

"Why ain't you a college professor or something? What happened," Troglodytic Amory asked.

"Same story as any hobo," Opie sighed, "My mother took off - literally - with some hot shot zeppelin pilot from Patuxent Station, my father had a shoe-tying accident and lost a fingernail, which got infected and before long he was dead - from running over himself with his own tractor..."

"Same ol' story," Amory nodded thoughtfully. "Boy, if I had a nickel..."

"Yeah, so that was five years ago, and I've been walking the rails and hopping trains ever since."

Troglodytic Amory and Fossilwise Opie became friends, sharing the common ground of their farm-based childhoods and identical hobo origin stories. They walked the B&O as far  east as Baltimore and westward to Cumberland, and did all those hobo-y things that hoboes did. Eventually, Opie talked Amory into letting him share his cave - infrequently at first, but with increasing regularity over time. They became an odd, mostly homeless pair of roommates. 

Until.

One day, Amory had left Opie asleep in the cave and walked to Brunswick to try to score a free meal at one of its churches. He was unsuccessful, and returned at dusk, finding an exhausted and filthy Fossilwise Opie Fingernail sitting on a tree stump outside the cave, proudly holding up what appeared to be a tiny stone skeleton for Amory's inspection and approval. 

"Keen, pal," Amory affirmed. "Where'd you... find... that..." He looked inside the cave that had been his home for years. The once-smooth floors were rutted and full of holes. The walls were riddled with divots. There were little piles of loose soil and rocks littering the entire space. "What did you do?"

"Sorry, buddy. I've been looking for this trilobite for years. Just needed you to leave me here alone long enough to finally dig. I hope you understand. It's the best-preserved specimen anyone's found yet. I didn't mean to destroy your cave, but the piece wasn't exactly where the old Indian said it would be, and one thing led to another..."

"Take your rock and go," Amory spat. "Are you even a hobo?"

"I am not," Dr. Opie Huffnail said. "Again, sorry about your, um, cave."

Amory though for a moment. “Oh, that’s alright, professor. You can stay and help me get my floor smoothed out. Fair enough?”

“Sure.”

“And when we’re done, I’ll kill you with a rock.”

Curing Bingo-Balls Nick Chintz And Fourteen-Bindelstick Frank

 

Lined up to rejoin the main. Photo by Joe - 2001

If had a nickel for every time no one asked me about the mental health issues of the American hoboes, I'd have all the nickels in the Mariana Trench. Of course hoboes endured all kinds of mental illness; they were people. As you might expect, they experienced such maladies with much greater frequency than did the general population. They were homeless, malnourished, often the victims of violence, and they spent a lot of time alone. Alcoholism, schizophrenia, lint addiction, depression, and anxiety were common. Less prevalent was the disorder we now call hoarding.

This is primarily due to the fact that hoboes tended to carry all their worldly possessions on their person - usually in sacks, or stick-and-bindles - so as a practical matter, it was hard to hoard anything much larger than pennies or lint. But it wasn't impossible. In an amazing coincidence I just made up, two of John Hodgman's documented hoboes knew each other, and were friends.

Bingo-Balls Nick Chintz grew up as only child Nicholas Schmidt in Charleston, West Virginia. His father operated the coal tipple at a nearby mine, and his mother was a homemaker who dabbled in freelance laundry cleaning, a job that became full-time when the Depression hit. In 1931, when young Nick was sixteen, Mr. Schmidt ate a pound of anthracite coal on a bet, and died of a bowel obstruction - or complications thereof. Nick's mother remarried a few months later, desperate to keep a roof over their heads. Her new husband, an undertaker, was a broken veteran of The Great War, and terrifyingly abusive. Within a year, Nick and his mother fled their house of horrors and joined the ranks of the wandering poor. Nick took to the hobo life rather easily, but despite his best efforts, he couldn't keep his mother from returning to that awful man. He walked on, assuming the worst. When she left him, she gifted him with a bingo ball (B-11), which his father had swiped from the church and given to her after bingo night - their first date.

The rest, as they say, is history. For reasons known only to him, Nick began stealing bingo balls, one at a time, from churches from Maine to Missouri, bent on acquiring a complete set. He carried them in an old flour sack, and though they weighed very little, after a while the bag became rather bulky. It is believed that he didn't stop collecting when he completed one set of balls; he just kept acquiring. And acquiring, and acquiring. He was hoarding bingo balls.

He met Fourteen-Bindlestick Frank in East St. Louis, Illinois in 1933, and they immediately became friends. Frank was busy collecting more bindlesticks than he could carry, and Bingo Balls Nick Chintz had more bingo balls than he could carry. Together, they helped each other's hoarding disorder grow and thrive. In an interesting (to me) twist, Fourteen-Bindlestick Frank's path from child to hobo was exactly like Nick's, except that when Frank's dad died. it was from watermelons, and he gave his widow a bindlestick as a first-date keepsake, and when she remarried following his death, the new husband was an absolute sweetheart. 

Word of Frank and Nick and their co-enabled hoarding habits spread, which is a testament to the busybody network of hobo comms, as it really shouldn't have concerned anyone else. Eventually, their case came to the attention of one Dr. Nobel Dynamite, the renowned hobo shrink and slight-of-hand magician. "I must cure them," he declared to the hobo media, who promptly misquoted him and made him sound weak and stupid (out of context).

A meeting was arranged. Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick provided security, although at first, no one knew why that was necessary. The three men met behind the B&O's "HO" tower, in Hancock, Maryland. "Fellas, I aim to cure you of your destructive neurological disorder, and free you from the shackles of mental illness," The doctor declared grandly. With that, he grabbed as many of Frank's fourteen bindlesticks as he could carry - including the one containing Nick's bingo balls - and ran away, laughing. Ol' Barb prevented them from giving chase. 

"You're cured!" the good doctor yelled as he ran off through the woods. 

"He's just lucky I keep Ma's souvenir B-11 ball in my trousers," Nick said.

"I'm grateful that he left me with one stick-and-bindle," said Frank.

"Well, looks like we'll have to get back to collecting."

"We sure will, pal. We sure will."

When Craine T. Eyebrow-Smeller Met Chelsea Bacon

There's magic 'neath that old roof. Photo by Joe, 87 years ago

As a fake expert on fake hoboes, I'm often asked by no one about the famous series of hobo speed-dating events that took place from 1934 to 1938 in the B&O's Baldwin roundhouse in the Mt. Clare section of Baltimore. If you're one of those who have previously asked me about this, you needn't read on, for no new information follows. If, however, you fall into the category of literally everyone, here's a peek at a typical encounter at one of these meet-ups.

The events were held on Sunday evenings, the only time the roundhouse and surrounding Mt. Clare shops weren't crawling with workmen. There were two night watchmen, but as luck would have it, they had a soft spot for lonely hoboes - and a rather startling addiction to hobo wine. With the guards outside drinking their bribes, the hosts (Sausage Patty and Gummy Miles, a married hobo couple) would arrange pairs folding chairs and crates on the turntable in the center of the cavernous roundhouse. Attendance varied, because hoboes, but on most nights there would be about ten to twenty single 'boes, ready to mingle. They paired up for five minutes at a time and hurriedly familiarized themselves with each other. Hookups often followed, as well as fisticuffs, and - rarely - a real connection.

Sausage Patty yelled, "Gentlemen, switch," and all the men switched stations. 

Chelsea Bacon looked up at the exceptionally tall, wiry man as he approached and lowered himself onto the crate opposite her chair. When he sat, his long legs creaked and bent, and he looked like a grasshopper. But his freckled face was kind, and his tired eyes smiled - and he clutched his ratty hat to his chest, minding what manners he could remember from his time before. She offered her hand and he took it, gently but confidently. "Chelsea Bacon," she said, "Charmed, I'm sure."

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Craine T. Eyebrow-Smell-- er, sorry. I'm Craine."

"Eyebrow what?" she asked, head tilted quizzically.

He looked away for a moment. "Eyebrow-Smeller. It's not what it sounds like."

"Well that's lucky, because it sounds like maybe you have a penchant for sniffing people's eyebrows."

"I'm just tall, is all. When I became a hobo, they gave me a lot of guff about how my nose was right at the height of everyone's eyebrows, and, well... you know how stupid men are. It doesn't make a lick of sense, but it stuck. As God is my witness, I've never smelled an eyebrow."

"What's your given name, then?"

"Craine Thomas Browsmellier."

"Huh."

"Enough about me. We have so little time. Let's talk about you. Is your name as silly as mine?"

She stared at him for a moment, fighting the urge to pout. "Chelsea Beacon is my real name."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"I like bacon," he offered nervously, "and Chelsea is pretty. So, where are you from? How did you come to be a hobo? Sorry - I'm not very good at this." She smiled and he fell in love a little.

"You're doing fine. I grew up in Cincinnati. My parents died not long after the crash, when I was seventeen, and I hit the road with a couple of girlfriends from school who were in similar straits. They've both died since then, as well."

"Good Grief!" he gasped. "That is a lot of loss for one person to endure. I lost my parents, too. Mine were taken."

"Taken?"

"By President Hoover's gypsies, yes. What happened to yours?"

"My pa was a shoe salesman. One night, while stocking his backroom shelves with the latest shipment, he stepped on a wooden shoehorn and it snapped, sending splinters of wood flying. One zonked him right in the eye, and he died three weeks later, of getting hit by a streetcar."

Craine frowned thoughtfully while his brain struggled. "Gee whiz..."

"And my ma, she was a school nurse. She kept working after Pa died, but little did my brothers and I know, she was taking all sorts of drugs from the school, and one night, she drank a whole bottle of ipecac syrup, and she vomited to death."

"I'm so sorry," he said sincerely. He thought for a moment and added, "This is a strange date."

"Indeed. So, Craine T. Eyebrow-Smeller, the man who doesn't smell eyebrows but is merely very tall - what were you before? And are you ever going back, or are you a lifer?"

"I was a freelance lightbulb changer in Richmond, but after the crash, jobs went from scarce to nonexistent, so I hit the rails and I've been doing the best I can, ever since. I take whatever day jobs I can find, and I try to keep to the code and avoid stealing any more than absolutely necessary. Mostly, I just keep walking. I have this fear that if I stop walking, I'll stop hoping, and if I stop hoping, well that's that, isn't it?"

"What are you hoping for?"

"Something better. I don't know if that means a way back to the world, or finding peace with this life, or just finding someone to walk with. You know - something good."

Her eyes widened and she drew a profoundly long breath. "That's exactly why I keep walking," she whispered.

"Which one - the something better, or--"

"All of it," she said. "Just - all of it. I keep walking. It's what I do. I've seen so much loss, as you say, so much despair and dirt and sickness and godlessness and hopelessness. I cling to my hope like it's my own newborn baby and jackals are trying to grab her. It's all I have left. I guess that sounds silly."

"That sounds anything but silly, Chelsea. I see Sausage Patty is checking her watch. Our time is up. If I may be so bold - would you like to walk a while with me? I've only my hope left, as well, but I'd be happy to share it with you."

She smiled again. He fell in love a little bit more. She stood and took his hand, and led him toward the door. They walked a while together and pooled their collective hope. 

Candle-Eyed Sally Goes Home

Since I started telling the tales of John Hodgman's 700 Hoboes, I've been asked repeatedly by no one whether any of these tramps ever managed to return home from life on the road.  There were seven hundred of them; of course some went home.  Remember  Santa Fe Jingle Bell, The World's Most Christmassy Tramp?

Candle-Eyed Sally - given name Sara Elizabeth Fitzpatrick - ran away with her boyfriend in 1931, when she was thirteen years old, and he was three years her senior.  She left her family's humble but comfortable home in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania primarily to escape her father, with whom she had developed a bitter and private rift, but also because she was in love with Ralph Bourne.  They were going to be hoboes and get married by the railroad tracks at Horseshoe Curve on Sally's next birthday.

Part of that plan came to fruition, as they both quickly learned the ways of the road, but her dream of marrying Ralph died when he did, not ten months after they left home.  He was cooking a pot of hobo chili in the shelter of a small rail-side shed.  Taking a test sniff of his concoction, he inhaled a noseful of chili powder.  He sneezed so hard that in the recoil, he hit his head on the low roof of the shed, broke his neck, and died instantly.  Sally cried for a month, nearly starving and dehydrating herself to death in the process.

She almost went home, that month, but by then she knew that only one of her two loves had perished.  She loved the road.  She loved being in control of her destiny, fending for herself, being free.  She vowed to make it work.

Her moniker came from her late hobo boyfriend.  Even before they had run away together, he had taken to calling her Candle-Eyed Sally.  It was the easiest of nicknames.  Her blue eyes did indeed glow with a light that seemed to come from within, but more importantly, they flickered as only the solitary flames of candles can.  Her hair was the kind of fiery red that would have made her Irish ancestors proud.  She was sturdy and broad-shouldered, and had always been a bit of a tomboy.  

She did what hoboes did to survive, and she grew up fast and hard.  Life on the road was ten times more difficult for a girl than it was for the boys and men who dominated the hobo world every bit as much as they dominated everything else.  She learned quickly, became a tough and respected filthy homeless drifter, saw the United States from end to end and top to bottom, and made many friends.  Men twice her size were powerless when faced with her candlelit eyes and, when push came to shove, with her fearsome right hook.

She couldn't - or wouldn't - explain to her hobo brethren just what it was that compelled her to go home for Christmas in 1935, some four and a half years after leaving.  She rode B & O and Pennsy trains from western Kentucky, through Cumberland and Baltimore and Philadelphia, and walked the last miles to her parents' home.  She arrived just before dark on Christmas Eve. 

"Saints preserve us!" her mother gasped at the sight of her firstborn, standing on the porch.  "It's Sara!  She's come home!  George!  Fay!  Come quick!  Sara's home!"

Hugs.  Shrieks of joy.  More hugs.  She scarcely recognized her baby sister Phaedra "Fay" Anne, now all of nine years old.  She acknowledged her father with a nod and a quick smile.  Her mother showed her to her room, which they had kept ready for her for nearly the last half-decade.  Sally enjoyed a bath, sang Christmas hymns, gave her family gifts of hobo incense and figurines crafted from anthracite coal, then joined them for dinner.

"We've set a place for you, every night, all this time, Sara," her mother announced.  "Haven't we, George?"

Mr. Fitzpatrick grunted and took his seat at the head of the table.

"I go by Sally now, Mother," she said quietly.

"Not in my house, Sara Elizabeth," her father said flatly.  "Sally is a floozy name."

Undeterred, she added, "all my friends call me Candle-Eyed Sally."

"Leave her be, George," her mother said.  "You do still have the most luminescent eyes, sweetie."

"I can't wait to tell you about the things I've seen - the places I've been and oh, the people I've met..."

"We don't need to know about the dirty, sinful cities or the rotten, heathen drunks and criminals you've been associating with, Sara," her father growled at his plate.  "We're just happy you're home, where you belong."

"But they're not all bad, Daddy.  In fact, some of the folks I know from the road are the salt of the earth..."

"I'm sure they are," her mother nodded, "but the important thing is, there's still time to repent for all your sins."

"My what?"

"Your sins, and your sinful, fornicating ways," her mother said with a disturbing degree of cheerfulness.

"My what??"

"You heard your mother," Mr. Fitzpatrick said.  "But, tell me - why did you come home?  Were just hungry, or are you planning on robbing us while we sleep?"


The candles in Sally's eyes dimmed.  "Firstly - I live a pretty clean life, Mother.  As to your query, Daddy - I am here to tell you that I forgive you."

Silence.  

"Don't change the subject, young lady.  There's nothing for you to forgive your father for.  He was strict because you needed him to be strict.  But don't deny your sinful ways of the road.  We're not ignorant.  We know what goes on among those dirty hoboes.  You were an innocent little girl when you left here, and now... well, a woman can tell certain things about her daughter..."

"You must be joking!" Sally snapped.  "I was not exactly a virgin when I left here.  Isn't that right, Daddy?"

"You come back into my house and start insulting everyone and spouting your vile lies?  Get out!"  Her father thundered.

"Oh, she's just delirious from malnutrition, George. Let her be.  After a good night of sleep and some prayer, we'll all be right as rain in the morning."

"Well, I was here because Christmas is the best time for forgiveness, but I was mistaken..."

It took several minutes, but Mrs. Fitzpatrick managed to restore order and steward her reassembled family through dinner.  Sally retired to her little girl bed in her little girl room, and slept fitfully, unaccustomed as she now was to the softness and warmth.  

At nearly two in the morning, she became dimly aware of sounds coming from Fay's room, next door.  After a minute or so, her dim awareness became a keen awareness.  She recognized the breathing; she had stifled those same cries, fearing for her life.  She couldn't hear her father's words, but she knew the tones of his voice, the sinister and confusing blend of comfort and threat.

She stomped resolutely to Fay's bedroom door, and kicked it in.  "I knew it!"

"This is none of your concern," her father roared.  

"Sure it isn't, Daddy," Sally said through gnashed teeth, "but if you touch her again - ever - I will kill you myself."

"You don't understand..." Mrs. Fitzpatrick sobbed, racing from the master bedroom and wedging herself between Sally and George.

"No.  I do, Mother.  That was the whole point behind my forgiving Daddy.  I understand that someone hurt him, too.  I truly want to forgive him, but we have to get out of here."

"I'm the man of this house, and no one's going anywhere!" he declared.

"I am, Daddy.  Don't try to stop me.  If Mama and Phaedra have any sense, they'll come with me."  She ran to her room, snatched her bindle bag from the floor, and raced past her parents, who were still frozen in ghastly denial in the hallway.  "Thank you for the bath, and for dinner.  I still love you all, and Daddy..." her voice cracked, betraying her heartbreak at the realization that it was forever, this time - she would never come home again.  "...I forgive you."

A half-mile down the old Philadelphia road, her mother caught up with her.

"Sara!  Sara, stop!  Here.  Take this."  She held out a stack of cash.

"Mother!  No!  I don't need it, and Daddy will beat you to death if he finds that missing," Sally said.

"He doesn't know about it," her mother said.  "I've been saving it, a dollar or two at a time, for years.  Take it, please."

"I'll take five bucks, Mother.  You take the rest, and go get Fay, and promise me that you will run from that man and never stop."

"But, he's my husband.  And, and it's Christmas..."

"I know, and I am not so young that I don't understand - truly.  But your life and Fay's life are worth saving.  Everyone is worth saving, Mother, but we can't save Daddy.  Save yourself.  Save my sister.  Promise me you'll run."

Her mother hugged her, hard.  "I promise, honey.  I will.  I have to get back now.  He'll drink himself to sleep, and once he's passed-out, I'll take Fay and go.  Can we meet you?  Will you help us?"

"I'll wait behind the train station until sunup, but then I'm going.  I hope you'll come.  It will be a Christmas miracle if you come."

Her mother kissed her on the forehead.  "I love you, Candle..."

"Candle-Eyed Sally," she said.  "I love you, too.  Go.  And be careful."

The flames grudgingly returned to Candle-Eyed Sally's eyes, and they flickered faintly in the dim light of the sodium lamp that hung from the eave of the train station roof in Washington Crossing.  Sally prayed, and she waited.

It was Christmas, she reasoned with her god.  Anything could happen.  



 

Achilles Snail-Hair the Buddha

The devastation of the Great Depression reached virtually every person in the United States.  The rich lost their riches, the middle class became destitute, and the poor turned to dust and blew away.  The financial impacts were obvious, immediate and overwhelming, but there were a number of other losses.

One non-monetary, but equally destructive, loss experienced by millions of Americans was that of faith.  For every penniless bum and wandering hobo who prayed his or her way through the Depression, there was one who found no solace in religion.  For some, God was deemed to have died.  For others, the higher power had turned its back on them.  Many more simply abandoned their faith, concluding that they had been on their own all along.

The rampant faithlessness among the nation's hoboes makes the life of Achilles Snail-Hair the Buddha one of the more surprising of the stories I've uncovered to date.

Achilles' path from a normal life to hobodom was unremarkable.  He was the only child of young Greek immigrants.  His father, a grocer, was accidentally crushed to death under a truckload of honeydew melons when Achilles was five.  Before he turned thirteen, his mother was gone, as well.  She was a hairdresser, and was giving her son a "snail do" when she badly burned her hand on a hot iron curler.  The wound became infected, and within two weeks she had succumbed.  From there, Achilles, who kept the snail hairdo for the rest of his days, went quickly from odd jobs to blah blah blah to hobo.

He had been raised Greek Orthodox, but there was little room in his difficult vagrant life for such strict and solemn worship.  As the 1930s - and Achilles' twenties - dragged on, his faith waned.  He kept mostly to himself, but when he met other hoboes, he was always warm, cordial and quietly friendly.  He grew wise.  He made no enemies, but many lifelong friends. 

None of this is what makes his story stand out.  What was unique was the way people sought Achilles, now called Achilles Snail-Hair the Buddha, for words of wisdom, hope and enlightenment.  He was respected for his gentle, sage advice and insights, and loved for his genuine compassion and love for all of his fellow humans.  His reputation grew, but as it did so, it turned into something it shouldn't have.

He was thought to be some kind of enlightened spiritual leader, a preacher, a Buddha, but the fact is, he had almost no faith left.  He was just a really sweet little man, with a strong belief in the goodness of his brethren.  If you asked him a question, he would smile thoughtfully and give you the answer.  He was also short, and had a plump, round belly that protruded as though he might be a mannish-looking mother-to-be.  In Hobo Nation, a quiet, wise, friendly man who looked like the Buddha was assumed to be a Buddha.

He was frequently found sitting as the Buddha sat - on Jefferson Rock, high above Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.  He made his home, so to speak, in the thick woods along the Shenandoah River, and lived out his years, content with his scarce material necessities.  He continued to serve as the secretly-faithless spiritual teacher to a generation of the wandering poor along the B&O, happy to be of whatever help it was that he was being. 

Yet another writing prompt, "PLUMP," from my friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS.