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| N&W Class J #611. We hear and we obey. |
1936. It was five-thirty on a chilly late-September afternoon in Cumberland, and the yard was filled with idle trains. The autumn sun had been weak to begin with, but now, through the haze of a dozen steam locomotives and scores of wood-burning stoves, it was downright feeble, failing to draw a shadow from Mexico Tower, at the south end of the yard. A double blast from a throaty steam whistle echoed through the valley, announcing the impending forward movement of a stopped train.
Trainwhistle Abejundio leapt to his feet and grabbed the ratty burlap sack containing all five of his worldly possessions. "That's my train! Gotta go..."
"Oh, for Pete's sake, Abejundio, please be still," Dee Snider groaned. "That was just the yard hump engine - or maybe a helper, headed back from Sand Patch."
"No, Deandra. It's that westbound freight we saw sitting in the yard," Abejundio insisted, "We gotta hop it, or we'll be here all weekend."
"Well, we'll never hop it from a mile away. Besides, what's the matter with a weekend in beautiful downtown Cumberland, Maryland," Dee said, with a dash of sarcasm. "Why can't you ever just stay put for a couple days? Ol' Barb might be coming through here..."
Trainwhistle Abejundio did not care to see Ol' Barb Stab-You-Quick, as he had met her once before, and it had not gone well. He also was less than fond of staying put - in Cumberland or anywhere else. "How long have you been a hobo?" he asked his grubby, spindly walking companion and frequent partner in petty larceny.
"Five years," she said flatly, "why?"
"Because 'can't stay put' kind of comes with the territory. It's right there in the name..."
"Abejundio? Oh - I get it. Can't sit still."
"No. In the name 'hobo,'" he said.
"Hobo is a title," she corrected, "Not a name."
"Whatever you say. I'm fixin' to hop that westbound and get to Grafton, tonight. By this time tomorrow, I'll be in Cincinnati, eating oysters and having a grand time..."
"Stop. Oysters? You think they have Oysters in Cincinnati?"
"Well, I don't know what they have in Cincy, Dee. Pierogi? Roast beef and cloudberries - whatever it is, I'll be enjoying it, while you're sitting here in overcooked squirrel town, or dirty waterville, or whatever they're calling it, this year..."
Dee Snider moved a half-pound of long, frizzy, blonde curls from her face, and stared at her friend. "What happened to you, Abejundio? You're so bitter."
He sighed heavily, shook his head at the caboose of the departing westbound freight, and dropped his stick and bindle. "I was born in El Paso, supposedly a half hour after my parents crossed the border. When I was twelve, my dad died while saving France in the Great War, and my Mom passed less than a year later, from fingernails..."
"From fingernails?" she repeated.
"Yes, fingernails. Anyway, I pretended not to understand English for a few years, and watched as the younger boys at the home all found gringo parents, and I heard the train whistles from the Union Pacific yard - as well as the nun's jokes about giving up and putting me on an eastbound train, because, they said, there were way more suckers on the east coast."
"Rude," Dee declared, supportively.
"Yes," Abejundio agreed, "very rude. So, I took matters into my own hands, and found an empty cattle car bound for who knew where, and I was gone."
Dee nodded thoughtfully. "Sounds like almost every hobo story I've heard. But it doesn't really explain your recent bitterness, does it?"
"It does not."
It did not.
"Well?"
He sighed the rattling, shallow sigh of a man who'd spent way too much time around coal and smoke. "It's really very simple. I'm losing the last good thing I have."
"What on earth are you talking about? You're a hobo. You have nothing."
"Not quite," he said. "I lost my folks, I lost my job, my home, my faith, my way - like we all have - but I still had my gift. I got my hobo moniker for it, and now I'm losing it."
"The 'Trainwhistle' part, or 'Abejundio?'" Dee asked.
He blinked several times at her. "Trainwhistle," he said. "Abejundio is my given name. I got to be known as Trainwhistle on account of my uncanny ability to emulate the specific whistle sound of any locomotive, from Maine to California - even the little short lines and logging railroads. Name a loco, and I could mimic its call, plain as day..."
Dee clasped her hands excitedly. "That's marvelous! How have I never heard you do this? Do one now. Let me hear a Pacific."
"I've actually done it around you plenty of times. I just made sure you weren't looking, and you always thought you heard a train."
Dee tilted her head at him. "Well, that's not very nice."
"I know. I'm sorry. Anyway, I haven't done it in six months. I can't, anymore. I've gone tone-deaf."
"Oh," she said, shaking her head at the ground. "That's sad. I'm sorry. Well - at least you had a gift, for a while. I got nothing."
"You have one," he said, "and it's the same one I have, now - so we're even. It's my last gift - and the first gift of every hobo. It's the reason I'm so hell-bent on living up to the meaning of Abejundio."
"Freedom," she said, not looking up.
"Freedom," he echoed. "Let's find a place to camp. Maybe I will stick around and say hello to Ol' Barb..."
