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 --

Wicked Paul Fourteen-Toes

You can count on one hand the number of hoboes who slept in trees, and of those, only one slept upside-down, hanging by his feet.  And he was not very nice at all, so you wouldn't want to meet him.

But you're about to.  Briefly, so that no one gets hurt.

Wicked Paul Fourteen-Toes was very wicked.  He found delight in the infliction of pain, embarrassment and discomfort on his fellow hoboes.  He peed in their canteens and flasks.  He surreptitiously heated their spoons in the campfire.  He filled their bean cans with dirt - or worse - and resealed them (don't ask me how).  He would burn a hobo's only photo of a loved one or dog - or accidentally drop them in creosote or a cesspool.  He frequently tied his victims' shoelaces together.  He once put a weasel and an eastern diamondback rattlesnake into a sleeping bag occupied by Finnish Jim, zipped it all the way shut and proceeded to kick it.  He rubbed his gamey arm wound on people every chance he got.  He often would convince an unsuspecting hobo that a pretty girl liked him and wanted to meet him, then watch secretly as the hapless man would make a complete fool of himself, getting shot down, laughed at or slapped in the face in front of everyone.  He cut the fingertips off of fellow hoboes' gloves, and the toes from their socks. He would also put powerful laxatives in the food bowls of police dogs.  He drew the line at bringing physical harm to animals, but he delighted in being chased from a train yard by dogs who were busy laying down a putrid, slippery obstacle for the cops bringing up the rear, as it were.

These are just some of the more harmless things he would do.  He also committed more than his share of actual crimes, and it is said - although never proven - that he caused a passenger train derailment near Richmond, Virginia for the purpose of stealing suitcases and "grabbing victims' bosoms" in the chaos that ensued.  Sixteen people died in that wreck, and scores of others were injured.

His fourteen toes were not by themselves particularly noteworthy, except for the fact that eleven of them were on one foot.  And yes, with that one freakishly-grippy foot, he would grasp a tree branch and hang upside-down from it, and snore loudly and drool deliberately his bacteria-laden spittle upon unsuspecting passersby.

There.  It wasn't all romance, choo-choos and sticks-and-bindles in hobo world, was it?  Next time, we'll talk about a friendly hobo who did nice things and was liked.