Full Speed Ahead: My Journey with Kit

Startled, I jump around. We face a squinting, suspicious woman standing on the front porch. She asks what we are up to. Or she’ll call the police. Kit bravely says that this is her Uncle Hendrick’s house. The woman scoffs and says that Hendrick has been her neighbor for thirty years and she has never seen Kit before. He would never have such a ragamuffin for a niece.

I reach into my pocket to take out the letter that Uncle Hendrick wrote to Kit and say that this will explain everything. But my pocket is empty. I gasp to Kit that I’ve lost Uncle Hendrick’s letter. But Kit isn’t daunted. She says that we’re not thieves. The woman asks if that is our suitcase, and Kit looks at me. I know she expects me to pipe up and say the suitcase belongs to me. But I can’t lie, so I don’t say anything.

Kit finally says that this isn’t her house, and it isn’t her suitcase. The woman cuts her off and says that breaking into an empty house and taking things that don’t belong to her, makes her a thief. She skulks at my well-worn clothes and says that we aren’t up to no good. We’re probably hoboes. And she never trusts hoboes. She says that if we put the suitcase down and go back to the jungle where we belong, she’ll let us go.

I ask Kit what a hobo is. And what is the jungle? Kit quietly says that hoboes travel from town to town looking for work. Their camps are near the railroad tracks and are called jungles. I tell the woman that she made a mistake. We are not hoboes, and even if we were, she would have no right to be mean to us.

The woman gasps. I can tell she thinks I’m very rude. Probably children in the 1930s don’t speak to grown-ups so boldly. But I am from the twenty-first century, and I know all about bullies. The only way to stop them is to stand up to them.

But it doesn’t work this time. The woman threatens to call the police unless we go back to the jungle with her.