Full Speed Ahead: My Journey with Kit

We stumble down the embankment, cross a field, and reach a narrow paved road. It’s hot, and Buddy is exhausted. I’m tired and thirsty, too, but the bulls won’t let us stop. Eventually we reach a small town whose sign welcomes us to Lewis Falls. Kit points to a hobo symbol scratched onto it: the symbol for “jail.”

Sure enough, the bulls usher us into a red brick building marked “Lewis Falls Jail,” though at least it’s cooler inside. They lock Mr. Birdseye in a cell with some other men and are about to put Kit and me in another when a stout lady bustles toward us.

The stout lady scolds the tallest bull, they can’t jail us, we’re just babies. He says we hopped a freight and broke the law; she says he’ll regret it for a month of Sundays if he doesn’t hand us over to her instead. Grumbling, he nudges us toward her and stalks off.

The lady sits us on a bench and brings us water, even a cup for Buddy. She says she can tell someone at home is worried sick about us, and hands Kit a nickel for the pay telephone on the wall. Kit thanks her, and the lady beams. Nice, polite girls, she knew it.

I ask if Kit’s calling her parents. She sighs. No car, and no phone either since they couldn’t afford to keep it. There’s only one person to call, Uncle Hendrick, long distance and collect. He’ll fuss and fume, but he’s their only chance. Kit makes the call, then reports that he’s mad but coming, with Charlie driving him, and returns the nickel to the lady.

Waiting outside in the jail’s shade, I ask who Uncle Hendrick is. She says it’s Kit’s mother’s uncle, a man who lives alone in a big fancy house and never misses a chance to criticize the family. He sounds like Aunt Shelley, who once told me I needed a manicure. Charlie, at least, I’ll be glad to meet. Kit says he’s home on leave from the Civilian Conservation Corps, building roads and bridges in Glacier Park, Montana.

I ask if Charlie likes the work. Kit says yes, and he’s proud to send money home every month. Before the Depression, his dream was college and English literature, but once Dad lost his job, there was no money left for tuition.

Kit explains that tuition is forty-five dollars a year, nearly $200 for all four years. My lunkhead cousin’s college costs $45,000 a year, something Aunt Shelley never stops bragging about, but to Kit’s family forty-five dollars might as well be a million. Kit sits up straighter and says she’ll find a way to pay for Charlie’s college somehow. I tell her if anybody can do it, it’s her.

Then I ask Kit if she’d like to go to college, too. Kit admits, quietly, that she’d love to study journalism and become a reporter, though it might as well be the moon she’s asking for. I make a secret wish to help her get there.

After a while a big fancy car pulls up, Charlie driving, Uncle Hendrick sitting like a king in back. Charlie swings Kit up in a hug, and when Kit introduces me, he grins and says that for a pint-sized girl, I stir up a lot of trouble. I blush, of course.

Uncle Hendrick, who doesn’t bother getting out, shouts that we need to get going, he doesn’t have all day. We climb in, and he orders me to hold Buddy in my lap so the dog doesn’t shed on the upholstery. We’re off.