Full Speed Ahead: My Journey with Kit

I tell Kit that it’s pretty clear that I should go. Mrs. Kittredge been generous to me, and I don’t want to repay her kindness by mooching. I pick up the sack of potatoes, and Buddy looks up as me as if he’s asking what we’re doing. Kit says at the very least, she can walk me to the hobo jungle.

I agree to this. I haven’t got a clue where the hobo jungle is. Or what it is. The word jungle makes it sound as if there’ll be giant ferns and monkeys. So the three of us set out together. I carry the sack of potatoes that Mrs. Kittredge gave me. I feel phony-baloney about the potatoes. My mother doesn’t cook from scratch at all. She says her best recipe is the phone number of our favorite delivery pizza place. And the most interaction I’ve had with a whole potato is putting sour cream on it at a restaurant. I should give the potatoes to someone who will know what to do with them.

I ask Kit if she she’s met a lot of homeless kids. She nods. Her voice sounds heavy and tired. She’s met them at the hobo jungle, and at the soup kitchen, and at churches where they can sleep and get clothes and food. That gives me an idea. When we get to the hobo jungle, we can give the potatoes away. Kit asks if I’m sure. I say yes. That way her mother’s kindness will help more people than just me.

Kit says that’s very nice of me. She says that before the Depression, she was a carefree kid, and sort of selfish. She never thought about anyone but herself. I blush. That’s exactly what I am like at home. I only ever think about what I want and how I feel. I ask Kit if the Depression, and her dad losing her job, kind of made her grow up faster. She says maybe. She’s become more independent and hopefully, more caring. She looks at me with a sideways smile. So she supposes the Depression isn’t completely bad if it changes people for the better.

Kit leads Buddy and me down a hill next to the train station, and instead of the funny jungle I’m expecting, a secret city appears. Except instead of houses, there are ragged tents and rough lean-tos made out of boards. Instead of roads, there are dirt paths that wind between the trees and instead of restaurants, there are open fires with old beat-up cooking pots on them. It’s a very sad, tumbledown secret city.

Kit, Buddy, and I go up to one of the fires. A tired woman is stirring stew in a pot. Kit nods me towards the woman. I politely tell her that the sack of potatoes are for her. You’d think I handed her a sack of gold. She looks at me in disbelief and thanks me kindly. I smile at her, but inside I’m thinking of all the food I’ve wasted in my life. I resolve never be picky-persnickety about food ever again.

Buddy trots off to explore, so Kit and I hurry to keep up with him, carefully stepping around the ragged tents and lean-tos as we make our way. We’ve just passed a sleeping man when the man suddenly jumps up and grabs Kit by the arm. He asks what she did with his shoes. He knows that she nipped them and hid them somewhere. He tells her to give them back. Kit looks startled and a little frightened. She stammers that she didn’t take his shoes. I demand that he leaves her alone. She didn’t take anything. The man growls that she did. He saw her. I tell him he’s a liar, and Buddy barks. I grab the man’s arm and try to wrestle it off of Kit. I demand that he lets her go.

Desperately, Kit wrenches her arm away from the man and she tells us to run. Buddy and I don’t need to be told twice. We run as fast as we can away from the man, darting around the people in our way. We hop over boxes and logs, and duck under clotheslines. We struggle towards the train tracks, but the man is so close on our heels, and it feels like he’s breathing down my neck.

Kit yells for me and she climbs into a boxcar and tells me to give her Buddy. I scoop him up and toss him to Kit, and fling myself headfirst into the boxcar. But before I can even turn around, the boxcar starts to move. The man chases the train for a while, but as we pick up speed, he falls farther and farther behind until he gives up. He’s yelling, but we can’t hear him over the rattle of the car.

“Full speed ahead!” I shout, thrilled by our victorious getaway. I turn to Kit and ask where we’re going. Kit says the train will stop. It’s just changing tracks. But Kit is wrong. The train thunders along, faster and faster. We clutch each each other as we look out the door at the trees and the hills passing by. Kit moans. And I can see why. The train is whizzing across a bridge that spans a river far below. I’m so scared that I think about clicking the camera to leave. But I can’t desert Kit and Buddy.

So we sink back into the gloomy darkness of the car. There’s nothing to do and nothing to say. We’re trapped in the boxcar until the train stops, whenever and wherever that may be.

After a little while, Buddy wiggles his way out of my arms and skitters farther into the boxcar. And then I hear a voice. I squint into the blackness and see an old man petting Buddy. He smiles at me and Kit. He says hello to us. He says he didn’t know that he’d be having company on the train. He’s Mr. Birdseye. He holds out his hand, and I shake it as we introduce ourselves.

Mr. Birdseye welcomes us aboard. Kit asks where the train is going, and he says that we just crossed the river into Kentucky. Kit asks if the train stops in Mountain Hollow. Mr. Birdseye says it’ll stop in Poncton first, then Mountain Hollow. Kit turns to me and says her Aunt Millie lives in Mountain Hollow. If we can get there, she can help us get back to Cincinnati.

The train lurches along, and Mr. Birdseye uses a piece of chalk to show Kit and me some hobo symbols. He says we’ll need to know these if we’re to get home safely. He draws the symbols on the floor of the boxcar. One of them looks like an X with two dots on the side, and a horizontal line over the top. That one means “good jungle.” Then he draws a grid of three lines vertically, and three lines horizontally. This one means “jail or prison.”

And just then, with a sickening screech of brakes, the train slows to a halt. Mr. Birdseye says it’s a couple of bulls. I ask if the train is stopping for cattle, and Mr. Birdseye softly says they’re railroad bulls. They’re the men the railroad hires to throw tramps like us off the trains.

The four of us cower in a huddle in the darkest corner of the boxcar as we hear mens voices coming closer and closer. The door of the boxcar slides open and a deep voice says that he knows we’re in there. We should come on out before they climb in and haul us out. Kit and I hold our breath and look at Mr. Birdseye. With a sigh, he slowly stands up. We blink as we walk from the shadows into the glaring sunlight.

Two big men shake their heads when they see me and Kit. We’re just kids. Mr. Birdseye jumps down, and then he helps Kit and me to the ground. Buddy jumps into my arms. The railroad bulls clamp heavy hands on our shoulders and make us walk in front of them. We don’t know where they’re taking us.