The Image Seeker

by Amanda Hughes

  “Agreed.”

  After finding a safe jungle, they settled in for the night. Just as they were about to retire, Felix announced, “I’m going for a run. This cool weather is perfect.”

  “All right, see you in three hours or so,” Billie replied. She was glad to see he was getting back to it.

  “Come too?” Hazel asked. Felix would sometimes carry the girl on his back when he ran to increase his strength.

  “Not this time, sweetheart.”

  Billie was up at the crack of dawn along with Luther. Today, it was Felix’s turn to watch the girls while they worked. Billie had unusually good luck that day, finding a job at a laundry and then washing dishes at a restaurant.

  When she was done, she counted her money. She had just enough extra after purchasing food to buy something for the girls. As she walked along window shopping, she could hear the Salvation Army Band playing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” down the block.

  It was getting cold, and she pulled up the collar of Mr. Hoffmann’s jacket. Billie was still wearing his clothes after all these years. She wondered if the couple was even alive anymore. She missed them terribly.

  Shaking off the melancholy, she concentrated on the gaily decorated windows. Suddenly, she stopped. There was a hat in a clothing store window that was perfect for Hazel, an adorable plaid tam.

  She stepped inside to inquire about the price, and an elderly clerk rushed up wearing glasses on a chain. “What is it you want?”

  “I just wanted to know the price of that hat in the window.”

  “No tramps in here,” she replied officiously and opened the door for her to leave.

  Billie walked out. A sick feeling welled up in her stomach, and she fought back tears of anger. When she looked at herself in a plate-glass window, she saw a scrawny eighteen-year-old girl, dressed in a shabby jacket and dirty overalls. Her long, dark hair was tied back, and she had on a battered fedora.

  How long had it been since she had looked pretty? Had she ever?

  Billie looked across the street at the young women walking by. They had on fashionable cloche hats, three quarter length gloves, and form-fitting coats with fur collars.

  How would she look in those clothes? Would she ever have an opportunity to wear garments that beautiful, or would she grow old in rags?

  Billie swallowed hard and walked on. She had to wipe these thoughts from her mind and find gifts for the girls.

  There was a pawn shop across the street. Just as she was walking inside, a well-dressed Negro gentleman came out dragging a steamer trunk. Billie held the door for him. He looked up, winked at her, and jerked his head to the side. Billie followed him over to an expensive Duesenberg.

  “My employer’s fallen on hard times, and she’s selling some things. The broker didn’t want all of it. You interested?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  The man flipped open the trunk and started pulling out evening gowns, porcelain figurines, and scarves. Billie was dazzled.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I love it all, but what I need is a hat.”

  “Wait,” he replied, digging through the trunk. He pulled out a yellow hat with a feather, several cloches, and a red wool tam.

  “There,” Billie said. “How much for the tam?”

  The price was more than she could afford. “No, thank you, anyway,” she replied.

  “All right, half that!” he cried.

  “Done!” Something on the trunk tray caught her eye. It was a necklace. “May I see that?”

  “Of course,” he said and handed it to her. The valet chuckled, “Since they found Tut’s tomb, this stuff has been all the rage. My employer has a houseful of Egyptian furniture.”

  The necklace was perfect for Olive. It was a triple string of tiny, colorful beads that fit closely around the neck with a blue scarab in the middle. It looked exactly like something Cleopatra would wear. But she knew this was going to be expensive. Nevertheless, she had to try.

  “Same price as the hat?”

  “What? That’s robbery!”

  Billie stood firm, looking him in the eye.

  He curled his lip and said, “All right. My employer can’t eat the necklace.”

  “I’ll take them both,” Billie said, digging into her pocket.

  She rushed back to their camp delighted with her purchases.

  The next day was Christmas Eve. Everything was closed in the evening, so there was no work. Hobos were drinking, smoking, and playing cards. Families with children were having private celebrations.

  “Put out that cigarette, Olive,” Luther said. “You and Hazel help me with something.”

  Felix looked up from cooking. “Olive!” he barked. “Where d’you get those cigarettes? Were you picking pockets again?”

  “Only for smokes,” she protested, snuffing her cigarette and putting it back in the pack.

  “I don’t want you doing it at all!”

  “Well, I wouldn’t if Luther would let me have some of his.”

  “Well, he’s not going to! Now get over there and help him.”

  Luther was standing by a scrawny pine tree that was growing near their campsite. “We are going to decorate this for Christmas, and we’re going to enjoy it,” he said.

  He did a double take of Billie, who was sitting by Felix. She was grinning. He had never done anything like this before, and she knew it.

  Hazel’s eyes grew large. “Weally?” she lisped. “We’re going to have a Cwistmas tree?”

  “Yes,” Luther replied.

  They strung stale popcorn and tied on bits of ribbon that he had found in the trash.

  Felix roasted a chicken on a spit and baked dessert in a tin can. Saving dimes here and pennies there, he had accumulated enough money to buy ingredients for a fruitcake.

  The evening was a great success. After supper, Billie gave the girls their presents. Hazel was the first to open her gift. She was thrilled with her hat and put it on immediately. “Thank you, Cleopatra,” she said to Billie.

  Olive was next. Carefully, she untied the string and folded back the brown paper. The smile dropped from her face, and she stared wide-eyed at the necklace.

  “Olive?” Billie asked. “What’s wrong?”

  No response.

  “Olive?” Billie repeated.

  As if waking from a dream, Olive murmured, “Was this hers?”

  Billie’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, no, it’s from─”

  Olive didn’t wait for the answer. She stood up and announced, “From the neck of the Queen to my own.” She put it on.

  Olive wore the necklace to bed that night and every day thereafter. She never took it off again.

  * * *

  It was an unusual sight indeed, seeing a little girl dressed in a flat cap and tattered boy’s clothes wearing the ornate Egyptian necklace. Many nights, she would sit by the fire, smoke cigarettes, and dream. On the street, people stared at her, but Olive didn’t care. She knew the truth. Cleopatra’s necklace was bewitching them.

  New Year’s Eve was not as merry for the group. Felix had a slip in his sobriety. He told Billie and Luther he was going out for a run, but he didn’t return.

  “Should we look for him?” Billie asked.

  “No, he’s out drinking,” Luther growled.

  “I didn’t think this would happen again.”

  “He won big at cards last night,” Luther said. “And the money’s burning a hole in his pocket. He’ll be back in the morning.”

  Luther was right. At sunrise, he returned to the jungle full of liquor and remorse. Felix had visited one speakeasy after another, ending his night at a brothel.

  For weeks, Felix berated himself. Usually so animated and garrulous, he withdrew from them all. He wouldn’t talk and frequently sat away from the campfire. No one pressed him. The girls even left him alone, but it was hard. They missed his wit and cheerful attitude. Eventually, things returned to normal, but no one spoke of that New Year’s Eve agai
n.

  In the spring, the group decided to look for work out West. Their freight went as far as Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, a long journey over the mountains. They arrived in broad daylight, but this was a smaller town, and the chance of railroad dicks was slim. The other hobos in their boxcar jumped out first, and then Luther and Felix helped Olive and Hazel. Billie jumped down last.

  Throwing her pack over her back, she took a deep breath of fresh mountain air and smiled. This was one of her favorite towns, and she was glad to be back. Suddenly, she spotted a railroad detective. “A bull!”

  “Quick!” Luther barked, and he hoisted the girls onto couplings between cars. Billie and Felix followed.

  Pressing themselves back into the shadows, they waited.

  There were shouts, and a whistle blew. The bull was in pursuit of someone else. They waited and listened. Billie spotted a hobo hiding under a flatcar nearby. He was waiting too. His face looked familiar, but she dismissed it. She had met hundreds of men on the road.

  Gradually, the whistles and shouting stopped. They could hear railroad workers barking orders, the humming of trucks, and locomotives rumbling. They dashed between warehouses and up into town.

  “That was close,” Felix said as they stepped out onto the street, panting.

  Suddenly, somebody grabbed Billie’s arm, and she jumped. She thought it was a bull, but it was the man she had seen under the flat car.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  Billie stared at the man, stunned. Luther and Felix stepped up, ready for trouble.

  “My little Billie,” the stranger said.

  Her lips parted. “Papa?” she murmured. His hair was gray, and his cheeks were withered, but there was no mistaking it. “Papa!” she said and hugged him.

  Slowly, his arms came up around her.

  “Are you alone?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Wiping the tears from her eyes, she said to Felix and Luther, “This is my father. I’ll meet you at the Sally. Give me a few minutes.”

  “All right,” they replied.

  They walked inside a diner and sat in a booth by the window. Workmen were lined up at the counter, eating donuts, drinking coffee, and talking quietly. A radio was playing. A waitress in a green uniform and white apron brought them coffee.

  Sam Bassett gazed at his daughter. “My beautiful girl.”

  Billie managed to smile but seeing him was disconcerting. He looked so old and was shabbier than most hobos. He was filthy, his hair was a dirty white, and he was missing teeth. His coat was in shreds, and his gloves were full of holes.

  “Where’s Mama?” she asked.

  He dropped his eyes, and he started mumbling unintelligibly.

  She grabbed his wrist. “Papa, tell me in English.”

  He was breathing heavily, and tears ran down his cheeks.

  “Papa,” she repeated. “Did Mama die?”

  He nodded.

  “How did she die?”

  “H-having,” he stammered, “having a baby. The baby died too.”

  Billie bit her lip and nodded, fighting back tears. Clearing her throat, she asked, “Is Nookoo still alive?”

  “She lives with your aunt.”

  “And little Emma?”

  “I…” He rubbed his forehead. “I can’t remember.”

  “At boarding school?”

  “I think so.”

  “Here, have some coffee,” she said and put his hand on the cup. She wondered how he ever managed to survive on the road. Wiping her eyes, she took his hand and asked, “The boys?”

  He stared at her slack-jawed and said, “I—I saw them—a train.”

  “Are they on the road too?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to the boat works?”

  “Gone. Everything gone.”

  Pity welled up inside her. He had nothing left. Nothing but her. She paid for the coffee, and they left the diner. Arm in arm, they walked down the street. He still had his familiar shuffle. “You’re safe now, Papa. I’m going to take care of you,” she said, patting his hand.

  “Yes, daughter, yes,” he mumbled.

  Luther, Felix, and the girls were waiting for them outside the Salvation Army. “A ‘bo told us about a place to sleep outside of town,” Felix said. “We can build a fire safely there without being seen.”

  “All right,” Billie replied.

  Luther and Felix spent the rest of the day looking for work but had no luck. They gave up and went out to the site. It was a beautiful, wooded location with an abandoned cabin near a stream. Sam Bassett sat on a stump and watched the girls catch frogs.

  “There’s a bit of a breeze to keep the bugs away. Let’s sleep outside tonight,” Luther said.

  “Agreed,” Billie replied. “It will be nice listening to the stream. Shall we sleep outside, Papa?” she called to her father.

  He did not respond.

  Felix built a fire and cooked beans and coffee for supper.

  “Thank you,” Sam mumbled when he was finished. But he said nothing more the rest of the night. He seemed content watching the fire. Felix tried to include him in conversation but had no luck.

  Billie could see that her father was more distant and confused than ever, and it worried her. Now they had one more mouth to feed. How could she ask Felix and Luther to take care of another hobo when there was no work and no money? She ground her teeth, wracked with guilt. But this was her father. She loved him and should accept the responsibility happily, but instead, she was scared. All night long, she tossed and turned, staring up at the night sky. Just before sunrise, she drifted off to sleep.

  “Wake up, Billie,” she heard someone say.

  She rolled over and opened her eyes. It was Luther. “Your father. He’s gone.”

  Jumping up, she ran along the stream, calling for him, but there was no answer. They asked at missions, the Salvation Army, and in the rail yard. No one had seen him.

  Sam Bassett disappeared from Billie’s life as fast as he had come into it.

  For weeks, a dull ache plagued her. It was a mixture of loneliness and guilt because she not only missed her father but was relieved he had disappeared.

  Chapter 10

  Kansas City 1931

  As the economy worsened that year, Billie and her hobo family went hungry. Lines formed for jobs. Lines formed for bread. Hobo jungles cropped up everywhere as more and more people from every walk of life struck out on the road. Lawyers rode next to migrant workers. Doctors, cooks, and farmers haunted the highways. Schools closed, and teachers jumped freight trains. Out of work steel workers rode next to teenagers. And women on the road increased tenfold, as well as entire families. People of all races jumped freights, a disproportionate number being Indians from reservations all over the country. The jungles exploded and were nicknamed, “Hoovervilles.”

  “They say California is the place to be,” Felix said one evening.

  “Then that is where everyone will go,” Luther grumbled as he sprinkled tobacco onto a rolling paper. “I say we stay right here.”

  “Billie, what do you think?” Felix asked.

  “I don’t know.” She was trying not to think of the grinding hunger in her stomach. “Let’s give Kansas City a few more days and then move on if we can’t find work.” Sitting for long periods on the floor of a rattling boxcar had become increasingly uncomfortable for Billie, her bones protruded so dramatically through her skin.

  They agreed and decided to go to bed.

  “Are you girls going to spend another night in that box?” Billie asked as they stood up from the fire.

  “Ya, we’ll sleep on our river barge again tonight,” Olive replied. “Right, Hazel?”

  “Right.”

  Their campsite was in a secluded spot along the tracks near a nice neighborhood in Kansas City. The girls had been sleeping in an old cardboard box, playing Queen of the Nile.

  The next morning, when Felix and Luther left to find work, Billie and the girls set
out for the neighborhoods.

  “We’re hard workers, sir,” Billie said to the man at their first house.

  He shook his head. “I’m without work too. I have nothing to offer.” He ran his eyes over the girls sympathetically. “I’m not sure how I’ll feed my own.”

  Billie nodded. “Thank you just the same.” They tried the next house.

  All morning long, they knocked on doors, but with no results. They even went through trash cans near the corner market for old produce, but they were cleaned out. At last, the housekeeper in a sprawling Craftsman style home gave them work cleaning a garage. When they were done, she paid them in sandwiches.

  “Thank you very much,” Billie said and gestured to a man standing on the corner. “That’s my husband over there,” she lied. “Please, could you spare a sandwich for him too?”

  The stocky housekeeper frowned. “Why wasn’t he here working?”

  “He has tuberculous. He doesn’t want to infect anyone.”

  The woman’s eyes grew large, and she looked at Billie and the girls as if they may be contagious. “Wait here,” she said. Going back into the house, she returned with a bag of food, handed it to Billie, and slammed the door.

  Billie looked in the bag as they walked down the street. “Thank God!” she exclaimed. “There is a lot of food in here!”

  “Can we eat it now?” Hazel asked.

  “No, let’s go back to camp. Here.” She handed them an apple to share.

  When they arrived, Luther and Felix had not returned, which gave Billie hope. Maybe they had found work. It was a warm spring day, and she sat with the girls in the sun eating lunch. Billie did not like camping in the jungles. It was noisy, dangerous, and the past few years, overcrowded. These private locations were better. The only sounds were the birds chattering in the trees.

  With a full belly, Billie became drowsy. “I’m going in to rest for a while,” she said to the girls.

  “We’re going to the barge,” Olive said, standing up. “Come on, Hazel.”

  Billie crawled into the dirty canvas shelter left by other hobos. It was under a tree, cool and shady. She could hear the girls playing quietly in the box. She drifted off and slept heavily until she heard a crack. She bolted upright. There was another and another. There was a shrill scream.