The Odyssey of Ben O'Neal (2 page)

Then everything happened at once. The conductor yelled, "All aboard." There was a slight jerk; then another, and I found myself holding my breath as the cars moved, a deep chomping sound coming from up ahead, creaking sounds from beneath. So this was how Reuben did it so long ago. For years, walking over the sand trails on the Banks, or in bed at night, I'd thought about this very day, and now it was here, suddenly spinning along. The station and the platform disappeared and the land began to rush by.

A few minutes later, nose pressed against the window so as not to miss anything, I barely heard the conductor calling for tickets, and frantically searched around the seat. He stood over me and laughed. "It's in your hand."

Clearly, I made a terrible mess of things that first twenty minutes, and it took another twenty to work up courage for something else I'd planned for a long time. I rose up, keeping my eyes strictly ahead, and went to the narrow mahogany door at the rear of the car, opened it, and stepped into the cubicle, locking the door securely behind me. For a moment, I just stood there in awe, looking down at the flush toilet, then up to the water chamber with the brass pull chain. An outhouse on wheels! And I promptly unbuttoned my pants to partake of the luxury.

A moment later, I could hardly contain a shout of triumph as I reached for the iron knob on the chain. Holding the lid up, I watched joyfully as the water spewed down to the crossties of the roadbed. What an event!

It was the first of my many experiences with modern conveniences, and I went back down the aisle as if I'd ridden a train a thousand times. Unfortunately, I did not fool one unkind railway employee.

Just after we crossed the Virginia border, other side of Moyock, a harsh voice came thrusting up behind me. "Candy bars! Cookies! Apples! Pears!"

Hovering near was a skinny, oval-faced, green-eyed boy in a baggy brown uniform, hat with a shiny plate saying
ATLANTIC NEWS COMPANY
on his head, blond hair spiking out from under it. In the crook of his long arm was a laden wicker basket ringed with chocolate bars.

Suddenly realizing I was now hungry, I said, "I'll take an apple."

The boy rested the basket on the seat arm. "You pick it. That'll be five cents."

"Five cents?" I was stunned, though the apples were certainly larger and shinier than any I'd ever seen. But fine winesaps sold for a penny each at the Burrus store, in Chicky village, where I'd previously worked; plucking chickens, packing ducks in ice, head down; errands and such.

"That's robbery," I said, withdrawing my hand.

He eyed me coldly. "You wanted to buy it."

"I don't now."

The boy looked me over as if examining a possum held by the tail. "Where you goin'?"

"Bound out to sea."

He hooted. "To sea? You ain't old enough to sail bathtub boats."

Well, despite the fact that he was trying to grow a mustache and doing a scraggly poor job of it, he didn't look a day over fifteen himself. Worse, he talked with a Yankee twang. Yet I couldn't help but be impressed with him. Here he was on these trains day after day. A merchant, no less. So, deepening my tone as much as I could, I looked the skinny peddler straight in the eye. "I'm old enough, all right. Seventeen."

The boy grinned, balancing with the sway of the coach. "You a captain?"

"No," I replied. "Just a sailor," I added, holding my temper.

"You been to sea before?"

"Many times." The Pamlico, on to which our rickety dock extended, was a sea of sorts.

The insolent grin vanished. "Tar Heel, I don't even think you been on a train till today."

Embarrassed, I looked around. Some of the other passengers were listening. The man across the way was laughing.

"I watched you," the vicious seller went on. "Your mouth was wide open when you boarded in Lizzie City. I've seen hundreds like you. Real hayseeds."

I felt fire spreading over my cheeks as he tipped his hat and went on down the aisle yelling about his apples and pears.

T
HE TRAIN RUMBLED
along over the marshy land, whistling at last at Brand Creek Turnpike, slowing to curve around at Chatham Junction and begin the run directly east to Union Station. A few minutes later, I saw the outskirts of the city, marred with smoke, and a dryness came into my throat. Scared again. Houses, no more than twenty or thirty feet apart, and streets, some paved, stretched in every direction. A trolley car—and I'd heard of them—went by an intersection and the train curved widely, slowing and whistling, as other tracks suddenly sprouted alongside.

I wiped at drops of sweat as the conductor came down the aisle yelling, "Nor-fawk, Nor-fawk..." The moment of trial was near on that fourteenth day of March.

Finally, the train jerked to a stop by a long shed and I did what everyone else was doing: got off. Passengers threaded by me, baggage carts were rolling, and I finally moved with the throng, bewildered and bumping about.

Inside the depot, I looked around, peered up at the high ceiling, gandered all the people going in different directions, not quite certain what to do next. Then, remembering that Reuben had said there was a place called Sailor's Bethany in Norfolk where you could get sleep for thirty cents a night, I prepared to make inquiry on how to get there, when up walked that insolent apple seller from the train.

"You lost?" he asked.

I came very near saying toughly, "Mind your own Yankee business," but my knees were on the verge of knocking. So I replied, "I'd like to get to Sailor's Bethany. It's somewhere here. Maybe down on the waterfro-
ont
." Of all miserable luck, my voice squeaked again.

The boy stood there lordly and cocked his head over. "Tar Heel, you been to sea so many times you ought to find it easy." The green eyes prodded.

Plainly, I had two choices. Tell him the gospel truth or wander around stupidly asking other people. Again looking at him straight, I admitted, "First time on a train; first time to sea, if I can get there." I felt vast relief.

The boy grinned and pushed back his Atlantic News Company hat. "First time away from home, too, I figure. Name's Michael Grant." He shoved his hand out.

He was friendly, after all, I thought, quite surprised. "Mine's Ben O'Neal. I'm from down Hatteras way." His thin hand was firm and just as friendly. I had misjudged the Yankee boy.

"Wherever you're from, you don't want to stay at Sailors Bethany. Despite all the soul-savin', too many drunks there every night. Tomorrow morning you won't have that seabag, either. Maybe not your shoes."

"My older brother stayed there."

"How old's he?"

"Twenty-four."

"How old are you?"

There was no sense in carrying on the lie at this point. "Thirteen."

"Ben, you got a lot to learn about cities. Those men might not tamper with your big brother, but they'll backhand you quicker'n look at you. I should know. I've rescued a dozen like you. I been drummin' two years."

"Drummin'?"

"Sellin' on these trains. I been to Norfolk a hundred times."

I could not hide my curiosity. "How old are you, Mike?"

"Sixteen come May."

Yet he seemed much older, now that we were talking about something other than overpriced apples. "All right, where should I go?"

"Come to a safe place. My boardinghouse. Mrs. Crowe's. I sleep there overnight, and keep my street clothes in a closet when I don't."

"How much does she charge?"

"Sixty-five cents a night, including breakfast and supper."

"I can't afford that," I protested. Me and Mama had lived on five dollars a month in the house near Heron Head. My fund, which was already damaged by the railway fare, would be gone in three weeks at those outrageous prices.

"There're lice-ridden places here you can get a bed for fifteen cents, but watch they don't slit your throat during the night. Besides, you got to buy all your meals extra."

All this talk about getting backhanded and slit-throated was unnerving. "I guess I better go with you."

We walked out to East Main Street and headed for midtown. Buildings were jawbone to jawbone, some five stories high. Trolley tracks were in the middle of the street. Horse wagons jangled by. People moved along the sidewalk like schooled fish.

Mike wagged his head to one side. "Chinese places."

HOP SING & COMPANY SHING HONG YICK SAM
I had never seen a Chinese, dead or alive, and looked into the window of Hop
Sing,
smelling herbs, making up my mind to come back and walk this street slowly.

"This is purely the biggest street I ever saw," I confessed, craning my head, almost stumbling several times. The signs alone were enough to stop a person:
MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE OF NEW YORK WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY POCOMOKE GUANO COMPANY COLUMBIA TYPEWRITER COMPANY FEREBEE, JONES & COMPANY, AGENTS FOR KNOX HATS.

To think all these things were going on less than two hundred miles from Chicky Dock.

NORFOLK CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC NORFOLK SHAVING PARLOR HEPTASOPHIAN HALL,
whatever that was.

"Has to be the biggest street in the world," I said.

Mike shook his head. "Only seventy-one miles of streets in this town. Some made of Belgian blocks, some cobblestone, some brick. Some just ground oyster shells. Wait'll you see Philadelphia and New York. This is a hick town."

Hick town? He should visit Whalebone, North Carolina.

A trolley came ringing by, spraying sparks, and I almost fell into the gutter, trying to walk backward and watch it.

Mike smiled. "Stay around here long enough and you'll see some steam automobiles."

"Automobiles?" Impossible.

"Run on banana oil. Electric trucks, too."

I couldn't wait to see them. "You from New York, Mike?"

"No, Scranton. That's in Pennsylvania."

Thankfully, he wasn't from Baltimore, which Filene had said was full of criminals. But he was solid Yankee, all right, though he seemed to be a nice enough one. They had played hod down toward Hatteras during the war, cutting timber as if they owned it, and were still unwelcome south of Moyock. If anything, I was solid Confederate, and Robert E. Lee, not General Grant, was my idea of a hero. But bygones had to be bygones.

As we walked on, I listened to the city. There seemed to be constant harsh noise in the streets, so different from the Banks. Far off, I could hear the yallowing of steamships and tug whistles in the river reaches, and I noticed the smells. Food and coal smoke and fertilizer and tar and creosote and roasting coffee beans. Pleasing antiseptic smells that pushed out of open doors alongside windows edged in brass. Robert Holmes, Druggist, was at No. 196, with a white tile floor; selling medicines, toilet articles, and Whitman's Fine Candies; advertising a new Tuff Revier double-stand soda-water fountain of solid onyx and overhead wooden-paddle electric fans.

All of it was overwhelming.

We made headway up on Main, then twisted and turned and soon arrived at a tall white house that was on a lane off a street called Granby.

S
URROUNDED BY STRANGERS, I
felt somewhat ill at ease at supper and ate mostly in silence, sitting by Mike Grant, listening and looking nonetheless. Red-haired Mrs. Crowe, who said she usually had no truck with riffraff from the sea, though she made an exception in my case, was rather small and quick; peppery of speech and sharp of light blue eye, independent enough for a widow of forty-five left with a fourteen-room house and not much else. Most of her middle-aged boarders were talkative railroad men, as had been her late husband, I soon learned.

I also quickly discovered that Mrs. Crowe, a dedicated Baptist, had a certain reputation in downtown Norfolk. Prominent member of the local Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she often burst into East Main Street saloons to kneel by the bar and shout, "Deliver them from Satan." When she was really stirred up, she broke bottles and poured the poison into spittoons.

She also had her rigid rules in the narrow four-story house fronted by a nice porch with scrollwork and round supporting posties, lined with six green rocking chairs. The rules were posted in every room and I read them, but none applied to me, of course.

•  WHISKEY BREATH IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
  
•  NO BEDROOM SLIPPERS ALLOWED IN THE DINING ROOM.
  
•  NO FEMALE BOARDERS (BECAUSE THEY WASH THEIR BLOOMERS AND HANG THEM OUT THE WINDOW).
  
•  NO PETS.
  
•  CIGARS AND PIPES PERMITTED AFTER DESSERT. NO ASHES IN THE FERNERY.
  
•  NO SMOKING IN BED.
  

So far as housekeeping goes, in a way she reminded me of fussbudgety Filene Midgett. She presided like a banty peacock at the table of nine that cool, clear evening over platters of ham hocks and new potatoes, fried lightly; bowls of black-eyed peas, and a warmer of buttermilk biscuits.

The talk was railroad talk, and I had never heard it before. High-wheeled Atlantic locomotives and air brakes and automatic couplers. No. 999 had pulled the Empire State Express at more than a hundred miles an hour in '93, and there was no reason not to get that kind of engine on the Norfolk & Western tracks and pull hotshot freights, said Mr. Stone, brakeman on a coal train.

"Shush, Mr. Stone," ordered Mrs. Crowe to the bald, big-jowled man who wore lavender galluses. "I want to talk to this innocent boy."

My mind was already weary from the wear and tear of the day, but Mrs. Crowe was never to be denied.

"Now, I say you'd be much better off going to work in the N&W machine shop out at Lambert's Point. They hire apprentices and treat them well. In five years you can be running a lathe or making molds. Earn a decent living without the temptations of the sea."

They were all waiting for my answer, looking at me. Finally, I explained, "I have to go to sea, ma'am."

"And who is forcing you to do that?"

"I expect I am," I replied, as earnestly as I could. "It's in my family blood."

"You should drain it out."

The railroad men laughed.