Flying Clean

Flying Clean Chapter 9

Chapter 9

We came into another small town two days after leaving Peoria and I spent unnecessary money again, but for the last time. It was frightening how quickly my fortune could be squandered and I had become more parsimonious after that day. The name of the town evades my memory now, but that is no surprise. At my age, it is a wonder that I can remember as much as I do.

We passed a newspaper stand which also sold magazines and trinkets, and because John and I had decided that the children must learn to read if they were to enter the world as adults, I bought a copy of Weird Tales Magazine and that day's newspaper. It was then that we learned how the mayor had spawned such a manhunt; drawings of the Desmonds and I were on the front page and two full pages of the article presided further within. I also purchased a yoyo for Willy and John to share and a small rag doll that Susan and Heather named Annabel. There were tears of gratitude at this, and though I could no longer afford such things, it was well worth the dollar thirty I had spent.

I read the newspaper article to the Desmonds as we rested for lunch in a forest in western Illinois. At night- and for many nights- I read them the dark stories from Weird Tales, without fear that these abused children would have nightmares from the content after what they had been through. The first story I read them- our unanimous favorite in the issue- was "The Rats in the Walls," by a man named H.P. Lovecraft. I did my best to pronounce the words I didn't know, but the Desmonds seemed to soak everything in from the context. At one point, Willy asked me what the word 'antediluvian' meant and I had to tell him that I didn't know.

"I think it means vewy, vewy old," Willy said at once. I found out years later that he was exactly right. They were certainly bright children, despite the horrid lives they had lived until 1938.

Before long, Susan was reading stories to us- and not as haltingly as I would have thought.

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Our food supply had mostly diminished by the time we reached the Iowa border. By this time, I had felt fairly certain that we were safe to get on a train, but we were so far between even large towns, that it didn't seem a likely future for us. I wanted to hold on to as much money as I could- I didn't know how long it would take to find Uncle Herbert once we made it to California- but we also needed to eat. We solved the problem as best we could: when we came into a town, we would exchange a day's work for a meal.

Mostly, it was kitchen work. We would arrive in town and immediately go to the local diner and I would tell the proprietor the same story: I was escorting my younger siblings into the next county to meet our grandparents, but we had foolishly spent the money our parents had left us. The restaurant owner would usually be amicable enough to put Susan to work cooking while John and the twins washed dishes. Most of the time, the proprietor would notice my muscular frame and send me across town to work for a friend or cousin. A lot of the time it was hard work- the sort of thing I was accustomed to- digging ditches or building fences, but sometimes it was as simple as painting or whitewashing. I never earned much money, but we would eat for free and what I did earn would slowly accrue in my wax paper bundle inside the canvas tarpaulin.

One day a shop owner sent me to a freight depot to shovel coal and when I left, I was black with soot and sore to the bone, but I had a new ten dollars in my pocket- the friendly foreman had given me five times what was promised when he saw how hard I had worked for my siblings. He had also intimated that an empty freighter would be stopping in late that night and a certain box car would be left open, if we wanted to get to the next county in a hurry. I thanked him politely, but did not indicate whether or not I would take the favor.