Grandpa always said a man that earned his own dinner could hold his head up.
Before long Grandma appeared on the porch, carrying a steaming plate of leftover pork chops and sweet potatoes served with biscuits and a tin of hot creamed coffee.
The hobo eyed the biscuits.
But he wasn’t going to get fed quite yet.
Grandma offered a basin of water with a thin slice of lye soap, which scoured all the dirt and part of the hide off, leaving the hobo’s hands pink as the pig snouts she’d made the soap from.
The hobo looked at the biscuits again.
But Grandpa said we should first bow our heads for a word of prayer.
“Lord, we just thank you for the bounty of this food we are privileged to share and for your many blessings on this family. And Lord, we ask you to bless this humble traveler. Protect and guide him as he goes forth across this great land. Lead him through the unknown trials and tribulations he’s bound to face. But Lord, if it be Thy will, allow him the sweetness of some victories. In the precious name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
All of us said, “Amen.”
So the hobo said, “Amen,” too.
“You sit down in the swing there and enjoy your meal,” Grandma said over her shoulder, disappearing into the house and leaving me and the hobo for Grandpa to deal with. Grandpa busied himself raking leaves and giving me rides in the wheelbarrow to keep me from being an aggravation. I watched the man pick up his fork and load it with sweet potatoes. He didn’t stop until the plate was clean.
Grandma came back out holding a paper bag. “I put some extra in here for you to take with you. Make you a good supper later on.”
Courtly as he thanked Grandma for the meal, the hobo nodded to Grandpa’s “God bless you” and headed off down the red dog road. He sang a ditty:
don’t know where i’m going
don’t know where i’ll be
i’m at home in this fair land
from sea to shining sea my friend
from sea to shining sea.
Grandpa watched him go. “For the most part they’re good men down on their luck,” he said. “Times is hard for lots of folks nowadays.”
I wondered out loud if hobos ever got lonely.
Grandpa thought on that before he answered. “For the most part, I’d reckon not,” he said. “Funny how some men are content not putting a foot across the county line while others have the need to roam. You know how geese have it in them to fly south for the winter? Some men are born with that same yearning. Like the geese, it’s in their blood.”
Not long after, we had another hobo visit, this time at Sissy’s house. Late one morning we were sitting on her maroon mohair divan cutting clothes out of an old Sears, Roebuck catalog to dress our family of paper dolls. Her momma had put her daddy in charge of us while she went downtown to shop for shoes. Sissy’s momma was four feet ten inches tall and wore a size two and a half shoe, so she bought sample sizes when they went on sale. She looked even smaller next to Sissy’s daddy, who was close to six feet tall and blocked most of the light when he stood in a doorway.
When someone knocked at the door, Sissy jumped up and ran to see who it was, the scantily clad paper dolls in her lap flapping wildly to the floor.
I thought she had lost her mind.
People rarely knocked on our doors. Those who did were people we knew, and they only gave a couple taps before opening the door and sticking their head in to holler was anybody home. If that didn’t work and they had a mind to, they came on in and made themselves at home until somebody showed up. Now, Sissy did not have the faintest notion who was outside that door, and we’d both been warned about a million times not to open the door to strangers. A bowlegged little man stood there, his beat-up hat pulled down over his ears. Shorter by a good head than Sissy’s momma and grimed from head to foot with coal soot, he grinned up at Sissy through gap teeth.
“Young missy, is the master of the house available for a word?”
“If you mean my daddy, he’s in the bathroom,” she answered.
The hobo was right about that master-of-the-house part. Sissy’s daddy did rule the roost. Although he had a big wood paddle he called the Board of Education hanging on the wall, I’d never known him to use it. He didn’t have to. A glance was enough to keep us in line. Sissy tried real hard to please him. So did I.
That’s why it was a complete shock to my system when Sissy opened that door.
“Would you be so kind as to give a thirsty sojourner a cool glass of water?” the man asked.
“I’ll go get you some,” Sissy replied, “but you’ll have to come in the house because my daddy won’t allow me to let the door stand open.”
The little man followed her in and hoisted his sooty self onto the couch, taking off his hat and stuffing it in a pocket. I noticed his forearm was tattooed with “A Mother’s Love” and a tombstone with “R.I.P.” on it. He’d washed his hands somewhere, and water had run down to his elbows, leaving clean tracks in the dirt on his arms.
Sissy’s daddy, probably hearing the commotion, came into the room holding an unfolded copy of the morning Post Herald in his
