THE NEW HOME
And when, having slid back the crazy door at the nearer end of the car,
they entered it and seated themselves on the benches, it didn’t look
nearly so unpromising. There was a good, stout floor underfoot and a
reasonably tight roof overhead. Wayne began to see possibilities.
The car was only about twelve feet long and of the usual width. At some
time a matched-board partition had divided it into two compartments,
but this had nearly all disappeared. Every pane of glass, and there
had been eighteen in all, counting those in the doors, were either
smashed or totally missing. Over one window at each end and over three
of the six windows at each side boards had been nailed. The remains
of a flimsy curtain hung over the glass of the forward door. From the
roof two lamp fixtures still depended, but the lamps were gone. The
floor was littered with trash, including newspaper and tin cans and
cracker boxes and scraps of dried bread, indicating that the place had
been used for picnic purposes. In a corner at the farther end a small
“air-tight” stove was set on a board placed on the seat. It was badly
rusted, the upper door hung by one hinge, the mica was broken out, and
the interior was filled with ashes and charred embers. Between stove
and ceiling there was no pipe. Wayne tried the door at that end, but it
was jammed so tightly that he couldn’t budge it.
An inspection of the outside followed. The trucks had been discarded
and the body of the car rested on four six-inch sills, two running
lengthwise and two across. An attempt had apparently been made to set
fire to the car, for at one side the woodwork was scorched and the end
of a sill burned away for nearly a foot. The inscription, “Medfield
Street Railway Co.,” in faded brown letters against the faded yellow
body, was still legible, as was the figure 6, preceding and following
it.
“I’d like to know what number 1 looks like,” said Wayne, “if this is
number 6!”
Everything of value in the way of metal had been removed, even to the
brass hand rails and sill plates. The only glass that had escaped
destruction consisted of a number of long and narrow panes in the roof,
of which less than half remained intact. As Wayne discovered later,
these were set in hinged frames that could be opened for ventilating
purposes. On the front platform--they designated it the front merely
because it seemed natural to call one front and one back, and that was
the one outside the jammed door--a dozen sticks of wood suggested the
location of the fuel pile at some time. Ashes had been disposed of by
merely emptying them over the front dash. June discovered the missing
stovepipe lying a few yards away, but it was so rusted that it came to
pieces when he tried to lift it from the ground. Other untidy evidences
of former occupation and more recent vandalism lay around: an iron
skillet with the handle broken off, a bent and twisted toaster, many
empty cans, a worn and sodden rope doormat, a length of rotted clothes
line of which one end was tied to a ten-foot pole set some six yards
away.
“I wonder,” mused Wayne, “who lived here. And why they went away. And
I wonder most of all, June, how they got this thing out here in the
middle of this marsh.”
But June was ready with a quite feasible explanation, which was that
the car had been loaded onto a truck and hauled there. “Reckon in the
summer this yere field is all dried up, Mas’ Wayne.”
As it was getting on toward the middle of the afternoon by now it
behooved them to set about preparing the domicile for occupation. They
discarded their coats and set to work and in an hour had accomplished
marvels. The floor was cleared of rubbish, Wayne requiring June to
carry it well away from the vicinity of the car before disposing of it,
dust was obliterated with the fragment of curtain, some loose boards
were nailed back into place over the windows--the broken skillet served
as a hammer--the stove door was rehung with a bent nail, ashes were
removed, and the refractory rear door was coaxed into obedience by
digging away the dirt beneath it with a pocket knife.
After that the principal demands were stovepipe and covering for the
broken windows. They thought later of many other things that were
sorely needed, but just now those wants took precedence. It was out
of the question to find stovepipe nearer than town, unless, as June
suggested, some rubbish dump supplied it, and so they tackled the
matter of covering the windows. For that they needed boards, or some
other material, and nails. And a hammer would have helped a lot,
although the skillet did fairly well in the emergency. There was enough
of the partition left to supply boards for one window, but they had no
nails, and a search through the ash pile failed to provide more than
four bent and rusted ones. So it was decided that June should walk
back to the stamping works and see if he could find, beg, or borrow
some. Also, he was to be on the lookout for anything that might be used
in making the new home weather tight. In the meanwhile Wayne was to
“projeck ’roun’,” as June phrased it, and collect anything useful that
could be found.
June went off, whistling blithely, and Wayne began his search. The new
abode stood about two hundred yards from the railroad embankment, at
this point a good eight feet above the meadow, and possibly half again
as far from the nearest building which was the stamping works. Beyond
the latter were a number of other factories, puffing steam or smoke
into the afternoon sunlight, and beyond these began the town. Standing
on the front porch, which was the term ultimately applied to the rear
platform, the view to the left ended at the railroad embankment, but
to the right Wayne could see for nearly a mile. A few scattered houses
indicated the dirt road in that direction and beyond the houses was
some tilled land, and, finally, a fringe of trees. In front lay the
edge of the town, with the town itself, overhung by a haze of smoke,
a good mile beyond. On the fourth side, visible when Wayne stepped
off the “porch” to the soggy ground, the meadow continued for another
hundred yards to a rail fence. Beyond the fence was a ploughed field
which sloped off and up to meet the blue March sky. Between car and
railroad a group of trees attracted Wayne’s attention, and he set out
for it across the _squishy_ meadow. Half-way to it he caught sight of
water and recalled June’s mention of a “branch.” It proved to be a
tiny brook that, emerging from a culvert under the tracks, wandered
as far as the tiny grove and then curved off to the rail fence and
followed it across the fields in the direction of the road. The water
was clear and cold and tasted very good to the boy. Just now the brook
was overflowing its bed in places, but the little knoll on which the
cluster of trees grew was high and dry underfoot.
The brook offered treasure-trove in the shape of a number of short
planks and pieces of boxes rudely nailed together, doubtless
representing the efforts of some boy to construct a raft. Wayne doubted
its seaworthiness after he had experimentally pushed it back into the
water and tried his weight on it. He floated it along to the nearest
point to the car, getting his feet thoroughly wet in the process, and
then, not without much panting and frequent rests, dragged it the
balance of the way. After that he ranged the field in all directions,
returning several times with his loads of wood for fuel or window
repairs. He had quite a respectable pile on the front platform by the
time June returned.
The darkey brought a whole pocketful of nails and a number of sheets
of tin of various sizes which he had salvaged from the waste heap.
Few were larger than fifteen or sixteen inches in any direction, but
together they would turn the wind and rain at one window at least.
The nails had been given him by a man in the office. He had, he said,
requested a hammer, too, but the man’s generosity had balked there.
They set to work with the materials at hand and inside of the next hour
accounted for four windows and part of a fifth, leaving six still open
to the winds of Heaven. They made a systematic search for more boards,
but failed to find any. Foiled, they entered their new home and sat
down for a brief rest.
The sight of the groceries presented a new quandary to Wayne. “Look
here, June,” he exclaimed. “We’ve got coffee and milk and sugar, and we
know where there’s water, but we haven’t anything to boil it in!”
“My goodness!” said June. “Ain’ that a fac’? What we-all goin’ to do,
Mas’ Wayne?”
Wayne shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I reckon
that skillet wouldn’t do, would it?”
It wouldn’t, as an examination proved, for when the handle had broken
off it had taken a generous piece of the skillet with it. June studied
the situation hard, cupping his chin in his hands and gazing at the
scuffed toes of his shoes. “I reckon,” he said finally, “we jus’ got
to _eat_ that coffee. ’Sides,” he continued, “how we goin’ to boil it,
anyway, without no fire?”
“We could build a fire outside,” answered Wayne. “For that matter,
we could build one in the stove. I reckon the smoke wouldn’t bother
us much seeing half our windows are open! But we’ve got to have a
coffee-pot or a pan or something. We surely were chumps, June,” he
ended sadly.
“How come we didn’ think of that, Mas’ Wayne?”
“There’s something else we didn’t think of,” replied the other. “We
didn’t think of anything to drink it out of, either!”
“I ain’ botherin’ so much about that,” said June. “Jus’ you cook me
that coffee an’ see! But we surely has got to have somethin’ to----”
He stopped abruptly. “How much money we got, Mas’ Wayne?” he asked
eagerly.
“Five cents. You can’t get a coffee-pot for five cents, I reckon.”
“Give me he,” said June, jumping up. “I’ll go on back yonder an’ ask
that man in the tin factory to sell me a five-cent kettle or somethin’,
Mas’ Wayne. He’s a nice man an’ I reckon when I tell him we can’ get no
supper without he sells it to us he goin’ do it. Jus’ you wait, Mas’
Wayne.”
“All right,” laughed Wayne. “And ask him to throw in two tin cups and a
candle and a blanket or two and----”
“No, sir, I ain’ goin’ to ask no imposs’bilities,” replied June,
showing his teeth in a broad grin, “but I certainly am goin’ to projeck
mightily aroun’ that tin pile. I reckon there’s a heap more pieces like
I done fetched if I can fin’ ’em.”
“Maybe I’d better go along,” said Wayne, giving June the nickel.
“No, sir, you stay right here an’ rest yourself, Mas’ Wayne. I can
’tend to that man without no help. Jus’ you get them victuals ready----
What’s the matter, Mas’ Wayne?”
“Oh, nothing,” groaned Wayne, setting down the paper bag he had untied.
“Only I forgot to ask them to grind the coffee, June!”
“Lawsy-y-y!”
They gazed dejectedly at each other for a moment. Then June chuckled.
“I reckon I’ll jus’ have to ask that Mister Man to throw in a coffee
grinder, too!” he said. “Ain’ there no way to make coffee out of that,
Mas’ Wayne?”
“There must be,” was the answer. “If we can’t do it any other way,
we’ll grind it with our teeth! You run along and see what you can find,
June, and I’ll try to think up a way of grinding the coffee.”
So June departed again and Wayne faced his problem, and when, some
twenty minutes later, the darkey returned in triumph with a tin
coffee-pot, a tin dish, a tin spoon, and several more sheets of the
metal dug from the waste heap enough coffee for the evening meal was
ready and Wayne was grinding the rest of their supply between two
flat stones! “There’s more than one way to grind coffee,” he laughed,
as June paused in the doorway to regard the proceeding in pardonable
surprise. “I just remembered the way the Indians used to grind their
corn. Or was it the Egyptians? Someone, anyhow. I had a dickens of a
time finding these stones, though. There, that’s the last. It isn’t
very fine, but I guess it will do well enough.”
“Don’ it smell jus’ gran’?” asked June, sniffing the fragrance. “An’
look what I fetched, please, Mas’ Wayne. Look yere! Ain’ that a pretty
fine coffee-pot? An’ ain’ that a pretty fine little dish? An’ look yere
at the spoon! All them for a nickel, Mas’ Wayne! That man certainly was
good to me, yes, sir! I done tell him I ain’ got but a nickel an’ he
say: ‘Nickel’s enough, nigger. What-all you wantin’?’ He say these yere
things is ‘second,’ whatever he mean, but I reckon they goin’ to suit
us all righty, ain’ they?”
“They’re fine, June! You surely know how to get your money’s worth. But
where are the blankets I told you to fetch?”
“He goin’ to send them over in the mornin’,” replied June gravely.
“Didn’ have none good enough, he say. How soon we goin’ to cook that
coffee, Mas’ Wayne?”
“Not for a long time yet,” said Wayne resolutely. “We aren’t going to
have any supper at all until all these windows are fixed, June. It’s
getting cold in here already and we’ll just naturally freeze tonight if
we don’t get something over them. Come on and get to work. Where’s the
tin?”
It was almost twilight when they actually finished the undertaking. It
is doubtful if they would have finished at all that evening if June
hadn’t discovered a piece of tar paper nearly three yards long and
a yard wide near the railroad embankment. It was torn and held some
holes, but it was far better than nothing and it covered three windows,
with the aid of a few pieces of wood found in the same locality. Those
windows presented a strange appearance, but nobody cared about the
looks of them. At least, when the door was closed and the stove was
going, the car was warm enough for comfort even if the smoke did bring
tears to their eyes. Until the coffee was boiled they kept the fire
up, but after that they were very glad to let it go out. They had the
equivalent of two cups of coffee apiece and finished most of the bread
and butter. They were very hungry and it was so much easier to satisfy
present appetites than to give thought to the morrow. The coffee was
somewhat muddy, but, as June said ecstatically, “it certainly did taste
scrumptuous!”
After supper they sat huddled in a corner of the seat opposite the
dying fire and talked. For some reason their thoughts tonight dwelt
largely with Sleepersville, and Wayne wondered this and June that, and
they decided that at the very first opportunity Wayne was to write back
there and let his stepfather and June’s mother know that they were
alive and well. And they wondered about Sam, too, and how he would
like this new home. And presently they stretched themselves out on
the seat, sharing the horse blanket as best they could, and slumbered
soundly.