Sewer Pipe Village

Dad raised Robbie sternly. Every man was sir or mister. And every man, whether as stern as Dad or as kindly as Uncle George, was to be obeyed without question. That was before Robbie’s evening in Sewer Pipe Village.

Sewer Pipe Village was the name Dad gave a dozen giant concrete cylinders strewn in a clearing of scrub—cottonwood and sassafras—across the tracks from their home in Indian Hills. It was along the South Crick, a ditch really, part of a system to drain the swamps south of Lake Michigan, land far enough from the beach for steelworker families like theirs to afford.

Dad took Robbie and his older brother Rick hiking there on Saturday afternoons. The pipes facing up were good for campfires, another enjoyment of Dad’s, and of the firebug in Robbie. One pipe, upright, was big enough to make an echo when he’d stand inside and clap his hands.

It was little Cary Carman’s fault that no one older went along on Robbie’s next trip to Sewer Pipe Village. That day, Robbie didn’t care that Cary was an attention hog who’d do anything to get a rise out of him or the other Big Kids—once to the extreme of eating a dead toad. Cary was giving Robbie a chance to play his favorite game, stretch, in his front yard. You throw a pocketknife to make the blade stick in the grass several inches or a foot away from your opponent, and he has to stretch out a foot next to the knife—until he can’t stretch his legs far enough apart to get there.

Cary played at a disadvantage. Instead of a folding pocketknife, he had an old paring knife that his skinflint father had “fixed”—he ground the snapped-off end of the blade until it was sharp, if not pointed, and made a sheath for the blade out of an old handlebar grip from a tricycle.

Robbie’s mom told him not to play such dangerous games, but how dangerous could a three-inch blade thrown by a ten-year-old be? Mom worried too much. Every time Robbie would head for the woods without Dad, she’d tell him to watch out for tramps. If the boy didn’t respond—and why would he, he never saw anyone in the woods—she’d say, “Remember that escaped killer from Westville? He’s still out there somewhere!” Westville was the nearest insane asylum. The local paper had sensationalized the psycho’s escape for weeks that summer.   

Robbie’s second favorite game was telling whoppers. To Cary, he had played up Sewer Pipe Village as some kind of Stonehenge—the huge masses of concrete in the middle of nowhere, the eerie echoes—till the smaller boy got sarcastic. “Village? There’s no village out there. Show me, I dare you. I double dare you.”

Robbie didn’t tell Mom, and Cary certainly didn’t have time to tell his. Robbie had already changed from school clothes to jeans and Red Ball Jets, so he was ready to go. He led Cary down the sidewalk to the end of their dead-end street and up the rocky railroad embankment, as tall as two men, onto the High Line, the Wabash tracks.

Cary was having a grand time, complaining about the crummy bike his dad had made for him by welding tricycle parts together. He showed Robbie the scabs on his knees from his falls. Some of the scars had cinders embedded, tattoos of the crushed steel mill leavings that were used as the road surface of Floyd Steet, where they lived.

As they walked and talked, Robbie whittled on a long sassafras branch to make a walking stick. The darn thing was so tough—or his blade was so dull from throwing it into the dirt—that he could only gnaw the wood down a bit at a time. By the time they boys got near the crick, Robbie had barely got the stick cut in two. It was still sharp-ended, pretty worthless as a walking stick or downright dangerous, so he left it stuck in the railroad embankment at the marker point, a prehistoric-looking clump of horsetails.

“What are you saving a dumb old stick for?” Cary said and kicked it.

They skittered down the embankment to the other side of the tracks to follow the South Crick awhile, then onto a path that departed in a more southerly direction. Robbie was getting impatient to reach the sewer pipes, feeling like a fool for taking a dare from a Little Kid so late on an October day when they might run out of daylight. A concern nagged at him about the return trip home; his sense of direction wasn’t so hot.

When at last they neared the clearing, Robbie was surprised to see blue wood smoke rising. “Look!” he said. “Someone’s there.”

Oblivious, Cary dashed ahead shouting, “It is a village! This is so cool! We could make a fort!”

A wispy voice called out, “Help! Help, boys!”

Sitting on the floor of the upright pipe was a hobo, a heavy little guy in a tan windbreaker and jeans. Long gray scraggles at his temples stuck out of an old brown cap, greasy curls flowing behind.  A grizzled mustache and beard covered his face. A few brownish teeth showed. Still, everything else about him was eclipsed by his huge gray-blue eyes. They glittered in deep sockets. The boys could hardly look away.

Hunkered over the smoldering campfire, the hobo clutched his hands together, rolling this way and that, looking miserable.

“What’s the matter, mister?” Cary asked.

“I’m hurtin’, sonny.” H grimaced in pain. “Don’t need much, though. Could ya’ c’m-ere and help an old codger?”

His eyes pulled the boys near. Cary approached all the way to the hobo’s knees.

“That’s a good boy,” the hobo said. He patted Cary on the head. “Stand next a-me, so I kin get up.”

Cary did, and the hobo leaned to him, held onto the boy with both hands, and rose. Robbie’s heart went out to the man’s struggle, but the look on Cary’s face switched from pity to fear. Tears began to roll down his cheeks.

“Cary?” Robbie said. “What’s wrong?”

All that came out of Cary’s mouth was something low and lost-sounding. As if the hobo was holding him so tightly that he could hardly breathe.

“Never you mind what’s wrong with Cary,” the hobo said. He shifted to hold the boy with one arm. With his filthy free hand, he brushed tears down Cary’s cheek. “I’m the one feelin’ bad. So, Cary’s gonna stay here and help take care o’ me.” His weird eyes swiveled onto Robbie. “Till you come back with eats, boy! Ya got some roast beef leftover? Some ham? Meat’s what I need.”

Robbie couldn’t move.

The hobo made a snaggle-tooth grin. “Then ya can have yer little buddy back, all safe and sound. Little Cary,” he said. He shook the boy. “Sweet little Cary and me are gonna be friends.”

Cary, eyes wide, whimpered like Robbie’s spaniel had when he’d held the little dog down for the vet.

Retreating slowly, Robbie nodded. “Sure, mister. I will. My mom’ll help.”

“Your mom? Ain’t no mamas gonna find out about this, and no daddies either. You raid the fridge on yer own. Our little secret. And ya know why? Cause that’s the only way you’re ever gonna see little Cary in one piece again. Yeah, and if you take too long, I might just make a ham sandwich outa him.”

Robbie ran away. When he reached the High Line, his face felt cold. He rubbed tears away. Ashamed of his fear, enraged, he raced home.

When Mom heard the screen door bang shut, she called from the kitchen sink, “I left your dinner in the oven, honey.” She didn’t turn around from the iron pot she was scrubbing. She had made pot roast, his favorite. Now it turned his stomach. He pulled the warm crock out of the oven. “Mom, Cary and me are having a picnic. So I’m gonna take this. I’ll be right back.”

“Come back soon! Sunset’s coming, young man.”

“Thanks, Mom.” he ran out of the house with the crock of pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, and string beans.

It got as heavy as a cannonball before he reached Sewer Pipe Village. A pain grew in his side from so much running. At last, the shifting glow on a sewer pipe from the hobo’s campfire helped Robbie locate the wild man and Cary.

At first, they looked the way Robbie had left them, only sitting now. Relief washed through him, chased by a jolt of guilt for getting Cary into danger. He stopped a stone’s throw away. Then he noticed Cary wasn’t crying anymore. He had a lost, shocked look. His shirt was out. He didn’t even seem to recognize Robbie.

The hobo laughed. “Well, looky here. If it ain’t the waitress. Bring that bowl over here, sweetheart.”

Robbie’s fury came out coldly. “No. Let him go first.”

“In a pig’s eye! I think I’ll take ‘im with me. Catch us the next train that rolls by, off to Chicago or Detroit. To hell and gone from Westville. Ain’t never gonna rot in that hole again.” He put on a softer look. “Or maybe I’ll let ‘im go. But first, gimme my dinner!”

Robbie set the bowl on the ground and shoved his hands into his pockets so the hobo couldn’t see them tremble. In the hip pocket was his pocketknife. It gave Robbie courage. “Come here and get it,” he said in the meanest voice he could muster.

The hobo shook his head. “You little bitch. All right. We can do that.” He rose, yanking Cary along, and started moving toward the bowl. Robbie retreated.

“That’s right. Jest keep backin’ away. And little Cary ain’t gonna get hurt.”

Cary started blubbering. The hobo forced him down till the two were seated before the crock. With one hand around the boy in his lap, the hobo began to eat, wolfing food down with his other hand.

Robbie was out of arm’s reach but not out of throwing range. He whipped out his pocketknife and snapped the blade open. “You got what you wanted. Let him go!” The chill in his voice surprised him.

The hobo grinned. “Think ya can skeer me wavin’ that toothpick around?”

“No. What I think is that I know how to throw this knife. Ever hear of the game stretch? I always win. You ask Cary. Go ahead, ask him.”

The grin faded from the hobo’s face. “Ya cain’t hurt me. I got me a hostage here. You’ll hurt him, not me.”

“Tell him, Cary. How I always miss your foot, but I don’t miss the right spot on the ground. Play stretch against me and you lose.”

“Throwin’ knives in the dirt, boy? It ain’t like throwin’ a knife at a man. Bet you never done that.”

Blade between thumb and forefinger, Robbie cocked his right arm behind his head. In a tone colder than ever, he said, “I said, you got what you wanted. Now let him go!”

The hobo belched, jerked upright by pushing off Cary, and pitched the crock at Robbie. The knife flew out of his hand, he ducked, and the crock splattered on a sewer pipe behind him.

“Ai!” the hobo screamed. The knife was embedded in his cheek. He yanked it out, and blood began to pour. He fell backward wailing.

Cary ran toward Robbie, and they took off for the crick.

At first, Robbie thought they’d make it home. But then he heard the hobo behind them screaming bloody murder. And Cary couldn’t keep pace. Then Robbie realized something worse. The crick was broadening. In his panic, he was running the wrong way, leading Cary away from home.  

There was only one way to put distance between them and the hobo: cross the crick. But how? It was a good twelve feet wide and getting wider still. For all Robbie knew it could be that deep, too. None of the kids had ever set foot in the brown, stagnant water, not even Cary.

Robbie looked up. The cottonwoods along the crick were slender. How flexible they were he had learned the hard way that summer. He had picked a tree too small to climb, and it bowed, nearly ducking him in the stinking water before he jumped off. Rick had found it hilarious.

If Cary and Robbie could climb a tree big enough to hold their weight but flexible enough to bend, it could serve as a bridge to the other side of the crick—a bridge no bigger person could use. Panting, Robbie chose a narrow sapling and hissed to Cary, “Climb after me.”  

Cottonwoods look easy to climb because they have so many branches, but the branches are so congested that you have to be something of a snake to keep at it. Fear kept the boys at it.

Robbie tried swaying back and forth. The tree started to bend, but not enough.   “Pump with me,” Robbie said, as if they were on a swing set. When Cary caught his rhythm, the tree began to brush farther this way and that.

A snapping sound farther down the trunk made it shudder and swoop down over the crick. A shower of falling leaves blinded them momentarily in golden medallions. But they were on solid ground on the other side of the water.

The hobo approached the snapped-off stump on the other side. Panting, sweating, he waved Robbie’s pocketknife in the air and shouted, “I’m gonna slit yer throats!”

The boys ran. All too soon, they heard the madman again. “I know where yer goin,’ and you’ll never beat me to them tracks!”

But his voice was behind them. And the boys were on easier terrain, twin dirt tracks. The other bank was all cottonwoods and wild raspberries, a Hoosier jungle. The hobo would lose time fighting his way through the brush to keep the boys in sight, or he’d have to detour around to their previous path and chance losing sight of them.

They made it to the High Line and partway to Floyd Street. But then they saw the hobo, crouching flat between the tracks. All they could do was turn back and run along the rails, farther and farther from safety.

The hobo rose and called out, “G’wan, run! Ya cain’t get away!”

Robbie saw the clump of horsetails ahead. A thought hit him so hard that he stumbled. His walking stick could become a spear. But the stick was halfway down the embankment. If Robbie ran down there—and didn’t fall on the way—the hobo would catch them.

He pulled Cary along by the hand as fast as he dared lest the little boy fall. The crunch of their footfalls in the cinders didn’t hide a louder patter of crunching sounds behind them. The hobo was wheezing, panting, but getting closer. “Faster!” Robbie panted, “We have to go faster!” 

“Here. Take my knife,” Cary said. With his free hand, he pulled the paring knife out of his pocket and yanked off the rubber sheath with his teeth.

Ragged breaths got closer. The hobo’s rotten breath hit Robbie. He caught Robbie by the back of the neck and shoved.

Robbie’s neck snapped. His hold on Cary’s hand broke. His body lurched ahead of his legs. Falling, he grabbed the paring knife in both hands for dear life and put out his left knee. It hit the cinders. White hot pain shot up his leg. The impact spun him around. He locked his elbows and aimed the blade up, making a puny spear.  

The hobo fell on him. The point of the blade hit him in the gut. A crack came from Robbie’s right forearm. It sent a sheet of pain up his arm, but his left arm held.  The hobo’s breath came out in a whoosh that turned into a scream. He fell next to Robbie, writhing in pain.

The boys bolted toward Floyd Street. Robbie paused before running down the embankment and looked back. The hobo was still down, bringing up the pot roast, silhouetted in the red, dying sun.

By the time they neared Cary’s house, they had slowed to an exhausted, dragging walk. They didn’t say another word. 

Mom was aghast at Robbie’s broken arm but easily convinced it was an accident. She wiped Robbie’s face with the cloth she was using to dry dishes.

She and Dad bundled Robbie off to the doctor’s. On the way, she blathered nervously. “You ripped the knee of your pants, too! How many times have I told you not to walk on those rails? I should scold you about losing that crock. I ought to cut off your allowance. No more fifty cents a week.”

“Mom,” Robbie said through gritted teeth, “Let’s make a deal. Keep up my allowance, and I’ll never play stretch again.”

Robbie’s arm was in a cast for six weeks. He didn’t sleep well and blamed it on the cast.

One Saturday in early November, Dad scolded Robbie because he wasn’t calling him sir anymore. But Dad brightened when Robbie asked him along for a walk in the woods.

They didn’t get far. When, through the leafless trees ahead, they could see Sewer Pipe Village, Robbie said his arm was aching and he wanted to go home.