Duke of all hoboes

“Duke of all hoboes” is Isaac English’s self-appointed title: a comic flourish that becomes part of the story he tells himself as he leaves Buell behind. First spoken alongside a new name and a claim of being loved by sailors, it reappears when Isaac walks west alone. The phrase gives his journey the sound of an adventure, while the dark railbed, scattered hobo camps, and abandoned industrial landscape keep its physical uncertainty in view.

Naming and Invention

In the hideout, Isaac announces, “Boxcar Isaac, that's my new name.” The declaration makes a name into a small act of self-invention: rather than simply describe who he is, it lets him try on a roving identity. He follows it with “Loved by sailors” and “Duke of all hoboes,” extending the invention into an extravagant little hierarchy. The phrases are brief and playful; they do not establish that Isaac has any particular standing among travelers. Their force lies in the contrast between the scale of the title and the vulnerability of the person claiming it.

The moment is shared with Billy Poe, who is there with Isaac in the hideout. Billy accepts Isaac’s gesture as an apology, then wraps his football jacket around himself and asks to be woken when the rain stops. Isaac kicks him and tells him to get up. The scene’s ordinary, bodily details keep the exchange from becoming a solemn declaration: the new identity emerges amid rain, a piece of cardboard, fatigue, and teasing between friends. “Duke of all hoboes” is at once a joke and a phrase Isaac can carry with him.

The Title on the Road

The title acquires a different weight when Isaac actually leaves. Moving out from the grounds of the steel mill, he follows the tracks past the town, his old school, and the road to Billy Poe’s place. Those familiar landmarks disappear quickly behind him. The railbed narrows and winds along a hillside, with woods on either side; the narration marks this as the point when his journey begins in earnest. His imagined rank does not make him less alone. It accompanies a young traveler on foot, heading for California and the warmth of a desert he pictures as his own.

As he walks, Isaac thinks that the kid will be fine and again calls himself “duke of all hoboes,” this time pairing the title with “King of the snakes.” The repeated phrase links the playful naming in the hideout to the inner story he uses on the road. It also sits beside practical attention: Isaac keeps an eye out for fires at the few hobo camps in the woods. The title therefore does not erase the conditions of travel; it overlays them with bravado, turning watchfulness and isolation into elements of a self-fashioned adventure.

Solitude, Landscape, and Self-Mythology

The walk places Isaac’s chosen persona against a landscape of decline and movement. Before reaching the tracks, he passes the steel mill’s empty buildings, rusted blast furnaces, slag cars, and stacks of structural steel left after dismantling ran out of money. The mill’s scale contrasts with the narrow railbed that carries him away from town. Behind him are the school and familiar roads; ahead is a route through woods and hobo camps. The title gives this departure a mock-heroic cast, but the setting makes clear that the journey proceeds through the remnants of a place where no one wanted to buy the old mill.

The surrounding narration enlarges Isaac’s solitude without turning it into literal triumph. In the night he sees a satellite, imagined as a companion to other wanderers, including Arab traders and astronauts. At daybreak, birds begin moving and singing according to a shared, unchanging rhythm. Isaac’s thought that he makes his own sun and prefers the night distinguishes the kid’s self-invented freedom from the regularity of the natural world. In that sequence, “duke of all hoboes” belongs to a broader attempt to narrate himself as a wanderer with a place among wanderers, even when he is physically alone.

Meaning and Limits

The title’s significance rests on its recurrence and its mismatch with Isaac’s circumstances. In the hideout it is an absurdly grand flourish among friends; on the road it becomes a repeated reassurance attached to an actual departure. The shift does not prove that Isaac has mastered his situation. He is still alone, still moving through darkness, and still alert to the possibility of fires in camps along the tracks. Instead, the phrase offers a provisional identity with which he can meet those conditions.

The self-mythology is also unstable. Isaac speaks of the kid as if that figure were separate from him, presenting the traveler as someone who will be fine and who welcomes tests. Yet the narrative follows Isaac’s concrete route and his nervousness as he approaches the traincar plant, where he decides to retrieve his backpack and belongings by coming from the rear. The title’s bravado and the practical calculation coexist. “Duke of all hoboes” names neither a secure destination nor a settled social role; it is a portable, joking claim through which Isaac recasts flight as a journey and loneliness as a chosen fellowship.