Me & Emma (8 page)

“Oh, Caroline…”

I turn around and catch him smiling just like his high school picture. “Yes, sir?”

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“Y’all better be careful,” he says, “the Box is the scariest thing you’ll ever see.”

He knows! Could he have heard us yesterday? I stumble back-first out the door while my mind tries to wrap itself around this question, and then I see the noisy old rusty car Miss Mary borrows to drive herself to town pull up, the windows sealed up tight to keep in the little bit of cool air that trickles out of the one unbroken vent, and I hurry to grab the front seat before Emma can call it and I forget all about Mr. White and how he came to find out about the Box.

“Emma, I’m older, I get it!” We’ve both grabbed the front door handle and are trying to push each other out of the way. It’s one thing to ride in the back in Momma’s car—I do that ‘cause Emma’s so picked on by her. But this is a horse of a different color. Emma gets plenty of attention from Miss Mary so I think I should get it. Plus, I was the one we decided had to do the Mr. White asking.

“Em-ma!” I jimmy my shoulder in between her head and the car door, but she’s strong from beating up so many people after school so she isn’t about to let go of the handle without a fight. Now Miss Mary has herself halfway standing, halfway sitting out her side of the car, calling out to us, “You better git in ‘fore I change my mind and that’s that.”

We cain’t get into the car fast enough. The cool air gives me gooseflesh at first but then I settle into it.

“So? Y’all ready for the Box?” Miss Mary says as she pulls the car out of the parking lot and onto the main road that leads out of Toast. “Is it alive or dead?” Emma asks.

“Don’t be startin’ on me with all them questions. This ain’t no game show.” I can see the top half of Miss Mary’s face in the cracked rearview mirror looking back at the both of us, the lines around her TO

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eyes crinkled from smiling. I once heard one frown line on an old person’s face is caused by one hundred thousand frowns all added up. If the same’s true for smiles, then Miss Mary’s been a happy person all her life ‘cause she has a ton of lines around the corners of each of her

eyes.

“Just say,” Emma says. “Is it alive or dead?”

“I just do not know,” Miss Mary says. She’s at the blinking yellow light that keeps you from getting hit by an eighteen-wheeler racing fast as can be through Toast and on to bigger and better places. Not one today, though, so Miss Mary pulls out slow and onto the highway toward Lowgap.

“I bet it’s a head cut offof someone’s body,” Emma says.

“I bet it’s a pig’s tongue,” I say. “You know, Daddy used to eat tongue–did you know that?”

“I bet it’s blood,” Emma says, not paying any attention to this tidbit of Daddy information I parcel out to her. Too bad for her.

“That’s not all that scary,” I tell her. “I mean, who hasn’t seen blood before? No one’d hightail it out of the room over a box full of blood.”

“I’m telling you, it’s boogers,” Emma says, crossing her arms and sitting up straighter so she can see the road we’re driving on. I don’t know why she’d care about that, though, since there ain’t a thing on it to see.

“What ifIke won’t let us see the Box?” This is what I’ve been most

worried about. “What if he says we’re not old enough?” “He let you through,” Miss Mary says. “How big is it again?” Emma asks.

“She already told you.” I roll my eyes just like Momma says not to. “It’s about the size of a shoe box. Jeez.”

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Miss Mary says, “Y’all start that bickering an’ this drive gits longer an’ longer so quit it.”

This, of course, makes no sense a-tall since bickering cain’t make the distance between two places any farther. But I’m not about to point this out to Miss Mary. We’re so lucky her friend lives near Low-gap.

Soon we’re slowing down in the middle of the main road in Low-gap. “The City on the Rise!” it says on a signpost right before the stores start lining up. It doesn’t feel like it’s on the rise, though, since not many of the places are open. Some have windows so dusty they look like they’ve been locked up for a thousand years. Miss Mary pulls up to the curb outside a glass window with a sign: Dot’s Kountry Kafaye.

“Reckon you as hungry as I am,” she says, fishing in her purse on the seat next to her. She finds her lipstick and shimmies up to the rearview mirror so she can reapply. She doesn’t have those tiny smoker’s cracks outlining her mouth, like Momma does, so the lipstick stays where it’s supposed to. On Sundays Momma’s lips look like they’re bleeding. Miss Mary pops the cap back on and throws the lipstick back into her bag and turns to face us.

“We better get some food in your stomach ‘fore it gets too tied up in knots over this ole Box.”

I was hungry up until now, but once Miss Mary says the word Box I lose my appetite all over again. I couldn’t eat dinner last night, even though Momma made biscuits and gravy—my favorite.

Dot’s Kountry Kafaye looks just like Mickey’s Country Kitchen in Toast. There’s a counter where you can watch them make your food or there are booths if you want to be surprised. I like the counter and lucky for me that’s where we go. The seats at Dot’s swivel all the way around! At Mickey’s they only make a halfa circle.

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Miss Mary says we can order one thing and split it on account of

the fact that she’s paying and we aren’t so we decide on a hot dog. “All the way?” the waitress asks.

“Yes, please,” I say. The bell on the top of the glass door jingles as Miss Mary turns to back out through it.

“Y’all going over to Ike’s after this?” the waitress asks me and Emma after she clips our order slip onto a metal tree that sits on an

island between the kitchen and the restaurant.

“Yes, ma’am,” we say at the same time.

“I expected you would.” She nods, all serious like Mr. White was. “Good luck,” she says, and the way she says it I know I won’t be doing any more than picking at my share of the hot dog.

“I’ll tell you what,” the waitress says, trying to sound cheerful, “I’ll bring you a Coke with a side of peanuts, on the house since y’all ain’t never seen the Box ‘fore.”

We both sit up straight and swivel. Peanuts and Coke! It’s the best thing in the universe.

“I call I get to drop the first one in,” Emma practically shouts. “Let’s shoot for it,” I say. And I lose.

The first peanut into the Coke causes the most bubbles, and this time when Emma drops it in is no different. It’s like a science experiment, the foam gets high up to the edge of the glass and then, just as quick-like, drops back down. The rest of the peanuts just plop in. But they make the Coke taste even better than when it’s on its own.

“Aw-right, here you go.” The waitress pushes the sloppy hot dog in front of the both of us. There’s a pickle on the side for good measure.

I eat my share but then my stomach lurches and it occurs to me I might throw up so I ask if I can visit the washroom before we go.

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“Sure, sugar,” the waitress says. “Lemme unlock it for you.” She takes a wooden mallet with a little chain and key attached from behind the register and flicks her head to the side, which means I’m to follow her. We go past the kitchen and the smell makes me swallow hard. Uh-oh. She unlocks the door just in time for me to run in and lean over the toilet to throw up hot dog and Coke. I hear the door click closed behind me, and before I can reach for the toilet paper to clean myself up I hear a tap on the door and Miss Mary’s voice. “You okay, chile?”

I cain’t answer her ‘cause I’m still gulping air, but she doesn’t wait for my answer, she’s through the door and stroking my back and then I feel her cool hands smoothing my forehead and pulling my hair back from my face and up from my neck. It feels so good that I stay leaning over even though I don’t have to anymore.

“I went too far’d with the talk of this Box,” she says. She’s talking soft, like you’d talk to a baby bird. “Don’t you worry anymore about it. We go on back home if you like. We just stop by my friend’s house to say howdy and then we hit the road—”

“No! Please, no,” I say, whipping around to face her. She dabs my chin with tissue from out of her purse that has the same Miss Mary smell of flowers mixed with cleaner fluid. “I feel fine now, for real.

Please? I have to see the Box. I just have to.” “But you worried sick ‘bout it, chile.” “No I’m not. I swear. I feel fine. Please?”

I cain’t breathe until she says, “Okay.” She frowns when she says it. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea no more. We go by for a second and give it the once-over.”

I throw my arms around her without even thinking first, the way I used to with Daddy when he came home from a trip. “Thank you,”

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I say into her waist. Her clothes smell so good. I feel her hand resting on my head, and for that second I feel like nothing could ever go wrong. Not when there’s Miss Mary to hug.

Ike’s General Store is a few doors down from Dot’s, but it’s set back farther from the road. I guess this is so they can have a front porch, where there are rocking chairs and a normal chair that has no seat on it. You’d have to be really big so you won’t fall through if you want to sit that bad. There’s an old guy in one of the rocking chairs and he’s staring straight ahead like he’s waiting on a ride somewhere, but when we walk up he turns his head to us and I get the feeling maybe he was sleeping with his eyes open. Inside the screen door there’s a little fan that’s turning its head from one side to another, but it doesn’t stay in any one place long enough for you to cool down any. Right by the cash machine there are candy jars with sugar sticks in all different colors. A whole jar with just red ones (my favorite) and another whole jar with the purple kind (Emma’s). There must be ten in all. Behind them are all kinds of bottles like at White’s, but the rest of the store has stuffyou’d normally find at Feed-n-Plow back in Toast: barrels of grain, rakes, burlap sacks of flour that’ve leaked a bit so the floor looks like it’s dusted with fairy powder. I cain’t tell what’s toward the back of the store ‘cause it gets dark, but I bet it’s cooler than here up front where the sun slashes through the door right onto us.

Emma takes hold of my hand and I pretend not to notice since she’s real proud and would pull away if I looked at her being scared.

“Now, what can I do for y’all today?” the man behind the counter asks. He looks like he could be a twin of the old man out front in the

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rocker, only both straps of his overalls are snapped up and his shirt looks cleaner. Also, his hair is combed and not quite so gray.

Miss Mary’s been looking at the table that has cookbooks on it and starts at the sound of his voice. I see she’s been reading the book called Sweet Tooth Heaven.

“They here to see the Box.” She looks over at me and Emma and says “the Box” in a lower tone, like it’s a secret between them and them only.

The man nods his head like the preacher does at church on Sunday when people stand up to confess their sins out loud in front of everybody. It’s a nod that says he knew all along they’d been sinning.

“I see,” he says. “And how old are you, young lady?” he asks me. He must think Emma’s going to hang behind when I go in.

“I’m eight and my sister’s six but she’s brave and wants to see, too,” I say.

The man looks at Miss Mary, who whispers something across to him like she’s sticking up for Emma, who does look pretty much younger than six. The man looks us up and down while Miss Mary whispers and then he whispers something back to her and I think they’ve been able to strike a deal.

“So you want to go in together, that right?” he says after thinking on it a minute and scratching his chin.

“Yes, sir,” we say at the same time again, only this time neither of us calls jinx. We’re too scared.

“I s’pose that can be allowed. Let me go on back and let them know you’re comin’,” he says, wiping his hands on the apron he has tied around his thin waist. On the way to the back there’s an icebox that I bet has meat in it since the man’s apron’s streaked with red. Either that or it’s blood from the Box!

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“I’m so scared,” I whisper to Emma. She squeezes my hand tighter. “I don’t know if I can move my legs to walk back there.”

Miss Mary bends down so she can look us in the eyes. “You change yo minds an’ we can leave right now.”

I just shake my head and look over hers at the man who’s coming toward us and motioning with his arms that we should go on back to him to save him the rest of the steps it would take for him to come fetch us from the front.

“Aw-right, then.” Miss Mary straightens up and pats us on the heads. “Good luck, girls. I be right here the whole time, hear?”

I don’t remember how I take the first step on the dusty floor but somehow I’m walking toward a wooden door smack in the middle of shelves that line the whole back wall of the store. Our steps are tiny, though, ‘cause the door stays far offin the distance even though we’re moving toward it.

“Oh, Lord,” I whisper my prayer out loud. “Oh, Lord, make us strong.”

Emma’s grip on my hand tightens and it’s hard to know whether it’s her or me sweating.

The man isn’t smiling anymore. He’s holding the door open for us togo through and he has a real serious look on his face like we’ve done something wrong. That’s fitting, I guess, since we’re walking toward him like we have something to answer for.

Once we’re at the doorway he says, “Now, girls, you sure you’re ready for the Box?”

My mouth is so dry ‘cause I’ve had it hanging open, I now realize, so all I can do is nod to him like I see Emma doing out of the corner of my eye.

I look from his face into the darkened room and I see three fig

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ures standing around a table with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth on it, like the picnic one we used with Daddy. My eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark yet but I think one of the men is the old man from the front porch. It’s smoky in here and I notice that toward the back there’s a card table set up and a cigarette is tilted against the side of an ashtray. One of the other men is wearing glasses, but I notice they only have glass in one side.