Waiting for Augusta (8 page)

Well, the old lady ate that up. She nodded at the urn. “I can understand that. I certainly can. My Jimmy comes to visit four times a year and says that his wife's cooking has got nothing on mine.” The smug look on her face shifted to concern. “Why're you grabbing your throat like that?” she asked me, scooting away. “You sick, honey? Need a lozenge? I got a lozenge. Oh!” She stood. “There's my Jimmy.”

She dug in her purse, and I accepted a cherry-flavored cough drop. We said goodbye to Ticket Granny and Noni carried my painting to the ticket seller, who took one glance and looked like she'd just walked in her home door after a long, long trip. She met my eye and waved, then put her
waving hand on her heart as Noni plopped back down beside me with two tickets.

“Can't believe that worked,” I whispered, covering my face with one hand. “By the way, that was a good story about our Grandma Jones you told. I liked the squirrel part.”

Noni leaned over and retied a loose shoelace. “That wasn't a story. My grandma, rest her soul, was backwoods and superstitious as anything. She had three life rules for avoiding bad luck. My daddy believed them, too. He even made me memorize them so I could recite them when we visited her.” Noni sat up, cleared her throat, and shook a finger at me. “It's bad luck to trust the government,” she said in a high-pitched, shaky granny voice. “It's bad luck to ignore a child in need. And it's bad luck to turn down a meal made with squirrel.”

“Oh.” I wasn't sure what else to say. Nobody'd ever offered me squirrel meat. “The only time my daddy got superstitious was on the golf course. He had lucky tees and ball markers, and he said it was bad luck to get into an argument before starting a round of golf. But I think he said that just so my mama wouldn't fuss about him skipping church.”

While we waited for the bus, a few more people, mostly old ladies and old men, chatted with me after overhearing that I didn't talk at all. They filled in my silence with whatever they expected to hear and seemed pleased with my responses. I wondered how they learned to do that and why
the words my mind filled Daddy's silences in with weren't so nice.

When our bus arrived, Noni told the driver in a loud voice how her brother didn't talk and not to be offended that I didn't say hello or thanks. Both of us took seats about three-quarters of the way back, ready to go home to our fake parents if anyone asked.

I let Noni have the aisle seat. We sat across from a very pregnant woman who kept rubbing her belly the way I rubbed at my throat, and I wondered if her baby was moving around in there, the same way my lump moved. She caught me staring at her belly and gave me a small smile. She was the only colored woman on the bus. Was it hard to be the only colored person on a bus, the way it was hard for May to go to my school? I didn't know, and I wasn't about to ask.

As we pulled away from the station, raindrops splattered on the window beside me but stopped within a few minutes. Whatever clouds had set them free weren't quite ready to let a storm pour down yet. I wondered what they were waiting for.

I
stared out the window as the bus drove along, taking me away from my first and only home and toward Daddy's final one. Flashes of planted fields, corn and soybeans, thick-trunked brown oaks, swaying branches feathered in new leaves, hanging gray moss, fading red roadside restaurants in need of fresh paint and new customers, old towns, white-chipped porch swings and rocking chairs, kids running-playing-pushing-staring, burn piles smoking, gas stations. We moved by it all fast, the window painting changing every time I blinked.

“Where'd you come from?” I whispered to Noni, not sure how long I'd have to pretend to be a non-talker.

“Doesn't matter,” she said, pumping the skirt of her dress up and down. “Man, it's hot.”

“But why were you in Hilltop? There's nothing there.”

“There's good pork. I followed the tracks behind my house and ended up there. Good enough? You ask too many
questions.” Her mouth went wide in a yawn. “There are rules, you know.”

“Rules for what? Being a . . .”
Being a runaway? Being an orphan?

“I'm a wanderer and lucky to be one,” she said firmly. “But there are rules. I'm not generally a fan of rules, but wandering rules are more like guidelines for living by.” She reached down into her sock and pulled out a scrap of paper. “Here. I wrote 'em down so I wouldn't forget.”

“Where'd you learn them?”

“None of your business.”

“Maybe you just made them up.” When her glowering began to make me uncomfortable, I swallowed hard. “What are these guidelines?”

She squinted at the paper. “Number one, always keep your focus on the next step ahead. Number two, don't ever be telling anybody the whole truth. Little truths are okay if you find someone to trust.”

“And you trust me?”

Her eyes drifted up to the bus's ceiling. “Yep, I trust you.”

“Why?”

She looked at the backpack. “Because I miss my daddy, too. Why do you trust me?”

I didn't trust her yet. I couldn't. There were too many blanks and whys surrounding her. Why was she so willing to come with me? Was she running from someone? How
could I trust her when she'd given away a good chunk of our traveling money and then had taken over at the bus station? Sure, I felt bad that she had no parents left, and sure, it was nice to have someone to share a seat with, but she was a bossy thing, and there was no getting around that. I had the feeling I'd have to stand up for myself at some point or things wouldn't change.

Ignoring the seatback in front of me, which was pleading for me to tell a white lie, I looked Noni straight in the face. “I don't think I do trust you. Sorry,” I added for cushion.

Her low-pitched laugh was followed by a snort and a nod of approval. “That's fair. You don't have as much faith as I do. But I think you're wrong. You're trusting me right now, and I appreciate that, even if you can't admit it.” She kept shifting around, trying to get comfortable. “Know why you're trusting me? It's better than being alone. Same for me. And I've lost two parents, not just one, so you probably feel sorry for me, which is fine.” Her head nodded a little as she yawned again, fighting sleep. “Sympathy can come in handy.”

She smoothed out the paper scrap, which had crumpled in her fist. “Back to my guidelines—number three, don't talk to people you shouldn't be talking to, or your wandering time will be up for sure. That's all I could remember to write down. Now, stop talking my ears off and let me get some rest. Wandering's more tiring than it sounds.” Wiggling her legs up to the seat, she wrapped both arms around herself and turned away, tucking her head into her body like a baby bird.

My paint box poked my leg through the backpack's fabric, so I took out my sketchbook and flipped to the third-to-last page. Most of the face was blank from the eyes down, but I'd drawn light outlines that could be erased and changed later on. Miss Stone told me that mistakes in art were okay. They were lessons in disguise, she told me. Clues to help you go about things a better way next time. From memory I drew a nose, then erased it, then tried again. Better. Ears and jawline came next, then the top lip line.

Daddy wasn't speaking, not even when I reached in the backpack and shook him around a little, so I stretched my arms high, then low, then leaned against the window and used the backpack as a pillow. When I closed my eyes, I drifted in a soft dream fog before recognizing our front porch. The fog parted, and I saw that it was a late-summer afternoon in August. Mama and a younger version of me were waiting for the day to cool and for Daddy to get home from the golf course, and I was floating above the scene.

An ache filled me when I realized what would happen to the Ben Putter crouched over a bunch of papers. I tried to yell a warning to myself, but I'd floated too high for the little boy to hear and my words were coming out as silence anyway.

Can't change something that's already happened
, the golf ball in my neck sang out in a mocking sort of voice. I slapped it quiet.

Then I watched the younger me, knowing exactly what would happen.

I
was eight years old, just days away from getting the pounding of my life from twelve-year-old Willy Walter, the beating given because I'd won the second grade art prize for my drawing
Pregnant Pig in Yard
over his sister's drawing
Portrait of My Brother Willy
.

All day through, with only one break for lemonade and a cold ham sandwich, I had sketched and planned a project for Daddy. I figured that maybe he didn't like me drawing and painting things like flowers and trees and Mrs. Grady snoozing and drooling on her porch, but he couldn't help but like a comic strip. Daddy always chuckled at the Sunday funny papers, and I knew that a special comic was just the thing to make him smile.

I'd thought long and hard before making up and drawing a five-page Abbott Meyers comic strip, based on the golfer character from the good-night stories he told me on rare, golden occasions. I drew forty-five frames of comics, and
even Mama thought I was working too hard. The outlines were in navy blue ink, and I was so proud that I snuck into Mama's room and nabbed the set of colored pencils she'd already bought me for the upcoming school year so I could fill up the empty white space.

In my dream, I felt the same excitement I had that day when he pulled into the driveway, leaving a trail of disappearing dirt smoke. Running to the car, I pointed to my superhero and his weapon.

“Huh,” said Daddy, glancing at the first frame. He reached into the trunk and pulled out his clubs. “Who's that supposed to be?”

“Abbott Meyers, Daddy. I made him a real superhero and wrote you a comic. See, it's called
Abbott Meyers Swings for Freedom Against the Hateful Wart Droid Assassins
. Look what he's got—it's a golf club that doubles as a Tommy gun. See? And the golf ball is a delayed-action tear gas bomb.”

Daddy snatched a paper from me and studied it as we walked to the porch. I leaped up the three stairs and watched. Waiting.

He wrinkled his nose. “You've got the grip all wrong. Good Lord, Ben, weren't you paying attention last week, or was I wrong to think eight was old enough for the golf course?”

He grabbed the other sheets and studied them briefly. “Nope, not one good club grip in here.” He waved the pages
in the breeze like they were nothing at all. “Tell you what, I'll grab us some lemonade. You come on around back and hit a few into the net with me. We can have us some man talk and I'll give you a few tips on that grip. That sound fun?” He reached down, handed my gift back, and walked into the house, humming a tune.

I dropped the pages.

Mama leaned over me on the porch and made a neat pile of the papers. I waited until she went inside, too. Then I tore my gift to pieces and shoved the mess into the rain pipe.

•  •  •

I woke up as the Atlanta-bound bus was driving through a small town. Just as I blinked awake, the driver let out a word that not even Daddy used to say, hit the brakes, smacked into something in the road, and went spinning out of control. Even as my head banged against the seat in front of me, I could see out my window to a lake that said
We've got fish!
and a wall with painted yellow bricks that shouted
Hello!
and a café sign that said
Come on in
for a spell!
and that's exactly what we did, blasting right through the front windows like we were extra hungry for pie.

A
pig caused the accident. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see a boy sitting on the side of the road, crying and looking at the mangled mess while the driver ran out there, I guess to make sure it was really a pig he'd hit and not a piggy-looking person. I joined the line of wobbly people and stepped out of the bus with my backpack on, into shattered tables and chairs, broken glass, and several exploded ketchup bottles that made the scene look worse than it was.

A woman stood behind the café's counter, her face full of grit and worry as she reached across the service slab and rubbed the back of a colored customer who was holding a newspaper in one hand and a forkful of pie in the other, his wrinkled face dotted with lemon crème and Cool Whip. A lit cigarette rested in an ashtray beside him, and a heavyset white man in overalls was tapping his own cigarette in there, blinking at us like he couldn't believe what had just
happened. Three more counter stools and a few tables held mostly older folks. Except for the counter, coloreds and whites were sitting at separate tables like in our school cafeteria, but all of them looked pretty much the same, holding shaking coffee cups and staring. They'd probably come in for the day's gossip. Now they'd gotten it.

I looked through the disarray for Noni, who'd scooted off the bus fast while I checked the backpack to make sure nothing had fallen out when we crashed.

The driver made sure we all were accounted for, holding a shaky paper and checking us off his list before asking for a telephone and reporting our location. Which was just north of Montgomery, but nowhere near Atlanta. We weren't even in Georgia yet.

Voices hummed and moaned while we all got our bearings. Everyone seemed to be breathing and fine, though the pregnant woman was tucked into a pile of broken chairs like a curled-up possum, crying quietly and talking to her belly, while another woman tried to comfort her.

“Hey, Bobby Jones,” Noni said, pushing around a turned-over table and coming to my side. She squeezed my hand, her fingers doing the talking to say,
are you okay, I'm okay, are you okay
,
good, I'm glad we're okay
. She raised her eyebrows at the backpack, and I nodded to let her know that Daddy was fine. Patting her pocket bulges, she grinned. “The eggs made it, too.”