Bones & All (10 page)

The ticking clock reinserted itself into the silence, and Sully picked up the newspaper. Finally he said, “You better git to bed. We gotta be up early so her niece don't find us here.”

I stood, lobbed the ball of yarn back into the basket, and picked up my rucksack. “Well,” I said. “Goodnight, Sully.”

He kept puffing on the pipe as he turned the page and scanned the headlines. “Sleep tight, Missy.”

I changed into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and went into the Spare Oom. As I was closing the door the white cat bounded out of Mrs. Harmon's room down the hallway and stuck his paw between the door and jamb, mewing like he wanted to be let in. “Sorry, Puss.” I kneeled and gently pushed him back into the hallway. I'd never slept with an animal before, and I was afraid he'd keep me awake.

Something made me turn the key in the lock. If he was honest, he'd never know.

I flipped off the light and got into bed. The moonlight glinted off the sphinx on the night table and the faces of the cherubs carved along the headboard, casting lights in their little wooden eyes as if they were watching me. Watching
over
me. I missed Mrs. Harmon and wondered how long it would be before somebody slept in this spare bed again. Probably never.

Of course, I'd napped far too long that afternoon. Sleep wouldn't come. The dark was oppressive, and the silence covered me like a blanket I didn't need. When I finally drifted off I dreamed of the invisible man and his invisible knife, and through the fog I felt the pain wending its way back into my ear.
Knife, twist. Knife, twist.
He pressed the knife to my mouth.

*   *   *

In the morning I found another note on the kitchen table, but this one made me smile.

MISSY:

I got a feeling you won't take my advice to heart about not looking for your daddy. But if you change your mind, just come back to town and wait somewhere for me and I'll find you. Life with ole Sully is never dully.

SULLIVAN

P.S. Picked this up in my travels, thought you might like to have it.

Beside the note was a paperback book, the size of my palm and at least fifty years old. The crimson cover was stamped in silver:
RINGLING BROS. KEEPSAKE BOOK
. I opened it at random and found no words, only a red-and-black illustration of three tiny acrobats in midair. Two had big, curling mustaches, and the other wore red slippers that laced up to her knees. I turned the page, and another.
Aha,
I thought.
A flip book!
So I flipped, and the gentlemen on their trapezes flung the lady acrobat from one page to the next and back again. Maybe it's not so bad if a stranger knows you better than you think.

After a quick breakfast I said goodbye to the friends I'd made over the past twenty-four hours, the brass sphinx and the white cat and Mrs. Harmon at her Emerald City wedding. At the mantel my fingers hovered over the row of lovely old jewelry, and I picked up the cream and pink enamel locket. When I pressed the button, the lid popped open and there he was again, Mr. Harmon, smiling to the side. I closed the locket, unfastened the clasp, and put it around my neck. I knew I shouldn't take it—the jewelry, all of it, rightfully belonged to her niece—but I needed something to remember her by.

A few minutes later I boarded the local bus, and this time I knew I was going in the opposite direction of the Shieldses' house. I would never see my mother again, not even through a picture window.

There was nothing of interest in Edgartown now, so instead of looking out the bus window I played with the circus flip book. I closed my eyes and imagined what it must be like to sail through the air, pretending you could fly while you waited for someone to grab you by the ankles.

It was just before ten o'clock when I got to the Greyhound station. I went up to the counter, where a woman wearing too much lipstick sat filing her nails. “When's the next bus to Minnesota?” I asked. “I need to go to Sandhorn.”

“That near St. Paul?”

“I don't think so.”

“If you don't know where you're going, then how d'you expect me to help you?”

I wanted to grab that nail file and shove it up her nose. “I thought you'd be able to tell me where the nearest station is,” I said.

“Look, kid. You can get yourself a map, or you can get on that bus to St. Louis that's pulling out of gate one in about a minute and a half. That's what I'd do, if I were you. Won't be another westbound bus 'til eight o'clock tonight.”

The clerk was rude but sensible. I bought the ticket to St. Louis.

 

4

More highways, more snoring strangers and queasy attempts at losing myself in a book, more meals out of vending machines. It took two days to get to St. Louis, so I had plenty of time to mull over all the strange and wonderful things Sully had talked about: sleeping rough and killing your own supper, getting thoroughly comfortable living out of a rucksack, devil's bargains, and telling the truth like it's only a story—that part I thought about for a long while, because you can accept it even if nobody else can.

Then I thought of how life might be once I found my dad, and it felt like unwrapping a peppermint candy I'd been saving for ages. I knew there had to be a good reason why he'd left us, because even though Mama never talked about him I knew she still loved him. Why else would she go on wearing his ring?

Hour after hour I stared out the bus window, imagining his face and his voice and his hands. He was half a head taller than Mama, and he still wore his wedding ring too, and he wouldn't wait 'til he was dead to tell me everything he knew. I even pictured how he would sign
Francis Yearly
on the credit card slip when he took me out to an Italian restaurant. My dad would teach me how to get on in the world, so it wouldn't matter that no one knew the truth about me. We would find friends like Sully, and that would be enough. My dad and I would live in a house with place mats and picture frames, and we would volunteer at a soup kitchen on Sunday mornings when everyone else was at church.

I was in a weird mood when I finally got off the bus—exhausted and elated at the same time, as if I knew exactly how to get to that castle I'd built in the sky. I only realized when I got in line to buy my next ticket that I had fifteen dollars left in my wallet.

How could I? How could I be so stupid?

It made sense, of course, from Mama's point of view. I wouldn't have needed more than a hundred dollars to get me from Cincinnati to Sandhorn. I'd wasted most of it going in the opposite direction.

I lugged my rucksack into a filthy restroom, locked myself in the last stall, and cried. I was nearly penniless and definitely homeless. Why hadn't I taken Sully up on his offer? Why hadn't I listened?

I wore myself out, then emerged from the restroom with stinging eyes but a fresh sense of purpose. I'd get to Sandhorn the way any broke person would: by sticking out my thumb.

Out on the street, I asked the nicest-looking taxi driver I could find how best to hitch a ride to Minnesota. “I'd go up the street to the college,” he said, pointing the way. “Good time to find a lift, with all the students going home for the summer.”

After twenty minutes I came to the edge of the college campus, with tidy brick sidewalks and a bright green lawn beyond the open gate. There were students all over the place: walking from one hall to another, reading on park benches, and playing Frisbee. I fished a piece of cardboard out of a trash bin and wrote
NEED A RIDE TO MINNESOTA
. Then I sat down to wait. I tried to read, but the words danced, rearranging themselves on the page. Eventually I closed my book and thought of my dad and how we'd spend our first weekend together painting the walls in my new bedroom. Lavender or teal?

An hour later a shadow fell across my lap. “I'm driving home to Minneapolis,” the girl said. “Can you help pay for gas?” She was tall and tanned and wearing a T-shirt that said
MISSOURI STATE VOLLEYBALL
.

I nodded, uncrossed my legs, and, wobbling a little, got to my feet.

“Cool,” she said. “You're lucky, I was on my way out.”

Her name was Samantha, and she wasn't interested in getting chummy, which was just as well. Like I said, I'd never had a girl friend.

We stopped for gas somewhere in Iowa, and when Samantha got back in the car she said, “It was twenty bucks. Can you give me ten?”

“I've only got fifteen dollars left.”

“I hate to break it to you, but fifteen bucks isn't going to get you very far anyway. What are you going to do once you get to Minneapolis?”

“I'll just find another ride to Sandhorn.”

Samantha gave me a funny look, then she started the engine and we got back onto the highway. I took out a five-dollar bill and tucked it in the ashtray, where she kept the spare change, but she didn't say anything. I'd told her I would help pay for gas, and it would have been mean of me to go back on it, even if she could have been nicer.

An hour later I told her I had to go to the bathroom, and she seemed annoyed. “You couldn't have gone when we stopped for gas?”

“I didn't have to go then.”

We drove on in silence for a couple more miles, but when we passed a sign for Walmart she took the exit and pulled into the parking lot.

“Thanks,” I said, and ran inside.

When I came out again I found my rucksack in an empty parking space. I couldn't believe it. I just stood there awhile staring at where her car had been. What was the point of giving her gas money if she was only going to leave me in the middle of nowhere?

I took out my wallet and counted my money again. Ten bucks and a smattering of dimes and quarters. The thought of hitching another ride made me want to lock myself back in the restroom and never come out.

Wait a minute
, I thought. This wasn't my fault. What she'd done made no sense. Why offer me a ride and then turn me out?

Maybe she'd smelled it on me. None of the girls at school had ever liked me either.

I tried to take a deep breath and think of what I should do next. But I didn't want to do anything next. I didn't want to be here—I didn't want to be anywhere.

I pressed my fists to my eyes, and for a few minutes I forgot the world. I couldn't even think clearly enough to wish again that I'd gone with Sully. I didn't have any tissues so I wiped my cheeks and nose with the sleeve of my T-shirt, and all the while people were walking past me into the store. Some tried not to look at me, and others stared at me like I had three heads. I looked up at one man in a Cubs jersey. He turned as red as the logo on his shirt and hurried through the automatic doors.

Suddenly I thought of my mother, crying her heart out over the salad bowl in a kitchen I'd never see the inside of. I got up, dusted the grit off the backside of my jeans, and picked up my rucksack.

The gust of refrigerated air as I walked through the automatic doors almost dried my cheeks. A Walmart is a city unto itself, every department its own neighborhood, blue shopping carts gliding between them like cars. You could go for miles under those cold fluorescent lights, past the lawnmowers and paint chips and crib sets and lipstick displays. You could even sleep here, in theory anyway, on beds heaped with too many throw pillows.

In the cafeteria I stood at the long glass counter and surveyed my options: shrink-wrapped tuna fish on Wonder Bread; a sausage patty on an English muffin; and under a heating lamp, a red and white paper boat of macaroni and cheese dried to an orange crust on top. If I was going to spend half my remaining cash on food tonight, I wouldn't drop it here.

Candy. If I could only have a Snickers bar, I could forget all this. For a minute and a half I could pretend I was normal.

I rounded the corner of the candy section and stopped short. There was a man in his underwear teetering up the aisle. I've seen all kinds of weirdos at Walmart, and in the summer there are always men heading for the refrigerated section in their swimming trunks and flip-flops, but this guy was a whole new species.

Swimming trunks and cowboy boots would have been ridiculous enough, but he was wearing cowboy boots, a Stetson, a wifebeater, and a pair of tatty old boxer shorts you could kind of see through. There were long brown stains beneath the arms of his undershirt, like he'd drunk so much beer he'd begun to sweat it.

Maybe if he'd been old and drunk off his rocker the sight of him would've just been sad, but he was too young and too sober not to be totally creepy. He swung his basket as he walked—if
walked
was the word—and muttered to himself. “I don't gotta take this shit. I'm sick an' tired a' you blamin' me for
everything,
woman. I'm gonna show you, oh boy, am I gonna
show
you, woman.”

A recorded message came on the loudspeaker as the drunk man ranted to himself. “
Walmart Value of the Day! Family-size bottles of Tide detergent are buy one, get one free, for a limited time only!”

He should take advantage of that one
. Behind me a woman with a shopping cart turned into the aisle, and as she passed me I saw her catch sight of the drunken cowboy and freeze.
No
, I could almost hear her thinking.
It's too late to turn around.
He'd already seen her. So she moved down the aisle, cautiously, glancing up only to make sure she wasn't going to run into him with her cart.

But that was enough. “What'choo lookin' at?” he called to her. Well, she certainly wasn't going to say
A drunken moron,
so she didn't say anything. He swung his head around and stared at her with glassy eyes. “I
saaaaaaaid,
what'choo
lookin'
at, bitch?”

She froze, clenching the handlebar of her shopping cart with pale knuckles. She looked back at me, and I tried to smile sympathetically. We both glanced up and down the aisle, but no one in a blue polo shirt was coming to escort him out. It was too quiet beneath the elevator music on the loudspeaker, as if all the Walmart employees had gone on their dinner break at the same time.