Chapter 11
THE CAR ONLY WENT thirty giant steps before it commenced to bucking and finally cut right off. The vampire guy finally caught up with me. He was looking very surprised, he just tapped on the window with his knuckle. He said, "Roll the window down for a minute, Bud."
Sometimes it's terrible to have been brought up proper. I couldn't help myself, I rolled the window down just enough so that our words could get in and out but his hand or claws couldn't.
He said, "OK, what's this?"
I said, "Don't you think I can read? How come you're carrying real human blood around in your car?" I showed him my jackknife. "I'ma warn you, I know how to kill vampires. This knife is genuine solid twenty-four-karat silver."
He put both of his hands over his face and shook his head back and forth a couple of times. He said, "Sweet baby Jesus, why me?"
Then he said, "Bud, if you were from Flint I might think you believe that, but you're a Grand Rapids boy, you've got to be smarter than that. If I was a vampire why have I got that sandwich and bottle of red pop?"
I thought for a second, then the answer jumped out. "Bait!"
He put his hands back over his face. This time when he pulled them away he was laughing. He said, "Bud, if I was a vampire I wouldn't have to catch little boys, I'd just stick my fangs into one of those bottles and have my supper. Besides, where've you ever heard of a vampire that knew how to drive a car?"
That made sense, in all the moving picture shows I'd seen and all the books I'd read about vampires I never could think of seeing one that could drive a car. But I wasn't going to take any chances.
"Could I please see your teeth, sir?"
"What?"
"Your teeth, sir."
The man mumbled something, shook his head again, then leaned close to the window glass and opened his mouth.
Even though he didn't have fangs his teeth still looked kinda scary. They looked like they could bite a pretty good grapefruit-sized chunk out of you.
Then he said, "Bud, I've got to get this blood to Hurley Hospital in Flint, they need it right away for someone's operation. I can look at you and tell you're far too smart to believe in any nonsense like vampires, son. Be a good boy and open the door."
I pulled the lock up for him and scooted over to the passenger's side of the car. I unlocked my door just in case he had any tricks up his sleeve.
He got in the car and said, "You'll never know how grateful I am to you, Bud. I'll take that horrible image of you putting the car in gear to drive away while I stood by the side of the road in Owosso, Michigan, at two-thirty in the morning to my grave with me. Thank God you don't know how to drive."
"No, sir, but if you'da showed me some fangs I'da learned real quick."
Just in case, I watched the way he put the car in gear so's the next time something like this happened I'd know how to make a clean getaway. Me and the man headed back toward Flint, driving over the same road it took me so long to walk. Going like this I wasn't never going to get away from this doggone city.
We hadn't been driving for a minute before he started asking a whole slew of questions. Questions that I had to be very careful about giving the right answers to.
He said, "Don't you feel bad about worrying your mother like this, Bud-not-Buddy?"
"My mother is dead, sir." Most times if you tell a adult that they'll leave you alone, but not this man.
"What? I'm sorry to hear that, Bud. So you stay with your daddy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Right in Grand Rapids?"
"Yes, sir."
"What's his name, does he work for the railroad?"
"No, sir." The seed started sticking its head out further and further. "His name is Herman E. Calloway and he plays the biggest doggone fiddle you'll ever see."
The man shouted, "What?"
I said, "Really, sir, I swear 'fore God it's the biggest fiddle in the world."
He said, "I know your father, everybody in Grand Rapids does."
I didn't say anything.
He said, "Well, I'll be. You know, at first glimpse I wouldn't say you look that much like Herman, but now that I look at you I suppose you do. Of course he's quite a bit bigger, if you know what I mean."
This was the best news I'd had all day, my face nearly split in half from my giant smile. "Yes, sir, folks say I'm the spitting image of my old man."
He really started shooting the questions at me so to stop him I said, "Sir, could I please have the sandwich and the rest of the red pop before I answer any more questions?"
He slapped his forehead and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Bud, I was so surprised about who you are and so happy that you didn't drive off that I forgot all about our deal."
He handed me the sandwich and the pop and the apple. I was so hungry that I forgot all about scraping the mustard off the baloney sandwich and even like that it was the best sandwich I'd ever had in my life.
"Bud," he said, "my name's Mr. Lewis. Now if you were about fifteen, twenty years older you could call me Lefty. But you're not, so you can't. Mr. Lewis will do just fine."
I shoved the part of the sandwich that I was chewing into the side of my mouth so I could say, "Yes, sir, Mr. Lewis, sir."
He said, "I'm not ashamed to admit it, you gave me a scare here tonight that I'll never forget. I just know I'll be having nightmares about meeting you for the rest of my life. I'll wake up in a cold sweat many a night with the picture of you and my car pulling away with that blood on the seat.
"I can see it all now, I'll be sound asleep, deep in the middle of a Ruth Dandridge dream, when all of a sudden I'll be standing on the side of the road in Owosso, Michigan, at two-thirty in the morning and I'll be seeing my car and that blood pulling away with nothing of you showing but that little peanut-head of yours peeking up over the dash."
He looked at me out of the side of his eye.
"Anyone ever tell you you've got a little peanut-head?" I glugged down the pop I'd been swishing around in my mouth and said, "No, sir."
"Well," he said, "this may be the first time but unless you undergo some major surgery I'll bet it won't be the last."
"Yes, sir."
He waited a second, then sounded kind of disappointed when he said, "Don't take it so seriously, Bud, I am teasing, you know."
I started in on the apple. "Yes, sir."
"Ever been in the army, Bud?"
"No, sir."
"Well, I've got to tell you, I haven't heard so many 'sirs' since I was back at Fort Gordon in Georgia training for the Big War."
I almost said, "Yes, sir," but I looked at him and guessed he was still teasing.
I took another drink of the red pop and saw that when I was raising the bottle I'd accidentally let some of the sandwich slip out of my mouth down into the pop. There were a couple of chunks of chewed-up bread, a blob of baloney and some of the mustard swimming around in the bottle. The mustard was real pretty, it looked like some kind of magical fog, every time I moved the bottle the mustardy smoke went into a different kind of shape.
Lefty Lewis said, "How about sharing that pop, Bud?"
Uh-oh. He took one look and handed it back.
He said, "Nothing personal, Bud, I've raised three kids and have two grandkids, I've learned the hard way about drinking after young folks. But I do believe you need to get in and see a doctor soon, son, it looks to me like you've got a serious backwash problem, that's the most food I've ever seen floating around in a bottle of pop. In fact, that doesn't look like red pop anymore, it looks more like red stew."
I real quick chugged the rest of the pop down and ate the apple real slow because I figured as soon as I was done with it the questions would start up again.
Lefty Lewis said, "Aren't you sleepy?"
This was perfect! I could pretend I was falling asleep and then come up with some answers that would get me to Grand Rapids for sure. I yawned real big. "A little bit, sir."
"All right, here, give me that core, I think the only thing that's left is a seed or two anyway."
I handed him the apple core and he put it and the wax paper from the sandwich in the paper bag.
"You just stretch out there and have some sleep. In about an hour you'll be in a nice comfortable bed. We can have our talk in the morning."
He reached in the backseat and said, "Here," and handed me a jacket. "You can use this for a blanket."
The jacket smelled real good, like spice and soap.
Lefty Lewis said, "Oh, Bud-not-Buddy, one more thing before you doze off. Could you reach over into that box and hand me one of those bottles of blood? I haven't had a bite to eat all day."
I kept my eyes closed and smiled. I knew I was going to be safe, because I'd never heard of a vampire that could drive a car and I'd never seen one that had such a good sense of humor. Besides, I kept my jackknife open under my leg and he looked like he'd believed me when I told him it was made out of real silver, even though it probably wasn't.
As soon as I had the jacket over me the smell of the spice and soap and the sound of the crickets and toady-frogs outside made my eyes get real heavy.
WOW! I must have been real, real tired. Walking and ducking in and out of the bushes between Flint and Owosso was a lot more work than I thought it was.
Most of the time since Momma died, if someone even walks close to where I'm sleeping I'm up in a flash, my eyes fly open and I'm looking right at them. At one of the foster houses where I'd stayed a woman told me she knew I was going to be a criminal because "anyone who sleeps that light has got to have a guilty conscience." Most of the time the sound of someone else going from sleep breathing to awake breathing in the same room as me is enough to get me up.
But this morning I felt like I was at the bottom of a well that someone had filled with tons of thick chocolate pudding. Someone was calling my name from way up at the top of the well. She was saying, "Bud. Bud. Bud."
Waves from the pudding were slogging me back and forth, back and forth.
"Bud. Wake up, Bud." It was a woman's voice and her hands were trying to shake me awake. Uh-oh. This is Number 29 of my rules:
RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 29
When You Wake Up and Don't Know for Sure Where You're At and There's a Bunch of People Standing Around You, It's Best to Pretend You're Still Asleep Until You Can Figure Out What's Going On and What You Should Do.
I kept my eyes closed, acting like I was out cold.
The woman said, "Poppa, what on earth are all these lumps and bites on this baby's face?"
A man answered, "Well, he was walking all the way from Grand Rapids to Flint, it looks like he provided a pretty paltry meal for every mosquito on the way."
The woman said, "This poor child must be dead, I hate getting him up. I wish he could stay with us for a while, at least until he's had his sleep."
Then I remembered who I was with because Lefty Lewis said, "I know, but I've got to get back. He can sleep in the car on the way back to Grand Rapids."
The woman rolled back the blanket they'd put over me and said, "Poppa, look at his legs, this boy's as skinny as a rail."
Shucks, they'd taken off my knickers when they put me in this bed. Now I was going to have to pretend I was asleep even longer, at least until I could figure a way out of being so embarrassed.
Lefty Lewis said, "Yeah, he's puny. Good thing his legs don't touch when he walks 'cause if those two twigs got to rubbing against one another he'd have a fire going in no time."
The woman said, "That's not funny. He doesn't look like he's been fed right. Now who's his father again, you said you know him?"
"Everyone in Grand Rapids does, I'm surprised you can't remember him. He's quite a big fish there."
See! I told you it was smart to pretend you were asleep some of the time. Now I was going to learn some things about my father.
The woman said, "What kind of man is he that he let this child be so thin? And look at the condition of the boy's clothes. Everything is either too small for him or almost in tatters. Where is this child's mother? There's not much of a woman's touch about him."
Lefty Lewis said, "It seems to me that the Mrs. Calloway I knew passed a long time ago. The boy says he's ten and I'm sure she died quite a while before that. But you know how musicians are, there must be at least a few Mrs. Calloways I don't know anything about."
That meant that my dad was married to someone before he married my mom.
Lefty Lewis's daughter said, "Well, I think it's a sin. I'm of half a mind to keep this boy for a while to put some fear in his daddy's heart. But he probably wouldn't even miss him."
Lefty Lewis said, "Now you stop being so judgmental, Herman's got a reputation for being no-nonsense, not mean."
"Does this child have any brothers or sisters?"
"I believe he's got a sister, but she'd have to be his half-sister, she must be full-grown by now."
The woman pulled the blanket back over my legs and shook me again. I was glad I could stop pretending I was asleep, I was sick and tired of hearing about how skinny I am and what a mixed-up family I come from. She said real soft, "Bud, wake up. Come on, sweetie, I've got a nice breakfast waiting for you."
Food! I started blinking and acting like those were the first words I'd heard that morning. I said, "Huh?" like I was kind of confused.
The woman smiled real big and said, "Oh-ho, I see that got your attention, didn't it? Good morning, young man."
"Good morning, ma'am. Good morning, Mr. Lewis."
He said, "Hey, you remembered my name, I'm impressed. Good morning, Walking Willie. We've got to hit the road in a bit, better hurry up and get some food in your belly."
He acted like he was whispering just to me when he said, "The food in this joint ain't the best, but I guarantee after you eat here you won't be hungry for days, this meal's going to be sitting on your stomach like a rock for a good long time."
The woman said, "Ignore him, Bud. My father doesn't mean anything, he just can't stop teasing."
I said, "I know, ma'am, he told me I've got a head shaped like a peanut."
The woman slapped her father on the arm. "Poppa! I can't believe you've teased this child already. What is on your mind?"
Lefty Lewis rubbed his hand over my head and said, "Look at this noggin, I rest my case. Boy looks like one of George Washington Carver's experiments sprouted legs and run off. You sure you're not from Tuskegee, Alabama, Bud?"
I said, "No, sir."
The woman sucked in her lower lip and swallowed a smile before she said, "See, Bud, he can't help himself. But he really doesn't mean anything, do you, Poppa?"
The way she asked that you'd have to be pretty stupid not to know how to answer her. Lefty Lewis said, "Not a thing. It's just that you—"
His daughter spoke up. "My name is Mrs. Sleet, Bud."
"Pleased to meet you, ma'am."
"Now, while you wash up I'm going to go get some clothes that my boy outgrew a while ago, barely been used. So when you get dressed you come on down and we'll eat, you chose a great day to visit, we're having a very special breakfast today—pancakes, sausages and toast and a big glass of orange juice. You can meet Scott and Kim, too. How's that sound?"
"That sounds real good, ma'am. Thank you very much."
"Don't mention it, it's a pleasure to have such a well-mannered young visitor."
Mrs. Sleet and Lefty Lewis left the room. As soon as they were a little bit down the hall I could hear her start in on scolding her father again.
"I just can't believe it. You know, Momma was right about you . . . ."
All I could hear next was him mumbling some answer, then her slapping his arm again.
After I got out of the bathroom, I saw that Mrs. Sleet had put some clean clothes on the bed. My old clothes were gone, all except for my drawers which I hadn't taken off. She'd even put clean drawers out for me so when I put them on I stuck my old ones down in the pocket of my new pants. I could ditch them when I got to Grand Rapids. It's too embarrassing to have strangers look at your dirty drawers, even if the stranger is as nice as Mrs. Sleet.
The new clothes were just a little bit too big, but they were long pants and not knickers so I didn't care, I rolled cuffs into the pants and sleeves and they fit pretty doggone good.
Man, my first pair of trousers!
I let my nose lead me down to where the smell of pancakes and toast was coming from. The Sleets had a room for eating and it had a great big table right in the middle of it. The first thing I noticed was a huge pile of pancakes sitting on a blue and white plate on top of the table.
Lefty Lewis was sitting with Mrs. Sleet's kids. The little girl had a big smile and the boy was looking at me kind of hard. It wasn't one of those put-up-your-dukes looks, it was just a look like one dog gives another dog that might be passing through his neighborhood.
Lefty Lewis said, "Bud, these two worrisome midgets are my favorite grandkids. Kim is my favorite granddaughter and Scott is my favorite grandson. Of course they're my only grandkids, so in fairness you'd have to say they're also my least favorite grandkids."
These two kids had had a lot of practice being around their teasing old granddad because they didn't pay him no mind at all.
I said, "Hi, my name is Bud, not Buddy."
The little girl said, "That's a strange name, Bud-not-Buddy," and even though she was kind of young and scrawny to be teasing folks I could tell that that' was exactly what she was doing.
Lefty Lewis laughed and said, "That's my girl," then he went into the kitchen.
Scott looked up to make sure the grown folks weren't around and said, "You really run away from home?"
I had to stop and think, it's one thing to lie to a grown-up, most times adults want to hear something that lets them take their attention off you and put it on something else. That makes it easy and not too bad to lie to them. You're really just giving them what they want.
It's different when you lie to another kid. Most times kids really do want to know what they're asking you.
I guess I'd been thinking too long 'cause he said, "You run all the way from Grand Rapids to Owosso? Was it 'cause your daddy use to beat you?"
I could answer that with the swear-'fore-God truth. "Shucks, my daddy never laid a hand on me in his life."
"Then how come you run?"
"I didn't like where I was." That wasn't a lie.
"Well, if you're lying about your daddy beating you, you better scram right after breakfast 'cause my gramps is taking you straight back home."
"My daddy never laid a hand on me."
The little girl said, "Scott, you talk too much, let him sit down." Then she told me, "Momma's gonna be bringing the sausages in in a minute, you like sausages?"
"Uh-huh." I'd never had sausages before but if that was what was making the house smell so good I was going to love it.
Kim said, "Good, 'cause my grampa brought them all the way from Grand Rapids. He always brings us good food and we're going to share it with you 'cause Momma says you're our special guest and we have to treat you nice. Am I being nice?"
"So far."
"Good. I'll make a deal with you."
Uh-oh. "What kind of a deal?"
"I'll sing a song that I made up all by myself and when I'm done I get to ask you one question and you have to answer and cross your heart you'll tell the truth."
This didn't sound too bad.
"OK."
"Here goes, it took me a very long time to make this song up, so I hope you like it."
The boy said, "Oh, brother."
Kim sang,
"Mommy says no
Mommy says no,
I listen, you don't,
Wha-ha-ha-ha.
The building falls down,
The building falls down,
You get crushed, I don't
Wha-ha-ha-ha."
Boy. That was about the worst song I'd ever heard. Kim stood up and bowed like a princess.
I clapped my hands together kind of soft under the table.
She said, "Thank you very much."
Scott just shook his head.
Kim said, "OK, that's my part of the deal, now you've got to keep your part and answer any question I ask."
"Now you can tell me all about how your mother died."
Scott's foot kicked at her under the table.
I said, "Who told you my momma died?"
The little girl said, "Oops," and stuffed something from her hand into her mouth.
"My momma got sick. She died real fast. She didn't feel no pain or no suffering."
Kim said, "I hope my mother never dies."
Scott said, "Stupid, everybody's got to die."
Kim said, "Ooh, I'm telling Momma you called me stupid."
He said, "You do and I'll tell her that you've got one of those pancakes in the pocket of your dress."
She shut right up.
I told her, "He's right, everybody's got to die. It's not sad unless they do it real slow and suffer. My momma died so quick and painless that she didn't even have time to close her eyes, she didn't even have time to make a face like she was hurting."
Both of Lefty Lewis's grandkids looked real surprised at this news.
Mrs. Sleet came into the room with another blue plate, covered with little round pieces of meat. Those had to be the sausages.
She saw the way her kids were looking at me with their mouths half opened and said, "Now you two aren't talking Bud's ear off, are you?"
Scott said, "No, Momma, I'm not, but Kim's coming real close to."
Kim said, "I was not, I was just making pleasant conversation."
Mrs. Sleet laughed and set the plate on the table right in front of me.
Lefty Lewis came out with a big glass jug filled with orange juice and sat down next to me.
Mrs. Sleet sat down and said, "Scott and Kim, would you say the grace, please?"
Everyone ducked their heads down and the two kids said,
"God is great,
God is good,
Let us thank him
For our food.
Amen."
Then people started passing the big blue plates around and stabbing toast and pancakes and sausages with their forks. I watched to see how much everyone took and tried to take the same. Then I started to watch how much food the two kids put on their fork every time so I wouldn't look like a pig.
Lefty Lewis noticed I was taking a long time and told his daughter, "See what I told you, Nina, poor Bud-not-Buddy is so skinny and his stomach has shrunk down so much that just smelling the food has got the boy full. Oh, well, I guess that just means more food for the rest of us." Everyone except for me and Mrs. Sleet yelled a big cheer.
Eating with the Sleets and Lefty Lewis was really hard to do, not because they had bad table manners or nothing, but because they talked through the whole breakfast. And they kept trying to get me to talk too.
At the Home after grace was said we weren't allowed to say boo. Eating and being quiet is a hard habit to break. Every time one of these Sleets would talk to me and look at me like they expected a answer I'd look around first to make sure no one was watching. At the Home if you got caught talking during mealtime you'd have to get up and leave your food. If these Sleets had to live under those rules they'd all starve to death.
They talked after every swallow, they talked after every drink they took, they talked whilst they were wiping off their lips. Shucks, the little girl, Kim, talked with milk running down her throat, some of the time her words got gluggled up in what she was swallowing. And they laughed. Man, did they laugh.
It was hard to tell whose story they were laughing at, they were doing so much chattering.
Lefty Lewis was talking about radio shows and Scott was talking about going to a baseball game to watch Lefty Lewis pitch and Kim was talking about a little girl she didn't like and Mrs. Sleet was talking about some people called redcaps.
Kim said to her mother, "Mommy, can't you tell that Bud-not-Buddy doesn't know what a redcap is, you gotta explain better."
Mrs. Sleet said, "Oh, sorry, Bud, redcaps are the men who work at the railroad station loading the trains and taking people's bags to their cars. That's what Mr. Lewis does. My husband is a Pullman porter, he takes care of the people once they're on the trains."
Kim said, "Yeah, our dad gets to travel all over the country on trains for free!"
Scott said, "That's 'cause he's working, it's not for free, he gets paid to do it."
Lefty Lewis swallowed a big hunk of sausage and said, "And you know what, Bud? I bet the thing he misses most is Nina's cooking. I can't tell you how proud I am of how far my daughter's cooking has come. This might be hard to believe, but she used to be such a bad cook that her fried chicken was known to have turned a chicken hawk into a vegetarian."
Scott and Kim and Mrs. Sleet started busting a gut.
"Yup," Lefty Lewis said, "I brought a friend to Flint a couple of years ago and even though I'd warned him he tried to be polite and ate four of her pancakes. Pour soul held his stomach all the way back to Grand Rapids. Said to me, 'Lefty, I don't mean to show any disrespect, but those weren't pancakes your daughter served me, they were paincakes.'"
Mrs. Sleet laughed along with everyone else and said, "Well, I'm sure I don't need to hear any more of this," and picked up the empty sausage plate and went into the kitchen.
As soon as she got out of the room Kim whispered, "Quick, Grampa, tell Bud-not-Buddy how many times you had to pull the car over when you two were going back to Grand Rapids so that man could get out and vomick on the side of the road."
Before Lefty Lewis could answer, Mrs. Sleet came out of the kitchen with a big wooden spoon and whopped her father a good lick in the head.