“Come to my house after school tomorrow,” Howard said on the bus the next morning. “I have a plan.”
“What kind of plan?” I asked.
“A plan for catching that dog.”
“Wishbone,” I said. “His name is Wishbone.”
Howard took a bite of the toast he had brought on the bus with him. “Whatever,” he said. “We still need a better plan than a map.”
“I don’t see why we can’t—” I sat up and grabbed Howard’s knee. “Don’t move,” I said.
His eyes got wide. “What’s wrong?”
“Take off your glasses,” I said. “Real slow.”
“Why?”
“Just do it,” I snapped, a little louder than I’d meant to.
He took his glasses off and then squinted over at me.
“There’s an eyelash right there,” I said, pointing to one of the thick lenses. “I need it.”
“Why?”
“To make a wish.”
“A wish?”
“If you blow on an eyelash, you get to make a wish.” I took the glasses from him and pressed my finger on the lens. Then I held it up so Howard could see the tiny, reddish eyelash. “See?” I said.
Then I closed my eyes, made my wish, and blew, sending that eyelash out into the air where it disappeared, probably settling on the floor with clumps of dirt and chewed gum and trampled spelling tests.
“What’d you wish for?” Howard asked.
“I can’t tell you,” I said.
“Why not?”
I flopped back against the seat and rolled my eyes. “Jeez, Howard,” I said.
“What?”
I explained to him that if you tell your wish, then it won’t come true. “Everybody knows that,” I added.
Howard wiped his glasses with the end of his T-shirt and put them back on.
“I’ve made a wish every single day since fourth grade,” I said.
Howard bugged his eyes out at me. “You must want a lot of stuff.”
I shook my head. “No, just one thing,” I said. “I always wish for the same thing. Every single time.”
The minute I said that, I regretted it. I knew what he was going to say next and sure enough, he did.
“Well, if you’re making the same wish every time, it must not be coming true,” he said. “So what’s the point? Seems kind of dumb to me.”
I felt my face turning red and that familiar feeling of anger starting to churn in my stomach. “Because some day it will come true!” I hollered, making a bunch of kids turn in their seats and stare at me.
Howard looked at me over the top of his glasses and said, “Pineapple.”
I kicked his backpack hard, sending it sliding out into the aisle of the bus. I confess to feeling a flicker of regret when some kids laughed at that. But Howard, he just picked it up, brushed the dirt off of it, and said, “Pineapple, Charlie. Remember?”
I held on to my mad feelings all morning, taking every opportunity I could to shoot razor-sharp glares at Howard or to bump into him real hard over by the pencil sharpener. I never should’ve told him about my wishing. I’d never told anybody and now that I had, it did sound dumb. Why would anyone make the same wish every day if it never came true? Maybe I should give up.
But then guess what happened? I looked at the clock and it was 11:11! I closed my eyes and made my wish.
By the time I got home from school, my mad feelings about Howard were gone and I was glad he had a plan to catch Wishbone. When I told Bertha I was going to his house the next day, she was tickled pink. She kept telling me how good I was to be friends with Howard ’cause other kids were so mean to him.
“Even in church,” she said. “Can you believe that?”
I didn’t tell her I sure could believe that, with the likes of Audrey Mitchell in that so-called church family.
That afternoon, Howard dropped into the seat next to me and said, “You can borrow my brother Lenny’s bike.”
“What for?”
“So you can get home. Better than walking.” He took a smashed bag of potato chips out of his backpack and emptied the crumbs into his mouth. “I got a real good plan,” he said. “You know. For catching Wishbone.”
And wasn’t that just like Howard, to go right on wanting to help me after I’d kicked his backpack and been mean to him like I had yesterday?
So when the bus stopped at his house, I followed him and Dwight across the weed-filled yard, up the rickety steps, past the ratty couch, and into that sad-looking house. When I stepped inside, I didn’t know where to look first. A hamster cage on the coffee table. A drum set in the corner. Stacks of books and magazines lining the walls. Some kind of tree planted in a rusty bucket by the window. The floor was littered with blankets and pillows and shoes and board games and plastic bowls with popcorn kernels and pretzel crumbs in the bottom.
The walls were covered with crayon artwork on construction paper and school papers with gold star stickers and “Nice job!” written at the top. I could see that Mrs. Odom’s rutabaga trick with Howard’s brother Cotton wasn’t working too good because there were lots of drawings with colored markers along the bottom of the walls.
Howard stepped over the pillows and stuff and motioned for me to follow him into the kitchen.
“Mama,” he said, “Charlie’s here.”
Mrs. Odom turned from the sink and smiled the nicest smile. “Well, hey!” She wiped her hands on her apron and put her arm around my shoulder and gave me a little squeeze. “Howard told me you’re his Backpack Buddy at school,” she said. “And about that Wishbone dog.” Then she started going on about how Gus and Bertha were so happy to have me here in Colby with them and weren’t the Blue Ridge Mountains heaven on earth? After that she put a cake with pink and purple flowers in a cardboard box from the grocery store on the kitchen table and told us to have some. The next thing I knew, that little kitchen was filled with boys pushing and poking and grabbing at that cake. They didn’t even use plates or forks or anything. Just cut a slice and ate it right there, dropping crumbs on the floor and Mrs. Odom didn’t seem to mind one bit.
The oldest boy was Burl, the only dark-haired one. Loud-talking and friendly-faced, with a shadow of a mustache over his lip. Next was Lenny, in a grease-stained T-shirt. His freckled arms were long and skinny and he kept punching Dwight and elbowing Burl. Next came Howard and Dwight, who were only a year or two apart and could have passed for twins except Howard wore glasses and had that up-down walk. And the youngest was Cotton, dirty-faced and sticky-fingered. Legs all covered in scrapes and bruises and Band-Aids.
Mrs. Odom gave us water in paper cups and made the rounds kissing and hugging each of those boys. It didn’t take a genius to know that Bertha had been right about the Odoms and their good hearts. I don’t know why, but I felt shy and out of place in there with the noise and energy bouncing around and sheer goodness clinging to the walls of that house.
Howard and I sat on the couch on the porch and he told me about his plan to catch Wishbone. He had it all written down in a notebook and even had pictures drawn with colored pencils.
“You think it’ll work?” I asked.
“Sure.” Howard closed his notebook and hugged it to his chest. Then we sat in silence watching Lenny and Cotton filling a plastic bucket with rocks and dragging it to the side of the yard where they were building some kind of wall.
Dwight rode his bike round and round the yard, stirring up clouds of red dust while Burl hollered at him to stop ’cause he was trying to change the oil in his truck.
Then me and Howard decided to look for Wishbone some more, so we spent the rest of the afternoon tromping through the woods and wandering up and down the side of the road but finally gave up. By the time we got back to Howard’s house, Mrs. Odom was telling everybody to wash up for supper.
“Stay and have supper with us, Charlie,” she said.
Before I could say anything, Mrs. Odom added, “I’ll call Bertha and see if it’s okay with her. Mr. Odom’s driving a load of lumber over to Charlotte, so you can sit right there in his chair.”
So we sat at the table and before I knew what was happening, Howard grabbed my right hand and Dwight grabbed my left and they all bowed their heads while Burl said the blessing. He thanked the Lord for nearly everything under the sun, including the deviled eggs on the plate in front of him.
Then everybody said “Amen” and dove into that food like they hadn’t eaten in a week.
Mrs. Odom kept jumping up to get more pork chops or pour more milk, and it seemed like she couldn’t walk by one of those boys without patting their shoulders or kissing the tops of their heads.
I tried to imagine taking Howard to my house back in Raleigh. So quiet and dark. My school papers would not be taped on the wall and Mama would not kiss me on the top of my head. There wouldn’t be any cake with pink and purple flowers. If Howard stayed for supper, he and I would eat pork and beans or potato chips or a bologna sandwich in front of the TV and nobody would say the blessing.
When it was time for me to leave, I thanked Mrs. Odom, climbed on Lenny’s bike, and set off for home. As I pedaled up the road, I turned and glanced back at the Odoms’ house. I remembered that first day on the school bus when I had seen it and thought it was so sad-looking. Then I pictured all those boys in that little kitchen getting loved on by their mama and that house didn’t look one bit sad anymore.
When I got home, I told Gus and Bertha about Howard’s plan to catch Wishbone.
“We’re gonna build a great big trap,” I said, stretching my arms out to show how big. “With chicken wire from his daddy’s workshop.”
Gus’s eyebrows shot up. “A trap, huh?”
I nodded. “Well, kind of. More like one of those big dog crates. We’re gonna put it out at the edge of the woods beside the garden shed and then we’re gonna stick branches and leaves and stuff in the chicken wire so it blends in.”
I went on to explain how we were going to put something good to eat inside the crate and when Wishbone went in to eat it, we’d close the door.
“He likes meat loaf,” Bertha said. “And hot dogs. And bologna.” She tossed a couple of pieces of fish stick left over from supper onto the floor for two of the cats. “Now, I don’t want to rain on your parade, Charlie, but what if that dog isn’t friendly to people? What if he bites? What if he has some kind of dog disease?”
“He won’t bite. He likes me,” I said, ignoring that question about dog disease.
“Gus,” Bertha said, “tell Charlie about that dog you had when you were a kid.” And then she went and told me about Gus’s dog named Skeeter who used to catch rabbits and bring them home for Gus and his sisters to play with. “And one time he climbed in the back of a produce truck and ended up all the way down in Hendersonville and showed up on the front porch the next day full of porcupine quills. Right, Gus?”
Gus nodded. “Right.”
“And then one time he dug up a hornet’s nest,” Bertha said. “That dog must’ve had nine lives, like a cat.”
“Must have,” Gus said.
“Tell her about how he waited for you outside school every day.” Bertha scooped one of the cats onto her lap. “Oh, and tell her about how he used to steal chicken livers right out of the frying pan.”
“We’re gonna bore this poor child to death, Bertie,” he said, winking at me. “Right, Butterbean?”
Gus had started calling me Butterbean sometimes. That made me feel like a baby, but I didn’t say anything.
Then Bertha told us about some woman in the grocery store who fainted in the cereal aisle but I wasn’t really listening because I was thinking about Wishbone. I pictured him waiting at school for me every day. Then he’d run along beside the school bus like he’d done that day I saw him fighting. Maybe the bus driver would let him on the bus because he was so smart and would do tricks for all the kids.
He’d sleep in my bed every night and I’d sing “Good Old Noah” to him. He’d let me put Jackie’s Raleigh High School T-shirt on him and maybe even paint his toenails red. I’d teach him to go up to the end of the driveway on Sunday mornings and get the newspaper before church. He’d chase rabbits out of the garden and sit out on the porch with us every night. I still had a little niggle about Mama having a hissy fit when I brought him back to Raleigh with me, but I pushed that aside.
By the time Bertha went inside to get a box of graham crackers for us, I was so in love with Wishbone I couldn’t hardly stand it. I sure hoped Howard’s plan worked.
“Let’s go set up the sprinkler in the garden,” Gus said to me, tugging on his dirty baseball cap.
I followed him outside, with three cats sauntering along behind us. I helped him untangle the hose and drag it out to the garden. While he attached the sprinkler to it, I walked up and down the tidy rows of pole beans and squash and tomato plants growing bigger every day. The soft dirt was warm under my bare feet. Suddenly, a ladybug landed on my arm! I put my finger next to it and let it climb on. Then I held my finger up and whispered, “Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home.” As I watched that little ladybug fly off into the sky, I made my wish.
Jackie called again that night. She told me she had put those blue streaks in her hair and now everybody at school was copying her.
“I swear, Charlie,” she said. “Everybody in Raleigh’s got blue streaks in their hair.”
Then she told me she met some boy who played guitar in a band and had his nose pierced. His name was Cockroach, and her sorta-kinda boyfriend, Arlo, didn’t like him.
“Cockroach?” I said, because what else can you say to that?
But she just kept on talking. She couldn’t wait to graduate and kiss that school goodbye. She and some girl named Shayla might move to Fort Lauderdale if Shayla’s uncle could get them jobs in his Mexican restaurant. But if that didn’t happen, she might go to school to be a dental assistant.
She sure had a lot of plans but it seemed like none of them included me.
“Are you gonna come visit me sometime?” I asked in a tiny voice that sounded like a baby.
“Of course I am, Charlie,” she said. “As soon as I get time.”
I guess she had lots of time for Cockroach but not much time for me.
Out on the porch that night, Bertha told Gus about her day while I sent my thoughts zipping through the trees to wherever Wishbone was. I wanted him to know he didn’t have to be a stray like me. I wanted him to be mine.
Then my mind wandered to the Odoms. I wondered what they were doing right that very minute. I bet they were all piled on pillows on the floor eating popcorn and playing Crazy Eights. I bet Mrs. Odom was taping their school papers up on the wall and telling them how proud she was of them. Then she’d have to say “rutabaga” so Cotton would stop drawing on the wall with markers.
Gus interrupted my thoughts when he stood up and stretched and said, “Time to turn in.”
I hated the thought of another day at school. That awful bus with gum on the seats and kids snickering when I walked by. Mrs. Willibey frowning at me and tossing my marked-up papers onto my desk with a sigh. The cafeteria with kids flinging peas at each other and ignoring me. There were only a few more weeks of school left but it felt like a hundred years to me.
There was no doubt about it. I needed Wishbone more than ever.
The next day at school, it seemed like the clock had stopped and the day was stuck in a never-ending torture of math and social studies and gym. Even lunch and recess were in slow motion. Finally the dismissal bell rang and I hightailed it to the bus. I plopped down in my usual spot and waited for Howard. He must’ve been taking his own sweet time because the seats were starting to fill up. The next thing I knew, Audrey Mitchell was making her way up the aisle, cutting her eyes from side to side searching for a seat. I couldn’t believe it when she sat next to me, propping her backpack between us so she wouldn’t catch any of my cooties.
“You can’t sit here,” I said.
She made an ugly face at me and said, “Yes, I can.”
“No, you can’t!” I sort of hollered.
She flinched a little and gaped at me. “You can’t save seats,” she said. “That’s the rule.”
Pineapple.
Pineapple.
Pineapple.
But Howard’s dumb trick didn’t work because the next thing I knew, I had shoved her right off the seat and into the aisle. The minute I did it, I regretted it. Everybody liked Audrey. I ought to be bringing her candy bars and telling her how nice her hair looked instead of shoving her onto the dirty bus floor. Luckily, Audrey didn’t have a temper like me and Scrappy. All she did was yelp a little bit, dust herself off, call me crazy, and move to another seat.
By the time Howard finally got there, my temper had settled down from a boil to a simmer.
He dropped into the seat next to me. “What you fired up about now?” he asked.
I looked out the window so he couldn’t see my still-red face.
“I’m not fired up,” I said.
He pushed his glasses up on his nose and went, “Huh.” Then he dug around in his backpack and pulled out half a cheese sandwich. He took the cheese out, rolled it into a ball and popped it into his mouth. Then he did the same with the bread, rolling it into doughy balls.
As the bus made its way through the streets of Colby, I thought about that trap we were gonna make to catch Wishbone, and my simmering anger disappeared. In its place was a swirl of excitement.
When we got to Howard’s, Mrs. Odom was on the porch with Cotton, smiling and waving to the bus driver. Howard, Dwight, and me sat on the porch steps while she asked about our day. Did Mrs. Willibey finally get that window fan fixed? Was Dwight’s math test hard? Did the PTA sell cupcakes in the cafeteria again?
Then Howard whipped some papers out of his backpack and thrust them at her, grinning. “Ta-da!” he said.
She made such a fuss over those papers you’d’ve thought they were made of pure gold. I could practically feel my marked-up papers jammed into the bottom of my backpack, weighing heavy on my lap. I wished I had a good one so I could say “ta-da” too.
Howard didn’t really need to be my Backpack Buddy anymore since I knew my way around school and I definitely knew the rules. Instead, he kept offering to help me with some of my schoolwork. I always said no, ’cause what was the use? I wasn’t even going to be at that school much longer, I reminded him. His face would droop and he’d say, “You never know. You might be.”
I ignored that and stuffed my sorry-looking papers into my backpack like I didn’t even care one bit. But sitting on that porch with Mrs. Odom, I sort of wished I had let him help me some.
After we had banana pudding for a snack, me and Howard went straight back to the ramshackle garage behind his house. I swear, that garage looked like it was going to fall right over, tilting sideways with the door hanging off one hinge. We stepped inside and Howard’s daddy looked up from his workbench in the corner. When he stood up, I thought his head was going to go right through the ceiling, he was so tall. He had great big freckled hands and fiery red hair and twinkly blue eyes. He smelled like grass and sawdust and gasoline all mixed together.
“Hey, there,” he said, and his big booming voice bounced around that little garage, practically shaking the saws and shovels right off the walls.
I’d seen him at church, mopping his sweaty face with a handkerchief while he belted out “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” but I’d never talked to him. While most folks were drinking coffee and chitchatting in the fellowship hall, Mr. Odom and some of the other men were outside inspecting each other’s truck engines or watching teenagers play basketball in the parking lot.
“Well, look at you,” he said to me. “You know, you are the spitting image of your mama.”
My mama?
I hadn’t expected that.
“I am?” I asked.
“You sure are. Look just like her.”
“You mean Bertha?” I said.
“Naw, Carla,” he said. “Your mama.”
“You know her?”
“Don’t really know her,” he said. “Only seen her a time or two.”
“In Raleigh, you mean?”
“Naw, up yonder at Gus and Bertha’s.” He brushed sawdust off the front of his shirt. “Seems like just yesterday, but I reckon it wasn’t,” he said.
“Oh,” was all I could think of to say, but my mind was racing. When had Mama been at Gus and Bertha’s? How come nobody’d ever told me that?
“Old Howie here has been talking about you nonstop,” he said, winking at Howard.
I felt my cheeks burn.
Then Mr. Odom said, “So, y’all gonna catch that mangy old hound, are you?”
“Yessir.”
“That mutt’s a rascal. I can tell you that. Been chased away from every chicken coop and garbage can in Colby.”
“His name is Wishbone,” Howard said.
Mr. Odom chuckled. “Well, that’s a fine name.”
“He likes me,” I said.
“Charlie’s gonna keep him,” Howard said. “But we have to catch him first.”
So Mr. Odom showed us how to staple chicken wire to wood and how to screw on hinges for a door, and before long, we had a trap perfect for catching a dog. When Burl got home from his job pumping gas, he helped us load the trap into the back of his truck and drove us to Gus and Bertha’s. My thoughts kept flitting around all over the place, sometimes thinking about Wishbone and sometimes thinking about Mama being up there at Gus and Bertha’s. But Burl played the radio so loud none of my flitting thoughts had a chance to settle down in one place.
When we got to Gus and Bertha’s, we set the trap up over by the bushes at the edge of the yard. While me and Howard gathered leaves and branches to stick through the chicken wire, Bertha kept Burl busy with all her questions.
Did he think his mama would like some pickled okra from the garden when it was ready?
Was Lenny still in the marching band?
Had his grandmama had that hip surgery yet?
Burl said, “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am,” “Yes, ma’am.”
Finally me and Howard finished and, I swear, you couldn’t hardly even see that trap nestled there in the bushes. I ran inside the house and got the pie tin of table scraps I’d been saving. A piece of bacon. A biscuit. Some tuna noodle casserole. I pushed the pie tin way back up into the corner of the trap and said, “Okay, now all we have to do is wait.”