Lunch-Box Dream (9 page)

“Not the bus,” he said when they woke Friday morning in the motel room in Atlanta. “Not the bus, please.”

“It's the cheapest way,” said his mother coldly. “We can't afford to rent a car. The trains are on strike. I want this damn trip over. I'm sorry. I have to get home. I need to be home.”

“Not the bus,” said Bobby. “
She
can take one, but not us.”

“Grandma
is
taking one, and so are we,” she said, and slipped into the bathroom to dress. “Get your clothes on and pack.”

This was wrong. This was bad. They were five hundred miles from their airplane, and the trains were on strike. They really ought to have the car to get back home, but now the car was wrecked. With three of them in there, there would have been plenty of room, and they could have driven straight through the night and been home by tomorrow night. In the car, if his brother was up front with the TripTik, he could have the whole backseat to lie down on. Not now. It was all wrong.

They'd stayed in a cheap motel near the railroad tracks, which was the only one they found after the Triple-A truck towed the wrecked car away. The motel had no pool. The car park was filled with junky cars. They'd had to use a taxi for everything since yesterday. Their mother was barely talking now, full of sharp looks, as Grandma walked onto the platform to take a bus south to St. Petersburg.

“I'm sorry,” said their mother. “This has been a bust. I'm sorry about the car. About everything.”

Grandma nodded. “Come visit me?”

“Of course,” their mother said, looking away.

“Yes. You, too?” she said to the boys.

“Of course,” repeated their mother, although Grandma was looking alternately at Bobby then Ricky then Bobby again.

Ricky said, “Sure,” and hugged her.

“Sure,” Bobby said, trying to smile, but Grandma looked down at him with her face pouching, not moving to hug him until a bus horn shattered the quiet. “My poor Bobchicka,” she said finally, pressing her hand heavily on his shoulder. He watched her eyes, but they were deeper and farther away than before.

He felt his chest go empty when she walked up the steps into the silver bus and the driver pulled the door closed. That was it. A few minutes later, the bus left the terminal, coughing and squealing away into the white air.

“She'll be home by tonight,” their mother said, pulling her eyes away from the blurry street. “I have to deal with insurance now, then we'll be out of this terrible place by lunchtime.”

Poor Bobchicka.
His grandmother couldn't bring herself to hug him.

She was letting him go.

Two hours later they were back at the bus terminal, heaving their suitcases out of a hot taxicab onto the hotter sidewalk. Bobby was headed toward the door behind his mother when she dropped her luggage on the sidewalk and swung around. “Give it to me,” she said.

“What?”

“You know what. That damn stick!”

“I…” he started, moving his hand toward his pants pocket, but not putting it in. “I lost it.”

Faster than he imagined she could, she drove her hand into the same front pocket. Finding it empty, she searched the others, front and back, roughly.

“I lost it,” he repeated.

“Don't
ever
let me see one of those things again. You hear me?
Ever
. And if you
ever
steal anything again, so help me, I will make you regret it for the rest of your life.” She looked as if she would hit him, she looked as cold as his father had, but also hurt. Staring at him with dark eyes, then taking her eyes off him as if something between them had broken, she turned on her heels, grabbed her bags, and walked up the sidewalk to the station.

Ricky had watched every moment of this from a few feet off, his eyes narrowing to little slits behind his glasses. He didn't move.

“What?” said Bobby.

“It's so easy, isn't it?” said Ricky.

“What's easy?”

“To be lucky,” said Ricky. “It's so easy to be lucky.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You've always been lucky. You could have just said nothing. About the bullet. You could have just said nothing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bobby.

“So stupid easy,” he said, and right there he dropped the souvenir slug he had found in the dirt at Lookout Mountain. It rolled to the edge of the sidewalk and off into the gutter. Without looking, he walked toward the station, his book-laden suitcase knocking his knee with every step.

Was that it? Was Bobby lucky? Was that all it was? Could he so easily have been in his brother's shoes? Was there only a thread of a difference between them, after all? Brothers. Nearly the same age. Interchangeable? Could Ricky's bad eyes have been
his
bad eyes? Was that why Ricky was taken to Indians games? Because of what might happen? And yet Bobby had been vicious to him, saying things that couldn't be taken back. So now, one by one, his grandmother, his mother, and now Ricky had stepped away from him.

“Get in. Get in here!” his mother said, kicking open the door to the station, pushing herself through, then letting it fall closed on Ricky as Bobby watched from the gutter.

So that was it, after all. That he didn't know, that he was mixed up, that he made nothing but mistakes, that he could steal and be mean and be angry, that he could look around at everything and know things were broken and wrong and unfair and not know what to do or say to fix them, except to grunt and run like an animal.

That was it, that was all he could do, that was who he was.

Bobby dragged his red suitcase across the sidewalk after his brother, through the door, and across the floor of the big foul-smelling room, trembling, sick to his stomach, his legs tingling from his ankles to his bottom as if someone were spying at him from a high hidden place.

The terminal smelled of coffee and sweat and exhaust and it echoed with the sound of voices from every direction. The long room was half waiting room, half lunchroom, with a low wall separating the benches and booths and a bank of windows overlooking the bus platform, which was no more than a raised sidewalk under a low roof.

Several buses were outside, parked at an angle to the building. On the flank of each was the famous image of the lean racing dog, promising fast bus travel. The buildings beyond the roof were white in the sun. The street shimmered with heat.

The two boys sat silently at a booth while their mother bought tickets at a counter window under a clock that read five after eleven. When she returned with papers in her hand, she said she had purchased the last tickets and they were allowed to load their things onto the bus before they ate, though it wouldn't leave for almost an hour. Without a word about it, Ricky and his mother found a seat together on the bus. Bobby put his suitcase on the bench in front of them, but after they descended the steps, he decided to move it to the one behind.

Bobby hated the big hot dirty city and wanted only to be home, though thinking now of their small house and his smaller room, with his brother and mother everywhere, and maybe his father home from Washington, he wasn't sure it would be better than here or anywhere else.

He settled his hands on the lunch table. The sandwich his mother put before him was dry. When had it been made? By whom? By black hands? The black hands at the car window. His own hand on the crank, keeping his window sealed. The car's insane twisting away from the shack. And now the sudden smell of cigarettes and dirty underwear as a couple of men slumped into the booth next to them. The more he thought about it, the more he felt he was going to throw up.

The wall clock's wide face stared ahead, unconcerned.

There was still close to an hour before the bus left and even then it made stops every half hour. Racing dog? That was wrong. The bus was just standing there! Their suitcases were already on it. Why couldn't
they
get on it and just leave? His mother said they were lucky to get tickets at all, she had to pay extra to get them and now the bus was full because of the train strike. When he remembered the airplane, it made him sick all over again how the trip was ending this way. He wanted only to be home. Or anywhere but here.

The man behind the ticket counter glanced slowly around the room at the people eating, then slid a sign over the window and walked slowly into another room.

“When is our bus going to leave?” Bobby asked his mother, knowing the answer, but wanting to show how bored he was, and wasn't there something she could do? But she didn't answer his question. She was reading a newspaper someone had left on the lunch table. The ticket man returned. The clock had barely moved.

She put the paper down. “Boys, I want to warn…” She paused, ruffling the newspaper. “Never mind. Nothing.”

“Mom?” said Ricky.

She didn't look up from the newspaper that she kept lining up with the edge of the table. Bobby's mind swam with the headlines. “Manhunt…Negro Youth…Prophet…Rape…Shotgun…White Teenager…”

“Nothing,” she said finally. “It's raining at home. Oh, and Daddy will be there when we get back. That's all.”

So that was it. His father was waiting at home. She'd tried to hide it by saying it casually, but that's what she was warning them about. He was mad again. Even home was not a place to be.

More minutes of silence.

Bobby shivered in the heat. “When is our bus going to leave?” he asked stupidly.

His mother shot a look at the clock on the wall. “We can board in thirty minutes. A little less. Don't you have to go to the bathroom?”

“No.”

He was worried that if he saw a toilet he would have to throw up, and he didn't want to. At least the bus would be moving, air would come in on them. It would be hot air, but it would be moving. He needed to get out of there. He was a thief. He was mean. He was lucky and he had no right to be. He hated his hitting father. He hated history and the Civil War. He was dumb and unfinished, a dirty little boy, and everyone in the room, everyone everywhere, knew it. He counted the lines on the schedule. Thirteen stops from Atlanta to Cleveland. Two days. It would never end. They would never get back home. He would be sick and would never see his room again. He hated the room he shared with his brother, and his father would be there, typing in the den, ready to burst out, but there was nowhere else for Bobby to go.

He wondered if the bathroom was occupied in case he had to vomit. There it was, the men's room, and it said white over the door. He thought of what he did in there and none of it seemed white. He thought of the smell from the motel bathroom when his mother was in it. He saw another door through the partition. colored.

The schedule again. His vision was darkening, as if he were staring out light-headed from under a deep hood. The first stop was what? Marietta. Then Dalton then Chattanooga. He hated Chattanooga. The name sounded like someone vomiting. His armpits were souring with smell. Down on the list was a stop called Cleveland, only it was Cleveland, Tennessee. And if they called another city Cleveland, you could bet it was far away from the real Cleveland. They would never get home. Never. All the miles ahead. Two days of miles.

Heat began to creep up the sides of his face from his neck to the top of his scalp, and his cheeks burned, while his whole head now felt suddenly chill and heavy. He breathed in, but the air in the room was close and foul and thickly warm.

He lowered his nose into his glass and breathed in the plain no-scent of tepid water. It didn't help. Running his hand over his damp scalp he felt his hair bristle. A shiver ran down his spine. Was he going to pass out? He slid out of the booth and stole across the room, trying with every fiber not to vomit or faint.

“Bobby—”

He didn't answer, but pushed quickly through the restroom door. When he entered its coolness—he guessed it had been empty for some minutes because it didn't smell like he expected—the burning in his stomach and face lessened. He closed himself in a wooden stall and waited. Looking down into the bowl, but not leaning toward it, he felt nothing, not even the urge to pee. Good. He might not be sick after all.

Outside the stall, he ran his hands under the cold water and splashed his face. That was better. There were no towels, cloth or paper, so he dried his cheeks on his shirt shoulders and stood staring at his face in the mirror. He hated the fat dumb thing. His eyes were pale green and weak. Not weak of vision, but of the thing that made eyes truthful. He remembered his father's eyes when he slapped him for crying. He hated those weak eyes, too, but forget them. His face in the mirror now was mean and weak in its own way. He was a shape of dough, a blob, a thing unfinished, still waiting to be made. He was empty, unfilled.

His hands were dry now. He turned.

The door pushed in at him, and a big black shape with deep brown eyes stepped nearly on top of him. Bobby froze, there was nowhere to go, and felt the heat rise in his cheeks again and in the hollow of his throat. Beyond the shape, in the waiting room outside, he saw his mother standing. “Bobby,” she said quietly.

“If you're done,” said the big black man, and he pushed past Bobby and entered the stall with a groan.

“Sorry, Mom,” he said when they were outside. “I'm sorry. I didn't see the sign.”

“Finish your sandwich,” she said. “It's almost time.”

When he sat again, he felt Ricky's eyes on him but didn't return the look. He imagined an expression of amusement or anger.

The sandwich was tasteless. Taking a small bite, Bobby turned to see the uniformed man move back from the counter window, his face hidden for a moment as he worked on things behind him. The sound of papers and something ticking.

Footsteps at the street door. Bobby looked out to see a long yellow car drive away and, as if it were possible, felt more heat pour through the door from the white air outside. The ticket man looked up from what he was working on. The ticking stopped.

A brown man eased into the room with them. He wore a dark brimmed hat set a little to the side. He stepped into the waiting room as if he knew everyone was looking at him. Bobby wondered why the man hadn't entered the bus station through the door that said colored waiting room over it. He would have to, wouldn't he?

“There was a sign,” the brown man said to the ticket man. “At the colored window. It's closed now.”

“Be with you in a few minutes,” said the ticket man, turning back to his work. “Please wait on the street until I call for you.”

“Sir, we telephoned before and hurried to get here in time to catch—”

The white man looked up. “Until I
call
for you. You're not hard of hearing, are you, son?”

“No, sir,” the brown man said, stopping.

“I thought not. Please? Outside?”

The man tipped his hat slightly and stepped backward through the doorway to the sidewalk outside. Bobby watched the others move to him. Were they a family? Some were very black. Some were regular. There were two women, one younger than his mother, one older, then the man with the hat, and an older man, with short gray hair, leaning on a cane. They stayed in a cluster outside, until the older woman leaned to the window to read the chalkboard schedule over the top of Bobby's head. The younger man with the hat took a step up behind her and looked over her shoulder at the schedule. They were so close to him now.

The young woman stood a bit apart from the others. Her skin was like light coffee. She seemed to Bobby as if she were afraid, her eyes darting at everything, settling on nothing, always moving. The lunchroom window was open and he heard their low quiet talk.

The older man, wearing dark pants and a dark shirt and beige vest, half unbuttoned, appeared in the doorway. His skin was blacker than the younger man's. Bobby felt his neck stiffen.

“Is that the same man?” he whispered to Ricky.

“Who?” his brother said, turning to the window.

“That one.”

“Same as who?”

“The old man at the shack when Mom crashed into the garbage can and he came out and we took off. Isn't it the same man?”

“Him?” said his brother. He adjusted his glasses, blinked several times through them, looked closely at the older man. For a moment it seemed their eyes met. He looked away. “You're nuts.”

“It sure looks like him.”

“You're completely nuts. This one's taller than the guy who came out of the house. And younger.”

Maybe, but Bobby couldn't stop looking at the family. They weren't like the chocolate men on his street. They were so much closer, for one thing. They talked softly to one another, moving their hands. The words were too low for him to make out.

He looked at the schedule again, saw again how many stops there were before reaching Ohio, and his throat tightened.

There were footsteps on the platform outside. The young brown man was striding down the platform ahead of the others. The short older black woman walked past the platform door, a heavy oak door with a glass window, carrying a cloth shopping bag in each hand. The one in her right hand bulged with something and caught the door on her way past. It made a sound. Then the four of them were together at the open door of the waiting bus. Then they walked up the steps into it.

“What?” Bobby whispered. His chest spiked.

He saw the four shapes inside the bus pass down the aisle and sit down in seats near the window. The man with the hat took his hat off.

“Mom, that's our bus,” Bobby whispered. “Those people took our seats.” He tugged her arm. “Mom, they took our seats. Our stuff is in there. My suitcase is right there. That's our seats. You said it would be safe—”

His mother rose from the table, her face paling. She glanced over at the ticket man, but he had already dropped what he was doing and leaned over the counter toward the platform door. “Hey. No, no,” he said. “No, no. You can't—”

“Hey!” A louder voice this time.

It was the driver of the bus, who had been smoking at the counter with a cup of coffee in front of him. Now he twisted around, and now he was up off the stool. “Hey, get outta there!” he said, moving quickly through the tables toward the door, trailing cigarette smoke behind him. He jumped up the bus steps and yelled loud enough for the lunchroom to hear, shooing the family out of their seats like cats. “No you don't. No you don't. That's…we have whites on this bus. We're full up. This ain't no sit-in. Get offa here—”

The family was on the platform again, and his mother sat back down.

“You don't understand, sir,” Bobby heard the younger man say as he followed the driver into the lunchroom, but stepped back just inside the platform door, holding his hat. “You see, sir,” he started, when the ticket seller stepped out from behind the counter and in one, two, three steps, he was there and slipped behind the man, blocking the way to the platform. The brown man turned toward him suddenly, his mouth open, but saying nothing. The ticket seller watched the man's hand reach for the knob on the door to the platform, and he slapped the brown hand away from the knob.

It was not a hard slap, and the ticket seller seemed as surprised as the man whose hand he had slapped.

The room went quiet, and no one moved. On the platform beyond the windows the young woman trembled on her feet, one hand over her mouth, watching the three men.

Bobby knew she was afraid of something about to happen. He felt his neck turn cold and clammy.

The young man lowered his head and repeated, “Yes, sir, but you don't understand, sir—”

“What don't I understand,
sir
?” the ticket man said, no longer surprised at the slap but looking now as if he might do it again.

“It's about our Jacob—”

“That's not your bus,” the driver said. “That's this people's bus,” he said, waving his hand into the lunchroom. “They paid for their seats, and the bus is full because of the strike. Maybe you heard of the railroad strike where you come from?”

“Yes, sir, I've heard of it, but you see we called about seats, and they said—”

“They are going back up north, and their seats are on that bus, which is full because of the strike.”

“I know about the strike, sir,” the brown man said. “But we need to get to Dalton because our son is missing—”

A smirk on the driver's face. “You all have the same son now?”

“No, sir.
My
son. We called before. And Mrs. called. She talked to you, and there are seats—”

The ticket man was almost laughing now. “I don't know who your Mrs. is, but this bus is full,” he said. “Didn't you hear us? You can't get on
this
bus. You can take the
next
bus. It leaves in three hours. You know what three hours is?”

“But we have seats for now—”

“This—bus—is—full!”

Ricky stood up from the table and stared at the three men.

He stood up and stared and stepped toward the men.

The room went electric with dark eyes. All the people at the other tables turned from looking at the group of men to look at this boy who stood up. No one spoke. Bobby was sitting right next to him but didn't stand. Ricky took two steps toward the brown man, the ticket man, and the driver. He didn't even look like he wanted to, but that's what his body made him do. Just the movement, the only thing in the lunchroom to move, and his face, his shiny glasses, looking directly at what was happening, made the men pause. The two white men turned their attention to him.

Ricky took another step.

Bobby didn't know what his brother was doing.

From across the room, the ticket man waved his finger at Ricky as if marking the figure “1” on a chalkboard. His mouth was open, his features twisted as if he were going to object, but he said nothing, just marked the air at his brother's face.

Bobby understood. The man wanted his brother to sit down.

What happened next was that a door opened and a man in a blue cap appeared from an office behind the counter. He must have heard the raised voices. Ricky kept looking at the men by the door, not sitting down, poised as if to take another step, his back heel lifted off the floor, but not taking the step. His mother stared at her son, her face dumbstruck.

“Ricky, sit down—”

“No,” he said softly.

Bobby glanced up at the clock, at the lunch tables, at the brown faces on the platform looking at the younger man, then at the clock, then at the man's face, then at his brother's face.

The man in the conductor's cap wove through the tables to the group at the door. “So…” he began.

He spoke quietly to all of them one after another, talked over their talking, quietly, insistently, listened to the two white men, then to the brown man, then to the older woman with the bags, which she had not put down when she came in from the platform, and suddenly there was a clipboard now. The older woman was crying solemnly, softly, though Bobby heard her drawing huge wet breaths, and using her arms to help her talk. It was musical when she spoke. Bobby glanced beyond their little group to the bus steps and the younger woman with skin like coffee marked by streaks of tears. Her face just then was one he could imagine watching the Lincoln train pass in the night. She held her hands close to her mouth almost as if she were praying, just as she might have when the wind-stirred bunting drew by. Watching her, even for a second or two, he felt the blood drain from his face as if he had done something wrong to look at her, and he had to turn away.

The ticket man was pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the easel or the clock, saying, “But the later bus at three—”

“But you see…” the man with the hat in his hands said. And the word “Dalton” came out again. And the name “Jacob.”

The conductor hushed the ticket man gently and, as he spoke, put one hand on the brown man's sleeve. The brown man did not move his arm from under the white man's hand, but turned to the young woman, who was inside the lunchroom now, and she to him. Her face was like polished stone in the rain, her eyes full of crying, but her mouth was closed and her chin up.

“So,” the man with the cap said finally, pulling away from the group. He then tugged something from his pocket. It was a watch. He went to one lunch table, then to another, and a third, nodding here and there, speaking quietly and using his hands as he spoke. After approaching a fifth table, he said, “Thank you…”

Ricky, who had been stock-still, relaxed a little now. He didn't move forward or back, just relaxed; his heel touched the floor.

“Sit down,” said his mother. “Ricky, sit down. Your sandwich. Sit down.” He didn't. He watched the group by the door.

The conductor faced the room. “We're going to start boarding now,” he said over the tables, looking at Bobby and his family, at their plates, their food, at the others. “We're going to start boarding now.”