On the Other Side of the Bridge (20 page)

His heart sank when he looked down and saw his dad's CD in the trash can. Despite what Thelma had said, she had no intention of giving it to her boss.

“Done already?”

Thelma's voice startled him. “Yes, ma'am … uh, Thelma. Do you want to take a look at what I did?”

She took the cigarette from the ashtray and slipped it in the corner of her mouth. “That's okay. I trust you.” She reached into her trousers pocket and fished out thirty-five dollars. “Don't spend it all on girls,” she said with a wink.

Lonnie jotted his name and phone number on a Post-it note and told Thelma to let Mr. Porras know that he was available to rake leaves anytime the work needed to be done.

He left, feeling terrific. Things were going to get better. He just knew they would.

O
N
S
UNDAY MORNING
, L
ONNIE AND HIS DAD
sat in the Winfield Road Presbyterian Church parking lot and gazed across the street at their old house. Another family was now living in it.

“We're gonna be back in a house real soon, buddy,” Lonnie's dad said. “You'll see. Hopefully after Mr. Porras listens to my CD, he'll give Los Brujos a steady gig at his club.”

It would never happen, but Lonnie didn't mention anything about Thelma throwing away the CD. “Want to go inside with me?” he asked.

“Nah, you go ahead. I got some things to do. You can pray for the both of us.”

Lonnie slid out of the car, disappointed but not surprised. “Pick me up around twelve. If the service is still going on, I'll slip out quietly.”

His dad drove off, and Lonnie returned to his Sunday school class for the first time in months. The lesson was about how Mary and Joseph had traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem because they had to be registered in their hometown for a census the government was conducting. But when they arrived, they had no place to stay.

“It was like they were homeless,” Lonnie told Mrs. Finley, then instantly regretted speaking out, thinking he may have said something inappropriate.

“That's an interesting thought,” she said. “Would you care to elaborate?”

Lonnie glanced around the room, but nobody looked at him as if he had said the wrong thing. “Well, sometimes when homeless people don't have anywhere to go, they end up living under bridges or in abandoned buildings. In Mary and Joseph's case, they couldn't find a room at the inn, so they stayed in an animal stable, like they were homeless. But they knew they weren't going to live there permanently. They knew things were going to get better, the same as with a lot of homeless people. Things may be real bad for them, but they have to believe that their problems are only temporary.”

“What an astute observation,” Mrs. Finley said. “Thank you for sharing.”

Lonnie wasn't sure what
astute
meant, but he liked the sound of the word. He left, thinking that he had as much to contribute to the Sunday school discussions as some of the know-it-alls in there, provided he didn't make any horror movie references.

He walked down the hallway and stopped by the rear window. Looking out, he realized that Catfish Creek had lost all its appeal for him. He no longer had any desire to hang out down there. And it wasn't because he was afraid of running into Moses or some other homeless person. He needed some consistency in his life, and church seemed like a good place for it.

Lighted Christmas wreaths with red bows hung on the walls of the sanctuary, and poinsettia plants lined the sides of the church stage. The pianist played Christmas carols, while the congregation made its way inside. A few ladies stopped and asked Lonnie how he was doing. He
said fine, not caring to share what was really going on in his life.

He had planned to sit with some of the guys from his Sunday school class, but Jo Marie quickly scooted in his pew and sat next to him.

“I'm glad you're here, Lonnie,” she said cheerily.

“Thanks. I'm glad to be here, too.”

Jo Marie wasn't so bad, he decided. A little too churchy for his taste, but what did he expect with her dad being a preacher? After that day when he broke down in front of her, he felt as if they had grown closer.

Brother Beasley led the congregation in singing “Joy to the World.” Lonnie never been much of a singer, but he belted out the words to each verse enthusiastically.

Brother Elrod preached a sermon titled “I'll Be Home for Christmas.” With Christmas a week and a half away, Lonnie had no idea where he would be spending it. And it certainly wasn't going to be at “home.”

After retelling the story of the birth of Jesus, Brother Elrod explained to the congregation that while Mary and Joseph weren't in their house at the time of the birth, they were still “home” because “home is wherever God is.”

“Life is hard, but God is good,” Brother Elrod emphasized as he concluded his message.

Lonnie turned to Jo Marie and said, “What an astute observation.”

She gave him a curious look, not sure if he was putting her on.

After church, Lonnie and his dad ate lunch at the Wendy's near the motel, and Lonnie paid for their food with his leaf-raking money.

“How was church?” his dad asked.

“Alright, I guess.”

“What'd they preach about?”

“Oh, the usual stuff. You know, about God and Jesus.”

“That's good.”

After lunch, they returned to the motel to watch football on TV. Lonnie dozed off midway through a game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Carolina Panthers, but he woke up in time to watch the Dallas Cowboys play the Miami Dolphins. He told his dad that they were running low on clean clothes, and could he take him to the Laundromat as soon as the game was over.

His dad cursed when a Cowboys receiver dropped what looked like a sure touchdown pass. “I don't know why I bother watching those stupid Cowgirls,” he complained. “They always choke before the season's over.”

“Did you hear what I said?” Lonnie asked.

“Yeah, yeah.” His dad cursed again when the kicker missed a forty-two yard field goal try on the next play.

During the commercial break, Lonnie gathered their dirty clothes and stuffed them into trash bags. Then he sat back down and watched as the Cowboys continued to trail the Dolphins.

Finally, with six and a half minutes left in the fourth quarter, and with the Cowboys losing 38 to 14, his dad turned off the TV and grabbed his car keys from the dresser. “Come on, let's go.”

Lonnie took the trash bags outside. His dad opened the car trunk and was about to help him load them in, when he heard someone say, “Hey, amigo. You got a light?”

Two men were standing behind them.

“Sorry, I don't smoke,” Lonnie's dad said.

One of the men pulled out a gun and pointed it at his face. “Then how about giving us your money?”

“C'
MON, MAN, DON'T DO THIS
,” Lonnie's dad pleaded. “We're going through a real rough time right now.”

“Yeah? Well, so are we. Now give me your wallet.” The gunman turned his weapon on Lonnie. “You, too, little man. Empty your pockets.”

It was dark, and Lonnie couldn't see the men's faces clearly, but the gunman looked familiar. For a second, he thought it was Kevin Williams, the man who had shot his mother. But it couldn't be him. Kevin Williams was dead.

The gunman's accomplice was a tall, slender, African-American man with an uncombed afro. Both men were dressed shabbily, and Lonnie wondered if they were homeless.

“Listen, I ain't worked in almost a year,” Lonnie's dad said. “This is all the money we got.”

“We ain't got time to listen to your crying,” the gunman's accomplice said. “Do what Carl says before he shoots you both, and then takes your wallets anyway.”

The gunman glared at him. “Why'd you call me by my name? I told you never to use our names.”

“Let's just get the money and split,” his accomplice said without acknowledging his mistake.

“Everything out of your pockets,” the gunman ordered. “Now!”

Reluctantly, Lonnie and his dad took out their wallets, pocket change, cell phones and keys.

“Take 'em, Dewayne,” the gunman said.

“I thought you said we weren't gonna use our names.”

“Just take 'em!”

“Can you at least let us keep our car?” Lonnie's dad asked.

Carl chortled. “You think we want that piece of junk?” He peeked inside the trunk to make sure there wasn't anything of value in it. “Keep it, amigo.”

Dewayne tossed the keys on the ground. He shoved the coins and cell phones in his pocket, and then counted the money in the wallets. “Dawg, Carl! They got almost six hundred bucks between them.”

Carl smiled. He kept his gun pointed at them as he and his partner walked backwards. “A pleasure doing business with you, amigos,” he said with a soldier's salute. Then they disappeared into the night.

Lonnie and his dad stood speechless, too stunned to react to what had just happened. Lonnie's dad's entire unemployment check money was gone. So was Lonnie's leaf-raking money. They couldn't even go back inside their motel room to call the police because their key cards were in their wallets.

Lonnie's dad's face crumpled, and he began to sob. “I can't take this no more. We got nothing left. Nothing!” His knees buckled, and Lonnie had to hold him by the waist to keep him from falling. “I don't know what to do no more. I just …” The tone in his voice changed from sobbing to loud, animal-like howls. He pounded the hood of his car with his fists and screamed at the top of his lungs, “
God, help me!”

As much as Lonnie wanted to cry too, he couldn't. He had to be strong for his dad, like Mr. Treviño had advised. “Let's go to the office and tell them what happened,” he said. “They can call the police for us.”

“What good do you think that's gonna do? You think the cops are gonna get our money back?”

Lonnie had already made a mistake by not calling the police when he should have, and he wasn't going to make the same mistake again, whether or not their money could be recovered. With his arm around his dad, he walked him to the office. Finally his dad composed himself and dried his tears.

No one was at the window, but there was a bell on the counter with an index card that read RING BELL FOR SERVICE. In the back room, Lonnie could hear the TV blaring. Whoever was working the desk was watching the game.

He hit the bell several times. The TV volume became mute, and a man appeared at the window. He looked irritated, and Lonnie heard him mutter something about the Dallas Cowboys.

“Can I help you?”

“We just got robbed at gunpoint!” Lonnie told him. “We need you to call the police.”

“Was it two of them? A white guy and a black guy?” the clerk asked, sounding almost bored.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

The clerk sighed. “This is the third time those guys have robbed our tenants. What do they think this place is, anyway? The First National Bank?”

“We also need new key cards to get back in our room,” Lonnie said. “They took our wallets with our key cards in them.”

“Well, you know there's a five-dollar charge for lost key cards,” the clerk said.

“We didn't lose them. They were stolen.”

“We still gotta replace them, lost or stolen.” The clerk turned to Lonnie's dad. “I'll add the cost of the cards to your weekly rent, which, FYI is due tomorrow.”

He picked up the phone and called 911. “Yeah, this is Floyd Womack, the manager at the Twin Oaks Motel, 6211 Freestone Avenue. Seems like we had another robbery here.” He paused and asked Lonnie, “Anyone get hurt?”

“No, sir.”

“Naw, they're all right. They just got their wallets stolen, that's all.”

“And our cell phones,” Lonnie said.

“And their cell phones. Yeah, I'll be here all night. I suppose they will, too.” He asked Lonnie, “Y'all aren't planning to go anywhere tonight, are you?”

“I don't think so.” With their money gone, they wouldn't be able to do their laundry or even go out to buy dinner.

“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” The clerk hung up. He looked for Lonnie's dad, who was hidden in the shadows. “They're sending out a squad car. In the meantime, I guess you need to get back in your room. Which one are you in?”

“One-thirteen,” Lonnie said.

“You want one key or two?”

“One.”

The clerk handed Lonnie the new key card, and he and his dad walked back to their room to wait for the police.

Lonnie dropped the dirty clothes bags on top of the table. His dad sat on the edge of his bed, hunched over, and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don't know what to do,” he said. “We can't stay here after tonight. They want the rent a week in advance, and I ain't got the money for it.”

“Do you think you could borrow the money from somebody?” Lonnie asked.

“How will I pay it back? I don't get a check for another two weeks, and we can barely make it on that money without having to pay back a loan.” His dad lay on his bed with his hands clasped behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “You know what? I think maybe it's time for you to go live with your grandparents, buddy. They were right. You need to stay with them till I can get back on my feet, and that might take a while.”

“No, I want to stay with you,” Lonnie said. “Come on, we'll figure something out.” What really frightened him was what would become of his dad if he was left alone. Lonnie worried he might lose hope completely and end up like Moses. “We still have all our furniture and things in storage. Maybe you can sell some of it.”

“If I do, I'll have to find a buyer real quick, 'cause I gotta let the front desk know by noon that we're staying, and they'll expect me to pay for the room at that time.”