Buddy (9 page)

“Arrroooo!” Buddy's crying. “Arrrooo!”

I put my hand on the door and feel it shaking.

“Buddy,” I say, but he just keeps on, wailing and moaning like he ain't never heard me. Like he ain't never even known me.

I'm standing there and something big's trying to go down my throat. I'm feeling my eyes get stingy, and Buddy keeps on howling.

“Two days?” I say to Daddy.

“Two days,” Daddy says.

18

It usually takes an hour and a half to get to Aunt Joyce's place in Mississippi. This time it takes eight. We're sitting on the superhighway with everybody and his brother. The cars are backed up along the road as far as you can see, all shining in the hot sun.

When we're on the bridge crossing Lake Pontchartrain, some cars start driving down the shoulder lane, and Daddy starts cussing.

Mama says, “T Junior, that doesn't help,” and he shuts up.

It takes us four hours just to get from our house to the other side of that bridge. Once we get across the lake, I see a man get out of the passenger door of a car and walk along the side of the road for a while. He bends down, touches his toes a few times, and does some jumping jacks. Then he turns around and goes back to his car. Traffic is moving that slow.

Baby Terrell starts up fussing and Granpa T's got his head tilted back as usual. Tanya's singing to herself in the backseat. After a while, Mama starts up some hymns. I wish I had my Game Boy back.

Eight hours is a long time to sit in a car that ain't hardly moving.

We make Aunt Joyce's house long after dark. She's got a whole plate of fried chicken waiting and a big old pot of gumbo. We eat and we talk. I tell Aunt Joyce all about Buddy. She says she had a dog once. She named him Spot because he had a white circle around one eye. He had four legs but lost part of his ear in a fight. Aunt Joyce can't remember what became of Spot. She says she'd have to ask her mama and her mama's passed.

Daddy and Granpa T sit out on the front porch and drink their beer. They don't have any neighbors to talk to because we're so far out in the country. There ain't no other houses. There ain't no cars. There ain't no lights.

Tanya's running around in the dark trying to catch fireflies while Aunt Joyce looks for a jar. Mama's sitting on the swing holding Baby Terrell and humming.

I walk out into the open yard where Aunt Joyce has a little garden growing tomatoes. At home you have to lift the tomatoes up to your nose and give them a good sniff if you want to smell them. Here they soak up the sun all day and then sit there in the dark, sending off their tomato smell to everybody in the yard. I get myself a good noseful and then walk farther out under the trees.

Aunt Joyce must have fifty trees in her yard. They're tall, tall pine trees. I got to bend my head way back to see the needles all at the top. The wind is moving them just the tiniest bit and they're making a quiet
whush-whush
ing sound. I can see lots of stars through the trees, but I can see the clouds are starting to blow in, too.

When I get back to the porch, Daddy and Granpa T are looking up. They're feeling the air.

“It's coming,” Granpa T says.

“I'll be glad when it's gone,” Mama says. “I already want to lie down in my own bed.”

I hear her voice in the dark and I think how quiet it is at home right now with everybody gone.

How quiet and dark.

I'm wondering what Buddy is thinking. I'm wondering if he's scared.

I wrinkle up my forehead and I squinch my eyes shut and I send him a message.
Two days, Buddy,
I think.
Just wait. Two days.

When I wake up Monday morning, I'm covered in sweat.

We're all sleeping in the same room again. Mama and Daddy are on the bed. Granpa T is on a sofa pushed against the wall. Baby Terrell's in a crib borrowed from the people down the road. Me and Tanya are rolled up in blankets on the floor.

The ceiling fan ain't moving and there ain't no air coming out the vents. The alarm clock is dead.

And the storm is on us.

I'm laying there, sweating and listening to the wind.

I ain't never heard wind like that before. It sounds like a ship on the river and a cat screaming and a whistle blowing all at the same time. And it don't stop. It just keeps going on and on and on.

The pipes in the walls are rattling and the glass in the windows is shaking. The curtains are blowing in and out even though the windows are locked shut. Every once in a while the rain slams against the windows like somebody threw a bucket of gravel straight at the glass.

I hear footsteps and it's Mama. She's tippy-toeing across the room. She pulls Baby Terrell out of the crib. He's so asleep he almost flops out of her arms. She takes him in the bed with her. I see her crawling under the covers and tucking Baby Terrell up between her and Daddy. I feel Tanya next to me. In the dark I can barely see her eyes shining at me, wide open and still. “Don't be scared,” I whisper, and pull her closer.

Underneath all the sounds of the wind, there's a howling sound. A howling sound like Buddy's. I'm laying there with Tanya all snugged up next to me and I feel like I can hear him all the way in New Orleans. He's sitting on that cold floor. That old house is shaking, and he's hearing the wind just like I am. He's tilting his head back. His mouth is opening up. And out comes that sound. “You left me, Li'l T,” he's saying, and all the sadness in his heart is just pouring out in that little, bitty bathroom all by himself.

I'm squinching up my eyes and trying to send him a message. “Be brave, Buddy,” I'm saying. “Be brave.”

And then all a sudden something outside explodes. Loud. Like a bomb's been dropped.

And again and again and again.

I hear Mama's voice praying. She's praying almost as loud as the wind but I can't make out her words.

And then Daddy's bending down beside us and saying, “Everybody under the bed,” and we're all crowding up under where it's dusty and there are probably spiders, but we ain't thinking about that.

Daddy's head is up beside me and I whisper in his ear, “What's that sound, Daddy?”

“The trees,” Daddy says. “All those pine trees are popping in two.”

We lay under the bed and listen.

One after the other the trees explode, and we hear the sound of the branches breaking as they crash past each other to the ground, and then they hit, and sometimes the whole house bounces and somewhere in the house we hear glass shatter, and always we hear that wind blowing and screaming and howling.

And now I'm thinking about the window in our bathroom and the pecan tree beside our house and my mind is so tight with pictures I can't send any more messages to Buddy.

We're laying there so long I forget there's any other place to be. I forget my name is Li'l T. It's almost like being asleep except it's completely different. I feel Daddy beside me. Sometimes he's stiff. Sometimes he's praying. When I remember, I say my prayers, too. And I cross my fingers just in case.

When it's finally quiet, we creep out from under the bed. Granpa T's so stiff he can't hardly move. Mama's got dust balls in her hair. Tanya's practically sucked her thumb off her hand, and Baby Terrell needs a new diaper bad.

We find Aunt Joyce locked in her bathroom. Daddy gets her to come out. All together we open the front door and look out into the drippy, morning sun.

All the pine trees in her yard are down. Every single one.

And the air smells sparkly and clean, like a Christmas tree lot.

The electricity pole is broke in two and half is laying on the ground. One little tree is leaning on the roof of the front porch. All the other trees between the house and the road are snapped and cracked and blocking the driveway. Our car is crushed and Aunt Joyce's car is penned in between two tree trunks twice as big around as a utility pole.

“We ain't going nowhere soon,” Granpa T says.

Aunt Joyce bends down and picks up something laying on the front porch. It's a shingle. Then I see the yard is full of them. She sighs. “We don't have any electricity,” she says. “Don't open the refrigerator unless you have to. We'll fire up the grill to cook. The rescue trucks'll come soon.”

I look at Daddy. “You said two days.”

He looks back at me. “What do you want me to do about it?” he says, and goes clomping out on the porch to sit.

19

Once the storm clears up, it gets hotter than ever. The air is still and quiet. There ain't no breeze blowing. There ain't no birds singing.

My guess is, there ain't no birds left and if there is, there ain't nowhere for them to sit. When we stand on the porch and look out, Aunt Joyce's yard looks like an ocean of pine branches with broke-off trunks sticking up every once in a while. Daddy asks Aunt Joyce if she's got a saw he can start cutting some of the branches with. He says he wants to cut a path to the garden. He wants to make his way to her car. She finds a half-rusted saw and an old ax in a closet by her washing machine. She says they ain't been used in a thousand years, and they look it.

Daddy picks them up, heads outside, and starts chopping.

Every morning Daddy and Granpa T sit in Aunt Joyce's car and listen to the radio. When I ask Daddy what he's listening to, he just looks at me and tells me to go pick up some shingles. I'm making a pile of shingles beside Daddy's pile of branches. I can't help but notice they ain't all the same kind of shingles and there ain't no other house nearby that I can see.

We eat steak and chicken from the freezer. We drink hot drinks out of the can. We run out of clean clothes. We pull all the tomatoes still hanging on the vines.

Mama says she's losing count of the days, but I ain't. Every night when I lay down on my pallet, I say to myself, “That's another one.”

I lay there and I'm wondering where in that bathroom does Buddy lay himself down. That tile is cold and hard, and we didn't put his blanket in there with him. I'm wondering if he can eat all he needs out of that hole in the bag. I'm wondering what if the stopper don't work in the tub and all the water drains out.

Sometimes I think about the window and the pecan tree and I squinch up my eyes and I think as hard as I can to Buddy.

When I get home,
I'm thinking to him,
I'm going to make it up to you. I promise.
I tell him I'll sell my bicycle back to the lady and it'll be dog biscuits every day. I tell him I'll make him that leg. I know Granpa T will help me. We'll walk to the river.
It won't be long, Buddy,
I'm thinking to him.
It won't be long.

But no rescue trucks come.

We've been living in that house without electricity for five days.

On day six Mama says, “We got to get milk. This baby needs milk.”

Granpa T nods real slow. “And I need my medicine.”

“Are you about out?” Daddy says real sharp.

Granpa T pulls the little brown bottle out of his pocket and shakes it. It don't make hardly any noise.

“Why didn't you say something before?” Daddy asks, and then he looks at Aunt Joyce. “How far are we from town?”

“Ten miles,” she says.

Daddy looks down at his shoes. “I can walk ten miles,” he says, and heads for the door.

We run after him. “When will you be back, Daddy?”

“When I get back,” he says.

We wait all day. We wait all night. We wait all morning.

Baby Terrell's crying something bad. Mosquitoes have bitten his arms all to pieces but we have to keep the windows open because it's so hot. Mama's run out of diapers and Aunt Joyce is ripping up her sheets. Tanya's sucking on her thumb all day. Mama sits on the front porch and fans herself. Granpa T sits on the sofa and leans his head back. He hardly moves at all. He's gone and can't nobody go with him.

When it's almost night again, we hear a truck a long way off. We all jump up, and then after a while we see Daddy walking down the long drive with two other men. They got great big saws. They pull the cords and fire them up, and then they start cutting their way to the house. We can smell the pine trees again. We're jumping up and down and cheering. When they're done, me and Tanya go running down the road to Daddy and we jump in his arms. Mama's standing on the porch yelling, “Thank you! Thank you!”

Daddy grabs us up. He stinks something bad but it smells good. He sends us down the road. “Ride with the men,” he says. “We'll be right behind you.”

Mama and Aunt Joyce are already piling stuff in Aunt Joyce's car, and I'm thinking,
We're going home at last
. I'm thinking when I open that bathroom door Buddy's probably going to knock me over he'll be so glad to see me. I'm thinking I'll take him outside, and we'll walk a little in the yard to stretch his legs, and then I'll take him to the shed, and we'll sit in the dark, and I'll tell him about the storm, and he'll listen to every word. Every single word.

Get ready, Buddy
, I'm thinking.
Here I come
.

“Are you taking us all the way to New Orleans?” I say to the men.

They laugh. “Just to town,” they say.

All the way in, we're looking at what that storm did. Trees are down everywhere. Electricity lines are laying around like spaghetti. Some houses have their roofs torn off. One house has a swimming pool ripped up and laying against the front porch. Cars are laying around upside down and sideways. One store has its big, plate-glass window busted and yards of cloth trailing out into the parking lot.

“Is it like this in New Orleans?” I say.

They look at me. “You ain't heard?” they say.

“Heard what?” I say.

“New Orleans flooded,” they say. “The levees broke. Everything is under water.”

Tanya sucks in her breath.

I sit real quiet.

The engine is loud in that truck.

“Everything?” I say.

“Yessiree,” one man says. “Right up to the rooftops. Everything. Ain't nothing living in that town no more.”

The men take us to the shelter in town. It's a big arena where football teams play their games. Out front there's a long line of people waiting to get in. Some of them are carrying suitcases. Some have garbage bags. Most of them don't have anything at all.

The men wait with us until the others get there, then they're gone.

Daddy says they're headed out to find other people stuck in their houses in the country. He says he already helped them cut the trees to two other houses today. He says at one house, the lady was dead and the man didn't want to leave. “They're too old for this,” Daddy says. “We had to carry the man out the door. He was crying like a baby the whole way.”

Aunt Joyce takes one look at that line of people waiting to get in the shelter and she says there ain't no way she going to stay in a shelter. She says she's driving up to Atlanta right now to stay with her daughter even if she has to drive all night. She tells Granpa T to come on with her, but he says no. She begs him and begs him, but he keeps shaking his head. Finally she says there ain't no fool like an old fool and drives off, leaving us waiting in line with everybody else. When we get to the front they give us badges to wear. They write down numbers off Daddy's driver's license. They take us to six cots lined up in a row on about the fifty-yard line. “How's Baby Terrell going to sleep on a cot?” Mama says. Daddy puts his hand on her arm and says, “We're the lucky ones.”

I'm sitting there on my folding cot. Granpa T's shaking his head. Mama's opening the milk the ladies gave us. Tanya's sucking her thumb.

I can't help it. I blurt it right out.

“The men in the truck told us New Orleans is flooded. They said everything is under water. Everything.”

Mama's busy with the baby. Granpa T's looking around for the shelter doctor. They don't look at me.

But Daddy looks at me. He looks at me a long time.

“It's true, son,” he finally says. “Everything.”

He looks at me a little while longer. “I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm real, real sorry.”

I lay down on my cot. I curl up. I close my eyes. I go to a place where nobody else can go. Not even Granpa T.