Homecoming (15 page)

“Can you lend me some cash?” Windy asked. “Stewart?”

“I’ve got a twenty,” Stewart said. He went into his bedroom.

The living room was filled with warm air and sunlight from the windows. The Tillermans
were all fresh and clean and not starving. They would have breakfast. They would get
a ride to Bridgeport.

It was almost over.

Stewart stood in the doorway of his room. Dicey looked at him and smiled, but he did
not smile back at her. He waited there, silent, and looked over the small group of
people standing between the sofa and the fireplace. His eyes were gray now, a distant
wintry gray. “I can’t find it,” he said. He looked at Windy over the heads of the
children.

“You sure?” Windy asked. “It’s not like you to keep good track of your money.” His
eyebrows made dark arches over his eyes.

“I’m sure this time,” Stewart said, still not looking at the children. “I just cashed
the check yesterday and put the money in my wallet. I didn’t spend any. My wallet
was in the top drawer.”

Despite the warmth of the day and the brightness of the room, Dicey felt a chill spread
out from her stomach and everything grew shades darker, as if a big black cloud had
just covered the sun. She looked at Sammy.

Sammy shook his head decisively.

James’s eyes were on the floor and his hands were clenched in his pockets. “James,”
Dicey said.

“Whyn’cha ask Sammy,” James said. His eyes were hot and angry.

“Sammy said he didn’t,” Dicey answered. She held on to her temper.

“Then neither did I,” James said.

Dicey looked at Stewart, who still stood in the doorway to his room where the little
kids had slept last night. He looked back at her and she was ashamed.

“Give it to me, James,” she said quietly.

James pulled one hand out of his pocket and opened it wide. A crumpled bill fell to
the floor. “Get it yourself.”

Dicey exploded. “I told you we don’t steal and you just go ahead and do it. And then
you try to lie to me about it. I could kill you, James. You hear me? You’re so smart,
but you can’t even figure out—” She was so angry the words got jammed up in her throat.
“Look what you’ve done!”

James stood with his head bowed. Silence filled the room, a cold silence.

The crumpled bill lay there on the floor. Dicey couldn’t look at the faces of the
young men.

“You’ve ruined everything,” she said. She strode to the window and looked out, pounding
with her fist on the windowsill. She tried to find something to say to James that
would make him fall down onto the floor, that would knock him over and hurt him.

Finally James spoke. “You didn’t yell at Sammy, you didn’t say you wished he was dead.”

“Sammy’s six!” Dicey turned around. “And Sammy didn’t take money, he took food. And
Sammy didn’t take it from someone who’d helped us. Even you can see the difference.”

“He”—James kept his eyes on the floor but he jerked his head toward Stewart—“doesn’t
need the money like we do. He’s got sweaters and guitars.”

“So what!” Dicey hissed. “And who are you to say, anyhow? All I asked you was to do
what I say, only that—and now—”

Maybeth went to James and looked up at him for a minute. Then she took hold of the
hand he had out of his pocket.

“You’re a thief,” Dicey spat the words at James. His hazel eyes flicked up to hers.
“You steal.”

“Big deal,” James answered, from deep within his own anger. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay.” Dicey matched anger to anger. “Okay, if that’s the way you want it. But until
we get to Aunt Cilla’s you will do exactly what I say to do—or I’ll leave you behind.
Do you understand?” James nodded. “Then we better get out of here.”

James nodded.

“Apologize, James,” Dicey ordered.

He had to obey her, so he apologized, looking into the empty fireplace. “I’m sorry.”

“Okay. Let’s go,” Dicey said to her family. She felt sick inside.

“Why?” Windy unexpectedly spoke. He bent down and picked up the bill, smoothed it
with his fingers and held it out to Stewart, who came forward to take it. “As far
as I’m concerned, we found Stew’s money. Right, Stew?”

“No,” Stewart said. “But you did want to borrow it, didn’t you?” He handed it back
to Windy.

Dicey wished they were out of the room and on their way again, on their own.

“Dicey?” Stewart said her name. She looked at him. “What did Sammy steal?”

“Some lunchbags at a park,” Dicey said. “Two. It was different. We needed food, sort
of. He thought we did, anyway. He doesn’t
understand. He did it to help. There was a wallet in one bag, but we took that back.
Sort of. Not just because it was stealing money though. Really because we didn’t want
to have police coming in. I guess James doesn’t understand either. He’s not bad.”

Stewart looked at her and she looked right back at him. James was her brother and
she would have to stick by him; and she wanted to stick by him. How could Stewart
know James? He couldn’t, but Dicey could.

“It does matter, James,” said Stewart.

“Why? We all die anyway,” James said.

“Sure, but you can see to it that you like yourself when you die,” Stewart answered.
“You can be sure you don’t hurt anybody while you’re alive. Especially, you can be
sure you don’t hurt yourself. Are you a thief?”

James shook his head.

“But you stole,” Stewart said. “Who did you hurt? You’re right about me; I’m not rich
but I can go to the bank and take out another twenty. So you didn’t hurt me very much.
You hurt yourself. More than anyone you hurt yourself.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Nothing matters. There’s nothing you can count on—except
the speed of light. And dying,” James said.

“So that’s what it is,” Stewart said. He studied James’s face. “Well that may be true
but it’s not a big enough truth to contain me. I plan to be a man when I get through.
Not only a man, I plan to be a good man.”

“Why?” James asked.

“Because I owe it to myself,” Stewart said.

“Is that all?”

“No,” Stewart said, but he didn’t add anything to it.

“I don’t understand,” James said.

Stewart didn’t answer him.

“Can I learn to understand?”

“Maybe,” Stewart said.

“I’m smart,” James said. “Will that help?”

“Maybe,” Stewart said. “Maybe not.”

James nodded.

Dicey waited for the conversation to continue, but it didn’t, and James just stood
there looking at Stewart as if Stewart were a mountain or something terribly large.
So she began to move toward the door, pulling Sammy with her.

“Hold it,” Windy said. “Where are you going? Dicey? We’ve got breakfast to get and
then Stew’s going to drive you to Bridgeport. That’s right, isn’t it, Stew?” His eyebrows
moved as he spoke, emphasizing his words.

“Of course,” Stewart answered. “Get me some doughnuts and coffee, will you?”

Windy took the Tillermans to the diner they had eaten at the night before. Dicey followed
along, as quiet as Maybeth. She felt as if she was no longer in charge. In a way,
she was relieved to let somebody else give directions and make decisions. In another
way she was angry at these young men for taking over their lives, for telling them
when and where to eat, for leaving her out of the conversation with James.

In the diner, which looked dingy by daylight, Dicey had fried eggs, while the others
had pancakes. She had time now to enjoy the taste of her food. When she had eaten
both eggs, she took one piece of toast and mopped up some yolk onto it.

Never had she enjoyed a meal more. She said so to Windy and he told her she looked
like she’d like to climb onto the plate and roll around in the eggs. Dicey giggled
and said she guessed she might. Windy finished his own breakfast and Maybeth’s. Dicey
took part of Sammy’s pancakes and gave the rest to James, who was never full. They
all drank milk.

When they returned to the room and Windy had given Stewart his coffee and doughnuts,
he said good-bye to the Tillermans. “I’ve got a lab this morning and you’ll probably
be gone when I return,” he said, shaking hands solemnly with each of them.

They thanked him, but he waved the words aside. “Any time,” he said. “It was fun.”
He grinned at them and his eyebrows arched.

Stewart quickly wolfed down the four doughnuts and while he was sipping coffee he
pulled out a guitar and played. The Tillermans sat quietly and listened.

His was not an ordinary guitar, although it looked like one; it had a belly and neck
and six strings like ordinary guitars, but instead of cradling it against his arm,
Stewart laid it on his lap. He held a metal bar to the strings of the neck and plucked
the strings over the belly. The sound this odd guitar made was metallic and round
and slidy. When he reached over for his coffee cup, Dicey asked him what it was.

“A Dobro,” he answered. He explained how it was made and how he played it. Then he
played a slow, mournful melody on it, concentrating hard, biting his lip, leaning
over the instrument and moving his shoulders with the rhythm.

Maybeth stood beside him and watched. “That’s ‘Greensleeves,’ ” she said.

Stewart nodded. “Do you know it? You want to sing it?”

Maybeth sang the old song in her clear voice. “ ‘Alas, my love, you do me wrong, to
cast me off discourteously.’ ”

At the conclusion, Stewart smiled at her. “You do know it.”

“Momma sang to us,” Maybeth said. “We know a lot of songs.”

“What else do you sing?” Stewart asked. He looked around at all of them.

“Play something you like,” Dicey answered him.

“I play blue grass,” Stewart said. “You know what that is?”

They didn’t, so he played a song about a miner’s child who dreamed her daddy would
die if he went to the mines that day, but he went anyway.

“That’s silly,” Maybeth said, when he had finished.

“Okay, then, what about this?” Stewart asked. “ ‘Oft I sing for my friends,’ ” he
sang. His voice was soft as clouds and clear as the sky could be. “ ‘When death’s
dark form I see. When I reach my journey’s end, who will sing for me?’ ”

It was a short song, and Maybeth asked him to sing it again, and she joined in with
him.

When that was finished, he looked at them. “Do you all sing? Like that?”

Dicey nodded.

Then Stewart put down the Dobro and said he had to go to class, but as soon as he
got back he’d take them to Bridgeport. He went into his room and came back with a
guitar case, out of which he took a regular guitar. “You can mess around on these
if you like,” he said. Even after he left, the room was filled with the harmony they
had made, and the singing.

James picked up the Dobro and plucked at it with his fingers. “Dicey? I’m sorry. Really.
I won’t ever do anything like that again.”

“I know,” Dicey said. Her anger was entirely forgotten. “I didn’t mean most of what
I said.”

“You think Stewart is smarter than Louis?” James asked. “I do,” he said.

“How should I know that?” Dicey asked. “I like him a lot better. I like Windy too.
Maybeth?”

Maybeth nodded. She was looking at a book of pictures.

“Sammy?”

Sammy stared out the window. “How long do you think it’ll be? Until we get there?”

“Not long. They said an hour.”

“What’s it like there?”

“I dunno, Sammy. Why?”

“Will Momma be there?”

Dicey looked at the back of his round little head, where the yellow hair stood out
at crazy angles.
No
, her heart said inside her. “I dunno, Sammy,” she said aloud. He didn’t answer, just
stood looking out.

Stewart’s car was a battered old black VW bug. The three little ones sat in the backseat,
crowded together. James sat in the middle because he could see out easiest. Dicey
was in the front seat. “It’s a good thing you don’t have luggage,” Stewart said. “We’d
never fit it in.”

The day had grown hot and muggy. City smells hung heavy on the air. The little car
clattered, like a giant sewing machine.

They made their way onto the Thruway and joined the cars hurtling along there. Stewart
stayed in the middle lane. Cars passed them on both sides.

“I left my map,” Dicey said.

“We’ll get another,” Stewart answered her, without moving his eyes from the road.
“I don’t know Bridgeport at all. Do you?”

“How could we?”

They drove with the windows open. The air roared in their ears. Things went by so
fast when you were in a car, you could barely look at anything before it was gone.
But this area, all concrete and sad little houses, was the kind you liked to pass
by quickly.

Dicey leaned over and said loudly: “I don’t know where we would have slept along this
road.”

“Where’d you sleep when you came to New Haven?” Stewart glanced quickly in the rearview
mirror.

“Behind some stores. In a little park. Once in a carwash,” Dicey told him.

“Then you’d have found someplace along here,” Stewart said.

They went through a toll booth where Stewart paid a quarter, and then after a while
saw signs saying:
BRIDGEPORT
. Stewart kept to the middle lane.

“Aren’t we going to get off?” Dicey asked.

“Not yet. I’m hungry, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Dicey said, “but—”

“I thought we’d go down to Fairfield—it’s only ten or twenty miles on—and eat at McDonald’s
there. I know where that is, and I like going someplace that I know where it is. We
can pick up a map of Bridgeport too, so we can see how to get there, to your aunt’s
house.”

Ten or twenty miles, two days’ walk. Four days there and back. Dicey just nodded.
“If you want to,” she said.

“What I don’t want to do is drive into a strange city without a map,” Stewart said.
He studied the traffic behind him in the rearview mirror and turned on his signal
blinker. “Besides, Fairfield’s pretty.”

“Do you live there?” Dicey asked.

He shook his head. They pulled off the Thruway and onto a four-lane road lined with
low buildings, hung over with stoplights, bleached white by the heat.