Savvy (9 page)

“We Beaumonts are just like other people, Will.” I said the words, halting and toneless from memory, like I was speaking the Pledge of Allegiance. “We get born, and sometime later we die. And in between, we’re happy and sad, we feel love and we feel fear, we eat and we sleep and we hurt like everyone else.”

“And?” he said, not letting me wriggle so easily off his pointed question mark of a hook.

“And … nothing. We’ve just got know-how of a different flavor than most.”

“What’s
your
‘know-how’ then, Mibs?” he said, leaning toward me even closer.

“Well, she’d
better
know how to get me some Band-Aids pretty quick, if she knows what’s good for her.” Fish was standing over us, holding on to the backs of the seats to stay balanced and upright on the lurching, bouncing bus. He was looking at me like a storm cloud rising, his eyes full up with meaning.
Don’t say anything
is what he was telling me.
Don’t say anything!

I glared at Fish. Caught between the two boys, and between my own fears of sharing and not sharing secrets, I shrugged my shoulders with a dismissive jerk. “There’s nothing more I can tell you,” I said at last, turning back to Will.

Family rules said: Keep quiet. No one told unless they had to, or unless they were getting married—starting families. It was always best to tell the one you’re settling down with that your children may or may not develop the ability to walk through walls or to play the neighbor’s piano from across the street without touching it.

Poppa had been in the navy, stationed down in Gulfport, Mississippi, when he met Momma at a Labor Day street carnival near the beach. Momma, just seventeen then, was visiting the coast with her older sister, Dinah. Our aunt Dinah wasn’t perfect like Momma. Instead, she had a way of getting people to do whatever she said. With a word from Dinah, babies stopped crying. Surly teenage boys minded their manners and hugged their mothers. Even the stodgiest old codger would dance a jig if Dinah asked. Momma said that Aunt Dinah had stopped a bank robber once, just by telling him to sit down and be still until the police arrived. We all loved our aunt Dinah, but we were sure thankful that she wasn’t
our
momma.

On that day of the street carnival, Poppa still knew nothing about savvy-folk like Momma and Dinah. He and his navy buddies were on leave and having a fine time strutting around in their sailor uniforms, whistling at all the girls. But the moment Poppa saw Momma, he was smitten; Poppa knew a perfect girl when he saw one.

They met at the ring toss game. Momma hadn’t wanted to play, insisting to Dinah that it was hardly fair—she knew she could toss a ring onto a lurching, moving peg perfectly every time and didn’t think it right to flaunt her savvy in such a public way, or in such a public place. Laughing, Dinah insisted Momma play—and that was that. Before long, Momma had a crowd of people watching her win the game again and again—a crowd that included Poppa and his buddies.

After watching Momma nail fifteen tosses in a row, Poppa had squeezed through the crowd, sidling right up to stand next to Momma.

“I’ll tell you what,” Poppa said jauntily into her ear, rubbing his knuckles against his jaw. “If you make the next toss, I’ll buy a ring and marry you.” With a sly and knowing smile, Momma picked up another ring and took deliberate and careful aim. She sighted that peg and put a nice spin on that ring. The crowd went silent as the thin metal circle soared out toward the distant rows of shifting, jerking pegs … then fell short, clattering against the pegs and falling to the ground. Momma had missed, perfectly.

Momma raised one eyebrow and gave Poppa a not-too-sorry palms-up shrug. Dinah told Poppa to shove off in her savvy way, but Poppa just smiled. Poppa never had been one to give up easy, even up against the power of Aunt Dinah. In fact, Poppa never gave up on anything once he set his mind to it, and he told Momma so then and there.

The day Poppa asked Grandpa Bomba and Grandma Dollop for their blessing to marry Momma was the day he learned that some folks aren’t exactly what you might expect. That was the day that Grandpa Bomba made Poppa and Momma six acres of land on which to build a house—shifting all of their new neighbors east and west—and Grandma Dollop caught the young couple a love song in a jar so that they could listen to it whenever they liked. Momma and Poppa always kept that jar up on the mantel, loosening the lid now and again to let the never-ending song fill the house.

Listening to that song always lifted my spirits and I wished I had it with me as I sat there on that bus. Fish and Will were passing a fierce look back and forth like a football, and I worried that they might tackle each other again, right then and there. I was about to tell Fish to sit himself back down, when Lester hit the brakes. The big pink Bible bus heaved and shuddered like a whale caught by the tail, sending Fish sputtering and flailing onto his backside on the floor amidst an avalanche of Bibles and boxes. A horn sounded angrily as a car sped around us where we stood, stopped short in the middle of the dark rural highway.

Turning on the bus’s flashing red lights, Lester leaned on the lever that extended the bus’s stop sign—stalling the few cars traveling on the same lonesome highway. Then he opened the squealing door, stood up without a single word or glance back in our direction, tucked his shirt down into his overalls, and walked off the bus.

F
ish picked himself up off the floor and we all watched Lester climb down out of the bus, wondering what had made him grind to such a sudden halt. Fish, Bobbi, Will, and I all slid into the seats across the aisle in order to look out the cracked or missing windows and see what Lester was up to. I thought for a second that maybe Lester had pushed that bus past fifty-four miles per hour and we’d broken down, but when I saw him talking to a tall lady next to a car with its hood propped up and its hazard lights on, I knew that he’d only stopped to help.

The woman wore a long, coat-like, belted sweater that hung down past the hem of her old-fashioned green and white waitressing uniform. She was bigger and broader than Lester with his narrow chest and caved-in shoulders, and they made a funny pair standing there. Lester moved around the woman’s car, then tinkered and fiddled under the open hood for a short time. Occasionally, a car edged around us despite the stop sign and the bus’s flashing lights. When Lester finally stood upright, he shook his head and pointed back over his shoulder.

The woman contemplated the Heartland Bible Supply bus. When she saw our faces through the broken windows, she smiled like a small woman in a big woman’s body and gave a little wave. Lester glanced up at us as well and his face split into a funny, unexpected grin, looking for all the world like, despite the bickering and fighting and the damage to his bus, the more was the merrier. I think that if Lester had had a tail it would have been wagging. Instead, he hooked his thumbs through the straps of his overalls and rocked back and forth on his heels.

The woman gave her broken-down clunker of a car one good, satisfying kick, then she allowed Lester to lead her up the three steep steps of the big pink bus, where he introduced her to us as though he’d just gotten hitched.

“Kids, this here’s Miss Lill Kiteley and she’ll b-be riding with us as far as Emerald.”

We all looked from Lester to Lill to each other without a word. Fish shook his head and scowled. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing: One more adult to snoop in our business, and another delay to keep us from getting to Poppa. Lester’s smile wavered and his right shoulder danced up near his ear as he registered our unhappiness at the sight of Lill. He cleared his throat and tugged on his loosened, crooked pink tie. The bus was silent. Well,
almost
silent.

“What do you know? Another stray …”
Rhonda scorned from Lester’s arm.

“Lester would take in a rabid hyena, even after it bit him,”
said Carlene from the other.

“You should know,”
grunted Rhonda.

“You’ve always been such an old witch, Rhonda,”
said Carlene in her most graveled tone.

“Well, it takes one to know one, I suppose,”
Rhonda snapped back.

“Hi,” said Lill with another tiny little wave in our direction. “Are y’all Lester’s kidlings?”

Bobbi snorted and moved back to her original seat with a halfhearted humph. “You’ve
got
to be kidding. I would rather have been raised by wolves.”

“Naw,” said Lester, hardly even hearing Bobbi. “These kids—”

“Are old friends of Lester’s,” I cut in before Lester could pronounce us stowaways. “I mean, he’s a friend of the family. He’s giving us a ride, right, Lester?”

Lester’s smile skidded sideways and he scratched both sides of his head at once like that might jump-start his brain and help him keep up—as my quick interruption had caught him off guard. Lill looked back and forth from me to Lester, and I could tell she’d noticed Lester’s confusion. But Lill didn’t say anything, so I just grinned.

Another car honked at us, wanting to pass; the bus was still parked there on the highway with its flashers on and its stop sign extended. The added noise and pester fuddled Lester’s brain even more and I felt ashamed at how easy it was to steer the deliveryman astray.

My own smile slipped away as I pointed back and forth between Fish and me. “Our poppa’s in the hospital down in Salina,” said to Lill with a twist in my stomach. Lill, who was obviously quite a bit smarter than Lester, was looking at me carefully. “Mr. Swan was at my birthday party today,” I continued, trying hard to keep looking the woman in the eye. “The party was at our
church in Hebron
.” I emphasized the last words to prompt Lester, but wasn’t sure he was following my lead.

“Yeah,” Bobbi broke in almost cheerily. “Good old Lester was talking to my father—he’s the pastor there in Hebron—he was delivering some Bibles, and—”

“And when
our
dad”—Will pointed from Bobbi to himself, trying to help as well, but picking up the thread of deception with less delight than his sister—“well, when he found out that our good friend Lester here was headed back down to Salina—”

“He said that Lester should take us all with him,” finished Fish in a flat and final tone, as though that was the end of it.

Lill looked at us all quizzically. I could tell she wasn’t quite believing us. Lester, on the other hand, seemed somehow relieved, as though it suddenly all made much better sense to him why we were on board his bus, even if he didn’t remember things in quite that way.

Lester did his best then to introduce us kids to Lill, since he was now a friend of the family and all. Unfortunately, he didn’t do too well, calling Fish “Trout,” and Will Junior “B-Bill Junior,” and me “Midge.” He got Bobbi’s name right but forgot to mention Samson—or, maybe he hadn’t remembered Samson hidey-holing it under the cot.

“It’s nice to meet y’all,” said Lill with a slow, suspicious drawl. Then she settled down sideways with her legs across the front seat of the bus near Lester, hanging her large white sneakers off the end of the bench like a kid herself, and keeping her back to the window so she could keep us all in sight.

As Lester pulled the stop sign back in and turned off the bus’s flashing lights, Lill’s eyes strayed to the scratches on Fish’s face and to Will’s black eye. “You all look like you need a wash and brush up. Are you sure this isn’t the bus for the bad kids?” she said, eyeing the broken windows with a nervous laugh too small for her body.

“No, just the misfits,” said Bobbi.

Lill smiled. “Then I should fit right in.”

I
’m not sure exactly what it was about Lill Kiteley, but I took to her right away. We all did. Even Bobbi seemed to thaw a bit—I caught her smiling once or twice as Lill yakked and joked around with us kids.

Lill was a lighthearted lady with no tattoos. She worked nights as a waitress in a truck-stop diner just off the interstate near Emerald and had been on her way to work when her rusted-out, dinted and dented, sorry excuse for a car gurgled and gargled and choked on its last drop of gasoline, then died. She had been sitting in her car by the side of the highway for nearly twenty minutes, contemplating sticking her thumb out to hitch the twenty-five-mile stretch between where she was and where she needed to be, when Lester Swan saw her and stopped the bus. Now, as the bus jounced on down the highway toward the interstate, Lill moved to help me clean up Fish’s face, never even asking what had happened.

Lester was having trouble keeping his eyes off Lill and on the road where they belonged. Every now and again, someone in another car would lay on their horn like a shout when Lester drifted out of his lane and into theirs as he twisted his head to glance Lill’s way.

With Lill there, it was almost like having a momma on the bus. She fussed over each of us in turn, cleaning and bandaging Fish’s cheek and checking Will’s eye.

“Here, let me fix this up for you, kidling,” Lill said to me as she tugged gently at the purple ribbons of the flower on my special-occasion dress, unpinning and repinning the ribbons higher up on my shoulder. That silky flower had become rumpled and off-kilter from the day’s ruckus, and my dress was now dirty and wrinkled.

“This is a mighty fine dress you’ve got on,” continued Lill, still concentrating on the ribbons.

“My poppa picked it out all by himself,” I told her, remembering the contented look on Poppa’s face as I’d danced that dress around the living room. I smiled to myself at the memory, then faltered as my lips began to tremble.

As we drove on and on through the dark, I told Lill at length about my poppa and how he’d bought me my dress, not giving up until he’d found me just the one—how he’d handed it to me in a big white box tied shut with stretchy gold elastic that made it feel extra-special. My heart ached as I told her about the World’s Largest Porch Swing, and about the accident on the highway and the cars stacked up like Sunday pancakes. Then I told her about Momma and Rocket and how they were already there, already with Poppa at Salina Hope Hospital. Lill listened to my whole story without interrupting once. But her face showed me that she was hearing every word, as her expression changed from a warm smile to a laugh, to kind and sympathetic concern.