Wish (7 page)

There was no doubt about it. I needed Wishbone more than ever.

 

Eleven

The next day at school, it seemed like the clock had stopped and the day was stuck in a never-ending torture of math and social studies and gym. Even lunch and recess were in slow motion. Finally the dismissal bell rang and I hightailed it to the bus. I plopped down in my usual spot and waited for Howard. He must've been taking his own sweet time because the seats were starting to fill up. The next thing I knew, Audrey Mitchell was making her way up the aisle, cutting her eyes from side to side searching for a seat. I couldn't believe it when she sat next to me, propping her backpack between us so she wouldn't catch any of my cooties.

“You can't sit here,” I said.

She made an ugly face at me and said, “Yes, I can.”

“No, you can't!” I sort of hollered.

She flinched a little and gaped at me. “You can't save seats,” she said. “That's the rule.”

Pineapple.

Pineapple.

Pineapple.

But Howard's dumb trick didn't work because the next thing I knew, I had shoved her right off the seat and into the aisle. The minute I did it, I regretted it. Everybody liked Audrey. I ought to be bringing her candy bars and telling her how nice her hair looked instead of shoving her onto the dirty bus floor. Luckily, Audrey didn't have a temper like me and Scrappy. All she did was yelp a little bit, dust herself off, call me crazy, and move to another seat.

By the time Howard finally got there, my temper had settled down from a boil to a simmer.

He dropped into the seat next to me. “What you fired up about now?” he asked.

I looked out the window so he couldn't see my still-red face.

“I'm not fired up,” I said.

He pushed his glasses up on his nose and went, “Huh.” Then he dug around in his backpack and pulled out half a cheese sandwich. He took the cheese out, rolled it into a ball and popped it into his mouth. Then he did the same with the bread, rolling it into doughy balls.

As the bus made its way through the streets of Colby, I thought about that trap we were gonna make to catch Wishbone, and my simmering anger disappeared. In its place was a swirl of excitement.

When we got to Howard's, Mrs. Odom was on the porch with Cotton, smiling and waving to the bus driver. Howard, Dwight, and me sat on the porch steps while she asked about our day. Did Mrs. Willibey finally get that window fan fixed? Was Dwight's math test hard? Did the PTA sell cupcakes in the cafeteria again?

Then Howard whipped some papers out of his backpack and thrust them at her, grinning. “Ta-da!” he said.

She made such a fuss over those papers you'd've thought they were made of pure gold. I could practically feel my marked-up papers jammed into the bottom of my backpack, weighing heavy on my lap. I wished I had a good one so I could say “ta-da” too.

Howard didn't really need to be my Backpack Buddy anymore since I knew my way around school and I definitely knew the rules. Instead, he kept offering to help me with some of my schoolwork. I always said no, 'cause what was the use? I wasn't even going to be at that school much longer, I reminded him. His face would droop and he'd say, “You never know. You might be.”

I ignored that and stuffed my sorry-looking papers into my backpack like I didn't even care one bit. But sitting on that porch with Mrs. Odom, I sort of wished I had let him help me some.

After we had banana pudding for a snack, me and Howard went straight back to the ramshackle garage behind his house. I swear, that garage looked like it was going to fall right over, tilting sideways with the door hanging off one hinge. We stepped inside and Howard's daddy looked up from his workbench in the corner. When he stood up, I thought his head was going to go right through the ceiling, he was so tall. He had great big freckled hands and fiery red hair and twinkly blue eyes. He smelled like grass and sawdust and gasoline all mixed together.

“Hey, there,” he said, and his big booming voice bounced around that little garage, practically shaking the saws and shovels right off the walls.

I'd seen him at church, mopping his sweaty face with a handkerchief while he belted out “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” but I'd never talked to him. While most folks were drinking coffee and chitchatting in the fellowship hall, Mr. Odom and some of the other men were outside inspecting each other's truck engines or watching teenagers play basketball in the parking lot.

“Well, look at you,” he said to me. “You know, you are the spitting image of your mama.”

My mama?

I hadn't expected
that
.

“I am?” I asked.

“You sure are. Look just like her.”

“You mean Bertha?” I said.

“Naw, Carla,” he said. “Your mama.”

“You know her?”

“Don't really know her,” he said. “Only seen her a time or two.”

“In Raleigh, you mean?”

“Naw, up yonder at Gus and Bertha's.” He brushed sawdust off the front of his shirt. “Seems like just yesterday, but I reckon it wasn't,” he said.

“Oh,” was all I could think of to say, but my mind was racing. When had Mama been at Gus and Bertha's? How come nobody'd ever told me that?

“Old Howie here has been talking about you nonstop,” he said, winking at Howard.

I felt my cheeks burn.

Then Mr. Odom said, “So, y'all gonna catch that mangy old hound, are you?”

“Yessir.”

“That mutt's a rascal. I can tell you that. Been chased away from every chicken coop and garbage can in Colby.”

“His name is Wishbone,” Howard said.

Mr. Odom chuckled. “Well, that's a fine name.”

“He likes me,” I said.

“Charlie's gonna keep him,” Howard said. “But we have to catch him first.”

So Mr. Odom showed us how to staple chicken wire to wood and how to screw on hinges for a door, and before long, we had a trap perfect for catching a dog. When Burl got home from his job pumping gas, he helped us load the trap into the back of his truck and drove us to Gus and Bertha's. My thoughts kept flitting around all over the place, sometimes thinking about Wishbone and sometimes thinking about Mama being up there at Gus and Bertha's. But Burl played the radio so loud none of my flitting thoughts had a chance to settle down in one place.

When we got to Gus and Bertha's, we set the trap up over by the bushes at the edge of the yard. While me and Howard gathered leaves and branches to stick through the chicken wire, Bertha kept Burl busy with all her questions.

Did he think his mama would like some pickled okra from the garden when it was ready?

Was Lenny still in the marching band?

Had his grandmama had that hip surgery yet?

Burl said, “Yes, ma'am,” “No, ma'am,” “Yes, ma'am.”

Finally me and Howard finished and, I swear, you couldn't hardly even see that trap nestled there in the bushes. I ran inside the house and got the pie tin of table scraps I'd been saving. A piece of bacon. A biscuit. Some tuna noodle casserole. I pushed the pie tin way back up into the corner of the trap and said, “Okay, now all we have to do is wait.”

 

Twelve

Me and Howard waited and waited but Wishbone never showed up. Gus had come outside a couple of times and sat with us, chewing on a toothpick and stroking the scrawny black cat curled up in his lap. Every now and then, Bertha would stick her head out of the front door and call out, “Catch him yet?”

We'd put our fingers to our lips and shush her and she'd slap her hand over her mouth and go, “Oops. Sorry.”

When the sun began to disappear behind the mountains and the lightning bugs twinkled out in the garden, Gus stood up in that slow way of his and said, “Want me to drive you home, Howard?”

“No, sir,” Howard said. “I'll walk.”

I wondered if Gus was thinking what I was. That it was liable to take him all night to get home with that up-down walk of his. But Gus just stretched and said, “All righty, then,” and ambled off toward the house.

“See you,” Howard said, and headed up the driveway toward the road.

I sat there by the trap and looked over at Gus and Bertha's little house nestled on the side of the mountain. How come Bertha hadn't told me Mama had been here? Had Mama liked it here? Had she picked pole beans out in the garden with Gus? Had she helped Bertha make bread-and-butter pickles? Had she sat on the porch at night, gazing up at Pegasus? Had she slept in that room with those canning jars?

Finally I got up and went inside. I looked around the living room at Gus's old easy chair, the dusty table covered with magazines and coffee cups, the TV with a bowl of plastic fruit on top. Had Mama sat in that chair? Propped her feet on that table while she watched soap operas on that TV?

I could hear Gus and Bertha out on the porch talking. Every now and then, Bertha's laughter danced through the screen door. Finally I went out there and sat in the lawn chair next to them. Light from the kitchen sent a soft glow over the porch. I took a deep breath and said, “So, Mama came here one time, right?”

The two of them looked at each other. Gus cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. Bertha reached over and put her hand on my arm.

“Yes, she did,” she said.

“Oh.” I watched one of the cats swatting a moth that was flitting around the porch. “When?”

“A long time ago,” Bertha said.

“But when?”

“When you were just a baby,” she said.

“So I came, too?”

From somewhere down in the woods, a bullfrog croaked, sending an echo across the mountains. Below us, crickets chirped in the tangled weeds under the porch.

Bertha gave me a sad-eyed look. “No,” she said. “You didn't come.”

“What about Jackie?” I said. “Did she come?”

“No, Jackie didn't come either.”

“But where were me and Jackie?” I asked. “And Scrappy? What about him?”

Bertha leaned over closer to me. She smelled like talcum powder. “Charlie,” she said. “Your mama came here and left you and Jackie and Scrappy behind. Showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night with a garbage bag full of clothes.”

“Did she just come to visit?” I asked. But in my heart, I knew the answer to that question.

“No, Charlie,” Bertha said. “She just up and left y'all without looking back.” Bertha's voice suddenly had an edge to it. Sharp and angry sounding. I would've never guessed Bertha could sound angry like that.

“Oh,” I said.

Bertha continued, her voice getting sharper and angrier. “When I asked her what in the world she was doing running off like that, she looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I'm tired of my old life. I'm startin' a new one.'”

A flash of heat lightning lit up the sky over the mountains and there was a low rumble of thunder.

“Then what happened?” I asked.

Bertha let out a big sigh. “Her new life didn't last too long.”

“How long?”

“A couple of months.”

“But what happened?”

“I told her what I thought about her new life and I reckon she didn't like it. She didn't want to hear what I thought about a mama who up and leaves her children behind. She stormed out of here like a freight train and hightailed it back to her old life and I haven't seen her since.”

Another rumble of thunder echoed across the valley below us.

“I tried to call but she wouldn't even talk to me,” Bertha said. “I sent you and Jackie cards and gifts but she sent 'em right back. After a while, I gave up.” She patted my knee. “I'm sorry to tell you these things, Charlie.”

I shrugged like it was no big deal but my quivering chin must've given me away. Bertha knelt in front of me and took both my hands in hers and said, “Your mama loves you very much, Charlie. But sometimes, she just loses her way.”

Loses her way? I'd be happy to draw her a map to show her the way back to being my mama again.

I stared out into the dark woods below us and sent my laser thoughts zipping through the trees and over the creek and down into the streets of town to wherever Wishbone was. I wanted him to know how much I needed him and what a great life he would have with me. And I didn't even care one bit if Mama had a hissy fit about him.

“I wonder if Wishbone will come get that food in the trap tonight,” I said.

“He'd be a dern fool dog if he didn't,” Gus said. “And something tells me that dog is no fool, Butterbean.”

This time, when he called me Butterbean, instead of feeling like a baby, I felt a tiny smile tugging at the corners of my mouth even though my insides were twisted up knowing my mama had just up and left me like that.

Then I said good night and went back to my room. I sat by the window and watched the heat lightning. Where was Wishbone? Chasing somebody's chickens? Fighting with that little black dog down by those trailers? Or maybe he was out there in that trap this very minute eating tuna noodle casserole.

I climbed into bed and thought about Mama. What was her new life supposed to be? Was she going to stay here in Colby forever? Was she going to be a schoolteacher or a librarian or maybe open a beauty parlor down there on Black Mountain Road? Was she going to find a new husband who didn't fight so much? Was she going to have new kids and give them cake with pink and purple flowers when they got home from school?

But what was the use of thinking about that? She had gone back to her old life and there she is and here I am, with my family all broken and scattered every which way.

Outside, the rain had started, slow and soft at first and then faster and louder. The wind picked up and blew cool and damp through the screen. Suddenly I sat up, my heart pounding. I hadn't made my wish today! My mind raced, thinking about my list of things to wish on. Too late for stars. No ladybugs in here. No four-leaf clovers or pennies or dandelions. And then I couldn't believe what happened next. From far off in the trees outside the window came the song of a mockingbird. Hearing a bird sing in the rain is on my list of things to make a wish on. So I closed my eyes and made my wish.