red-faced in his apology to Samson or to Bobbi or to himself. Will Junior had gotten up from the floor during Fish’s outburst, dropping the pen set and accidentally kicking it beneath the cot as he batted at the attacking magazines. Now he and his sister were looking at my brothers and me like we were aliens just landed green and mean in their backyard. Everything had gone quiet … and I mean everything. It took me a moment to realize
how
quiet things had got … and how still.
The bus had stopped. The engine had been turned off. The rattling and bouncing had halted. The deliveryman was standing in the aisle, fists on hips, arms akimbo, staring at us all, his lost-dog look replaced now by something a bit more nettled—something a lot more cross.
“She knows she’s in trouble now,”
said Bobbi’s angel in my ears.
She’s not the only one, I said to myself.
Chapter X
I n the deafening silence, the deliveryman looked at us as though deciding what to do about finding baby mice nesting in his Bibles—would it be poison or drowning? Would he feed us to a cat, or stick us in a trap? He looked at us and we all looked back at him, hardly daring to breathe.
The man had removed his wilted carnation and loosened his pink necktie. He had his sleeves rolled up at the cuffs, and when he folded his arms across the front of his faded overalls over his narrow sunken chest, Carlene and Rhonda, the sassing and squabbling ladies, finally showed their faces—or rather, their places.
Carlene
was tattooed in fancy letters on the man’s right arm above a black rose with thorns like nails.
Rhonda
was tattooed on the man’s left arm beneath a red heart with the word
Mom
inscribed inside it. As I watched, the letters of each name eddied and jived; my stomach turned over as the lines began redrawing themselves into the likeness of women’s faces. Their argument started up again.
“You’re his mother, Rhonda. What did you do to make Lester grow up so soft? The man’s got no fight.”
“Don’t blame me! Lester takes after his useless fool of a father, the weak man. But maybe, Carlene, if you didn’t insist that my boy give you every nickel and dime he makes from delivering those Bibles for your cousin, Lester would have a chance at getting ahead for once in his life, instead of suffering to support your lifestyle.”
I watched the two women, animated from the lines of their own names like comic strips in the Sunday funnies come to life, and I felt my head go filmy and fuzzy again. I took a step back, weak-kneed and shaken, trying to remind myself that
this
was not my savvy. This was just my mind playing tricky, tricky tricks on me. I still had to get to Poppa and wake him up, because
that
was what was supposed to happen. I wanted to sit down on the cot before my jelly legs gave out, but Bobbi was still stationed there and Will Junior was standing in the way.
Then Samson was in the corner of my eye like a ghost, his tender touch brushing my back. I no longer felt like I would fall, and I could blink my eyes against the yammering women and begin to scumble their voices to a slightly lower volume by relaxing and taking some deep breaths.
“What are you k-kids doing b-back there?” the deliveryman said, his voice galled and glum yet surprisingly tuneful, like a country western singer yodeling from atop a cactus. None of us said anything, not knowing what to say or who should say it.
“Now, don’t make me repeat myself,” the man said, still musical but jittery, as though talking to kids gave him the jimjams.
“That’s right, Lester,”
said Rhonda from the man’s left arm.
“Show them your backbone.”
“Oh, like he’s got some kind of gumption,”
scoffed Carlene.
“He’ll make a good short show of it before he crumbles. These kids’ll be driving this bus and telling him where to sit in less than ten minutes.”
Swallowing hard, I took a small and careful step toward the man. “Are you headed back down to
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