The Adventures of Jack and Billy Joe by A. Jeff Tisdale Page A

Garner’s house?” he wondered, not knowing whether or not to continue up the winding driveway to her house in the woods.
    “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.” A louder scream penetrated the evening air. He almost bolted but told himself, “I’ve gotta deliver her paper. How would I explain it to Mrs. Whitehead if I didn’t?”
    He eased on up the tree-lined driveway slowly, trying to determine what was going on at the house. As he rounded the last curve in the driveway, he saw several cars parked in the yard of the house. That was unusual because Mrs. Garner didn’t even drive a car, much less own one.
    There were people sitting on the porch and others walking in the yard.
    There was another scream and one woman walking in the yard yelled, “Oh my lord, what are we gonna do?”
    Two men on the porch answered, “Amen!”
    Jack eased his bike on into the yard. He saw someone he knew. Willie Mae Moats was standing next to the porch steps with her arms folded, looking up at the sky.
    Pulling his bike up next to her, he asked softly, “Willie Mae, what’s goin’ on?”
    “Mrs. Garner died, Jack,” she answered. “We’re havin’ her wake.”
    “Oh, I sure am sorry,” Jack said. “Here’s her paper.”
    He handed her the paper and rode off down the driveway to the road.
    For the next thirty minutes, it seemed that the hair on the back of his neck was standing up.
    After delivering the papers to the jail, Jack had the easy part—delivering to those houses on the nice paved streets around the downtown area. The only one that was tough was the Bynum house. It was out at the edge of town where the pavement ended and on top of a hill on a curve. It was a little work getting up the hill but coming back down was easy. You just hung on and coasted.
    In the downtown area, Jack left his bicycle at the post office, which was on the end of the “T” streets of the small downtown area. He carried the canvas paper bag by its strap over his shoulder and walked from store to store leaving a paper in each. They all subscribed. At Mr. Batch’s newsstand, he left ten papers. Mr. Batch would resell them to people on the street. Mrs. Whitehead gave him a special price so he could make a little on each paper. His newsstand was built into the large entranceway of the old hotel, long since closed. He was in a wheelchair from, Jack had heard, an old war wound.
    By the time Jack had finished delivering in the downtown area, it had begun to sprinkle rain. He got out the yellow slicker that was tied to the back of his bicycle seat and put it on, leaving the hood down. He would put that up, he decided, if it really started to rain.
    He put the canvas newspaper bag back into the bicycle basket and mounted the bike to continue his route. He made sure the front skirt of the slicker covered the newspaper bag to keep the papers dry. The worse complaints you get are when the papers get wet.
    The rain slowed him down. On those houses that didn’t have a porch, he had to walk up to the house and put the paper behind the screen door.
    He moved as fast as he could up and down the streets east and west, moving slowly south toward the junior college.
    By the time he got to the hosiery mills, he could smell the wonderful odors from the junior college dining hall. That’s pork sausage, he thought, and they gotta have biscuits.
    When he pulled into the junior college gate he also pulled his hood down so the rain could soak his head good.
    His first deliveries were in the dining hall and he wanted to go in there looking like a drowned rat. He had found that if he looked pitiful enough, they would give him something good to eat. Tonight, it just had to be a biscuit with sausage.
    He parked his bike under the little entrance roof and entered the kitchen’s back door. There were six women working in the kitchen to feed the junior college boarding students. They all looked up as Jack came in the door.
    “Oh, you poor baby,” one of the women