Greetings from Nowhere (3 page)

Read Greetings from Nowhere Online

Authors: Barbara O'Connor

And then Loretta said it again.
“I wonder what she was like.”
The kitchen clock went
tick, tick, tick
.
Suddenly her father slapped his hand on the table. “I have an idea,” he said.
“What?” Loretta said.
“Why don't we visit some of those places on that charm bracelet?” Loretta's father grinned at them.
Loretta felt her heart leap with excitement.
“Really?”
Her father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and nodded. “Sure,” he said.
Loretta cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “Texas?” she said.
Her father scratched his chin. “Hmmm,” he said. “That's a little far. Why don't we start closer to home?”
“What about the Smoky Mountains?” Loretta's mother said.
Loretta crossed her fingers under the table and waited, watching her father's face.
He squinted up at the ceiling. Then he slapped his hand on the table again. “Sure!” he said. “Let's do it.”
Loretta ran and got the charm bracelet. She held it over the dinner table so the tiny silver bear dangled in front of them.
The silver bear from the Great Smoky Mountains.
Then she hugged her father and kissed her mother and said, “Thank you.”
The kitchen clock went
tick, tick, tick
.
And Loretta's mother said, “Aren't we lucky, Marvin?”
Kirby Tanner snatched a package of red licorice off the
shelf beside the cash register and jammed it into his pocket. He glanced out the front window of the gas station to make sure the old man was still pumping gas, then he took a piece of bubble gum out of the jar on the counter. He unwrapped it, tossed the wrapper on the floor, and popped the gum into his mouth. Then he headed out to the car to wait for his mother.
“Where y'all from?” the old man asked, wiping his hands with an oily cloth.
Kirby didn't answer. He climbed into the front seat of the car and stared straight ahead.
“I
said
, where y'all from?” The old man peered through the window at Kirby.
Kirby took his sneakers off and tossed them onto the floor with all the other junk down there. An empty soda can. A McDonald's wrapper. Cigarette butts. The tattered shoebox that Burla Davis had given him, tied up with string.
“Just some little ole things I thought you might like,” Burla had said that day Kirby had gone over to say goodbye.
Had it been only yesterday?
Kirby could feel the licorice in the pocket of his shorts. It felt hot, like fire, burning through the thin cotton.
When he heard his mother's sandals slapping on the concrete, he looked up. She had pinned her frizzy red hair on top of her head and was wiping her neck with a paper towel.
“Great day for the AC to go out on this piece of junk,” she said, giving the tire of their car a kick.
The old man chuckled. “I hear ya,” he said. “Want me to take a look at it?”
“You gonna fix it for free?” she said.
“Can't do that,” the man said. “I could give you a good deal, though.”
Kirby's mother yanked the car door open and flopped inside, tossing her purse into the backseat.
“Yeah, I bet,” she muttered, slamming the door shut and starting the engine with a roar.
The tires kicked up sand and gravel as Kirby and his
mother sped out of the gas station and back onto the highway. Thick, hot air whipped through the open windows, blowing paper napkins and empty cigarette packs around the car.
Kirby leaned against the door and put his face out the window, letting the wind blow his hair back off his forehead. He stared at his reflection in the side mirror.
He looked mean.
No, maybe he didn't.
Maybe he just
felt
mean.
Mean?
No, not mean.
Mad?
Yeah. Mad.
Kirby felt mad and he looked mad.
No wonder everybody hated him.
His mother lit a cigarette. “Get your feet off the dash,” she said, swatting his legs.
“How much farther?” Kirby kept watching his mad face in the mirror.
He felt his mother's eyes on him. “I still don't know why I had to be the one to drive you up here,” she said. “Seems like your sorry excuse for a father could make an effort to do something useful once in a while.”
Kirby took the licorice out of his pocket and tossed it out the window.
“You know, Kirby,” his mother said, “this is your last chance to straighten up and fly right.”
Kirby glared at his reflection in the mirror. He hated those freckles. He hated that red hair.
“If this school don't whip you into shape, I'm through.” His mother blew a stream of cigarette smoke up to the roof of the car. “You mess up this time,” she said, “you ain't coming back to
my
house.”
Kirby took the gum out of his mouth and stuck it on the mirror, right in the middle of his reflection.
“Virgil don't need this drama every minute of the day, neither,” his mother said.
Kirby made a little snorting sound when she said that about his stepfather. He knew that would make her mad, but he didn't care. He wanted her to be mad. It was her own fault she had to go and marry an old man like Virgil who was sick in bed all the time, so now she had to work two jobs and come home tired every night.
“And Ace,” his mother went on. “How do you think Ace feels about you? Every time you pull one of your stunts at school, you humiliate him.”
Yeah, right, Kirby thought. Perfect little brother Ace. Mama's precious lamb.
“You know, Dr. Lawton said flat out that Ace's bedwetting problem is 'cause of you.” His mother flicked her cigarette out the window.
The air blowing through the car was getting cooler as the road took them farther up the mountain. Every now and
then, Kirby could see a creek through the trees below them. He wished they would stop and wade in it. Or maybe sit at a picnic table and eat bologna sandwiches and drink Kool-Aid.
Play checkers.
Be nice to each other.
But they didn't stop. They kept right on going. Farther and farther from home. Closer and closer to Smoky Mountain Boys' Academy.
A bad-boy school,
Ace called it.
Last stop before prison,
Virgil called it.
Total disciplinary environment,
the brochure called it.
Nestled in the heart of the beautiful Smoky Mountains. Strict but loving atmosphere.
When Kirby had gone next door to show the brochure to Burla Davis, she'd said, “Why, I think this place looks real nice, Kirby. I bet you're gonna love it there.”
She had pointed to the pictures inside the brochure. Boys building birdhouses in a woodwork shop. Boys playing football. Boys sitting all happy and smiling in a classroom.
“This'll be a fresh start, Kirby,” Burla said.
Then she set out a plate of those tiny little doughnuts Kirby loved. When it started to get dark outside, Burla hadn't told him to go home. She never did. She always let him sit at her cracked Formica table in her kitchen with the teapot wallpaper, and she never told him to go home. Not even when he stuck gum up under her kitchen chairs or
made little mountains of salt on the counter. Not even when he said cuss words right out loud in front of her.
“I've lived a long time, Kirby,” she always said. “I've heard all them words before.”
Kirby's thoughts were interrupted by a whirring, grinding, clanking noise as the car began to jerk and sputter.
His mother threw her hands up in the air.
“Oh, great,” she said. “Just what I need.”
Sputter. Rattle. Clank.
She pulled the car to the side of the road. Black smoke drifted out of the tailpipe and floated in the air beside them.
His mother banged the steering wheel with her fist.
“I
told
that no-account father of yours this piece of junk wouldn't make it,” she hollered at Kirby.
“What're we gonna do?” Kirby said.
His mother dropped her head back against the seat and closed her eyes.
“Kirby,” she said. “Do I look like the person who wrote
The Answer Book of Life
?”
“No, ma'am.” Kirby was surprised to hear his own voice sound so small and pitiful. He had been trying hard to act like he didn't care that he was going to that school. Now his voice was about to go and give him away. But then, his mother probably wouldn't notice anyway.
“How should I know what we're gonna do?” His mother jerked the door open and got out.
The car rattled, then let out one big cough before the engine died.
Kirby got out of the car. The ground felt cool and sandy beneath his bare feet. From way down in the gulley below them came the faint sound of flowing water.
“Must be a creek down there,” he said.
His mother walked around the car, glaring at it.
“Maybe we should flag somebody down,” Kirby said, looking up one side of the road and down the other.
His mother yanked the car door open and fumbled through the glove box. She took out a tattered map and spread it out on the hood.
“I don't even know where we are,” she said, squinting down at the map. She traced a squiggly line with her long red fingernail. “Bird's Creek ain't even on this map,” she said. “The lady at that school said it was off Highway 15 near Bird's Creek.”
Kirby wandered to the edge of the woods. Soft green ferns rippled in the breeze. He ran his toe over the carpet of moss beneath the trees. He wouldn't ever admit it out loud, but he was beginning to think it was kind of nice up here in the mountains.
Cool and moist and green.
Not like the hot, red-dirt yard back home.
“Come on,” his mother called. She climbed into the car and turned the key. The engine whirred and chugged, sending
more puffs of black smoke into the air. “Get in, quick,” she hollered, “before this piece of junk dies again.”
As they sputtered up the winding mountain road, Kirby practiced pig Latin in his head.
Upid-stay.
It-nay it-way.
Ut-shay our-yay ap-tray.
All the words that made Ace run crying to Mama.
“Come on, you big piece of junk.” His mother pounded the steering wheel. “Don't stop now.”
But that big piece of junk didn't listen to her.
It stopped.
Pow
.
Rattle
.
Thunk
.
Hiss
.
Silence.
Before Kirby could say a word, his mother was out of the car and storming off up the side of the road, her hands clenched into tight fists at the ends of her stiff, skinny arms. Her sandals kicked up little pebbles, leaving a cloudy trail of dust behind her.
Kirby got out and hollered to her. “Where you going?”
But she didn't answer. Didn't stop. Didn't even slow down.
“What about all my stuff?” Kirby called.
Finally she stopped. She flopped down in the weeds on the side of the road and put her head on her knees.
“You want your purse?” Kirby said.
Her shoulders shook. She must have been crying, but Kirby couldn't hear her.
He felt a wave of mad wash over him. Why was
she
crying?
She
wasn't the one everybody treated like dirt.
She
wasn't the one being sent away 'cause nobody wanted her around anymore.
He reached into the backseat, grabbed his mother's purse, and hurled it in her direction. It hit the ground and burst open, sending lipstick and pens and gum skidding out into the middle of the road.
His mother jumped up and said some nasty things as she gathered her stuff up and jammed it back into her purse.
She shot Kirby a glare and then marched off up the side of the road, her sandals slap, slap, slapping.
Her arms pumping.
Her purse swinging.
Kirby opened the car door and took Burla's box off the floor. He jammed it into his duffel bag and slammed the car door shut—hard—sending an echo down the side of the mountain.
Then he headed up the road after his mother.

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