Waiting for Augusta (11 page)

“I butchered a whole hog,” I reminded her. “And I just drew a picture that got us a lighter and a spoon.”

“Which you wouldn't have had to do if you hadn't picked the wrong bus. But I won't hold a grudge.”

“Wrong bus? If you'd brought any money from wherever you came wandering from, maybe you could have taken your own bus.”

She frowned. “But I like having company.”

That caught me off guard. I searched her face, but she didn't seem to be joking. “You've got a funny way of showing it. Don't take the urn again. Okay?”

“Fine.” A remnant of the stink eye she'd had when I met her flared up, along with her nostrils. “And don't
you
go trying to stick your nose too much in my business.”

Has to get the last word, doesn't she?
the coal beneath me pointed out.

Don't let her,
suggested a Marlboro patch.

“Fine,” I told her. “And next time you decide one of us can't talk, pick yourself.”

She nodded. “I just might do that.”

I wasn't expecting her to agree. “Oh. Well, okay.”

The sun was starting to head toward setting. It was maybe five o'clock. With the train's movement, the Alabama heat felt cooler and it was downright pleasant, other than a line of dark clouds following behind us at a distance. There wasn't a thing in the world to do but dig out a little sitting spot for all of us and eat the last of the pork and wash it down with the last of the water from my bottle.

Noni and I threw pieces of coal off the train, trying to hit things, and had a gentle Hell's snowball fight with the smaller scraps. She took off her shoelaces and tied knots, showing me a bowline, a clove hitch, a fisherman's knot, and a few others. I told her about Daddy's favorite golfers, the Big Five, letting Daddy interrupt to test me on quotes, and decided my next fake name would be Walter Hagen, Bobby Jones's biggest rival of the day.

She said she'd be Wendy Hagen and told me that if you pressed coal hard enough it turned to diamonds. She made coins disappear from her hands and wouldn't show me how to do it and then plucked the coins from hidden spots. I swear her hands were empty, sleeves pushed back, when she plunged her hand deep down in the coal and came up with a
nickel. I begged to know the secret, but she only winked and said if she told me everything, it wouldn't be magic.

Eventually we quieted down and just stared at the landscape. We passed through a town and Noni waved at a confused driver who was stopped at the safety gates, waiting for the train to go by so he could cross the tracks. Behind him, I saw a general store and a short line of buildings and a large sign that said:

WELCOME, YA'LL, TO GRINK

YOU'LL MISS US IF YOU BLINK

Population
324
187
99

Pulling the road atlas from Daddy's backpack, I opened it to the Alabama page and searched east of where we'd crashed. Nothing.

“Try Georgia,” Noni said, flipping through the atlas.

It took less than a minute to find the smallest of dots. “There it is.” I traced the space between Grink and Augusta. “We've got a ways to go,” I said, shifting around to get comfortable.

We spoke in quieter voices then, and I told Noni about Miss Stone, my art teacher who'd left my school one month ago because the school decided there wasn't enough money
for art or music now that they'd lost so many students to the white-only school. Her job had gotten butchered away, like the school was a pig and art class was hacked off and thrown in the no-good pile. I told her how Miss Stone was the nicest person I knew. Noni told me that my mama was the nicest lady she'd ever known because she'd fed her for free and had given her an extra-big piece of pie and hadn't asked questions.

I hoped Mama was doing all right without me and that she wasn't too worried. I hoped she'd agree that I was doing the right thing for Daddy.

The world was soaked in the prettiest kind of light, and as the sun got lower in the sky, I told Noni how Daddy'd died of lung cancer. “What happened to your dad?” I asked her.

She picked up a piece of coal and rubbed it between her hands. “I'm not ready to talk about it. Okay?”

It was okay, but it wasn't what I wanted to hear and I felt stupid for being so open with someone who refused to tell me as much as I'd told her. She'd said back in Hilltop that she'd be my partner. My friend. But I got the idea that Noni, though we were traveling together, didn't want or need a friend. Not a close one, anyway.

Did you think this girl was gonna turn into a replacement for May Talbot?
asked an extra-big piece of coal.
Nobody can replace May.

I threw the coal piece hard, banishing it for speaking the truth, watching it fly into a field and wondering if it was too late for me to fix things between me and May.

“Don't be mad at me for not being able to tell you the whole truth.” Noni reached her right hand around her front, letting her fingers circle her bruised elbow. “I know you've got questions, but I've got to follow my wandering rules.” She met my stare, her chin shaking a little, maybe from the cars rattling along the rails. “They're all I've got to guide me, okay? That and finding the right sign. Those things are all I've got. Maybe I can tell you more later. Just not now.”

“All right.”

•  •  •

We'd been on the train maybe an hour past Grink. Sunset oranges and reds and pinks weren't too far off, and the wind from the train's movement began giving me the shivers.

“How long do we have before dark?” Noni asked with a yawn. “I'm a little tuckered.”

“I don't know. About an hour, based on the sky. Maybe two,” I said, pleased that I knew something she didn't seem to.

I wondered if Noni and I would be sleeping on the train. Then I started thinking about nights I'd gone to bed late, after waiting up for Daddy. I thought about how I'd shuffle my legs under the sheets, rotating them in and out, in and out, to keep the cloth cool during the summertime night heat.

I thought about hearing Daddy come in and how I'd always wondered whether I should jump out of bed to go see him.

I thought of what a strange feeling it always was, to be right in my house and not know where I belonged: in bed asleep or saying goodnight to my father. I never knew what to do and nearly always ended up sitting on the edge of my bed, waiting. I wondered if that's what Daddy felt like now, stuck in purgatory. Like a boy at the edge of his bed.

And then I thought that Dr. Bartelle at church was probably right. I thought too much and did too little. But I could change. This trip could change me if I let it. It was as I was absentmindedly shuffling my legs in the coal, moving instead of thinking, that I accidentally kicked my father off the train.

I
didn't see where he landed. All I saw was his gray-silver urn fading away, disappearing like brush paint fading into a creek. All I heard was the train and my voice screaming one word, not slow and beautiful and perfect like Daddy had said
Augusta
, but fast and panicked and messy.

Noni jerked out of some spell beside me, her head darting back and forth. “ ‘Wait?' Wait for what? What's wrong?”

The coal was too busy forcing me to a standing position to answer. I scrambled up and it shifted under me, saying
Jump now, jump now, jump now
. My fingers pointed over the side. “The urn,” I managed to whisper. “Noni, how fast are we going?”

Her expression was partly shadowed, but I saw the moment when Noni's horror turned to resolve. Instead of telling me I was crazy, she spread her arms wide and closed her eyes. Then she blinked them open and peered over the side. “Too fast for comfort. Make sure not to hit a tree and jump far enough to clear the tracks.”

Swallowing, I scanned the landscape and saw lights in the distance, spread far apart. We were in farm country of some sort. I didn't even know for absolute sure what state we were in. I'd be jumping into nowhere-land. “Fear of jumping,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Sam Snead said ‘A player should correct one fault at a time. Concentrate on the one fault you want to overcome.' Right now fear of jumping is the fault I want to work on.” I didn't tell her that Sam Snead also said “Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.” “He won eighty-two professional golf championships and—”

“Face your fears, crazy—that's a direct Noni quote. They might not go away, but at least they'll know you're up for a fight.”

Threading my arms through the backpack, I crouched on the edge, counted to three, and was shocked when Noni jerked me backward.

“Geez, crazy, climb down the ladder first! You'll be closer to the ground.” She tilted her head toward the space between two cars.

“Oh. Right.”

She raised an eyebrow, impressed or pitying, I couldn't tell. “I like your enthusiasm, though. Leaping without thinking. Shows loyalty.”

I scrambled down the ladder to the platform at the edge of the car and jumped.

Slamming into the ground, I knew how a golf ball felt when it got smacked off the tee with a driver club, hit for maximum distance. My feet managed to hit first, but quickly crumpled beneath me, leaving my side to blast into the earth and slide across what felt like extra-hard grass. The impact was terrible, but somehow my body knew to tuck and roll, just like I was doing a fire drill in class, not jumping off a moving train. Curling up like an armadillo, I let myself roll over and over again until I came to a halt.

Just as I was ready to attempt standing, I heard Noni moan about thirty feet away.

I hobbled over to her and helped her up. “Come on.”

It took about ten minutes of walking before we caught sight of the urn. Daddy was sitting under a tree, one in a long row stretching out from the tracks, sprawled on his side like he was taking a quiet evening nap.

Fighting the rush of hurt that made my right side feel like it'd been placed on a smoker grate, I ran to the urn and swept it up in my arms. “Daddy? You okay? You still in there?”

Snoring. Sweet, heart-relieving snoring. My dead father had slept through falling off a train. “Noni, where are we?”

There was a tired smile in her sigh. “Benjamin Putter,” she said, “I do believe that we've jumped into a peach orchard.”

I leaned against the small tree trunk and looked up at the branches and leaves. They were darkened by the coming
twilight, but I could make out little balls hanging here and there. She was right. Peach trees lined up like a welcoming parade. Peach trees to my left and right and in front of me. Peach trees as far as I could see.

Abbott Meyers
, one of them said with a wink.
Your daddy just fell into Abbott Meyers territory
.

“Abbott Meyers,” I agreed.

“Who?” Noni asked, stretching her arms up, then touching her toes. “That one of your daddy's Big Five?”

“No, just some made-up boy who played golf and caddied. My daddy told me bedtime stories about him a few times. How he'd climb a tree and stay on the course after caddying if a full moon was due, so he could play golf for free all night long. Stuff like that. There was always a peach in there somewhere, because he said Abbott lived in Augusta, Georgia, and Georgia's supposed to be full of peaches. They were just stories, though. Abbott Meyers is a nobody.”

I was lying to her a little. Abbott Meyers wasn't a nobody to me. Daddy wasn't one for saying any kind of goodnight, either because he was out back, smoking cigarettes and smacking balls into his backyard net every night, or he was out with his buddies, telling tales to the men at Pastor Frank's. So when he chose to come into my room and ask if I wanted a story . . . well, those evenings were maybe the best, most easy I'd ever felt with him. I soaked up every word and stockpiled Abbott Meyers stories in my head the way our
neighbor Mrs. Grady stored air tanks and canned ham in her basement bomb shelter.

“Sounds nice. My daddy was too tired from work most days to read me books, but he always let me stay up late with him while he watched too-loud television.”

I shook away memories and rummaged through the backpack, coming up with the road atlas. I looked down at the slumbering ashes and was glad Daddy wasn't up to see the sun set on the Wednesday before the Masters began.

Time was running out.

“We need to find a road and figure out where we are,” I said. “We'll walk through the night.”

“Not a chance.” Noni cracked her back. “Wandering's no good if you do it in the dark. Let's find someplace to sleep.”

At the rate we were going, we'd miss the entire first day of the Masters tournament. And if we couldn't make it there by the second day, there was a chance that Hobart Crane wouldn't make the cut for weekend play and Daddy would miss being near his favorite player on the tour. “No. We need to find a road.” I put Daddy in the backpack and started to pick it up.

She stuck a finger right on my nose and shoved the backpack to the ground with her free hand. “Listen, my daddy went to Georgia six times for work, and every time I asked him to bring me back a Georgia peach. He always came back empty-handed, saying the peaches weren't ripe
yet.” She held both arms out wide. “And now I'm in Georgia, surrounded by peaches. We
have
to stay. Just one night.”

Her voice was talking to me, but her eyes were on the orchard, scanning over the trees like she knew she was meant to be among them. “It means we're on the right path. I'm going to find him, Benjamin Putter.”

“Not in a peach orchard.”

Noni sighed. “I didn't say I'd find him here. I said this was a
sign
. Us landing in a peach farm is a sign for you, Benjamin Putter, with those peach stories your daddy told. And it's a sign for me, too. Not
the
sign I'm looking for, but one that we're on the right track.” Reaching a hand out, she slapped the backpack. “Some of us aren't lucky enough to have talking urns to guide us, so we got to go with instinct. I swear, you are the most faithless runaway I've ever met.”