Lunch-Box Dream

  “When is our bus going to leave?” Bobby asked his mother, knowing the answer, but wanting to show how bored he was, and wasn’t there something she could do? But she didn’t answer his question. She was reading a newspaper someone had left on the lunch table. The ticket man returned. The clock had barely moved.

  She put the paper down. “Boys, I want to warn…” She paused, ruffling the newspaper. “Never mind. Nothing.”

  “Mom?” said Ricky.

  She didn’t look up from the newspaper that she kept lining up with the edge of the table. Bobby’s mind swam with the headlines. “Manhunt…Negro Youth…Prophet…Rape…Shotgun…White Teenager…”

  “Nothing,” she said finally. “It’s raining at home. Oh, and Daddy will be there when we get back. That’s all.”

  So that was it. His father was waiting at home. She’d tried to hide it by saying it casually, but that’s what she was warning them about. He was mad again. Even home was not a place to be.

  More minutes of silence.

  Bobby shivered in the heat. “When is our bus going to leave?” he asked stupidly.

  His mother shot a look at the clock on the wall. “We can board in thirty minutes. A little less. Don’t you have to go to the bathroom?”

  “No.”

  He was worried that if he saw a toilet he would have to throw up, and he didn’t want to. At least the bus would be moving, air would come in on them. It would be hot air, but it would be moving. He needed to get out of there. He was a thief. He was mean. He was lucky and he had no right to be. He hated his hitting father. He hated history and the Civil War. He was dumb and unfinished, a dirty little boy, and everyone in the room, everyone everywhere, knew it. He counted the lines on the schedule. Thirteen stops from Atlanta to Cleveland. Two days. It would never end. They would never get back home. He would be sick and would never see his room again. He hated the room he shared with his brother, and his father would be there, typing in the den, ready to burst out, but there was nowhere else for Bobby to go.

  He wondered if the bathroom was occupied in case he had to vomit. There it was, the men’s room, and it said white over the door. He thought of what he did in there and none of it seemed white. He thought of the smell from the motel bathroom when his mother was in it. He saw another door through the partition. colored.

  The schedule again. His vision was darkening, as if he were staring out light-headed from under a deep hood. The first stop was what? Marietta. Then Dalton then Chattanooga. He hated Chattanooga. The name sounded like someone vomiting. His armpits were souring with smell. Down on the list was a stop called Cleveland, only it was Cleveland, Tennessee. And if they called another city Cleveland, you could bet it was far away from the real Cleveland. They would never get home. Never. All the miles ahead. Two days of miles.

  Heat began to creep up the sides of his face from his neck to the top of his scalp, and his cheeks burned, while his whole head now felt suddenly chill and heavy. He breathed in, but the air in the room was close and foul and thickly warm.

  He lowered his nose into his glass and breathed in the plain no-scent of tepid water. It didn’t help. Running his hand over his damp scalp he felt his hair bristle. A shiver ran down his spine. Was he going to pass out? He slid out of the booth and stole across the room, trying with every fiber not to vomit or faint.

  “Bobby—”

  He didn’t answer, but pushed quickly through the restroom door. When he entered its coolness—he guessed it had been empty for some minutes because it didn’t smell like he expected—the burning in his stomach and face lessened. He closed himself in a wooden stall and waited. Looking down into the bowl, but not leaning toward it, he felt nothing, not even the urge to pee. Good. He might not be sick after all.

  Outside the stall, he ran his hands under the cold water and splashed his face. That was better. There were no towels, cloth or paper, so he dried his cheeks on his shirt shoulders and stood staring at his face in the mirror. He hated the fat dumb thing. His eyes were pale green and weak. Not weak of vision, but of the thing that made eyes truthful. He remembered his father’s eyes when he slapped him for crying. He hated those weak eyes, too, but forget them. His face in the mirror now was mean and weak in its own way. He was a shape of dough, a blob, a thing unfinished, still waiting to be made. He was empty, unfilled.

  His hands were dry now. He turned.

  The door pushed in at him, and a big black shape with deep brown eyes stepped nearly on top of him. Bobby froze, there was nowhere to go, and felt the heat rise in his cheeks again and in the hollow of his throat. Beyond the shape, in the waiting room outside, he saw his mother standing. “Bobby,” she said quietly.

  “If you’re done,” said the big black man, and he pushed past Bobby and entered the stall with a groan.

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said when they were outside. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see the sign.”

  “Finish your sandwich,” she said. “It’s almost time.”

  Twenty-Nine

  When he sat again, he felt Ricky’s eyes on him but didn’t return the look. He imagined an expression of amusement or anger.

  The sandwich was tasteless. Taking a small bite, Bobby turned to see the uniformed man move back from the counter window, his face hidden for a moment as he worked on things behind him. The sound of papers and something ticking.

  Footsteps at the street door. Bobby looked out to see a long yellow car drive away and, as if it were possible, felt more heat pour through the door from the white air outside. The ticket man looked up from what he was working on. The ticking stopped.

  A brown man eased into the room with them. He wore a dark brimmed hat set a little to the side. He stepped into the waiting room as if he knew everyone was looking at him. Bobby wondered why the man hadn’t entered the bus station through the door that said colored waiting room over it. He would have to, wouldn’t he?

  “There was a sign,” the brown man said to the ticket man. “At the colored window. It’s closed now.”

  “Be with you in a few minutes,” said the ticket man, turning back to his work. “Please wait on the street until I call for you.”

  “Sir, we telephoned before and hurried to get here in time to catch—”

  The white man looked up. “Until I call for you. You’re not hard of hearing, are you, son?”

  “No, sir,” the brown man said, stopping.

  “I thought not. Please? Outside?”

  The man tipped his hat slightly and stepped backward through the doorway to the sidewalk outside. Bobby watched the others move to him. Were they a family? Some were very black. Some were regular. There were two women, one younger than his mother, one older, then the man with the hat, and an older man, with short gray hair, leaning on a cane. They stayed in a cluster outside, until the older woman leaned to the window to read the chalkboard schedule over the top of Bobby’s head. The younger man with the hat took a step up behind her and looked over her shoulder at the schedule. They were so close to him now.

  The young woman stood a bit apart from the others. Her skin was like light coffee. She seemed to Bobby as if she were afraid, her eyes darting at everything, settling on nothing, always moving. The lunchroom window was open and he heard their low quiet talk.

  The older man, wearing dark pants and a dark shirt and beige vest, half unbuttoned, appeared in the doorway. His skin was blacker than the younger man’s. Bobby felt his neck stiffen.

  “Is that the same man?” he whispered to Ricky.

  “Who?” his brother said, turning to the window.

  “That one.”

  “Same as who?”

  “The old man at the shack when Mom crashed into the garbage can and he came out and we took off. Isn’t it the same man?”

  “Him?” said his brother. He adjusted his glasses, blinked several times through them, looked closely at the older man. For a moment it seemed their eyes met. He looked away. “You’re nuts.”

  “It sure looks like him.”
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  “You’re completely nuts. This one’s taller than the guy who came out of the house. And younger.”

  Maybe, but Bobby couldn’t stop looking at the family. They weren’t like the chocolate men on his street. They were so much closer, for one thing. They talked softly to one another, moving their hands. The words were too low for him to make out.

  He looked at the schedule again, saw again how many stops there were before reaching Ohio, and his throat tightened.

  There were footsteps on the platform outside. The young brown man was striding down the platform ahead of the others. The short older black woman walked past the platform door, a heavy oak door with a glass window, carrying a cloth shopping bag in each hand. The one in her right hand bulged with something and caught the door on her way past. It made a sound. Then the four of them were together at the open door of the waiting bus. Then they walked up the steps into it.

  “What?” Bobby whispered. His chest spiked.

  He saw the four shapes inside the bus pass down the aisle and sit down in seats near the window. The man with the hat took his hat off.

  “Mom, that’s our bus,” Bobby whispered. “Those people took our seats.” He tugged her arm. “Mom, they took our seats. Our stuff is in there. My suitcase is right there. That’s our seats. You said it would be safe—”

  His mother rose from the table, her face paling. She glanced over at the ticket man, but he had already dropped what he was doing and leaned over the counter toward the platform door. “Hey. No, no,” he said. “No, no. You can’t—”

  “Hey!” A louder voice this time.

  It was the driver of the bus, who had been smoking at the counter with a cup of coffee in front of him. Now he twisted around, and now he was up off the stool. “Hey, get outta there!” he said, moving quickly through the tables toward the door, trailing cigarette smoke behind him. He jumped up the bus steps and yelled loud enough for the lunchroom to hear, shooing the family out of their seats like cats. “No you don’t. No you don’t. That’s…we have whites on this bus. We’re full up. This ain’t no sit-in. Get offa here—”

  The family was on the platform again, and his mother sat back down.

  “You don’t understand, sir,” Bobby heard the younger man say as he followed the driver into the lunchroom, but stepped back just inside the platform door, holding his hat. “You see, sir,” he started, when the ticket seller stepped out from behind the counter and in one, two, three steps, he was there and slipped behind the man, blocking the way to the platform. The brown man turned toward him suddenly, his mouth open, but saying nothing. The ticket seller watched the man’s hand reach for the knob on the door to the platform, and he slapped the brown hand away from the knob.

  It was not a hard slap, and the ticket seller seemed as surprised as the man whose hand he had slapped.

  The room went quiet, and no one moved. On the platform beyond the windows the young woman trembled on her feet, one hand over her mouth, watching the three men.

  Bobby knew she was afraid of something about to happen. He felt his neck turn cold and clammy.

  The young man lowered his head and repeated, “Yes, sir, but you don’t understand, sir—”

  “What don’t I understand, sir?” the ticket man said, no longer surprised at the slap but looking now as if he might do it again.

  “It’s about our Jacob—”

  “That’s not your bus,” the driver said. “That’s this people’s bus,” he said, waving his hand into the lunchroom. “They paid for their seats, and the bus is full because of the strike. Maybe you heard of the railroad strike where you come from?”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve heard of it, but you see we called about seats, and they said—”

  “They are going back up north, and their seats are on that bus, which is full because of the strike.”

  “I know about the strike, sir,” the brown man said. “But we need to get to Dalton because our son is missing—”

  A smirk on the driver’s face. “You all have the same son now?”

  “No, sir. My son. We called before. And Mrs. called. She talked to you, and there are seats—”

  The ticket man was almost laughing now. “I don’t know who your Mrs. is, but this bus is full,” he said. “Didn’t you hear us? You can’t get on this bus. You can take the next bus. It leaves in three hours. You know what three hours is?”

  “But we have seats for now—”

  “This—bus—is—full!”

  Ricky stood up from the table and stared at the three men.

  He stood up and stared and stepped toward the men.

  The room went electric with dark eyes. All the people at the other tables turned from looking at the group of men to look at this boy who stood up. No one spoke. Bobby was sitting right next to him but didn’t stand. Ricky took two steps toward the brown man, the ticket man, and the driver. He didn’t even look like he wanted to, but that’s what his body made him do. Just the movement, the only thing in the lunchroom to move, and his face, his shiny glasses, looking directly at what was happening, made the men pause. The two white men turned their attention to him.

  Ricky took another step.

  Bobby didn’t know what his brother was doing.

  From across the room, the ticket man waved his finger at Ricky as if marking the figure “1” on a chalkboard. His mouth was open, his features twisted as if he were going to object, but he said nothing, just marked the air at his brother’s face.

  Bobby understood. The man wanted his brother to sit down.

  What happened next was that a door opened and a man in a blue cap appeared from an office behind the counter. He must have heard the raised voices. Ricky kept looking at the men by the door, not sitting down, poised as if to take another step, his back heel lifted off the floor, but not taking the step. His mother stared at her son, her face dumbstruck.

  “Ricky, sit down—”

  “No,” he said softly.

  Bobby glanced up at the clock, at the lunch tables, at the brown faces on the platform looking at the younger man, then at the clock, then at the man’s face, then at his brother’s face.

  The man in the conductor’s cap wove through the tables to the group at the door. “So…” he began.

  He spoke quietly to all of them one after another, talked over their talking, quietly, insistently, listened to the two white men, then to the brown man, then to the older woman with the bags, which she had not put down when she came in from the platform, and suddenly there was a clipboard now. The older woman was crying solemnly, softly, though Bobby heard her drawing huge wet breaths, and using her arms to help her talk. It was musical when she spoke. Bobby glanced beyond their little group to the bus steps and the younger woman with skin like coffee marked by streaks of tears. Her face just then was one he could imagine watching the Lincoln train pass in the night. She held her hands close to her mouth almost as if she were praying, just as she might have when the wind-stirred bunting drew by. Watching her, even for a second or two, he felt the blood drain from his face as if he had done something wrong to look at her, and he had to turn away.

  The ticket man was pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the easel or the clock, saying, “But the later bus at three—”

  “But you see…” the man with the hat in his hands said. And the word “Dalton” came out again. And the name “Jacob.”

  The conductor hushed the ticket man gently and, as he spoke, put one hand on the brown man’s sleeve. The brown man did not move his arm from under the white man’s hand, but turned to the young woman, who was inside the lunchroom now, and she to him. Her face was like polished stone in the rain, her eyes full of crying, but her mouth was closed and her chin up.

  “So,” the man with the cap said finally, pulling away from the group. He then tugged something from his pocket. It was a watch. He went to one lunch table, then to another, and a third, nodding here and there, speaking quietly and using his hands as he spoke. After approaching a
fifth table, he said, “Thank you…”

  Ricky, who had been stock-still, relaxed a little now. He didn’t move forward or back, just relaxed; his heel touched the floor.

  “Sit down,” said his mother. “Ricky, sit down. Your sandwich. Sit down.” He didn’t. He watched the group by the door.

  The conductor faced the room. “We’re going to start boarding now,” he said over the tables, looking at Bobby and his family, at their plates, their food, at the others. “We’re going to start boarding now.”

  Thirty

  The third man had done this: found a couple and a single man and woman alone who agreed to take the later bus. The remaining passengers would move up, and there would be room for the black family in the rear. The third man had worked it out to find four seats for them.

  Once in his proper seat, his suitcase on the rack above him, Bobby hoped that the incident with the Negro passengers was over. The Negro passengers, he thought, as he rehearsed his telling of the story to the Downings next door. He wouldn’t call them chocolate this time, though he wondered why they needed to be on that particular bus and what the end of the story would be. Sitting sideways and glancing back, he saw the two men, looking afraid and angry, whisper to each other, while the older woman fussily arranged her bags at her feet. The younger one sat between them, her eyes staring blankly ahead, unable to stay dry.

  When it finally roared alive and left the terminal, the bus was beyond hot, a tin box of old heat. And there was the bad smell of human gas floating past him every few minutes. Bobby tried to guess who the offender was, but no one looked back as if they cared who was smelling what, so he leaned his face against the open window to catch what fresher air there might have been, but the bus rolled through one hot street after another as slowly as the old Chrysler had moved through the streets near his home the day they left.

  Thirty-One

  Hershel

  “Sing,” she said in my ear after a half hour of no words.