Bud, Not Buddy

  Herman E. Calloway said, “Sounds like a case of diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.”

  Miss Thomas gave him a dirty look and said, “You said ‘the Home,’ Bud, what kind of a home? Where’s your momma?”

  I said, “She died four years ago, ma’am.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. How ’bout your daddy? Do you know where he’s at?”

  I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She said, “Where is he, honey?”

  I pointed dead at Herman E. Calloway’s big belly again and said, “That’s him right there.”

  Miss Thomas looked like she wanted to smile but she said, “Now, Bud, I’ve only known you for a couple of minutes but I can tell your momma did a fine job of raising you, I can see you’ve had a good, proper upbringing, so I’m kind of surprised that you’re pointing like that.”

  She was right. I brought my finger down. I said, “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  She said, “That’s fine, but it wasn’t me who got pointed at.”

  I told Herman E. Calloway, “I’m sorry, sir.” But I didn’t mean it.

  She smiled and said, “That’s better, we all make mistakes. You know what, Bud, you look like you could use a good meal, so why don’t you sit right there and join us?” She pointed a ring-covered finger at the empty chair direct across from him.

  Shucks, how could anyone enjoy their food with Herman E. Calloway staring back at you?

  But maybe my luck was starting to change. As soon as I sat down, Herman E. Calloway picked up his coffee cup and said, “If you’ll excuse me, this is about where I came in,” and walked over to where the band was sitting.

  He told them, “All right. Someone’s got to give me their seat and go sit with James and Miss Grace—oh, and my son.”

  For a second it looked like a stampede of Dusky Devastators of the Depression, they all jumped up at once and started heading for our table.

  They saw what they’d done, laughed, and Steady Eddie said, “Take my seat, Mr. C., I wanna talk to that kid, he’s got the look of a future sax man about him.”

  He came over to our table.

  Miss Thomas asked me, “Do you mind if I order your supper, Bud?”

  I said, “No, ma’am.” I couldn’t believe you got to order what you wanted, I thought you just sat down and they’d bring you whatever was on the stove.

  A woman came up to the table. She said, “Y’all ready, Miss Thomas?”

  Miss Thomas said, “We sure are, Tyla.”

  Tyla said, “Who’s the little fella, did y’all pick up someone new for the band?”

  Miss Thomas laughed. “They’re getting younger all the time, aren’t they? This here’s Bud and he’s going to be our guest for a while, so I want to impress him with something special.”

  Tyla said, “Well, you know you brought him to the right place. It’s nice to meet you, Bud.”

  I said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”

  She said, “Ma’am? Mercy, Miss Thomas, your guest has some real fine manners. I can tell that he isn’t one of those rude, crude folks Mr. Calloway usually scours up.”

  Steady Eddie said, “Tyla, I am crushed.”

  She said, “Bud, I apologize for mistaking you for a musician.”

  I told her, “That’s OK, ma’am, no offense taken.”

  Miss Thomas said, “Is there any more of that meat loaf left?”

  “Yes, ma’am, sure is.”

  “How about some okra and mashed potatoes too, Bud?”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “And does a glass of apple cider sound good?”

  “Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am.”

  “OK,” she said, “I’ll have the same.”

  Mr. Jimmy ordered a supper that was all the way different from mine and Steady Eddie ordered one that was all the way different from his! No wonder you hear about rich folks going to restaurants once a week, this was great!

  Miss Tyla went away and Miss Thomas started back on me.

  “Bud, I’ve got to let you know that I’m pretty sure that there’s just no way that Mr. C. is your father. Tell me what gave you the idea he was.”

  “My mother did, ma’am.”

  Miss Thomas looked over at Mr. Jimmy real quick, then said, “Sweetheart, did you know a whole lot of people all over the state know Mr. C., did you know he’s pretty famous?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Ah, well. You know what I think? I think maybe your mother heard him on the radio or heard somebody talking about him or saw the band somewhere and told you that Mr. C. reminded her of your father and you misunderstood what she meant, isn’t that possible?”

  “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  She looked at me for a second, then said, “Did she come right out and say, ‘Your daddy is Herman E. Calloway,’ Bud?”

  “Well, almost. But not in words just like that.”

  “Then tell me what the words were like, honey.”

  Uh-oh. It was going to be hard to explain to Miss Thomas about mighty maples and hints from flyers. As long as I kept Herman E. Calloway being my father to myself the whole thing made real good sense, but as soon as I tried to tell other folks about it, it seemed like maybe it was something some stupid kid had dreamed up, like it was wishing and hoping instead of something true and real.

  I looked down at my suitcase and said, “Well . . .”

  And I could tell my luck was changing, before I could say anything else Miss Tyla was at our table with a tray.

  Miss Thomas reached across the table, patted my hand and said, “We’ll talk tomorrow, Bud, I bet you’re sick and tired of answering people’s questions, aren’t you?”

  I said, “Yes, ma’am, I am.” But I did notice that she’d said “tomorrow.” That might mean they weren’t going to try to send me back to Flint right away!

  Miss Tyla said, “Miss Thomas,” and set a plate in front of her, then said, “Mr. Jimmy,” and gave him some food too, then said, “Steady,” and put his plate down so that it rattled a little, then said, “And finally, the young gentleman,” and put a plate crammed with food in front of me!

  It was the best meal I’d ever had, and when it was done Miss Tyla brought me a dessert she called “On the House.” It was a piece of warm sweet potato pie with some white fluffy stuff called whipped cream swopped all over the top of it.

  After I shoved the last crumbs of pie in my mouth and scraped up the last little dribbles of whipped cream, I looked around at the people at my table and I couldn’t help breaking out in a big smile.

  I didn’t see it before, but now that I looked I could tell that Miss Thomas must be the most beautiful woman in the world. When she talked she moved her hands and fingers around and the lights from the ceiling and from the little candle on the table would bounce off all them diamonds and spark up in your eye and make you feel like you’d been hit with some kind of magic fairy dust, then you couldn’t help but smile.

  All the while she’d hum too, but hum doesn’t seem like it’s the right word for what she was doing. Most times I’d heard humming before it was just a excuse for not being able to sing or something people’d do if they didn’t know the words to a song. Uh-uh, that doesn’t fit the sounds Miss Thomas was making, you couldn’t help but look up and wonder if this was a real human bean that was making these sounds.

  What her humming reminded me most of was that feeling you get when you walk barefoot on a railroad track and, for a long time before you can see it, you can feel the train coming right through the bottoms of your feet. Her humming started slow and easy at first, but then, just like you could feel that train shake-a-shake-a-shaking from somewhere far off, after while Miss Thomas’s humming made you feel like something big and strong was passing right by you and everything on you was getting rattly and shaky and about to get shook loose. It made you want to drop your fork and grab holt of something solid.

  From hearing just this little
bit of humming I could understand why Mr. Jimmy didn’t call her a singer, singer wasn’t a big enough word to take in the kind of music that was jumping out of Miss Thomas’s chest.

  And I didn’t notice before how funny Mr. Jimmy was. The stories he was telling about traveling around the country with Herman E. Calloway had us all laughing so much that even the nosy people at all the tables near ours quit eating and were busting their guts and throwing their two cents into the stories.

  The only table that was quiet was where the Dusky Devastators were sitting. It seemed like Herman E. Calloway could make it so you just wanted to sit and watch your hands with a sad look on your face.

  And I hadn’t noticed before how nice Steady Eddie was either. He talked out of the side of his mouth and kept his eyes kind of blinked halfway down, especially when Miss Tyla would come to our table to see if we were all right, which she did a lot. And he was the first person I’d ever seen who could eat and talk and laugh and drink and sneeze whilst keeping a toothpick dangling out of his mouth, no matter what he’d do that toothpick always stayed dancing just below his mustache. And Steady Eddie took his time to show me how to hold my lips and how to put my fingers like I was really playing a pretend saxophone.

  I’m not sure exactly when it happened, if it was when I was scraping up the last little drops of melted whipped cream or if it was when Miss Thomas’s fingers got to flinging all that magic fairy dust, but sometime whilst I was sitting in the Sweet Pea another seed got to sprouting, sometime in that smells-like-heaven place another mighty maple started digging down its roots and grabbing holt.

  One second I was laughing my head off and the next second I was feeling very surprised ’cause something hit me just as hard as Snaggletooth MacNevin had smacked Herman E. Calloway. All of a sudden I knew that of all the places in the world that I’d ever been in this was the one. That of all the people I’d ever met these were the ones. This was where I was supposed to be.

  And Herman E. Calloway could kiss my wrist if he thought he was gonna scare me out of this. It was gonna take more than a grouchy old bald-headed guy with a tremendous belly to run me out of here.

  I was smiling and laughing and busting my gut so much that I got carried away and some rusty old valve squeaked open in me then . . . woop, zoop, sloop . . . tears started jumping out of my eyes so hard that I had to cover my face with the big red and white napkin that was on the table.

  I hadn’t been this embarrassed since I woke up and found Mrs. Sleet looking at my legs. I could tell that everyone in the Sweet Pea had stopped laughing and talking and had started looking at me, but I still couldn’t quit bawling. Momma used to tell me I’d only get one chance to make a first impression and it looked like I was blowing it with the Dusky Devastators of the Depression.

  Shucks. Finally I had to put my face in my arms on top of the table and put the napkin over my head like it was a little blanket ’cause, try as hard as I wanted, it didn’t look like I was gonna get this doggone valve closed any time soon.

  I felt Miss Thomas’s hand come up under the napkin and rub real soft and slow back and forth over my head. She pulled me out of my chair into her lap and wrapped her arms around me and bounced me up and down on her knee. Dangee, I’d never have any kind of reputation with the band now, the only thing I could do was hang on to the napkin and try to make it so folks wouldn’t notice how wet my face was.

  She said, so quiet that I was the only one who could hear it, “OK, baby, OK. I know, sweetheart, I know.” Then she started hunmiing again and with my ear mashed up against her chest it felt like all my bones and muscles quit doing their jobs, it felt like something as big as a steam locomotive engine was chug-chug-chugging right past my ear.

  I wasn’t sure if it was her lips or her hand, but something whispered to me in a language that I didn’t have any trouble understanding, it said, “Go ahead and cry, Bud, you’re home.”

  “NOW, BUD,” Miss Thomas said, “this is what we call Grand Calloway Station.” She parked the car in front of a big house and got out so I grabbed my suitcase from the backseat and jumped out too.

  Even though I was still real embarrassed and quiet about all the crying I’d just been doing at the Sweet Pea I knew I was going to have to start talking sooner or later so I asked her, “How come this house has got a name, ma’ am?”

  She said, “Mr. Calloway said a long time ago that there were so many different people in and out of here at so many different hours of the day and night that it reminded him of that train station in New York City, Grand Central Station. The name kind of stuck.”

  As soon as we got inside Miss Thomas said, “I’ll show you around the place tomorrow, tonight it’s late and we’re all pretty tired, so I’ll take you right up to where you’re going to be sleeping.”

  I followed her up a staircase and we walked down a hall. Miss Thomas opened a door and we went in. On one side there was a bed and a window with some curtains, and on the other side were two little doors. Sitting in the space between the two doors was a chair and a little table like the kind you see in the moving pictures that women use to put lipstick on, it had a long skinny drawer that went across the bottom and a big round mirror stuck right on top. Next to the bed there was a little table with a lamp that had a picture of a skinny little black horse right in the lampshade.

  Miss Thomas turned on the lamp and the horse got all bright, now I could see he was brown. Miss Thomas said, “We’re going to have to talk to Mr. Calloway about where you can put your things, Bud, I don’t think you’ll be able to fit anything in those closets.” She pointed at the two little doors. “There’re a lot of old things in there that he really needs to clear out. For now just put your suitcase there.” She pointed at the table with the mirror on it.

  I said, “Yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am.”

  She smiled and said, “OK, I guess that’s it. The first door in the hall on the left is my room, the second door is Mr. Calloway’s, and the door on the right is the bathroom. Do you think you’ll be all right?”

  I would, except that those two little doors were starting to make me nervous. They looked like they were just the right size for a young Frankenstein or wolfman to come busting out of once all the grown folks left the room, and since there was only one chair in the room I wouldn’t be able to block both of the doors off.

  I said, “I’ll probably be OK, ma’am, but there’s one thing I’m wondering about.”

  “What’s that, sweetheart?”

  I pointed at the doors and said, “Are those locked?”

  I was going to have to try to make a better first impression on Miss Thomas, she had to think I was pretty babyish what with me crying my eyes out before and now being scared of some little monster-size doors.

  She laughed and said, “I don’t think they’re locked, Bud, there’s nothing in there but girl’s clothes and toys.”

  I said, “Won’t the girl get mad if she comes back in here and I’m sleeping in her bed?”

  Miss Thomas waited a second like she had to think. She finally said, “No, Bud, I don’t think you have to worry about that, she’s gone.”

  Uh-oh! That was two things to get nervous about in one sentence! The first thing to worry about was Rules and Things number 547, or something, that was the one about when a adult tells you, “Don’t worry.” The second bad thing was Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things to Have a Funner Life and Make a Better Liar Out of Yourself Number 28, that was a real short one:

  RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 28

  Gone = dead!

  I don’t know why grown folks can’t say someone is dead, they think it’s a lot easier to say “gone.”

  That meant I was going to have to spend the night in the room of a little dead girl, that meant I wasn’t going to be getting much sleep at all. I could jam the chair up against the one door’s knob, and I’d have to scooch the table with the mirror over up against the other one. I don’t buy it when people tell you that closets are the only way a gh
ost or monster can get into your room. Shucks, I bet you they got ways to come up from under your bed, or if they want to get at you real bad, I bet they can even slide out of a drawer that you think is shut good and tight.

  Miss Thomas said, “I’ll see you in the morning, you get a good night’s sleep.” She closed the door and was gone just like that.

  Before you could say Jack Robinson I had the chair jammed up underneath the one doorknob and was trying to figure out the best way to push the dresser thing when I heard some loud voices coming from out in the hall. It was Herman E. Calloway and Miss Thomas going at each other pretty good.

  They argued back and forth so I sat on the bed and put my suitcase in my lap hoping that Mr. Calloway would win the argument and they’d give me some other place to sleep. I can never get why grown folks will put a kid all alone in a bedroom at night. It’s just like they give the ghosts a treasure map and instead of there being a big pot of gold where X marks the spot, there’s some poor kid that’s sound asleep.

  The door banged open and Herman E. Calloway stood there huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf, only with his belly it looked like he’d already eaten the three little pigs. I wasn’t too worried because I could see the toes of Miss Thomas’s shoes in the doorway.

  Herman E. Calloway looked at me sitting on the bed and rushed over to the first little closet door. With one mighty huff he swiped the ghost-blocking chair away and stuck a key in the lock. Then he stomped over to the other closet door and locked it too.

  He kind of whispered so Miss Thomas couldn’t hear. “You’ve got the rest of them fooled, but not me. There’s something about you that I don’t like. I’m going to find out what your game is and believe you me, scamp, you’re going back where you belong.”

  He stuck the key back in his pants pocket, walked out of the room and slammed the door.

  The door wasn’t even done shaking from being slammed so hard when it jumped open again. Herman E. Calloway pointed a finger at me and said, “And you better not do any snooping around this room or anywhere else in this house, I know where every single thing belongs and I can tell right away when something’s missing. I’ve got little secret bells all over everything and when something’s stolen the bell goes off and only I can hear it, so watch your step.”