by Wayne, Jimmy
We loaded up the car with some clothes and a little bit of food and headed west, traveling from North Carolina toward Oklahoma, where Tim said he had some relatives. We were like Bonnie and Clyde with a kid, living in that car along the way, sleeping at rest areas and dodging the law. A few days later we arrived in Del City, Oklahoma, at the home of Tim’s relatives, whom Mama and I had never met. From the way they regarded Tim, I wasn’t sure that he had ever met them before either. They were an elderly couple—very nice but cautious. Even I could tell they were afraid to have us in their home.
They allowed us to stay for a few days before telling us we had to leave. Tim didn’t argue. We loaded up the car and headed south to Waco, Texas. We spent the next few weeks living out of the Oldsmobile, driving aimlessly from one town to another. Being cooped up in that car for weeks made everyone grouchy.
The Oldsmobile used almost as much oil as it did gas, so someplace along the highway in Waco, Tim pulled into a park and changed the oil on the ground while I took a long walk. I walked by the river, then visited a thrift store, where I bought a baby blue T-shirt with airplanes printed on the front. The shirt cost me twenty-five cents.
When I got back to the car, we drove to the Waco Salvation Army mission, where we checked in and spent the night. Mama went to the women’s side of the facility while Tim and I stayed in the men’s quarters. We were each given a Ziploc toiletry bag and escorted to our sleeping quarters to unpack, then to the chow hall. After having dinner with the other homeless men, we headed to the bedding area and prepared for a shower.
I stepped into the shower area alone, peeled off my clothes, and turned on the hot water. That’s when I noticed a big man loitering nearby, leering at me. As far as I could tell, there were no other men in the shower area, just the big man and me. Instinctively, I covered myself with my hands. For a fleeting moment, I wished that Tim were nearby.
The big man edged closer and said, “I saw you sleeping on the ground, then on the hood of the car at the rest area the other night. Those fire ants are bad, aren’t they?” He said that he was a truck driver and that he had parked his truck in the same rest area.
I didn’t respond. But he was right about those ants. We had slept on the ground a few nights previously, and the ants were so bad, I crawled onto the enormous hood of the Olds 88 and slept there. But I wasn’t about to engage in a conversation with him. He finally left the dressing area, and I took a shower. The entire time I was under the warm water, I feared that the man was going to come back into the shower area before I finished. I quickly scrubbed, rinsed, and dried off. It felt so good to be clean.
I crawled into a bunk bed, surrounded by homeless men in other bunks. I didn’t know where Tim was, so I lay quietly, trying not to be noticed with the sheet and blanket tucked under me on both sides. Although being wrapped up like a mummy made me hot and sweaty again, I felt safer and eventually fell asleep.
Early the next morning, the Salvation Army staff rushed everyone out of the mission. They weren’t being rude; they had to prepare for the next batch of vagrants who would soon arrive. Tim and I reunited with Mama, and I was so glad to see her. We stashed our belongings in the backseat of the car, and I shaped them into a little cubby where I could sleep.
We drove eastward all that day and on into the evening. Mama and Tim weren’t getting along well and were barely talking to each other. I couldn’t tell if they were mad at me, angry with each other, scared, or simply in deep thought. When they did speak, they seemed to be scheming, talking in low tones, making me even more uncomfortable.
I nestled into the safety of the cubby I’d made from dirty clothes in the backseat, and wind streamed in through the open windows as the big orange sun set in the Texas evening sky. Occasionally our headlights caught the eyes of a deer grazing alongside a long, lonely back road. Music played at low volume on the car radio. Had it not been for the extreme tension, we made for a tranquil scene.
Mama heard something on the radio that piqued her interest. She leaned over and turned up the volume louder and louder. A song called “Venus” was playing on the radio, and Mama started singing along really loud, “I’m your Venus,” clapping her hands and moving her shoulders. To my surprise, Tim joined in singing, swaying his upper body from side to side as he drove.
I scooted up to the edge of the backseat, put my elbows on top of the front bench seat, and bobbed my head to the beat of the song. The three of us sang and danced the entire song. It was the most exciting three minutes we’d had in more than a month out there on the road.
But as abruptly as the fun began, it stopped. When the song ended, Tim reached over and slapped off the radio. He stared straight ahead. I quickly sat back in the cubby in the backseat, and Mama went back to staring out the passenger side window. For nearly three minutes, we were a happy family, enjoying the music. Then it was over.
We drove late into the night until we found another rest area, where we could sleep. The following day was business as usual but at a different rest area. We were getting short on money, so Mama stuffed clothes under her shirt and pretended to be pregnant. Tim popped the hood and pretended to work on the engine, complaining about the car to anyone who passed by at the rest area. “What’s wrong with your car?” someone always asked. He told people passing by that we were having car trouble and that his wife was pregnant and we needed food and fuel.
Inevitably, before long some kindhearted Good Samaritan took the bait. Seeing Mama in the front seat with her big belly, the benevolent soul believed she was pregnant. And seeing me in the backseat, looking mournful and sullen, sealed the deal.
Sometimes Tim and Mama worked the shtick several times at the same rest area. Compassionate, sympathetic people gave them money every time.
Sometimes we stopped at churches along the way, and Mama and Tim put on their show. Some churches had rules for what they could do to help passersby. Many didn’t and simply gave us food out of their food pantry or benevolence ministries. We never attended these churches’ services, but we took advantage of their kindness.
On more than a few occasions when we stopped for gas at a country gas station, Tim instructed me to fill the gas tank while he sat behind the wheel. The moment the tank was full, I slipped back into my cubby, and rather than going into the gas station to pay, Tim floored it. Taking money from generous strangers, begging for food from compassionate churches, and driving off from gas stations without paying for the fuel—it was just another day of life on the lam.
I HAD FALLEN ASLEEP AS WE DROVE BUT SENSED THAT IT was dark and late at night when I felt someone shaking me. “Wake up,” a voice said gruffly.
I opened my eyes and saw Tim staring at me.
“Get out of the car and get your clothes,” he ordered.
I had no idea where we were. Originally we had started out from North Carolina, heading west to Oklahoma. Then we had turned back southeast, driving through Texas. When I had fallen asleep that night, we were in Texas, heading east toward Florida. I crawled out of the backseat and stood up in a dark parking lot. Looking around, I saw a neon sign on the building: Bus. A billboard near the building read Trailways.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and noticed for the first time that Mama was standing behind the car, leaning against the trunk. I realized that she was crying, so I asked, “Mama, what’s wrong?”
When she saw me, she opened the trunk. “You need to get your things out of the car,” she said.
I didn’t know what was going on, but I obeyed. I nervously walked around to the back of the car and pulled out my two small boxes that were tied together with a string. In addition to my clothes, inside the boxes were my most precious possessions, some of my drawings, some poems I had written, and most precious of all, my letters from Mama while she had been in prison.
“Do you have any money, Jimmy?” Mama asked.
She knew I always had money. I had worked to earn survival money from the time I was ten years old. As a kid, I went door to
door in town, asking folks, “Is there anything around your house that you need done? Any work that I can do?” Sometimes I did the same with stores or businesses. So I always found odd jobs around town, whether it was cleaning up trash, mowing grass, or any dirty jobs they needed done. I saved my money because I never knew when Patricia or I might need to buy food or have a few dollars for emergencies.
“Yes, Mama,” I told her naively. I looked in a leather pouch that Mama’s former husband Robert Davis had given to me. He had told me that he’d made the pouch when he was in a mental hospital. It never struck me at the time that he and Mama may have spent time together in the psychiatric hospital.
“I have seventy-nine dollars and twenty-five cents.”
“Good,” Mama said. “We’re in Pensacola, Florida. You’ll need to buy yourself a bus ticket and head back to North Carolina. Find Patricia and tell her you need to stay with her until I return.”
What? I heard what Mama was saying, but her statements made no sense to me. What do you mean, go buy a bus ticket? Try to find my sister?
Mama got back in the car and looked up at me from the passenger side of the Oldsmobile. She was crying and waving good-bye to me.
I was crying hard, too, but I managed to return her wave. As Tim drove away, I saw Mama turning around, looking back at me. Mama’s face was wet with tears, and the look in her eyes said she didn’t want to leave me. But she did.
I walked into the Trailways bus station and told the clerk where I needed to go. He took my money—all seventy-nine dollars, allowing me to keep my twenty-five cents—and gave me a one-way bus ticket from Pensacola, Florida, where I now was, to Gastonia, North Carolina, the area where Patricia lived with her husband, Steven. I walked back outside and sat on a bench while I waited for the bus.
Around three in the morning, a large Trailways bus pulled in to the station. I cautiously stepped up on the bus, walked down the long, narrow aisle, and found a window seat on my right. I put my boxes in the overhead rack and sat down. I sat alone in the middle of the night, with the left side of my face pressed against the bus window, as I looked out in the direction that the Oldsmobile had disappeared into the night, carrying Mama away from me. An awful sense of abandonment and rejection swept over me. I was thirteen years old, and I was alone in the world—again.
THE BUS WAS FULL BEFORE WE PULLED OUT. NOBODY wanted to sit next to me since I was filthy and smelled so badly. I was scuzzy and dirty from living in the car; it had been several weeks since I’d last had a shower at the Salvation Army, so my adolescent body odor was noticeably strong.
The bus pulled away from the station, and soon we were on the interstate to Atlanta, Georgia. With several stops in Alabama along the way, it was midmorning when the bus arrived in Atlanta. I was scheduled to transfer buses there, but I was clueless how to find the other bus and didn’t discover it in time before it left the station without me. I asked someone for information and was directed to a waiting area.
Hours passed, and I was tired and hungry. I hadn’t eaten or drunk any water since the previous day. I saw a popcorn machine that read “25 cents per bag,” and it reminded me of the quarter I still had in that leather pouch. I dug out my last quarter and dropped it in the popcorn machine.
It was a small bag of popcorn—even in the late 1980s, you couldn’t buy much for a quarter—but I sat in the chair and ate every kernel in the bag, even the unpopped corn kernels. The popcorn was extremely salty, and my lips were burning, but I was too afraid to leave the area to search for a water fountain. I didn’t want to risk the chance of missing the last bus to Gastonia that day.
It finally arrived midafternoon. When I boarded the crowded bus, again the expressions on people’s faces let me know they didn’t want me sitting near them. I found a seat with space above to put my boxes, so I sat there, alone.
Late that evening we were still a long way from Gastonia when the bus driver announced over the intercom, “We’re about thirty minutes early, so I’m going to pull into Wendy’s. Please feel free to get off the bus and go get yourself something to eat. But stay close to the bus and don’t wander off since we won’t be here long.”
One by one the passengers unloaded. I was the only one who stayed on the bus. I didn’t get off because I didn’t have any money. A number of passengers bought food and drinks and stood outside the bus, talking, laughing, and eating. I sat there, staring out the window, watching them eating and drinking cold drinks, my stomach growling. It had been more than twenty-four hours since I had eaten anything other than my small bag of popcorn, nor had I drunk anything. I simply turned my head and stared at the back of the seat in front of me.
The passengers loaded shortly afterward, and we continued on to another bus station, where I transferred again. I found the bus going to Gastonia, walked down the aisle and put my boxes in the overhead bin, and took a seat, just as I had previously. The bus sat idling as the driver waited on the boarding passengers.
A tall, skinny white guy with a flaming red Afro haircut stepped up on the bus. Adding to his odd appearance, the skinny young man was wearing a blazer and carrying a briefcase. He walked past empty seats directly toward me.
I sat staring straight ahead, trying not to make eye contact with him, hoping he wouldn’t sit near me. But sure enough, the red Afro sat down in the seat right beside me. He jostled around, getting comfortable, and placed the briefcase in his lap.
I didn’t say a word to him, pretending to ignore him. I thought, It’s strange he’d bypass all the empty seats to sit beside me, a kid! He has to be up to no good. His unusual appearance and demeanor made me nervous, and I worried that he might be a pedophile.
The bus steered away from the station. We hadn’t gone far when the weird-looking guy turned to me and asked, “Hey, kid; are you hungry?”
I looked at him cautiously, wondering what he had in mind. I paused, then said, “Yeah, I am.”
The red Afro nodded in understanding. He slid two buttons on his briefcase to the right and left with his thumbs. The latches popped up, and he slowly opened the top as though he were opening a briefcase loaded with cash.
But what I saw was better than money! His briefcase was filled with crackers and all kinds of other snacks. He nodded toward the snacks and said, “Go ahead, eat whatever you want.”
I could barely believe my eyes or ears, but I didn’t want to be greedy. I took a pack of crackers and gobbled them down.
Meanwhile, he pulled a marijuana cigarette out of a little hiding place inside the briefcase. “I’ll be back,” he said. The red-haired guy stood up, sat the open briefcase in his seat in case I wanted something else, and walked to the lavatory at the rear of the bus.
A minute later I could smell the marijuana cigarette, its aroma wafting through the back of the bus. But before the driver noticed, “Red” stepped out of the lavatory and returned to his seat. I must have been looking at him quizzically because he said, “Man, this is what I do. I smoke, eat, and ride.”
All I could think about was how glad I was that he sat beside me! I couldn’t imagine an angel wearing a red Afro and smoking marijuana, but the guy was an angel to me that night.
It was well past midnight when the bus pulled into the Trailways bus station in downtown Gastonia. “This is where I get off,” I told Red. I took my boxes down from the overhead bin and walked to the front of the bus. As I started down the steps, I turned and took one last look at my new friend. I waved at him, and he waved back at me with what looked like an expression of empathy. Despite our differences, we were kindred spirits. I smiled and stepped off the bus.
THE BUS STATION WAS CLOSED, WITH THE DOORS LOCKED and lights out. Nobody knew I was coming, so I wasn’t surprised that no one was there to pick me up. Not even my sister, Patricia. She was fourteen, she and Steven married less than a year. I didn’t know how they would respond to my intruding in their lives, but I had nowhere else to go.
I stood at the front of the bus station and looked up and d
own Franklin Boulevard, about a mile from Vance Street. There was no traffic anywhere, and it was dead quiet.
I pondered lying down in front of the bus station on the concrete, but I was too afraid to do that, considering that someone might attack me in my sleep. I walked around to the back of the bus station, searching for a spot on the ground, where I could sleep till morning. I found a dark area next to the back wall of the bus station, tucked away from the glare of any streetlights. I plopped down on the ground and cuddled with my boxes. I closed my heavy eyelids and drifted toward sleep.
But I had barely gotten comfortable on the ground when I heard something nearby that sounded like someone crinkling plastic. My eyes flashed open, and I was immediately on alert, my eyes darting every direction in the darkness. I saw what appeared to be cats walking around the bottom of a garbage can a few yards away. But then I noticed that these cats had long, skinny tails. I sat up to get a better look. That’s when I realized they weren’t cats; they were enormous rats.
I jumped up, snatched my boxes, and ran around to the front of the bus station. Just then I saw the blue flashing lights of a police patrol car reflecting off the brick buildings. An officer had pulled someone over.
I waited on the side of the bus station until the policeman finished dealing with the person he’d pulled over. Then I carefully approached him and said, “Hey, sir, can you take me to my sister’s house?”
Startled, the officer asked, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
I guess he wasn’t expecting a filthy thirteen-year-old kid carrying small boxes tied together to come walking out from the dark shadows, asking for a ride to his sister’s house.
“What’s your name? And why are you out at this time of night?” the officer wanted to know.
I told him that I had just gotten off the bus, but I didn’t want to give him too much information because I didn’t want him to know where Mama was. Mama had just recently gotten out of prison, and I was aware enough to know that her running off on her thirteen-year-old child would not go over well with her parole officer. They might ship her right back to prison. So I tried to protect her by saying as little as possible about Mama. I honestly had no idea of her whereabouts by now, anyhow.