by Nic Stone
While Scoob’s in the bathroom, it occurs to him how odd it is that G’ma just went into his bag without permission. That’s…unlike her.
Yes, it’s her treasure box and she can do as she pleases with it, but G’ma’s usually all about respecting Scoob’s “agency.” In fact, her house was the one place where he was allowed to close his door. He knows it shouldn’t be a big deal, but this just feels like another brick added to the pile of changes he feels he’ll eventually be crushed beneath. In this moment, he misses his old life. He’s only been gone a couple days, but he’d give anything to catch a whiff of the flowery perfume Shenice started wearing at the beginning of the year, or hear one of Drake’s corny jokes. He even misses Dad’s rumbly laugh—which he hasn’t heard very often in the past few months, but still.
Why does everything feel so off?
“I wanna show you one more thing before we get back on the road,” G’ma says, snatching Scoob out of his thoughts (which may not be such a bad thing). She spins on her sneaks and takes the three steps to the door with something green clutched in her hand.
Scoob is frozen to the spot.
Which G’ma seems to sense. As she shoves the door open, she turns to him. “Well? Ya coming?”
Scoob breathes in suuuuuuper deep through his nose. Blows it out of puckered lips. The Green Book wasn’t even in his backpack; it was under the pillow in his bunk. Which would mean she poked around up there without his permission as well.
He doesn’t know what to think or feel now. Technically it’s her pillow in her bunk because this is her Winnebago. It’s also her Green Book.
But…
Scoob shakes his head and forces his feet to move. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
* * *
Once they touch down on the sidewalk and the RV door clicks closed, G’ma’s the speechless one. She looks at the stuff in her hand and instantly appears on the verge of tears again.
Scoob wonders if it’s a good idea for them to see what she wants to show him. “You know, G’ma, if this is too painful for you, we can just go,” he says with maybe too much hope in his voice.
If G’ma picks up on it, she doesn’t let it show. “No, no,” she says. “It’s important for both of us. Come on.”
They head back away from the RV. It’s strange: the sidewalks look brand-new, and the redbrick street makes him wonder if the road will lead him to a wizard who can send him back home. The one in The Wiz is yellow, but same concept, right?
However, most of the buildings they pass aren’t only boarded up: they’re beyond hope of repair. There are even a few gaps between dilapidated buildings where Scoob can tell there used to be…well, more building.
They stop at the intersection of Fifth Street and Twenty-Fifth Avenue, and she stares across the street at a rusted corner marquee as she hands him the Green Book. His eyes rove the cover again and stick on 1963. What must a street like this have looked like way back then?
“Go to the Mississippi section and find Meridian,” she says. “Page thirty-three, second-to-last listing.”
Scoob looks at the line—which is underlined—then up at the marquee. Both say Hotel E. F. Young Jr.
“Whoa” is all Scoob can think to say.
Then G’ma passes him something else. “Have a look-see.”
A photo.
Of G’pop. Standing beneath the marquee. Scoob holds it up to eye level, shifting his focus between the hotel in the picture and what’s right in front of him. “Double whoa,” he says.
“That’s the last picture I ever took of your G’pop, and the last good night he and I ever had together was inside of that hotel,” G’ma says. “Believe it or not, this place used to be mighty fine. There was a barbershop and beauty salon and a shoeshine place all inside. They say Dr. King even stayed here once. It was glorious.”
Scoob glances in her direction and isn’t surprised to see tears weaving down over her wrinkly cheeks.
“I wish I had the words to express how hard it was for your grandfather and me to be a couple, Scoob-a-doob,” she says. “Frankly, black folks weren’t any keener on it than white folks were. Part of the reason we got the RV is so we wouldn’t have to worry about a place to sleep while on the road. The woman working the front desk at this place didn’t even want to book us a room.”
“Really?” Scoob says.
“Really. Manager happened to pass by while she was giving us trouble. I wasn’t feeling too hot at that point—it was during our stay here that I first realized we probably weren’t gonna make it much further on our trip—and I think he could tell we needed the kindness.”
“What was wrong with you?” Scoob asks.
G’ma shakes her head. Sighs. “We’ll get there, Scoob-a-doob. We’ll get there.”
And she turns to head back to the RV.
* * *
Scoob might’ve made it back to center—more concerned with G’ma’s sadness than his own unease—if he hadn’t caught sight of the Tennessee license plate on the rear bumper of the RV again.
This time, the uneasiness is impossible to shake. Even once they’re inside and their seat belts are fastened and the engine is cranked. Even when G’ma says, “Scoob-a-doob, not to get all sappy on ya, but it means the world to me that we made this pit stop. It’s like closing a door almost.”
Scoob gives a vague nod and grunt and bites his thumbnail. Wishes he’d thought to grab his map so he could add a drawing of the marquee over Meridian just for something to do.
She keeps going. “Last time I was here was the beginning of the end of a journey, but this time feels like the end of the beginning. You know what I mean?”
“Mmm…not really,” he says, too mentally exhausted to lie.
“That’s all right.” She nods. “You’ll understand soon enough.”
What the heck is that supposed to mean?
“We’re gonna make it this time, Scoob-a-doob,” G’ma continues. “All the way to Juárez. It’s what your G’pop would want. I just know it.”
Scoob squints. Remembers the Green Book he’s still holding and the fact that there’s an international section in the back. He saw it while flipping through in Alabama night before last.
Tourist Camp—Jardín Fronterizo is circled in the Mexico section on page eighty. “You’ll help me, right?” She glances at him briefly just as the traffic light they’re approaching goes green. Which feels all the way wrong considering how much Scoob wants to stop. “If something happens and I need your help, you’ll do as I say and you’ll help me, right, kiddo?”
Scoob gulps. Tries to swallow down the words he doesn’t want to say forming in his throat.
But it’s no use. She’s his G’ma. “Of course I’ll help you,” he says, doing the exact thing that got him wrangled into the cheating scandal.
“Good,” she says. “Cuz I’ve got a good feelin’.”
All Scoob can do is sigh. Why’s it so hard to just say no when he’s got a not-good feeling?
But this time, after just a few minutes, Scoob can’t take it anymore. “G’ma, was this house-on-wheels made in Tennessee?” he says without looking in her direction.
She turns the radio down. “What’s that?”
“I noticed we have a Tennessee tag,” he continues. “So I was wondering if the Winnebago company is based in Tennessee or something.” He faces his window and clenches his jaw.
Not the least bit smooth.
And G’ma doesn’t reply.
Now what’s he supposed to say?
His eyes shift and latch on to her powered-down cell. “You mind if I use your phone?”
“Depends on who you wanna call,” and she winks.
Probably shouldn’t call Dad, then. She’ll be able to see it on the call log and might get mad or something. And who knows what she’ll do then? “Just wan
na holler at Shenice. See what she’s up to.”
“Shenice, huh?”
“Yeah.”
No response.
“I kinda miss her,” he adds, upping the mushy factor. Grandmas can’t resist that, right?
She pulls her focus from the road to look at him…suspiciously?
Then she smiles. “That’ll be fine.”
With relief tingling at his fingertips, Scoob grabs the thing and unbuckles his seat belt.
“Where ya goin’?” she says.
“Oh. I could use a little privacy, if you don’t mind.”
She shakes her head. Which makes Scoob feel like a helium balloon is expanding in his throat. He knows if he tries to respond, either his voice will crack, or all that’ll come out is a squeak.
“No can do, kiddo,” she says. “Not safe for you to walk around back there while we’re in motion. You wanna call Shenice, gotta do it right where you’re sitting. With your seat belt fastened.”
“Oh.” Scoob could bring up all the times he’s already walked around “back there” while they’re in motion (he very specifically recalls being asked to grab a Grandma Protein Shake not too long after they began their journey), but he doesn’t want to push it.
Guess he won’t be telling Shenice about everything going on and how weird and uncomfortable it makes him feel. But he certainly can’t not make the phone call now.
He makes sure the ringer switch on the side is set to silent before hitting the power button. Doesn’t want her snatching it from his hand if the message notification happens to chime—
And it’s a good thing he does because there are three new voice mails.
All from Dad.
Scoob knows it’s a risk, but instead of actually calling Shenice, he makes a show of dialing the number—in case G’ma is sneaking glances in his direction—then taps to switch over and listen to a voice message instead.
He puts the phone to his ear and smiles at G’ma, feeling “guilty as sin,” as she would say. Then Dad’s voice comes pouring out of the ear speaker:
Mama, I don’t know where you and William are or why you’re not answering my calls or if you even still have this phone, but I…I need you to call me back. Immediately. Some…authorities came by here and they’re saying you…Mama, I need you to call me back. Now. Please.
**click**
For a second, Scoob sits frozen, the phone attached to his face as if glued there. He blinks. And blinks.
“You all right over there, Jimmy?” comes G’ma’s voice, slicing through the block of ice Scoob feels trapped in.
“Yeah,” he says. “Umm. Shenice isn’t answering. I’m gonna leave a voi—” But he catches himself because if he says voice mail, it might tip her off. He quickly pulls the phone down and taps to delete the message he just listened to. “I’ll try her again later,” he says.
“All righty.”
“And umm…I’m William, G’ma.”
“Mmhmm, sure are,” G’ma replies. And she holds out her hand for the phone.
Scoob takes what he hopes is a not-obvious deep breath. He knows what he needs to do and that it’s now or never. “You mind if I call my dad too, G’ma? I’d like to check in with him. Make sure he’s doing okay at home without me and all that.”
“Maybe later,” she says. “You know how he is. Can’t have him spoiling our good time, now can we?”
Scoob grips the phone a little tighter. “Guess not.”
“Now hand it over.”
Except now he’s got a real a problem. Because if she were to check the call log right, it would be clear that Scoob lied to her: he never actually placed the call to Shenice’s number.
So as much as he wants to leave it on so he can snatch it up and answer the next time Dad calls—why isn’t he calling now?—Scoob shuts the thing off.
Then he lays it against her outstretched palm.
When she pushes the button that usually makes the screen light up and nothing happens, her eyes narrow just the teeniest bit. “You turned it off?”
Scoob can hardly breathe now. “Yeah. It was off when I picked it up, so I figured—”
He doesn’t have a clue how to finish that sentence.
Which turns out to be fine. After a second, G’ma nods. “Good,” she says. She drops the phone into the small storage space on the driver’s-side door where Scoob can’t reach it. “You and I are going off the grid.”
Scoob spends the next hour and a half doodling in the margins of his map while G’ma’s favorite band, Earth, Wind & Fire, croons them into the unknown (for Scoob at least). Then G’ma signals to exit the interstate again. “One more drive-by pit stop, then on to Vicksburg for refreshments,” she says.
Scoob just sighs and puts a little star over Vicksburg as they ease to a stop at the top of the exit ramp.
“This time I think I’ll tell ya where we’re headed,” she continues, lowering the volume of “Boogie Wonderland.” The song always makes him think of penguins; the waddly cold-weather creatures sang and danced to it in one of Scoob’s favorite movies.
“I don’t think we’ll get out once we get there cuz we need to mosey on,” G’ma continues, “but I know if we drove through Jackson without me finally seeing this place, I’d regret it forever.”
“Is that where we are?” Scoob replies, spotting it on his map.
“Mmhmm. Good ol’ Jackson, Mississippi. Your G’pop and I attempted to take this detour fifty-one gosh-darn years ago. Can you believe that?”
Scoob can’t, but he doesn’t say so.
“There was a man back then: Medgar Wiley Evers. Fought for this country in World War Two, then came home to fight for Negro rights. Real good fella,” she says.
“Now I’ll be honest with ya, Scoob-a-doob: your ol’ G’ma had her head in the clouds when your G’pop and I attempted this trip. We began our courtship in 1961 but were together six years before we tied the knot because it wasn’t legal for whites and blacks to marry until sixty-seven.
“There was a couple in Virginia who’d been convicted of a crime for marrying, and your G’pop wasn’t willing to take the risk of marrying in secret,” she says. “But when the Supreme Court overturned those dumb laws across the nation? Don’t think I’d ever been so happy.”
Scoob grins.
“Not everyone was, though.” She hangs a right into a neighborhood and then follows a short curve around to a street on the left. “Your G’pop and I tied the knot at a courthouse, and the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, but racial tensions were high—”
And she stops.
Driving and talking.
Scoob follows her gaze to the house across the street. Parts of it are painted a blinding turquoise color, and there’s a plaque on the brick part, but he can’t see from this distance. Looks like there’s also a plaque in the front yard.
G’ma hasn’t said a word. Or moved. She’s just…staring.
That’s when Scoob notices something’s off about the structure itself. He looks at the house next door, and then at the one whose curb they’re idling beside.
It hits him.
“There’s no front door,” he says.
“Entrance is in the carport,” G’ma murmurs without pulling her eyes away.
“Oh.” Weird.
“Had it built that way cuz they thought it’d be safer,” she says.
“Who thought it’d be safer? And safer for what?”
“Safer for the family,” she says. “This was Medgar Evers’s home, Scoob-a-doob. The man I mentioned.”
“Oh. Okay,” Scoob says. Is he supposed to say more?
“I can’t believe—”
Scoob waits for her to go on.
“I don’t know what to say,” she says.
Apparently Scoob d
oesn’t either.
“Go in my box—it’s in the cabinet above the kitchenette sink—and hand me the…radio that’s in there.”
“Okay.” Scoob gets out of his seat to do as she asked. Though what G’ma could need an old radio for, he’s not sure. There’s no way the thing actually works.
He’s quick to hand it over when he gets back to the cab, though, because what little color G’ma had has disappeared from her face like she’s seeing something Scoob can’t at the house-with-no-front-door.
A ghost?
“G’ma, are you okay?”
She doesn’t answer. Just unscrews what Scoob assumed was an antenna to reveal a clear spout…which she then puts to her mouth before turning the “radio” upside down.
To drink from it.
“Whew,” she says after a good few gulps. She squeezes her eyes shut and her head and shoulders quiver. “Forgot how much that burns.”
Burns? Scoob’s known G’ma going on twelve years and has never seen her drink anything other than water and unsweet tea with a quarter of a lemon squeezed over the top. There’s no way she’s drinking—
“G’ma, is that alcohol?”
“Bourbon. It was your G’pop’s favorite.”
Scoob’s dumbfounded.
“And this was his flask,” she continues, holding up the radio.
“Wait—” But Scoob’s got so many questions, he’s not sure which one to ask first. What’s a “flask”? Why’s that one shaped like a radio? Since when does G’ma drink?
The thing he says: “What you just drank was fifty years old?”
She bursts out laughing. And doesn’t stop.
For like two minutes. Solid. Scoob literally watches the clock.
At least the color returns to her face, though. The tears leaking from her eyes are running down very pink cheeks now.
She eventually takes a breath. “Good lord. Haven’t laughed like that in years. And boy, did I need it.”
Scoob exhales. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take.