by Betsy Byars
“Where do you think Uncle Newt could be?” Anna asked. She was not on the back seat where she usually sat, but up front with the family.
“Did you hear what the bus driver said about the man who got off in Spartanburg? That was Newt, don’t you think, John?”
Mr. Glory did not answer. With a jerk of his shoulders he threw the bus into third gear.
Mrs. Glory said, “It sounds like him—bolting off the bus, spilling people’s things, running away. Newt never could face up to anything. He’d run like a scared rabbit if you looked at him.”
“But why would he run from me—us?” Anna asked. The thought was unexpectedly painful. “Mom, maybe we should drive to Spartanburg—”
“And do what, Anna? Drive up and down the streets looking for a man we might not even recognize?”
“I’d know him,” Joshua said, leaning forward. “He’s going to be real pale, and his clothes won’t fit right, and he’ll—”
“The last time I saw Newt,” Mrs. Glory said, interrupting, “was eight years ago at a family reunion, a picnic. Well, I wanted to be nice and so I went over to hug Newt—everybody was hugging everybody else—and he jumped back like I had a disease. I never will forget the look on his face when he saw me coming.”
“Did you hug him anyway?” Matthew asked. He didn’t care for affectionate relatives himself.
“I had to. I already had my arms out. And Newt cringed and ducked his head—he did everything but dig a hole in the ground and disappear.”
Mrs. Glory puffed up her beehive hairdo. The memory still stung. “Later Cousin Annabelle said, ‘Didn’t you know? Newt can’t stand to be hugged.’ And I said, ‘Anybody that can’t stand to be hugged doesn’t belong at a family reunion.’”
“Mom, you and Dad would recognize him,” Anna said.
“It’s been eight years. I told your father this morning he’d probably have to point Newt out to me.”
“Well, we ought to do something.”
“I look at it this way. If Newt doesn’t want to come, if he doesn’t want to be part of our family, if he wants to get away from us so bad that he’ll knock people down getting off a bus—well, that’s fine with me.”
“Maybe he’s—I don’t know—real shy. Maybe …” Anna leaned back in her seat. Suddenly she could imagine Uncle Newt sitting on the Greyhound bus, alone, looking out the window, riding away from prison and toward a family he hardly knew. She could imagine the bus driver saying, “Next stop Greenville,” could imagine the panic that would grab Uncle Newt and send him dashing down the aisle and out into the open air.
It was odd. A week ago Anna’s English teacher had asked the class to imagine that they were someone else and to write a composition about it. Anna had sat there, staring at her blank paper, while around her students scribbled away, pretending to be Howard Cosell, Barbara Walters, Nancy Reagan. The trouble was Anna could not imagine what it would be like to be somebody else.
And yet now, without even trying, she had done it. She had, for a moment, become Uncle Newt charging down the aisle, jumping to the ground, running through the streets of Spartanburg, his overcoat flapping behind him, his suitcase slapping against his leg.
“Newt never was one of my favorite people,” Mrs. Glory said, as if that were the end of the matter.
“Mom!”
“Well, he wasn’t, and if he keeps on acting this way, Anna, running like a fugitive, they’ll take him back to prison. He’s supposed to settle down somewhere.”
“Is that true? Dad, would they make him go back?”
“I’m driving,” Mr. Glory snapped.
“Dad—”
“Don’t bother your father when he’s driving.” Mrs. Glory did not want any more distractions. Her knees still hurt from the beer truck incident.
“But I couldn’t stand it if Uncle Newt went back to prison. I really couldn’t.”
“Don’t get so emotional, Anna. You’ve never even seen the man.”
“I must have. I was at the picnic. I—” She touched her father on the shoulder. “Dad, you’ve got to turn around.”
Mrs. Glory reached out quickly and batted Anna’s arm away. Her look at Anna was such a warning that Anna got up and, holding onto the seats, moved to the rear of the bus.
“If he does have to go back to prison,” Joshua commented, “I hope it’s before I finish my report so—”
Anna, passing him, let her hand fall on his shoulder. She squeezed it hard enough to make him say, “Ow.”
Angel turned around. Her blue eyes seemed to look beyond Anna. “We’ll see him soon, Anna,” she said in her soft prophetic voice.
Anna sat on the last seat with a sigh, and the Glory family rode the rest of the way home with only the rattling and backfiring of the bus to break the silence.
The Autographs
JOSHUA AND MATTHEW WERE waiting to go up onto the stage of the Central High Auditorium. They had on their blue outfits, and Joshua had a blue scarf tied around his head, Indian style, to hide his stitches.
Joshua was pleased with the way the scarf looked and with the fact that Matthew didn’t have one. He was standing there, imagining how he looked to the audience, when two girls came up.
“She wants your autograph,” one said.
“Mine?” He glanced around to see if, perhaps, someone famous was standing behind him. He had not thought he looked that good.
“I don’t want his autograph. You want it. She’s the one wants it.”
“I don’t! She wants it. She says you’re good-looking.”
“You said he was good-looking.”
As the girls argued pleasantly about which one wanted the autograph, Joshua said, “You can both have one.”
He took the scrap of notebook paper, tore it carefully in half. “I don’t have anything to lean on.” These were his first autographs, and he wanted to do it right.
“Lean on my back,” the fat girl said quickly.
“Well, all right.” He would rather have leaned on the redhead’s back, but she didn’t offer it. He signed the pieces of paper slowly and carefully. Twice the ball-point pen poked through the paper and left small blue dots on the fat girl’s blouse. “Excuse me,” he said each time.
“There.” He handed the small soiled scraps of paper to the girls. For the first time in his life he wished he had followed his mother’s orders and washed his hands.
At that moment, the greatest personal triumph of his life, Matthew stepped in and said, “You can have my autograph too.”
“He’s nobody,” Joshua told them quickly. “Just my brother.”
He elbowed Matthew out of the way and kept him there. When Matthew tried to pass him on the right, he stepped to the right. When Matthew tried to pass him on the left, he was there too. He had done this with great skill four times when he heard their introduction. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s my pleasure to present to you the Glory Gospel Singers!”
“I’ve got to go. That’s me,” Joshua said.
Turning, he shoved Matthew up the steps ahead of him. Matthew stumbled and Joshua passed him without a glance.
The applause was building. As Joshua moved into the lights, he knew at last what it was like to be a star. He felt taller, better-looking.
He sat at his drums and watched the two girls going down the aisle, the scraps of paper held like tickets between their fingers. They took seats in the third row. Joshua made a mental note to keep an eye on them and to add extra beats and flourishes when they were watching.
“I’ll get you for that,” Matthew muttered as he got into place.
“Go ahead and try,” he answered back.
It was halfway through the program, and Mr. Glory was at the front of the stage, leaning forward. His handsome face was shining with sweat.
The faces looking back at him were dull, without expression. A woman in the second row had fallen asleep. Things weren’t going well.
“Now, boys and girls, I want to tell you a little story about my
self.” Someone in the back of the auditorium groaned. “When I was a little boy going to Bible school, I was always having to learn the books of the Bible or the names of the prophets, but I never had to learn the apostles because my mama taught me their names a long time ago. I remember she’d sing …”
At a nod of his head, Mrs. Glory began an introduction that caused the upright piano to tremble, and the twins came down hard on their drums. Mr. Glory sang:
“Oh, let us name the apostles
Peter, Philip, John, Matthew,
Let us call their names out
Simon, Judas, Thomas, too.
Let us name them one by one
Till the roll is called and done.
Matthias! Jude! James! Andrew!
And Bar-tho-lo-mew!
“Let’s sing it together, boys and girls. It starts ‘Let us name the apostles.’ Here we go.”
At the back of the auditorium Anna was sitting with her eyes closed, slumped in her seat. She was waiting for the program to end so she could sell tapes and albums.
She could already tell that it was going to be a poor night for sales. The way the crowd was sitting, not clapping in time to the music, the kids not singing along—and when Mr. Glory had sung “Reach Up and Touch the Master,” only three hands, other than his, had reached toward the dingy ceiling. Another bad sign. On a good night every arm in the audience would be raised, waving.
She slumped lower in her seat. Her father always seemed to hold her personally responsible when the sales were less than twenty. “You didn’t try,” he’d say. She imitated the cold expression that came over his face, and then she opened her eyes and glanced quickly around to see if anyone had noticed.
“Come on, kids!” Mr. Glory shouted. He sounded tired. A few mothers, out of sympathy, nudged their children and said, “Sing.”
“Now, we’re going to have a contest.”
There were groans throughout the audience at this.
“We’re going to see who knows the most names of the apostles—the girls or the boys. Girls, I’ll sing the first line and see if you can sing the second. ‘Oh, let us name the apostles—’”
There was a jumble of names and laughter.
“Well, boys, I know you can do better than that. Here’s the third line. ‘Let us call their names out—’”
“‘Simon, Judas, Thomas too.’”
“That was better. ‘Let us name them one by one till the roll is called and done.’ Everybody.”
“‘Matthias! Jude! James! Andrew! And Bar-tho-lo-mew!’”
“Let’s do the whole thing now. All together. ‘Oh, let us—’”
The outside door opened behind Anna, and she heard the sound of rain. That was another bad sign, she thought glumly. People would not buy records because they would be in a hurry to get home.
She glanced around to see who had entered.
The Man in Gray
A MAN IN A GRAY overcoat was standing in the doorway, looking down, shaking the rain from his coat. He watched the drops as they struck the floor, as if he had not been out in the rain often, as if what he was doing were a novelty.
Anna decided not to ask him if he had a ticket. The performance was almost over—just one more song, so it didn’t matter.
Anyway, the man did not seem interested in sitting down. He was standing back in the shadows, his eyes looking at the floor. His hat was in his hands in an old-timey gesture of politeness. He had probably come in to get out of the rain, Anna decided, or to give somebody a ride home. She turned back to the stage.
Mr. Glory had finished the singing contest—an obvious relief to everyone—and was now standing back as Angel did her solo. Then he stepped up to the mike and began his spiel about the records and albums. “And on these records and cassette tapes,” he was saying, “are the greatest of the great, the most popular songs we’ve ever sung, and I know you’ll want to get one.”
Anna stood up and moved into the light.
“At the back of the auditorium one of the Glory girls, our little Anna—she can’t sing, but ain’t she pretty?—she’ll be waiting to help you with your purchases. Hold up your hand, darling, so they can see where you’re at.”
Dutifully Anna held up her hand and then moved back out of the light. She bumped directly into the man who had moved into the doorway. She could smell the wet wool of his coat.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Excuse me.”
“My fault.” The man stepped back quickly with a slight bow. He moved out of the bright light.
Anna sat at the table and, ignoring the stranger, began to straighten the stacks of albums. She opened the cash box.
The man cleared his throat. “Are you one of the Glory family?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so.” Another pause. “You don’t sing?”
“No.”
“Don’t that bother you?”
“Oh, it used to bother me sometimes, but I think I’m getting used to it. My grandmother used to say people could get used to anything. She used to say we could get used to hanging if we hung long enough.”
“My mother used to say the same thing, but I sure do wonder sometimes.”
“Me too.”
He said quickly, “Anyway, you look like you know what you’re doing. You probably sell a lot of them records.”
“Sometimes I do. Tonight I probably won’t. When it rains and when the kids don’t join in the singing and people don’t clap with the music—well, you can always tell when nobody’s going to buy anything.”
“I’ll take one.”
“Oh, you will? Great.” Anna smiled. “What do you want—an album or a cassette tape?”
“It don’t matter.”
“Well, what do you have—a stereo or a tape player?”
“Neither one.”
Anna really looked at the man for the first time. His face was round, and there was something childlike in his small, earnest smile. As she met his eyes, he looked away, embarrassed.
“Then what on earth do you want with one of these?”
He did not answer. His smile faded. Suddenly he looked as wet and uneasy as a stray dog.
“I mean, don’t buy one just to be polite,” she said.
“I won’t—I wasn’t—”
Anna smiled again. Her smile was gentler this time. “Listen, my father would be furious if he heard me say this, but save your money.”
The man had taken out his wallet and was holding it open as if it were a small book he was going to read. “I would be glad to buy one.”
“Well, thank you for that, but—”
“Really, I don’t mind.”
“No,” Anna said firmly.
In the auditorium the music was swelling. The Glory family was singing the final bars of their theme song.
“If you sing
With the Glorys
Then you’ll never,
Never,
Never, Sing a-lone!”
“Good night, everybody,” Mr. Glory shouted, “and may God bless you and keep you until we meet again.”
“You’ll have to excuse me,” Anna said to the man. “People will be coming out now. I’ll be too busy to talk.”
“Of course.” He folded his wallet and put it in his pocket. Pulling back a little into his overcoat, he stepped back out of the way.
He’s like a turtle, Anna thought, the way he retreats into his shell. “Get your Glory tapes and albums over here,” she called as the people began filing out of the auditorium.
“Ma’am, would you like to—”
The people were pulling on their coats, hurrying for the door. They all made a point of not looking in Anna’s direction.
“Ma’am, sir, would you—”
When the crowd had gone without buying one single tape and Anna looked up again, she saw that the man in the overcoat was no longer there.
It was then that she realized she had been talking to Uncle Newt.
In the Middle of Galaxians
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br /> “I WANT TO PLAY Ms. Pac Man.”
“No, it’s my quarter—I asked for it—and I’m playing Galaxians.”
The Glory family had stopped to eat on the way home from their performance at the Central High Auditorium. Mr. and Mrs. Glory were sitting in a booth, tiredly leaning on their arms. Mr. Glory had not spoken since his final, “God bless you and keep you until we meet again.”
Mr. Glory was depressed. In his mind he was blaming the rain, his wife’s playing, and his children’s singing for the dull, unsuccessful performance. Underneath was the nagging thought that he was the one who had not been at his best.
If that was true, he thought, it was because of Newt. Mr. Glory’s brows lowered over his gray eyes.
His brother Newt had become like the bear in that old game they had once played as children. The bear would hide and the rest of them would go around the yard singing, “Ain’t no bears out tonight, Papa killed them all last night.” But they would know that the bear was there, somewhere in the dark bushes, waiting for the right moment to jump out and send them screaming for safety and the front porch.
Mr. Glory had been feeling Newt’s presence for days. He even thought he had seen him driving past the house once in an old red Ford. That would have been like Newt, he thought, wanting to see without being seen, waiting for the worst possible moment—at a performance perhaps—to appear and ruin their lives.
“Here goes!” Joshua said.
He and Matthew were now in front of the Galaxians screen. Joshua dropped in his quarter and pushed the starting button. He always felt a chill of power when he started a video game. It was as if there really were an invasion and only he could stop it.
A burst of charge music came from the machine, and at the top of the screen purple and green and red invaders appeared in formation.
At the same time a lone spaceship, armed with a yellow missile, appeared at the bottom. Joshua grasped the control and got set to fire. The bright invaders streaked toward Joshua’s rocket, peeling off the top of the formation. Joshua dodged and fired, dodged and fired, gasping with pleasure as he made a hit. Then a red alien crashed into his spaceship and Matthew said quickly, “My turn.”