“I’ll get Daddy and the backpack,” I said. “I’ll drive you there, and then you’re on your own. Don’t take too much provision stuff, Noni. We’re about to borrow their son’s truck and—”
She was over the table before I knew it, her arms around me. “You won’t regret this. You might even change your mind about your daddy between now and then. And I won’t take too much stuff, but I can think of one small way we can pay them back.” She raised her eyebrows and made a wiggly painting motion in the air with her fingers. “Better make it fast, though.” She glanced at the small clock in her room. “That Hobart Crane fellow your daddy likes so much is already playing golf. Think you can finish in fifteen minutes?”
“No.”
“Well, try. You ever finish up that drawing with the good eyes?”
“I got a little more done, but no.”
“Finish it sometime. That one is gonna be good, I can tell,” she said.
• • •
I got out my paint box and opened it up at the kitchen table. Noni and I were leaving soon, and I felt her taking charge again, but I’d be the one driving, and that was something. And maybe I’d caught a little of her magic, because I knew what the Marinos needed me to paint for them.
I took out one of the two small canvas frames I had in my box. It was only five inches by five inches, but it’d work good. It was meant for oil paint, I think, but Mama must not have known the difference. I’d come home from a day of school that’d been empty other than getting my pencil stuck in Erin Courtney’s hair, and it’d been the best surprise ever to see four small canvases stretched over wooden frames, sitting on my bed like it was Christmas. When I made the first painting and handed it to Mama as a thanks for being the best mama ever, she’d blushed and said, Aren’t those a trick? Where’d those fancy things come from?
I took one of the jars from the Marinos’ counter and studied the picture on the label for a moment, mixing colors until I thought I had the right ones. Then I got a mug of water for rinsing and started out by staring at the back of my eyelids.
Even if it was just for a second, Miss Stone had told me to always start a painting or drawing by visualizing what I wanted to do and how I’d get there. I’d learned that unless I was just experimenting, I needed to be confident in my strokes. If something went wrong and I got off course, I’d make adjustments, adding a little red or yellow or white, fixing mistakes as I went along, focusing on the finished picture. Always keeping that image in my mind until I got there, or got as close as possible without starting over. With my time limit, I didn’t have the option of starting over.
Take a good look, then close your eyes, Ben.
Pinks, yellows, reds.
Now find your grip. Feel it.
Browns, a hint of green leaf.
Keep your eyes closed and see the hole. See the distance between where the ball is and where it needs to be.
Lighter shades in the place where the light hit the fruit.
Now feel yourself swing. Feel how easy it should be. It should be easy, feel right, not forced. See the ball going there, right there, right where it belongs.
A dark gray for the small shadow around the base.
Send the ball home.
I opened my eyes, touched the paintbrush’s handle against the lump in my throat, and started painting. Stroke by stroke, seeing it all play out like it had in my head.
The colors layered on one another, thicker than I normally would do, making the painting textured, making it look like all I had to do was reach out, just reach out and the fruit would be mine. All I had to do was take what I wanted. But I couldn’t, of course. It was stuck to paper. Forever out of reach.
The painted peach was still drying on the kitchen table when I packed up and walked out the door to take Peter Marino’s graduation gift for a drive to Augusta, Georgia. I’d drop Noni off and turn around. Only one thing held me back from feeling right about that. I still had to get rid of the golf ball stuck in my throat. I knew it wouldn’t leave me if I went back to Hilltop. Was it possible that the ball in my throat wanted to get to Augusta as much as Daddy did?
Maybe Noni was right. Maybe I should think about giving Daddy and me one more chance.
It might be too late, the porch floor creaked beneath me.
That’s right, he’s been awfully quiet, said the steps.
He might already be gone forever, said the ground between me and the rusted truck.
“Could be,” I said back. “Hope not.”
HOLE 3
Empty Roads
Big Fiver Byron Nelson said that one way to break up any kind of tension is good deep breathing. He was wrong. I breathed in the lingering scent of Mrs. Marino’s pancake breakfast clinging to my clothes and tried to be patient, but the truck wasn’t cooperating. I’d managed to get a promising whirring sound out of it twice, but the engine cut out every time I tried to move my right foot from the brakes to the gas. The truck’s pedals were too far away to stay seated, so I was half standing in the driver’s seat, my eyes shifting from the clutch to the orchard, praying that Mr. Marino didn’t finish mending his fence too soon.
“Just start the darn thing!” Noni said, her feet dangling off the passenger seat, swaying next to a half loaf of bread, a container of peanut butter, a jar of pickles, and two lengths of camping rope she’d found in a closet. She had a lapful of eggs, too. “I thought you knew how to drive!” She turned and looked back at the driveway. “The missus might get back early, so hurry it up!”
“I’m trying,” I said, teeth clenched while I pushed in the clutch, started the engine, then gave it a little gas. I wished Daddy was talking so I could get advice on the right way to let off the clutch. “And you might be a little nicer.”
She shrugged. “I might, but then I’d be somebody else and not me, in which case you wouldn’t be about to borrow a truck so you can drive me and your daddy to Augusta National Golf Club. And you might be nicer to me for not letting you get stubborn and ruin your dead talking daddy’s dream. Now you’ve got a chance to do the right thing. You would have felt guilty the rest of your life, and nothing’s uglier to feel than guilt.”
May Talbot’s face flashed in the windshield for a second before I blinked her away.
Noni gave herself a little harrumph of approval. “And I’m not mean, I just know how to speak my mind. You should try it sometime.”
The engine died again. I’d give it a few seconds before trying another time. “It’s hard to get a word in with you, unless you’re stuffing your face with pie or cobbler. And I did try speaking my mind and now my dead talking daddy won’t talk anymore.”
“Oh.” Her voice lost some of its sharpness. “Sorry. I’m sure he’s just taking a break.”
“Maybe.” I picked up the urn and gave it a good shake, hoping he’d shout at me to stop. He didn’t. This was the longest he’d gone without talking since he’d spooked me back in the kitchen. Letting my anger loose to his shiny urn face had freed up space inside me, but him going silent afterward made me sick to my stomach. Like I’d blown the best chance I’d ever gotten to make him proud of me. To make him see me.
I put my grit and worry into turning the key again. The entire truck sputtered like it had before, then sighed with relief along with me as it roared to life.
Woo-hoo, thank you! it shouted. Been waiting for this, let’s drive!
I gave the dashboard a pat, looked in the rearview mirror, and backed up, trying not to hit the barn. “Get the map out, Noni. Let’s figure out where we’re going.”
“How’re we gonna do that?” she asked.
Shifting into first gear, nervous sweat sinking down my side, I rolled us down the Marinos’ long driveway and paused. The sun was just under halfway up the sky to my left. East. I turned toward it, ignoring the arm Noni’d flung out to steady my own.
“Geez, take it easy,” she said. “Don’t fly off the road.”
So she was nervous about driving, too. That made me
feel a little better. I shifted into second gear. “Look at the road atlas and flip to the Georgia map. You gave the Marinos’ address to that barbecue place, didn’t you? What town are we in?”
“Feather.”
“Then find Feather.”
She brought her legs up on the seat with her, holding the map close, her finger going up, then down, shifting left to right. Finally, after what seemed like forever, she laughed. “There we are! We’re about halfway through Georgia, halfway down. Looks like that train was going a little south. Sorry about that. Keep heading east and north a little, stay off the big roads, and we’ve got maybe this much left.” She held out her hand, showing me the distance between her widespread index finger and thumb. “Two hundred miles, maybe.”
“I hope we can get two hundred miles on one tank of gas.”
We drove past peach farm after peach farm, all of them with trees lined up nicely in a row, standing in the places they should be, doing their jobs right. I wondered if any of those trees ever wanted to run away and go join a pecan grove instead, or if they all felt like the peach orchard fit them perfect.
The roads weren’t completely smooth, but after the stop signs became few and far between, I got comfortable enough to put the truck into third gear and was content to stay there. There was something magical about driving down a road, just me and a mysterious girl who, try as I might, I couldn’t stay mad at. I grinned and tilted my head Noni’s way. “Told you I could drive.”
“Indeed you can, Benjamin Putter. But there’s still plenty of time for a wreck, so pay attention.” She twisted open the pickle jar. “Pickle?” She stuck a spear next to my face. “I’ll hold it for you.”
“No, thanks.”
I wished Daddy could have seen me driving when he was alive. The golf ball in my throat grew heavy at the thought of him, the whole him, sitting beside me, maybe giving a lesson, correcting my grip on the steering wheel the same way he did with golf clubs.
I shifted my stance. It was uncomfortable driving like that, but it looked like we’d maybe make it to Augusta if the car didn’t die on us. I wouldn’t go too fast, not wanting to break the engine or get pulled over. We’d be okay. In the back of my mind, I wondered what I would do once I got there. Should I stay with Noni? If we made it onto the grounds, should I scatter Daddy even if his voice didn’t show up again, telling me to do it? Or should I do like I said back at the orchard and take him back to Hilltop?
“Pass me Daddy, will you?”
Noni tucked Daddy beside me, anchoring him with the pickle and peanut butter jars. I glanced at the black line declaring the gas tank to be full, hoping it wouldn’t sink down too fast.
Aw, don’t worry, the gas gauge said. I’ll stop when I stop, nothing you can do to change it.
When we realized that empty roads made for somewhat relaxing driving, we played with the radio and soon were singing along, shouting out made-up lyrics to the songs we didn’t know, Noni and me trading high and low notes, mixing voices together in a way that sounded like something between two crows fighting, two sheep laughing, and two pieces of sunshine slamming into the windshield, like if we sang loud enough we could blast away the clouds filling the sky.
Daddy was a terrible singer. He used to serenade Mama at the café, screeching loud in an off-key voice every time he brought a load of meat in from the pit, embarrassing her until she’d sing a few lines for him, give him a kiss, and tell him to get on back.
After a time, the radio stations all turned to static or adults talking about things we didn’t care about, and we let silence take over. It took me a while to get up the courage to say my next words. I tried to keep my voice real casual. “Hey, Noni, tell me something about you.”
She shuffled around, trying to get comfortable. “I already said I’m not ready to tell you the whole truth yet. I don’t know why you can’t keep your nose out of my business.”
And I don’t know why her business had to hop onto your business, the steering wheel harrumphed. She’s an Augusta thief, that’s what she is.
“Noni, take the wheel for a second, will you?” With a white-knuckled grip, she held both her breath and the wheel while I shifted my position. “Thanks. Well, how about some little truths? You’ve already told me a couple. A few more couldn’t hurt.”
“I don’t know.” Keeping her eyes on her lap, she reached in her pocket, touching but not removing something. I thought it was her wandering rules, but when I glanced over quickly, I saw a folded piece of newspaper sticking out—the one I’d seen in her pocket at Darry’s café.
Her hand pushed, shoving it out of sight. “Fine. Little truths, that’s it. Noni’s a nickname. I like pork with a lotta sauce. And I can read lips. That’s how I knew what you said to May back at your house.”
“How’d you learn that?”
“Seemed interesting, so I tried. It’s not as hard as you might think.”
“Okay.” I looked over at her, hoping for more.
“I always wanted a brother or a sister.”
“Me too.”
“My daddy and I talked all the time, every day, but it’s not the same as having someone close to your age around.” She tucked her knees up and wrapped her arms around, like she wasn’t sure if little truths were allowed after all. “I lived near a train track—told you that already. There was something about that railroad yard in Hilltop that made me ache the minute I saw it. Same thing when we hopped the coal train. And, well . . .” She squirmed against her door and squinted at the sun. “There’s something else. Something bad I did.”
This is it, I thought. She’ll tell me about that bruise. “It’s okay. You can tell me.”
“I took something from my father on the day that he left me forever. His favorite thing in the world. Something that he loved most.”
“What did you take?”
A corner of her lip disappeared into her mouth, and she chewed. Her fingers lifted in the air, and she closed her eyes, reaching. The hand dropped with a dull thud against her thigh. “I don’t want to say. But I was mad at him for taking me with him everywhere and not letting me go to regular school, so I took it.” She sighed. “He said school wouldn’t suit me anyway, because I had a fiery personality and a dragon’s temper. He said I could try to make friends anywhere, even traveling, I just needed to be more friendly. Who knows what that means, though.”
“What? You’ve got a temper?” A smack on the arm was my answer. “Sorry. Thought maybe I’d gotten good at jokes.” I turned my head from the road to see Noni resting her head on curled up knees.
Fingers digging through her sock, she found the scrap of paper with her wandering rules on it, studying them. “I can still see myself taking it,” she said. “And then I lost it and couldn’t get it back. I tried, but just got stuck. I called for help, but he didn’t hear me. Then the thing I took from him was gone.” The paper disappeared into her sock. “And then he was gone, too.”
She put her legs back down. “Part of me thinks if I get it back somehow, he’ll be okay, wherever he is. And then maybe I can find a home without him.” She unscrewed the pickle jar again and took out a big spear, the juice dripping all over her shirt while she crunched through it. “Stupid, I know.”
“It’s not stupid.”
She took the backpack and put it against her door, leaning against it. Her left arm lay limply by her side. “I’m gonna rest my eyes. Do some thinking.”
I looked at her elbow bruise again. It almost looked alive, like it would talk if a person took enough time to really listen. A reminder, she’d said, to follow the rules. The bruise was like a solid cuff, chaining her to something I couldn’t wrap my head around. If someone had been beating on her or grabbing her, which had crossed my mind, the mark left behind wouldn’t be so even. For the life of me, I couldn’t imagine what thing or situation would cause something like it, or why it didn’t seem to be getting better, while the smoker burn on my arm from earlier that week had hardened already, shelled over
with new skin.
While Noni slept, I drove on, staying on country roads and driving a steady thirty, thirty-five miles an hour. Any faster and the engine started sounding funny. I stopped to pee on the side of the road one time, and Noni tapped me once to do the same. Soon enough, it was an hour or two before twilight. We’d already missed tournament play for the day. I figured if we got to Augusta that evening, we’d have plenty of time to stick with our plan of trying to sneak over the fence somehow. And getting into town at night would work to our advantage, people in general not reacting well to almost-twelve-year-old drivers.
I rolled my window down and let the last two days blow into me as I steered the truck, Augusta calling us closer. Dark, mean clouds filled the rearview mirror. We were surrounded by them now, like they were boxing me into a smaller and smaller space until I’d have no place to run away from the fact that Daddy was gone and I had to go back. No place to run from facing whatever waited for me in Hilltop.
Noni’s father had told her that people meet up with their life on the road they take to run away from it. Was my life hidden ahead somewhere, or was my life chasing after me, begging me to wait and give it a second chance, clawing at me the way last night’s thunder had clawed at the wind?
I murmured the questions out loud, hoping something in the truck or the road or the scenery would answer me. But all those things were as quiet as the road was empty. We’d barely passed a single person, and I found myself wondering if a road could feel lonely.
“Daddy?”
He didn’t answer. The hum of the truck became louder in his silence. The vibrations almost hurt my ears.
The gas tank was getting low. Real low. Almost empty, and it was starting to grow dark. I fumbled for the map, tucked into Noni’s arm, and checked the place names covering the Georgia page against the last town we’d passed through. We’d driven a little too far east, trying to stay on country roads. We’d turned north at some point, staying along the Savannah River, which separated Georgia from South Carolina, and to my surprise we were no more than fifteen or twenty miles south of the black circle marked AUGUSTA. I felt a surge of warm, golden relief shoot through me, and I let out a bark of laughter.
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