by Ingrid Law
‘She just needs a little space,’ I heard Fish tell the others above the din in my head.
‘I really have to get to work,’ said Lill apologetically, linking her hand through Lester’s arm where he stood next to her. ‘I may be in luck tonight, y’all. I didn’t see The Great and Powerful Ozzie when we came in.’ She sounded relieved and laughed her small laugh, bumping Lester with her hip and nearly knocking him to the ground.
‘Ozzie’s the manager here and he’d put a knot in my tail if he caught me coming in at this hour. Mister Fish, why don’t you stay with your sister and I’ll have the others bring you kidlings something to eat in a wink and a shake.’ Fish just nodded without looking away from me. Lill pulled Lester back out into the restaurant, and Bobbi and Will Junior followed after, Will casting a long, worried look over his shoulder, obviously reluctant to leave my side. I looked around for Samson.
‘Where’s –?’ I started.
‘Who knows,’ said Fish with a shrug. ‘Y’know Samson. He’ll turn up.’ Pushing aside the empty cans and brushing off some of the crumbs, Fish sat down on the low table directly in front of me and, patience worn thin, crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Tell me.’
Fish wanted the full hokeypokey on my savvy. He wanted details. He wanted them now.
Wanting to look anywhere besides my brother’s sullen face, I stared at the fuzzy images on the small TV screen across the room; there was so much static that it was like trying to watch television through lemonade bubbles. The sound was too low to hear. The story about the power outages ended and the anchorman behind the news desk swivelled his chair to a new, more dramatic angle, looking doubly serious. A telephone number began marching herky-jerky across the bottom of the screen as the anchorman moved his lips mutely.
I didn’t know quite what to tell Fish. I had been so sure about my savvy. We wouldn’t have been sitting there in the storeroom of the Emerald Truck Stop Diner and Lounge if I hadn’t been positive that I could bring Poppa back home to us, back home to Kansaska-Nebransas. But it was now as clear as Momma’s don’t-touch-or-else crystal that my savvy had different plans for me, and I was nothing but sorry and filled up with misery and dread at the thought of telling my brother.
‘It’s the ink, Fish,’ I finally said, still finding it easier to focus on the black-and-white fizz of the news report than to look my brother in the eye.
‘What ink, Mibs?’ said Fish.
‘Any ink, I think, as long as it’s on someone’s skin.’
Fish squinted at me. ‘Go on.’
I didn’t know how to explain. I didn’t want to rummage through my mind for the right words and try to put them into the right sentences like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It felt too hard. I was tired and I was hungry. And, now that I knew there was nothing, nothing, nothing I could do to help Poppa, I just wanted to go home. Home to Grandpa Bomba and home to Gypsy. Home to the mud left behind by Fish’s rain. Home to be home-schooled and grow moss in pickle jars and learn how to scumble this savvy and make it know its place.
‘Tell me, Mibs,’ Fish demanded. I tore my eyes away from the little TV, where a reporter was interviewing a man and a woman who looked, through the sleety static of the poor reception, a little like Pastor Meeks and Miss Rosemary. I met my brother’s stare and sighed again.
‘Maybe I should just show you.’ I pulled the silver pen Will Junior had given me for my birthday from the pocket of my skirt. ‘Hold out your hand and think of a number – any number. But make it a hard one.’
Fish drew his eyebrows together, looking wary. ‘What are you going to do, Mibs?’
‘It’s not a hurricane, Fish,’ I said impatiently. ‘It’s not dynamite. Trust me.’ Fish thrust his hand towards me stiffly, his lips pressed together into a tight, straight line. I could tell I’d made him mad – my hair blew back from my face and the newspapers by the door rustled and fluttered. I placed the tip of the pen to the skin of Fish’s palm, and then stopped.
‘Are you thinking of a number?’ I asked him sharply. ‘Because I don’t want to hear anything but a number.’ The last thing I wanted was to hear what was going on inside my own brother’s head. I shivered. Gross.
Fish squinted at me again and nodded, all curt and serious and grumpy. ‘I’ve got a number.’
‘Just think it to yourself over and over,’ I said, and I pressed the pen down to draw a small quick circle punctuated with the eyes and mouth of a smiley face that wasn’t smiling so much as not smiling. The mouth of the face rippled like a grimace and the eyes blinked twice.
‘Two thousand, two hundred twenty-two and a half,’ it said. ‘Two thousand, two hundred twenty-two and a half… Two thousand, two hundred –’
I spat quickly on Fish’s hand and smeared the face away before Fish’s thoughts had the chance to wander somewhere else. Fish didn’t move, but just sat looking at me like I was some kind of a whack-of-a-quack fortune-teller at the county fair, reading his palm and telling him how many squalling, bawling children he was going to have when he was grown up.
‘Two thousand, two hundred twenty-two and a half,’ I repeated. ‘Right?’
Fish gave me a hard-boiled nod, looking grave but unruffled. ‘You can hear what I’m thinking?’
‘Thinking or feeling, I guess.’
‘So you read minds, do you?’ A singsong voice broke out above the droning roar and hummed inside my head.
Bobbi was standing just inside the storeroom, looking as though she was about to drop her armful of plastic baskets all overflowing with burgers and fries.
‘So you read minds, do you?’
19
Bobbi looked at me and Fish. She’d seen and heard everything.
‘I knew it. I knew it,’ she said, setting the burger baskets down on the desk and backing up the few metres towards the door. ‘I knew there was something mental about you. Will’s never going to believe this.’ Bobbi left the storeroom before Fish or I could say a word.
Fish leaped up from his seat on the low table. Tve got to stop her!’
‘There’s nothing you can do, Fish,’ I said, jumping up from the sofa to grab my brother’s arm, to keep him from doing something stupid. But there was no need. Fish halted dead in his tracks, staring at the little television on top of the filing cabinet.
I followed his gaze and inhaled sharply. There, in all the snowy black-and-white importance such a tiny TV could muster, our photographs – Bobbi’s, Will’s, Fish’s, Samson’s and mine – began flashing across the screen with ALERT! MISSING! ALERT! scrolling across the bottom of the screen, along with a number to call if anyone had seen us.
We watched our pictures flick and wobble through the poor reception of the small TV, then the newscast cut over to another reporter interviewing the pastor and his wife in front of the church. Miss Rosemary looked sorrowful and worried; Pastor Meeks looked stiff and strained and spitting mad.
Fish clenched his jaw, his muscles tense. ‘We’ve got big problems, Mibs,’ he muttered without looking away from the television.
I glanced from the television to the door leading into the dining area and swallowed hard, trying to imagine what else could go wrong that day. Things had already gone from bad to worse, and I had a feeling our situation wasn’t going to be getting better any time soon.
Just as Fish reached out his hand to turn off the television, the back door emergency exit burst open with the loud rasp of metal on metal, startling me and Fish so badly we both jumped back. A barrel-chested man in a hooded sweatshirt and green spandex shorts scowled at us from the doorway. He had a gold chain around his neck and a large gold-nugget ring on each hand.
Ozzie, the manager of the Emerald Truck Stop Diner and Lounge, pulled a toothpick from between his lips and flicked it back over his shoulder towards the parking lot. He stepped inside, bearing down on Fish and me like an angry bison.
‘What are you kids doing back here?’ he demanded, his breath a loud mix of bluster and buffalo wings. ‘Can’t you read?
This area is for employees only. Beat it. Scram.’ Ozzie advanced, waving his hands at us like a muscled wizard shooing chickens. ‘Go find your parents, or go play with the jukebox or something.’
‘We’re here with Lill,’ I squeaked as he pushed us backwards towards the door to the dining area. ‘She said we could be in here.’ But that didn’t stop Ozzie’s forward momentum. In fact, it only made things worse.
‘BWAAAAAP!’ he said, making a harsh and showy sound like a game show buzzer. ‘Wrong answer! Lill’s at the top of my list right now. In fact, Lill’s about to get canned.’ With that, Ozzie pressed Fish and I right out of the storeroom.
Pushed back into the middle of all those chaotic, noisy voices, I tried my best to keep from becoming discombobulated, tried to figure out how to scumble those thunderous thoughts that didn’t belong to me, but that was a hard thing, a thing that could take years – horrible long years of this stupid savvy – and I had no idea how to do it.
I stayed as close to the edge of the room as I could, hovering near the wall closest to the kitchen, next to the long dining counter. I was aware of the sound of plates hitting plates in the kitchen, the sound of silverware hitting the floor, and the pop and sizzle of frying burgers. But all the boisterous voices in my head floated on top of those other ordinary sounds like warring battleships on a churning ocean.
I couldn’t tell if the room was spinning or if I was, and the scene that followed flew by me like a series of snapshots set to the jingle-jangle jumble of other people’s thoughts and feelings.
When Ozzie entered the dining room, Lill was behind the counter with three pies lined up in front of her, putting the first slice into the banana cream with a long, wedge-shaped pie knife. Lester sat near her on a round stool, biting into a thick burger and spilling yellow mustard on to his pink tie.
‘Bobbi’s with Will Junior over by the jukebox,’ I heard Fish say into my ear. Looking towards the corner of the room, I saw Bobbi talking to Will and pointing our way.
‘She’s telling him everything,’ said Fish darkly. I noticed Will looking back and forth from his sister to me, but at that point my head hurt too much to care about his reaction. And by then Ozzie had started yelling again.
Ozzie stepped over to Lill, picking up the banana-cream pie and taking the knife out of her hands.
‘That’s it for you, Lill,’ Ozzie said, waving the pie knife covered in whipped cream through the air as he spoke, gesturing wildly and hitting Lester on the head with a stray slice of banana. ‘You’ve tried my patience too far. You may be a decent waitress – when you manage to get yourself here on time – but I’ve had it. This is the last time you show up late and the last time you slice pie at the Emerald Truck Stop Diner.’
‘But, Ozzie –’ Lill started to protest.
‘I want you out of here right now, Lill Kiteley!’ shouted Ozzie in his spandex shorts, obviously enjoying the sound of his own voice and the attention it brought him from the red-haired waitress. By now everyone in the diner had stopped talking and turned to watch the scene unfolding between Ozzie and Lill. Even the song on the jukebox ended, as if it too were listening in. Lester dropped his hamburger and slowly wiped the banana from his thinning hair. Will and Bobbi stepped closer to the counter, but stopped when they saw Ozzie wielding the knife. With everyone’s attention fixed and focused on The Great and Powerful Ozzie, even the voices in my head grew quiet.
Still holding the pie, as though he didn’t trust Lill enough to put it down near her, Ozzie set the knife into a tub beneath the counter. Watching him, I saw Samson sitting still and quiet under the counter in an open space just next to the dish tub, so dark and shadowy that Ozzie hadn’t even noticed him.
‘Ozzie, just let me –’ Lill tried again to speak.
‘BWAAAAAP!’ Ozzie made the same annoying game show noise, cutting Lill off. ‘You lose, Lill!’
Ozzie turned, holding the pie in his left hand; with his right hand, he opened the cash register. He pulled out a wad of bills and made a production out of throwing the money at Lill, who, for all the world, looked like she might melt away into a flood of tears, should she lose control and let the dam burst.
‘There,’ said Ozzie, as the bills fell to the floor at Lill’s big feet. ‘You can pick up your consolation prize – that should cover your last pay packet.’
I could see the red-haired waitress smirk as Lill, with all the dignity she could muster, bent down to pick the money up off the floor.
It would have been better for everyone if Ozzie had managed to maintain a little more restraint. When Ozzie started laughing cruel as cruel at poor Lill, now down on the floor picking up her final pay, the real unbridled brouhaha began.
‘Mister,’ said Lester, slamming his fist against the counter, his twitch working his shoulder up and down like one of the pistons inside the engine of his bus. ‘That’s no way to treat a lady.’ Saying this, Lester shoved his plate aside and stood up, walking around the counter to help Lill gather her money.
At the very same moment, Samson leaned forward from his hidey-hole behind the counter and bit The Great and Powerful Ozzie hard on the leg.
Ozzie shrieked like a little girl and the banana-cream pie flew out of his hands to land upside down with a sickening splump on the floor in front of him.
‘Why you little –!’ Clutching his leg and hopping on one foot, Ozzie pulled the pie knife back out of the tub menacingly.
‘No!’ I cried out.
Seeing Samson pop up from behind the counter within easy reach of the angry man and his pie knife, Bobbi and Will rushed across the floor of the diner. They both tried to grab for the knife over the countertop as Samson shot out from behind it, running away from Ozzie towards the storeroom. Fish and I charged forward and together we shoved Ozzie hard in the middle of his muscled back, sending him lurching forward and slip-sliding through the fallen pie. The burly man skated on one foot through bananas and custard as Fish’s angry wind swept through the diner, unbalancing Ozzie even further. Ozzie toppled backwards with a thud.
The red-haired waitress screamed and customers rose to their feet, unsure if they should help or even whose side they should be on if they did.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ Bobbi shouted, sprinting around the counter to help Lill and Lester collect the rest of the money. Then she and Will Junior herded the rooted and rattled adults past the cursing, floundering Ozzie and back towards the Employees Only door for an emergency escape out the emergency exit door, Fish and I wasting no time in following.
Passing through the storeroom, Lill grabbed her sweater from its peg and looked at the rest of us, shaking her head. Her face was red and she had pie on her big white shoes.
‘Sorry all,’ Lill said breathlessly as we headed towards the door. ‘Looks like we bad kids and misfits got to hit the road again.’ She pointed towards the baskets sitting on the desk where Bobbi had set them earlier. ‘Grab those burgers, kidlings. You can eat on the bus.’ Lill looked down at Samson, who had taken her hand, looking mournful. ‘Sorry about the banana cream, critter,’ Lill said with earnest. Lester stopped short.
‘Everyone just hold on one minute.’ Lester’s decisive tone stopped us in our tracks. Without even pausing to twitch, he hoisted one finger into the air like a signal to charge, then turned in the wrong direction and pushed back through the door to the dining area. For a moment, I thought Lester had blown his last fuse and had run the wrong way by mistake. But a moment later, he was back with a second cream pie held high above his head like a trophy. He barrelled across the room in a hot-footed hustle towards the exit, as Lill gave the battered sofa in the storeroom one firm and final kick, just as she’d done to her broken-down car. Then she pushed the rest of us after Lester, all tumbling out the back door into the parking lot behind the restaurant, away from Ozzie and the Emerald Truck Stop Diner and Lounge.
20
Rushing out into the spring night, the air was crisp and cool, laced with the smell of diesel fumes and c
hicken fingers. After the noisy babble and bedlam inside the restaurant, being outside was a relief, a soothing hush of sky and pavement. I could hear cars on the road in front of the diner, each sounding like nothing more than a wave lapping shore.
Nobody spoke as we hopped quickly over potholes in the light of the single streetlamp, weaving in and out of trucks and semi-trailers towards the distant corner of the lot, moving towards the alley. We kept a close eye behind us in case Ozzie or anyone else might be giving chase. But whether he was still lying on his back in the middle of the remains of banana-cream pie, or just too embarrassed to follow, it didn’t appear that Ozzie was coming after us.
During all the commotion inside the restaurant, I’d forgotten about the down-and-out man by the bin. We had nearly passed him again before the noisy return of ‘Seen too much…’ would not allow me to forget that he was still there. I felt the pinch of sorrow and remorse, and realized that while my savvy had done nothing to help the soul-sick, broken man, there was something else that I could do for him. Dropping behind the others, I set my burger basket down on the ground near the outstretched hand. Then I removed the purple ribbon flower pinned to the shoulder of my special-occasion dress and set that too down with the burger, feeling sure that Poppa would understand. Aside from my silver pen, it was the only thing I had to give, the only way I had to show that I’d seen the man. That I’d listened.
Heading back to the bus, everyone was so breathless and shaken by the incident inside the diner only Will seemed to take any notice of my tiny offering, giving me a warm look as he waited for me to catch up.