He acted like he was whispering just to me when he said, “The food in this joint ain’t the best, but I guarantee after you eat here you won’t be hungry for days, this meal’s going to be sitting on your stomach like a rock for a good long time.”
The woman said, “Ignore him, Bud. My father doesn’t mean anything, he just can’t stop teasing.”
I said, “I know, ma’am, he told me I’ve got a head shaped like a peanut.”
The woman slapped her father on the arm. “Poppa! I can’t believe you’ve teased this child already. What is on your mind?”
Lefty Lewis rubbed his hand over my head and said, “Look at this noggin, I rest my case. Boy looks like one of George Washington Carver’s experiments sprouted legs and run off. You sure you’re not from Tuskegee, Alabama, Bud?”
I said, “No, sir.”
The woman sucked in her lower lip and swallowed a smile before she said, “See, Bud, he can’t help himself. But he really doesn’t mean anything, do you, Poppa?”
The way she asked that you’d have to be pretty stupid not to know how to answer her. Lefty Lewis said, “Not a thing. It’s just that you—”
His daughter spoke up. “My name is Mrs. Sleet, Bud.”
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
“Now, while you wash up I’m going to go get some clothes that my boy outgrew a while ago, barely been used. So when you get dressed you come on down and we’ll eat, you chose a great day to visit, we’re having a very special breakfast today—pancakes, sausages and toast and a big glass of orange juice. You can meet Scott and Kim, too. How’s that sound?”
“That sounds real good, ma’am. Thank you very much.”
“Don’t mention it, it’s a pleasure to have such a well-mannered young visitor.”
Mrs. Sleet and Lefty Lewis left the room. As soon as they were a little bit down the hall I could hear her start in on scolding her father again.
“I just can’t believe it. You know, Momma was right about you . . . .”
All I could hear next was him mumbling some answer, then her slapping his arm again.
After I got out of the bathroom, I saw that Mrs. Sleet had put some clean clothes on the bed. My old clothes were gone, all except for my drawers which I hadn’t taken off. She’d even put clean drawers out for me so when I put them on I stuck my old ones down in the pocket of my new pants. I could ditch them when I got to Grand Rapids. It’s too embarrassing to have strangers look at your dirty drawers, even if the stranger is as nice as Mrs. Sleet.
The new clothes were just a little bit too big, but they were long pants and not knickers so I didn’t care, I rolled cuffs into the pants and sleeves and they fit pretty doggone good.
Man, my first pair of trousers!
I let my nose lead me down to where the smell of pancakes and toast was coming from. The Sleets had a room for eating and it had a great big table right in the middle of it. The first thing I noticed was a huge pile of pancakes sitting on a blue and white plate on top of the table.
Lefty Lewis was sitting with Mrs. Sleet’s kids. The little girl had a big smile and the boy was looking at me kind of hard. It wasn’t one of those put-up-your-dukes looks, it was just a look like one dog gives another dog that might be passing through his neighborhood.
Lefty Lewis said, “Bud, these two worrisome midgets are my favorite grandkids. Kim is my favorite granddaughter and Scott is my favorite grandson. Of course they’re my only grandkids, so in fairness you’d have to say they’re also my least favorite grandkids.”
These two kids had had a lot of practice being around their teasing old granddad because they didn’t pay him no mind at all.
I said, “Hi, my name is Bud, not Buddy.”
The little girl said, “That’s a strange name, Bud-not-Buddy,” and even though she was kind of young and scrawny to be teasing folks I could tell that that’ was exactly what she was doing.
Lefty Lewis laughed and said, “That’s my girl,” then he went into the kitchen.
Scott looked up to make sure the grown folks weren’t around and said, “You really run away from home?”
I had to stop and think, it’s one thing to lie to a grown-up, most times adults want to hear something that lets them take their attention off you and put it on something else. That makes it easy and not too bad to lie to them. You’re really just giving them what they want.
It’s different when you lie to another kid. Most times kids really do want to know what they’re asking you.
I guess I’d been thinking too long ’cause he said, “You run all the way from Grand Rapids to Owosso? Was it ’cause your daddy use to beat you?”
I could answer that with the swear-’fore-God truth. “Shucks, my daddy never laid a hand on me in his life.”
“Then how come you run?”
“I didn’t like where I was.” That wasn’t a lie.
“Well, if you’re lying about your daddy beating you, you better scram right after breakfast ’cause my gramps is taking you straight back home.”
“My daddy never laid a hand on me.”
The little girl said, “Scott, you talk too much, let him sit down.” Then she told me, “Momma’s gonna be bringing the sausages in in a minute, you like sausages?”
“Uh-huh.” I’d never had sausages before but if that was what was making the house smell so good I was going to love it.
Kim said, “Good, ’cause my grampa brought them all the way from Grand Rapids. He always brings us good food and we’re going to share it with you ’cause Momma says you’re our special guest and we have to treat you nice. Am I being nice?”
“So far.”
“Good. I’ll make a deal with you.”
Uh-oh. “What kind of a deal?”
“I’ll sing a song that I made up all by myself and when I’m done I get to ask you one question and you have to answer and cross your heart you’ll tell the truth.”
This didn’t sound too bad.
“OK.”
“Here goes, it took me a very long time to make this song up, so I hope you like it.”
The boy said, “Oh, brother.”
Kim sang,
“Mommy says no
Mommy says no,
I listen, you don’t,
Wha-ha-ha-ha.
The building falls down,
The building falls down,
You get crushed, I don’t
Wha-ha-ha-ha.”
Boy. That was about the worst song I’d ever heard. Kim stood up and bowed like a princess.
I clapped my hands together kind of soft under the table.
She said, “Thank you very much.”
Scott just shook his head.
Kim said, “OK, that’s my part of the deal, now you’ve got to keep your part and answer any question I ask.”
“Now you can tell me all about how your mother died.”
Scott’s foot kicked at her under the table.
I said, “Who told you my momma died?”
The little girl said, “Oops,” and stuffed something from her hand into her mouth.
“My momma got sick. She died real fast. She didn’t feel no pain or no suffering.”
Kim said, “I hope my mother never dies.”
Scott said, “Stupid, everybody’s got to die.”
Kim said, “Ooh, I’m telling Momma you called me stupid.”
He said, “You do and I’ll tell her that you’ve got one of those pancakes in the pocket of your dress.”
She shut right up.
I told her, “He’s right, everybody’s got to die. It’s not sad unless they do it real slow and suffer. My momma died so quick and painless that she didn’t even have time to close her eyes, she didn’t even have time to make a face like she was hurting.”
Both of Lefty Lewis’s grandkids looked real surprised at this news.
Mrs. Sleet came into the room with another blue plate, covered with little round pieces of meat. Those had to be the sausages.
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She saw the way her kids were looking at me with their mouths half opened and said, “Now you two aren’t talking Bud’s ear off, are you?”
Scott said, “No, Momma, I’m not, but Kim’s coming real close to.”
Kim said, “I was not, I was just making pleasant conversation.”
Mrs. Sleet laughed and set the plate on the table right in front of me.
Lefty Lewis came out with a big glass jug filled with orange juice and sat down next to me.
Mrs. Sleet sat down and said, “Scott and Kim, would you say the grace, please?”
Everyone ducked their heads down and the two kids said,
“God is great,
God is good,
Let us thank him
For our food.
Amen.”
Then people started passing the big blue plates around and stabbing toast and pancakes and sausages with their forks. I watched to see how much everyone took and tried to take the same. Then I started to watch how much food the two kids put on their fork every time so I wouldn’t look like a pig.
Lefty Lewis noticed I was taking a long time and told his daughter, “See what I told you, Nina, poor Bud-not-Buddy is so skinny and his stomach has shrunk down so much that just smelling the food has got the boy full. Oh, well, I guess that just means more food for the rest of us.” Everyone except for me and Mrs. Sleet yelled a big cheer.
Eating with the Sleets and Lefty Lewis was really hard to do, not because they had bad table manners or nothing, but because they talked through the whole breakfast. And they kept trying to get me to talk too.
At the Home after grace was said we weren’t allowed to say boo. Eating and being quiet is a hard habit to break. Every time one of these Sleets would talk to me and look at me like they expected a answer I’d look around first to make sure no one was watching. At the Home if you got caught talking during mealtime you’d have to get up and leave your food. If these Sleets had to live under those rules they’d all starve to death.
They talked after every swallow, they talked after every drink they took, they talked whilst they were wiping off their lips. Shucks, the little girl, Kim, talked with milk running down her throat, some of the time her words got gluggled up in what she was swallowing. And they laughed. Man, did they laugh.
It was hard to tell whose story they were laughing at, they were doing so much chattering.
Lefty Lewis was talking about radio shows and Scott was talking about going to a baseball game to watch Lefty Lewis pitch and Kim was talking about a little girl she didn’t like and Mrs. Sleet was talking about some people called redcaps.
Kim said to her mother, “Mommy, can’t you tell that Bud-not-Buddy doesn’t know what a redcap is, you gotta explain better.”
Mrs. Sleet said, “Oh, sorry, Bud, redcaps are the men who work at the railroad station loading the trains and taking people’s bags to their cars. That’s what Mr. Lewis does. My husband is a Pullman porter, he takes care of the people once they’re on the trains.”
Kim said, “Yeah, our dad gets to travel all over the country on trains for free!”
Scott said, “That’s ’cause he’s working, it’s not for free, he gets paid to do it.”
Lefty Lewis swallowed a big hunk of sausage and said, “And you know what, Bud? I bet the thing he misses most is Nina’s cooking. I can’t tell you how proud I am of how far my daughter’s cooking has come. This might be hard to believe, but she used to be such a bad cook that her fried chicken was known to have turned a chicken hawk into a vegetarian.”
Scott and Kim and Mrs. Sleet started busting a gut.
“Yup,” Lefty Lewis said, “I brought a friend to Flint a couple of years ago and even though I’d warned him he tried to be polite and ate four of her pancakes. Pour soul held his stomach all the way back to Grand Rapids. Said to me, ‘Lefty, I don’t mean to show any disrespect, but those weren’t pancakes your daughter served me, they were paincakes.’”
Mrs. Sleet laughed along with everyone else and said, “Well, I’m sure I don’t need to hear any more of this,” and picked up the empty sausage plate and went into the kitchen.
As soon as she got out of the room Kim whispered, “Quick, Grampa, tell Bud-not-Buddy how many times you had to pull the car over when you two were going back to Grand Rapids so that man could get out and vomick on the side of the road.”
Before Lefty Lewis could answer, Mrs. Sleet came out of the kitchen with a big wooden spoon and whopped her father a good lick in the head.
AFTER BREAKFAST me and Mr. Lewis said goodbye to the Sleets and got back into the car. I leaned over the front seat to put my suitcase in the back.
“Mr. Lewis, someone stole all the blood last night!” He said, “I’ll say one thing for you, Bud, when you go to sleep you go way, way to sleep. You don’t remember anything about last night after we got to Flint?”
I said, “I don’t think so, sir.”
“After you so rudely fell asleep on me we dropped the blood off at Hurley Hospital, then I gassed up, then I got in touch with your daddy to let him know you were all right.”
Uh-oh. “What did he say, sir?”
“I didn’t call him, I sent a telegram to the Log Cabin. He still owns that club, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Lefty Lewis leaned over and reached in the glove box of the car. He pulled out a flimsy piece of yellow paper and handed it to me.
Across the top of the paper it said in big letters, WESTERN UNION. Underneath that it said,
HEC STOP
BUD OK IN FLINT STOP AT 4309 NORTH ST
STOP RETURN 8PM WED STOP
LEFTY STOP
Man! I’ll bet Herman E. Calloway was just as confused by this message as I was.
I said, “What does this mean, sir?”
Lefty Lewis said, “When you send a telegram the more letters you use the more money you have to pay, so you try to keep your messages as short as you can. Here, let me see it.”
I handed him the paper.
He said, “OK, ‘HEC,’ that stands for your dad, Herman E. Calloway. ‘Bud OK in Flint,’ that lets him know how far you got and that you’re safe. And you did get pretty far, Bud, maybe he won’t be too hard on you when he sees how resourceful you were at running away. I know I’d’ve been darn proud of one of my kids if they’d’ve gotten that far, but I used to offer them money to run and they’d never take it.
“ ‘At 4309 North St,’ that’s my daughter’s address. And ‘Return 8PM Wed’ lets him know I’m bringing you home by eight tonight.”
I said, “What are all of those ‘stops,’ sir?”
He said, “That’s the telegram office’s way of saying ‘period.’ It just means that the sentence is over.”
Lefty Lewis spent most of the day doing errands all around Flint. He made me promise to wait in the car for him. I was good and happy when he said, “That’s it, Bud, time to head home.”
We drove past that sign that said WELCOME TO FLINT on one side when he looked up and said, “Uh-oh.”
Suddenly a sireen went off sounding like it was in the backseat of the car. I raised my head up to look over the seat out the back window. Uh-oh was right! There was a Flint police car right behind us with the red light on top of his roof flashing on and off, on and off, and with the sireen blasting. They’d found me!
Shucks, this doggone FBI was just as good as the movies said it was, they were just like those Royal Canadian Mountain Police, they always got their man! I crouched down as low as I could.
Lefty Lewis pulled the car over to the side of the road and said real calm and real slow, “Bud. It’s very important that you listen very carefully to what I’m going to tell you and that you do exactly as I say.” He kept his eyes stuck on the rearview mirror.
By the way he was acting I was starting to think that maybe Lefty Lewis was on the lam too. And wait a minute, how come this man didn’t have a real name? Whoever heard of someone’s momma naming him
Lefty? That name had alias writ all over it!
Lefty sounds like a real good name for a stick-up man. It seemed like it would be real easy for Machine Gun Kelly to point at some poor slob and say, “That’s the guy what ratted me out, Lefty. Finish him off!”
And what he just said about listening carefully and doing exactly what he said was Number 8 of Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things to Have a Funner Life and Make a Better Liar Out of Yourself.
RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 8
Whenever a Adult Tells You to Listen Carefully and Talks to You in a Real Calm Voice Do Not Listen, Run as Fast as You Can Because Something Real Terrible Is Just Around the Corner. Especially If the Cops Are Chasing You.
I stared at Lefty Lewis, keeping my fingers crossed that the next thing he said wouldn’t be “You’ll never take us alive, copper!”
Instead, he said, “Bud, are you listening, Bud?”
I had to play along until I got a chance to make a break. I said, “Yes, sir.”
“Attaboy. First close your mouth. Good. Now I want you to take the box that is next to me and quickly put it all the way beneath your seat.”
I picked up a box that was about the size of a big thick book and slid it under my seat.
Lefty Lewis said, “Good boy. Now stay put and don’t say anything.” He winked at me and said, “Don’t worry, it’s all right.”
He opened his door and walked back to the police car.
I tried to decide what to do. If I made a break for it I was sure the coppers would plug me, but maybe Lefty Lewis would rassle the gun away before they got a good shot off. Or maybe, just maybe Lefty Lewis would take a bullet for me.
OK, I told myself, I’ma count to ten, then I’m going to reach into the backseat, snatch my suitcase and book out for those buildings.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
OK, I’m gonna count to ten again.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.