U R not a loan.
Twenty-Three
I WALKED UP to Miss Charleena’s back door carrying the cookbook. I didn’t care who answered. I didn’t care if Macon had told the whole world that I couldn’t read. I was going to read this cookbook if it killed me.
Macon was watering the flowers. I didn’t look at him. I knocked. Miss Charleena answered. I held Sonny’s cookbook out to her. I told her about his accident.
“I’m ready to do this now,” I told her. “I’m not going to run away.”
I wanted to take those words back any number of times, but I didn’t. Sometimes it took three days to get through one recipe. Once I tried to teach Miss Charleena how to make butterscotch brownies, and she kept saying, “How do I know if I’ve overmixed the batter?”
“Well, you just know. . . .”
“How do I know if the muffin springs back when I touch it? How much does it spring back?”
“Well . . .”
She was worse at cooking than I was at reading.
Once I just slammed Sonny’s cookbook shut and started crying.
“Foster,” she said. “Maybe I’m the wrong person to help you. I’m not a teacher!”
“I think you’re doing really well.” A guy said it.
I turned around. It was Macon.
What’s it to you?
“I think it’s cool you’re doing this.” He looked up at me smiling. “I know what it’s like to have to deal with something that’s always a problem. The problem with my problem is that everyone can see it and it can’t be fixed.”
“What’s your problem?”
“I’m short!” He stood there, small and miserable.
“You’re not that short,” I lied.
“Last year the teacher called me to read something in class. She said, ‘Stand up, Macon,’ and I did. Then she shouted, ‘I said, stand up, young man!’ And I was already standing! All the kids were laughing.”
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smile.
“People call me names like elf and pipsqueak. A documentary filmmaker called pipsqueak? And there’s squirt, shrimp, small-fry, dinky, and”—he shuddered—“mini Macon. It kills me, Foster. I feel tall inside.”
I smiled. “People call me stupid, dumbo, and dunce.”
“You’re none of those things. You’re smart.”
“Thanks.” I wish I could tell him he wasn’t little.
“You need to know something about me, Foster. I would never call you a name or make fun of you. So, look. I’m a good reader and I could help you. And if you want to help me, I still need an assistant. You don’t have to take notes. You can help me think of questions to ask the people who work at the prison.”
“You mean, like, ‘Have you ever had problems with a prisoner?’ ”
“Yes, exactly.” Macon was writing.
“Have you ever wondered how the prisoners feel about you?”
“That’s excellent.”
“Do you ever feel sorry for them?”
“Yes!”
“But I think to really learn about the prison, you’ve got to go to the Helping Hands House, Macon.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.” He wrote that down, too. I’d never had anybody take notes when I was talking. “I can’t believe anyone would ever think you were stupid.”
The widest smile took over my face.
Macon, you have no idea what you just said to me.
Those next weeks weren’t easy, I’ll tell you, because three people had made it their business to teach me how to read. I’d made it my business, too, but Miss Charleena, Mama, and Macon were on my case day and night.
Macon wrote my job out on paper:
ASSISTANT
“This is what you are,” he said. “Let’s sound it out.”
“Ass . . .” I began. “Hey, wait a minute!”
“It’s phonics, Foster!”
Mama arranged things from Fish Hardware on the table, then she wrote the name of each thing on a sticky note. HAMMER, NAIL, CURTAIN ROD, PAINTBRUSH, PLUNGER. She said it might help if I could see the thing and the word that went with it. After the lesson, the toilet overflowed. Mama grabbed the plunger and started pumping.
“Plunger,” I said. “P-l-u-n—”
“Foster, just grab some towels right now!”
After I cleaned up, I asked Mama to write out, She grabbed the towels and cleaned up the mess. It helped to see the thing I’d just done written out, and I used my amazing memory to memorize what the words looked like.
“Do you think memorizing is cheating in reading?” I asked Mama.
“You use whatever God’s given you, Baby.”
I felt like yeast was in my brain and it was rising. Sometimes I’d stand in front of the bathroom mirror and look to see if my head had doubled.
Sometimes I had to tell people, Enough! My brain can’t take anymore. But it was better to be surrounded by people who were trying too hard than by people who didn’t care. Kitty wanted to help, too.
“You know what killed me in school?” she groaned. “Word problems in math.”
“Those are the worst!” I agreed.
She laughed. “Donny has six cats and Susie has nine. If Susie gives three cats to Donny . . .” She shook her head laughing.
I finished it for her. “And then five more cats show up on Donny’s porch so he has to give two back to Susie, how many cats does Donny have?”
We looked at each other and shouted, “Too many!”
I put a big sign with the alphabet right under Lester’s daddy’s stupid, dead fish. I taped paper underneath it and wrote down the new words I was learning. This way, when I was cooking, I could have reading right in my face.
Every night before bed I said to the fish, “Guard these words and letters. I’m counting on you.”
Twenty-Four
YOU KNOW HOW it is when you’re learning something hard? You have a breakthrough and then you take twelve steps backward and forget you learned anything.
One day I’d feel my brain open up; the next day it would be locked tight. Miss Charleena never seemed frustrated with me. I guess I was frustrated enough for both of us.
Sonny’s show was in reruns, and all anyone said was he was in critical condition. I renewed his cookbook at the Bookmobile. Then, to honor him, I turned his banana cake with fudge frosting into amazing cupcakes.
“I can move two dozen cupcakes a day if you’re up to it,” Wayne told me.
I was! I baked red velvet cupcakes with fluffy white frosting; I made apple cupcakes with caramel frosting. I sure liked having a little baking business. I was even getting stopped on the street.
Where did you learn to bake like that?
When are you going to make the chocolate ones again?
Those lemon cupcakes were dry.
That last one hurt. “I fell asleep waiting for them to bake,” I explained to the man who said my lemon cupcakes were dry.
He climbed into his pickup and told me, “If you’re going to put yourself out there, be ready to take your fouls.”
“You can’t make everybody happy,” Mama told me later.
Then Amy had an idea. “A new cupcake, Foster. A cupcake no one has ever eaten in Culpepper. I want you to make it, and we’re going to give them out on the first Cool Tool Saturday. Daddy said we could try this. I want to go all out.”
I smiled. “How about chocolate malt?”
She sat down. “This is possible?”
In the cupcake world, anything is possible.
And on Saturday I brought thirty-six chocolate malt cupcakes to Fish Hardware, and Amy gave me thirty-six dollars—which was very cool. Mama arranged them on a plate; the coffee was waiting. A swarm of people came into the store.
Amy held up “the ultimate cool tool, a must-have for anyone interested in anything.” Angry Wayne, Kitty, Lester, the sheriff, and Betty were watching as she took it out of a leather case and began to unfold it. “This,” she said proudly, “is the Ü
ber Tool. It’s got a hammer, screwdriver, bottle opener, flashlight, wrench, first aid kit, pliers, scissors, nail file, wire, and a personal cooling device.” A little fan whirred.
Angry Wayne ate two of my chocolate malt cupcakes and bought the first Über Tool. He turned to me. “Why haven’t we sold these cupcakes at my restaurant?”
“Amy wanted something brand-new, sir.”
“I want these cupcakes at my place Monday morning,” he ordered.
Amy marched over. “These are hardware cupcakes.”
Angry Wayne stared her down. “These cupcakes belong to the world.”
“My dad would have liked the Über Tool, Foster. He was always fixing something.” Garland smiled. We were outside Fish Hardware. “He fixed my running.”
“How did he do that?”
“I was fast, but I didn’t want to practice. And one day I ran a really bad race. I didn’t even finish. I made my school lose. And he told me, ‘Look, sport, it’s a gift to be fast, and it’s your job to see how far you can go with it.’ He told me, when you start a race, you’ve got to finish it. And you know the crazy part? He had one leg a little shorter than the other, so he couldn’t run. . ..” Garland gulped and looked away.
“He sounds awesome.”
“I’ve never had a coach so good. I try to go back over everything he told me.”
I know exactly what he meant.
Amy came outside grinning. “The cupcakes are gone, Foster. And we sold thirteen Über Tools. I think we’ve hit the tipping point!”
There was energy popping in the air. It felt like Culpepper was waking up. Macon finished an apple cupcake with caramel frosting, his favorite, and said, “Okay, you guys. It’s time.”
Garland and I nodded.
“It’s time to do what we have to do.”
“You have to do it,” Garland reminded him.
Macon stood by the Culpepper prison gate and announced to the guard, “I am a documentary filmmaker. I’m making a movie about how this prison has affected Culpepper. I’d like to speak to the warden.”
Macon had been practicing this line all day, but he needed to grow another foot to be taken seriously. The guard looked at him. “Very funny.”
“It’s not funny!” Macon insisted. “This is serious!”
Garland and I looked serious. I should have brought cupcakes.
“This prison has made promises to this town that it hasn’t fulfilled!” Macon insisted.
“Step away from the gate,” the guard said.
Macon had memorized this next part, too. “I’m making this request as a citizen of Culpepper.”
The guard laughed. “How old are you?”
“Almost thirteen!”
“Step away from the gate, junior.”
Garland and I dragged Macon off, which was harder than you’d think. He was little, but all his issues had risen to the top.
“You’ve lied to this town!” Macon screamed.
“I just work here, little man. Get lost!”
“That’s what we’re doing, sir.” We dragged Macon down the road.
“I’m never going to get my movie made!”
Garland lifted him over a pothole. “I think it’s good to practice and all, but maybe you should wait until you get your camera.”
“I want to film the big stories, you guys, and show people all the ways we’re being lied to.” He looked miserable as a prison bus drove by.
“I think you’re the perfect one to do that,” I told him.
He looked up hopefully. “You do?”
“It’s like you’re angry for all of us.”
His face changed to all-out happiness. “That’s exactly what a doc filmmaker does, Foster. Be angry for the world. You’re a genius!” His face was red. “I have to hold on to my anger.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, Macon.”
Lots of people in town were angry. The word was that Taco Terrific had offered Mr. Fish a lot of money for the church and he was going to sell it. Every time Perseverance Wilson saw Mr. Fish, she hollered he was “messing with sacred ground.”
Angry Wayne wore a shirt that had a taco with an X through it.
I wore a shirt with a cupcake on it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t mad.
And then Mama dropped her bomb.
I was mashing bananas for banana cupcake batter when she did it. She walked through the door; the smile was out of her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.” She started cleaning up around the Bullet—wiping things down that looked clean to me. Mama does that when something’s wrong.
“You still have the job at Fish Hardware?”
“Of course.”
“You feeling sick or something?”
“No.”
She didn’t say much at dinner. She didn’t say much as we were doing the dishes. We went outside and sat in the fold-up chairs. The strange glow from the prison filled the night sky.
“I’ve got to go away for a few days,” she said.
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Where are you going? ”
She looked at her hands. “Back to Memphis. I’ve got to take care of a few things.”
Memphis! “I’ll come with you.”
She took my hand. “You need to stay here with Kitty and Lester. They said it’s okay. I’ll only be gone for a couple of days.”
My mouth felt dry all of a sudden. “What have you got to do?”
“Well, we left pretty quick, you know. And there’s the bank and some forms I’ve got to fill out.”
There’s Huck, I thought. “You think going alone is a good idea, Mama?”
She looked up at the hard glow in the sky. “I need to do this myself.”
I didn’t sleep too well. I kept tossing and turning and thinking about Mama driving alone. I thought about her seeing Huck and got a sick feeling. The more I thought about it, the sicker I felt.
When Mama put her suitcase in the car that morning, I handed her the good lunch I’d packed. “You’re strong, Mama, and you’re a fighter. Remember that.” I hugged her with a lot more courage than I had.
She got in the Chevy smiling brave. I watched her pull away and felt like I was getting left. There was nothing in my life that said Mama would up and leave me—I just felt a place of fear open up in my heart. She blew me a big kiss and honked as she drove off. I ran behind the car waving and shouting, “See you Sunday,” just in case she forgot.
I walked slowly to Kitty and Lester’s house. It didn’t seem as friendly as before. Nothing did. I figured if I didn’t go up their steps, this whole thing didn’t actually start.
I worried about fog rolling in and Mama being in the car by herself. I worried she’d run out of gas, or get lost again, or drive off a cliff. I checked my watch. Exactly three minutes had passed. By the time Sunday came, I was going to be a wreck.
Twenty-Five
MACON AND I were walking to the Bookmobile. I had to turn in Sonny’s cookbook.
“I’m really glad you moved here, Foster.”
“Thanks.”
“How come you did?”
That was a loaded question.
“I’ve lived here half my life,” Macon said. “I came because my daddy ran off. Me and my mom moved in with my grandma.”
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.
“Do you remember your dad?”
“Yes.” Macon’s face looked hard, like he didn’t have any good memories.
“Mama and I had to leave kind of fast,” I began.
“What happened?”
I told him a little about Huck, but just a little. “He wasn’t the kind of person we should have in our lives,” was how I put it.
“My dad wasn’t either.”
And there passed between us this kind of knowing. We didn’t need to talk about it anymore. We walked up the gravel road.
“In addition to my reading stuff, I’ve got a fear of Elvises.” r />
He stopped and looked up at me, but he wasn’t smirking or anything.
“I know it’s unnatural,” I added.
“My uncle Chester is afraid of Democrats,” he said. “He starts shaking all over when he sees one.”
We kept walking, heading down the road, hearing the crunch of our shoes on the little stones. I got in step with him, swinging my arms like he was doing, setting my jaw.
I felt safe around this small, determined boy who didn’t make fun of anything I told him.
This is how best friends are made.
I turned in Sonny’s book, and Mrs. Worth said, “What can we get you now?”
I didn’t want anything else, but Macon said, “Do you have any books on Elvis?”
Had he been listening at all?
Mrs. Worth did a little dance behind her desk and led us to the back section. “Mr. Elvis Presley with photographs,” she said, and handed the book to Macon.
Some friend.
Macon sat on the floor and opened the book. “I’ve been thinking, Foster, about how we need to face our fears.”
This was my fear, not his!
“You need to look at this,” Macon said. He opened the book to a two-page picture of Elvis in a shirt that looked like it had jewels on it, sweat dripping from his face.
“Macon, stop it! I don’t want to think about Elvis.”
“But the thing is, Foster, Elvis is hard to avoid. He was so famous, there’s probably no place you could go where there isn’t a picture of him someplace. You’re going to have to deal with it.”
I shook my head.
“It’s hard in the beginning, but then it gets easier. Here’s a picture of Elvis when he was just a boy.”
I looked.
“And here’s another one when he had a famous TV moment on the Ed Sullivan Show long before we were born. See, it’s just Elvis from the waist up.”
I looked a little longer at that one.
“You’re doing fine,” Macon said.
I crossed my arms tight. “Huck made me call him Elvis when Mama wasn’t around. It was weird. His voice would get low and he’d say he was the real Elvis come back from the dead.”