Waiting for Augusta

by Jessica Lawson

  Voices hummed and moaned while we all got our bearings. Everyone seemed to be breathing and fine, though the pregnant woman was tucked into a pile of broken chairs like a curled-up possum, crying quietly and talking to her belly, while another woman tried to comfort her.

  “Hey, Bobby Jones,” Noni said, pushing around a turned-over table and coming to my side. She squeezed my hand, her fingers doing the talking to say, are you okay, I’m okay, are you okay, good, I’m glad we’re okay. She raised her eyebrows at the backpack, and I nodded to let her know that Daddy was fine. Patting her pocket bulges, she grinned. “The eggs made it, too.”

  The driver bellowed for everyone to listen up. “Ya’ll just take a break and settle in. They can send another bus, but it won’t be until six o’clock or so.” He held up both hands. “I know, I know, that’s five or six hours from now. I’m sorry. Ya’ll eat a meal on the bus company if this fine woman can find a way to serve you.”

  The woman glared at him. “Got pie and grilled cheese. That’s it.”

  “You got pig,” someone joked, pointing to the road.

  An even deeper stare met the joker’s eyes and put them back to normal. Mama’d used that same look on Daddy a few times.

  “That was Darry’s pig,” the café owner said. “My boy raised it since it was weaned to take to the state fair in a month. Pillow, he called it. Boy took more care with that barrow than, than . . . .” At that, she dropped her cloth and started crying.

  “What’s a barrow?” Noni whispered.

  I raised my hand over my mouth. “Castrated hog. Meant for the market.”

  Noni went over to her. “Were you going to sell Pillow after the fair?”

  The owner shook her head and took a handkerchief from her back pocket with a jittery hand. “No. We’d make more money by using the meat here. He already weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds. We would’ve gotten more than two hundred pounds of pork off him, but now it’ll just rot on the side of the road. Bill Davis does all the butchering around here, and he’s in Shreveport until Friday. We don’t have time to drive Pillow somewhere else. I wouldn’t even know who to call.” She blew her nose, then gestured around the broken café. “Lord, look at this mess.”

  Without making eye contact with me, Noni put an arm on my shoulder. “My brother doesn’t talk, but he can butcher a pig with a whole lot of love. Our Daddy taught him. Can we help you?”

  The woman looked surprised. Her eyes swept over me, pausing at my hands and arms—my body’s butchering tools. Tapping fingers along both hips, she seemed to exchange silent words with a man holding a broom by the front door. “Okay,” she said. “That’d be a help, thank you. Barrett,” she said to the broom man, “ya’ll get Darry and go around back. We’ll use all of him,” she said to me. “Sausage parts too.”

  I don’t know why I agreed to do it. Something about the way that little boy was crying on the side of the road, like he’d lost something more special than anybody but him could really know.

  The café owner rummaged around a closet in the kitchen and handed me a pair of coveralls that I suspected belonged to Darry. I stepped outside and slipped them on over my clothes, then zipped them up while three men hauled the barrow off the road and around the building, its body so big that it would have stood over waist high next to me. Behind the café was a long field and a dirt pen attached to a small barn. A cow chewed its cud along the field’s fence line, staring with kind, dull eyes.

  Darry’s father placed a set of knives and tools on an overturned barrel in the middle of the dirt pen. Three tarps were spread on the ground inside the pen, and the hog was dragged and positioned on top of one. A long cutting board was placed on the second tarp, and the third tarp was topped with large white buckets, ready to be filled with whatever I deemed worthy of keeping.

  Pillow was a big mess, and the side where the bus had smacked into the hog’s body left a few spots that would be too torn up for plate cuts. I needed to cut him open completely and clean him out before dividing the meat up for the café’s menu. I gestured for a water hose and sprayed the body down, increasing the water’s pressure with my thumb and trying not to look at Darry. His father had encouraged him to help, but the boy refused.

  “It’s okay, son,” Darry’s father told him, squeezing his son’s shoulder. “You don’t have to watch. I need to go check on the rest of the bus folks.”

  But Darry stayed, watching me from an overturned bucket.

  I knelt on the tarps, making cuts to open the cavity. I scraped out intestines and organs, piling them into the buckets to be made into sausage, thinking how my life back in Hilltop had literally stopped me in my tracks, shouting at me clear as if it had a voice, letting me know that it wasn’t about to let me run away.

  The only time I’d ever helped butcher a full pig was when I was nine. Daddy brought home a live one instead of ordering a blood-drained whole hog. He made me watch while he scratched the pig’s ears. He waited until it was good and happy and grunting away, and then he slipped the sharpest, thinnest knife we owned underneath the pig’s neck and winced as he sliced across, smooth as running a dinner blade through warm butter.

  The pig collapsed, and Daddy said it hadn’t felt anything more than a horsefly bite. He said Grandpa Clay had shown him the very same slaughtering technique, and even though Daddy’d been twenty at the time, it’d still been hard to watch. He made me help gut the animal and take out all of its parts. I vomited and cried the whole time. Daddy patted my back and told me I was doing good and said he was sorry, but never once said I could stop.

  Grandpa Clay thought slaughtering a pig by hand, up close and personal, was the only way a true barbecue man could show respect for his trade. Even the most delicious things can have an ugly side, he’d said. Nothing in life is as perfect as it seems, and when you take ownership for the messy parts, it makes you a better person because it gives you a clearer picture of the world. After it was done, Daddy had given me a new apron and said that I was officially a barbecue man.

  Snap out of Memory Land and get back to work, Barbecue Man, a mosquito said, sucking my blood. And try not to cry this time.

  “You either,” I murmured, slapping it.

  Noni showed up and set the backpack down, a piece of newspaper sticking out of her dress pocket and the corners of her mouth white with pie cream as she sat on the ground beside Darry. She had two plates in her hand and held one under his nose. “Pie?” When he made a point of ignoring her, she nodded. “I don’t blame you.” She set down the extra plate, cut a bite from her piece, and popped it in her mouth, chewing with a satisfied, interested look on her face, like she was eating Cracker Jacks at a baseball game.

  “Pretty gross over there, huh?” she said to Darry, her mouth full of chocolate pudding and meringue. Then she saw me glancing her way. “Pretty gross!” she repeated. “The pig, not the pie. Pie’s great,” she said to Darry. “Did your mama make it?”

  I stopped what I was doing long enough to see Darry give her another death stare.

  She squirmed and blushed, stuffing pie in her face, which was probably the only way she knew to keep quiet.

  “What’s going on, Ben?” Daddy asked. “Where are we? This little gypsy girl and some other folks were talking about a bus crash and how we’re gonna have to wait a bunch of hours?”

  The backpack with Daddy’s urn was near me, propped against a wooden pen post. Noni saw me looking toward the pack and watched my face. She left her spot, came over, and pulled the urn into the daylight.

  “We got to get on the road, son, so quit whatever you’re— ”

  She tapped Daddy’s urn. “Shh. I don’t know if you’re real or if you can hear me, but if you’re jabbering in there, you quit it,” she whispered. “Your boy’s cutting up a pig, so stop distracting him or he might slip and cut off a finger. And the pig’s owner already looks like he’s about to vomit. A cut-off finger’ll make him lose his lunch for sure.” She winked at me and gave me a thumbs-up,
returning to her seat.

  Darry wasn’t vomiting, but he was fighting tears, I could tell. His lips twitched and jerked up and down and sideways, even while the rest of him stayed still as a statue. Just before it was time to start with the big cuts, I closed the body cavity, and with all the hosing I’d done, the pig looked as close to okay as it ever would again. I let my hands graze that pig’s skin, and I gave its ears a good scratch, even though Pillow wasn’t alive to feel it. I motioned to the body and stepped back.

  Darry looked stubborn for a minute and then stood and came over and put a hand on the hog’s head. His face crumpled, and then he leaned over and let his tears sink into his pig. He whispered words too low to hear. Then he rose, wiped snot from his face, and nodded.

  “I hate you,” he told me. “I hate you.”

  Then he sat back on the bucket and watched me finish taking his hard work to pieces. I knew it wasn’t losing any prize that hurt most. It was other stuff that had him crying.

  After I’d hosed myself down and taken off the bloodied coveralls, I found Noni back inside the café, where the bus driver was telling an angry crowd that, due to an unexpected shortage in availability, new transportation would be delayed until eight o’clock that evening. I glanced at the wall clock and Darry, who was sitting under it, slumped over a table with his nose bumping up against a ketchup bottle.

  Noni put her arm around me and steered me toward the door. “Come on, Brother Bobby. Let’s walk. I can’t sit in here for another handful of hours.”

  When I looked back, Darry felt me staring and raised his head. He didn’t look angry anymore. He just looked sad. I waved goodbye and turned, knowing he wouldn’t wave back.

  HOLE 13

  Hobo Song

  We took our cheese sandwiches and wandered across the road from the café, sitting on a bench that overlooked a set of train tracks and the lake.

  “How many pieces of pie did you eat?” I asked her. “You still got some on your face.” I looked down at her rolled up sleeves, then at her bruise. I hadn’t really noticed how strange it was. It circled the entire elbow like a perfectly straight armband, the edges of it looking like they’d been drawn with a ruler. I couldn’t figure out what could have done something like that. It didn’t seem to bother her, though.

  Noni grinned. “Five. Had to try each kind. I wasn’t about to miss out on pie. Wanderers never know when good stuff’ll stop being available. Best to stock up when we can.” She burped, wiped at her mouth, and took a bite of cheese sandwich.

  I finished my sandwich, took out my sketch pad, and started drawing in pencil. Darry came easy with his sharp features and overalls. The pig was more difficult, but I’d seen its face and knew its heft. The lines were soft at first, and I pressed harder when the shapes became clear.

  Noni picked up a rock and threw it, then searched the ground and found a bigger one, hurling it nearly to the lake. “Nice one, Noni,” she congratulated herself. “Say, Benjamin Putter, do you believe in signs? Like if you saw a sign that seemed like it might be from a dead person you loved, would you believe it? Like maybe a sign that something wasn’t your fault and you shouldn’t keep thinking it was?”

  I let out a Daddy snort. “I think you’re talking to the wrong person.” I patted the backpack. “I’ve gone beyond signs with my daddy.”

  “That’s right, he’s talking to you. That’s lucky.”

  “You hoping your daddy will leave you a sign?”

  “Something like that.” She picked up another stone and threw it toward the water. “I went away for a while after the funeral, and when I got back to my house, I knew that I’d never be able to talk with my daddy again. I knew that. The only other thing that was clear to me was that I needed to try to find him anyway.” She dug in her pocket. “So I wrote down these wandering rules and started walking. I think he needs me to find him, somehow. I just need to find the right sign. I know that sounds crazy,” she added, studying her shoes.

  Her shoes looked like the extras you had to wear at gym class if you forgot to bring sneakers. They were nothing like May’s shoes, which always looked like something she could wear straight to church. She usually kept a handkerchief with her to keep the dust off, which seemed pointless in a town full of dirt roads. But Noni’s shoes were the opposite. Worn and smudged with stains from wherever it was she’d been walking before she met me.

  “It doesn’t sound that crazy.”

  She looked over my shoulder at the sketch of Darry with his arm around a pig that had a huge prize ribbon around its neck. I’d written WINNER in tiny letters on the ribbon.

  “That picture doesn’t belong to you,” Noni said. “Stay here.” She tore the sketch from my pad and went sprinting back to the café, throwing in a few one-handed cartwheels along the way.

  What a show-off, said the bench beneath me. Pretty good, though. She’s no stay-in-her-shell turtle boy, that’s for certain. In fact, if she were your sister, I bet your daddy would be more proud of—

  “Hush,” I told it.

  Within a few minutes, heavy footsteps and heaving breaths were followed by a slap on my back. Noni sank back into the bench. Her toes started tapping against the ground. “Darry likes it.” She held up a small black rectangle. “He even found us a lighter when I asked for matches. I asked if there was any free pie left, but he started getting all grouchy again and I got the feeling he just wanted me to leave.”

  “Imagine that.”

  She flipped the lighter in the air. “We can build a fire for the eggs tonight. Got a spoon, too, for getting them out of the hot water. First tickets, now supplies. I’m thinking you packed the right things after all. You did good, Benjamin Putter.”

  “You mean Bobby Jones.”

  She scratched her elbow, the one with the bruise, and looked back toward the café. “Bobby Jones didn’t have anything to do with that drawing. Say, I think I saw these tracks on the map back at the Heart station. They lead right to Atlanta, I’m pretty sure. Or close, anyway.”

  She was lying and we both knew it. “How close do they get to Augusta?” I asked her.

  Noni picked up a pebble and rolled it between her finger and thumb. “The tracks are going east, the same way we want to go. What more do you need?”

  “You heard the driver. A new bus is coming.”

  “Not until tonight.”

  Daddy cleared his throat. “I’m with the girl on this, Ben. Find a way to get going. We’ll never get to the Masters at this rate.”

  “You sure pick your times to start talking,” I said to Daddy.

  “I’ve been talking since I met you. Don’t be a turkey,” Noni said. “There’s something nudging at me about these tracks. It’s a sign, maybe. I think we should follow them. Why wait around until eight o’clock at night for a bus that might run into another pig?”

  “Because a bus is faster than walking.”

  “So’s a train.” She pointed far, far down the line, where a tiny dot had appeared. A train, heading our way. Heading east. Noni stood and started singing a low song.

  My pencil stopped. I couldn’t help but watch her and listen.

  Gone wandering, Lord, got my wandering card,

  Wandering, wonder why life’s so hard,

  Found my time on the rail, found a dry way to sail,

  Gone wandering, Lord, to my home

  Been trying to find my home,

  And I’ll die on the rail, in my home.

  It was magic. The way she sang was magic. I’d never heard someone sing like that, with longing and hope and pain all blended up until you couldn’t quite tell what you were hearing. Just that the words mattered.

  The last note rang out low and mournful, and she looked lost when she met my eyes again. “It’s an old hobo song. My daddy used to sing it while we watched trains go by behind our house. There’s more, but that’s all I can remember.” She turned, and I saw her eyes squinting, like she was trying to make something come into focus.

  “My
grandma’s café used to feed the railroad hobos,” I said, “back when they’d come into Hilltop to work the fields. She told stories about how they’d appear and disappear when she was a girl, coming and going without any warning. She said some days she’d been tempted to leap on a passing train herself, just to see where they all went when they left town on the tracks.”

  I remembered how Daddy had hopped onto Grandma Clay’s stories, calling the hobos Luckies. Saying they had all the freedom in the world. Nothing tying them down.

  The train was getting closer, changing from a dot to a thin black line.

  Noni nudged me with her elbow. “Let’s hop that train, Benjamin Putter. We’ve got to get to Georgia.”

  “We’ve got to get to Georgia,” Daddy agreed.

  “Couple of best friends, aren’t you,” I mumbled.

  “What?” both he and Noni asked.

  That’s right, the train tracks agreed with me. They’re just using you, the both of them. And did you notice how your daddy only talks when he wants something from you?

  You’re being used, all right, the bench said. But I guess you’ll take attention any way you can get it, ’cause deep down you know he thinks you’re worth—

  “Nothing,” I said to all of them.

  The train was still a ways down the track, but now I could make out mounds of black in each of the open freight cars. Coal. Smoke puffed out of the front like our smoker at home and it could have been a moving barbecue pit. The golf ball in my throat twisted in place until I reached up and rubbed on it. Go away, I said silently. Make me, it said back.

  “Noni, you really want us to just jump on a coal train?”

  “Yep.”

  The train was close now, probably less than a minute before the engine car would come charging past us. Coal pieces were piled in each one, some cars looking less filled than others, like those’d gotten less from a bad pour off the filler. Either that or the coal on those cars had done a better job of settling in for the ride. There must have been tons and tons of it with the number of cars on that train. “Where’s all that coal going?” I asked, half to myself.