it sprang away he began to yell. In a moment Charles was there, pulling one thief away while another ran down the alley. The one Charles had by the shirtsleeve was a black boy not much older than Silas.
“Let me go, motherfucker,” he said to Charles and snatched his arm so hard the sleeve came off and he was gone down the alley, the bus driver left holding the sleeve like a dead wind sock.
“You okay, baby?” His mother was hugging him. She pushed him away and looked at him. “Did he hurt you?”
Silas shook his head. He was beginning to understand that it was over, he was going to be all right, a few lights coming on in the high decrepit apartment buildings.
His mother and the bus driver pulled him up and helped him back to the pickup, waiting a few blocks away.
“Dammit,” Charles said. Someone had stolen his hubcaps.
“I’m so sorry, Charles,” his mother said.
She reached and touched his wrist.
They’d stolen Silas’s suitcase from the back of the truck, and his mother’s from inside. Got her coat, too, where she’d left it on the seat. By some miracle she still had her purse, their money. His mother climbed in the middle and Silas sat by the door, which was cold. Still, he pressed against it, shivering, his feet cold in his socks.
“Lord,” his mother said to Charles, “the night we’ve give you.”
“Well,” he said, “truth is yall ain’t going to find a motel room this late. They all full by now, the decent ones anyway.”
“We might have to use one of the other ones, then,” his mother said.
“Well,” Charles’s voice sounded thick, stifling a yawn, “maybe I could drive you.”
Silas heard her protesting, but he was so tired he closed his eyes. When he opened them it was warmer, his socked feet dry under the heater, and he heard Alice talking again, her chatting no longer afraid, she was happy because Charles was driving them all the way to wherever they were going.
Silas closed his eyes.
Sometime later she shook him awake and put him out of the truck, saying to stand in the alcove at the bus station door, she’d be there in a minute. He did as she said, hurrying toward the door, still half-asleep. The concrete was ice to his feet and he clutched himself and shivered awake. He looked in the big window of the bus station, the lights dimmed, the ticket window closed. A large clock said it was almost 6:00 A.M. He looked back toward the truck, where his mother was standing at Charles’s window, talking to him.
Something clicked behind him, and the bus station door opened. A white woman with a giant ring of keys looked out. She wore a blue uniform like a police officer and a cigarette hung from her lip.
“Good Lord, child,” she said. “Get in here before you freeze to death.”
He came in as she flipped a row of switches that lit the ceiling a section at a time.
“You by yourself?” the woman asked, walking. “Come on.” Her name tag said CLARA.
“No,” he said, following her over the cold white tile. “My mom’ll be here in a minute.”
“No,
“She coming.”
Clara smiled at him and stubbed out her cigarette in a standing ashtray. “You from up north?”
“Yeah.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Chicago.”
“I can tell. You don’t talk like the colored boys around here.”
By the time Alice came in, a few minutes later, Clara had given Silas some hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup and even found a pair of unclaimed sneakers from the lost and found. His mother talked to Clara, now behind the ticket counter, then came over to him where he sat in a chair by the radiator.
“Momma-”
“Silas don’t talk to me.”
He followed her outside into the cold and down a street toward a diner. Inside it was hot and bright with gleaming Formica tables, and for a moment he felt giddy. He smelled coffee and bacon frying. They slid into a corner booth and he wiggled his toes in his roomy new shoes while his mother flapped open a giant laminated menu. Their waitress, a young white girl, arrived with coffee for his mother. She ordered Silas bacon and eggs with grits and toast with jelly and orange juice but said the coffee was fine for her. While they waited she looked out the window and never once spoke. Soon his steaming food arrived, but she didn’t watch him eat, continued to stare out the window where clandestine dawn had arrived and figures in coats began to pass the window and cars blare by as his mother held her cup with both hands and sipped.
The waitress brought Silas more jelly and refilled Alice’s coffee.
“If yall ain’t too busy,” his mother asked, “can we just set for a while, till our bus come?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl said. “Just let me know if yall need anything else.”
When she left he said, “Momma?”
She didn’t look at him.
“Momma?”
“What?”
“Ain’t you hungry?”
Now she looked. “What’s missing out of you, Silas?” She looked hard. “You ain’t seen it that bad. I know. I know cause I have seen it that bad. But you. Up till now you had it easier than I ever did. But now I see what kind of man it’s made you, I don’t know if maybe I didn’t do you a disservice.”
He wouldn’t look at her.
“I’m done fighting you so I’ll tell you what I’m gone do. This here is Fulsom, Mississippi, not far from where I grew up. I’m taking the bus here to a town called Chabot. It ain’t far. From there I’ve got to walk, or catch a ride. To a place I know. It won’t be much, at first. But it’ll get better, soon as I get me a job. If you want to come, you’re going to be a very different boy. Is that clear?”
He didn’t answer.
“Silas?”
The waitress appeared with a second plate, two eggs, over easy, four link sausages, grits, and a cat-head biscuit. She moved Silas’s plate to set the new one between them.
Alice looked up to the girl’s face. “Miss? This ain’t ours.”
The steam from this and other food had frizzed the girl’s hair. “Somebody else sent it back,” she said. “That old grump in the corner. He never even touched it. If yall don’t want it, I’ll have to throw it away.”
“Thank you,” his mother said.
“Enjoy,” the girl said and was gone.
“Silas,” his mother said.
“What?”
“Would you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Would you go find a booth and let me set alone with my breakfast?”
“But, Momma.”
“Go, now,” she said. “If the place gets busy, you can come back.”
He slid out of the booth and found an empty one a few behind her and watched her head move as she ate, slowly. The diner never did fill up, and he looked for the old grump who’d sent his food back and saw no one who wasn’t already eating.
He and his mother sat separated the rest of the time until she rose and he followed her and she paid their bill and he stood by the door as she went back to her table and left a dollar tip. Then she asked the girl something and waited as she brought out a paper. A job application.
Hugging himself, Silas followed her into the morning and up the street to the bus that took them five miles east through more trees than he had ever seen to Chabot where he beheld for the first time the lumber mill he now saw daily. An old man in an ancient pickup with a cracked dash and a pair of vise grips for a window knob gave them a ride and dropped them off by the store at a bend in the road called Amos. His mother went inside and Silas followed her up and down the aisles as she bought a few things and paid, agreeing with the fat white counterman that yes, it
