It wasn’t cold, it was jest durn confounded dark, and that highway stretched on in front of me like, without nobody using it, it had stretched out half again as fer just like a man does when he lays down, so that for a time it looked like full sun was going to ketch me before I had finished them twenty-two miles to Jefferson. But it didn’t. Daybreak was jest starting when I walked up the hill into town.
I could smell breakfast cooking in the cabins and I wished I had thought to brought me a cold biscuit, but that was too late now. And Pete had told me Memphis was a piece beyond Jefferson, but I never knowed it was no eighty miles. So I stood there on that empty square, with daylight coming and coming and the street lights still burning and that Law looking down at me, and me still eighty miles from Memphis, and it had took me all night to walk jest twenty-two miles, and so, by the time I got to Memphis at that rate, Pete would ‘a’ done already started for Pearl Harbor.
“Where do you come from?” the Law said.
And I told him again. “I got to get to Memphis. My brother’s there.”
“You mean you ain’t got any folks around here?” the Law said. “Nobody but that brother? What are you doing way off down here and your brother in Memphis?”
And I told him again, “I got to get to Memphis. I ain’t got no time to waste talking about it and I ain’t got time to walk it. I got to git there today.”
“Come on here,” the Law said.
We went down another street. And there was the bus, jest like when Pete got into it yestiddy morning, except there wasn’t no lights on it now and it was empty. There was a regular bus dee-po like a railroad dee-po, with a ticket counter and a feller behind it, and the Law said, “Set down over there,” and I set down on the bench, and the Law said, “I want to use your telephone,” and he talked in the telephone a minute and put it down and said to the feller behind the ticket counter, “Keep your eye on him. I’ll be back as soon as Mrs. Habersham can arrange to get herself up and dressed.” He went out. I got up and went to the ticket counter.
“I want to go to Memphis,” I said.
“You bet,” the feller said. “You set down on the bench now. Mr. Foote will be back in a minute.”
“I don’t know no Mr. Foote,” I said. “I want to ride that bus to Memphis.”
“You got some money?” he said. “It’ll cost you seventy-two cents.”
I taken out the matchbox and unwropped the shikepoke egg. “I’ll swap you this for a ticket to Memphis,” I said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“It’s a shikepoke egg,” I said. “You never seen one before. It’s worth a dollar. I’ll take seventy-two cents fer it.”
“No,” he said, “the fellers that own that bus insist on a cash basis. If I started swapping tickets for bird eggs and livestock and such, they would fire me. You go and set down on the bench now, like Mr. Foote—”
I started for the door, but he caught me, he put one hand on the ticket counter and jumped over it and caught up with me and reached his hand out to ketch my shirt. I whupped out my pocketknife and snapped it open.
“You put a hand on me and I’ll cut it off,” I said.
I tried to dodge him and run at the door, but he could move quicker than any grown man I ever see, quick as Pete almost. He cut me off and stood with his back against the door and one foot raised a little, and there wasn’t no other way to get out. “Get back on that bench and stay there,” he said.
And there wasn’t no other way out. And he stood there with his back against the door. So I went back to the bench. And then it seemed like to me that dee-po was full of folks. There was that Law again, and there was two ladies in fur coats and their faces already painted. But they still looked like they had got up in a hurry and they still never liked it, a old one and a young one, looking down at me.
“He hasn’t got a overcoat!” the old one said. “How in the world did he ever get down here by himself?”
“I ask you,” the Law said. “I couldn’t get nothing out of him except his brother is in Memphis and he wants to get back up there.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I got to git to Memphis today.”
“Of course you must,” the old one said. “Are you sure you can find your brother when you get to Memphis?”
“I reckon I can,” I said. “I ain’t got but one and I have knowed him all my life. I reckon I will know him again when I see him.”
The old one looked at me. “Somehow he doesn’t look like he lives in Memphis,” she said.
“He probably don’t,” the Law said. “You can’t tell though. He might live anywhere, overhalls or not. This day and time they get scattered overnight from he — hope to breakfast; boys and girls, too, almost before they can walk good. He might have been in Missouri or Texas either yestiddy, for all we know. But he don’t seem to have any doubt his brother is in Memphis. All I know to do is send him up there and leave him look.”
“Yes,” the old one said.
The young one set down on the bench by me and opened a hand satchel and taken out a artermatic writing pen and some papers.
“Now, honey,” the old one said, “we’re going to see that you find your brother, but we must have a case history for our files first. We want to know your name and your brother’s name and where you were born and when your parents died.”
“I don’t need no case history neither,” I said. “All I want is to get to Memphis. I got to get there today.”
“You see?” the Law said. He said it almost like he enjoyed it. “That’s what I told you.”
“You’re lucky, at that, Mrs. Habersham,” the bus feller said. “I don’t think he’s got a gun on him, but he can open that knife da — I mean, fast enough to suit any man.”
But the old one just stood there looking at me.
“Well,” she said. “Well. I really don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” the bus feller said. “I’m going to give him a ticket out of my own pocket, as a measure of protecting the company against riot and bloodshed. And when Mr. Foote tells the city board about it, it will be a civic matter and they will not only reimburse me, they will give me a medal too. Hey, Mr. Foote?”
But never nobody paid him no mind. The old one still stood looking down at me. She said “Well,” again. Then she taken a dollar from her purse and give it to the bus feller. “I suppose he will travel on a child’s ticket, won’t he?”
“Wellum,” the bus feller said, “I just don’t know what the regulations would be. Likely I will be fired for not crating him and marking the crate Poison. But I’ll risk it.”
Then they were gone. Then the Law come back with a sandwich and give it to me.
“You’re sure you can find that brother?” he said.
“I ain’t yet convinced why not,” I said. “If I don’t see Pete first, he’ll see me. He knows me too.”
Then the Law went out for good, too, and I et the sandwich. Then more folks come in and bought tickets, and then the bus feller said it was time to go, and I got into the bus just like Pete done, and we was gone.
I seen all the towns. I seen all of them. When the bus got to going good, I found out I was jest about wore out for sleep. But there was too much I hadn’t never saw before. We run out of Jefferson and run past fields and woods, then we would run into another town and out of that un and past fields and woods again, and then into another town with stores and gins and water tanks, and we run along by the railroad for a spell and I seen the signal arm move, and then I seen the train and then some more towns, and I was jest about plumb wore out for sleep, but I couldn’t resk it.
Then Memphis begun. It seemed like, to me, it went on for miles. We would pass a patch of stores and I would think that was sholy it and the bus would even stop. But it wouldn’t be Memphis yet and we would go on again past water tanks and smokestacks on top of the mills, and if they was gins and sawmills, I never knowed there was that many and I never seen any that big, and where they got enough cotton and logs to run um I don’t know.
Then I seen Memphis. I knowed I was right this
