“Sho you got to,” I said. “Them Japanese—” He turned over hard, he kind of surged over onto his side, looking at me in the dark.
“Anyway, you’re all right,” he said. “I expected to have more trouble with you than with all the rest of them put together.”
“I reckon I can’t help it neither,” I said. “But maybe it will run a few years longer and I can get there. Maybe someday I will jest walk in on you.”
“I hope not,” Pete said. “Folks don’t go to wars for fun. A man don’t leave his maw crying just for fun.”
“Then why are you going?” I said.
“I got to,” he said. “I just got to. Now you go on to sleep. I got to ketch that early bus in the morning.”
“All right,” I said. “I hear tell Memphis is a big place. How will you find where the Army’s at?”
“I’ll ask somebody where to go to join it,” Pete said. “Go on to sleep now.”
“Is that what you’ll ask for? Where to join the Army?” I said.
“Yes,” Pete said. He turned onto his back again. “Shut up and go to sleep.”
We went to sleep. The next morning we et breakfast by lamplight because the bus would pass at six o’clock. Maw wasn’t crying now. She jest looked grim and busy, putting breakfast on the table while we et it. Then she finished packing Pete’s grip, except he never wanted to take no grip to the war, but maw said decent folks never went nowhere, not even to a war, without a change of clothes and something to tote them in.
She put in the shoe box of fried chicken and biscuits and she put the Bible in, too, and then it was time to go. We didn’t know until then that maw wasn’t going to the bus. She jest brought Pete’s cap and overcoat, and still she didn’t cry no more, she jest stood with her hands on Pete’s shoulders and she didn’t move, but somehow, and just holding Pete’s shoulders, she looked as hard and fierce as when Pete had turned toward me in the bed last night and tole me that anyway I was all right.
“They could take the country and keep the country, so long as they never bothered me and mine,” she said. Then she said, “Don’t never forget who you are. You ain’t rich and the rest of the world outside of Frenchman’s Bend never heard of you. But your blood is good as any blood anywhere, and don’t you never forget it.”
Then she kissed him, and then we was out of the house, with pap toting Pete’s grip whether Pete wanted him to or not. There wasn’t no dawn even yet, not even after we had stood on the highway by the mailbox, a while. Then we seen the lights of the bus coming and I was watching the bus until it come up and Pete flagged it, and then, sho enough, there was daylight — it had started while I wasn’t watching.
And now me and Pete expected pap to say something else foolish, like he done before, about how Uncle Marsh getting wounded in France and that trip to Texas pap taken in 1918 ought to be enough to save the Unity States in 1942, but he never. He done all right too. He jest said, “Good-by, son.
Always remember what your ma told you and write her whenever you find the time.” Then he shaken Pete’s hand, and Pete looked at me a minute and put his hand on my head and rubbed my head durn nigh hard enough to wring my neck off and jumped into the bus, and the feller wound the door shut and the bus begun to hum; then it was moving, humming and grinding and whining louder and louder; it was going fast, with two little red lights behind it that never seemed to get no littler, but jest seemed to be running together until pretty soon they would touch and jest be one light. But they never did, and then the bus was gone, and even like it was, I could have pretty nigh busted out crying, nigh to nine years old and all.
Me and pap went back to the house. All that day we worked at the wood tree, and so I never had no good chance until about middle of the afternoon. Then I taken my slingshot and I would have liked to took all my bird eggs, too, because Pete had give me his collection and he holp me with mine, and he would like to git the box out and look at them as good as I would, even if he was nigh twenty years old.
But the box was too big to tote a long ways and have to worry with, so I just taken the shikepoke egg, because it was the best un, and wropped it up good into a matchbox and hid it and the slingshot under the corner of the barn. Then we et supper and went to bed, and I thought then how if I would ‘a’ had to stayed in that room and that bed like that even for one more night, I jest couldn’t ‘a’ stood it.
Then I could hear pap snoring, but I never heard no sound from maw, whether she was asleep or not, and I don’t reckon she was. So I taken my shoes and drapped them out the window, and then I clumb out like I used to watch Pete do when he was still jest seventeen and pap held that he was too young yet to be tom-catting around at night, and wouldn’t leave him out, and I put on my shoes and went to the barn and got the slingshot and the shikepoke egg and went to the highway.
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
