Savvy (12 page)

“But, Ozzie—” Lill started to protest.

“I want you out of here right now, Lill Kiteley!” shouted Ozzie in his spandex shorts, obviously enjoying the sound of his own voice and the attention it brought him from the red-haired waitress. By now everyone in the diner had stopped talking and turned to watch the scene unfolding between Ozzie and Lill. Even the song on the jukebox ended, as if it too were listening in. Lester dropped his hamburger and slowly wiped the banana from his thinning hair. Will and Bobbi stepped closer to the counter, but stopped when they saw Ozzie wielding the knife. With everyone’s attention fixed and focused on The Great and Powerful Ozzie, even the voices in my head grew quiet.

Still holding the pie, as though he didn’t trust Lill enough to put it down near her, Ozzie set the knife into a tub beneath the counter. Watching him, I saw Samson sitting still and quiet under the counter in an open space just next to the dish tub, so dark and shadowy that Ozzie hadn’t even noticed him.

“Ozzie, just let me—” Lill tried again to speak.

“BWAAAAAP!” Ozzie made the same annoying game show noise, cutting Lill off. “You lose, Lill!”

Ozzie turned, holding the pie in his left hand; with his right hand, he opened the cash register. He pulled out a wad of bills and made a production out of throwing the money at Lill, who, for all the world, looked like she might melt away into a flood of tears, should she lose control and let the dam burst.

“There,” said Ozzie, as the bills fell to the floor at Lill’s big feet. “You can pick up your consolation prize— that should cover your last paycheck.”

I could see the red-haired waitress smirk as Lill, with all the dignity she could muster, bent down to pick the money up off the floor.

It would have been better for everyone if Ozzie had managed to maintain a little more restraint. When Ozzie started laughing cruel as cruel at poor Lill, now down on the floor picking up her final pay, the real unbridled brouhaha began.

“Mister,” said Lester, slamming his fist against the counter as his twitch worked his shoulder up and down like one of the pistons inside the engine of his bus. “That’s no way to treat a lady.” Saying this, Lester shoved his plate aside and stood up, walking around the counter to help Lill gather her money.

At the very same moment, Samson leaned forward from his hidey-hole behind the counter and bit The Great and Powerful Ozzie hard on the leg.

Ozzie shrieked like a little girl and the banana cream pie flew out of his hands to land upside down with a sickening
splump
on the floor in front of him.

“Why you little—!” Clutching his leg and hopping on one foot, Ozzie pulled the pie knife back out of the tub menacingly.

“No!” I cried out.

Seeing Samson pop up from behind the counter within easy reach of the angry man and his pie knife, Bobbi and Will rushed across the floor of the diner. They both tried to grab for the knife over the countertop as Samson shot out from behind it, running toward the storeroom. Fish and I charged forward and together we shoved Ozzie hard in the middle of his muscled back, sending him lurching forward and slip-sliding through the fallen pie. The burly man skated on one foot through bananas and custard as Fish’s angry wind swept through the diner, unbalancing Ozzie even further. Ozzie toppled backward with a thud.

The red-haired waitress screamed and customers rose to their feet, unsure if they should help or even whose side they should be on if they did.

“Let’s get out of here!” Bobbi shouted, sprinting around the counter to help Lill and Lester collect the rest of the money. Then she and Will Junior herded the rooted and rattled adults past the cursing, floundering Ozzie and back toward the Employees Only door for an emergency escape out the emergency exit door, Fish and I wasting no time in following.

Passing through the storeroom, Lill grabbed her sweater from its peg and looked at the rest of us, shaking her head. Her face was red and she had pie on her big white shoes.

“Sorry all,” Lill said breathlessly as we headed toward the door. “Looks like we bad kids and misfits got to hit the road again.” She pointed toward the baskets sitting on the desk where Bobbi had set them earlier. “Grab those burgers, kidlings. You can eat on the bus.” Lill looked down at Samson, who had taken her hand, looking mournful. “Sorry about the banana cream, critter,” Lill said with earnest. Lester stopped short.

“Everyone just hold on one minute.” Lester’s decisive tone stopped us in our tracks. Without even pausing to twitch, he hoisted one finger into the air like a signal to charge, then turned and pushed back through the door to the dining area. For a moment, I thought Lester had blown his last fuse and had run the wrong way by mistake. But a moment later, he was back with a second cream pie held high above his head like a trophy. He barreled across the room in a hot-footed hustle toward the exit, as Lill gave the battered sofa in the storeroom one firm and final kick, just as she’d done to her broken-down car. Then she pushed the rest of us after Lester, all tumbling out the back door into the parking lot behind the restaurant, away from Ozzie and the Emerald Truck Stop Diner and Lounge.

A
s we rushed out into the spring night, the air was crisp and cool, laced with the smell of diesel fumes and chicken fingers. After the noisy babble and bedlam inside the restaurant, being outside was a relief, a soothing hush of sky and pavement. I could hear cars on the road in front of the diner, each sounding like nothing more than a wave lapping shore.

Nobody spoke as we hopped quickly over potholes in the light of the single streetlamp, weaving in and out of trucks and semitrailers toward the distant corner of the lot, moving toward the alley. We kept a close eye behind us in case Ozzie or anyone else might be giving chase. But whether he was still lying on his back in the middle of the remains of banana cream pie, or just too embarrassed to follow, it didn’t appear that Ozzie was coming after us.

During all the commotion inside the restaurant, I’d forgotten about the down-and-out man by the Dumpster. We had nearly passed him again before the noisy return of
“Seen too much …”
would not allow me to forget that he was still there. I felt the pinch of sorrow and remorse, and realized that while my savvy had done nothing to help the soul-sick, broken man, there was something else that I
could
do for him. Dropping behind the others, I set my burger basket down on the ground near the outstretched hand. Then I removed the purple ribbon flower pinned to the shoulder of my special-occasion dress and set that down beside the burger, feeling sure that Poppa would understand. Aside from my silver pen, it was the only thing I had to give, the only way I had to show the man that I’d seen him. That I’d listened.

Heading back to the bus, everyone was so breathless and shaken by the incident inside the diner, only Will seemed to take any notice of my tiny offering, giving me a warm look as he waited for me to catch up.

Farther now from the crowd of voices inside the restaurant and the voice of the homeless man, I was disappointed, but not surprised, when Bobbi and Carlene and Rhonda all rolled back into my head as loud and rowdy as if they owned the place.

“Lester’s got his foot stuck in a deep bucket of mud now …”

“The man sure has a way of doing it.”

As Lester struggled to open the door of the bus and balance the stolen pie at the same time, the rest of us leaned up against the side of the bus to catch our breath. Despite everything that had just happened, Bobbi was staring at me almost calmly, arms folded, with a probing, yet guarded, look on her face. Will Junior stood behind her, his expression unreadable.

“Tell me what I’m thinking. Do you know what I’m thinking?”
that little angel on Bobbi’s back sang through my brain. Carlene’s and Rhonda’s voices took backstage to Bobbi’s angel, their never-ending Lester-bashing sounding like backup vocals to Bobbi’s newest tune.

“Tell me what I’m thinking. Do you know what I’m thinking?”
Bobbi pushed her thoughts at me, louder and louder.

“Tell me what I’m thinking. Do you know what I’m thinking?

“Tell me what I’m thinking. Do you know what I’m thinking?”

She was driving me crazy. As Lester finally got the door open, I put my fingers in my ears and started to hum “The Star-Spangled Banner” just as loud as anyone can hum. But Fish spun me around, pulling my finger out of my right ear, and whispering tightly, “What are you hearing, Mibs?”

“Bobbi’s got herself a tattoo on her back and it won’t stop yammering at me,” I whispered back. “She
knows,
Fish, remember?”

Fish threw a glance Bobbi’s way. The girl was leaning up against the side of the bus watching me like I was a mouse and she was a cat—a cat who liked playing with its food before eating. Will Junior was standing just a bit behind her, his face screwed up now as though trying to decide if he understood the punch line of a joke. Bobbi didn’t look at Fish; she was too busy burning her eyes right into me.

“Tell me what I’m thinking. Do you know what I’m thinking?

“Tell me what I’m thinking. Do you know what I’m thinking?”

“Stop it, Bobbi,” said Fish, one hand raised in a tight fist, as Lester and Lill climbed up into the bus with Samson.

“Stop what?” said Bobbi, overflowing with fake flibbertigibbety sugar.

“You know what,” said Fish, angrily throwing his burger onto the ground. A gust of wind blew Bobbi’s hair up around her head in a flurry, and the air turned humid and hot. Bobbi stopped leaning against the bus and stood up straight. Narrowing her eyes across the light from the streetlamp at Fish, and spitting at strands of hair caught in her gum, Bobbi threw down her own burger, as though accepting a challenge to fight.

“I’m just
thinking
. Do you want me to stop
thinking?
”

Fish’s next gust was stronger, blowing Bobbi’s hair straight back and plastering her clothes to her body as though she were facing straight into a tempest. Will Junior took a step back and turned to shield his eyes—and his burger—as dirt and gravel, lifted from the crumbling pavement by the strength of Fish’s wind, swept toward him and Bobbi. Ragged shreds of plastic sheeting whipped and snapped along the alleyway like a multitude of wild, ghostly specters. From out of nowhere came a spatter of biting rain that hit the side of the bus with the sound of a sprinkler hitting a chain-link fence.

Fish was standing in front of me now, acting like a shield between me and Will and Bobbi Meeks. He had his feet planted and his arms out at his sides like some kind of comic book Superkid, his own hair whipping up a frenzy as he pushed out powerful storms of wind and rain that started the bus rocking and knocked Bobbi backward into Will.

Lester poked his head out the door of the bus, his combed-over hair flapping madly like a grocery sack on a barbed wire fence. All Lester could see was the harum-scarum hurly-burly of a rising storm. Despite everything, he didn’t realize that the disturbance was coming from Fish and that, behind Fish, I didn’t have a single hair out of place or a single rustle in my skirt; it was as though I were standing in the still, calm eye of a cyclone.

But Bobbi and Will Junior saw it all, and now they understood perfectly. Now they knew, sure as sure as sure.

Bobbi and Will no longer had any doubts whatsoever that the Beaumont kids were different. That the Beaumont kids were extraordinarily, freakishly not normal. But all told, when it came right down to it, Bobbi and Will realized that we were also pretty amazing.

“S
cumbling a savvy is like spreading a thin layer of paint over yourself,” Momma had told Fish and Rocket when she’d had them painting pictures with her on a winter morning before the holidays. I’d stayed home sick from school that day and was enjoying lying on the sofa watching my brothers render stormy ocean waves from memory. My ears had perked up when Momma started talking about how to scumble, and I paid close attention to her words.

“If you don’t use enough paint,” Momma continued, “your savvy will come through too strong, causing some pretty big problems for both you and the rest of the world.” Momma laughed as Fish and Rocket both made faces—they already knew far too well about such troubles.

Momma went on, “If you use too much paint, you’ll not only obscure your savvy completely, but most everything else in life will become dull and uninteresting for you too. You can’t get rid of part of what makes you
you
and be happy.”

Momma took her paintbrush and dipped it into a color much lighter than that already on her canvas. She brushed the light paint over the dark, completely covering it. But the light paint didn’t block out the dark paint all the way. Instead, that pale color had a softening, blending effect, making the darker shade harmonize with the rest of the painting.

“So a well-scumbled savvy gives you clarity and control,” lectured Momma. “You have to let your own know-how, your own unique color, shine through as a something-special others can’t quite put a finger on.”

Momma had made it sound so easy But managing that kind of success with a savvy could be more of a high-wire act than a cakewalk. Depending on the person and the savvy, it could take years to gain enough control to mingle easily with the rest of the world, and even adulthood didn’t offer any guarantees of an effortless fit. That’s why, back in Kansaska-Nebransas, homeschooling went way, way beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Fish’s wind blew stronger and stronger through the dark alleyway. I wasn’t sure he’d stormed that mightily since the day his hurricane had sent us packing. After turning thirteen, Fish had never stopped needing to work extra hard to let his own particular color shine through all his dark storm clouds. Having a really powerful savvy like his was similar to waking up with a savage temper: It required a lot of extra effort and patience to control.

There in Emerald, far from home, with Fish storming his storm and The Great and Powerful Ozzie knocked down to size inside the diner, I was starting to feel low on heart, and my brains and bravery weren’t so sure either. Fish and I weren’t in Kansaska-Nebransas anymore and we didn’t have any yellow bricks to guide us, just a big pink bus and the yellow stripe-stripe-stripes on the highway.