Savvy (8 page)

Still holding tight to Will’s wrist, Fish worked his mouth for one long second, then spat a big, thick wad of juicy spit right into Will Junior’s hand.

“
Eww,
man!” Will hollered out in disgust. “That’s just foul!” Will tried to pull his hand away but Fish held on tight, smearing that spit in and around to mix with the ink until there was nothing left but a great messy smudge, resembling nothing much more than the big blue-black bruise that was already forming around Will Junior’s eye where Fish had popped him a shiner.

“Let go already!” Will demanded, pummeling at Fish with his free fist.

With Fish’s spit, the new voice in my head gurgled and gargled and sputtered and spluttered until
“secret”
turned to
“slucbret,”
and
“slucbret”
turned to
“sluppet,”
and
“sluppet”
slipped away like water down a drain, leaving Will Junior’s secret safe and only three voices remaining in my head.

Lester Swan was doing his best to keep the boys apart and Bobbi off his back, skating and sliding on the broken glass. As soon as Fish saw the muscles in my face relax and my shoulders drop back down to where they normally rested—as soon as he saw the relief in my eyes—my brother backed off, pulling free from Lester’s grip and stepping out of the way of Will’s fists. Fish may not have known precisely
why
he’d needed to get that ink doodle off Will Junior’s hand, but he’d known it was important to
me,
and I was grateful. Sometimes it was good to have older brothers.

Looking grossed-out and suspicious, Will Junior wiped his wet and sullied hand on his trousers. His shirt had come completely untucked and his hair was wild and unruly above his blackening eye.

I realized I was still holding tight to the fine and fancy silver pen that Will had given me. It felt heavy in my hand, like it was made of lead. I replaced the cap on the writing end and slipped the pen into one of the deep pockets in my skirt; I’d left the box and the other pen back at the falling-down house. I was worn out and tired, and I didn’t think I liked being a teenager all that much. As the last ray of sun surrendered to the deep blue of evening, I sank to the floor of the bus, trying again not to think, and not to listen.

“What’s Lester gotten himself into this time?”
muttered Carlene behind my eyeballs.

And Rhonda answered with a cluck of her tongue:
“The usual trouble, of course. The usual trouble.”

A
s Lester Swan loaded the others back onto the bus, assigning them seats well away from each other and surveying the damage to the windows mournfully, I tried making a deal with God. I vowed that I would eat my green beans without complaint, I’d be a good person, and I’d never take more than one half of a powdered sugar donut after Sunday school ever, ever again. If only I could stop hearing voices when someone nearby had ink on their skin—especially voices that insisted on sharing secrets and feelings others preferred to keep hid.

I hadn’t cried once since Poppa’s accident, but now that I’d started, there on that big pink bus, I couldn’t stop. Everything felt broken and hopeless. What if this had all been for nothing? What if Poppa was already better and sitting up in bed laughing and talking with Momma and Rocket? Or what if Poppa was worse; what if he was …

I sobbed harder, trying to push my worst fears out of my mind. Samson wiggled out from under the cot, dragging the almost empty bag of potato chips and the Slim Jim wrappers with him. Sitting down on the floor next to me, offering me the last salty crumbs of chips without a word, he rested one gentle hand on my arm.

I’m not sure what it was about my shy and shadowy Samson, but his touch always made a person feel more braced up inside. It happened now and then, I knew, that some folks got their savvy early. Momma’s brother, Uncle Autry, had five-year-old twin girls who could make their plastic ponies hover an inch or two above the ground as they played, moving them up and down like carousel horses. But, outside of our cousins, that sort of thing was rare. Maybe it made a difference that the girls were twins and seemed to share a savvy between them.

Perhaps Samson’s strengthening touch was just an ordinary sort of human magic, the kind of magic that exists in the honest, heartfelt concern of one person for another. Regardless of the reason, with Samson’s small hand on my arm, it wasn’t long before my eyes began to dry.

“What’s the half-baked idiot thinking? Lester should have his head examined,”
Rhonda was saying from Lester’s left arm.
“How could any son of mine turn out to be such a namby-pamby?”

“What he should do is leave these rotten kids on the side of the road, the same way I ditched that mangy dog of his when the beast chewed up my best red shoes,”
said Carlene from his right.
“Instead the dolt bandages their boo-boos and pats them on the head.”

I knew I didn’t care much for Lester’s mom, Rhonda, and I was certain I didn’t care at all for Carlene. But Lester Swan must have felt something strong for each of them, having seen the need to tattoo their names right on his skin. To me, those two seemed like heavy ladies to heft around. Rising to my knees, I peered up over the seats and boxes through the dimming light to watch Lester root around under the driver’s seat, then come up, looking triumphant, with a rusty old metal box with a red first aid cross on it. He handed the box to Bobbi, who looked at it like Lester had just handed her a dead rat.

“What do you want me to do with this?” Bobbi asked.

Lester hemmed and hawed as he pointed toward the first aid kit. “Maybe you could tend to the b-boys so that I might try to c-cover some of these windows and get us b-back on the road?”

“I don’t
tend,
” said Bobbi, sounding snarly and sarcastic with her lip pulled into a sneer. “What do I
look
like? A nurse?”

“Naw, you just look like the oldest,” Lester said with a crooked half smile, though his shoulders twitched again, nearly jumping all the way up to his ears this time. He crossed and uncrossed his arms as though trying to figure out how to look like he required listening to.

“This is all Mibs’s fault. Make
her
tend,” said Bobbi, handing the first aid kit back to Lester.

Twitch. Twitch. Lester took the box back from Bobbi and looked down the length of the bus, catching my eye where I peered over the last seat. Even through the gloom of nightfall, I could recognize the look of a drowning man when I saw one. I couldn’t stand to listen to Carlene and Rhonda snicker and scoff as Lester sank below the tide of Bobbi’s attitude. Maybe this was my chance to show God how good I could be, show Him that I was worth some reconsidering on His part, that maybe I deserved better than what I’d gotten so far on my most important day.

Lester looked mighty grateful when I stood up and walked toward the front of the bus, taking the first aid kit from him with a hiccup and an awkward, sorry smile. After all, Bobbi had been right when she’d said that this deep-fried pickle of a situation was all my fault. If it hadn’t been for my birthday, or the choices I made
because
of my birthday things might’ve turned out different. I was discovering that sometimes the outcome of a choice was almost as hard to predict or to control as a new savvy.

I opened the first aid kit as Lester tried in vain to cover the broken windows; three panes had blown out completely and a fourth looked ready to fall out of its frame at the first bump in the road. Lester appeared on the verge of tears himself as he finally gave up his attempts at wedging cardboard across the gaping holes and started the bus, the sound of the noisy engine doing little to dampen the voices still ringing in my head.

“That Lester …”
said Rhonda.

“Stupid man …”
said Carlene.

“She’s not sure if she likes you, or if she thinks you’re a freak,”
said Bobbi’s angel, sounding bored.

“I’m not a freak, Bobbi,” I said as I stubbornly pulled gauze and dried-up and useless antibacterial wipes from the first aid kit.

“What?” Bobbi cranked her neck around to look at me. “
What
did you just say?”

I swallowed hard and said nothing, realizing that I’d spoken out loud when I should have kept my mouth closed tight, tight, tight. I pulled a dusty cold pack from the first aid kit, the kind you have to twist to make go cold, and concentrated on that. I could feel Bobbi’s eyes on me, trying to dissect me like a splayed and gutted frog. I twisted the pack with a
crack,
and felt a slow chill spread through the small plastic bag. Turning around, I moved three rows back to where Will Junior sat with his black eye.

The spring night air rushed through the broken windows as Lester took a turn too sharp and too fast, making the bus lurch and groan as he got us back onto the highway sending boxes, magazines, and Bibles sliding. I stumbled and tumbled down onto the seat next to Will, handing him the cold pack for his eye with a little more force than I’d intended, nearly hitting him in the nose with it.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to move quickly back into the aisle of the bumping, jumping bus. But Will Junior took hold of my hand and pulled me back down to sit on the seat next to him. He pressed the pack carefully to his eye, making a face. Still holding on to my hand, he looked at me full and square with his good eye.

“I’m not mad, Mibs,” he said. I didn’t know if he meant he wasn’t mad about me pushing an icepack up his nose, or if he wasn’t mad about the rest of it, about what had happened back in Bee. I was hoping it was that second thing.

“I’m not a freak,” I said.

“I didn’t say you were.”

“No, but maybe you were thinking it.”

Will paused, dropping the plastic pack to his lap, glancing at his sister, then studying me with both eyes as though trying to see all the way down to my
DNA
.

“Was Bobbi thinking it?”

“I have to clean up those scratches Bobbi gave Fish,” I said, avoiding Will’s question and starting to get up. But he held my hand tight.

“Was Bobbi thinking it? Was she thinking you’re a freak?”

“Maybe.”

“How do you know that, Mibs?”

I shrugged.

“How do you
know
that? Tell me, Mibs, what happened when you drew that picture on my hand? Why’d you flip out? And how does Fish make it storm like that? I know he’s doing it—he’s got to be.” Will leaned in closer. “I just want to know …”

Will had that eager look on his face again. He was dying to know my secret.

“Just tell me, Mibs. Tell me what makes you Beaumonts so special.”

W
hat did make my family so special? All I knew was that being different ran through our veins. Grandpa had explained it to me years before, just after Grandma Dollop died, long before our move to Kansaska-Nebransas. Taking me with him to walk along the beach, he held my hand in his knobby one and told me how our family’s extraordinary talents were passed down from our kin.

Grandpa had recounted stories about our ancestors, and of relations both close and distant. Since Beaumont was Poppa’s name, Grandpa’s stories held tales of Yeagers or Mendelssohns or Paynes, Danzingers, O’Connells, and Beachams. He spoke of cousins and aunts and nephews and nieces who had used their savvy to do good things, and of those who’d made a different choice—like Grandma Dollop’s youngest sister, Jubilee, who could open any lock, and used her abilities to take things that didn’t belong to her.

“A savvy’s not a sickness or a disease, Mibs,” Grandpa told me. “It’s not magic or sorcery, either. Your savvy’s in your blood. It’s an inheritance, like your brown eyes or your grandma’s long toes or her talent for dancing to polka music.” Grandma Dollop had loved the oom-pah-pah sounds of polka music and had collected jars full before she died; Momma even had one or two of those jars left among the others on top of our kitchen cupboards in Kansaska-Nebransas. They were the ones Gypsy favored dancing to with all of her make-believe friends.

But talking about Grandma Dollop had ended Grandpa’s storytelling that day on the beach. His memories of her were still too sharp and prickly with loss. If I wasn’t careful of Grandpa’s feelings, his grief would make the ground rumble, buckling the sidewalks and pushing the neighbor’s lawn ornaments into the next yard over. I pretended not to notice the tears on Grandpa’s cheeks as we walked on along the beach. But I held his hand tight and strong all the way back home.

Momma said that lots and lots of ordinary folk have a savvy, but most simply don’t recognize it for what it is. “Some people know they feel different, Mibs,” Momma told me. “But most don’t know quite what makes them that way. One person might make strawberry jam so good that no one can get enough of it. Another might know just the right time to plant corn so that it’s juicy and sweet as sugar on the hottest day of summer.” Momma had laughed then, and I wasn’t too sure if she was telling me the truth or pulling my leg. “There are even those folks who never get splashed by mud after a rainstorm or bit by a single mosquito in the summertime.”

But as I grew up, I began to understand that a savvy is just a know-how of a different sort. Some people get called whiz kid or prodigy because they can do puzzles or play music better than anyone’s supposed to, or they can recite the numbers of pi, 3.141592653 … on and on for hours from memory without a hitch. There are those who can run fast and win medals, and others who can talk anyone into buying anything at all. Those things are all just a special kind of know-how.

Well, we Beaumonts and our kin weren’t so very different. We just had a name for our talents, and a fairly predictable time of life when our inheritance and our know-how kicked in and we had to learn to scumble—to use our savvy or work around it.

So, when Will Junior asked me, point-to-point-blank like a pellet from a BB gun, what made my family so special, I told him what my relations have been telling folk for generations when faced with questions that had to be answered.