The Waking (46 page)

He smiles. “It’s already for someone special, huh?”

I nod. “My son.” I think. Maybe even for Mary. Or for her mama? Hmm.

“
Lucky boy.” He closes the trailer doors. “Where you from?”

“
Pittsburgh.”

“
No kiddin’? I’m goin’ to Pittsburgh day after tomorrow, and I always get lost down there. You goin’ to or comin’ from?”

“
Going to.”

He rubs his chin with his hand. “How you plan on gettin’ there?”

“
Walking.”

He squints. “You’re gonna walk up to Pittsburgh?”

“
Yeah.”

“
That’s at least seven hundred and fifty miles, Manny.”

I shrug.

Try to look pitiful so we can get us a ride.

I already look pitiful.

Jeff takes a deep breath and exhales. “You ain’t some religious freak, are you?”

“
No.”

Yes he is! He’s got me believing in coincidences. He hears voices! He—

Hush.

“
Tell you what.” He puts his arm across my shoulders. “You tell me where you got that blanket and how I can get some more … at a discount, of course … and I’ll take you to Pittsburgh.”

“
All you want is some information?”

“
Information means money, Manny. You saw how that sister acted when she saw that blanket. You see her eyes pop? Man, she would have paid a hundred or more if she had it.” He lowers his voice. “And if I could get ‘em for, oh, say, twenty-five, thirty each … See what I’m sayin’?”

“
I don’t know if they sell them.”

“
Who’s they?”

“
My relatives.”

He jumps back, his eyes popping out even more. “Your people make these?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Get in the truck, cuz.”

I hesitate. “You sure?”

“
Heck yeah. You can get us a family discount, now come on!”

I walk around the cab to the passenger side and climb in, putting my backpack on the floor in front of me. “Thanks.”

He starts up the engine, and the cab quivers and shakes. “Don’t thank me. If this works out, I’ll be the one thankin’ you. I could sell twenty of them blankets a week easy and make a sixteen-hundred-dollar profit.”

I do the math in my head. “But that would mean—”

“
C’mon, I know you can get them for me for twenty. They’re your people, right?”

“
Yeah.” They’re my people, but would they want to go into business like that?

He pulls out of the parking lot, and we lumber along Martin Luther King, Junior, Boulevard, past City Hall and the State Capitol building, taking I-85 north past Georgia Tech. The traffic thins out as we drive in the far right lane barely going fifty miles an hour.

“
How long have you been driving a truck?” I ask.

“
A couple years.”

“
Selling FUBU?”

“
Nah. That’s just somethin’ I do on the side, and today was really slow for some reason. Probably the weather.”

“
Yeah, I drop a load of whatever for Southeastern, and I always pick up somethin’ wherever I go. I got most of those shoes in the back from an outlet in South Carolina on the way down, and I’ll sell ‘em up in Roanoke tomorrow.” He turns up the heat. “Sorry about keepin’ the heater on. I get cold easily.”

It has to be ninety degrees outside, and it’s pushing a hundred in here. “What’s in Roanoke?”

“
Not much.” He laughs. “Nah, it’s where I’m from up in Virginia. We’ll get in there tonight, hang out all day tomorrow, then get up to Pittsburgh on Thursday. That okay?”

“
Sure. You, uh, make much money from this little, um, racket of yours?”

“
Yeah, it’s a racket, but it’s a good one. Makes me three, four hundred dollars a week over what Southeastern pays me. Cash money, no taxes.” He smiles. “I have better days than others, especially on the holidays.”

A driver cuts in front of us, and Jeff has to slam on the brakes. “Stupid Georgia drivers!” he shouts. “They are the
worst.
They all think they’re NASCAR drivers or somethin’.”

“
Worse than New York City drivers?”

“
Much worse. Folks in New York drive fast, but they drive safe. They have to cuz auto insurance there is higher than high.”

So we make haste slowly through north Georgia, past fields of organized yellow wild flowers in between roads, into South Carolina. I look behind my seat and see a book lying there. I pick it up, and it’s called
Granddaddy’s Dirt
by Brian Egeston.

“
Some dude just handed that to me when I was down in Atlanta a few months ago. I was just sittin’ at a traffic light, and he walked up and gave it to me. He said something like it was a story of generational burdens or somethin’ like that. Can you believe that? How can a guy make money with a book he just … gives away?”

Maybe he’s repaid in other ways. I flip to the beginning of the book and read the dedication:

This is spooky.

You’re telling me.

No, I mean all this. Three folks in a row have slow days, this book is talking directly to you, and it’s a hundred and ten degrees in this truck and you’re not complaining.

Yet.

“
How long has this been lying back here?”

“
Since … January, I think.”

And it just happens to be here now, huh?

Yeah.

I open to the first chapter, which happens to be titled “While on the Way Home.”

You’re going to read this book, right?

I have to.

I hold the book up under the windshield so I can see better. Jeff flips on an overhead light. “Knock yourself out,” he says. “Let me know if it’s worth what I paid for it.” He laughs.

And I start reading …

And here I am sweating like a dog with the heater going full blast. “Can I roll down a window or something?”

“
Just a crack,” Jeff says.

I crack my window and feel the beginnings of a breeze through my hair. It won’t be enough to keep me cool, but it will have to do. I read on, but the heat and humidity get to me before I can get past the first page, and I doze off.

“
Would you look at that!” Jeff shouts, waking me a little while later.

“
What?”

“
Thunderstorm. Big one. I hate thunderstorms.”

I don’t. I sit up and stare into one big black cloud hovering over the highway ahead of us like a huge dark hand pressing down on everything it touches. “How long have I been asleep?”

“
Almost two hours, man.” Huge raindrops begin lashing the windshield. “We’re pullin’ off. I ain’t drivin’ in this mess.”

We pull into a Burger King near the North Carolina border where we are served by a Vietnamese girl with a southern accent.

While I’m savoring the salt on my fries and gulping a Coke, Jeff watches the skies. “I wanted to get to Roanoke before it got dark.”

“
How much further?”

“
About two hundred miles.”

Which means four more hours in the slow-moving sauna that is Jeff’s rig. “What time is it?”

“
A little after six.” He shakes his head. “I hate drivin’ at night.”

He hates driving in the rain, and he hates driving at night. Why is he a truck driver, then? “I’d, uh, offer to drive, but I don’t have a license.”

“
No kiddin’?”

“
No.”

“
Hard to get one in Pennsylvania?”

“
Wouldn’t know.” I take a bite of my burger.

“
You never even tried to get your license?”

I shake my head.

“
That’s messed up. What are you, twenty-two, twenty-three?”

I
am
getting younger. “I’m twenty-nine.”

“
Get out of here!”

“
Yeah.”

“
Your people must age well. Mine …” He seems to shudder. “We get all wrinkly and lose our hair before we hit forty.”

After refilling our cups, we dash through the rain to the truck. Jeff turns on his flashers before we even leave the parking lot, and we’re back out on I-85 in a traffic jam of epic proportions. Jeff doesn’t seem to mind, though. In fact, he seems more relaxed.

“
Too much road construction on this road,” he says. “They got bridges bein’ repaired from here to Virginia.”

Thank God for that. Folks like me need them to hold us up when we jump.

“
And folks don’t know how to drive on this road or any other, let me tell you. They should all be slowing down, not speeding up. I mean, look at that fool rollin’ up a lane that’s gonna be closed in less than a thousand feet, like he got a more important place to be than the rest of us. C’mon, y’all, I want to get home, too.”

So do I, I think, drowsing to the sound of Jeff’s voice. So do I …

21: Roanoke

Six
hours later, we roll into Roanoke and drop off the truck. The storm had followed us all the way, and Plantation Road is covered with six inches of running water that Jeff’s Hyundai barely clears as we hit Orange Avenue.

“
They was gonna rename this road after Martin Luther King,” he tells me, “but the businesses on this road said it would cost too much to change their addresses.” He shakes his head. “Triflin’, ain’t it?”

We splash down Orange until it becomes Melrose, cut past some projects, and end up in a neighborhood full of ranch-style and split-level houses.

“
You live here?”

He pulls to the curb in front of a ranch that has several cars in the driveway. “Sometimes. When my girl and I are fightin’.” He frowns. “Which is most of the time. You might get to meet her tomorrow at the reunion.”

“
Huh?”

“
We’re havin’ a family reunion tomorrow. I didn’t tell you that?”

“
No.”

He told you just about every other thing. The man kept me awake all night, too.

Shh.

“
You’ll have a good time.”

I follow him to the front door, where Jeff knocks for about five minutes. “They’re some heavy sleepers.”

Or they aren’t here.

There are cars in the driveway.

Doesn’t mean nothing.

The porch light comes on, and a sleepy-looking, balding black man comes to the door. “What y’all want?” He looks past Jeff at me. “Who’s he?”

“
Friend of mine,” Jeff says, trying to step past the man.

The man steps with him, blocking his path. “Where you goin’, Jeff?”

“
C’mon, Jerry, let me in.”

Jerry nods at me. “He talk?”

“
Not much,” Jeff says.

“
Then
he
can come in,” Jerry says.

Jeff steps back. “You gonna do me like that?”

“
You still owe money for the mortgage.”

Jeff turns to me. “And this is the brother I actually
like.
” He digs in his pocket and pulls out a wad of bills. “How much I owe?”

Jerry snatches the entire wad. “This much.” He steps aside.

Jeff walks in. “Now you
know
I don’t owe that much, Jerry.”

“
You probably owe more!” Jerry calls after him. He turns to me. “You comin’ in?”

“
Yeah.”

We should have stayed on 29.

I step past Jerry into a room full of furniture, a ceiling fan whirring overhead, two other fellas playing a video game hooked to a wide-screen TV. A few others are lounging behind them drinking beer on a semicircular sofa. They look up at me, nod, and continue playing. I hear Jerry fussing with Jeff down a hallway over the thermostat at the end of the hall.

“
I told you not to mess with the thermostat, boy!” Jerry yells, turning the knob back and clicking a switch.

“
But it’s cold up in here!”

They turn to look at me. “Oh,” Jeff says, “there’s a mattress downstairs. I’ll be down after I kill Jerry.”

That ain’t gonna happen. Jerry outweighs him by at least a hundred pounds.