Savvy: Chapters 17–25

“The strong, silent type, eh? Hello, Samson,” Lill said kindly. Samson looked at Lill impassively, the way the animals look back at you when you are watching them at the zoo.

Lester had to park the big pink Bible bus past all of these trucks and trailers in a back alley that was cluttered with smelly Dumpsters, stacks of splintered wooden pallets, and old, rotting cardboard boxes.

Looking closer, we saw the still, prone form of an old homeless man, whiskered and filthy and stinking of drink and despair.

I dug down deep into myself, searching for that thing, that spark, that powerful storm all my own—searching for the wellspring of my own savvy strength and concentrating with all my might on waking up the man on the ground in front of me.

Then a harsh and hollering voice blasted through my head, sending me backward and scrabbling against the pavement.

The voice in my head was filled with the undertow of bottomless despair.

Still reeling from my encounter with the homeless man, the new, added onslaught of all these strangers’ thoughts and feelings and questions and answers made me feel like I was going to be sick.

The other woman had red hair and a surly glower, and was trying to push pitchers of coffee and water Lill's way, complaining like a wet cat about Lill being late.

A small black-and-white television sat on top of one of the filing cabinets, its antenna aslant and festooned with bows of crumpled aluminum foil.

Needing to look anywhere besides my brother's sullen face, I stared at the fuzzy images on the small TV screen across the room; there was so much static that it was like trying to watch television through soda pop bubbles; the sound was too low to hear.

Fish drew his eyebrows together, looking wary. “What are you going to do, Mibs?”

Fish squinted at me again and nodded, all curt and serious and grumpy.

There, in all the snowy black-and-white importance such a tiny TV could muster, our photographs—Bobbi’s, Will’s, Fish’s, Samson’s, and mine—began flashing across the screen with ALERT! MISSING! ALERT! scrolling across the bottom of the screen, along with an eight-hundred number to call if anyone had seen us.

“What are you kids doing back here?” he demanded, his breath a loud mix of bluster and buffalo wings. “Can’t you read? This area is for employees only. Beat it. Scram.”

Pushed back into the middle of all those chaotic, noisy voices, I tried my best to keep from becoming discombobulated, tried to figure out how to scumble those thunderous thoughts that didn’t belong to me, but that was a hard thing, a thing that could take years—horrible long years of this stupid savvy—and I had no idea how to do it.

But all the boisterous voices in my head floated on top of those other ordinary sounds like warring battleships on a churning ocean.

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.

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.

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.

After the noisy babble and bedlam inside the restaurant, being outside was a relief, a soothing hush of sky and pavement.

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

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.

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.

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.”

He appeared to have finally found the right color paint to complement his savvy.

“Twister country,” he muttered, oblivious to the true nature of the haywire weather.

Lester nodded his head and started the engine; he seemed worn out by his uncharacteristic exploits and glad to have someone else tell him what to do.

As he drove, Lester’s shoulders began to convulse more violently than ever and the thin man started squirming in his seat like a small child.

It was with more than a little chagrin that we told Lill what we’d done.

Samson had finished his burger, and had carved a substantial crater in the pie, and now he reached out to sneak fries from Will’s basket.

He seemed to dote on women who told him what to do, but at least Lill wasn't anything like Carlene or Rhonda.

In the short hours since we’d climbed aboard that bus, we’d become an odd band of renegades.

Maybe it had been the way Lester stopped to rescue her from her broken-down car, or how he’d helped her pick her money up off the floor, or his spur-of-the-moment plunder of the pie from the diner.

For a second I wondered if Lester might panic and leave us there in the middle of the night; I supposed even less humble heroes might've thought about it.

I reached forward and tugged on the back of Bobbi’s shirt, noticing the way the angel tattoo on her back now reclined on one elbow, wings folded in, picking its teeth with the end of its pointed tail indifferently.

“Pick it up, but don’t say anything. Stay on the phone and let Bobbi in if she knocks. We've got to rely on Bobbi now.” Fish nodded, glancing at Bobbi dubiously, and then followed Samson and Will Junior into Room 215.

Bobbi, Will, and Fish all sauntered into the room, looking like a bunch of cats who'd just finished feasting on an entire flock of canaries.

Will let go of my wrist, coughing and sputtering, trying to recover from the water that had gushed up his nose. Then he looked up at Fish, who was still standing dry as dry next to the pool, his arms folded across his chest and a smug and swaggering smirk inscribed across his face.

“Don’t sweat it. Believe me, take your time.” That sounded funny coming from Bobbi, who, for all of her sixteen years, seemed more than ready to speed right along. As if to highlight this even more, Bobbi let out a short, wistful sigh, flicking at the surface of the water with one finger.

All I could hear was the raucous splish-splash of the water and the echoes of the boys' laughter bouncing off the walls.