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LETICIA. Moonily I daydreamed again, imagining that when I was done with that summer of living out of a wicker suitcase, Gram would meet me at the Greyhound station in Great Falls, healed up and feisty as ever, telling me, guess what, she had the old job as fry cook at the top spot in Gros Ventre. And guess what again, Letty was waitress on the same shift. Havre didn’t work out, I was not surprised to hear. And sure enough, there Letty was from then on, red-lipsticked and sassy as she dealt out the meals Gram made appear in the kitchen’s ready window, sneaking a cigarette whenever the counter wasn’t busy, and boldly taking up where she left off with Harv the trucker. With his jailbreaking past and mean sheriff brother behind him, and regular as the days of the week in courting Letty—who wouldn’t be, linked up with the world’s best kisser?—he was my great companion as well. To top off this dreamlike turn of life, I took all my meals there at the cafe, with Gram dishing up chicken-fried steak whenever I wished and Letty giving me a wink and asking, “Getting enough to eat, sonny boy?”
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“I SAID, are you getting enough to eat, sonny boy?”
I came to with a start, the Minneapolis waitress puncturing that vision as she started to clear away my empty plate. “Fine, yeah, I’m full as can be,” I mumbled my manners as real life set in again, the public-address system announcing departures and arrivals the same as ever.
Rousing myself with still plenty of time until I needed to be back at the bus, I left a dime tip as I had seen the person at the next table do, and roamed out into the busy waiting area, where I was naturally drawn to the news and candy stand.
The stand was piled on all sides with newspapers and magazines, a dozen times more than the Gros Ventre drugstore had to offer, and after buying a Mounds that I justified as dessert I circled around, investigating who was famous just then. On cover after cover was someone smiling big, although not President Truman, who seemed to be having trouble with a Wisconsin senator named McCarthy, according to Time and Newsweek. Of the others pictured, though, biggest of all in every way was the well-known face of the impressively hefty singer Kate Smith on the oversize cover of Life, which identified her as AMERICA’S FAVORITE SONGSTRESS—BLESSED WITH A VOICE LIKE NO OTHER. If a voice like no other meant singing “God Bless America” over and over until it stuck in the head of everyone in the country, she sure had that, all right. Giving her the admiring look of someone who, as Gram would have said, couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, I passed on to a whole section of the newsstand populated by movie stars—Elizabeth Taylor again, and Ava Gardner and Gary Cooper and Robert Taylor and a good many I had never heard of, but they were clearly famous. How I envied every gleaming one of them.
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PERHAPS IT GOES without saying that my fame fever was a product of imagination, but there was greatly more to it than that. Call me a dreamer red in the head back then, but becoming famous looked to me like a way out of a life haunted by county poorfarm and orphanage the other side of the mountains. A change of luck sort of like winning a real jackpot, in other words. Wouldn’t we all take some of that, at eleven going on twelve or any other age? The missing detail, that I had no fixed notion of what I might best be famous at—the talent matter—other than a world-record autograph collection, maybe even constituted an advantage, giving me more chances, as I saw it.
I became more engrossed in the faces of fame than I knew. When I remembered to check the clock, I looked twice, the second time in shock. The hour was up, the bus would be leaving in less than a minute.
I ran as hard as a frantic human being can with a depot full of travelers in the way as I raced for the departure gate.
But too late. By the time I scrambled through the maze of passengers lined up out in the loading bays for other buses, I could see mine rumbling onto the street and pulling away.
I stopped dead, which right then I might as well have been. There I was, in a strange city, with only the clothes on my back, while my every other possession—including the slip of paper with Aunt Kitty and Uncle Dutch’s address and phone number tucked into the autograph book in my coat pocket left on my seat—sped away in a cloud of exhaust. Helpless is pretty close to hopeless, and right then I felt both. For the second time that rugged day, eleven years old seemed much too young to be facing the world all by myself.