“But, but, it’s like you’re sending me to jail, when you’re supposed to let me be here all summer.” Life had flipped so badly I was desperately arguing for Wisconsin.
She had the decency to flinch when I flung that charge at her, but she also dodged. “Donny, dear, it won’t be as bad as you think. We have to believe that your grandmother will recuperate just fine and be able to take care of you again, don’t we. But in the meantime, there are foster homes that take in children for a while.” I knew those to be little more than a bus drop stop on the way to the orphanage. “To make sure, I went to the county welfare authorities here and got a list of such places in Great Falls. It’s all there in the letter I sent. Your grandmother will only have to fill out a form or two, and you’ll have a temporary home until she gets well.”
I must have given my now sworn enemy a gaze with hatred showing.
“Please don’t look at me that way.” She fussed at creases in the newspaper that needed no fussing at. “The nuns will help out if need be. They’ll have to, when you show up. Now eat up, and we’ll have to be going.”
I pushed aside my breakfast, too sick at heart to eat, and went for my suitcase for hundreds upon hundreds of miles of travel agony ahead.
? ? ?
WE WERE AT the car before I came out of my shellshock enough to realize the missing part in all this. “Wh-where’s Herman? Isn’t he coming with us?”
“You shouldn’t ask.” She sure couldn’t wait to tell me, though, as she impatiently gestured for me to climb in the DeSoto. “He sneaked off on the city bus for that ‘medicine’ of his. Threw the car keys to me and told me to do my—my dirty work myself.”
She got the rest off her chest, more than a figure of speech as she heaved herself into position behind the steering wheel and said over the grinding sound of the starter, “That man. He says he can’t bear to tell you good-bye. I don’t know why not, it’s just a word.”
Another piece of my heart crumbled at that. Abandoned even by Herman the German. I meant less to him than a couple of beers at the Schooner. Brave survivor of H?he Toter Mann, hah. If there was a Coward’s Corner on Boot Hill, that’s where he deserved to end up.
? ? ?
AT THE BUS DEPOT, everything was all too familiar, benchfuls of people sitting in limbo until their Greyhound was ready to run, the big wall map of THE FLEET WAY routes making my journey loom even longer. Forced to wait with me until my bus was called, Aunt Kate turned nervous and, probably for her sake as much as mine, tried to play up what lay ahead of me. “Just think, you’ll be there in time for the Fourth. They’ll have fireworks and sizzlers and whizbangs of all kinds, I’m sure.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about whizbangs,” I said loudly enough to make passing busgoers stare and veer away from us.
“Donal, please.” She looked around with a false smile as if I were only being overly cute. “This is the kind of thing I mean. You can see it just isn’t right for you here.”
It would take a lot to argue with that, but before I even had any chance, she had her purse up and was diving a hand into it. “Oh, and take this.” She pressed some folded money into my hand. In amazement, I turned the corners of the bills back, counting. Three tens. The exact same sum as had been pinned inside my discarded shirt.
“What—how come—”
“No, no, don’t thank me,” she simpered, while all I was trying to ask was why she hadn’t done this in the first place, like maybe as soon as we both realized she had thrown my summer money in the garbage.
All at once she burst into tears. “Donny, I wish this would have worked out. But you see how things are, Herman and I have all we can do to keep ourselves together. I—I may be a selfish old woman, I don’t know, but my nerves just will not take any more aggravation. Not that I blame you entirely, understand. It’s the, the circumstances.” Still sniffling, she pulled a hanky from her purse and blew her nose. “This is the best thing all around. You’ll be back there where people are more used to you.”
Yeah, well, it was way late for any apology, if that’s what this amounted to. All it did was delay us from the departure gate where passengers already were piling onto the bus with MILWAUKEE on its roller sign. For me, there’d be another one with WESTBOUND after that. I did not look back at her as I handed my ticket to the driver for punching, left the wretched old suitcase for him to throw in the baggage compartment, and climbed aboard to try to find a seat to myself.