SOMETHING STEPPED on a little stick. As soon as the twig cracked my eyes snapped open and I was wide awake. I held my breath and kept as still as I could. Whatever it was that was sneaking up on me knew I'd woked up 'cause it stopped moving and kept as still as it could too. Even though my head was still under my blanket, I could feel two eyes staring at me real hard, and I knew these weren't critter eyes, these eyes made the hair on the back of my neck raise up the way only human beings eyes can do.
Without wiggling or jiggling around too much under my blanket I got my fingers wrapped around my jack- knife. Right when I was ready to push the covers off of me and start running or stabbing, whoever it was that had been watching jumped right on top of me. I was as frapped as a roach under a dishrag!
I tried to guess the exact spot that the person's heart was at, then pulled my knife back. A voice said, "If you ain't a kid called Jojon from the Home I'm really sorry about jumping on you like this !"
It was Bugs!
When I tried to talk it felt like I had to suck all the air out of Flint, I finally got breathing right and said, "Doggone it, Bugs, it is me! You nearly scared me to death!"
He got off of me and I threw the blanket over to the side. "You don't know how lucky you are, I was just about fixing to stab you in the heart!" Bugs looked like he knew he'd just had a real close call. He said, "I'm sorry, Jojon, I didn't mean to scare you, but everybody knows how you like to sleep with that knife open so I figured I'd best grab hold of you so's you wouldn't wake up slicing nobody."
Shucks, even though it was Bugs who'd come real close to getting his heart poked, I was the one who was still having trouble catching my breath.
I asked, "How come you aren't back at the Home?" But before he had a chance to answer I knew. "You're on the lam."
Bugs said, "Yup. I'm going back to riding the rails. When I heard about you beating that kid up so bad that you had to take off I figured it was time for me to get going too. I thought you might be hanging around the library so I come down to see if you wanted to go with me."
"Where you heading?"
"There's always fruits to be picked out west, I heard we can make enough money to get by out there. There's supposed to be a train leaving sometime tomorrow. Did you really beat that kid up in the foster home?"
I said, "Uh-huh, we kind of had a fight. How long's it take to get out west?"
Bugs said, "Depends on how many trains you got to hop. Was he really two years older than you?"
"Uh-huh, he was twelve. Is it fun to hop a train?"
"Some of the time it is, some of the time it's scary. We heard he was kind of big too, was he?"
I said, "He was pretty big. I can't see how we can hop on a train, they look like they're moving pretty doggone fast."
Bugs said, "Most times you don't hop them when they're going fast, most times you try to climb on one when it's sitting in the train yard. Did the guy cry after you whupped him?"
"Well, kind of, he looked real scared, then told his momma to keep me away from him. They even said I was a hoodlum. Will we be sleeping on the train and everything?"
"Sure we will. Some of the time the train don't stop for two or three days. Man, I always try to tell people that just because someone's skinny it don't mean they can't fight, you're a hero now, Jojon!"
"Naw, I didn't really do nothing much. Well, how 'bout the toilet? How we going to use the toilet if the train doesn't stop?"
Bugs said, "You just kind of lean out of the door and go." "When the train is still moving?"
"Yeah. You get a real nice breeze."
"Oh, man! That sounds great! Count me in, I can't wait!"
Bugs spit a big glob of slob in his hand and said, "I knew I could depend on you, Jojon."
I spit a big glob in my hand and said, "We're brothers forever, Bugs!" We slapped our hands together as hard as we could and got our slobs mixed up real good, then waved them in the air so they'd dry. Now it was official, I finally had a brother!
Bugs said, "We'll go down to the mission. There's bound to be someone there that knows about where we can hop this train, then we'll be on the lam together!" WE FOUND OUT that we'd have to go to a city called Hooperville just outside of Flint. The only trouble was nobody knew exactly where Hooperville was. It was dark before we found out the right direction. I'd never heard of a city that was so doggone hard to find.
We walked on a trail through some woods that run right up against Thread Crick. We could tell we were getting close to Hooperville 'cause we heard somebody playing a mouth organ and the smell of food cooking was getting stronger. We kept walking in the direction that the sky was glowing with a orangeish light.
When we could hear the music real clear, and folks talking to each other and the sound of sticks cracking in a fire, we started cutting through the trees. That way we could peek into Hooperville first.
We looked out from behind a big tree and saw that a big wind or even two or three big wolves huffing and puffing real hard could blow Hooperville into the next county. It was a bunch of huts and shacks thrown together out of pieces of boxes and wood and cloth. The Amoses' shed would've looked like a real fancy house here.
Right near our tree was the big fire that had been lighting up the sky. It looked like a hundred people were sitting around it, watching things burn or waiting for the food cooking in three big pots set up in the fire. There were two littler fires burning in Hooperville. One had a pot that was big enough to boil a whole person in it. A man was stirring things in the pot with a big stick and when he raised the stick up he'd pull some britches or a shirt out and pass it over to a white man who was hanging the clothes on a line to dry. There was a mountain of clothes on the ground next to him waiting on their turn.
The other fire in Hooperville was real small. It was off to the side, by itself. There were five white people sitting at this fire, two kids, a man, and a woman holding a little wrapped-up baby. The baby sounded like all those new sick babies at the Home, it was coughing like it was a half-dead little animal.