He looked at the rest of us and said, "Seven little boys in this room and not a one of y'all knows who your folks is. This is a sure-enough sad collection of souls here,
I said, "That's not true, I know who my momma is, I lived with her for six years."
Another boy said, "Me too, I lived with my momma for a long time."
Billy Burns said to me, "Is that right? And what about your old man? How many years you live with him? I got a nickel here and you know what it says?"
Billy'd stole a nickel from somewhere and held it up so's the buffalo on it was looking out at us. He pretended the buffalo was talking, it had a deep voice like you'd figure a buffalo would. It said, "Billy, my man, go ahead and bet this little no-momma fool that he don't know who his daddy is, then I'd have another nickel to bang around in your pocket with"
Even before I had a chance to think I said, "You owe me a nickel, my daddy plays a giant fiddle and his name is Herman E. Calloway."
And with those words that I didn't even mean to say that little seed of a idea started growing.
The idea got bigger and stronger when I'd sit up at night and wonder why Momma'd kept those flyers. It dug its roots in deep and started spreading out when I got old enough to understand that Momma must've known she wasn't going to be around too long and was trying to leave me a message about who my daddy was and why she couldn't never talk about him. I knew Momma must be too embarrassed about why he wasn't with us and was trying to break it to me gentle. The only trouble was she waited too long.
I mean what other reason could there be for Momma to keep all these things I have in my suitcase and treat them like they were treasures, and why did I know way down in my guts that they were real, real important, so important that I didn't feel comfortable unless I knew where they were all the time?
That little idea had gone and sneaked itself into being a mighty maple, tall enough that if I looked up at the top of it I'd get a crick in my neck, big enough for me to hang a climbing rope in, strong enough that I made up my mind to walk clean across the state of Michigan.
I opened my suitcase and pulled the flyers out before it got dark. I put the blue one with the writing about Flint on it on the bottom and looked at the others.
Two of them had the same picture of Herman E. Calloway and the two guys but the first was called "Herman E. Calloway and the Terminally Unhappy Blues Band" they were called "Masters of the Delta Blues" and the other one was called "Herman E. Calloway and the Gifted Gents of Gospel--Featuring Miss Grace "Blessed' Thomas's Vocals" they were the "Servants of the Master's Salvation."
The two other flyers just had little drawings. The first one was a drawing of a accordion and told about a band named "H. E. Callowski and the Wonderful Warblers of Warsaw" who were the "Masters of the Polka." The second one was of a picture of some mountains and it told about a band named "H. E. Bonnegut and the Boisterous Big Band of Berlin" who were the "Masters of All We Behold."
I put the flyers back in the suitcase and stood up. Just like Bugs, I was going west!
***
FLINT ENDED all of a sudden and I was in the country. It was like one of those days that it's raining on one side of the street and not on the other. Here you have Flint and a sidewalk, you take one baby step, and here you have country and a dirt path. On the sidewalk side a sign said, YOU ARE NOW LEAVING FLINT, HURRY BACK, and on the dirt path side, YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FLINT--ENJOY YOUR STAY.
I jumped in and out of Flint around seven times before that got boring and I decided I'd better head for Grand Rapids. It was already very, very dark and unless things were different in the country it wasn't going to be getting light anytime soon.
One hundred and twenty miles. It didn't take too much time before I figured out that twenty-four hours' worth of walking was a lot longer than I thought it would be. I must've only been walking for a couple of minutes when everything changed.
First off there were the sounds. Flint could be pretty noisy, what with cars honking horns and trucks with no mufflers on them shifting gears and people yelling out at each other so you couldn't tell if they were happy or about to bust out fighting.
Out here in the country the sounds were loud too, but what I was hearing was the sound of bugs and toady-frogs and mice and rats playing a dangerous, scary kind of hide-and-go-seek where they rustle around and try to keep away from each other or try to find each other. Instead of being tagged and called "it" like the way human beings play the game, out here the ones that got got, got ate up. Every step I took toward Grand Rapids I could hear the sounds of mouse bones and bug skeletons being busted up by the teeth of bigger things.
Every once in a while a couple of cats would give out the kind of howls and yowls that would make the hair on your neck jump up if you were a human being and your heart turn into a little cup of shaky yellow custard if you were a mouse.
I walked and walked and walked. Some of the time a car would come by and I'd have to duck into the bushes and wait till it had passed, so I don't think I was doing any five miles a hour.
I felt like I'd been walking all night but I'd only gone through three little towns.