I was getting so tired that I started to forget to duck in the bushes when a car would roar by. Some of the time they'd see me and step on their brakes for a second, then speed off. Most times they never noticed me.
Another car bounced over the top of a hill. The lights blinded me for a second and then I ducked into the bushes again.
The guy in the car stepped on the brakes to slow down and I could see him twist his neck around. He stuck the car in reverse and pulled to a stop about thirty giant steps away from where I was hiding. His door opened and he stepped out and started walking slow toward my bushes. He brushed his hand over his head and put on a black hat like the kind the police or some army men wear. But all the cops I'd ever seen were white so I knew this guy must be a soldier.
He stopped and put his fingers to his lips and whistled. The whistle was so loud that it made me duck down and put my hands over my ears, it felt like he'd blown it right inside my head. All the bugs and toady- frogs shut right up, they quit chasing and biting each other 'cause this had to be the loudest whistle they'd ever heard too.
Rocks were crunching as the man in the black hat walked a couple of steps up the road, then stopped again. For the second time he blasted my ears with that whistle. The noise-making critters in that patch of road got quiet.
He said, "Say hey!"
He waited, then yelled, "Say hey! I know my eyes aren't what they used to be, but I know they aren't so bad that they'd lie to me about seeing a young brown- skinned boy walking along the road just outside of Owosso, Michigan, at two- thirty in the morning."
I couldn't tell if he was talking to me or to himself. I peeked up to see if I could get a better look at this man. He came closer to me, then stopped about ten giant steps away.
"And I'll tell you, I've seen some things out of place before and a young brown- skinned boy walking along the road just outside of Owosso, Michigan, at two- thirty in the morning is definitely not where he ought to be. In fact, what is definite is that neither one of us should be out here this time of night."
He squatted down and said, "Are you still there?" I raised my head a little higher to get a better look at him and his big car. He'd left the door open and I could hear the engine of the car grumbling, it was saying, wugga, wugga, wugga, wugga, wugga.
"Son," he said, "this is no time to play. I don't know and I don't care why you're out here, but let me tell you I know you're a long way from home. Are you from Flint?"
How could he tell I was from Flint just by seeing my face for a second in his headlights? I wonder how grown folks know so doggone much just by looking at you.
Something was telling me to answer him but I still wanted to get a better look.
He stood up. "You know what? I bet if I can't get you to come out with talk I got something else that might make you show your face.
"From the quick look I got at you, you seemed a little on the puny side. I'll bet anything you're hungry. Just so happens that I've got a spare baloney and mustard sandwich and an apple in the car. You interested?"
Shucks. How did he know I was so hungry?
Then he said, "Might even have some extra red pop."
Before my brain could stop it my stomach made my mouth yell out, "But I don't like mustard, sir."
The man could tell which bushes I was hiding in but please open key on me, he didn't bum-rush them or try to get me, he just laughed and said, "Well, I didn't check, but I don't suppose the mustard's been glued on, I'll bet you we can scrape it off. What do you say?"
I was carefully talking to him this time so he couldn't track where I was. I turned my head and talked sideways out of my mouth like one of those ventriloquists. "Just leave them at the side of the road and I'll get them. And please open the bottle of pop, sir, I don't have a bottle. He squatted back down again and said, "Oh, no, can't do that. The deal is I feed you, you show me your face." From the way the man talked he seemed like he was OK and before my brain could stop it my stomach told the rest of me to slide my suitcase deeper into the weeds and walk out. The man stayed squatted down and said, "I knew I saw something. A deal's a deal so I'll go get your food, all right?"
"Yes, sir."
He stood up, turned his back to me, then ducked inside the car. A second later he came back with a brown paper bag and a big bottle of red pop.
"Here it is."
He stood there acting like I was going to have to come over to him and get it. "Could you put them down and I'll eat them and you can keep driving, sir?" He laughed again. "Thanks for your concern, but I've got a little time to spare."
With him standing there in the dark dangling the bottle of red pop out of his right hand and the red taillights of the car behind him shining through the bottle it looked like the reddest red in the world. I walked right up to the man like I was hypnotized. I forgot all my manners and reached right out.
He raised the bottle over his head. "Hold on now." "Could I have some of the pop, sir?"
He smiled. "That's not why I said hold on, I said it because we have some talking to do first.''