"I can see it all now, I'll be sound asleep, deep in the middle of a Ruth Dandridge dream, when all of a sudden I'll be standing on the side of the road in Owosso, Michigan, at two-thirty in the morning and I'll be seeing my car and that blood pulling away with nothing of you showing but that little peanut- head of yours peeking up over the dash."
He looked at me out of the side of his eye.
"Anyone ever tell you you've got a little peanut-head?"
I gulped down the pop I'd been swishing around in my mouth and said, "No, sir."
"Well," he said, "this may be the first time but unless you undergo some major surgery I'll bet it won't be the last."
"Yes, sir."
He waited a second, then sounded kind of disappointed when he said, "Don't take it so seriously, Jojon, I am teasing, you know."
I started in on the apple. "Yes, sir." "Ever been in the army, Jojon?" "No, sir."
"Well, I've got to tell you, I haven't heard so many 'sirs' since I was back at Fort Gordon in Georgia training for the Big War."
I almost said, "Yes, sir," but I looked at him and guessed he was still teasing.
I took another drink of the red pop and saw that when I was raising the bottle I'd accidentally let some of the sandwich slip out of my mouth down into the pop. There were a couple of chunks of chewed-up bread, a blob of baloney and some of the mustard swimming around in the bottle. The mustard was real pretty, it looked like some kind of magical fog, every time I moved the bottle the mustardy smoke went into a different kind of shape.
Lefty Lewis said, "How about sharing that pop, Jojon?" Uh-oh. He took one look and handed it back.
He said, "Nothing personal, Jojon, I've raised three kids and have two grandkids, I've learned the hard way about drinking after young folks. But I do believe you need to get in and see a doctor soon, son, it looks to me like you've got a serious backwash problem, that's the most food I've ever seen floating around in a bottle of pop. In fact, that doesn't look like red pop anymore, it looks more like red stew."
I real quick chugged the rest of the pop down and ate the apple real slow because I figured as soon as I was done with it the questions would start up again.
Lefty Lewis said, "Aren't you sleepy?" This was perfect! I could pretend I was falling asleep and then come up with some answers that would get me to Grand Rapids for sure. I yawned real big. "A little bit, sir."
"All right, here, give me that core, I think the only thing that's left is a seed or two anyway."
I handed him the apple core and he put it and the wax paper from the sandwich in the paper bag.
"You just stretch out there and have some sleep. In about an hour you'll be in a nice comfortable bed. We can have our talk in the morning."
He reached in the backseat and said, "Here" and handed me a jacket. "You can use this for a blanket."
The jacket smelled real good, like spice and soap.
Lefty Lewis said, "Oh, Jojon-not-Jones, one more thing before you doze off. Could you reach over into that box and hand me one of those bottles of blood? I haven't had a bite to eat all day."
I kept my eyes closed and smiled. I knew I was going to be safe, because I'd never heard of a vampire that could drive a car and I'd never seen one that had such a good sense of humor. Besides, I kept my jackknife open under my leg and he looked like he'd believed me when I told him it was made out of real silver, even though it probably wasn't.
As soon as I had the jacket over me the smell of the spice and soap and the sound of the crickets and toady- frogs outside made my eyes get real heavy.
Wow! I must have been real, real tired. Walking and ducking in and out of the bushes between Flint and Owosso was a lot more work than I thought it was.
Most of the time since Momma died, if someone even walks close to where I'm sleeping I'm up in a flash, my eyes fly open and I'm looking right at them. At one of the foster houses where I'd stayed a woman told me she knew I was going to be a criminal because "anyone who sleeps that light has got to have a guilty conscience." Most of the time the sound of someone else going from sleep breathing to awake breathing in the same room as me is enough to get me up.
But this morning I felt like I was at the bottom of a well that someone had filled with tons of thick chocolate pudding. Someone was calling my name from way up at the top of the well. She was saying, "Jojon. Jojon. Jojon."
Waves from the pudding were slogging me back and forth, back and forth.
"Jojon. Wake up, Jojon." It was a woman's voice and her hands were trying to shake me awake. Uh-oh. This is Number 29 of my rules:
RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 29
When You Wake Up and Don't Know for Sure
Where You're. At end There's a Bunch of people
Standing Around You. It's Best to pretend
You're Still Asleep, Until You Can Figure
Out What's Going On and What You Should Do.
I kept my eyes closed, acting like I was out cold.
The woman said, "Poppa, what on earth are all these lumps and bites on this baby's face?"
A man answered, "Well, he was walking all the way From Grand Rapids to Flint, it looks like he provided a pretty paltry meal for every mosquito on the way."
The woman said, "This poor child must be dead. I hate getting him up. I wish he could stay with us for a while, at least until he's had his sleep."
Then I remembered who I was with because Lefty Lewis said, "I know, but I've got to get back. He can sleep in the car on the way back to Grand Rapids."
The woman rolled back the blanket they'd put over me and said, "Poppa, look at his legs, this boy's as skinny as a rail."
Shucks, they'd taken off my knickers when they put me in this bed. Now I was going to have to pretend I was asleep even longer, at least until I could figure a way out of being so embarrassed.
Lefty Lewis said, "Yeah, he's puny. Good thing his legs don't touch when he walks 'cause if those two twigs got to rubbing against one another he'd have a fire going in no time."
The woman said, "That's not funny. He doesn't look like he's been fed right. Now who's his father again, you said you know him?"
"Everyone in Grand Rapids does, I'm surprised you can't remember him. He's quite a big fish there."
See! I told you it was smart to pretend you were asleep some of the time. Now I was going to learn some things about my father.
The woman said, "What kind of man is he that he let this child be so thin? And look at the condition of the boy's clothes. Everything is either too small for him or almost in tatters. Where is this child's mother? There's not much of a woman's touch about him."
Lefty Lewis said, "It seems to me that the Mrs. Calloway I knew passed a long time ago. The boy says he's ten and I'm sure she died quite a while before that. But you know how musicians are, there must be at least a few Mrs. Calloways I don't know anything about."
That meant that my dad was married to someone before he married my mom.