Chapter 14

I remembered the Amoses had promised the same thing. I said, "You'll watch it yourself, ma'am? You'll make sure no one looks inside of it?"

She said, "Son, we don't have no thieving in here, we all look out for each other."

I said, "Thank you, ma'am" and put my suitcase down near the woman's feet.

Me, Bugs, a little white boy and a little girl loaded a whole mess of dirty tin cans and spoons and a couple of real plates and forks into a big wooden box and lugged them down to Thread Crick.

The little girl had been in Hooverville the longest so she got to tell the rest of us what to do. She said, "I don't suppose neither one of you new boys knows how to do dishes the right way, do you?"

Me and Bugs had done tons of dishes in the Home so I said, "Sure we do, we used to be real good at cleaning up."

Bugs said, "Dang, girl, you act like this is the first cardboard jungle I've been in, I know how you do dishes at here."

She said, "OK then, we'll split them up, you and you"--she pointed at Bugs and the other kid--"can do half, and me and this boy can do the others. What's your name?"

I said, "Jojon, not Jones." She said, "I'm Deza Malone."

Deza handed Bugs and the other little boy some rags and some soap powder and they started splashing the dishes in the water.

Me and the girl walked a little farther up the crick and started unloading the rest of the dishes. "You dry, I'll wash," she said.

She handed me a rag and just as soon as she'd splashed one of the tin cans in the water and give it to me I'd dry it and stick it in the wooden box.

She said, "Where you say you was from?" "Flint, right here."

"So, you and your friend come down here to get on that train tomorrow?" "Where's it going?"

"Chicago" she said.

"Is that west from here?" "Uh-huh"

"Then yup, that's where we're heading" I said. "Where you from?" "Lancaster, Pennsylvania."

"You going to take the train too?"

She said, "Uh-uh. My daddy is. Folks say there's work out west so he's going to try again."

"So you're going to wait here for him?" "Uh-huh."

She was real fast at washing the dishes but I noticed she got kind of slow and was touching my hand a lot when it came to giving them to me.

She said, "Where's your momma and daddy?" "My mother died four years ago."

"Sorry to hear that."

"It's OK, she didn't suffer or nothing." "So where's your daddy?"

"I think he lives in Grand Rapids, I never met him."

"Sorry to hear that." Shucks, she held right on to my hand when she said that. I squirmed my hand a-loose and said, "That's OK too."

Deza said "No it's not, and you should quit pretending that it is." "Who said I'm pretending anything?"

"I know you are, my daddy says families are the most important thing there is. That's why me and my momma are going to wait together for him to come back or write for us to come to him."

I said, "My mother said the same thing, that families should be there for each other all the time. She always used to tell me that no matter where I went or what I did that she'd be there for me, even if she wasn't somewhere that I could see her. She told me .. ."

Shucks, there're some folks who'll have you running your mouth before you know what you're doing. I quit talking and acted like I was having a real hard time drying the tin can she'd just handed me.

"What'd she tell you, Jojon?''

I looked at Deza Malone and figured I'd never see her again in my life so I kept shooting off my mouth. "She would tell me every night before I went to sleep that no matter what happened I could sleep knowing that there had never been a little boy, anywhere, anytime, who was loved more than she loved me. She told me that as long as I remembered that I'd be OK."

"And you knew it was the truth."

"Just as much as I know my name's Jojon, not Jones." She said, "Don't you have no other kin here in Flint?" "No."

"I guess I can't blame you for wanting to ride the rails. My momma says these poor kids on the road all alone are like dust in the wind. But I guess you're different, aren't you, Jojon? I guess you sort of carry your family around inside of you, huh?"

"I guess I do. Inside my suitcase, too."

She said, "So you been staying in a orphanage since your momma died?" "What makes you say that?"

"Well, you're kind of skinny, but I can tell by the way you talk and the way you act that you haven't been out on the road for very long. You still look young."

I said, "Shucks, I'm not all that young, I'm going to be eleven on November fourteenth, and I'm not skinny, I'm wiry. Some folks think I'm a hero." "So, Mr. Hero, we're the same age. But you have been staying in a orphanage."

"I been staying in a home."

"My daddy says being on the road ain't fit for a dog, much less a kid, how come you don't just go back to your orphanage?" She started up touching my hand too much again.

Deza Malone seemed like she was all right so I came clean with her. "Don't tell no one, but I lit out from a foster home so I'm on the lam. And I wouldn't go back to the Home even if I could. It's getting so's there's too many kids in there."

"So? That's better than being cold and hungry all the time and dodging the railroad police."

"What do you mean?"

"You don't think they just let people jump on the trains, do you?" "Well, I guess I hadn't thought about it."

"See, I knew you were too nice to have been out on the road, you're going to have a bad surprise tomorrow morning."

"That won't bother me too much." She said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot, you're a hero to some folks." When Deza smiled a little dimple jumped up in her brown cheek.

I didn't answer, I just kept drying tin cans.

We got to the last four or five tin can plates and Deza said, "You ever kiss a girl at the orphanage?"

Uh-oh! "Are you kidding?"

"No. Why, you afraid of girls?" "You must be kidding."