Lunch-Box Dream Read Free Page B

sometimes when Hershel’s stepdaddy Ellis tries to fix it (heal it, he says). He’s no good with that car, but he tries. But since we walk to our jobs and the open market is near and Ruth is picked up by Mrs., we don’t need a car much anyway.
    I just miss my little Jacob and wish he was home again.

Monday, June 15
Six
Bobby
    When Monday came, their mother promised they would get going early, but the whole first day turned out wrong. She had said they would drive out of the city right after morning traffic, but they didn’t end up leaving until afternoon, and even then it was late afternoon. Why had they waited? There was another phone call from his father midday; was that it?
    The car had mostly been packed the night before and the rest was done in the morning by his mother and grandmother, but hour after hour it just sat in the driveway getting hot. Bobby had eaten four times already, waiting to get on the road.
    Finally about three in the afternoon there was the sound of something breaking in the kitchen. “We’ll start tomorrow,” his mother said sharply, and something in Bobby’s chest fell. Ricky threw his suitcase on his bed, growling like a dog. Then, just as they got used to the idea and Ricky grabbed the tennis ball and headed for the back door, the phone rang again and, not answering it, their mother stormed from room to room, getting everyone into the car.
    What had just happened? There was no answer except the jumbled scene of the four of them piling out of the house and into the car, Ricky hooting softly to himself as his mother slammed and locked and relocked the front door.
    The car roared to life. Under the sound of the grinding engine they were all quiet as they drove down Green, then Cedar, past houses and churches and parks and more houses and endless streets in the neighborhoods south of their house, then on Northfield Road into Shaker Heights and Maple Heights, past Southgate Shopping Center and Handel’s Ice Cream, and Bedford Heights, then railroad tracks and factories and everything getting tangled in Northfield Center until all the streets slowed in end-of-the-day traffic and it seemed they would never get out of the giant city, and then they were out.
    They were out, free of the close streets. Even at suppertime, summer was full-blown in the long valley you entered after you left Cleveland on the way to Akron. Green wet heat had settled over everything, and the white roadways had already thinned of cars now that school was over. The constant dipping and rising on soft tires made the big car seem like a boat as they sailed out of neighborhoods and past fields of dry grass alive with the late afternoon hiss of insects.
    Soon they were traveling through small towns separated from one another by woods and plank-fenced and wire-fenced fields and overgrown meadows and old gray trucks, doorless and wheelless on blocks. It was new, all new, Bobby thought when the sharp smell of Queen Anne’s lace came in through his window. It was pungent and sweet and full of summer, but cut sometimes by the faint smell of garbage or the closeness of exhaust fumes.
    Early on, Ricky cranked his window all the way down, pushed a pillow to his cheek, leaned into the air, and breathed openly. The wind pushed his hair back.
    Coming from Cleveland, Bobby knew what a city was. These were not cities. West Salem. Lodi. Many looked like villages that held no more than a few hundred people. The centers of town were all piled up to the roadside and ugly, except for a trim brick bank or post office, and, because they were making such good time, soon gone.
    â€œI’m so hot,” Bobby said, fanning himself with a folded map, because the car still hadn’t lost the heat it had built up all day.
    â€œAnd one of us stinks,” said Ricky. “Hint, hint, it’s not me.”
    Bobby shifted his head to the right and pulled in a sour smell. He did the same to the other side