Me and Rupert Goody Read Free Page B

didn’t even know what I was talking about. Just kept washing milk crates like he didn’t know he was messing up my life. Taking the only predictable thing I ever had and mixing the vines up with the taters.
    I walked across the gravel parking lot. When I got to the road, I turned and looked back at the store. Rupert on the porch with his barn door open, sloshing water everywhere. I picked up a handful of gravel. Uncle Beau stepped out on the porch and waved at me. I threw the gravel at the ground and headed off to school.

Four
    Now, when I got up in the morning, the day that lay ahead of me was a mystery. Some days, I got to Uncle Beau’s and everything seemed like before. Produce to sort through, boxes to open. Other days, Rupert would be sitting there mixing up the apples with the tangerines. Forgetting to put the soda-machine key back on the hook by the door. Making me wonder what was gonna happen next.
    After school, I’d sit on the porch and listen to the same old grownup nonsense as before. Only now, with Rupert hanging around, I could swear there was a tension in the air. Uncle Beau told everybody about his son, about Hattie’s boy, patting Rupert on the back and grinning from ear to ear. I saw the raised eyebrows, but Uncle Beau never did.
    Claytonville’s so small you can’t spit without hitting somebody Everybody knows everything worth knowing
about everybody else. Least, they thought they did till Rupert come. I wanted somebody to say, “What you talkin’ about, Uncle Beau? That black man ain’t no son of yours.” But nobody did.
    A couple of the old folks remembered Hattie. “You mean this here’s Hattie’s boy?” they’d say Then they’d stare at Rupert and say, “Well, I’ll be.”
    Some of the black folks give Rupert the once-over. Every now and then, one of them said something like, “Looks every bit of Baker, don’t he?” But mostly they just give him the once-over.
    I tried to put on an I-don’t-give-a-hoot face, but the subject of Hattie Baker made me fidget a bit. Rupert, on the other hand, didn’t bat an eye. Half the time he just sat there all glassy-eyed like he didn’t understand a thing. Usually, he was caught up in some chore Uncle Beau had him doing. Rolling coins or checking the expiration date on the milk or something.
    First couple of days, I’d find Rupert doing my jobs—the price stamping and shelf stocking and all. Ticked me off big-time.
    â€œYou trust him with them pickle jars?” I’d say to Uncle Beau. Or: “Don’t know who can read them labels, the way he’s put them canned tomatoes out there.” I guess Uncle Beau knew how to take a hint, cause after a while Rupert was mostly doing other stuff. Stuff I didn’t like doing anyways.
    Uncle Beau got Rupert set up in the shed out back.
Wrote his name on the door with a black marker. “Rupert B. Goody” in Uncle Beau’s wiggly writing. “B for Beauregarde,” Rupert told me. “Same as Uncle Beau.” I figured he was saying that just to get my goat, which it did, but I just said, “Yeah, right. Whatever.”
    I went in that shed one day while Rupert was picking up litter in the parking lot. Nothing but a dirty old sleeping bag on an air mattress. A couple of shirts hanging on nails. Cardboard box full of socks and overalls and stuff. When I recognized the grocery sack Rupert had brought with him that first day he come to Claytonville, I couldn’t stop myself from looking inside. What I saw convinced me more than ever that Rupert was plumb off his rocker. A stack of Monopoly money in a rubber band, a box of Fig Newtons, some tiny knitted booties, shoe polish, rusty pliers, and a mayonnaise jar full of buttons and bird feathers. That was it. I was beginning to think maybe Rupert Goody’d escaped from the loony bin.
    I thought about it awhile before I decided to bring