Leaving
Wayland
Leaving
Wayland
“Fred, where in tarnation are your shoes?” I heard my mama shout through the front
sing. I used to sing along on the porch, and, truth be told, I knew the words to every song by
heart. But before I told that to Townes and Pete, I thought better. Maybe I could fake a boy’s
porch window. I looked around for my daddy, but he wasn’t nowhere. I shouted for him, and
speaking voice, but singing like a boy must be a whole lot harder. The only thing I ever tried to
nobody answered.
play was the washboard, but Mama said I was much better at using it for scrubbing. She was
And that’s when I seen it.
probably right.
I looked down and seen that I was still wearing my daddy’s pants, and his shirt, too. And
I shook my head.
I still had the drying line tied through the belt loops, only I didn’t need it no more because I was
“You want a swig?” Pete unscrewed the lid of his canteen and held it my direction.
every bit as big as my daddy (which weren’t that big nohow, except compared with me). Then I
“What is it?”
looked at my arms and my legs and saw they was hairy like a man’s. And I had his fingers.
Jumping up, I ran to the washtub and looked into the soapy water. I saw a scruffy beard
“Just some wine,” he said.
It tasted like sugar and vinegar, but I was grateful for it anyhow, and I said so. After that,
Townes took out a cigarette from a tin in his backpack and lit it with a match.
growing in on my face, and my eyes were big and brown; my hair was short. I was my daddy all
over.
“How old are you, kid?” he asked.
I shouted for my mama.
I told him I was seventeen. I would be next fall, so it was only a little white lie. At the
“Fred?” She leaned out the window. “What are you going on about?”
time, I remember patting myself on the back for being a good liar, but I think now there must’ve
been no way they believed me. I couldn’t have looked more than fifteen.
When the boxcar powered back into the trees and then scurried between two little
mountains, everything went dark again. I lay my head down on my pillow and slept.
Our house in Wayland wasn’t much to look at. But the sight from the front porch’s
I looked up at her and jumped back because, to my horror, she didn’t have a face. Her
body and her dress and her head were all there, but where her face should’ve been was nothing.
And her hair looked the same as it did on that day my daddy died, wild and rebellious.
I ran off down the mountain ‘til I came to the creek, and I just kept running. I ran across
the road that led from Maddy’s house, and I ran up Black Mountain, up and up through the
something I ain’t never seen no place else. I could sit out there for hours running my eyeballs
briars. Since I didn’t have no shoes, I ran ‘till my feet was bruised and bloody, and then when I
over them Kentucky mountains. And in my dream, the air felt clean like it used to be out there.
couldn’t run on them no more, I ran on my hands.
My whole life up to that point I never knowed nothing different—not like now, writing this here
in the city. But there I am getting ahead of myself.
When, finally, I couldn’t do nothing else, I sat down on a tree stump next to a snail.
Feeling my stomach growl, I reached into my pockets for something to eat. I knew there was
bread there somewhere, but I couldn’t seem to find it.