LITMIR.BIZ

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look back. “I’m glad to be shed of that place, all right,” he said.

      Casey wondered what he’d been in prison for, but knew enough not to ask. He settled back in the seat and crossed his arms again. “Good luck in Houston,” he said.

      He closed his eyes, figuring Denton would get the message, but apparently once the skinny man had decided to talk, he wasn’t interested in stopping. “I used to have a girlfriend in Houston. Her name was Thomasina. Kind of a weird name for a girl, but she was named after her daddy, Thomas. She was a big, tall girl, and she could hit like a man. She worked at this little store her daddy owned and once these two dudes tried to rob the place. She punched one guy in the nose and hit the other one upside the head with a can of green beans. He tried to run and she just wound up and threw that can at him. Knocked him out cold.”

      Casey stopped pretending to sleep, and laughed. “I wish I could have seen that.”

      “Thomasina was something.” Denton shook his head. “Maybe I’ll look her up while I’m in Houston.”

      “You should do that. I bet she’d be glad to see you.”

      Denton was still shaking his head, back and forth, like a swimmer who had water in both ears. “I guess you got somebody coming to meet you at the station when you get to wherever it was in Texas you said you was going,” he said.

      “Uh, yeah. Sure. My mom will come get me.” He hadn’t exactly thought that far ahead. He hadn’t told anyone he was going to do this—not his mom, or his dad, either. Maybe at the next stop, he’d look for a phone and call home, just so his dad wouldn’t worry. Then when he got to Tipton, he’d call Grandpa’s house and let Mom know he’d arrived.

      “Ain’t nobody coming to meet me.” Denton pressed his forehead against the window and stared out into the darkness. “I done my time and the state turned me loose. They gave me one new suit of clothes and a bus ticket to wherever I wanted to go, and that’s it.”

      “That’s tough.” Casey didn’t know what to say. He wondered if he could pretend to go to sleep again.

      Denton raised his head and looked at him again. “You got any money, kid?”

      The hair rose up on the back of Casey’s neck and his heart pounded. Denton didn’t have a gun in his hand or anything, but the way he said those words, you just knew he’d said them before when he did have a weapon.

      “I got a little,” he mumbled. He had a little over thirty dollars in his billfold in his backpack. Enough to buy meals the rest of the trip, he guessed.

      “I saw you eating dinner when we stopped back there, so I figured you had money. You ought to give me some money so I can buy some dinner. You ought to help out a fellow traveler.”

      Casey wondered if Denton was telling the truth. Would the state turn somebody loose with no money in his pocket? That seemed like a sure way for someone to end up back in jail really quick. Maybe Denton was just trying to scam him.

      “When we stop again, I’ll get some food and we can share it,” he said. He fought back a grin, proud of the way he’d handled the issue. But then, he’d always been good at thinking on his feet. It was another talent he knew would come in handy throughout his life.

      Denton grunted, apparently satisfied with this answer. He rested his head against the window and closed his eyes and was soon snoring.

      Casey slept, too. The rocking motion of the bus and the darkness, punctuated by the whine of passing cars and the low rumble of the bus’s diesel engine, lulled him into a deep slumber. He dreamed he was wandering through the streets of Tipton, searching for his grandfather’s house, unable to find it.

      When Karen returned from the grocery store, the aide, an older black woman named Millie Dominic, met her at the door. “Mr. Martin is carrying on something fierce, but I can’t figure out what he wants,” she said.

      Karen dropped the bags of groceries on the kitchen table and ran to her father’s bedroom. He was sitting up on the side of the bed, one foot thrust into a scuffed leather slipper, the other bare. When he saw her, he let out a loud cry and jabbed his finger toward the chair. “I asked him if he felt up to going outside for a walk and he roared at me,” Mrs. Dominic said.

      “I think he wants to go back to his office.” She looked at her father as she spoke. At her words, he relaxed and nodded.

      “What’s he gonna do in there?” Mrs. Dominic asked as she helped Karen transfer Martin to the wheelchair.

      “He can work on his computer. He types with his right hand, so he can communicate.” She lifted his left foot onto the footrest and strapped it in place. “I guess that’s less frustrating for him.”

      Once at his desk, he waved away Karen’s offer of a drink, but she brought him a Coke anyway, with a straw to make it easier to sip. He was alarmingly thin, and the doctor said she should try to get as many calories into him as possible.

      She thanked Mrs. Dominic and sent her on her way, then began putting away groceries. At home right now she’d be answering phones for their business while trying to decide what to cook for supper. If Casey was around, he’d suggest they have pizza. He would have gladly eaten pizza seven days a week.

      How were Tom and the boys managing without her? Was paperwork stacking up on her desk at the office, while laundry multiplied at home? We need you here. Tom’s words sounded over and over in her head, like an annoying commercial jingle that refused to leave, no matter how hard she tried to banish it. He’d sounded so…accusing. As if she’d deliberately deserted them in favor of a man who had earlier all but abandoned her.

      No matter what Tom might think, she’d never desert her family. They were everything to her. But she couldn’t turn her back on her dad, either. He was still her father, and he needed her. Maybe the only time in his life he’d needed anyone. She might never have a chance like this again.

      She decided to make corn chowder, in the hopes that her father could eat some. Though he’d never been a man who paid much attention to what he ate, content to dine on ham sandwiches for four nights in a row without complaint, she thought the diet of protein drinks must be getting awfully monotonous.

      After living so long with three boisterous, talkative men, the silence in the house was getting to her. She started to switch on the television, then at the last minute turned and headed for the study. Her father couldn’t form words, but as long as he could type, they could have a conversation. It was past time the two of them talked.

      “Hey, Dad,” she said as she entered the room.

      When he didn’t look up, she walked over and stood beside him. “What are you doing?”

      He glanced up at her, then leaned back slightly so she could get a better view of the monitor screen. He’d been studying a spreadsheet, listing birds by common and scientific names, locations where he had seen them, columns indicating if he had tape-recorded songs for them. Birds he had never seen were indicated in boldface. There weren’t many boldfaced names on the list.

      “Mom said you had just seen a Hoffman’s Woodcreeper when you had your stroke,” Karen said.

      He moved the mouse back and forth, in jerky motions, until the cursor came to rest on the entry for the Woodcreeper. It was no longer boldfaced, and he had dutifully recorded the time and date of the sighting.

      “That’s great, Dad. You’ve done a phenomenal job.”

      He shook his head, apparently not happy with her praise. She wasn’t surprised. As long as she could remember, he hadn’t been satisfied. When he was home, he was always planning the next expedition, making list after list of birds he had not yet seen, counting and recounting the birds he had seen, and frowning at whatever number he had reached so far.

      In addition to the life list of all the birds he’d ever seen, he also kept a yard list of birds seen at his home, a county list, state list, as well as various regional and country lists. This accumulation

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