Boys Life

Mr. White said?” Dad’s voice quavered with excitement. “Thirty-three! Ol’ thirty-three, he said!”
    “Sir?”
    “The Trailways bus, Cory! It’s number thirty-three! I was standin’ right there listenin’ to him, and I hardly heard it! You think that could be what those numbers mean?”
    I was honored that he was asking my opinion, but I had to say, “I don’t know.”
    “Well, the killer couldn’t be Cornelius McGraw. He doesn’t even live around here. But what would the bus have to do with whoever killed that man in Saxon’s Lake?” He started puzzling it over, his hands clenched hard around the steering wheel. Then a woman holding a broom came out on her porch and started hollering at us to move the truck before she called the sheriff, so we had to go.
    We returned to the gas station. Mr. White emerged again. “Sure went through that tank in a hurry, didn’t ya?” he asked. Dad wasn’t interested in filling up anything but his curiosity, though. When was number thirty-three due back in again? he asked Mr. White, and Mr. White said the next day around noon.
    Dad said he’d be there.
    Maybe he was wrong, he told Mom that night at dinner, but he was going to be at that gas station waiting for the bus at noon. It wasn’t Cornelius McGraw he would be there to see, but he would be watching to find out who the bus brought to Zephyr or who it took away.
    I was there with him as noon approached. Mr. White was driving us crazy talking about how hard it was to find good GoJo to clean the grease off your hands anymore. Then Dad said, “Here it comes, Cory,” and he walked from cold shadow into crisp sunlight to meet it.
    The Trailways bus, with number 33 on the plate above its windshield, swept on past without even slowing, though Mr. McGraw honked the horn and Mr. White waved.
    Dad watched it go. But he turned to Mr. White again, and I saw by the set of his jaw that now my father was a man with a mission. “Bus come back through day after tomorrow, Hiram?”
    “Sure does. Twelve noon, same as always.”
    Dad lifted a finger and tapped it against his lips, his eyes narrowed. I knew what he was thinking. How was he going to meet the bus on the days he had to work at Big Paul’s Pantry?
    “Hiram,” he said at last, “you need any help around here?”
    “Well… I don’t know if I-”
    “I’ll take a dollar an hour,” Dad said. “I’ll pump the gas, I’ll clean the garage, I’ll do whatever you ask me to do. You want me to work overtime, that’s fine. A dollar an hour. How about it?”
    Mr. White grunted and stared at the cluttered garage. “I reckon I do need some stuff inventoried. Brake shoes, gaskets, radiator hoses, and such. And I could use another strong back.” This from Quasimodo of the Belts. He stuck out his hand. “Got a job, if you want it. Startin’ six in the mornin’, if that’s all right?”
    “I’ll be here,” Dad said, grasping Mr. White’s hand.
    My father was nothing if not resourceful.
    The bus passed through once more without even a hiss of brakes. But it was due again, twelve noon, same as always, and my dad would be there.
    New Year’s Eve came, and we watched on television the festivities in Times Square. At the stroke of midnight, someone shot off fireworks over Zephyr, the church bells rang, and horns honked. It had become 1965. On New Year’s Day we ate black-eyed peas to bring us silver, and collard greens to bring us gold, and we watched football games until our south ends were sore. Dad sat in his chair with a notepad on his lap, and though he hollered for his teams he was scribbling 33… 33… 33 into an interlocking mosaic of numbers with his ball-point pen. Mom chided him to put down that pen and relax, and he did for a little while but soon his fingers found it again. I could tell by the way she looked at him that she was getting worried about him once more; ol’ number thirty-three was becoming as much an obsession as the bad dream had ever been. He was still having that dream, of course, but he knew the dead man was not calling him and that made a big difference. I suppose, though, that in my father’s case it took one obsession to break another.
    Ben, Johnny, and I and the rest of the childish generation returned to school. In my class, I discovered we had a new teacher. Her name was Miss Fontaine, and she was as young and pretty as spring. Beyond the windows, though, winter was starting to rage.
    Every other day, near noon, my