The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [31]
“Nowhere, really,” he answered.
“What about Kansas City? Or Des Moines?” she said, her fingers typing furiously on the keyboard, as if searching for the answer to a particularly difficult question with the help of very limited resources.
“St. Louis is fine,” he said, unable to maintain his composure.
“Chuck Berry’s hometown,” the ticket agent offered.
“That seals it then,” he replied, and took his ticket and five dollars in change and collapsed in a seat in the middle of an unoccupied row. He fished a pill out of his prescription bottle and swallowed it, waited for the ache spread tight across his face like cling wrap to disappear. He said, “Meet me in St. Louis,” but didn’t know whom he was addressing. Joseph? Dr. Ollapolly? The ticket agent? Perhaps he should extend the invitation to all three and hope one might take him up on the offer.
He fell asleep and when he awoke, perhaps an hour later, he had some one- and five-dollar bills resting on his chest and in his lap. He counted it out, seventeen dollars. It was both touching and incredibly patronizing. He lingered on the aspects of it that were touching and felt a little better. He thought this would make for a hilarious down payment on his medical bills, and instead walked to the diner across the street and ordered a milkshake that was cold and sweet. It was one of the few things he could imagine consuming, considering that his mouth was constantly aching. He placed the straw in the gap where his missing tooth had once been. He ignored the few customers in the diner, who were trying, and failing, not to look at him and ruin their appetites.
At the pay phone in the bus station, he called Annie collect but the phone rang without promise of an answer, not even her voice mail. If she picked up, of course she would help him out, though he hated asking, admitting that he could not keep himself safe and sane. He had not spoken to her since he had inadvertently seen her breasts on the Internet. Seeing her naked wasn’t the problem, though it wasn’t something he’d recommend to other sensitive boys who idolized their older sisters, it was the feeling he had gotten from the picture, that his sister was falling into something disastrous and depressing. And then there was the resulting frustration, knowing that he probably couldn’t help her. But none of this mattered at the moment, because she wasn’t answering the phone, and so he hung up.
He considered his remaining options. They were obvious and terrifying. His parents. He kept trying to rewrite the equation so that the answer was something other than his parents but each and every time he worked his way to the end, it was always Mom and Dad, Caleb and Camille, Mr. and Mrs. Fang.
“Hello?” his mother said.
“Mom,” Buster replied, “it’s your child.”
“Oh, it’s our child,” she said, genuinely surprised.
“Which one?” he heard his father ask, and his mother, not savvy enough to cover the receiver or perhaps not caring, said, “B.”
“I’m in a bad way, Mom,” he said.
“Oh no,” she said. “What’s wrong, Buster?”
“I’m in Nebraska,” he said.
“Oh, that is bad,” she cried. “Why are you in Nebraska?”
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“Well, this is a collect call, so we better keep it brief.”
“Yeah, so I need your help. I got shot in the face and—”
“What?” she shouted. “You got shot in the face?”
His father’s voice came on the line. “You got shot in the face?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Buster answered. “But I’m okay. Well, I’m not okay but I’m not dying.”
“Who shot you in the face?” his mother asked.
“Is it a long story?” his father asked.
“It is,” Buster said. “It’s very, very long.”
“We’ll come get you,” his mother said. “We’re on our way. I’m getting the atlas out right now and I’m drawing a line from Tennessee to Nebraska. Wow, that’s a heck of a drive. We better leave right now. Caleb, we’re leaving.”
“We’re on our way, son,” Mr. Fang said.
“Well, hold on,” Buster answered. “I’m going to be in St. Louis in a few hours.”
“St. Louis?” his mother said. Buster