Free Lunch-Box Dream by Tony Abbott Page B

myself company. Frank is funny sometimes. Like when Cora and I brought him home from the tavern. The “market.” That was funny. It wasn’t any market.
    The road curves up ahead. That’s not right. It’s nearly been an hour. I should be there already. Maybe more than an hour. Maybe it’s too late to fish the creek now. I didn’t say anything bad, did I? Who heard me if I did?
    Gonna be standing on a corner,
    Twelfth Street and Vine.
    I talked to Weeza only twice because she wasn’t around yesterday when I called. It was early. I just want to be home with her and Poppa now. I don’t want to fish here anymore. I better go on back. Is this the way? It still doesn’t look right. Maybe that turn ahead.
    Gonna be standing on a corner—
    Something’s making noise in the shadows up there. Someone running now?

Twenty-One
Bobby
    â€œAre ve lost?”
    Ricky flicked his eyes up at Grandma and said, “I don’t know.”
    â€œNuh. Ve are lost.”
    â€œI don’t know,” Ricky said.
    They’d left Chattanooga in the early afternoon, Bobby gazing sullenly at signs that said Ringgold (there was another battle there, but they didn’t stop) and Tunnel Hill and Dalton, and after another drive-through at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, had reached the outer streets of Atlanta before supper.
    Atlanta was a huge city, flat, ugly, and sprawling away from the route they were on.
    Ricky sat between their mother and grandmother in the front seat, commanding the maps. Though shadows were already growing over the streets, and they were beyond tired, there was one more site to see before they stopped for the night.
    â€œIt’s in the guidebook,” their mother said, hunkering over the wheel. “I read it before. The big house is right out here somewhere, and the memorial for the Union soldiers.”
    The tension in the car was electric and silent and heavy. Every breath Bobby took was wrong. He was a criminal now. A thief with a mean streak, an animal, while his brother was sainted.
    â€œI don’t know, Mom,” Ricky said, blinking through the window and removing the blue slouch cap his mother had bought him at the gift store when she returned the stolen bullet. “Why would they even have a Union headquarters in Atlanta? Georgia is a Rebel state. Why would they keep it as a place to see? They hate the Union. They hate Sherman because he set fire to Atlanta. And why would there be anything down such a junky street, anyway? Practically right on the railroad tracks.”
    She pressed forward. “Because the guidebook says so. It’s in the Triple-A. The Union cemetery and the headquarters. And it’s this way.”
    The car edged along the narrowing road, which buildings pressed even narrower. There were low brick and cinder-block structures and high-windowed warehouses. Tiny sheds and dismal, large-doored depots.
    â€œWell, it doesn’t make sense,” Ricky said. He held the map up to his face and scanned the lines on it. “This map stinks.”
    â€œVe are lost. Nuh.”
    â€œWe are not lost. We’re not lost. I’ll just go down here,” their mother said, barely slowing into a turn, “and if it doesn’t work…”
    â€œMarion,” said her mother, “vatch out, the fence—”
    The right headlamp nicked a length of fence that was bent in toward the road. Bobby pulled his face back from the window. There was a squeal and a crack.
    â€œMarion!”
    Bobby looked at the back of his mother’s head. She made a sound on her tongue and slowed. “All right—”
    â€œWe don’t have to go here, Mom,” Ricky said.
    â€œI’m here,” she said. “I’m already here!”
    Farther down, the road wound even closer between buildings on one side and a link fence on the other and led directly toward the crisscrossing tracks.
    â€œHow do we