Free Hometown Favorite: A Novel by BILL BARTON, HENRY O ARNOLD Page A

was parting the waters. When he saw Rosella under the tree
absorbed in her textbook, he slipped behind the tree, giving
her a fright that elicited a squeal and a smack on the chest. He
scooped her into his arms and stretched out the kiss so all single
females who thought they might have some future chance with
him could see his heart had been subjugated.
    The walk home would take ten minutes, and when one lone
female approached with a paper in her hand, Rosella was prepared to allow a brief pause for Dewayne to sign her paper, but
she hooked her arm through Dewayne's and drew him closer,
a visible sign of ownership.
    The woman had the emaciated face of an African refugee with
a tipsy expression, and as she drew near them, she gabbled in a
strange tongue. Her hair was a nest of windblown street trash.
The shapeless clothes she wore outsized her shrunken frame, and
the odor rose from her body like heat waves off hot pavement.
She became a roadblock on the sidewalk, forcing Dewayne and
Rosella to stop. Dewayne reached for his wallet, and the woman
unfurled the discolored and wrinkled newspaper she was carrying. On the front page of the society section of the Los Angeles
Times, above the fold, was a half-page random collection of
some of LA's finest celebrating the Caldwell/Jobe union.
    "'USC Football Star Marries Caldwell Daughter"" she said,
looking into their annoyed faces. She had memorized the headline. "You don't look so happy today. You don't look so happy
to see me"

    The creature's voice had the croaky sound of an old hag
who had stepped out of a fairy tale. She tapped the image of
Dewayne's face in the picture of the newspaper.
    "You don't look like a gold digger to me," she said. "Looks
like you didn't need to marry her for the money."
    "Excuse us," Rosella said and began leading her husband
with an end-around move away from the creature.
    "Don't be in a hurry now," the creature said, trying to counter
the couple's sweep. "I'm just happy for you is all. Not every day
you get married and make the society page"
    Dewayne and Rosella sidestepped the creature and quickened their momentum. The creature wadded the paper and
kicked it like a soccer ball over their heads.
    "Not every day you get to see your family either"
    Rosella stopped dead in her tracks. She released Dewayne's
arm and turned around.
    "I guess you bought into the crap that I was dead."
    "Bonita?"
    The last time Rosella had seen her sister was on a street
corner with two children, one just a baby crying in her arms.
Her mother had picked Rosella up from school to run errands,
but they drove through a part of town that was not the normal
errand route, and by its rough environs, she knew it should be
off-limits. But Joella traveled the different streets at a steady
school-zone speed, looking at every human they passed for any
sign of recognition, while strangers glared at them as though
they were foreign invaders.
    Joella sped up when she spotted a woman on the street corner with two children, but drove past them and stopped a half
block beyond the corner where they were waiting. She ordered
Rosella to stay put before she scooted out of the running car
and jogged back toward the huddled trio.

    Rosella turned around in her seat to see her mother open
her purse and hand the woman cash, brush her fingers once
down the right side of the little girl's face, stroke the forehead
of the crying baby, and return to the car, all without saying
a word to any of them. She would not have even known she
had seen her sister, niece, and nephew had she not overheard
Joella tearfully telling Franklin what she had done when they
thought Rosella was asleep in her bedroom.
    "Back from the dead," this haggard woman now said, raising
her arms to support her point. "Never really died except in the
minds of the Caldwells"
    "Bonita ... Bonita;" Rosella said, as if repeating the name
would confirm she was not looking at a ghost.
    In the