Free Flying Home by Ralph Ellison Page A

none.”
    Buster laughed and batted a tin can against a fence with his stick. A dog growled and sniffed on the other side. Buster growled back and the dog went barking along the fence as they moved past.
    “Sic ’im, Rin Tin Tin, sic ’im,” Riley called.
    Buster barked. They went past the fence, the dog still barking behind them.
    Buster dropped his stick and fitted his apple carefully into his fingers. Riley watched him.
    “See, here’s the way you hold it to pitch a curve,” Buster said.
    “How?”
    “Like this: these two fingers this here way; you put your thumb this here way, and you let it roll off your fingers this a way.”
    Riley gripped his apple as Buster showed him; then wound up and threw. The apple flew up the alley in a straight line and suddenly broke sharply to the right.
    “See there! You see it break? That’s the way you do it, man. You put that one right up around the batter’s neck.”
    Riley was surprised. A grin broke over his face and his eyes fell upon Buster with admiration. Buster ran and picked up the apple.
    “See, here’s the way you do it.”
    He wound up and pitched, the apple humming as it whipped through the air. Riley saw it coming at him and curving suddenly, sharply away. It fell behind him. He shook his head, smiling:
    “Buster?”
    “What?”
    “Boy, you ’bout the throwin’est nigguh I ever seen. Lesssee you hit that post yonder, that one over there by the fence.”
    “Hell, man! You must think I’m Schoolboy Rowe or somebody.”
    “Go on, Buster, you can hit it.”
    Buster took a bite out of the apple and chewed as he wound up his arm. Then suddenly he bent double and snapped erect, his left foot leaving the ground and his right arm whipping forward.
    Clunk!
    The apple smashed against the post and burst into flying pieces.
    “What’d I tell you? Damn, that ole apple come apart like when you hit a quail solid with a shotgun.”
    “Thass what you call control,” Buster said.
    “I don’t know what you call it, but I’d sho hate to have you throwin’ bricks at me,” said Riley.
    “Shucks, you ain’t seen nothin’. You want to see some throwin’ you jus wait till we pass through the fairgrounds to go swimming in Goggleye Lake. Man, the nigguhs out there can throw Coca-Cola bottles so hard that they bust in the air!”
    Riley doubled himself up, laughing.
    “Buster, you better quit lying so much!”
    “I ain’t lying, man. You can ask anybody.”
    “Boy, boy!” Riley laughed. The saliva bubbled at the corners of his mouth.
    “Come on over to my house and sit in the cool,” Buster said.
    They turned a corner and walked into a short stretch of grassy yard before a gray cottage. A breeze blew across theporch; it smelled clean and fresh to Riley. The wooden boards of the porch had been washed white. Buster remembered seeing his mother scrubbing the porch with the suds after she had finished the clothes. He tried to forget those clothes.
    A fly buzzed at the door screen. Riley dropped down on the porch, his bare feet dangling.
    “Wait a minute while I see what’s here to eat,” Buster said.
    Riley lay back and covered his eyes with his arm. “All right,” he said.
    Buster went inside, fanning flies away from the door. He could hear his mother busy in the kitchen as he walked through the little house. She was standing before the window, ironing. When he stepped down into the kitchen she turned her head.
    “Buster, where you been, you lazy rascal! You knowed I wanted you here to help me with them tubs!”
    “I was over to Riley’s, Ma. I didn’t know you wanted me.”
    “You didn’t know! Lawd, I don’t know why I had to have a chile like you. I work my fingers to the bone to keep you looking decent and that’s the way you ’preciates it. You didn’t know!”
    Buster was silent. It was always this way. He had meant to help; he always meant to do the right thing, but something always got in the way.
    “Well what you standing there looking like