keeping his room neat and by helping around the house. He also earned
quarters by running to the 7-Eleven for Mrs. Jannison, the old lady
who lived next door. There were several dollar bills in the jar, too,
most of those were birthday gifts from his Grandma Harper, his Uncle
John Harper, and his Aunt Emma Williams, who was Daddy’s sister.
Joey emptied the contents of the jar onto the bed and counted it.
Twenty-nine dollars. And a nickel. He was old enough to know that it
wasn’t a fortune, but it still seemed like a lot of money to him.
You could go a long way on twenty-nine dollars. He wasn’t sure exactly
how far you could go, but he figured at least two hundred miles.
He was going to pack up and run away from home. He had to run away.
If he stayed around much longer, Mama was going to come into his room
one night, really drunk, really pissed, and she was going to kill
him.
Just like she had killed Victor.
Whoever Victor was.
He thought about what it would be like, going off on his own to some
strange town, far away. It would be lonely, for one thing. He
wouldn’t , miss Mama. He wouldn’t even miss his father very much. But
he sure would miss Amy. When he thought of leaving Amy and never
seeing her again, he felt his throat tighten, and he thought he was
going to bawl.
Stop it! Be tough!
He bit his tongue until the urge to cry subsided and he was sure he was
in control of himself.
Running away from home didn’t mean he would never see Amy for the rest
of his life. She would be leaving home, too, in a couple of years,
going away to live on her own, and he could join up with her then.
They could live together in an apartment in New York City or someplace
great like that, and Amy would become a famous painter, and he would
finish growing up. If he showed up on Amy’s doorstep a couple of years
from now, she wouldn’t turn him in to Mama, not Amy.
He felt better already.
He put his money back in the big Mason jar and screwed the lid on
tight. He returned the jar to his desk.
He would have to get coin wrappers from the bank and package his
nickels, dimes, and quarters into rolls, then trade them in for folding
money. He couldn’t run away from home with his pockets stuffed full of
loose, jangling change, that would be childish.
He slipped into bed again and turned off the light.
The only thing bad about running away was that he would miss the county
fair in July. He had been looking forward to it for nearly a year.
Mama didn’t approve of going to the fair and mixing with those carnival
people. She said they were dirty and dangerous, a bunch of crooks. I
Joey didn’t put much faith in what Mama said , about anyone. So far as
Mama was concerned, there was hardly a person in the whole world .
who was free of sin. P Some years his father took him to the carnival
.
on Saturday, the last day of the fair. But other years there was too
much work at the law office, and Daddy couldn’t get away.
This year Joey had intended to sneak off to the carnival on his own.
The fairgrounds were less than two miles away from the Harper house,
and he had to travel only two streets to get there. It was an easy
place to find, high up on the hill. Joey had planned to tell his
mother that he was going to the library for the day, which he
occasionally did, but then he was going to take his bicycle out to the
fairgrounds and have himself a real ball all morning and afternoon,
getting home just in time for supper, without Mama being any the
wiser.
He especially hated to miss the fair this year because it was going to
be bigger and better than ever. The midway would be run by a different