CHAPTER 8
Devon
Uncle T stayed away for three weeks, long enough for Devon to finish ironing out the last details of the camp plans with Marla and Rev and get the flyers passed out to all the kids at James Watkins, and even at Dahlia Elementary in town, too.
T stayed away so long Devon thought he’d finally gotten the message and wouldn’t be coming back.
Truth be told, Devon knew nothing about planning this kind of stuff, but it felt pretty nice to be included. They always took him out for ice cream after, and dropped him off at home so he didn’t have to walk.
“Didn’t you use to have a bike?” Rev asked him last night.
“Someone stole it from the bike rack.”
“At school?” Rev’s mouth hung open.
“Yeah.” He couldn’t tell him Uncle T had thrown it against Memaw’s big oak tree out back last month, bent the frame so badly it was worthless. He couldn’t even remember why Uncle T was mad. No good reason, most likely. Mama had gotten him that bike. Back then, it used to be too big.
Rev shook his head. “I’ll see if I can round up another for you, and a lock, too. We always seem to be getting our hands on extra bikes and stuff here and there. Between the Friday Night Giveaway and everything else we do.”
Devon just waved, hoping he didn’t look as desperate as he felt. He’d love a bike, love a lot of things, to be honest. But sometimes it was better not to want. It made the not-having easier to deal with. If you never wanted anything, you didn’t ever have to feel bad about what you didn’t have.
But deep down, he wanted so much. Wanted it all.
Wanted his mama back. Wanted a house with air conditioning and good food.
Real food, not the kind that came out of a box or a can.
Wanted not to have to worry about whether Memaw had enough money for medicine or whether Uncle T was going to show that night, digging for dollars and whatever else he was looking for.
Uncle T was Memaw’s oldest child. Her only living child, now that Mama was gone. She and Mama had been quite the team, Prayer Warriors, they’d called themselves, and for as long as Mama had been alive, T stayed away.
“We don’ want none a’that drug business, hear?
” Devon had heard his Mama yell late one night, when he should have been in bed.
“Get on now, T. You get outta here. You might be blood, but what you bring here is bad news, all around. Go and stay gone. You won’t bring this family down. You won’t bring my son down.”
Her voice had been rough and raggedy, like she’d been crying. Devon knew he shouldn’t have been listening, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Your son’s gonna be just like me, Arnetta,” T had hollered back, but he’d gotten in his car, rolled down the window so he could holler some more. “Just you wait, hear?”
T was wrong. Devon would be nothing like Uncle T. He didn’t care how much stuff T’s drug money bought or that they were blood. Once he was grown, Devon didn’t plan to ever lay eyes on his uncle again. Not even at T’s own funeral.
Memaw was a different story, though. Uncle T was her son, her only child left, and she had a soft spot for him, even though he used her and she full-well knew it.
“You think your Memaw knows Uncle T steals money from her purse?” CJ had whispered to him late one night.
They’d had a sleepover, and the two boys had huddled in Devon’s room with the lights out when T made one of his surprise visits.
CJ’s mom didn’t let him come back after that, though Devon was always welcomed over at CJ’s house.
“I don’t know.” But Devon imagined she probably did.
Memaw was the kind of woman who’d give you the shirt off her back if you asked for it.
Decent people wouldn’t ask for it. Memaw was old, and her twisted-up knuckles were painful even to look at.
Between the cane and the asthma and everything else, she was the kind of person you should be giving to, not taking from.
But Uncle T wasn’t a decent person.
“Saint Devon,” T’d taken to calling him last time he was there.
Devon tried to ignore him and steer clear, hoping against hope that he’d eventually go away. So far, he always did.
But tonight his luck had run out. When he got home from school and Mr. Allen’s, Uncle T’s brown Cadillac was in the driveway.
Devon tried not to drag his feet as he walked in to the smell of cooking meat and spices. Not only was T there but his friend, too, a man with a patch over one eye who T insisted Devon call Uncle Ray. The two were laughing and clinking glasses when Devon walked in.
“Where’s Memaw?”
“Whassa matter wit’you, boy? Got no manners? Say hello to your Uncle Ray here.”
Uncle Ray grinned, the silver on his teeth all shiny in the kitchen light. Devon saw a line of coiled, viney-looking tattoos run clear up the length of the man’s arm. All black, except two blood-red eyes. Right in the head of a cobra.
A shiver ran down Devon’s back. He tried to move past them, but T blocked the way.
“I said say hello to your Uncle Ray.” T’s words were like ice, and a hand reached out then, clamped Devon by the neck. Squeezed so hard Devon almost thought he was going to have to yell, but at the last second T let go, and all he let out was a breath.
“Hi, Uncle Ray. Hi, Uncle T.” He muttered the words, wouldn’t meet their eyes, just hoped they couldn’t see the pounding of his chest beneath his shirt.
T stepped aside, and Devon slipped past, clutching the cords of his backpack.
“No respect, these kids,” Devon could hear T mutter to Ray. “Gonna hafta teach ’im a thing or two, you feel me?”
He made a beeline for his room.
Memaw wasn’t on the couch. He dropped the backpack on his bed, then tapped gently on her bedroom door.
“Memaw?”
No answer.
He tapped again, then gently opened the door.
Memaw was in bed, the covers drawn to her chin. Devon looked at the clock on her wall. Five-thirty. Memaw was never asleep at this time.
“Memaw?” He approached the bed. Still no answer.
He could see her chest rise and fall, but when he reached her, he saw she was shivering. Touching her brow, he pulled back. She was burning up. Fear fluttered in his belly.
“Memaw, are you okay?” He shook her slightly, but she didn’t budge.
Darting out to the bathroom, he rummaged through the drawers and then the cabinet, looking for Tylenol or Advil. Something. Anything that would help bring down the fever. He looked in the trashcan, saw an empty bottle.
Heart pounding, he dashed back into Memaw’s room, searching.
There.
In the corner, he saw her familiar black pocketbook. Digging inside, he grabbed a few bills, stuffed them inside his pockets.
“Memaw’s sick,” he told T back in the kitchen.
“Shoo, when’s she not?”
“Uncle T, she’s burning up.”
T’s jaw set. “She’s fine.”
“Do you have any medicine?”
Ray laughed, a low, knowing laugh, and Devon sighed.
“Forget it.” Starting for the door, he called over his shoulder, “I’ll be back in a bit.”
But at the drugstore, the pharmacist wouldn’t give him antibiotics, not unless she came in and saw the clinic doctor or brought a prescription. He almost didn’t sell Devon the Tylenol, pointed to the “no sales to minors” sign, but he must have noticed the look on Devon’s face.
“Give her some ice chips, too, and plenty of water,” the pharmacist said, ringing up the Tylenol.
He was a big man, with giant frizzy sideburns and tiny rectangular glasses.
“If she’s not better tomorrow, call me and I’ll see if we can get someone to go to the house. I know your Memaw doesn’t get out.”
“Thanks,” Devon said, and ran the ten blocks back to the house.
When he got back, Ray was gone, and T was on his cell phone on the back porch, yelling at someone. Devon tiptoed into the kitchen for a tall glass of water and plenty of ice, then down the hall to Memaw’s room.
“Thank you, honey,” Memaw said, when he got her upright and put the pills and the glass of ice water in her hands. A little water sloshed out and onto the bed, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You’re a good, good boy. Good like your mama.”
He slept in there that night, at the foot of her bed, reading his Bible for a long while.
Proverbs, mostly, and the psalms, and part of Kings, at one point.
Psalm 28 was the one he read over and over.
It was the one his Mama had read when she was so sick: “To you, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me.” And later, “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped.”
When he woke in the night to use the restroom, he felt Memaw’s forehead. Thank you, Jesus.
The fever had broken.
He looked down at the Bible in his hands and back at the woman, his only link to Mama, his own mama’s mama, there in the bed.
What would happen to him if she got too sick, or worse—if she died?
A rush of warmth hit him in the gut like a punch.
He couldn’t stay with Uncle T. He’d run away before he’d let that happen.
But what else was there? Foster care? He’d had friends who were bounced around in the system, spit back out like unwanted rags. Shane and T.C. That girl Lily. Horror stories.
He sank to his knees.
Please, God. Please let Memaw be okay. I can’t go to foster care. Please—I’ll do anything.
But God didn’t answer.