Applewhites Coast to Coast Page 9

  When they were out of sight of Archie she said, “We’re getting out of here.”

  “What? Why? Where are we going?”

  “Adventure,” she said. “Mining Memphis!” They reached the front doors without encountering Zedediah, and she pulled Jake outside, down the driveway, and out through the huge, ornamental gates. She let go of his hand then, and walked hurriedly down the sidewalk toward a taxi that was idling at the curb a little way away. “I told the driver not to pull into the museum so we wouldn’t be seen,” she said, waving her phone at the cabbie.

  Jake stopped and looked back toward the museum, half expecting to see Zedediah coming after them. By the time he looked back at the cab, Melody was inside, holding the door open for him. Adventure, he told himself, and climbed in next to her.

  “Beale Street,” Melody said to the cabdriver in an imperious voice. She must be used to taking taxis, Jake thought. “Turn off your phone,” she told him, as she turned her own off.

  Jake pulled his out of his pocket and turned it off. It made him just the slightest bit uncomfortable to realize that now nobody would have any idea where they were or could reach them in any way. Off the grid, he thought, and was surprised to feel a bit of a thrill.

  “Do you believe they brought us to Memphis and weren’t going to let us visit Beale Street?” Melody cried, sounding outraged.

  “I don’t really know what Beale Street is,” Jake admitted, even though it made him feel silly somehow.

  “Don’t mind him,” she said to the cabdriver, who had looked up in surprise at his rearview mirror. “He’s just a hick from North Carolina.”

  “Rhode Island,” Jake corrected her. He had no intention of letting her know how much she had bothered him.

  The taxi swung onto a highway for a while, then took an exit that went under a railroad overpass and began moving along the Mississippi River on their left. One of the few assignments Jake had actually done in school was read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was all about a trip down the Mississippi River. On a raft. Looking at it now, so wide and slow and muddy and powerful, he caught his breath. We’re off the grid and sneaking away, like Huck and Jim on that raft, he thought. Just the two of us! Suddenly, he felt better than he’d felt in weeks.

  Soon they were passing what looked like a long park along a slope above the river—grass and sidewalks and a few trees. Then the lawn swept upward, becoming part of the curved roof of a very long, modern-looking building. Rising from the middle of the sleek roof was a big red square tower structure. Beale Street Landing, it declared itself. As they turned and drove under the railroad overpass, heading uphill, the driver said, “Where on Beale Street were you wanting to go?”

  “Just drop us at Handy Park,” Melody said. “We can go wherever we want from there.”

  “Have you been here before?” Jake asked.

  “Nope.” She waggled her phone. “That’s what the Internet is for, my friend! But for real is better. Way better!”

  As the taxi pulled to a stop Melody pulled a credit card from her small leather shoulder bag and handed it over. “Add twenty percent,” she told him.

  “Where’d you get the credit card?” Jake asked.

  Melody answered airily, “My parents gave it to me. Makes ’em feel better for giving up on me and shipping me off with Uncle Jeremy for fixing. It’s about time I got away long enough to actually use it. Out!” she said. “Get out and see Beale Street. Home of rhythm and blues.”

  Two things struck Jake the moment he got out. One was the smell of barbecue, which seemed to waft through the air from everywhere. The other was music, with horns and drums and a bouncing electric bass line, coming from directly across the street. He could hear other songs, too, fainter, coming from one or two of the bars up the block. Two, three, four different tunes all mingled in the afternoon air.

  Melody waved at the driver as the cab pulled away and Jake noticed she was looking oddly serious as she stared at the entrance to Handy Park. A series of thick, square brick archways opened off the sidewalk on either side of the big concrete slabs that formed the main entrance. Dodging traffic, she headed across the street and Jake followed her as soon as it was safe. Inside the main entrance to the park stood a statue of a man holding a trumpet. Behind the statue was an open, grassy area, where a band was playing on a big square stage under a canvas roof. About a dozen people were gathered around listening, some of them moving to the insistent beat.

  They stood at the entrance, listening to the band. Just up the block, sitting in the sun on the sidewalk, was a man playing an old, worn acoustic guitar; he seemed entirely oblivious of the band. He had the cutoff neck of a beer bottle on his finger, and it made mournful notes as he slid it up and down the neck of the guitar. A middle-aged man wearing a hat with a ribbon around it stood close, singing wordlessly along with the guitar music. Their song didn’t sound anything like what the band was playing, and Jake took a step forward into the park so he could hear the big band better. But as soon as he did, he found he missed the guitar melody, the mix of two songs that weren’t alike but somehow went together and became something more interesting, more whole, than he’d ever heard before. He stepped back again so he could keep listening to them both.

  The big band finished their song, and Melody whistled and cheered. Jake asked where the Rock ’n’ Soul Museum was, but Melody just laughed at him. “You don’t go to Beale Street to go to a museum,” she said. “We’re going to a bar. I want a drink.”

  Jake immediately thought of about a dozen reasons why that was a ridiculous idea, but Melody seemed so determined that he found he couldn’t even bring himself to object. He just followed her into a dark, beer-and-barbecue-smelling place a couple of blocks away, with recorded music pouring out into the street, and then followed her right back out when the man behind the bar said, “Out you go, little lady. Don’t even bother showing me your fake ID.”

  “Idiot,” she snarled when they were back on the sun-drenched sidewalk. “Never mind, they didn’t have any live music anyway.”

  It turned out most of the restaurants advertised live music but it didn’t start until evening. Melody was hugely disappointed.

  The guy with the guitar was taking a break, mopping his forehead with a ragged handkerchief, but the band in Handy Park was still going strong. Jake couldn’t stop looking at the huge signs out in front of the bars and cafés—every one of them covered with neon lights, pale in the sunlight. The street must be amazing at night, he thought, when all the music and signs went live. He made a mental note that someday, for sure, he would come back here—at night—with somebody at least as spectacular as Melody.

  Finally, Melody led him into an expensive-looking place that specialized in “down-home southern cooking.” “Give us a nice, private table,” she said to the woman who greeted them, and they were led to a booth in a darkish place far in the back. Here the music, still with a beat that made him want to move, was softer than it had been in the bar, while the barbecue smell was all but overwhelming. Jake could feel his mouth watering, just thinking about a slab of ribs. The trouble was, he didn’t have so much as a quarter in his pocket, and nobody had ever given him a credit card of his own. He was thinking of just asking for water when the waiter arrived, and Melody, without so much as looking at Jake, ordered two hickory burgers, one with sweet potato fries, the other with regular. She pointed at him then, and said, “He’ll have a ginger ale, and I’ll have a beer.”

  The waiter looked from her to him and back again, his lips pressed together in a firm imitation of a smile. “One ginger ale, one root beer, coming up,” he said.

  Melody swore under her breath as he left.

  The burgers cost about three times as much as any burger he’d ever eaten. He had never in his life been in a place like this with no adults, let alone with a girl like Melody. He became uncomfortably aware of his heart pounding in his chest. They sat for a while, listening to the music, feeling the breeze from the ceilin
g fan overhead, and soaked it in.

  “Free at last,” Melody said finally, blowing out a deep breath and leaning back in her chair. “I was suffocating with those people.”

  “The Applewhites aren’t so terrible,” Jake said. That, he thought even as he said it, was totally unfair. The Applewhites were way better than “not terrible.” The last year-plus-a-little that he’d spent with them had been the happiest time in his life. He knew he ought to be sticking up for them more.

  “Well what else are you going to say?” she said, as the waiter put her burger in front of her. She picked it up, looking at him over the huge, buttered bun. “You’re their well-trained little lapdog.”

  Jake couldn’t speak for a minute. He had just picked up his burger, doing his best to hold the whole giant thing together, but he put it back down. “Wait,” he said at last. “What?”

  She grinned and smeared some barbecue sauce off her cheek with the back of her hand. “Well, I mean, look at you! You’re supposed to be this singer, right, but you’ve never heard of Beale Street. So I assume you don’t know much about the blues. All your singing is like ‘Old MacDonald’ or songs from musicals, right? Randolph’s precious theater music. The whole family’s too snobby for Elvis! You heard their reaction to Graceland! We’re in Memphis! And they don’t want to see Graceland!”

  Jake had never really listened to much Elvis Presley music, and didn’t know why he should have wanted to see the guy’s old house. But Melody was on a roll he couldn’t manage to interrupt.

  “You don’t swear and you don’t smoke, and you dress in stupid short pants and prance around onstage when they tell you to.” She put down her burger and picked up a sweet potato fry and waved it at him. “Who are you—really? Basically you’re just the babysitter for that motormouthed little kid.” She bit into the fry, not even seeming to notice she was saying anything particularly mean. “I’m surprised you even get a bed. I’m surprised they don’t just toss a pillow on the floor for you, like your buddy Winston the Wondermutt.”

  Jake wondered if the music had been turned up this high when they came in. It didn’t sound mysterious and cool anymore; it just sounded loud. It made it hard for him to think. He put his hands flat on the table and took a deep breath to clear his head.

  “Look at you,” she said, quietly enough that he almost couldn’t hear her over the music. “Our hands are on the table, not even four inches apart”—he hadn’t even noticed, but now he saw it was true—“and it hasn’t even occurred to you to touch me.” She sighed dramatically. “I bet we’ll do this whole cross-country trip, bunking in the same bus, and you won’t even try to kiss me.”

  One time, Archie had taken Jake and Destiny fishing in the pond at Wit’s End. They had caught only one tiny sunfish, and when they were getting it off the hook it fell on the dock and flopped around there for a couple of seconds before they could scoop it up and toss it back in the water. It struck Jake, at the time, how desperate the fish looked in the open air, its mouth opening and closing, suffocating out of the water. Out of nowhere, that image came back to him now.

  I know how that fish felt, he thought.

  He stood up before he really knew what he was doing. “I’m going to go take a walk,” he said. Melody looked startled. For some reason that made him feel a little better. “I’m going down by the river. I’ll meet you back here in an hour. Maybe.” And he walked out of the restaurant without looking back.

  Beale Street went down under a railroad bridge just before it ended at the river, and there was a freight train going over. Something about the clacking of the wheels over the rails sounded like the blues they had heard in the park. He walked under it, until the train was all he could hear, then out the other side and across Riverside Drive to the waterfront that was part of Beale Street Landing. He made his way down the grassy slope past two triangular kid park areas built like ships marooned on the hill, all the way down to the cobblestoned edge of the river. He could see where the water had reached when it was a little higher, marked by a line of tangled sticks and debris on the rocks.

  Later on he’d have no idea what he thought about, even though he sat there on the stones, his knees pulled up under his chin, for most of an hour, watching huge barges push up and down the river, with the sun pounding down on him. He knew Archie and Zedediah were probably going crazy wondering where the two of them had gotten to. They must have known for a while that they were nowhere in the museum. And how would he explain why they ran away and what they did? What he did? I heard some music and looked at some signs and didn’t eat a fantastic burger and fries. And then I sat alone by the river and thought about nothing.

  With a sigh, he powered his phone back on and texted Zedediah to tell him where to pick them up.

  One thing he knew for sure, as he got to his feet and headed back to find Melody, knowing how mad she’d be that he was ending their little side trip. He really, really didn’t understand girls. And he was beginning to think he didn’t understand himself much better.

  Chapter Thirteen

  E.D. was used to almost constant squabbling and bickering. But what happened back at the Memphis RV park at the end of the day, when everyone finally gathered there, felt more like open warfare. Everybody was in full freak-out about something. All, actually, except Destiny, who had had “the bestest best day ever” at the Children’s Museum—and Melody and Jake, who remained disturbingly silent about what had happened between the time they sneaked away from the Metal Museum and the time Archie and Zedediah picked them up on Beale Street.

  E.D. was far too upset even to let herself think about what they might have been up to, and Melody had only offered a very unsatisfactory explanation. “We were creatively but independently ‘mining the city.’”

  “You turned off your phones!” Zedediah thundered at the two of them, his white mustache quivering.

  Melody! E.D. thought. Jake would never have come up with that idea. Jake actually looked traumatized by the whole experience. He was sitting off to the side with his head hanging. Melody sat across the room and wasn’t looking at him, either. Interesting.

  Her grandfather took a breath now and spit out his next words. “Never. Ever. Ever. Again.” He looked around at all the others. “That goes for everyone. Do you understand? There will be no turning off of phones!”

  Sybil looked at Randolph, her eyebrows nearly meeting in a furious frown.

  “What? What?” he asked with an air of injured innocence. “I had to turn it off. George and I were having a critical discussion. I couldn’t very well allow interruptions.”

  Jake and Melody weren’t the only members of the Expedition who had gone missing that day. When Randolph dropped them off at the museum, he had told them all he was going to park Brunhilda and would “catch up with them later.”

  “That’s exactly what I did!” he had announced when he finally drove Brunhilda up in front of the museum, a full hour and a half after it had closed. What he’d actually done was go find his old theater buddy, who worked nearby, and they had ended up chatting for the rest of the day. E.D. couldn’t remember seeing her mother so mad. Sitting for more than an hour on the sidewalk in front of a closed museum was not Sybil Jameson’s idea of a good time.

  When he’d finally shown up, Randolph refused to accept responsibility for anything other than the large dent in Brunhilda’s back bumper. “I didn’t see that light pole. I’d like to see one of you park this monster on a busy street!”

  They were only five days into the Expedition. This was what happened, E.D. thought, when you didn’t have enough structure.

  “I’m making my signature chili mac,” cried Lucille above the bickering. Comfort food, E.D. thought. Good. With lots of grated cheese on top!

  When they finished eating, Hal discovered that the Rutherfords’ next e-mail had arrived. “Destination: Valley View, Arkansas. Challenge: Cooperate with the locals. And we’re supposed to stay there for four days. Four days!”

  Loud g
roans met his announcement. What would the locals of Valley View, Arkansas, be like? E.D. wondered. And what would they cooperate with them about?

  “That cuts it!” Randolph said emphatically. “I’m opting out of this challenge to start working on the new Pageant Wagon plan. I have a great deal to do. And it will not—not—involve any random Arkansas locals.”

  “A writer does not cooperate in the creation of her work,” Sybil said then. “I wish to finish Petunia Possum, Detective so that I can announce my new career as a children’s author.”

  Packing up and breaking camp took a bit less time the next morning. E.D. could turn her bed back into the dinette in three minutes flat now, if she didn’t count folding her sheets. Jake was helping Hal take down the screen house and pack up his tent as E.D. came out of Brunhilda to get Winston’s food bowl from under the picnic table, and their eyes met. There was a split second of electricity before Jake’s shifted away. There was something furtive in that shift, E.D. thought, as if he couldn’t look her in the eye. Why, she wondered. Why? She wanted more than anything to ask him that, and she might actually have done it, if there hadn’t been anyone else around.

  Hal had just stowed the poles when Randolph and Zedediah came back from the campground’s bathhouse, Randolph complaining that it was un-American to charge for a campsite and then charge fifty cents for a shower.

  “Sounds entirely American to me,” Zedediah said. “But,” he said to E.D., “you might check what the nightly fee actually covers before you make our next reservation.”

  The problem with that, E.D. thought, was that she’d checked for campgrounds in Valley View before she’d gone to bed the night before, and there was only one. One that was “full up.” She’d found another campground thirty miles away that had spaces, and she didn’t even dare to question the facilities or the fee—the family would be grumpy enough about the distance. When she told them, she would just have to use one of Aunt Lucille’s favorite expressions: “It is what it is.”