Jubilee's Journey (Wyattsville #2)(9)

“What if we get to Virginia and Aunt Anita don’t get along with us either?”

“You ask too many questions. Stop worrying. Try to sleep.” He wrapped a long arm around her shoulders and nudged her closer. “Tomorrow’s gonna be a big day.”





Jubilee closed her eyes and before long drifted off to sleep. For Paul, sleep was impossible. He kept asking himself the same questions Jubilee asked. Unfortunately, he knew something she didn’t. He knew what Anita had written in those letters. Paul thought back on the last letter, the letter dated just two months after Jubilee was born. The angry words were written in a heavy-handed script, and even after seven years the smell of bitterness still permeated the ink. If you refuse to listen to reason, Anita had written, then I wash my hands of you.

Since there were only a handful of letters, five to be exact, Paul had no way of knowing what Anita wanted his mama to do. He could only pray that by now her anger had subsided.





The bus pulled into Wyattsville shortly after daybreak. Paul gave Jubilee a gentle shake to wake her. “We’re here,” he whispered.

The bus station was something Paul could have never before imagined. Four buses stood side by side, each one coming from someplace far away and heading to someplace else. A loudspeaker crackled the last-minute warning for folks headed to Chicago. Men and women moved through the terminal without slowing, each one confident of where they were headed.

Wyattsville apparently was a lot larger than Paul had anticipated. Finding Anita might not be that easy. Holding tight to Jubilee’s hand, he made his way toward the front door of the station.





Their first stop was a luncheonette where they sat at the counter. Jubilee whirled herself around on the stool three times; then Paul told her to stop. He looked down the menu prices, then ordered a glass of milk and biscuit for Jubilee and coffee for himself. He was on his second refill when the waitress, a woman with a badge indicating her name was Connie, asked, “Can I get y’all something else?”

“You got a telephone book?”

“Sure do, honey.” She waggled a finger toward the rear of the shop. “Right past the restroom.”

Jubilee’s eyes widened. “You got a special room for resting?”

Connie laughed then leaned across the counter and whispered, “It’s a toilet. We just call it a restroom for the sake of politeness.”





After warning Jubilee not to budge from the stool, Paul headed toward the back. The phone book, nearly three times the size of Charleston’s, had way more names than he was hoping for. He turned the pages to W. He knew two things: Anita was supposedly their aunt, and her last name might be Walker like his mama’s once was. None of Anita’s letters mentioned a husband, so Paul was hoping she was still a Walker. There was a full page of Walkers. Not one of them was an Anita.

As he made his way back to his seat Paul began rubbing his hand across the back of his neck, the way his daddy did when he was worrying. Sitting at the counter he pulled the remainder of the money from his pocket and counted it again. Twelve dollars and eighty-seven cents.

When Connie poured a third refill, Paul pushed two dimes and a nickel across the counter and said, “Thank you, ma’am.” When she came back with another biscuit for Jubilee, he asked if she knew of any rooming houses in the area. “Not too expensive,” he added.

“I sure do,” Connie answered. “Missus Willoughby has a real nice place, and I think she only charges two dollars a night.”

“Two dollars just for sleeping!” Jubilee exclaimed.

Connie leaned closer. “’Course, if you was to mention you were short on cash, I think she’d be willing to let you stay in that upstairs room for a dollar.”

Connie then explained how they were to get to Missus Willoughby’s boarding house. “You can’t miss it,” she said. “It’s a big three-story house with a yellow sign out front.”





Fifteen minutes later Paul and Jubilee started walking north on Rosemont, and when they reached Main Street they turned right. “I think it’s less than a mile from here,” Paul said, but before they’d gone four blocks a sign in the grocery store window caught his eye.

“Help Wanted” it read. Underneath in smaller print was “Stock Boy—$30 a week.”

A few doors down, on the opposite side of the street, Paul spied a park bench. “Come on,” he said and took Jubilee by the hand as they crossed.





The Greyhound bus from Pittsburgh pulled in ten minutes after Paul and Jubilee left the station. They were nine blocks from the luncheonette when Hurt McAdams walked in. He looked down the long row of stools, and on the far end he saw the back of what he believed to be a uniformed policeman. “No sense asking for trouble,” he mumbled. He turned, walked out the door, and started toward what looked to be the center of town. He strode with long deliberate movements, his eyes fixed straight ahead and his features locked in a look of determination.





In three hours he had to be back on that bus. He had to get back to the station, buy a ticket, and be sitting on the bus when it pulled out for Miami. Hurt glanced down at his wristwatch. Two hours and twenty minutes left. Forty minutes already gone. He had to hurry.