police car right in the middle of Momma's charity
affair.
"Dallas," I said quickly. All I wanted to do was
get to Texas. Once I was there, I would call Grandma
Jana. I was sure she would see to it that I was brought
to her home, no matter how far away I was.
"Okay, Dallas. Well," he said, "the best I can do
for you is send you to our hub city, Atlanta. You'll
have quite a layover there, however; unless you come
back and leave early in the morning tomorrow." "No, I don't care about the layover," I
stammered.
"I see. Round trip, I imagine?"
"No," I said quickly. "One way."
"You want general seating, a car, a sleeper?" "A car," I replied.
He nodded and began working on ray ticket,
"That will be one hundred and sixty-two dollars." One hundred and sixty-two! That didn't leave
me much money for anything else. Perhaps I should
have chosen general seating, I thought, but I didn't
hesitate. I didn't want the ticket seller to know that I
didn't have much traveling money. I counted it out
quickly and he gave me the ticket.
"You leave from platform C, in about fifteen
minutes. That's down to the right and over. You can't
miss it."
"Thank you." I took my ticket and started away.
Now that I actually had the ticket in my hand and I
was heading for the train platform, the reality of what
I was doing set in. My heart was thumping so hard, I
thought I would go into a faint and make a scene. I
imagined a crowd of people clustered around me, the