“Grandma says if we want something to eat besides beans and peaches and that yucky cereal, you got to walk to the store.”
“Okay.” She sat up quickly, shoving the book once more under her pillow.
“She says you got to go. She thinks I’m too little to go by myself.” His bottom lip stuck out a mile.
“We got to go together,” she said. “I need you to help carry things.” She stood up and pulled down her T-shirt. “Is she going to give us some money?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
Grandma handed Angel a five-dollar bill. Not enough, Angel knew, for much in the way of groceries. But it would get them through the day. Verna would surely be back tonight—or tomorrow at the latest. Surely.
It was about two miles to the store, Grandma had said, well beyond the old house where Verna had stopped for directions, all the way back to the village they had come past. Still, it was a beautiful late-summer day, not too hot, and what else could she do to entertain Bernie? She made him leave Grizzle behind. “You can’t carry groceries and a bear at the same time,” she told him.
They started up the road in good spirits, but long before they got to the house where Verna had asked for directions, Bernie began dragging his feet and complaining. “I’m too hot and tired,” he said. “Why doesn’t Grandma drive us to the store?”
“She doesn’t have a car,” Angel said. “She’s probably too old to drive anyway.”
“She does, too, have a car, ” he said. “Over by the trailer.”
“I didn’t see any car.”
“Well, I did. I saw it yesterday when we got here. A big old dirty car over on the other side of that trailer.”
“It’s probably just junk—like the trailer. In the country, if a car breaks down, people just leave it to rust away. They don’t bother taking it to a junkyard.”
“Why wasn’t it there this morning, then?”
Angel stopped still in the road. “Bernie, you saw a car there yesterday, and this morning it was gone?”
“I just said I did, didn’t I?”
Maybe the star man wasn’t a dream. “Maybe—”
“What?”
“Nothing, Bernie. I guess somebody lives in the trailer, that’s all.” She started walking again, but Bernie didn’t move.
“Angel!” She turned. The pout on his face had been replaced by fear. “Suppose it’s the robber? The one with the big gun?”
“That wasn’t a robber. You heard Grandma.”
“She said it was Santa Claus. That was a lie, for sure.”
“Well, whoever it was, it’s nobody that’s going to hurt us.”
“How do you know? He had that big gun.”
She went back and took his hand. “It probably wasn’t a gun, Bernie.”
He snatched away his hand. “Then what was it if it wasn’t a gun? Just tell me that!”
Why couldn’t she say “telescope”? Why couldn’t she just tell him about the star man? Instead, she said, “Well, what if it was a gun? Lots of people in the country have guns. That doesn’t mean they’re crazy or that they want to shoot you. People in the country like to hunt and stuff.” She took his hand again. “Tell you what. If they have Sugar Pops in the store, I promise I’ll buy a box, okay?”
“You’ll just say they’re too ’spensive.”
And she wanted to. In the country store, which smelled just a little less musty than the shed, Sugar Pops cost more than three dollars, and she had only five. But the chubby clerk had already climbed the ladder and gotten them down from a high shelf before she told Angel the price. Angel got a small jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread with the rest of the money. That should get them through until Mama got back. There was no money for jelly, but it couldn’t be helped. She had to buy the Sugar Pops for Bernie.
He was not particularly grateful. The store had rows of candy bars and a whole case full of Popsicles. “I need a Popsicle,” Bernie said.