Savvy

The bus starts up, but it heads north, away from Salina. Perturbed, the kids keep silent. Mibs tries to ignore Bobbi’s chattering tattoo, but she also must contend with the invisible Carlene and Rhonda, who’ve begun arguing again about the driver.

Hours pass. Sitting on the cot, Bobbi gets bored and kicks Fish off the end of it. Angry, Fish causes a swirling wind that hurls magazines and fogs up the windows. Bobbi dives for cover. Mibs grabs Fish and shakes him, but it’s Samson who calms Fish with a touch, and the mini-storm abates.

Bobbi and Will stare at the Beaumont kids as if they’re aliens. The bus stops, and the driver walks back to confront them. Bobbi’s tattoo tells Mibs, “She knows she’s in trouble now” (82). Mibs figures this applies to all of them.

The driver, sleeves rolled up and folded across his chest, has tattoos on each forearm. One says “Rhonda” under a heart inscribed with “Mom,” and the other says “Carlene” over a black, thorny rose. As Mibs watches, the tattoos morph into the faces of two women who continue their argument: Carlene says Rhonda raised Lester badly, while Rhonda counters that Carlene takes all of Lester’s money. Mibs decides that the tattoo hallucinations are just her mind playing tricks on her and obscuring her true savvy, waking people up. She feels faint, but Samson touches her and she gets better.

Lester looks more confused and scared than angry. He says the kids will get him fired. Mibs raises a hand and swears that her parents will consider it a big favor if he delivers them to the Salina hospital. Sweating nervously, Lester struggles with doubt, gives up, and asks, “So, where are you all from?” (89).

Lester likes having someone to talk to while he drives, so the kids sit up front. Fish asks when they’ll be heading for Salina. Lester has several errands in Nebraska; he’ll get there by the next day. The children protest, but Lester doesn’t want to fail his employer and get fired. Only Will seems to be enjoying himself.

They arrive at the village of Bee, Nebraska. They’re late, and the local church is already locked up. Lester frets; Mibs walks away, tired of his bellyaching tattoos. She feels sorry for Lester because of his ornery mother. Her mother, of course, is perfect, but she remembers Momma denying that: Instead, she merely claims “a knack for getting things right” (97) and that people sometimes reject her for being so annoyingly competent. Momma insists the Beaumonts aren’t special but human like everyone else.

Mibs walks down a quiet lane to an old, abandoned house. She wishes it had a porch swing, like the long one in Hebron that seats 15 tourists. Will steps onto the porch and asks her to explain Fish’s storm. She doesn’t answer. He says he’s always thought the Beaumonts were strangely different but that it’s fine with him.

To change the subject, Mibs demands to know why Will is called “Junior” when his father isn’t named Will. The boy smiles and says, “Maybe you’re not the only one with a secret” (101). She smiles back. He pulls her birthday gift from his pocket. She unwraps it: The pens are very nice. A small wind gust pulls the wrapping away into the sky. She says she wanted to write something, but the paper’s gone. Will kneels and presents a hand, palm up. Mibs draws a smiling sun on his palm.

The sun blinks and clears its throat.

Mibs runs away from Will to the bus, where she hides under the cot next to Samson, plugs her ears, and hums noisily. The others board the bus, and with them come the voices of the tattoos and Will’s sun drawing. The sun keeps asking if she wants to know Will’s secret. She calls out to Will that he must wash his hand: “I didn’t want to know things I wasn’t supposed to know” (105). He walks toward her, asking if she’s ok, but she warns him to stay away. Fish jumps up, slugs Will, and demands to know what he did to her. Bobbi rushes at Fish and claws at him. Mibs screams that Will must wash his hand.

Fish starts a windstorm inside the bus that causes windows to explode. The others scramble out of the bus; the storm follows them, and clouds and rain form over the village. Still on the bus, Mis again yells for Will to wash his hand. Fish grabs Will’s hand, sees the sun drawing, and realizes this has something to do with Mibs’s 13th birthday. He spits onto Will’s hand and rubs the spit until the design looks like a shapeless bruise. Will starts hitting Fish, but the sun’s voice in Mibs’s head gurgles and drains away, and she relaxes visibly. Fish abruptly releases Will and backs off.

Mibs realizes she’s still holding her gift pen. She pockets it and sits on the floor, thinking, “I [don’t] think I like[] being a teenager all that much” (110).

Lester herds the kids back onto the bus. He seats them far apart from one another. Mibs prays to God, promising to be good forever if she can just stop hearing voices. She begins to cry and soon is sobbing. Samson comes over and puts a hand on her, and she immediately feels better.

Lester finds a first-aid kit and hands it to Bobbi, asking her to tend to the boys’ injuries. Bobbi hands it back angrily, saying she’s not a nurse and that Mibs should do it because the whole fiasco is her fault. Lester looks plaintively at Mibs, who takes pity on him and retrieves the kit. Lester tries to cover the smashed windows with cardboard, but his attempts prove futile. He starts up the bus and drives out of the village.

Bobbi’s angel tattoo tells Mibs,“She’s not sure if she likes you, or if she thinks you’re a freak,” and aloud, Mibs says to Bobbi, “I’m not a freak” (116). Bobbi turns and asks, “What did you just say?” (117). Mibs realizes she should have stayed silent. She ignores Bobbi and brings a compress to Will for his black eye. Will says he’s not mad at her but knows that Mibs can read minds and that Fish can cause storms. He begs her to explain.

Grandpa Bomba once told Mibs that when it manifested, her savvy would be an ability, not a sickness. Momma also told Mibs that many people have savvies but don’t realize it. They never get bitten by mosquitos or splashed by mud, or they know exactly when to plant corn or how to make perfect strawberry jam. Mibs wonders if kids who are math whizzes, amazing musicians, or natural sports stars are simply exercising their savvies.

To Will, she says in a well-rehearsed voice that the Beaumonts are just like everyone else but have their own special “flavor” of talents. Will presses her for more information, but Fish comes over and glowers at her, so she concludes, “There’s nothing more I can tell you” (124).

The secret only gets revealed when someone with a savvy marries an outsider. Poppa fell for Momma the moment he met her, and he kept at her until she agreed to wed, after which Grandpa created six new acres for them, the land where the Beaumonts now live.

Lester interrupts her daydream by slamming on the brakes, halting the bus, and exiting it.

Outside the bus is a car with its hood up. Lester talks to the driver, a woman who’s considerably larger than he is. She wears a long, belted sweater over her waitress uniform. Lester tinkers with her car and then gives up and points to the bus. She turns and sees the kids staring from the bus’s broken windows. She smiles and waves. Lester seems happy.

The woman climbs aboard. Her name is Lill Kiteley. Mibs and Fish aren’t happy about having another adult to snoop into their lives. Lester’s tattoos argue about how he always takes in strays. Lill asks if the children belong to Lester. Mibs says Lester is a family friend who’s giving them a ride. The other kids quickly pick up on the ruse and add to the story.

Lill looks suspicious; she sits on the seat behind Lester and keeps the children in view. Noticing the broken windows and the scratched and bruised Fish and Will, she wonders if she’s on the bus for the “bad kids.” Bobbi says they’re just misfits. Lill smiles and says, “Then I should fit right in” (136).

Lill chats cheerfully with the group. She tends to the boys’ injuries like a mother. The children take to her. Lill admires Mibs’s dress and re-pins its purple flower ribbon. Mibs tells her how her father picked out the dress for her. She also explains about his accident and her need to get to his hospital bedside. She asks Lill if the fancy dress makes her look like a little girl; Lill says it only does if it makes Mibs feel that way.

Lil notices Will staring at Mibs and says that Mibs certainly isn’t a little girl: “You’ve already got a handsome boy looking your way” (142). Mibs feels embarrassed, but Lill hugs her. Mibs wonders if the woman is an angel sent to watch over them.

Samson suddenly appears. He’s hungry and nudges Fish. Mibs explains to Lill that Samson is her shy younger brother. Lill promises them food at the diner—assuming she still has a job there after showing up late yet again—and says she’ll treat them to pie for dessert. Samson asks, “Do you have banana cream?” (146) It’s the first sentence out of Samson in weeks. The other kids laugh.

The bus arrives in the town of Emerald and drives to the truck stop where Lill works. The place is crowded, and Lester must park in a cluttered alley. They disembark; Fish leads, Lill takes Samson’s hand, and Will and Mibs bring up the rear.

As they walk along the alley toward the diner, Mibs sees a hand sticking up out of a pile of clothes. It’s an old man, dirty and smelling of liquor and possibly dead. Will tries to steer Mibs away, but she decides she can awaken the man. She bends down, touches the man’s wrist, and intones, over and over, “Wake up.”

Suddenly, she hears a loud, despairing voice in her head: “Don’t want to see any more...feel any more. Just let me fade away...I’ve seen too much...too much!” (152). Stunned, Mibs falls back. The man shifts in his sleep, and his hand turns to reveal a flying-eagle tattoo that flaps and shrieks. Realization strikes Mibs like a punch in the gut: Her savvy isn’t to wake people but to helplessly hear their heartfelt anguish.

Will helps Mibs stand, and they walk to the diner. Inside, it’s filled with tattooed bikers and truckers. Each person’s ink chatters non-stop about the wearer’s feelings: The room “ma[kes] [Mibs] feel like someone had switched on a razzmatazz radio inside [her] head” (156).

Mibs again feels faint. Lill takes the group to a storage room with a sofa, a cluttered desk, and an old TV that displays a news report on a series of power outages along Highway 81. Fish and Mibs figure it’s caused by Rocket. Lill must get to work, and she drags everyone but Mibs and Fish from the storeroom to the dining room for some food.

Away from the dining room, the tattoo voices are muted, and Mibs feels better. Fish demands to know about her savvy. Reluctantly, she admits that tattoos talk to her. Fish doesn’t understand, so she tells him to think of a number. She takes his hand, draws a smiley face on it with her pen, and hears from the drawing, “Two thousand, two hundred twenty-two and a half” (164). She spits on Fish’s hand, wipes off the ink, and then tells him the number. He understands.

A singsong voice in her head asks, “So you read minds, do you?” (165). Bobbi stands in the doorway, her arms filled with baskets of burgers and fries.

Bobbi says, “I knew it. I knew it” (166), sets down the food, and leaves to tell the others. Fish jumps up to stop her, but Mibs grabs his arm. He stares at the TV and Mibs follows his gaze. The screen shows pictures of the group’s faces with an “ALERT! MISSING!” banner scrolling at the bottom. The report cuts to an interview with Pastor Meeks and Rosemary. She looks worried; the pastor looks angry.

The diner’s manager, Ozzie, bursts into the storeroom and shoos the kids out to the dining room. Again, tattoos thunder in Mibs’s head. The room spins. Near the jukebox, Bobbi is informing Will of Mibs’s mind-reading ability. Ozzie stomps over to Lill, who’s slicing pie for the kids. He takes the pie and knife from her and abruptly fires her for being late yet again. She protests, but he angrily yells at her to leave at once. He tosses cash at her from the register; it’s her final pay.

The voices in Mibs’s head go quiet as the patrons watch. Lester puts down his burger and protests that Ozzie is mistreating Lill. He helps her collect the cash from the floor. Hiding under the kitchen counter, Samson suddenly surfaces and bites Ozzie hard on the leg. Ozzie screams and drops the pie. Knife in hand, he grabs at Samson, but Bobbi, Will, and Mibs rush forward and shove Ozzie, who skids on the overturned pie. Fish knocks him over with a burst of wind. Mibs and Fish hurry their group to the storeroom. Lester returns briefly to the dining room, grabs a fresh banana cream pie, and hurries back. The kids grab their burger baskets and stumble outside through an emergency exit door.

They rush through the parking lot toward the bus. As they pass the man who’s an alcoholic lying asleep on the ground, Mibs stops, places her burger basket next to his hand, removes the flowery ribbon corsage from her dress, and places it next to the burger. It’s all she can do for him.

Out of breath, they reach the bus. Bobbi stares at Mibs, and her singsong angel tattoo intones, over and over, “Tell me what I’m thinking. Do you know what I’m thinking?” (181). Mibs sticks her fingers in her ears and hums a tune. Fish sees what’s going on and tells Bobbi to stop it. She feigns ignorance, so Fish drops his burger and sends a burst of wind into Bobbi’s face. She throws down her own burger. Fish hurls wind and rain at her; it pushes Bobbi backward, splashes against the bus, and whips along the alley.

To Bobbi and Will, it’s clear now that Mibs and Fish have powers. They’re amazed.