Read Online Waiting for Augusta by Jessica Lawson - Free Book Online Page A

people think they’re concentrating when they’re really worrying or how golf was the greatest game in the history of the world or how you can’t hit too slow or too fast on the putting green or how a man’s patience with a dead pig meant more than his patience with boring conversation.
    He just listened. When he did talk, his voice sounded farther away. Weary. He asked me how far we were from Augusta and told me he’d better rest up. Then Daddy didn’t speak again and my only close company was the lump in my throat. I had the strangest feeling that I’d imagined him talking in the first place. Or maybe listening to me talk was exhausting to him. Maybe that’s why he didn’t do it much when he was alive.
    â€œHey, crazy!” Noni waved from fifty yards ahead. The dirt had changed to pavement somewhere along the way, and we’d reached Heart. She grinned and pointed to the BUS DEPOT sign far down the street. “You ever been to Georgia?”
    I shook my head and jogged a little to catch up to her. I’d never been anywhere outside of Hilltop, other than Heart and Mobile.
    â€œWell, Bobby Jones,” she said, slapping an arm around my back, “I haven’t either. But I bet it’s pretty enough to scatter ashes on.”

HOLE 9
Painting Tickets
    A clock read six o’clock in the morning when Noni and I walked inside. The big indoor room held benches and a ticket booth and smelled like a combination of cleaning supplies and body odor. Posters for destination cities plastered the walls. We found the water fountain, a rusty piece of metal nailed to the wall that dribbled liquid even when nobody was there to drink it. Only after taking a sip did I notice the ghost letters above it, barely visible under a layer of paint. The entire wall was covered in the same white as the rest of the station, but you could see what else used to be there.
    The word COLORED was hidden for the most part, but I could still see it. I bent to take one more sip of water, then moved to let Noni have some. While she drank, I noticed a cleaner-looking fountain attached to the opposite end of the station.
    A uniformed maintenance worker shuffled over to theside door of the ticket office. I heard a low murmur of tired voices. A few people were scattered around the benches, reading or staring sleepily at the air in front of them.
    â€œHey,” I said to Noni. “You never said where you’re from. Is there a chance anybody here might recognize you?”
    She nudged me toward the wall map, and I caught her studying her reflection in the clear plastic covering it. She tugged at her long ponytail. “No. I’m a nobody now.”
    Blue, green, and red lines spread from the town of Heart like veins in the body of America. “We could go to Chicago or New York if we wanted,” I said in wonder. I studied the map again. “Okay, Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta, or Chattanooga. Those are all in the right direction, for the most part.”
    â€œAtlanta,” Daddy said, sounding confident. “Watch the station until you see an older lady, then go up to the ticket taker and tell him she’s your grandma. Tell him you were just having a visit with Granny, and now you’re buying a ticket home to your parents.”
    It sounded a little far-fetched to me. “Daddy says we should buy a ticket to Atlanta. He said to attach ourselves to an old person and the ticket person will sell us the tickets, no questions.”
    Noni eyed the urn in my arms with a look of approval I hadn’t earned from her yet. “Smart man, that dead daddy of yours. I’ll just tell the ticket taker that our granny lets me buythe tickets because I get a kick out of it. But we don’t have enough money to get to Atlanta.”
    I studied the fare rate. “Says thirty-five dollars per person. Half that for kids. We’ve got plenty.”
    â€œNot after I left some for the eggs