Homecoming Read Online Free Page B

answered. “If we walk for a while, then rest a little, that’s
     the best way. So we’ll walk another hour or so and I’ll go into a supermarket. We
     should have fruit every day, and maybe some doughnuts and milk. I’ll see what they
     have. We’ve got to make our money last.”
    It was hard to start off again. Sammy lagged back on Dicey’s hand and she snapped
     at him time and again to keep up. He didn’t like being snapped at, so he pulled back
     a little more, while pretending to be hurrying as fast as he could. Dicey turned her
     head and saw Maybeth and James trudging along. Traffic passed them, roaring and honking.
     They passed building after building, and an occasional vacant stretch where wispy
     trees looked like weeds grown up. Dicey’s fingers cramped from holding on to the bag,
     so she moved it under her armpit, holding it by a hand across the base.
    The minutes stretched out. Dicey checked the time at every garage they passed. At
     noon, she began looking for a place to buy lunch, and at the next shopping center
     they turned off the highway and walked to the front of a supermarket that was open
     for business on Sundays. Dicey left the little ones with James, sitting on a curb
     off around to one side, and entered the market alone.
    The electric eye door swung open before her. Dicey headed for the produce aisle, not
     even bothering to take a cart. If she could spend just fifty cents for lunch, they’d
     have a dollar fifty for dinner. She picked out four apples, then searched for the
     kind of rack they have in every supermarket, a place where they offered items that
     were damaged or old. She found it back by the meat department. She stood before it
     a minute, selecting a box of doughnuts at half price. That would be three doughnuts
     and an apple apiece.
    It cost eighty-eight cents.
    They ate sitting on the curb, with the sun hot overhead. Sammy couldn’t eat his third
     doughnut but he didn’t want to give it away, so Dicey put it into their bag. They
     trooped by pairs into the market, first James and Sammy, then Dicey and Maybeth, to
     drink water from the fountain and use the toilets. The pair waiting outside watched
     the bag while the other pair was inside.
    “Now we rest,” Dicey said.
    “How much longer is it?” asked Sammy.
    “I told you. More than today.”
    “Where are we going to camp?” he asked.
    “I’ll tell you when we get there,” she said.
    “I haven’t seen any place that looks good for sleeping,” James said.
    “I figure we’ll have to get off this road to find something, otherwise the cars would
     keep us awake. I figure we’ll turn off the road and see what we find. There was that
     woods this morning. That would have been all right. So there are bound to be others.
     Don’t you think?”
    “Walking is no fun,” Sammy said.
    “Think about the soldiers who had to march everywhere,” Dicey said.
    “We could pretend to be soldiers,” James said. His eyes lit up. “You could be the
     general and I could be the major, and Sammy and Maybeth could be the army. And we
     could sing songs while we walk, so it would be like marching, and maybe give drill
     orders. We could be Revolutionary soldiers, going to Concord.”
    Dicey didn’t say that wouldn’t make any difference, they’d still be walking. She agreed
     to go along with it.
    “Everybody who talks to you has to say sir.” James elaborated the plan. “And you two
     have to say sir to me. We should have a drum.”
    When they set off again, they sang a song about marching to Pretoria and pretty Peggy-O
     running down the stairs, letting down her golden hair. It was a song Momma sang. It
     even had a line in it, “What will your momma think,” because in the song Pretty Peggy-O
     ran away with the captain.
    The afternoon wore on, wore away. Each rest period got longer, each walking period
     got shorter. At midafternoon they lay back in an overgrown lot next to two tiny houses,
     the only houses