I missed the bus that day. I ran right into its big old diesel cloud and chased it for half a block, but that can on wheels was just having fun with me that morning. So I stood there in the street huffing, my hands on my knees, blowing the smoke right back at the old bus. When I stand up, the whole city gone reeling -- I not so young even back then -- fifty something at least and I always been strong but not in my lungs, you know? Been living in the city for too long. Air ain't been in your lungs for since you a kid. And that's if you're lucky.

Me, I lucky when I a kid. My grandmother got a house just outside the city. She got a yard with a fence and flowers all around. One summer, my sisters go out with old rusty shears and a bunch mason jars and they cut every rose out the yard that summer day. And my grandmother holler and smack they hands and they backsides and she put them shears top the icebox. But I see her in the kitchen later and she looking at each those flowers and she smiling cause they all perfect, each a one. And that night we all have a big old bowl roses next our beds. And little cup them sitting on back the toilet. I young and I not caring too much about flowers one way the other, but I laugh when I see those roses on the toilet. I thinking they smell so nice but they gonna have all they petals fall off if my big brother come in here next day. And then I stop laughing cause they look so pretty.

When I older, I working outside the city doing odd jobs in the big old houses some people got. I fixing they gutters a hanging off, and they sinks from dripping and I go into this lady's powder room in they downstairs and the lady got the same roses in a little teacup, just like my grandmother, sitting top they toilet. And I just stare at them for long time before I even go into the room. When I got inside I leant down to take a breath a those roses and I see they just made a cloth, real pretty painted, but they don't smell nothing. And I open the cabinet under the sink to get at those pipes and there a little can a spray under there. It got flowers all over the whole length a it and I give the button a squeeze. It spray out with a little whoosh and I smell my grandmother's house the night with roses all over in they bowls. And I sit down on that lady's pretty floor, and I laugh. It a good thing she gone out to talk with her neighbor over the fence she got, cause she heard me laughing on the floor near her toilet, she'd a got me out for sure, thinking I gone in my head.

Oh man. So I in the middle a the street thinking how sick the bus coughing all over me making me feel and I thinking how I got myself late and how the boss ain't gonna give me another chance cause he got to get rid of some people anyhow seeing how the season is almost over and it slowing down early that year. And I know, standing there in the middle the street, I ain't got no job no more.

I see another bus coming, going the opposite way out the city. And I think, I gonna go see my grandmother's house. So I move to the side and let the bus come past me to the stop and I get the smoke on me again and I feel it going down my throat and of a sudden it be the nastiest thing I ever had inside my body. And I think, there no way in all God's green earth that I getting on that thing. So I just start to walk.

It be one those days when you see the heat in the air, like little waves in the harbor. Nasty hot and fulla wet. I not thinking much, just looking around, watching people go about, just walking. Actually, I trying not to think about my Ruth at home. She be mad when I get back, but maybe not so much cause she know I getting let go soon. Got a couple things lined up for the next month, but she still be looking at me sideways.

So I trying not to think about her and as I go past the university, I see some little VW Bug some those kids got all painted up like a rainbow and they got one those cloth roses attached to the antenna. That make me think about my grandmother again.

She had six kids and my momma's one a them. My grandfather die crossing the street down the city but not before he bought them a nice little house outside the city where my grandmother can have a garden and all. Got hit by a bus, he did, down the city. Maybe has something to do with why I can't stand those damn things.

My momma growed up at that house and my biggest sister, Jackie, she born there first, then most a the rest of us too since it the Depression and it be a while before my father get us our own place in the city.

My father, he built outta stone. He always taking us down the city when we real little and showing us a university building he built, an office building, a library. When I ten, we had a house in the city. My father used to stop us walking to school when he on a job close by. He make us come stand next a half-built wall, and lean against it, run our fingers over the mortar in between some big old stones.

He passed way when I just seventeen, before I marry my Ruth and have any grandkids to show for. I remember before his funeral, I had a smoke outside the funeral home, leaning against a hot stone wall, and I run my finger long the mortar and wonder if my father put it there.

Man. That day I walking, it so hot and I pass six buildings my father built before I get out the city. Soon the sidewalk's got grass between it and the street and houses coming to the street instead of gas stations and little restaurants. My grandmother's house ten miles out the city, but I walking fine still. After another stretch though, I still passing houses and I start wishing for a store or a restaurant so I can get a drink. Sun sapping all the water right out my skin.

I pass houses with yards kept nice, some with roses too, but not one pretty enough like my grandmother's. She got little picket fence like everyone always talking about wanting. What those folks don't know is that you gotta paint the thing every summer. I done that plenty times before we move to the city and after too, when my grandmother call us up to stay a few weeks. Book I had read to me back in school was Tom Sawyer and I know right away what he feeling when he don't wanna paint that fence.

So none a those houses got fences at all, and I keep walking. I figure I'll get there close on lunch time and I know there an ice cream shop right after my grandmother street and I think about how I gonna get a rootbeer float instead a lunch. My grandmother the only lady I know when I a kid who make rootbeer floats, with vanilla ice cream and all. She even had those long spoons to get at the lumps in the bottom. That was only in the summertime too cause she send one us up to the next street and they hand-scoop just enough fresh vanilla ice cream for all us kids. My grandmother, she ain't got but a small icebox, can't fit a tub a ice cream inside it, so she send us up and when we come back, she go down to under the cellar steps where she got a crate a rootbeer bottles. She buy one every summer and we finish last couple by Labor Day. She only let us eat those floats at the kitchen table cause she use big old glass mugs and my brother broke one them on the porch, so she make us sit in the kitchen. She sit with us and trim green beans or shuck corn. When we done we rinse those mugs real careful and put them in the sink. And we each one kiss my grandmother on the cheek to say our thanks. It get so if you the last one, her cheek be shiny and a little sticky from all those kisses after ice cream and root beer.

Mmm. So I finally go to where I recognize some the houses. I walking past the green and white one they use to had and the empty lot next to it where we all play catch and half-field football. The house still there and it got a sign for cutting hair in the window and the lot is half paved with one those snowball stands that really a shed on it. And I almost stop cause I real thirsty, but I think about rootbeer and keep walking.

I walk for a while, and I cut through a few streets so I can see my grandmother church. When my grandfather get hit, the church pour out all over my grandmother and her kids before the insurance could come. She never forgot that. She march us there every Sunday, washed and ironed so tight you could smell it. And she stay after and teach Sunday school and cook for those got in a situation like she done back then when my grandfather got hit. They pay her electric and fix her porch a falling down. She pay them back, though. She make afghans and get big old crates strawberries and make preserves. And they sell them at bazaars. She get us boys out with trimmers for the cemetery when we up for a week to visit. And every Sunday there was a big old vase a roses in the church, straight from her yard.

I come up on it and, I tell you, there nothing exactly I can put my finger on, but it ain't the same. Look like it sag in on itself just a bit, and it peeling here and there. But ain't just that. We come rake leaves for two big old trees they got out front, but they gone. Got a weedy pot o flowers setting on each stump, but they small. Grass gone too, a lot of it. Brown. Cemetery still look okay, like someone be out and there a coupla flags from Fourth a July or Memorial Day. Then I see there a sign on the door. I thinking it say when service be held, even if everyone know it be 10:30, Sunday school at noon. But when I go right up to it, get myself under the awning where it cool, I see it a plaque from the Historical Society. I read the church been there since before my grandfather born, little typed note beneath the sign give a number for tours.

I sit down on those steps and wipe sweat out my eyes. Not sure I want keep walking then. Know how you sit and realize you're tired when you didn't feel it before? Well, I get up, not for the rootbeer float, but cause wasn't much else to do. Least the trees back in there on those streets was big and old so the shade nice. I walking the sidewalk we used to come by home. I remembering the supper my grandmother make for us every Sunday. Always a whole chicken and cornbread with bits a corn and dripped in bacon grease. Stewed apples and in June they was strawberries. And green beans we always had from where the vine grew up straight the side a her back porch. Sweet lemonade or hot milk in winter. And pie or pudding, maybe cobbler.

My grandmother buried in a plot other side the city. Bus company bury my grandfather there, and give him big old headstone and a plot right next him for my grandmother. I only been there half dozen times. Bus line stop going out there after they buried my grandfather. When her neighbor go visiting family out there, they offer her a ride, and drop her at those high black gates and I guess she just sit there with him for coupla hours like her neighbor do with family too. Trimming done for them at that place. Big mowers come long and do it all.

I walking and not looking at much, just going the walk to her house. And then the sidewalk end of a sudden and I on tarmac, on street just like back the city. I look up and somehow I at a gas station. Got a little store and about fifteen pumps. Joins with the street and the sidewalk rolls right into it.

I turn round cause I think I must gone wrong somehow, but no, I passed about six houses I know good, been inside each one, feet wiped and hanging off some lady's sofa while my grandmother drink strong coffee and gossip.

Gas station so big it take up half the block and spill over to the next street. Cross the street sit a bank, right where about four houses use to be. Behind the store there, through some sick, dying trees, they got backhoes and a loader going, pressboard going up in shape a big new houses.

I walk cross the tarmac and it so new, it feel like it gonna give way beneath my shoes. It still smell new too, deep and smoky like the bus exhaust in my lungs. I walk a ways across and see a minivan pulled up to the pump that say twelve. I stand right there and I think that minivan about where my grandmother's dining table supposed be.

I pull open the door a the store and the air hit me and I shiver more than maybe I need to. Kid there ask me, “What pump?” and it take me a minute. I shake my head at him and ask him if he got ice cream. He point at a case there next the counter. But everything all done up with sticks and plastic. I walk through and there a big slush machine and I look and I see they got rootbeer flavor. I pay for some that and I go outside again and the hot, wet air hit me and I take a sip the rootbeer slush and it tasting like nothing that ever seen sunlight. But I drink it cause it cold and sweet and I walking back now.

And I stop on the way, some place inside the city, and I buy Ruth some ice cream and roses.