I waited until Granny was asleep and snoring, and then I went outside.

It was late afternoon, and everything was quiet. I stood and looked at our car. Granny had the keys under her pillow, and the pillow was, of course, under her head.

But I was wily. And I believed that I was wily enough that I could steal the keys and steal the car and drive back to Florida.

However, I didn’t know what direction Florida was.

Well, it was south, of course.

But how was I supposed to know which way was south? How could you possibly tell which way south was when there were so many directions in the world? Northeast. Southwest. People can point, and study maps, and say the words “south” and “east,” and look very knowledgeable when they say them, but directions have always confused me.

And there was also the fact that I didn’t have any money for gas. Or food.

And then, too, how could I leave Granny alone in a motel room with no teeth and no car?

It seemed cruel.

I was thinking about all of this when someone whistled and the crow — that same crow — went flying past me in a burst of shiny feathers. He was so close that I could feel the air he pushed aside.

I looked up, and lo and behold, what did I see?

A boy. Standing on the roof of the Good Night, Sleep Tight.

And the crow was sitting right on the boy’s shoulder.

“Hey,” said the boy. He was barefoot. He had on blue shorts and a white T-shirt, and his hair was cut so close to his head that it was bristly and shone in the light.

“Hello,” I said back.

“You know that vending machine in the office?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I seen you staring at it earlier.”

“So?”

“So, I can get you any old thing you want out of that machine. Anything at all. All you got to do is name it.”

Well, my heart soared up high in my chest at those words. I saw the vending machine as if it were right in front of me. It glowed with all of its special objects — ballpoint pens, cheese-filled crackers, candy bars, rain bonnets — each one of them giving off its own special light.

“My goodness,” I said to him.

“Anything you want.” He smiled. He looked like a pirate, standing up there with the crow on his shoulder.

And then Bernice came out of the motel office with a broom in her hand and the curlers still in her hair.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” she shouted, waving the broom around. “Get off my roof! Get off it!”

Bernice jabbed the broom at the roof. She jumped up and down.

“Get out of here,” said Bernice. “I mean it.”

“I’ll see you later,” said the boy, looking right at me. “Go on, Clarence.”

The bird (Clarence!) took off flying; the boy went running across the roof and grabbed hold of the branch of a big live oak that was next to the Good Night, Sleep Tight, and then he was gone, too.

“Don’t believe a word he says,” said Bernice, turning to me.

But it was too late.

I believed him entirely. I believed everything about him.

I couldn’t wait to make my selections from the vending machine.

And then two things struck me at once. The first was that I knew the bird’s name but I did not know the boy’s.

The second thing that occurred to me was that I felt hopeful.

Yes. For the first time since we had crossed over the Florida-Georgia state line, I — Louisiana Elefante — was filled with hope.