WE ALL AT the same table. The one by the front window. I picked it ’cause you can see the truck stop from here. I made up my mind. If April take too long, I’m gonna find her. WK ask if I’m crazy. Says there must be twenty trucks over there, so ain’t no way to know which one she’s in. Then for the first time he say something mean. “Maybe she’s the kind of mother that needs to stay gone.”

I’m being mean too when I look at his hand lying on top of Blaine’s and say, “Thought you were staying away from boys.”

“Away from boyfriends. Not friends who are boys who are cute and can kiss.” He winks, then asks Blaine to be nice and buy him a latte with extra cream from the coffee shop. “I need to go to the boys’ room.”

They both gone by the time Mrs. Rodriguez gets to her feet. “Char, sit their snacks and drinks out, please. I’ll take them to wash their hands.”

I point to myself. “Me?”

“You.”

“But we don’t got time.”

“Thank you very much.”

The drinks is on the table when the farmer walk in holding Cricket. Before the door shuts behind him and his wife, I’m in front of ’em with my arms stuck out. “I’ll take her.”

“No, you won’t.” He walks past me. “You see a police officer? A guard?” Cricket’s head is lying on his shoulder. His hand is on her bum and back. “They have to have one. Where’s the driver? He’ll know.” His head goes left to right too many times to count.

“Dear. It’s not our business,” his wife says, catching up to him.

He turns around so fast she bumps into him. “She left her! In the bathroom. On the floor. Like trash.”

“Cricket?” I ask.

She probably thought no one would hear her in there, he says. But he got prostate problems. His wife whispers something about Depends. If eyes could slap, she’d get one good across the lips from him. “We’re discussing that tramp, not me,” he tells her.

“William! Be decent.”

He start walking. Cricket’s wiggling like a worm. I’m right behind him. My eyes looking back at the window now and then.

He asks about the driver again. “Is he in the bathroom?” He’ll hand her over to him if there’s no officer of the law around, he tells us. I try to keep up. His wife tries to keep up. But he got long legs, plus he’s fired up. Mad.

“April is having a hard time,” I say. “Ain’t you ever had it bad?”

He in the middle of the room when he stops. “Who hasn’t had it hard?! This baby will have it hard too, if someone doesn’t intervene.”

People stare at us from everywhere. Cricket cries. Screams. Kicks. He look at his wife, starts to hand her over till I snatch her from him. Stepping back, holding her tight as muscle hold on to skin, I tell him if he try to take her from me, I’ll scream. “Bad things too.”

I turn my back to him and pat her head. “Shhh. Quiet. Your momma’s coming soon.” I look out the window that faces the trucks. “Them calves,” I say. “Where their mothers at?”

“What?”

“The calves on the farms we passed.”

He wipe sweat off his forehead with a white napkin he took off a table. “Just give her to me. I’ll turn her over to the—”

“You think their mothers may be on one of those trucks out there—on their way to be cut up, turned into steaks and shoes?”

I barely hear him say, “Life’s hard.”

I hold on to Cricket like I birthed her. Like JuJu held on to me some nights after my parents passed. “I bet them calves wish they had their mothers no matter how bad a mother they had.”

His wife looks down at the floor. “I was adopted.”

Her husband say not to bring that up again. “It has nothing to do with that trollop who sat her baby on a pissy floor of a Greyhound bus.” His hands go in his pants pockets. “I told you, Pat, what I was going to do, and I’m going to do it.”

“Leave her be, William.”

“No, I—”

“If her mother doesn’t return then we will take additional steps. But for now, let’s do like the Bible says we should.” He hangs his head after she says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

He talk like he wears the pants in the family, but it’s her I see.

“Where’s the coffee? I need some coffee—black.”

Once he’s gone, she give me Cricket’s Binky. It should go in the trash since it was on the floor, she says. Pointing to one of the stores, she starts walking. “I will pick up a few things for her. It’s the least we can do.”

“You mad at your mother for giving you away?”

She stop in her tracks. “Mad? No. I’m thankful. Sincerely and forever grateful. She was fourteen. Never finished high school. Where would I be if she hadn’t come to her senses?”

She’s gone when I call JuJu.

“Char. I told you—”

“I love you. I’m okay. You don’t need to worry about me,” I say, right before I hang up.