Excerpt from Buses Are a Comin' by Charles Person, Richard Rooker, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"This is Booker T. Washington, and his coin came out just a few years ago."

We did not care.

"Someday, it will be worth a lot more than fifty cents."

Our eyes could not stay on the money he was trying to show us.

"This coin goes back one hundred years. One hundred years," he repeated to punctuate the importance.

On it a kneeling woman lifted her chained arms in prayer.

"You need to learn about this coin," Papa told us.

But all we could see were the two rifles lying diagonally across the trunk's bottom. The barrels were oiled to a sheen. The stocks looked older, the wood marred and smoothed with the passage of time and the hold of hands.

My mind exploded. I had no idea what Kenneth was thinking. To me, he wasn't there. It was just those guns and me. Papa was saying something—most likely about the coins. I did not hear him. My eyes deafened me. My imagination heard only the bolt action of my right hand turning the lever to release a spent shell.

Papa must have figured out the futility of trying to keep our minds on the contents of the trunk's tray. He took a different tack.

"Would you like to shoot those .22s?"

I don't remember being able to speak, but somehow we communicated yes.

"Well," Papa said, "it's time."

He taught us how to hold the rifles when walking.

"Cradle the stock in your right arm. Keep the barrel pointing straight ahead and down."

We obeyed with exaggerated care. He might have told us, "Well, not that far down."

Papa led us out to his backyard, where he had constructed a shooting range within Atlanta's city limits. Here we were surrounded by houses and people, and we were about to fire rifles into embanked ground at the back of Papa's yard.

He had rectangular pieces of cardboard and crayons.

"Draw the roundest circles you can." He modeled an example for us. I'm sure we thought our circles were round, but I expect they looked more like concentric squiggles than circles.

Papa walked us to the elevated mounds of dirt that would be the backstop for our targets. We put the cardboard in place.

Back at our rifles, Papa took great care to teach us how to hold the gun and how to squeeze the trigger.

"When the gun goes off, you are going to jerk. You have to be ready for the noise and the kickback."

Papa fired his rifle, and just as he said, we jumped. Neither of us had ever been so close to a fired weapon. He fired more rounds till we stopped reacting to the noise.

"Bo, you first," Papa said, and my heart swelled with pride as much as my nerves made me scared. My now was here. Papa's patience balanced my anticipation. He helped me hold the gun, and I'm sure he helped direct the barrel.

"Slow," he said. And I tried to be slow.

The gun went off. I jumped up as the gunstock pushed my shoulder back. It was as if we had never practiced not jumping. The cardboard was untouched.

Then it was Kenneth's turn. Same lesson. Same result. The safest place for that cardboard that day may have been in the sight lines of Kenneth's and my rifles.

But Papa was patient. After lots of sessions of practice, Kenneth and I were able to hit the bull's-eye with regularity. Papa was proud. So were we. But it never occurred to me to ask Papa why he kept those guns, and why he thought we needed to learn to shoot.

* * *

During the workweek, Papa was more present in my life than my dad. Sixteen-hour days working two jobs meant Dad was gone before I got up, and I was asleep when he got home. In summer, I saw Dad between his jobs. The rest of the year, I was at school, and Dad was at work.

Dad worked as an orderly in two locations. His day started at 7:00 A.M. at Emory University Hospital. At 3:00 P.M. his shift ended, and he headed to Georgia Baptist Hospital to work from 3:30 to 11:00 P.M. All that work brought barely enough for us to live on. Mom's ironing and Dad's odd jobs such as raking autumn leaves and working on engines and motors brought us a bit more. Engine work gave Dad a mechanical smell like transmission oil. It's funny. He worked such long hours in sterile facilities, but the memory I have of him is the aroma of an automotive engineer trying to wash the smell off with Lava soap's pumice harshness.

Excerpted from Buses Are a Comin' by Charles Person and Richard Rooker. Copyright © 2021 by Charles Person and Richard Rooker. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.