Bud’s suitcase contains a pack of flyers. These sit at the very bottom of the suitcase. The flyers are advertisements for various performances of the jazz musician Herman E. Calloway. They are important to Bud because he strongly suspects that the musician is his father, whom he has never met. He particularly treasures one of the flyers that is blue in color, because it reminds him of his mother’s last days before her death. She had come back home from work with the blue flyer and had looked at it continuously. Clearly, she had found something in the flyer quite upsetting.

At the top of the suitcase sits Bud’s blanket. He likes to put it at the very top, folded, so that it can cover everything else and prevent the various items from “banging against each other.” The blanket is useful to Bud because it keeps him warm in his sleep, especially when he is on the run. Inside, there also is an “old tobacco bag,” which contains his favorite rocks that were given to him by his mother. Bud knows the exact number of rocks in that bag (there are five). Also, there is an envelope that contains a picture of his mother. He keeps it because it is “the only picture of his mother that exists in the world.” He also keeps the picture because it reminds him of some conversations that he had with his mother when she was alive. She liked to tell him the story of how she got to take that particular picture. The picture features his mother riding a “midget horse.”