Ask the Dark (3 page)

Uh-huh, I say.

I stare at him a minute. Then I go upstairs and lie on my bed.

Ten minutes later my sister, Leezie, come in. I didn’t look up. I was staring at a little patch of wall, just staring at it, place where the plaster’s all flaky.

She says, Billy, we gotta help Daddy.

I know, I said.

We can’t lose the house, Billy.

Um-hmm.

I felt her come closer, lean over me. Though I didn’t look up and she didn’t make no noise.

Can you do it, Billy?

I gave a little laugh. I said, Leezie, you sixteen and can get a job. Why put it all on me?

I couldn’t never make so much alone, she said. Anyhow, Billy, you got ways. She talked real quiet.

I stared at that flaky place. Didn’t want to answer.
I got ways?
I wondered if she knew what she was askin’ me.

Then I said, I’ll try.

You promise?

I felt her standing there, waiting.

It took me a minute, but I said yeah. Then I looked up at her.

Will you do something for me? I said. Go down ask’m what he owes?

She murmured yes and walked away. I could barely hear her. Footsteps soft as breath.

Room was empty now. Everything felt still.

Minute later she came back.

Forty-eight, she said.

I rolled over on my back.

Thousand?

Yes, Leezie said, swallowing a catch in her voice.

Don’t cry, I said.

I won’t, she said.

She bent down and kissed me. Then I heard the door close.

I lay there. Looking at the ceiling.

Forty-eight thousand.

God fuckin’ damn.

Scuze my language.

Chapter Four

Next day I got up early. Was thinking. I been saddled with a lot in my time. Seen crazy shit, ain’t lyin’.

But forty-eight thousand was something new.

I got up thinking about it, put my clothes on thinking about it, and ate my breakfast without it never leaving my mind.

How the hell I gonna do it? I had no goddamn idea.

I went out. Wandered. Went through alleys and streets looking around. But there was nothing. Just lawn furniture and junk on porches. Nothing worth forty-eight thousand.

Saw Richie Harrigan in his pickup, drivin’ slow down the street under the trees, and he waved at me. Hey, Monkey Boy, climb in, he said.

Monkey Boy, yeah, that’s what he calls me. You’ll see why.

I did. I sat and he said he got a job for a man on Frederick Street, man in a big house. Says he’s going to the HomeWorld Lumber, gotta buy supplies, will I come with’m?

Shit yeah, I say. Sure ain’t got nothing better to do.

We drove. Went through the neighborhood and then out on some route, I don’t know the number. Summer was going good now and all the woods ’longside the route had that foamy sort of lime-green color, you know it? Outside, cars was whizzing by.

Richie, he’s smoking a cigarette, window open, listening to the radio, some country singer. He’s big, Richie. Not tall, but big arms, big chest. Burly, I mean. Short hair and looks neat, ’cept all his teeth are brown’n busted. From when he was drinking, I s’pose.

Titans gonna win the pennant this year I bet, you know that? he says, looking forward.

That’s a year off, I said.

Bet they do, he said. They got some good players coming up. He nods his head and grins, thinking ’bout it.

He’d know. Used to be captain of the Titans, his old football team—quarterback, he was, and got a scholarship to boot. Ten years back. Folks say he used to look good, drivin’ in a convertible, girls just stuffed in it, all fawnin’ on him. Say he used to be rich. Wouldn’t know it now. He told me what happened to’m. I’ll tell you too, but not just now.

When we got to the store I took a cart from outside and went in. Richie walked beside me in the aisles, holding a list in his hand with what he needs scribbled on it.

So I say, Richie, I need forty-eight thousand dollars.

He sort’f just stops right there and looks at me.

What the hell for? he says.

My daddy’s gonna lose the house, I say.

Hold up a minute, he says, and moving aside he gets one of them ladders with wheels on it and brings it over. Okay, Monkey Boy, climb up there, he says.

Now you know why he calls me Monkey Boy. He don’t never climb no ladder, has me do it. Makes him dizzy, so he says, something left over from back when he was drinkin’.

I climb and he watches, and when I’m up top I look down and ask what he wants.

You gotta see my daddy, Richie says. Gimme those nails, flatheads, the two-and-a-halfs.

I read the numbers and grab a bag.

Here goes—flatheads, I say. Why’s that?

He runs banks, Richie says.

I hand him down the nails.

Makes a lot of money, he says. Hell of a lot more than what you’re after.

He ain’t gonna see me, I said.

Why not?

’Cause what I done to his car. What you need now?

Them eyebolts. Thought you paid for that?

Nope. Never did, I said.

I climb down and wheel the cart over to the aisle where they got concrete and plaster. Richie, he brings the ladder.

Gimme that bag of plaster, too, will ya, Monkey Boy? Big one.

Got it, I said.

Damn thing’s heavy. But I lug it.

Come see him, Richie says. See him at the bank. He’s there all day.

You mean a loan? I climb down beside him.

Yeah, that’s one way, he says. You just gotta have collateral. Push the cart, will ya?

I start pushing the cart. I push fast and make motor noises and yell,
Beep beep!
like I’m a truck and if I gotta back up I make the other beeping sound and say, Hold up, hold up, and Richie’s there right beside me, laughing. What’s collateral? I ask.

Something you put up against the money you get, he says.

That’s what my daddy already done, I say. I ain’t doing that mess come nothing.

Well, then there’s credit, Richie says. That they just give ya. But you gotta be eighteen.

Eighteen? That’s too far off for me, I say. I need the money
now
.

Richie laughs. Then you best get a job, he says.
Good
one.

I’m trying, I say. And I push the cart to check out.

Chapter Five

So that’s what I done.

Tried to find a job.

It was still early after I left Richie, just ’bout eleven. So I went around. I tried the grocery store up on the avenue, Lowry’s, I tried the cleaners on Burton Way. I went to the gas station there on Bellsprint, and crost over the street where they got that little market run by the Chinese lady. They all said no. Mr. Potecki, who cuts meat up the grocery, he told me to get out. Knows me ’cause I go to school with ’is daughter and I got her once to hook school with me, and she got caught.

By the time I was done I felt real beat, so I took a drink of water from a yard hose and lay down on the grass.

Grass got me thinking, so I got up. Went and rung the doorbell.
Hey, Mr. So-and-So, you need your lawn mowed?
Shakes head, says no. I try twenty other places. Finally get one. It’s a lady in her apron cleaning house, and she sort’f thinks about it a minute with her eyes rolling around, then smiles and takes me on.

She got this power mower, and the wheels are s’posed to turn by themselves, but something was busted or going the wrong way, ’cause I had to push hard as I could to keep that thing moving.

I go extra careful, ’specially out back round this big wood kiddie house she built, or her husband built, for their kid, boy I know named Joey, ’cause it got nice paint and she don’t want no scratches.

Sun was hot, and pretty soon I’m wet head to foot with sweat, both shirt and pants, and when it’s all done I still got to go around with snips, ’cause the truth is what with having to push the mower, the path I went was scraggly with plenty of high grass in the gaps between.

When I get finished, the lady she comes back out and checks what I done, then gives me the twelve bucks I’d asked her for.

I think about that for a minute. Twelve bucks down makes it forty-seven thousand nine hundred eighty-eight.

To go.

I don’t know how many little yards it would take, so I start thinking ’bout how big the yard would have to be for me to make it all in one go, and I figure ’bout the size of Delaware.

I got done there at around three thirty and still had a few hours left before curfew. I’m thinking I need more money, twelve bucks ain’t gonna cut it. So I figure I best go down Shatze’s and see’f Marvin’s around.

Now, I gotta stop right here and say something. ’Cause comin’ up I’m gonna tell you the first thing I saw that helped me find those boys and the man who took’m.

But you gotta understand one thing.

I didn’t know what I was seeing.

Least not right then, when I first seen it.

Now some people say that makes me pretty dumb, because what with all I
did
see, then and a couple weeks later, they say it wouldn’t be hard to know just what it all was and put it all together.

Well that might be true. But looking back now at what horrors I seen that still wakes me up some nights in cold sweats, I figure maybe I wish I was even dumber than I was, and never noticed nothing in the first place.

And let me tell you something else, too. You know what was going on at home for me and what I needed to do, I mean make all that money and with only ninety days to do it.

So that’s what I was thinking about, the house and the money, because no way I tried could I forget it. It was always pushing me on. And maybe if something like that was pushing you, you wouldn’t be so smart yourself, and miss a few things when you seen’m, till you got a chance to add’m all up later on.

I got to Shatze’s round four o’clock and I seen Marvin all ready with a heap of white bags on the counter. I asked’m’f I could tag along and he said sure so I grabbed the bags. Big armload they was, and with Marvin holding the door for me I went out, past that old fat counter lady, Miss Norris, looking nasty at me over the counter, ’cause she caught me taking candy once. I go round back, and there’s the van. Marvin follows, limping on that busted foot he got, and I dump the bags in the bin between the seats and sit. Marvin, he gets in beside me and starts up the motor.

We drive a bit, wind blowing over us ’cause that van’s the sort that ain’t got no doors and you gotta watch your ass not to fall out. Marvin’s got the list of addresses he wrote in his hand on the steering wheel, and I watch the houses and yards and the sun bright over everything, people walking their dogs or just standing in their gardens and the birds singing everywhere.

Then I turn to Marvin.

Shit’s going on, ain’t it? I say.

He nods.

Yup, he says. Sure is.
Lots
of shit.
Nothing
but shit.
Same
old shit.

He says that all the time. Same old shit, I mean. S’where he’s coming from.

They found Tommy Evans, I say. He was beat up bad, I hear. Ain’t a good way to go.

No way’s a good way, Marvin says. You just make sure
you
don’t go getting in no strange man’s car, you hear me?

I hear you, I said.

I was looking up the street at how the sunshine came down through the trees and leaves and still looked green on the black of the street, same color like the leaves.

Then I say, Marvin, I need forty-eight thousand dollars.

He looks at me, eyes buggin’. What the hell for?!

Bank’s taking my daddy’s house, I said.

For a second he don’t say nothing. Then he looks at me.
Shit,
he says. You mean
your
house.

Same one, I said.

God’amn, Marvin says, sort’f breathes. Looks at me. Why can’t your daddy make it?

He’s too bad hurt, I said. Fell off that roof, remember?

God’amn, he says again. That’s some mean nasty shit you got coming down on you. Some
mean
nasty shit.

Uh-huh, I said. But I gotta make it. Th’money, I mean. Promised Leezie. Ain’t got no ideas, though. Least no good ones.

Now Marvin, he looks at me, and I know what he’s thinkin’, can just tell from the squint of his eyes.

And he says, You ain’t gonna start slippin’, is you?

Slippin’ where? I say, but I know what he’s talking about.

Back to where you was a couple years ago, he says. You was a
crazy
kid, Billy. Actin’ out every way, saying you was here when you was really there and stealing everything that ain’t nailed down! Used to scare even me, and I’m a man who
done
some crazy shit in his day. Boy, back then I wouldn’t’ve even let you in the van with me, you was so damn wild. So don’t you slip. I don’t want to see you in jail or no boys’ home, you understand?

I was smiling now, looking at’m. I said, Naw. Ain’t slippin’. I swore.

How swore?

To my mother, afore she died, I said. On her grave, too.

He looked at me a minute, eyes right on me, his face all empty now ’cause the feeling run out of it. I weren’t smiling no more, neither.

Well that’s good, Billy, Marvin says. I know what all that meant to you, seeing her pass. Seen the change in you myself, if nobody else round here did. So don’t go slippin’ now that trouble’s come. Listen. I been in shit myself years back,
deep
shit. No money, no job, and children, too. But it all comes right in the end. You gotta believe that, and hold yourself together.

It felt good hearing him say all that, so I promised I would. Of course, me I’m thinking, I went after that mower—was that slippin’? Didn’t tell about finding Tommy, what about that? Hell, worst of all is I go and promise Leezie I gonna get forty-eight thousand—and to get that done right is like askin’ for a
world
of slippin’.

I guess hearing ’bout the house riled’m—Marvin, I mean—’cause after a minute he pounds the steering wheel and says,
Shit!
And I
mean
shit. See, that’s the thing. Boy like you ain’t got money. And your daddy ain’t got money, ’specially now that he got hurt and can’t go to work and your poor mother died, bless her soul. And if there’s one thing I know, nobody gonna dig you out.