Bluff City Pawn (6 page)

Joe eases back, pats his belly. “Doctors want me eating a handful of pills.”

“For what?” Huddy asks.

“For stuff I don’t have yet. Make sure my blood moves.” He rubs his stomach, some soft ulcer rub. “What you think—this brother of ours, he on the run? Hiding out from the world?”

Huddy watches Harlan’s glass tilt at his throat. He wants to talk about himself, not Harlan, not now—Harlan siphoning off Joe’s attention. Sitting beside Harlan makes Huddy feel identical, and Joe’s not helping with his eyes shifting back and forth like he can’t tell one brother from another. Joe getting it double, two needy brothers both at the margins, one without money and one without the means to free himself somewhere better. He’ll quick-fix Harlan and be done. That’s how Huddy’d do if he were staring at two kinds of favors.

“You the only one hid away,” Harlan says. “You a hermit crab now? Maybe you hiding from her—your next wife-to-be-ex.”

Huddy laughs, but he only wants to hear about his own relief. How am I supposed to talk out here, to tell what is happening to me, with the air so sweet and unreal, with all these blooming flowers and tree colors. He feels the water rolling over him, rounding him off, rubbing and wearing his complaints down, leaving him relaxed but weak. Water running everywhere and Huddy’s mouth drying up. He sips, feels warm and better, but his tongue is still thick with all that he wants to say, so he fires another sip to burn words down. Joe is pointing out the helicopter plants and tiger grass, and Huddy refills his glass and realizes he’s not just thirsty but hungry, since he forgot to grab dinner to hurry here. Another sip and more heat in his stomach and Joe’s talking about water cannon, elephant ear, some frond or other, but there’s too much to look at so Huddy’d like to chew the plants to not only clear some space but curb his hunger, and the trees need to be trimmed back too and Huddy’d like to do that also with his teeth. He’d like Joe to sit and watch while Huddy ate the entire garden, chewed it right to the ground, his mouth a plow filled with shreds of greenery, and then he’d go diving for the fish, and after he could have this talk and Joe would have to listen because Huddy’s voice would sound so strange with all of Joe’s plants stuffed in his mouth, fish scales jutting from his teeth like tiny pins.

“Listen, Joe . . .” But Huddy’s not even sure which problem he’s bringing up, he can’t say Summer yet, he hasn’t ordered his thoughts or maybe the drinking’s scrambling them. He runs his hand across his lips. “I got a situation.” His voice doesn’t seem right, the only sound that fits here is water. He likes his job. He just wants a small do-over, a tiny nother chance.

“I heard about it. Barnes called me.” Huddy watches Joe shake his head. Three feet away but it feels like what’s between them is ten shut windows. “Great, another vacancy.”

“Barnes called you?”

“An hour ago.”

“Well I’m leaving before Barnes.”

Joe’s hand up to halt him.

“We gotta move the shop, Joe.”

“I ain’t touching your rent, okay?” His hand pushing out now.

Huddy takes another sip, the glass sliding to his mouth.

“Tell him about the blood bank,” Harlan says.

“Two rehearse this?” Joe snaps. He frowns, thought he was having a brotherly moment, some shared family history, but Huddy and Harlan have turned twins, two halves with the same face and one voice, side by side with secret talks and plans, and Joe on the other bench, outnumbered and apart. He tilts one way to Harlan, then scowls at Huddy, but Huddy glares straight back. How can you think we sharing something when you’re living like this? Memories gonna get real blurry, the past going blank. There’s no stories when we’re all small, no older, other time—no us when there’s this maze of trails where I need a map to find you.

“We got a blood bank setting up next door to the shop,” Huddy says.

“So what? A few more lowlifes in your shop. Run ’em off.”

Huddy sips through clenched teeth, his face seething. Blood bank, he thinks, but it slips in his head to bloodbath. “If we move—”

“Move? Leave me with an empty building? Before I’ve made my money back?”

“That money was
gone
, Joe. Remember? It was
quiet
money.”

“You want me to fork it out again?
And
own a vacant building on Lamar? I’ll have to board the building up for a year before I get tenants filling it.”

“That’s why I’m leaving!” Huddy stands up to go, but he’s staring out at footpaths going every which way with a thousand hidden corners.

Joe sighs, lays his arms out. How does he get to be the exhausted one, the one with problems? Huddy hears the water pouring down on the pond, a current pushing his plans away, Joe sitting on his bench like a boat with the water moving him safely out to sea.

“Hey, man,” Harlan says, “that white fish, with the itty-bitty tail, I’m calling him Stubby.”

“Harlan!” Huddy says, hate flooding his face, shaking his head at Joe. “I got it all scoped out. Liberty Pawn, on Summer Avenue—”

“Summer Avenue?” Joe laughing, relieved.

“What’s wrong with Summer?”

Joe trades grins with Harlan. Huddy can see how Harlan’s giving him a lift—Joe gets to turn Huddy down and have fun doing it. “You must be the only person who drives down Summer and says, ‘Count me in.’ Summer and Lamar, they’re both ghetto streets.”

“Summer is doing business with the whole city,” Huddy says. “Don’t matter ghetto.”

“Joe,” Harlan says, “what Huddy’s trying to say is congratulations on all your money, and let’s just divvy it up three ways and we’re all happy.”

“I ain’t saying that.”

“Well, I believe in sharing.
Family.
” Harlan grabs the bottle and pulls directly, exhaling with a long, pleasurable sigh. “Family money. So how about sliding me twenty cents?”

“Will you shut up?” Huddy says.

“You gonna lose your customers,” Joe says, still smiling over Harlan’s act. “Nobody from Lamar coming over to Summer. Your customers can’t even find Summer.”

“I’ll get double back at the new place.”

“Just go to the bank, man,” Harlan says. “Why you need his dough?”

“Ha!” Joe says.

“Banks don’t do pawnshops,” Huddy says, but correcting Harlan doesn’t bring Huddy closer to getting Joe. “This other place, it’s got a drive-around. Contractors on a lunch break, they got their equipment hitched up, they can be fifty feet long and get in there. And the building’s freestanding.” Joe shuffling his hands, so what? “I don’t want no one connected to me no more. Nobody’s breaking in next door and coming over to me. Barnes gone, I’ll have empty stores on both sides. With Liberty, the only people coming into my lot would be for me. And it’s got a thousand more square feet inside. I can put more out on the floor, more in storage. It’ll give me a chance to spread out.”

“Spread out or spread
thin
? Why you want more space to guard? Sounds like too much, Huddy. Too many arms and legs and tentacles.”

“Sounds like you an octopus,” Harlan says.

Huddy looks up at the house, all the big rooms lit on the top floor. “Too many arms and legs and tentacles,” Huddy mumbles, feeling like one of his customers who echo his appraisals, like the guy who came in last week trying to get cash on a camera that was nothing more than a glorified piece of plastic. “Sorry, buddy,” Huddy said, “technology’s just a little old on that,” and the guy threw the line back, and Huddy kept quiet, just cut him down with silence, the echoed line cracking out in every direction, to bewilderment and humiliation and fear and rage and grief, and Huddy watched for a reaction, the man’s fingers hooking into the camera case, but then he left, his emotions twisting together at the door, which he yanked, calling the parking lot a motherfucker. But now Huddy’s exchanged positions, on the wrong side of the counter, playing the sad and mad repeater.

“I’m sorry,” Joe says. And he is, Huddy can see and hear it, Joe’s scratchy voice, his hand across his pained face. “I got my money tied up in Arkansas. This tract of land I’ve been throwing money into ’cause a geologist says I should. I’ve got a guy not paying me on a contract, hung me up for eighty thousand dollars worth of concrete. Says it’s not his fault, nobody has money anymore. Sure, I’m getting bigger. But I’m shrinking, too.” His fingers make a cage of his hands. “The numbers are all over the place. It’s not as much
live
money as you think.”

Huddy chews at his cheek, eats his flesh. “Are we brothers, Joe?” Huddy looking around at jackpot and Joe telling him he’s crapped out and bust.

“Don’t make me sound mean. If I could give you this—”

“’Cause right now I feel like a brother’s brother’s brother brother.”

Joe shakes his head. “Man, you don’t make me feel likable.” He stands and snatches the empty bottle. “You both drinking
my booze—
but I’m just the bearer of bad tidings.” They watch him tromp off, feet crunching gravel, climbing and descending the bridge till he’s half-seen through branches and leaves, then gone.

“Go count your money,” Huddy mutters.

“He thinks he’s bringing God to the world,” Harlan says.

Huddy doesn’t like Harlan feeling what he’s feeling. Joe with fishes in his yard, Huddy with roaches in his shop. No matter how much he sprays and bombs and sets the traps, they keep coming and breeding, laying their eggs in the low heat of the electronics.

“Two kinds of living,” Harlan says. “Shit and sugar. I guess the flip side to this is me.”

Harlan’s sorry voice in Huddy’s ears, Harlan dumping his pain in Huddy’s lap. “Where’s that stuff I staked you?” he says, his voice angrier than he means it.

Harlan’s hands come up to explain, but then twist open, empty. “Thought you forgot.”

“You thought a pawnbroker forgot a loan?”

Harlan’s lips press together. “Things just got tight.” He looks back at his hand like Huddy’s borrowed hardware should be glued there but it somehow got unstuck. “And then this guy got me out on a string and pulled it.”

Huddy waves the story away. “I already wrote it off as a loss.”

“Just a nail gun and chop saw,” Harlan mumbles.

“Hell it was. It was a compressor. And a generator, too.”

“Weren’t no generator.”

“Oh, yeah? I remember loading that truck up good.”

Harlan whirls his head like the missing machinery just slipped past on a raft, got carried down the canal of Joe’s yard. “Maybe I could work it off.”

“Sounds like you’ve already got a job. He gonna set you up with some heavy-duty mulework, that’s what he can do for you. Man, why’d you even go down to Florida? Drywalling? Like you had to go all the way to Florida to hang drywall.”

“I was framing houses, too. I was getting my stripes. And then I had this big job—”

“Save it. My whole fricking day is excuses and everything’s gonna sound double-stupid out here. I can’t believe he did this. I can’t—”

“Why you always hearing the bad part of me?”

“Huh? I don’t hear from you for a year and you come back talking about your tail getting tore off. Damn straight—I’m thinking you sleeping with a shotgun under your bed.”

“I was down there three years and the only part you want to hear about is the bad.”

“The bad is the punchline. The bad is why you’re here. The good don’t really count.”

“I ain’t saying I didn’t get crazy. But I stopped it. And then I got swiped. I come back to this armpit, this stinking place, and the two of you talking shit. Shotgun under my bed? Man, I was sleeping with a fishing pole. I didn’t get so much as a hangnail down there.” He flicks his fingers out. “The Florida me? It’s done. I buried him. You hear me?!” He pulls at his shirt like it’s dripping sweat clinging, but Huddy could care less about Harlan wrestling clothes. Harlan jolts up like he got stung and Huddy watches him repeat the walkout.

“Guess that makes two,” Huddy mumbles. He loops his finger out to where Harlan split. That’s right, get moving, get lost. Just like their daddy. Not that Huddy would give that a moment’s thought, he cut out that dark spot years ago, except that’s where Joe’s money started.

Joe was fifteen, Huddy thirteen, Harlan ten, and when their daddy left, Joe saw them through hard times. He started mowing neighbors’ lawns, and since he was too young to drive, he made a deal with an older neighbor whose family had a truck and a trailer, to drive him around the city on the weekends and nights, and Joe would do the bulk of the work and the neighbor could split the cash. He’d come home smelling of grass and gasoline, his face streaked with sweat and dirt, the heat coming off him. A fifteen-year-old man of the house. Thick wads of cash from his pants pocket, one leg, then the next, and they’d watch him reach for it, the money warm and unfolding on the table, everyone staring at it, their mama, too, the money from her new job at the grocery store not enough, but now, with this, it was. Huddy thankful but jealous, seeing her look at the money with relief, Huddy wanting to be older for it to be him, Joe not having to say a word, everything he needed to say or do was right there on the table. Joe’s little notebook, the neat rows of names and addresses and figures. Huddy asking to look at the notebook, wanting to see the numbers; Harlan wanting to hold the cash. Most of the money went to the household, but whatever was saved Joe threw back in the business. Upgraded the equipment, got a commercial mower, edger, string trimmer. Turned sixteen and got his own truck and trailer, went solo and made more, even had some old men knocking on the door looking for work.