God's Pocket - Pete Dexter (17 page)

Peets said, "That was Old Lucy. Some days he
comes in, some days he don't. Does as much work either way. He's
about a hundred years old, sickly. You know . . . weak." Peets
was surprised how easy that story came out of his mouth. He'd heard
of old women, though, who picked up Chevrolet Malibus when they'd
fell on their sons in the yard, so you never knew what you could do
until you had to do it.

Arbuckle was over by the cement mixer, still waiting
on Gary Sample to get what he was trying to say out of his mouth.
Peets saw it was out of his hands.

Eisenhower walked underneath the cherry picker and
looked up at the beam. Then he looked at the ground, and then at the
U-bolt fastened to the beam. He smiled up into the sun.

"Days like this," he said, "I got to
drive around in that car with Arbuckle or sit in an office, I wish I
was something else. I'd just as soon to come out here, for instance,
and do my work and watch the nurses come by, not worry about anything
.... " He looked at Peets. "You must go home and sleep like
a baby."

"A baby," Peets said.

"I knew it. I go home and I think about
everything that's happened. I go home and wonder if I did my job
right." He and Peets were still looking at each other.

"You done your job right," Peets said. He
was saying too much, but it was like the kid Gary Sample talking to
the other cop. It was out of his hands.

"What I was saying," Eisenhower said, "the
mother's got something. She can look at you a certain way and you
could just stick a fork in your leg .... " They looked around to
the construction site again. Arbuckle had given up waiting for the
kid to quit stuttering and started back. When he got close,
Eisenhower said, "How far down did you say this thing is going
to go?" and he left Arbuckle by the cherry picker and walked to
the end of the wall Old Lucy had laid.

Left alone, Arbuckle began measuring off distances.

Eisenhower said, "In the neighborhood, they say
the guy the mother is married to is connected. Mickey Scarpato, which
I never heard of`, so he ain't anybody that matters. But if it's
true, that's where your problem might come from. The woman's got his
balls in the blender, I could see that. You can't tell what
anybody'll do with his balls in the blender."

Back at the cherry picker, Arbuckle was standing with
his back to Gary Sample, who had followed him over and was still
trying to tell him something. "Fuckin' write it down or
something," he said, and left him again.

"Is it possible?" Eisenhower said. "That
that fuckin' thing could actually kill somebody?"

Peets just looked at him.
He needed some time to think about Eisenhower. "Because if it
is," the cop said, "let's give it a little while and see if
it likes Arbuckle."

* * *

Mickey sat through lunch, waiting for a sign that she
was getting tired of her sisters. They were all eating peanut butter
and honey sandwiches, drinking Pepsi-Cola. One of the sisters was
standing behind him, by the oven, where she could check on the
tollhouse cookies. A bell went off inside the oven, and when the
sister opened the door, the heat singed the hair on the back of his
neck.

She put the cookie sheet on the table and the other
sister put one of the cookies in her mouth whole. Three hundred and
seventy-five degrees was nothing to that mouth. "Ummmm,"
she said. "Jeanie, taste how good . . ." Jeanie took one of
the cookies and put an edge in her teeth. "What's that smell?"
said the sister with the cookie in her mouth.

She wrinkled her nose and looked around. The other
sister wrinkled her nose and looked around too. You could see they
were sisters. "It smells like a dead mouse," one said.

While they looked around the kitchen for dead
animals, Mickey ran a hand over the back of his head and smelled his
fingers. It was a little like a dead mouse, and it was a little like
cat shit. They weren't the kind of smells that just washed off.

He drove back over to the flower shop. Bird had come
down out of his bedroom and was in back, watching two butchers boning
and cutting the load of meat they'd taken in New Jersey. He was
dressed in a clean yellow shirt. His neck fit the collar like a
hard-on in an innertube. Mickey always wondered if Bird used to be
bigger.

"Mickey," he said, "Aunt Sophie said
you was over. Should of woke me up, pal. It's the old Bird again."
The butchers looked up from their saws, nodded and went back to work.
Bird crossed the room and shook Mickey's hand. He was smiling like
the old Bird, only there'd never been that kind of old Bird, at least
that Mickey knew of. He wished he could see an old picture.

"I thought if the electricity was back, you
could cut some of the meat we threw in the truck," Mickey said.

"No problem, Mick. Lissen, I appreciate you
helpin' me out, takin' it instead of the trump. We'll get this shit
all straightened out, don't worry .... " He hugged Mickey's
shoulder.

"You talk to your people?" Mickey said.
Bird shook his head.

"I didn't talk to nobody," he said. "I
ain't going to. Fuck it, I may get out of the business, you know?
Fuck, I may get out of the city." He looked down at his sleeve
and then pulled Mickey's arm up next to his, so they could compare
yellows. “Hey, lookit, queers. You remember when they said you was
queer if you wore yellow on Tuesday? Back in school?"

Mickey shook his head. "Queer if you wore
yellow? That's the most fucked-up thing I heard all day." Bird
laughed and hugged him again. It wasn't like him to hug so much.

"I forgot, Mick," he said. "You ain't
from around here. You missed a lot of great shit."

Mickey said, "You really thinkin' about gettin'
out?"

Bird winked at him, and he'd never done that before.
"You can't tell," he said. "You can never tell what
the Bird will do."

Then he called one of the butchers over and
introduced him to Mickey. Mickey guessed he was fifteen years old.
"Say hello to Bird's main man," he said to the butcher. And
then to Mickey: "This is my nephew Tony."

Tony nodded, and Mickey nodded back. Bird hugged the
kid's head, a sullen cold-looking kid, and Mickey watched to see if
Bird had picked up any bloodstains on the yellow shirt. "He
don't talk much," Bird said, "but this little fucker can
cut meat."

Then he called his other butcher, who was colored.
Mickey knew Bird had one working for him, but he didn't expect to be
introduced. Mickey shook hands with him too. He went back to work,
the nephew stayed.

Bird said, "Tony, take the meat out of Mick's
truck and cut it for him, all right? Do a nice job, don't sneeze on
it or nothin', okay?" Bird laughed and squeezed.

When Bird had finished squeezing him, the nephew
climbed in Mickey's truck. It shook as the boy moved the meat to the
door. Then he jumped out, put one of the sides of beef over his
shoulder, and carried it to his table. "Fourteen years old,"
Bird said, “strong as a fuckin' bull. Kid's twice as strong as we
was .... "

Mickey smiled. By the time he was fourteen years old,
he could work all day, with anybody. His old man had won a
twenty-dollar bill once in Waycross, Georgia, betting he could lift a
fat man off the floor of a truck stop there. He could still see the
fat man's face and remember his name. Giachetti. He weighed 480
pounds and lay with his arms against his sides, flat and wet, not to
offer any handholds, and Mickey had grabbed him behind the neck and
by the belt and got him off the door any way. The fat man cried from
one end of the diner to the other that he'd been cheated, like there
was official rules to picking fat people up, and in the end he'd
thrown the twenty on the door and left. It was the first time
somebody hated him because of what he was, and it stuck with him. He
thought of Jeanie's sisters then. The way things was going, it was a
miracle Giachetti hadn't showed up at the house with a suitcase, to
move in until the funeral.

Bird's nephew sharpened a knife. The blade was a foot
and a half long, and flashed in the light. The light came from two
bulbs hanging cockeyed over the table from black cords that had been
taped six or seven places. Now that he looked, Mickey saw one of them
was wrapped in Band-Aids. When the knife was sharpened, the nephew
began to cut. He never considered the meat, he just cut. He had a
quick, practiced motion—you could almost see Leon with his
razor—and a look on his face that he'd seen everything on the
planet. If he'd opened up a cow's ass and found pearls, his eyes
would have stayed the way they were—flat as a foot of snow.

Bird sat down in a school desk built for somebody
four foot tall. The warehouse had been leased to the school district
before Bird and Sophie, and there was all kinds of shit around that
they'd left. For instance, there was a box of books on South America
Mickey sometimes noticed on the way in. He'd of taken one of those
home to read, except right on the cover it said "Seventh to
Ninth Grades." He already did more explaining than he cared to,
and he wasn't about to open that can of worms.

Bird sat with his arms on the little desk, his elbows
hanging over the sides touching his knees, which were even with the
top. He pointed to another desk the same size and told Mickey to have
a seat. Mickey shook his head. "I'd need a fuckin' corkscrew to
get out," he said.

There were four boxes of advanced algebra books
stacked against a support beam, and Mickey took one down and sat on
it. He'd picked a book out of those boxes once, thought at first it
might of been about Germany. Nobody had to worry about him bringing
home no advanced algebra.

"I ain't going to worry about no more shit,
Mick," Bird said. "I made up my mind. It's going to be like
the old Bird, doin' business." Mickey didn't know what business
he was talking about. Bird laughed. "You think I'm crazy? The
mind is a powerful tool, Mick. I found out the secret. I'm goin' back
to the way I was, I ain't nervous now .... "

Mickey said, "Bird, you was always nervous."

"The secret," he said, tapping his head,
"the secret is I don't give a fuck. That horse is going to come
in tomorrow, and if they don't want me doin' business in Philly, I'll
go somewheres else and do business. They don't own the world, Mick.
Fuck, they don't even own Miami. Somebody else owns that. Sophie's
friends all moved down there anyway."

Bird was bouncing his feet on his toes, holding onto
the desk top, like the teacher wouldn't let him go piss.

"This horse is a nice horse," Mickey said,
"and she's in with a bunch of shit, but it's still a horse,
Bird. Little bitty ankles, ugly teeth, shits in balls . . ."

"She's a lock," Bird said.

"There ain't nothin' that weighs half a ton with
little bitty ankles that's a lock," Mickey said. Bird winked at
him again, like it was a joke between them. His nephew had finished
with the first side of beef. He'd packed it in cardboard boxes,
carried them back to the truck. The colored boy was faster, and he
was working on the meat they'd taken off the semi.

“
You don't understand," Bird said. "I
don't give a fuck. Just like that horse don't give a fuck. She don't
know and I don't care, that's what makes it a lock." He looked
at Mickey again. "You don't see it, Mick?"

Mickey shook his head. "What are you going to do
if she don't run? What if they scratch her?" But he could see
Bird wasn't hearing him. Hell, maybe he wasn't hearing Bird.

"The reason I'm tellin' you," Bird said,
"is you're my man, Mick. You helped me out, and now I'm tryin'
to help you, mentally. But if you don't wanna lissen, it's on you. I
can see things so clear, you know? Like you wonder how you didn't see
them before.”

Mickey nodded toward the semi they'd stolen. “They're
going to want their truck back," he said. "At least take
them the truck."

"Yeah, you got to settle accounts," Bird
said. "But my friends come first. When we get straightened out
in Miami, you always got a place, Mick. You know, if you got to
disappear for a while. Right now . . ." He shrugged and looked
around the warehouse. "All I can do right now is hide you here.
They can't touch us, Mick." And he began to laugh again.

Mickey had heard that Indians were afraid to kill
white men if they were crazy, but he didn't think the people who were
running things now were. "You can't see it," Bird said.
"Mick, I swear on my mother's grave, it's so clear .... "

As he said that, the band saws stopped and the lights
went out. For five seconds the place was dead still and solitary
black. Then Mickey could hear Bird breathing through his teeth. Tony
and the colored boy hadn't moved, like they were waiting for the
people who ran things now to come in with flashlights and shotguns.
Bird was breathing louder. Mickey couldn't see his face, but he knew
it was awful. Ever since he'd walked into his house yesterday and
found Jeanie crying, he'd been knowing shit.

He got up off the box. Nobody said a word. A door
opened toward the front, and there was a flashlight. "Arthur?"
she said. "Arthur, the electric went out again .... "

Bird's breathing got choppy. "We're over here,
Mrs. Capezio," Mickey said.