Paperboy (18 page)

I was glad for Rat but all the work I had done on the paper route for the month had left me with nothing but three words on a cut-up dollar bill. I did want to know what the fourth word was so I hurried on up the stairs. I knew Mam was still worrying about her Haints and she wouldn’t let me leave the house after dark.

The curtains in my room blew toward me as I walked down the hall but even with the fresh air coming in the room I could tell that the smell wasn’t right.

My room was all out of whack. The drawers under both of my twin beds were pulled out. That didn’t make any sense because the only stuff in them was blankets and sheets and winter clothes. The next thing I saw was the chair pulled away from my desk and all the drawers hanging open. Mam had taught me never to leave drawers open. Especially the middle drawer with all of my money in it. It was pulled out so far that it was tipping down in front.

A bad feeling came over me like it did at school when the books under my desk were not in the same order I had left them.

The money was gone from the drawer. All of it. My billfold and my wristwatch too. The air from the attic fan coming through the window was hot but I let it blow over me until I could get what had happened in my room straightened out in my head.

When I went to the top of the stairs and yelled for Mam she heard something in my voice more than just my words because she came up the stairs two at a time. We ran down the hall together.

s-s-s-s-Gone. s-s-s-s-Money’s gone.

Mam stopped in the middle of the room and breathed heavy.

Even though her nose was busted. Even though my mother’s mothballs from the attic smelled. Even though the air coming through
the window was new and hot. Mam smelled the same rotten smell I did. Ara T.

Mam went to the desk and jerked it away from the window like it was made out of model-airplane wood. She leaned out the window and looked at the flat roof.

Did you leave that ladder up?

I nodded.

When I s-s-s-s-got my s-s-s-s-ball yesterday.

Mam pulled her head in and jerked the window down so hard that the weights on the ropes banged inside the wall.

Mam untied her apron while she walked down the hall. She may have been walking but I had to run to catch up with her. She draped the apron on the post at the bottom of the stairs which was the first time I had ever seen it not hanging in its place on the back of the pantry door.

I can’t leave you here, Little Man. You get right on up to Mr. Rat’s house and wait for me there.

She looked at me for a nod.

Mam turned off the stove eyes and grabbed her black pocketbook from the pantry. I followed her out the door and down the back steps. Even as fast as I could move it was hard to keep up with Mam.

Even more strange than where she put her apron was seeing her leave the house in her white uniform without her little round black hat.

Mam stopped at the end of the driveway.

You get on up to Mr. Rat’s now.

I didn’t move or say anything.

Listen to me strict now. I’ve got some business that’s mine alone. You mind me now and get on up to Mr. Rat’s house.

I turned away from Mam and started walking up Melrose. Slow as I could walk. She went the other way in her fast walk. I knew she would make a line straight for Ara T’s shed.

When I came to the corner to turn onto Rat’s street I looked back and saw Mam was almost to Ara T’s alley. A new plan came to me. I watched Mam head into the alley and then I took off running back down Melrose.

I ran so fast I couldn’t hear my tennis shoes hitting the sidewalk. I turned up Harbert just before I got to Ara T’s alley and kept running up the street past Mrs. Worthington’s house. Three houses from the end of the street I cut into the driveway and ran beside a wooden fence that came out near Ara T’s shed.

Before I reached the alley I heard Mam yelling for Ara T. A few more steps and I was in the alley. Mam was pounding on Ara T’s secret shed door. Some of the door’s chipping gray paint floated to the ground like snowflakes. Snowflakes in Memphis in July.

Mam pulled at the shed door but it was locked tight. I started wondering if I should tell her how I had seen Ara T open it by pulling
out the two nails on the side and sticking something through the small hole. Right then Mam reached up and grabbed the top of the shed door with her hands. She gave the door a yank with all her might. The door came loose from its hinges and crashed to the ground with splinters and gray snowflakes going everywhere.

Mam stepped into the doorway and threw back the tarp covering the inside of the shed. The yellow lightbulb came on and I heard shovels and rakes falling and crates being emptied. Then a few seconds of quiet. Mam came back out the door of the shed and stood in her white uniform with her hands on her hips. She looked straight at me like she knew I had been there all the time.

You disobeyed me.

I was ready for whatever Mam had for me because I was going to tell her that I wasn’t leaving her. I was going wherever she was going next and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.

She seemed to know what the inside of my head was saying.

You have carfare money?

I patted my front pockets and felt the coins and wadded-up bills from the night of collecting. I couldn’t spend any of that but then I remembered Mrs. Worthington’s five-dollar bill in my back pocket. I pulled it out and handed it to Mam. She took off down the alley with the door to Ara T’s shed lying flat on the ground and the yellow light still shining. My mother always liked to say that Mam would walk barefoot across burning coals to turn off a light.

We turned on Bellevue and walked the one block to Peabody and past the paper drop where I had folded newspapers all month. I thought about how all the paperboys would be at the drop the next afternoon handling their papers and cutting up with Rat and asking him about his month at the farm. The paper drop was empty. If I had been by myself just seeing that spot would have given me the lonelies but Mam and I were headed for some business with Ara T. Walking faster and faster.

We crossed Peabody to a bus stop where Mam usually would hum a church song while we waited. She stepped back and forth on the curb trying to spot a bus.

Where we s-s-s-s-going?

I knew most of the answer but it seemed like I needed to ask the question anyway.

You know Ara took your money and your things and I’m going to get ’em back. Right quick like.

I had never heard her call Ara T just by his first name.

My first thinking was to say not to worry about the money and that my father would just fill the desk drawer again with change from his pocket but thinking about Ara T with my Ryne Duren card and the photograph of me and Mam at the zoo and especially Mr. Spiro’s words written on the three pieces of a dollar bill stirred me up on the inside.

The bus was empty when we stepped on. Mam handed the driver the five-dollar bill and then she gave me the change to put in
my pocket and sat us down on the first seat on the side opposite the driver. He gave her a look but Mam spoke before he could say anything.

Do this car cross Lauderdale?

The bus driver said it did.

Mam stared straight out the front window of the bus with her two hands holding the top of her black handbag like somebody might try to yank it away. Mam had been in her white uniform all day. Had cooked breakfast and lunch in it and walked to the store and back with groceries on this hundred-degree day and her uniform was still white and morning fresh.

The one thing Mam did on the bus that surprised me was to open her handbag and take a pinch from a bottle of Garrett’s with her thumb and finger and put it in her lower lip.

Mam had never taken a dip of snuff in front of me.

Where did your yellow-handle knife come from?

s-s-s-s-Don’t know. s-s-s-s-Just always had it.

You’ll have it again, Little Man, and all your other stuff. Don’t you be worrying.

Mam stood up a full block before we got to Lauderdale and pressed against the front doors of the bus instead of pulling the overhead cord and going out the back like we usually did.

She held my hand waiting for the bus door to hiss and fold open. Mam had not done that in a long time.

We walked down streets that were new to me. I read the signs. Lauderdale. Beale. Linden. Pontotoc. Vance.

I didn’t know Vance came downtown so far. The two-story houses on this part of Vance looked like they had been nice houses a long time ago but most of them had old cars parked in the dirt yards and sofas and chairs with the stuffing coming out lined up on the front porches. Men were sitting on red Coca-Cola cases turned on their ends and women were fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard. Everybody was laughing and talking loud and looking like they
were having a good time. The people in my neighborhood would all have been in their houses at that time of night with the attic fans blowing but everybody in this part of Memphis was outside and stirring.

We came to a store with a glass front that was bright on the inside and full of whiskey bottles. The rows of bottles looked like books lined up on library shelves.

We kept walking down Vance with Mam stopping to pop her head in the small stores and places with music playing.

More Juke Joints ’round here than the law should allow.

What’s a s-s-s-s-Juke … s-s-s-s-Joint?

Where the choirs of the devil sing.

Some of the signs on the stores were lettered in a bad hand with the words misspelled. When we got to the corner of Vance and Orleans Mam made sure I knew her rules in this part of town.

No matter what, Little Man, you stay close. If I tell you something, there won’t be any disobeying. You hear me?

I nodded. Double.

Mam turned the corner at Orleans and started walking back toward Union Avenue. She stopped dead still at the first alley we came to. In the back of a small red building were a bunch of junkmen’s pushcarts with their handles sticking out. Mam tightened down on my hand as we walked down the alley toward the red building.

A bare lightbulb over the top of the back door of the building lit up the jumble of old carts full of the usual junkman’s junk. Mam shoved one cart out of the way to get a better look at one in the middle. No mistaking. It was Ara T’s cart with its tarp and plastic doll head and all the shiny foolishness tacked on it.

Mam stood straight with her hands on her hips looking at the other carts and sizing up the red building. I could tell that she was making a plan. Before Mam did anything big at home like taking the rugs out to beat them or waxing the wood floors she would always stand with her hands on her hips to come up with how she wanted to go about things. When she was finished making her plan she would start in on her work and never miss a beat until the work was finished.

Mam squeezed my hand tighter when she moved closer to the back door of the building. She cupped her left hand to her ear and leaned against the door. The alley was quiet so it was easy to hear the music inside the house. It sounded like a woman singing but then the song ended and another one started up and I could tell then it was just a record playing. People were talking and laughing inside and bottles and glasses were clinking together.

Mam moved back closer to Ara T’s cart and pulled up the old tarp.

Listen to me strict now. Take my pocketbook and crawl up under here. Don’t you peep out for nothin’ or nobody.

Climbing up in Ara T’s smelly old cart was not something I wanted to do but I knew I didn’t have a choice if Mam had her plan worked
out. I stepped up on the handle and then slipped under the tarp. Mam covered me.

Be back directly, Little Man.

She patted my head like she always patted my foot when she left my room at night.

I couldn’t tell if Mam had been gone for five seconds or five minutes. I hadn’t moved a muscle under the tarp because I was listening hard and could hear only car horns honking and a few sirens every now and then.

The heavy canvas and the cart smelled as bad as Ara T did and without getting any of the little breeze from the alley it was getting harder to take a full breath. I counted to ten in my head saying Mississippi after each number.

I know that’s not how you type numbers but that’s how I see them in my head because I can’t separate the numbers and the words. I counted to ten again. And again.

I was sweating and having trouble getting my breath. I couldn’t stay under the tarp any longer. It was time to get out and go see about Mam. She would just have to be upset with me because staying in that cart was making me sick to my stomach. I needed air even if it was the sticky summer Memphis kind.

I saw by the light of the single bulb on the building that I had been lying on Rat’s two canvas newspaper bags I had left in the alley near Ara T’s shed. I thought about Rat who would be coming home the next day and then I thought about Mr. Spiro and his merchant marines and how much I would like to have both Rat and Mr. Spiro and all his marines with me now. But they felt a gazillion miles away.