Paperboy (3 page)

I think I’ll start paying weekly. Easier for me to keep track of, sweetie.

s-s-s-s-Be happy to s-s-s-s-come by on s-s-s-s-Friday.

See you tomorrow then, sweetie.

I had gone from being yelled at to being called Sweetie all in the same week. The way she said Sweetie was nothing like how my mother said it. Mrs. Worthington seemed like a different lady the second time I saw her. A very pretty lady.

On the way home I started wishing that Mam’s fortune-teller man from Coldwater was around to throw some bones and tell me what Mrs. Worthington was all about and why I wanted so much to see her again.

My favorite place to read in the summer is outside on the covered brick patio in our backyard sitting on the Wicked Furniture.

Rat was at our house a couple of years ago when a truck delivered the new white furniture my parents had bought on a trip to New Orleans. My mother asked Rat if he liked our wicker furniture and Rat asked me later what made the furniture Wicked.

I spelled out for Rat the right way to say it but he said he liked Wicked better. I’ve called it Wicked ever since because it’s easier for me to say it that way. I get upset when other people use the wrong words since it’s so easy for most everybody to make any sound they want. I guess I should be mad at myself for substituting Wicked for Wicker but you can always count on me to take the easy way out when it comes to getting words out of my mouth.

I was trying to read a book about Babe Ruth that my father had brought me from his last trip out of town but I was having a hard time thinking about what was on the pages. The first night of collecting was only a few hours away. It was pushing down on me like a history test I hadn’t studied enough for. I didn’t know if I was going to have the guts to ring a doorbell and wait for somebody to come to the door and then make the hard
P
sound that started
paperboy
.

About that time a cart came jangling down the alley. It sounded like Ara T’s cart with all the bits and pieces of metal clanking on it. Ara T was a junkman who pushed his cart up and down the alleys and did odd jobs for white people. Ara T could whet a knife or a pair of scissors razor-sharp.

Just about any doodad that Ara T could find on the street that had a shine to it or made a noise ended up nailed on his pushcart that was made from pieces of scrap wood and old bicycle wheels. I unlatched the fence gate and went into the alley even though Mam had told me that she didn’t like me hanging around Ara T.

How do, Little Man?

Ara T probably had heard Mam call me that because he was all the time picking through cans behind our house. I pulled my knife from my front pocket and handed it to him.

s-s-s-s-Needs sharpening.

He took the knife and flicked open the blade and pushed up the sleeve of his old coat and dragged the knife across the curly hairs on his arm. Even in the middle of summer Ara T wore a heavy coat.
Mam always said she could smell Ara T coming before she heard him and if you couldn’t smell him and his stinking coat you could smell the Bugler tobacco that he made into cigarettes by licking thin pieces of paper he kept in the top pocket of his coat. The cigarettes in his mouth always looked like they had been chewed on more than they had been smoked. He never bothered to take the cigarette out of his mouth like most grown-ups did so when he wanted to blow smoke he would just use the other side of his mouth and then keep puffing.

Sure do. This knife won’t do for hot butter.

He made a big show out of feeling around in his coat pockets.

My whetstone’s at my place but I can have your knife for you directly.

Ara T stood looking at me with my knife in his hand. He turned it over and over like he was studying both sides of the blade.

s-s-s-s-Don’t need it till s-s-s-s-tomorrow.

We stood staring at each other. Ara T ran his thumb back and forth across the blade.

I’s needin’ me some oil to whet with. Advance me some coin for a smite of a can.

I always had a bunch of money in the desk drawer in my room. When my father came home from his trips he would wink and ask me if the bank was open and then empty all the coins from his pocket into the drawer. He also gave me paper dollars when I swept leaves off the patio or cleaned the mud off his hunting boots. Rat’s father also paid me sometimes to untangle the rolls of chain and
rope at his hardware store. He said I was the best he had ever seen at untangling things. I liked doing it. At least if I couldn’t untangle my words I could get something else straightened out. I had never bothered counting the money but the drawer was getting heavy from all the coins in it.

I ran up to my room and got two quarters and came back out to the alley.

Little Man’s gonna be rollin’ in dough now with that paper route.

I smiled at him and nodded.

I wondered if Ara T had seen me throwing papers during the week. I didn’t remember seeing him. I handed him the two quarters. He tipped his dirty hat and put the quarters along with my knife in the front pocket of his pants that looked at least two sizes too big for him and were held up by the same kind of brown cord that wrapped the newspaper bundles.

Have it for you directly, Little Man.

I knew I would get a sharp knife back. Ara T showed Rat and me in the alley one time how he could cut a tin can into a ribbon with a knife he had sharpened. That can looked like the peel of an apple after he got through with it.

I watched Ara T push his cart on down the alley. He looked to the left and right in case there was something that caught his eye. He took the lids off garbage cans and poked around and checked all the bottles to see if anything was left in them.

Mam had told me I shouldn’t hang around Ara T because he sometimes got the fits but Rat and I had never seen him do anything but push his cart and pick up junk and do odd jobs. I liked all the colored junkmen who pushed their carts around our neighborhood because they minded their own business and just nodded at me when they passed and that meant I didn’t have to go to the trouble of trying to figure out how to say something.

I had decided to wear long pants instead of my regular shorts for the first Friday night of collecting. If I started stuttering when people answered the doorbell at least I would look more grown-up doing it with my legs covered.

I had planned my collecting route to go up Vinton across Bellevue to the smaller houses and then come back down Harbert toward my house. Mrs. Worthington’s house would be the last before I headed over to Rat’s to turn in the money to his mother. I was saving the best for last. I had been thinking more about seeing Mrs. Worthington again.

The first five houses on my list had their envelopes stuck in the screen door or clipped on the letterbox just like everything was supposed to work. The sixth house at 1219 Vinton was my first doorbell.

I had never before in my life walked up on a front porch to call a stranger to their door.

I heard the bell through the screen door when I pushed the button. The sound made my insides jump. I never liked to hear the doorbell ring at my house because it meant I might have to talk to somebody besides Mam and Rat.

A kid a little younger than me was sitting in the living room in front of a TV set so close that he could touch it. The sound was off. He didn’t move a muscle when the doorbell rang. A man in a tie and white shirt started toward the door with the newspaper in his hand and then stopped when he saw me.

I think it’s the paperboy, hon. Where’s his envelope?

A voice from the back of the house said she had forgotten how much it was and to ask me. The man walked to the screen door.

How much, son?

I knew exactly how much. Ninety-five cents. But the word
ninety
was just as tough for me to say as a
P
word because my tongue would hit the roof of my mouth and stick there without any sound coming out. I reached for Rat’s collection book and pencil trying to look like I was checking on something. I was thinking about saying Sixty cents because of the easy
S
sound on both words but I would be losing money if I did that. I also thought about rounding it off by saying One dollar but people could accuse me of cheating them out of a nickel.

I finally came up with something that I didn’t like to do much because people looked at me funny but sometimes the trick worked in school. I tossed my stubby pencil in the air with my right hand. The instant I flipped the pencil s-s-s-s-Ninety-five cents eased out of my
mouth. The only problem was that when I tossed something I usually got nervous and dropped whatever I was flipping. The pencil hit the concrete porch and the point broke.

The man opened the screen door.

Here’s a buck for you.

Mam had reminded me to take some coins with me from my desk drawer to make change. I reached in my pocket for a nickel and offered it to him.

Keep it, son.

He turned away and I watched him walk back into the dark of the house with only the light of the TV showing.

My first doorbell of the night had gone better than I had expected. I had gotten my first tip and I was feeling a little better about the collecting. The biggest problem was that I had broken the point off my pencil and I didn’t have my knife to sharpen it.

Walking the route in the afternoon and throwing the papers was nothing new to me but walking late in the day when the sun was going down was all different. The big trees blocked what little sun was left and the houses somehow seemed bigger. House lights were coming on everywhere and families were usually talking around the dinner table or watching TV. I eased up on each porch that was on my weekly collection list and hoped with all my heart that the owners had remembered to put their envelopes out.

I had reached the farthest point on the route. The next collection was at one of the small houses on Vance where the man with the funny name lived. Mr. Spiro.

Rat said Mr. Spiro was all the time stopping his paper for a month or two when he would go on trips. Rat also said that he was a nice enough old guy but that he used weird words when he talked. But he always had the exact change and most of the time was good for a small tip. Rat also said that Mr. Spiro would invite him to come in if the weather was cold or wet but Rat always told people it was against newspaper rules to go inside houses. I think that was just a polite way of saying no because Rat’s parents had made him promise that he would never go into anybody’s house on the route.

The front porch light was on even though it wasn’t all-the-way dark yet. I rang the bell and waited. I was counting on Mr. Spiro to have his ninety-five cents ready so I wouldn’t have to try to say those words again.

The wooden door with the small pane of glass at the top opened. Mr. Spiro wore glasses that dropped down on his nose and his head was bald except for a little gray hair around his ears that was cut short. He held two big books. One in each hand. His fingers were stuffed inside to mark his place.

Hello, Mr. Reliever. How are you this glorious summer eve?

s-s-s-s-Okay.

I think I have ninety-five percent of a US dollar right here for you. Just one moment.

Mr. Spiro used words in strange ways but it was easy enough to tell what he was talking about. He made what he said sound important like he was talking to a grown-up. I liked him double when I knew I wouldn’t have to try to say Ninety-five cents again.

He put his books down on a table near the door and was careful to keep them open to where his fingers had been marking his place. He counted out the coins and dropped them into my hand.

I thought I was home free at this address but then he asked me the one question I dreaded most in all the world. The question that always locked my neck like when a bigger kid on the playground gets you in a headlock.

He asked me my name.

Young man, before we complete our transaction I need to be apprised of your name. Young Arthur forgot to relay that important bit of information to me last week.

What Mr. Spiro couldn’t have known was that asking me to say my name out loud was like asking me to recite the Gettysburg Address. My history teacher had tried to make me do that but he finally let me write it out in longhand after it took me about half the class to get out Four Score and Seven Years Ago and with all the kids snickering at every word I tried to say.