Pay It Forward (3 page)

Bonnie nodded slowly.

“Hear them trees?” Arlene said.

“What about ’em?”

“They been singing to me at night. So clear and plain I can’t get no sleep anymore. Ricky songs. Can’t you hear that? I swear, before that damn truck come home they never sang those songs. They sang something, I guess. But not that.”

“That’s just the wind, girl.”

“To you, maybe.”

Bonnie tucked her into bed. “I’ll come back to check on you in the morning.”

“Oh, I’ll be right here.”

And Bonnie left her alone with all that singing.

She got up after a time. Let herself into Trevor’s room. Sat on
the edge of his bed and brushed all that curly black hair off of his forehead.

“You okay, Momma?” He had not been awake, but came up into those words like he’d been filling a place in his sleep all concerned with her welfare.

“You’re the one good thing I ever did.” She said this to him a lot.

“Aw, Mom.” He always said this same thing back.

When she left him, his eyes were still open. Like maybe he heard it, too.

S
ometimes I think my father never went to Vietnam. I don’t even know why I think that. I just do.

Joe’s father went to Vietnam, and he tells stories. And you can tell, just by the stories, that he really did go.

I think my father maybe just says things sometimes that he thinks will make people proud of him or feel sorry for him.

My mom feels sorry for him because he went to Vietnam. She says no wonder he has problems. So I don’t tell her that I think maybe he never did.

Mr. St. Clair is so cool. I don’t care what Arnie says. I think he’s great, and I’m gonna do such a great job on that assignment Mr. St. Clair won’t even be able to believe it.

H
e spent the night in a Dumpster behind the auto parts store, not two blocks from the place he planned to be at 9
A.M.
Even in his sleep there was hopefulness. Something he’d been missing for a while.

But when he woke, the whole thing seemed too much like a job interview for his taste. The prospect of it made his stomach feel weird. Like he knew in some part of himself how it would be. Just like so many other things. Just around the corner, just beyond his fingertips. A line that cuts off one or two people ahead of him.

And when he’d first read it, it had made him feel so good. So he read it again.

It was in his shirt pocket, folded. The newsprint smeared by the sweat of his hands. Rumpled. But he could read it just the same.

FREE MONEY AND OTHER HELP FOR SOMEONE DOWN ON LUCK. COME TO CORNER TRAFFIC WAY AND EL CAMINO REAL. SATURDAY MORNING
9:00.

He couldn’t get the feeling back, though.

He used to have it all the time, the feeling that whatever-is-up-there—“whatever” because words like “God” made him edgy—
was looking right at him when something was said. Or as in this case, read. And maybe because he didn’t feel it anymore, maybe that’s why he’d come to this, why he’d sunk so low.

When the sky and what’s in it don’t know you exist, then what’s left to you? Just this damn world, the part of it right under your nose, with no more promise or meaning than what you see. What you do with your day.

And he did almost nothing anymore, except the repetition of the same necessary steps. Get his hands on some money, spend it all in one place.

He couldn’t get that meaning back. Now he read that little ad and knew that lots of others probably had read it, too. That he would be standing in a long line.

But he set off just the same.

He looked in the window of the parts store, saw it was only seven-thirty. But he went to wait at that corner anyway, as if a real line would form and he could secure an early place.

But before he even got to the corner, he saw he was late. Later than he thought. There were seventeen people already there. So, with an irksome feeling of competition chewing at his gut like little mouse teeth, he stood with them. Nobody met anybody else’s eye.

It gets so damned cold in Atascadero.
That’s what he kept thinking.
This is supposed to be California, right? Sunny California.
During the day maybe, but here at night it could be thirty degrees. Some of these people had gloves. But he did not. So he rubbed his hands together to keep warm. And busy.

They were almost all men, he noticed, waiting; the one exception was a woman with no front teeth. Some looked better than he did, some worse. He had that thought, then doubted it. Doubted his own perception of how he looked. It had been a while since he’d looked in a mirror.

And then it hit him.

I’m looking in a mirror right now.

So he saw himself clearly for maybe the first time since everything went south, and sour. Saw his own image in the company he kept. These were his peers. It made him want to leave, and he almost did. But three more guys showed up and he decided he had just as much right to free money as they did.

H
E DIDN’T KNOW IF IT WAS NINE O’CLOCK YET,
but it seemed like it must be. Forty-eight people were gathered on the corner, not counting himself.

A boy twelve, thirteen years old rode up on a bike, an old beach cruiser. Jerry was surprised that there weren’t more kids waiting, because kids like free money. Along with everybody else. But the kid didn’t act like he’d come to wait.

The kid looked at the crowd. The crowd looked at him. Maybe because he was the only one so far who didn’t keep his eyes down on the pavement. The kid’s eyes scanned around like he was counting. His forehead all furrowed down into a frown. Then he said, “Holy cow. Are you all here for the ad?”

He said it in a kind of official way, and some heads came up. Listening to him, sort of. Thinking he might know something. And some others got defensive, and you could almost smell it. Like who was this little punk, anyway, to address them?

A few people nodded.

“Holy cow.” He said it again. Shook his head. “I only wanted one guy.”

Then this big bald guy walked up. Said, “You did that ad?”

Jerry knew this big guy. Not knew him, but knew enough to keep away. A high-profile bum around town. Made a lot of waves.

But the kid didn’t know to lie low around the big bum, so he said, “Yeah, I did.”

Big bum said, “Well, that’s it, then.” And almost everybody left, following him like he was the messiah or something. Whether he
meant he thought there was no money, or wouldn’t take it from a kid, Jerry didn’t know. Didn’t know if the guys leaving did, either. Just went where they were told to go. Elsewhere.

Jerry could hear them grumbling as they pushed by. But he was not leaving, not jumping to any conclusions. Most of the grumblings added up to something like, “Shoulda knowed it was all a gag.” That or, “Real funny, kid.”

The kid just stood there awhile. Kind of relieved, Jerry thought, because now there were only ten or eleven left. A little more manageable crowd.

Jerry walked up to the kid. Nice. Humble, not like to scare him. “So,
is
it a joke?”

“No, it’s for real. I got a paper route, and I make thirty-five dollars a week, and I want to give it to somebody. Who’ll, like, get a job and not need it after a while. Just to get ’em started, you know? Like food and something better to wear, and some bus fare. Or whatever.”

And somebody behind Jerry, some voice over his shoulder, said, “Yeah, but which somebody?”

Yeah. That was the problem.

The kid thought this over for a bit. Then he said he had some paper in his book bag, and he asked everybody to write out why they thought it should be them.

And when he said that, six people left.

Kid said, “I wonder what happened to them.”

And the lady with no front teeth, she said, “What makes you think everybody can write?”

It was clear from the look on the kid’s face that he never would have thought of that.

Why I think I deserve the money, by Jerry Busconi

When Jerry looked up, everybody else except the kid had gone.

I
t was not even seven o’clock, and therefore a scandalous hour of the morning, especially when a damned Ford extra cab had kept you awake half the night. Someone was shaking her shoulder, and without being exactly conscious, she knew by instinct that it was her boy.

“Momma? Are you awake?”

“Yeah.”

“Can Jerry come in and take a shower?”

She blinked and squinted at the clock. She had another half an hour to sleep. Nothing should have been happening now. A dream maybe, but that’s it. “Who’s Jerry?”

“My friend.”

She hadn’t known Trevor to have any friends named Jerry, and now she had forgotten the original request.

“Use your own judgment. I’ll be up in a half hour.”

She folded a pillow around her head, and that was the last thing she remembered until the alarm clock went off and she threw the pillow at it. She was not mad at the alarm, she was mad at the damn truck and at Ricky, but one had suffered enough abuse as it stood, and the other was not around.

A few minutes later, as she set a bowl of hot cereal in front of the boy, a total stranger popped out of the hall and into the kitchen. She was all set to scream but felt too embarrassed to follow through, maybe because, out of the three of them, she was the only one who seemed the least bit surprised.

She figured the man to be in his forties, at least, short, clean shaven, with a receding hairline, and he was wearing brand-new blue jeans and a stiff-looking denim shirt.

“Who the hell are you?”

He didn’t answer fast enough, so Trevor said, “It’s Jerry, Mom. Remember you said he could come in and take a shower?”

“I said that?”

“Yeah.”

“When did I say that?”

“Right before you woke up.”

Meanwhile Jerry had said nothing in his own defense or otherwise, but apparently was a smart enough man to know when and where he was not wanted, because he began to creep sideways toward the door. “Thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said with his hand on the knob, and Trevor asked him, of all the damned things for a kid to say, if he needed money for the bus. The man held out a handful of change. Held it out like war medals or rubies, something a damn sight more important than quarters and dimes, that’s for sure. “I saved it, see? From my clothes money.”

And Trevor said, “I hope you get the job.” And then after the door had closed behind him, Trevor looked up at Arlene like nothing at all had just transpired and said, “You know your mouth’s hanging open?”

But when he saw the look on her face he hunkered down over his hot cereal and concentrated on stirring in the sugar.

“Trevor, who the hell was that?”

“I told you. Jerry.”

“Who the hell is Jerry?”

“My friend.”

“I did not say he could come in here and take no shower.”

“Yeah, you did. You said I should use my own judgment.”

She had no memory of saying this, but it rang true, in that it was what she would have said if she was really just trying to stay asleep. Unless the boy was smart enough to know that’s what she would have said, and proceeded with his story from there. But it was too early in the morning to sort between things that happened and those that allegedly did, so she said only this: “If your judgment is to let a strange man into our bathroom to shower, then I do believe your judgment needs a tune-up.”

He tried to argue again that the man was not a stranger, but rather his friend Jerry, but Arlene was not having any of it. She told him only to eat up and get on to school, and that she did not want to see Jerry in the house anymore, ever, not under any circumstances, not even if hell froze over, no way, José.

The minute Trevor was out the door she regretted having forgotten to ask why he offered Jerry money for the bus.

She went straight to the bathroom, which the man had left surprisingly neat, and commenced to sterilize every exposed surface.

M
AYBE THREE DAYS LATER,
maybe four, Arlene arrived home after working at the Laser Lounge until 3
A.M.
to discover someone in the driveway tinkering with a light on the wrecked truck. And the fact that she pulled up in front of her own house did not seem to dissuade him from his work.

She had been afraid of this, being gone as much as she was. Every time someone came to see the truck and then drove away without buying something, she was half afraid they would come back in the night and take what they wanted. And now look.

She slipped into the house and into her bedroom closet, where Ricky’s twelve-gauge shotgun sat on the shelf, right where he’d
left it. In a locked case, because boys are curious. It had always given her a good feeling, it being there, not so much because she expected to use it but because she firmly believed Ricky would have taken it were he not planning a return trip. She pulled it out from its case, wrapped in a big old towel as Ricky always kept it, and when the towel fell away, the moonlight from the window turned the black gunmetal a beautiful deep blue. It smelled of gun oil and reminded her of Ricky, of watching him cleaning it in front of the TV at night.

She loaded the breech with three rounds of less-than-lethal bird shot, and with a big, deep breath kicked the back door open directly onto the driveway, where the man crouched, working by the light of a metal lamp clipped onto the bumper. And plugged in somewhere in her own garage. Which made her madder, somehow—that some low-life sneak thief would use her electricity to see better while robbing her blind.

He jumped up and turned to face her in the dark, and she finally got to do it, and it felt as good as she thought it would, cocking the weapon with that big, powerful
shuck-shuck
sound, and the reaction of fear that sound was bound to produce.

Talking about that sound, Ricky told her once, “You seen them cartoons where a guy runs right through a wall and leaves a hole just his shape in the wall behind him? Well, that could happen.”

Only this man held his ground. “Please don’t shoot, ma’am. It’s only me.”

“Only you who?”

“Jerry.”

Oh, damn it all to hell.
“What the hell you takin’ off my truck?” she said without lowering the shotgun.

“Everything, ma’am. I been stacking parts in the garage. Trevor told me you were parting out. You can get a lot more money that way. Did you know that? You got to give a price break if the people has to pull them parts on their own.”

“So you’re just trying to help out,” she said, in tone that made it clear she didn’t think so.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“At three o’clock in the morning.”

“Yes, ma’am. I got me a job now during the day, at the Quicky Lube & Tune a few miles down on the Camino. So if I’m going to help out, it’s got to be at night.”

She couldn’t see his face as well as she’d have liked, dark as it was, but his voice sounded pretty matter-of-fact, and the whole incident was beginning to get under her skin. Lowering the shotgun, picking up his little work light, she walked to the garage to see for herself. He had parts stacked all neat in there, with a door and a bumper and seats. And he had things labeled with something like a grease pencil:
Driver’s Side. Front. Rear.

She stepped out again and shone the light straight at him. He threw a hand up to shield his eyes.

“Did I ask you to help?”

“No, ma’am. But it’s something I’m good at. I used to work at a wrecking yard. And the boy’s helped me out a lot.”

“Trevor been giving you money?”

“Yes, ma’am. Just to help me get on my feet. You know, to get cleaned up enough to get a job again. Like that.”

“And now you got a job, you gonna pay him that money back?”

“No, ma’am. I’m not allowed to. I have to pay it forward.”

“‘Pay it forward’? What the hell does that mean?”

He seemed surprised that she was not familiar with the term. And meanwhile it had become something like a normal conversation, with Arlene not entirely having the upper hand, and the fact that she couldn’t get mad at him pissed her off but good.

“You don’t know about that? You oughta talk to him. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you about it. Something he’s working on for social studies class. He could explain it better, though. You know, if you got ten bucks to rent a hoist, I’ll pull that engine and put it up on blocks and tarp it. Save you a bundle.”

“No offense to you personally, but I told Trevor I did not want you around the house.”

“I thought you told him you didn’t want me
in
the house.”

“What the hell’s the difference?”

“Well. The difference is, one way I’m in the house. And the other way I’m out of it.”

“Excuse me. I think I better go have a talk with my boy.”

But Trevor was so sleepy all he could say was, “Hi, Momma,” and, “Is everything okay?” and when she told him Jerry was out in the driveway taking the truck apart he said, “That’s good.”

And she couldn’t be upset with him. He was just like his father in that respect.

B
ECAUSE IT IS ALWAYS SO MUCH EASIER
to blow off steam to a stranger, she went down to Trevor’s school to have a talk with this Mr. St. Clair. She went to the office first thing, before class started in the morning, hoping she would not even run into Trevor and that he would never have to know she’d been there. The office lady told her to go right up.

She got halfway through the door into his classroom, stopped, and misplaced all that good steam she had built up.

First of all—though it wasn’t the most important part—he was black. She did not feel so very different about black people—it wasn’t that. It was more that she tried so hard to bend over backward to show she wasn’t like that. After a while it became hard to act natural. So she would try harder. And there you have a losing battle if ever there was one. Trying hard to act natural. That can have you chasing your tail until long after the sun goes down.

So, right off the bat it made him hard to yell at. He might think she fancied herself better than him, where really it was more that it was her boy, and also her tax dollars paying his salary. Any teacher’s salary, that is.

So he looked up, and she still had nothing to say. Nothing. One hundred percent card-carrying speechless. And not mostly over any racial issues, either, but more because she had never seen a man with only half a face. It’s one of those things. Takes a minute to adjust to. And she knew if she took even one minute more he would notice that she had noticed his unfortunate scarring, which would be just plain rude. This whole scene had all gone very smoothly in her mind on the way to school, where she had been angry, articulate, and really quite good.

She moved through the room toward his desk, feeling small, feeling like twenty-five years ago, when these desks were too big to fit her. And he was still waiting for something to be said.

“What’s ‘Paying Forward?’”

“Excuse me?”

“That expression. ‘Paying Forward.’ What does it mean?”

“I give up. What does it mean?” He seemed mildly curious toward her, slightly amused, and as a result, miles above her, making her feel small and ignorant. He was a big man, and not only in physical stature, although that too.

“That’s what you are supposed to tell me.”

“I would love to, madam, if I knew. If you don’t mind my asking, who are you?”

“Oh, did I forget to say that? Excuse me. Arlene McKinney.” She reached her hand out and he shook it. Trying not to look at his face, she noticed that his left arm was deformed somehow, the wrong size, which gave her the shivers for just a second. “My boy is in your social studies class. Trevor.”

Something came onto his face then, a positive recognition, which, being connected in some way to her boy, made her like this man better. “Trevor, yes. I like Trevor. I particularly like him. Very honest and direct.”

Arlene tried for a little sarcastic laugh, but it came out a snort, a pig sound, and she could feel her face turn red because of it. “Yeah, he’s all of that, all right. Only, you say it like it’s a good thing.”

“It is, I think. Now, what’s this about Paying Forward? I’m supposed to know something about that?”

Actually, she’d been hoping for a laugh, a smile, something besides his businesslike manner; a bad sense was forming of Mr. St. Clair looking down his nose at her in some way she could never entirely prove. “It has something to do with an assignment you gave out. That’s what Trevor said. He said it was a project for your social studies class.”

“Ah, yes. The Assignment.” He moved to the blackboard and she swung out of his way, as though there were a big wind around him that kept her from getting too close. “I’ll write it out for you, exactly as I did for the class. It’s very simple.” And he did.

THINK OF AN IDEA FOR WORLD CHANGE, AND PUT IT INTO ACTION.

He set his chalk down and turned back. “That’s all it is. This ‘Paying Forward’ must be Trevor’s own idea.”

“That’s all it is? That’s all?” Arlene could feel a pressure building around her ears, that clean, satisfying anger she’d come here to vent. “You just want them to change the world. That’s all. Well, I’m glad you didn’t give them anything hard.”

“Mrs. McKinney—”

“Miss McKinney. I am on my own. Now, you listen here. Trevor is twelve years old. And you want him to change the world. I never heard such bull.”

“First of all, it’s a voluntary assignment. For extra credit. If a student finds the idea overwhelming, he or she need not participate. Second of all, what I want is for the students to reexamine their role in the world and think of ways one person can make a difference. It’s a very healthy exercise.”

“So is climbing Mount Everest, but that might be too much for the poor little guy, too. Did you know Trevor has taken a bum under his wing and brought him into my house? This man could be a rapist or a child molester or an alcoholic.” She wanted to say more but was busy thinking that since she herself was an alco
holic, that might have been a bad example. “What do you suggest I do about the problems you’ve caused?”

“I suggest that you talk to him. Lay down the house rules. Tell him when his efforts on this project conflict with your safety and comfort. You do talk to him, don’t you?”