The Day of Small Things (31 page)

“Now this is where you come in. You walk past me and I hand the wallet off to you. You drop it inside your pants.”

A thought seemed to occur to Pook. “You wearing briefs, Good Boy? Or them faggot-ass boxers?”

For a moment Calven couldn’t make his mouth work, than he managed to croak a reply. “I got briefs on. That’s the only kind of underpants I have.” The dead cellphone at his crotch seemed at least the size of a football and he had to force himself not to look down.
I got to hide that thing somewheres and do it soon
.

Pook nodded in approval. “Okay, one less thing to worry about. Now, while your mama is still doing her act, most likely the mark won’t notice nothing for a while. You go this way, I go that way, and when your mama gets done, she limps off—remember, she’s supposed to have a bum ankle—she goes in another direction, blowing kisses back at the mark. Hell, sometimes the mark’ll try to follow her and make a date but that’s when she starts going on about the big ol’ jealous boyfriend that she’s on her way to meet.
That kind of talk usually cools ’em down right quick. Meanwhile, you and me is going to the different places that we’ve set and Darrell comes and picks us up. We get down out of sight and then he picks up Prin—the big ol’ jealous boyfriend, just like she said, in case the mark is watching. Slicker ’n owl shit—if everyone does their part. You reckon you can handle pickup, Good Boy?”

Without waiting for an answer, Pook moved to the small table that divided the living area from the kitchen and began to paw through the plastic grocery bags heaped in its center along with the heavy flashlight Darrell had carried the night before.

“Where’s the peanut butter Nabs? I know we bought some of them. I can’t eat those stinking toaster tarts or whatever the hell they are.”

Calven shivered at the cold menace in Pook’s voice and watched as Darrell began to sidle uneasily toward the front door. Pook’s shaven head jerked around. “Did
you
eat my fucking Nabs, you greedy son of a bitch?”

The big man hung his head but didn’t speak. Three quick steps and Pook was at his side, the long tube of the flashlight in his upraised hand. Without pausing, Pook swung the flashlight, burying the metal butt in Darrell’s belly. The big man doubled up with a single gasp and then was silent.

Turning back to the table and pulling a bottle of Pepsi from one of the bags, Pook spoke again in a quiet, conversational tone. “Now take the van and go get me some more peanut butter Nabs. You know I don’t eat no sweet shit.”

Without speaking, Darrell hurried out the door, still crouched and clasping his stomach. There was the sound of dry retching, then of the van door slamming and the vehicle starting up and pulling away.

Pook twisted off the bottle cap and took a long pull of the drink, swallowing almost half the contents before stopping for a breath. Then he dropped onto the sofa beside Calven and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

“Want one, Good Boy?”

Calven looked at the pack in Pook’s outstretched hand. “No thanks … wouldn’t care for none … not now. But I was wondering …”

Calven frowned and studied his feet.
I got to do this right. Make him think I’m not scared of him
. “That thing you did—the way you pulled the pocket up—it wouldn’t work if the guy was wearing jeans.”

“The boy’s paying attention—reckon he’s as smart as you said he was, Prin.”

Calven jerked his head up to see his mother sidling out of the door across the room. She looked pale and sick—one eye was swollen and bruised and there was a round red mark on the side of her neck. She made her shaky way to the table and grabbed a bottle of Pepsi, then shuffled back to the bedroom, glancing once toward Calven but not meeting his eyes.

“The princess ain’t quite ready to be sociable, I reckon. You and me’ll just have to pass the time someways.”

The blank black gaze turned on him again, looking him up and down, and Calven had to fight to suppress the shiver that was threatening to sweep over him.

“How old did Prin tell me you was?”

“Fourteen … almost.” Calven had to force the words out. There was something in the pale man’s face … in the tone of his voice … a hunger, a
need
, that made this simple question terrifying.

“Fourteen …” Pook nodded, speaking low and to himself. “… a long lifetime of years ahead. That’s good … very good.”

He seemed to consider an idea that was forming, to weigh it, and then, somewhat reluctantly, to put it aside. He leaned back on the dusty cushions and lit a cigarette.

“You was asking about jeans. Now, I can snake a wallet outta a pair of tight Levi’s as pretty as you ever saw. But what we’re after is cash and credit cards. Reckon who’s likely to have the most cash and the biggest credit line—a fella in jeans or a dude in high-class trou?”

Pook blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling.

Act like you want to do this. Like you think this is cool
. Calven leaned back, in imitation of his mentor, and yawned. “Yeah, I see what you mean. So that’s what you come and got me for, to work with you uns. I can do that pickup stuff, no problem.”

The colorless face was turned toward him, nodding slightly in what looked like approval.

“Maybe I will take one of them smokes now.” Calven stuck out his hand. “And then whyn’t you show me how to do that trick with the pocket? I bet you
I
could do that.”

(Birdie)

I
got to wondering about witches because of something Aunt Belvy said in her prophecy, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”

Dorothy is pacing about my living room, looking at my pictures and fiddling with my doodads on their little bracket shelf. Every few minutes she goes and looks out the door like she was expecting someone to drive up. She says she has gotten too fidgety to sit home and wait for Calven to call again, so she has brought her new cellphone over and is spending the day with me. She also says she wants to help me with some cleaning but all that she is doing is worrying the life out of me.

Now she is looking out the window that faces the road. “That’s from the Bible, those words about not suffering witches, isn’t that so?”

“Why, yes, I believe it is,” I tell her, and look at the Bible there on the table by my recliner, knowing I could name chapter and verse, since I’d read it over and over
during the past few days. Seeking understanding, as you might say, but getting none.

The sound is turned low on the TV but I can see from their faces that Ashley is right upset with Brent—probably along of him stepping out with her best friend. She has just slapped him across that good-looking face of his and he has caught hold of her wrists and begun to kiss her but Dorothy don’t seem to notice and goes right on jabbering.

“Now, the old folks always used to talk of witchy women,” says she, running her finger along the slats of the venetian blinds to see if they need dusting, “but never like there was anything wrong with them. My mamaw—Uncle Luther’s own mama—had charms to get shed of warts. Why, she even
called
it ‘witching the warts.’ ”

Dorothy ain’t going to leave off, I can see that. And now there’s a commercial coming on anyways, so I mash the button to cut the sound all the way down.

“Well, everyone knows about water witches,” I say, “the kind that can show you where to drill a well. And the thrash doctors what blows in a baby’s mouth to cure the thrush and the folks who can take the fire out of a burn. But—”

Dorothy waves her hand like she is shooing flies. “I reckon those are all good witches. Or maybe not even witches at all. But what about the bad ones—the kind that Bible verse means? What about those? Have you ever heard of a kind of witch called the Raven Mocker?”

Though the day is unseasonable warm, the sound of that evil name sends a chill over me. I start to turn the TV back up, hoping not to hear more, but Dorothy has got a bug in her bonnet and just keeps going.

“I never had heard of any such, but last week Calven brought a book home from school that he has to do a
book report on. He always struggles so with those reports and I’ve taken to reading the books myself so as to be able to help the child
and
to make sure he gets all the way through … otherwise he’ll try to make do with reading just the first and the last chapters.”

Dorothy leaves off messing with the window blinds and goes and sets on the sofa facing me, I reckon so’s she can quiz me all the better. For the first time I see how tired and wrung out she looks. Her eyes is all red like she ain’t been sleeping and, even setting down, she can’t stop fidgeting while she talks.

“This book is all about the Cherokee Indians and their stories and what all they believed. Some of the tales is really nice and have a good little lesson at the end, almost like a Sunday school piece—but there’s this one about these Raven Mockers …”

She trails off and don’t say no more but just sets looking off into space. I don’t want to talk about them old Cherokee witches, not with Dorothy nor anyone else, and I mash the button to turn up the sound on the TV.

I am just in time to hear Ashley tell Brent that her best friend is carrying Brent’s baby. I can see that this is a surprise to him and he don’t want to believe it, but then, at the same time, that he reckons it
could
be so. Huh! That so-called best friend is nothing but a common huzzy and, if it was me, I wouldn’t give her air in a jug. And Brent ain’t never—

“Birdie?”

“What is it, Dor’thy?” I cut the sound plumb off and set up in the recliner. I can see I’m going to have to give some kind of answer to all these questions.

“Do you know about the Raven Mockers?” she asks. “Great awful old things like evil birds …”

She looks as pale and frightened as she did back at the Tennessee church and she is doing her hands like she was washing them, rubbing them over and over without seeming to notice.

“Birdie.” Her voice is low and trembly-like. “Birdie, I keep having these dreams … And every night I dream that it isn’t Prin what’s got Calven, but one of them Raven Mockers like in the book.”

On the TV screen, the people in my story all of a sudden look like paper dolls moving around and I wonder why I have spent so much time worrying about their sorry doings. I point the remote control at them and watch them disappear.

“Dor’thy,” I say, “let’s us step outside into the sunlight. If we have to talk of such things, the daylight is the place to do it.”

“The first night after Prin took Calven away, I had the dream … that there was this
thing …
well, you know how it is in dreams … I couldn’t rightly say if it was man, woman, or a great huge bird. But it had big black wings … and it made a horrible laughing sound.…”

We have pulled our chairs to the sunny end of the porch, and though it is warm aplenty, Dorothy’s words strike a chill to my bones. But I know I must hear her story and so I have brought her out into the open, where the winds can blow away the ugly words and the sun can burn off the cold dark evil.

“And in the dream, Calven is laying there and I can’t tell is he dead or asleep. And this great Rav—”

“Hush, Dor’thy,” I say, “there ain’t no need to speak that name. I know what you’re talking of.”

She cuts her eyes over at me. “I had thought that you might. I heard Uncle Luther telling Mommy, oh, many and many a year ago, that you had learned a lot of Injun ways from your granny … and that he didn’t reckon they squared with scripture.”

I had figured as much. Once I made my promise to Luther, him and me never spoke of the past no more. And I know that I never spoke of it to ary soul. But from things folks in his family let slip now and again over the years, I was right sure he had told at least part of my story to some of them. And Dorothy’s mother was the sister he was fondest of.