The Paper Cowboy (12 page)

THE BOOKSHELVES

November 21 was my last Saturday at McKenzie's. It was another quiet day at the store. After I'd done everything Mr. McKenzie had asked me to do, and even organized all his tin cans too, Little Skinny and I ate stale Halloween candy and read the papers.

I kept thinking about Murrow and how he was trying to make things right. Maybe I didn't know how to save the store or fix my mom, but I guessed I could try to apologize to Little Skinny. He was sitting a few feet away from me, the comics held up in front of his face like a shield.

I cleared my throat. “So, uh, Little Skinny. I wanted to ask you something.”

He grunted. He sounded just like his dad.

“What's
The Adventures of Cowboy Sam
?”

“Nothing,” he answered, still hiding behind the comics.

“Is it a story?” I asked. “A western?”

“Maybe,” said Little Skinny.

“Like
The Lone Ranger
? Or
Kid Colt Outlaw
?”

“Yeah. Kind of like that.”

“Cool.” I'd never thought about someone writing those stories. They just appeared in comic books at the drugstore. “Can I read it?”

“No,” Little Skinny said, finally putting down the comics. “And why are you asking me all these questions?”

I was trying to apologize. But somehow the simple words
I'm sorry
just didn't want to come out.

“You might as well go home, Tommy,” Mr. McKenzie said, walking over to us. “Don't think I need you anymore.”

I knew this was going to be my last week. But I felt kind of sad. “Can I have a sandwich before I go?” I asked. “They're really good.”

Mr. McKenzie looked surprised. “Okay.”

Little Skinny shrugged. “I'm hungry.”

So we sat in the back room, with the root beers and the sandwiches. I chewed the thick bread carefully, savoring each bite. And I realized, if I wanted to be a cowboy, I had to do what I knew was right. I had to turn in the communist. Even if I liked her. Even if she went to jail. I had to come up with a plan to get Mrs. Glazov's copy of
Das Kapital
and save Mr. McKenzie's store.

So the next day, Sunday, after I had given Mrs. Glazov her reading lesson and we had practiced the accordion for a while, I stopped playing and said, “I'm going to build you some bookshelves.” I said it real casual, like I had just come up with the idea.

“You?” asked Mrs. Glazov doubtfully.

“Sure,” I said. I couldn't think too much about how I was going to trick her or I'd lose my nerve. “Bookshelves are easy. Mount some brackets on the wall, paint a few boards, you're done.”

Mrs. Glazov shook her head.

“Come on,” I coaxed. “Don't you have a few extra old planks out back?”

She shrugged, so we trekked out to look. Sure enough, there were three or four long boards there. “These'll do,” I said.

I worked all afternoon in our garage, cutting and sanding the boards with my father's tools. Dad and Mom knew their way around tools, so I'd never thought knowing how to cut and saw was anything special. But Mrs. Glazov watched, fascinated, as if I were performing a magical feat.

And the whole time, I felt awful. Because I was deceiving her, pretending to be helpful, pretending to be nice, when the whole point of the bookshelves was to give me a reason to get my hands on that book. I was going to steal it from her and turn her in to the police. I was going to send an old woman to jail!

At least she'd get a fair trial by a jury of her peers. Unlike when the Soviets arrested someone. They tortured them. Manufactured evidence. Just look what had happened to Cardinal Mindszenty! But had the United States done that too? Radulovich had lost his job because of rumors. And Mr. McKenzie—he had no customers because I'd played a stupid joke. Here I was, about to destroy Mrs. Glazov's whole life, and she'd only ever been kind to me. But the difference between Mrs. Glazov and Radulovich was that I knew she was a communist. I knew it was the right thing to do. Even if it felt so wrong.

The next day after school, Mrs. Glazov gave me a quarter and I rode my bike over to the army-surplus store. They only had one color of paint—olive green—so that was what I bought. Mrs. Glazov helped me paint the boards, putting on each coat carefully, and grinning like Eddie did when he was winning at marbles. “How I doing?” she asked.

“It's just paint,” I said, “you can't really do it wrong.”

“Your dad teach you all this?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“He handy.”

“Yeah, I guess he is.”

By the time the paint was dry, Mrs. Glazov was tired. I suggested she go take a nap while I finished things up. Her eyes drooped and she must not have been feeling well, because I hadn't really expected her to agree, but she went to the other room to lie down.

So it was almost too easy. I put up the brackets and boards on the long wall while she slept. Then I opened the box and arranged all the old books on the new shelves. They fit perfectly, with just enough room at one end to display the framed photo. The small red book,
Das Kapital,
I slipped under my shirt.

It burned like a hot coal against my chest.

Mrs. Glazov walked back into the room then, her white hair wild about her head. “Still here?” She paused and glanced at the wall. Then she smiled and sat down heavily on one of the chairs at the table. “Thank you, Tommy,” she said finally, wiping her eyes with a corner of the tablecloth. “It looks wonderful.”

It did. The light of her kerosene lamp glinted off the silver frame.

“The paint is kind of an ugly color of green,” I mumbled.

“It beautiful,” she said. “Color of grass along river at home.”

Before I left, she gave me a big bear hug. I was terrified she was going to feel the book under my shirt.

I walked down the street as slowly as possible. I had to turn her in. I knew that. I had to save Mr. McKenzie's store. But in the movies they never told you how awful it felt to betray someone who had trusted you. Even if they had done something wrong.

Officer Russo's house was two blocks away. I knocked on his door and waited, my heart beating like I was the one who had committed a crime.

“You need something?” The old lady next door poked her head out the window. “Officer Russo and his family went away for Thanksgiving.”

Truthfully, I was relieved to put it off a little longer. “No,” I said. “That's fine. I'll wait till they get back.”

At home, I hid the book in my closet and threw myself onto my bed. Boots snuck his head in under my arm. The whole situation made me feel sick. I wished Mary Lou were around. She'd know what to do. She'd been right after all. I should have burned the paper when I'd first brought it home.

THANKSGIVING

This was the first Thanksgiving since Busia's death. She and Mom used to argue a lot, always in Polish, so I didn't really know what they were saying, but I'd liked her. Busia used to carve birds out of bits of wood with an old penknife and give them to Mary Lou and me when she visited. She'd been doing it for years and her hands were scarred with fine cuts from when the knife slipped.

When I heard from Dad that Mary Lou would not be allowed to come home for Thanksgiving, I tiptoed into her room and picked out one of the wooden birds to bring her. Mary Lou cradled the tiny sparrow in her hands when I gave it to her at the hospital.

“Thanks, Tommy,” she murmured.

I shrugged, embarrassed, and we both stared at the bird as if we were waiting for it to take flight.

At home, Mom went into a frenzy of activity, washing all the curtains in the house. When she was done with that, she moved on to the tablecloths, spending hours ironing them until there wasn't a wrinkle to be seen. Pinky and I scrubbed the floor, vacuumed and dusted until the house gleamed. After the disaster of the card party, Mom was determined to make Thanksgiving perfect. I was just glad she wasn't lying around in bed anymore.

I put on a polka record, thinking it would make the housework more fun. Pinky and I started to dance around, laughing as we dusted.

“Shut it off,” Mom said. “It's giving me a headache.”

“But it's your favorite,” I said.

“Please. Turn it off.”

So I did.

The night before Thanksgiving, Mom started polishing the only silver we had—forks and knives and spoons in a mahogany box—just as I was going to bed. When I woke up in the morning to do the paper route, she was still at the dining room table, fast asleep. I tiptoed out, careful not to wake her. Two hours later, when I returned, I could hear the yelling as I walked my bike back into the garage. I stood still for a moment, but there was nowhere else to go.

I poked my head into the kitchen.

The turkey was in the sink, thawing. Pinky was at the table, a bowl of oatmeal in front of her, but she wasn't eating. Her eyes were wide. And Mom was crying and screaming at the same time. Something about potatoes.

“But I got them!” Dad pleaded desperately, holding up the bag.

“Those are the wrong kind!” Mom whined. “Busia always used the red ones. Red mashed potatoes are Mary Lou's favorite!” She'd slept in her clothes and her navy dress was wrinkled now, like an old lady's face.

“But the rest of us don't care,” exclaimed Dad. “And Mary Lou's not here!” The lines around his eyes looked deeper this morning.

“I just wanted one thing to work out!” Mom wailed. Her long black hair hung loose around her head, wild as if she were in a windstorm. She picked up a small pumpkin pie and threw it across the room. It smashed against the wall. Orange guts dripped down onto the floor.

The kitchen was suddenly silent.

“I have a migraine,” Mom said. “I'm going to bed.” She walked out of the room, as if she hadn't been screaming a moment before.

I could hear the ticking of the clock in the silence. Pinky picked up her spoon and took another bite of oatmeal. The scrape of the spoon against the bowl sounded abnormally loud. Dad took a sip of coffee and swallowed heavily. The cup clanked as he set it down on the counter.

“Tommy.” His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “Tommy, would you . . .” He gestured to the pumpkin mess in the corner.

I nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Because I need to go out for a little while.”

“But—”

Dad stopped. “What is it, Tommy?”

“Who's going to cook Thanksgiving dinner?”

“I'm sure your mother will calm down eventually.” Then he walked out the door.

Pinky and I looked at each other. She finished her oatmeal as I picked up the pieces of smushed pumpkin pie. Boots walked over and licked up the crumbs. Mom did not come out of her room. Susie started crying, so I got her up and changed her and gave her a bottle. The minutes ticked by. Dad did not come back. And I got more and more furious. How dare Dad run away and leave me with the problem of Thanksgiving!

“What are we going to eat, Tommy?” Pinky asked.

“There's plenty of bread and bologna,” I said.

“I want turkey,” Pinky whined.

Yeah. I did too.

“Come on,” I said. “We'll figure this out.”

I placed Susie's playpen in the living room and set it up where I could see her from the kitchen. Then I dragged a step stool over to the sink and Pinky climbed up to help me, scrubbing the dirt off the big white potatoes with her tiny hands. I filled a pot with water and put the potatoes on the stove to boil. There was a pile of green beans on the counter. “Snap off the ends,” I told Pinky. “I'll be right back.”

I went out the back door and looked at Mrs. Glazov's house. Before I could think about it too much, I walked over to her front door and knocked.

“Tommy!” she said, surprised. It was only then, seeing her face, that I realized how upset I must have looked. “What wrong?”

I shook my head. “Could you just come over for a minute?”

She nodded and pulled on a faded coat. It had finally gotten cold and together we walked the few steps across the frozen mud to our house.

Mrs. Glazov stepped into our kitchen and looked around. Pinky was struggling to snap the end off a rubbery green bean. Susie was chewing on a toy in her playpen. Boots was pacing the room like a guard. The turkey still sat in the sink. “Ahh,” she said. “Cooking emergency.” She smiled, taking off her coat and rolling up the sleeves on her shapeless flowered dress. “I help.”

So all afternoon, Mrs. Glazov, Pinky and I chopped and boiled and simmered and roasted. I think Mom had taken another one of those pills from Dr. Stanton, because she was passed out on the bed, snoring softly, when I went to check on her.

When Susie started fussing, Mrs. Glazov cooed, “Pretty baby!” at her and insisted that she be the one to give her the bottle. Susie gurgled happily.

By the time my dad walked back into the house, it was late in the afternoon. He smelled like alcohol again. “I stopped by the Sullivans',” he said. “Eddie says hi.” He paused in the dining room. Pinky and I had set the table with the polished silver.

Mrs. Glazov walked in, carrying the turkey. “Ahh, good. Mr. Wilson. You home.”

“Wh-wh-what's all this?” my dad sputtered.

“Turkey,” Mrs. Glazov said. “Time to eat.”

A slow grin spread across Dad's face, erasing the lines on his forehead.

Pinky and I went to wake Mom. I shook her shoulder gently. “Turkey's ready,” I said.

“What?” she mumbled.

“Mrs. Glazov helped Tommy and me make dinner!” Pinky exclaimed.

As I watched, I could see the emotions shift across Mom's face, like tumbleweed blowing across the desert, uncertain where it would land. For a moment, I thought she was going to start yelling again, but then she smiled. “Give me a minute to get dressed,” she said.

When Mom walked into the dining room five minutes later, she wore a clean, freshly ironed pink dress. Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail and her cheeks were rosy, as if she'd splashed them with cold water. Pinky and I sat in our places, Boots at my feet, waiting patiently for me to slip him a bite or two. Susie was in her highchair, Dad sat at the head of the table, and Mrs. Glazov took Mary Lou's seat.

I thought that would make me feel funny, but it was sort of comforting not to have to see the empty spot. Mom sat down in the chair at the foot of the table and folded her hands in her lap. Dad said grace and we started passing the food around.

Mrs. Glazov piled her plate high with turkey and mashed potatoes and green beans, then covered them all with gravy. She dug in like a cowboy who hadn't seen a chuck wagon in a week.

Pinky stared at her.

“What?” asked Mrs. Glazov.

“Mom says it's rude to chew with your mouth open,” Pinky said seriously.

I glanced at Mom, worried. Her face was screwed up liked she'd bitten into something sour. If Pinky started crying, it would ruin the mood and . . .

But before Mom could say a word, Mrs. Glazov laughed, her mouth still wide open. She covered her face with her hands and finished chewing. “Your mother's right,” she said finally. “It's just . . . I not see point in cooking for one. Usually eat tea and sandwiches. This good, so good!”

Everyone smiled then, even Mom, and the moment passed. Dad told a funny story about how when he was a boy he'd switched the jars of salt and sugar one Thanksgiving and the cherry pie had turned out as salty as a pretzel. “The look on my mom's face when she took the first bite was worth the spanking!”

Pinky laughed so hard, milk came out her nose. For a moment, she looked as scared as a jackrabbit that's spotted a coyote, but Mom just mopped her up with a napkin and poured her some more milk.

After dinner, we were all too full for pie, so Mom put Dick Contino's “Lady of Spain” on the record player and we pushed back the couch and danced. Mom and Dad polkaed smoothly together. I grabbed Pinky's hand and swung her in circles until she squealed. Mrs. Glazov watched and smiled. When the song was done, Mom put it on again, and Dad walked over to Mrs. Glazov and asked her to dance.

They made a funny pair, my tall, thin dad and the short, squat Russian lady, but they whirled across the floor just fine. Mrs. Glazov looked so happy, she reminded me of Mary Lou when the boy she liked had asked her to the fall social. That was back before, of course. She hadn't gotten to go.

I was still thinking about Mary Lou when Mom walked over to me. “Want to dance, Tommy?” she asked.

Maybe it was all the turkey, but for once I didn't feel angry at her. “Sure.”

We spun around in circles. The dizzier I got, the more I could make myself believe that we were just a normal family like everyone else.

When the pie was finally eaten and all the dishes were done, I walked Mrs. Glazov back to her house. “Thanks,” I said, “you really helped—”

Mrs. Glazov clasped my hand and held it between her two fleshy palms. “No, Tommy,” she said. “Thank you. I never celebrate this American Thanksgiving before. What I, lonely old woman, no more family, what I have to be thankful for?” She smiled. “But it pretty nice holiday after all.” She put her hand on her front door. “See you Sunday.”

As I watched her open the door, I got a lump in my throat. After saving Thanksgiving, I didn't think there was any way I could turn her in. Even if it meant letting a communist go free.

“Mrs. Glazov?”

“Yes?”

It was now or never. “Are you a communist?”

She didn't smile or frown as she tilted her head to look at me. “Why you ask that?”

“Because I found this,” I said, pulling out the small red book. “I took it when we were building the bookshelves.”

She held the book in her big hands, glancing once at the spine. “Ahh,” she said, “
Das Kapital.
”

“Are you a Soviet spy?” I blurted.

“No. I raised communist. That true. But I believe that no more.”

“Then why do you have that book?”

“Book was gift from favorite teacher. It reminds me of him.”

“Was he a communist?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should get rid of it!”

“Why? Because he thinks differently?”

I didn't know what to say.

“Tommy, this book only full of ideas. Some good. Some bad.”

“But isn't it in German?” An even worse thought occurred to me. “Are you a Nazi?”

Mrs. Glazov laughed now. “No, Tommy. In Russia, I educated woman. Music teacher. Taught at the university.” She shrugged. “Here, I poor old woman who sells vegetables.”

“But why here?” I asked.

“Lived in Chicago first. But it so crowded. And St. Joseph's bought this land. Gave mortgage to immigrant like me at good price. That why I come here.”

“American dream,” I said.

“It good dream, Tommy. All men equal.”

“But I found a copy of the
Daily Worker
in the truck after the paper drive.”

She laughed again. “The
Daily Worker
is communist paper in English, right?”

“Yeah.”

“How I read it? You still teaching me English.”

That was a good point.

“Tommy,” she said. “I no communist.”

“I know.” And I did. I stared at my feet, embarrassed and relieved. I didn't want her to go to jail. But what was I going to do about Mr. McKenzie?

“Tommy,” she repeated. “Why you asking about communist?”

And there, in the dark and the cold of Thanksgiving evening, I told her about planting the paper in Mr. McKenzie's store. When I was done, she was quiet.

“Say something,” I said.

“What you want me to say?”