Paperboy (13 page)

How nice to see my sweetie paperboy.

She seemed to be talking okay. The whiskey hadn’t made her start saying her words funny yet.

s-s-s-s-Ninety-five cents for this week. And one s-s-s-s-ninety for two s-s-s-s-more weeks if you want …

She pushed open the screen door so fast it almost hit me in the face.

Sure, sweetie. Come in while I get my handbag.

I let the door close without stepping inside.

The whiskey had a sweet smell and so did the perfume that Mrs. Worthington was wearing. The two sweet smells all mixed in together reminded me of parties at my parents’ house. If the smell got
too sweet and especially if it got mixed in with the mothballs in the attic I would sneak outside and over to Mam’s room to get away from it.

Come on in, sweetie. Like I told you.

She held the screen door open for me. I didn’t have to think twice about going in to see where Mr. Spiro lived but I wasn’t sure if I should go inside Mrs. Worthington’s house. I was nervous but I went in anyway.

I expected to see stuff all over the floor and broken furniture and glass but what I could see of the house looked company-coming neat. The front hall was smaller than ours but the woodwork looked just as shiny.

Sit there in the living room, sweetie. I’ll be right back with your allowance.

Allowance? Where did she come up with that?

I walked into the living room but as soon as I sat down on the couch the loose change in my pockets started spilling out between the seat cushions. Leaving the coins would make me short on my collections so I pulled up the cushions to start gathering my money. Mrs. Worthington came back in the room with a glass in each hand.

Well look at Mr. Moneybags.

I pulled my hand back like I had been doing something wrong. She put the glasses down on the table.

Anything you find in there is all yours, sweetie.

s-s-s-s-Just want what’s s-s-s-s-mine.

Don’t we all, sweetie. Don’t we all. Drink your lemonade now.

Calling me Sweetie once or twice didn’t bother me but she was overdoing it by a long shot. I put the cushions back straight and sat down. Mrs. Worthington sat beside me and handed me one of the glasses.

I don’t know much about my sweetie except you write the nicest notes and you live in that big house on the corner.

I nodded. I couldn’t think of anything else right then that she needed to know.

What grade is my sweetie in?

Then I did something really stupid. About as stupid as anything a kid has ever done. Even though Seventh started with a good
S
sound I held up seven fingers on two hands. Like a three-year-old would hold up three fingers to show how old he is. I could feel my face turning hot. I was upset for not trying my favorite sound.

Mrs. Worthington pretended to be surprised. She put her hand up to her chest. The hand that didn’t have a glass in it.

My. My. You are such a tall boy for the seventh grade.

Half the girls in my class were taller than me because I should have been going into the sixth instead of seventh. And I was stocky but not tall at all. It was plain to me that Mrs. Worthington was acting surprised just for show.

And what does my sweetie like?

I was looking straight ahead at the woodwork but I knew that she was looking at me because I could smell the whiskey on her breath.

s-s-s-s-Throwing a s-s-s-s-ball.

OOOOOOH. I bet you can throw it r-e-a-l hard.

She spread out the OOOOOOH like a mouse in a cartoon would. A girl mouse.

Talking about throwing a ball was something I usually liked to do but not today. And Mrs. Worthington was talking slower than when I had first come in.

I watched her gulp down the last big swallow of her whiskey drink but when she went to put the glass back on the table she only got it halfway before it fell to the rug. The glass didn’t break like the one on the porch. It just rolled around spilling the nearly melted ice cubes. I thought she would go get something to clean up the mess but she just started talking softly. Almost under her breath.

I don’t even know my sweetie’s name. Mmmmmm? What’s my sweetie’s n-a-m-e?

Her voice was a little louder this time. Her sounds were getting drawn out more like mine but the sounds came from the whiskey instead of Gentle Air.

A pencil toss was no good. I was too nervous to find it in my pocket. Gentle Air was a waste of time because I could never make air gentle enough when it came to saying my name. Shouting was no good because I knew I wasn’t supposed to shout in a stranger’s living room.
A plan for an answer finally came to me. It wasn’t the greatest answer in the world but it was the best I could do.

Mam s-s-s-s-calls me s-s-s-s-Little s-s-s-s-Man.

Mrs. Worthington nodded slowly and she was smiling. Her long red hair fell over one of her eyes and she just let it stay there like she was peeping at me.

Mmmmmm. Little Man. I like that.

She sounded for once like she meant what she was saying.

Then she put her head on the back of the couch and fell fast asleep. She was snoring. Not like Mam snored but an uneven quiet snore.

I don’t know how long I had been in Mrs. Worthington’s house but it was getting dark enough for Mam to start worrying. I sure didn’t want her to come looking for me. I got up from the couch.

I looked around to find covers but decided Mrs. Worthington didn’t need anything over her in July. I picked up the glass from the floor and put both glasses on a
Saturday Evening Post
on the table. With my hand I wiped off a ring that one of the glasses had made. My mother was always getting on to me about leaving wet rings on tables.

I stood over Mrs. Worthington to look at her like I had done on her front porch.

She was so different now from the first time I had seen her when she thought I had called her the bad word. She had gone to a lot of
trouble to put on lipstick and makeup. Some of the makeup from her face had rubbed off. Then I saw that the makeup had been covering up a black-and-blue spot under her right eye. It wasn’t swollen as bad as Mam’s but Mrs. Worthington had taken a lick on her eye for sure. Maybe Greaser Charles or maybe Mr. Worthington had hit her. If Mr. Worthington could yell at her like he did then he could hit her too.

I said her first name in a whisper.

Faye.

F
was my second best sound behind an S because most of the time I could let a little air out under my teeth as I said it.

Mrs. Worthington had pulled her legs up under her like she was trying to fit inside a box. Her head was pushed up against the end of the couch. I wrote Faye on the arm of the couch with my finger. I put the
E
on the end of her name whether it belonged there or not. I wanted her to have all the extra there was.

Her red hair had fallen down over both her eyes. Pretty eyes for sure even though one was black and blue. I watched her breathe in and out some more.

Dark was closing in fast when I stepped out on Mrs. Worthington’s porch. Mam would be upset because I was out late. I felt at first like running. Running to Rat’s house to turn in my collection money and then running home. I walked instead. It felt like a time to be walking so my feelings would have time to get better situated in my head.

On my way to Rat’s house I remembered that Mrs. Worthington had not given me the money for the newspaper. She was the only subscriber on the route who was not paid up.

I stopped under a streetlamp and got out Rat’s collection book to put a check by 1396 Harbert. I would go by my house and get the money from my desk drawer to put with the collection money I would hand over to Rat’s mother.

That seemed like the least I could do for Mrs. Worthington.

On Saturday morning I pitched a good game even though I was a little out of sorts because I had upset Mam the night before by coming in too close to dark.

She had gotten on to me but good and said she had been studying about coming to find me. When I talked back to her by saying I had stayed out after dark plenty of times she said for me to mind what she said because she could feel the Haints nearby.

Mam talked about her Haints when she had a strong feeling that something wasn’t right. Mam said Haints were like ghosts. You couldn’t see them but you knew they were there just the same.

After the game I threw my route hoping to see Mrs. Worthington sitting on her porch but she didn’t show herself. I snugged her newspaper close up to the front door so she wouldn’t have to step out in her bare feet.

Turning onto Melrose I saw Ara T pushing his empty cart in the opposite direction from his shed. His cart didn’t have much in it and it would take him a while to fill it up. I started wondering if I might have enough guts to check out his secret place to see if I could find my knife. I got a heavy weight inside my stomach when I thought about trying to sneak into Ara T’s hideout. It was like the feeling I got in class when I knew my name was going to be called to say something. You know where the weight comes from and what it means but you just get downright tired of it.

I folded my newspaper bags under my arm and ran back up Harbert and then over to Ara T’s secret door in the alley fence.

On Saturday there weren’t as many cars and buses on the streets and the garbage trucks didn’t make their rounds. Ara T’s alley was quiet except for the usual dogs yapping and a few gasoline lawn mowers making a racket. I thought I could almost feel Mam’s Haints as I eased up to the shed but I kept going.

The secret door to the old shed wouldn’t open when I pulled on it. I didn’t have a broken-off car antenna like Ara T used but I found a wire coat hanger in a garbage can close by and straightened it out over my knee. The coat hanger was flimsy but I pushed it through the hole in the door and wiggled it around until I heard something fall away inside.

On the top and bottom of the frame I felt for the two long nails that I had seen Ara T pull out. They slipped out without any trouble and the door creaked open on its own. Covering the opening to the shed on the inside was a canvas tarp like the one Ara T kept
on his cart. I pulled the heavy canvas back and stepped into the dark.

The place smelled like Ara T. I couldn’t see much but the room felt small and tight around me like the cloakroom at school. I hooked the tarp back over the shed door to let in some daylight.

The room was tiny and no mistaking that it was where an honest-to-goodness junkman lived. Against one wall stood old brooms and mops and rakes and axes and shovels that Ara T had probably picked up from all over the neighborhood.

Pieces of bicycles and foot scooters and sidewalk skates were hanging on the walls. Wooden crates on the dirt floor were full of empty whiskey bottles and on a long plank resting on more crates turned up on their ends were three old rusty hot plates wired into an electrical cord that ran along the wall. I followed the cord to a single lightbulb with a small chain hanging down.

The lightbulb was one of those small yellow ones that was supposed to keep bugs away in summer and never did but it chased away the darkness with a dirty light when I pulled the chain.

On a shelf above the hot plates was a bag of red onions and cans of Vienna sausages in different sizes. I had only tasted Vienna sausages once and didn’t like them. Mam called them Trash Food. A single bed with the legs sawed off was pushed up sideways against the back wall. Old blankets and coats were piled up at the end of the bed. Memphis got cold enough in the winter but the pile of coats looked like they didn’t belong in July. Plus they stunk to high heaven.

Cigar boxes and other cardboard boxes under the bed were filled with bottle openers and broken ice picks. Old light switches. Empty Bugler tobacco cans. Small screwdrivers and pocketknives with broken blades. No yellow-handle knife.

At the other end of Ara T’s small bed was a crate with a clean blanket on top that looked like the only new thing in the place. Underneath the blanket I found what must have been Ara T’s private treasure. A new-looking camera in a leather case with a burned-out flashbulb still in its shiny holder. Two black handbags that seemed almost brand-spank new. Men’s billfolds that were empty except for some school pictures of kids. I recognized some of the kids from my school even though they looked younger in the pictures. A shiny silver cup with fancy letters carved into it. A mirror with a silver handle. Shiny table knives and forks. A ring of skeleton keys. A bunch of shiny Zippos. There was no yellow-handle knife but I recognized the big chrome headlight that had been on my old bicycle. It had to be mine because my old Schwinn was the only kind of bicycle around that had a headlight that big and shiny.

I put the blanket back on the crate. Ara T’s room was arranged neat in its own way even though it was filled with all that junk. I decided I could learn something from a junkman about how to keep a room straight.

Neat or not the heat and the stink in the room were starting to make me dizzy and sick to my stomach. I had seen as much of Ara T’s place as I wanted to. My mind could see him unloading his cart in the shed and start heating up his cans of Vienna sausage and slicing a red onion with my yellow-handle knife and then lying down on the bed and going through his treasures.

About that time I saw something move under the bed that I first took for a cat but then realized was a big gray rat with a long skinny tail. The rat was dragging one of Ara T’s red onions. Big rats were always running around in the alleys behind garbage cans but this rat acted like it belonged in Ara T’s secret shed. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Time to leave. I turned off the yellow bug light and reached for the tarp to pull it down over the opening when I heard dogs barking and then a cart jangling in the alley. I jumped back into the dark of the shed.

The jangling stopped outside but I didn’t move. Then the jangling started up again and I could tell the cart was moving faster toward me.

There was no place to hide in the tiny shed.

I remembered how Ara T had backed his cart into the shed so I eased up just behind the tarp but off to one side. As soon as the tarp moved I would try to slip out the side of the shed door.