Paperboy (19 page)

I eased up to the door of the red building and cupped my hand to my ear like Mam had done. A record was playing like before but there was not as much talking or clinking glasses. I looked for a doorbell but then decided that it wasn’t the kind of place to have one on the back door. Or the front door. Holding Mam’s black handbag as tight as I could I opened the door and stepped inside.

The place was darker than the alley and the thick smoke from cigarettes made it even harder to see. The smell was not as bad as inside Ara T’s cart but close. I walked on my toes with my hand against the wall through a narrow hall that led to the front of the building where the music was coming from. The song on the record confused me at first because I thought it was a song that I remembered Mam and her choir singing about Letting Your Light Shine. It didn’t seem right that they should be playing a church song in a Juke Joint but when I listened closer I figured out that the song was talking about letting your Love Light Shine and that was a different kind of light and probably a different kind of love from the kind Mam sang about in church.

Just then a man in a shiny blue shirt came running lickety-split down the hall toward me. I plastered myself against the wall and he zoomed past me and out the back door. If he saw me he didn’t let on.

The narrow hall was dark but the room that opened up in front of me had colored lights around the walls like you see at Christmastime on front porches. As I walked through the door everyone inside the room was standing at their tables staring at something on the far wall. The record about the Love Light was still playing but everything else was quiet.

My eyes started getting use to the dim light. At an empty table near the middle of the room I saw my brown leather billfold. Scattered around it was a pile of paper money and coins. I went a little closer and saw Mr. Spiro’s three pieces of a dollar and my Ryne Duren card and the picture of me and Mam at the zoo. The rest of the table was covered with glasses and brown bottles and sliced up red onions and opened cans of Vienna sausage. Ara T’s stinky coat was hanging on the back of a wooden folding chair.

The thing that everybody in the room was staring at was Ara T in a torn shirt and his old hat holding Mam up against the wall with both of his big hands around her throat. Mam’s white shoes were dangling with her toes pointing down trying to touch the floor. When she tried to hit Ara T in the face with one of her fists he spread his elbows like a chicken wing to block her arms. Even as strong as Mam was and as good as she was with both of her hands she couldn’t get in a solid lick.

A man in a fancy red hat standing at one of the tables picked up a wooden chair with both hands and eased up to Ara T’s back. He lifted the chair to his side to swing it but Ara T saw him and grabbed the chair with one hand and smashed the chair on the man’s head. Pieces of the chair went everywhere and the man backed away. Ara T still had Mam pinned against the wall with one hand. He held a piece of the chair in his other hand.

Mam’s white uniform was whiter than white in the dark room. Her arms were spread out and flapping. She looked like one of the angels on the front of the songbooks at her church getting ready to fly to heaven.

With his chewed-up cigarette in his mouth Ara T was cussing loud at Mam and then laughing and then letting out a cry that sounded more like an animal at the zoo than a human. Ara T never had a loud voice when he talked to me in the alley but it sounded like he was talking into a loudspeaker for everyone in the red building.

I’m killin’ this bitch this time.

Ara T then screamed into Mam’s face.

Just likes I killed your skinny-ass brother.

Mam was still swinging at him with her arms but I could tell her strength was leaving. Something was oozing out over her lower lip that I first thought was blood but then saw was her Garrett’s. She didn’t see me because she was looking straight into Ara T’s eyes. Not like she was afraid of him but like she was trying to come up with a plan even though time was running out.

That was when my plan came to me.

I put Mam’s handbag on the floor at my feet and reached with my right hand for a brown bottle with a long neck on the table next to me. The people at the table didn’t see me because they were standing and watching Ara T choke the life out of Mam with one hand and swinging the piece of the broken chair with the other.

The bottle was empty and the neck was wet and slippery. I wiped it off with my hand and then I wiped my hand on my shorts until my right palm was good and dry. I felt the weight of the bottle. I opened and closed my fingers around the neck until the bottle was balanced just where it needed to be. The neck of the bottle fit my hand like it was made for it. Better than even a baseball or a newspaper.

Ara T’s dirty hat against Mam’s white uniform made a perfect target. I held the bottle above my right ear and spread my legs for balance putting my left foot out ahead just a little. Just like my newspaper throws.

I cocked my arm. In my mind I could already see the brown bottle flying toward Ara T’s head.

I yelled as loud as I could. So loud Mr. Spiro could have heard it in Timbuktu. Vowel sounds aren’t my best but this one came blasting out of my mouth and no stutter in the world could have stopped it.

ARA T.

At the same time I said his name I let fly with the bottle. As hard as I could throw. Even harder than throwing rocks at the moon.

The bottle came out of my hand in a perfect end over end.

I should have thought about the way Ara T’s floppy hat sat high on the top of his head. If I had taken dead aim at his ear the bottle would have caught him between the eyes and dropped him right there on the spot but it hit him on the top of his head when he turned toward me. The bottle knocked his hat flying and then hit the ceiling where it crashed with a loud pop. Brown glass sprinkled down on Ara T and Mam.

Ara T dropped his hand from around Mam’s neck and the piece of chair in the other hand fell to the floor. He had opened his mouth when the bottle hit him and his crooked cigarette had fallen out.

Mam slid down the wall with her hands clawing at her throat and gulping for breath. Ara T rubbed his forehead where the bottle had smacked him. He staggered a little but got his balance quicker than you would have thought after taking a bottle to the head.

He grinned and started toward me and I saw his gold tooth shining like the headlight on my Schwinn.

I probably could have made it out the back door of the building without Ara T laying a hand on me but I couldn’t take my eyes off Mam leaning against the wall pulling at her throat.

Ara T reached out for me with his big sweaty arms. Still grinning his crazy grin.

Looks like I’m gonna breaks me a white boy’s neck now.

Ara T’s voice was booming and his gold tooth shining. I saw for the first time that the reason the tooth was so bright was because there weren’t any other teeth around it.

If you were just walking into the room and saw only his face you would have thought Ara T was smiling and kidding around but if you were up close looking into his wild eyes you would have known he was serious.

Ara T’s extra-strong junkman’s hands closed around my neck. The next thing I saw was my watch around Ara T’s wrist but he had it on upside down. That bothered me and then I decided I had more to worry about than how he was wearing my watch.

I managed one good kick at his knees because I knew he would block my arms but he pinned my legs against a table with his body. His red eyes were wide open like some monster in a comic book. His gold tooth was shining in the dark of his mouth and his breath smelled like it was on fire. Vienna sausages. Red onions. Cigarettes. Whiskey. All that was missing from my list of worst smells in the world was my mother’s mothballs.

My eyes wanted to close but over Ara T’s shoulder I saw Mam get to her feet and wobble toward Ara T’s old coat hanging on the back of the chair. I worried that Mam was thinking about just throwing the coat over Ara T’s head and that probably wouldn’t do us much good because Ara T was getting a grip on my neck like you grip down on a baseball bat at home plate. I thought I knew what being strangled felt like because I choked on my words all the time but this kind of choking made me want to close my eyes and just go to sleep. I could barely see Mam but could tell that she had started moving faster.

In my mind I was trying to tell Mam that she needed more than Ara T’s coat and then I saw her jerk something out of one of the pockets. I didn’t see her open it because she did it in such a quick move but then I saw the shiny blade of my yellow-handle knife slash across Ara T’s arm that was closest to her. On the bias. Ara T let out a quick yelp and grabbed his sliced arm with his good one.

Mam backed up a half step to get a better balance. Then she yelled.

PHILISTINE.

The word came out different than a field whoop but just as loud. Whatever the word was she meant it.

At the same time she switched the knife to her other hand in one quick move for a better angle and plunged the blade into Ara T’s other arm. All the way in. Up to the yellow handle.

The knife went in as easy as when Mam opened a ripe watermelon on the kitchen table. Ara T could whet a knife better than anybody.

Mam motioned for me to get behind her as she backed away from Ara T. The blood had begun to ooze from around the yellow handle. Ara T let out another animal sound and started toward us and that was when I heard a commotion from behind and something lifted Mam and me to the side in one motion like we were checkers on a checkerboard.

Big Sack.

It’s done, Ara.

Ara T looked up at Big Sack and then reached down for a piece of the chair that had fallen to the floor. With the arm that didn’t have a knife sticking in it he raised the stick of wood over his head and swung it.

Big Sack caught Ara T’s arm at the wrist. He gave a twist and the piece of wood fell to the floor. Big Sack gave another twist to the arm and I heard it pop like when I threw a hard one into Rat’s catcher’s mitt.

Ara T’s eyelids closed and then he dropped to the floor. Not like how cowboys fall down in movies but like when a coat falls off a hanger and crumples.

The phonograph record had finished playing but it was still going around with the needle making a scratching sound.

Big Sack started telling people what to do but he wasn’t talking fast like he was nervous.

Get me that gin bottle, Silk.

A guy in a blue shirt grabbed a half-full bottle and handed it to Big Sack who emptied the bottle on Ara T’s bleeding arm. It came to me straight then that Silk was the one who had run by me earlier to get Big Sack.

Hold him, Silk.

Big Sack wrapped a white handkerchief around Ara T’s arm where the knife had gone in and grabbed the yellow handle with the other hand. He yanked.

Ara T’s eyes opened and he rose up to let out a yell that had no match anywhere in the zoo then slumped back down on the floor. Blood gushed until Big Sack put down the knife and tied the bloody handkerchief tight around Ara T’s upper arm. Big Sack grabbed Ara T’s old coat and wrapped it around the bloody arm too. He turned to Silk.

Pull Ara’s wagon to the door and bring his cloth.

Where we takin’ him, Big Sack?

They’ll be shootin’ dice in back of Hatty’s. We’ll roll him there and get him stitched.

Mam left my side and walked around Ara T’s head. She picked up the knife from the floor and wiped the blood from the blade on a
sleeve of Ara T’s coat and slid my watch off of his wrist. She stood to face Big Sack.

You knows I had a right.

None said you didn’t, Miss Nellie. It’s done. You best clear out with the boy.

Mam folded the blade in and put the knife in the pocket of her uniform with my watch.

Big Sack knelt down and gave more orders.

Get a mop and rags from back. And some motor oil and sawdust. Fix a record on that player. Show here’s over.

Everyone watched Mam as she reached down to pick up her black handbag I had brought in.

She took the yellow-handle knife and my wristwatch from her uniform pocket and put them in the handbag and then walked to the table in the middle of the room. She moved the glasses and bottles to one side as easy as if she was clearing the dishes in our dining room after supper. She pushed my coins into a pile like she did with peas after she had finished shelling them and raked all the coins into her handbag. She carefully picked up the three pieces of Mr. Spiro’s dollar bill and our photograph and my Ryne Duren baseball card. She put everything in my billfold and put the billfold in her handbag. Mam snapped it shut like she wanted everybody to know that everything was over and done with like Big Sack had said.

Mam put her arm around my shoulder and we started for the back door as calm as if we were leaving choir practice on a Sunday night. We walked past Big Sack who was sliding Ara T onto the canvas tarp that Silk had brought in. Even down on his knees Big Sack was looking me straight in the eye.

Ara T won’t bother you again, Little Brother.

I nodded because I took Mr. Big Sack to be the kind of man who meant what he said.