“How do you do it?” I asked him, lifting the wallet to catch his glance. “Don’t you have to cut all this stuff?”
He took the wallet from me and ran his fingers over the leather roses, the engraved vines. “We use punches. You hit them with a wooden mallet, pound out the design over and over again for hours. Just the thing for men in jail. Keeps ’em busy and off each other’s necks.” He grinned.
I stared up at him, not quite able to ask.
He laughed at me then, understanding perfectly.
“They count ‘em—the punches, the blades. If the count don’t match at the end of the afternoon, we don’t get out for dinner. Of course, sometimes they count wrong, and sometimes the razors break.” He wiped sweat on his jeans and brought his hand up, palm open. A slender metal blade glinted in the sunlight. He laughed again, that low growling laugh, while I stood with my mouth open.
“They think they so smart.” He spit in the direction of the fence. He looked different without his long black hair, harder and older. Only his eyes were the same, dark and full of pain. Now those eyes burned in the direction of the guards walking the other side of the fence.
“They think they so damn smart.”
My heart seemed to swell in my breast. His hand wiped again at his jeans, and I knew the blade was gone. He was my uncle. I was his favorite sister’s favorite child. I knew absolutely that I was his and he was mine, and I was suddenly fiercely proud of him, and of myself.
“I love you,” I whispered.
“Sure you do, sunshine.” He laughed. “Sure you do.”
Uncle Earle picked me up and hugged me tight to his shoulder. I looked toward the fence and narrowed my eyes. We’re smart, I thought. We’re smarter than you think we are. I felt mean and powerful and proud of all of us, all the Boatwrights who had ever gone to jail, fought back when they hadn’t a chance, and still held on to their pride. When Aunt Raylene called my name, I took my time walking back to the car.
“Why does he have to be so stubborn?” Raylene was leaning forward with her hands on the wheel of the Pontiac. “Why does that man have to go looking for trouble all the time?”
“He don’t look for trouble.” I was still full of the magic of the hidden knife. “He just knows how to handle it when it finds him.”
“He does, huh?” Aunt Raylene turned to look at me. “Well, if he knows how to handle it, how did he get his ass in jail? How come he couldn’t handle himself well enough to stay out of jail? How come he couldn’t handle his own temper enough not to break the jaw of the best friend he’s got in this county?”
She shook her head and shoved her new pocketbook under the seat. “All you kids think your uncles are so smart. If they’re so smart, why they all so goddam poor, huh? You tell me that.”
I went looking for Grey when we got back from the county farm and told him it was time to use that hook. He gave me a slow grin of satisfaction and promised to meet me “anytime, anywhere.” The look in his eyes was a match for the one I’d seen in Earle’s, the one I imagined in my own. A small drum of excitement began to beat inside me, and the beat only sped up when I got the hook down. I gave it to Grey when he came over that night, even though it hurt me to let it go. It would be easier for him to get it down to Woolworth’s without calling attention to himself. A boy with a sack could look perfectly innocent, while I would be asked what it was I was carrying. I ground my teeth in irritation but held on to the idea that I’d get it back soon enough. We would meet at Woolworth’s Friday night, when Mama would be visiting Aunt Ruth and I was supposed to sleep over at Alma’s.
Grey and Garvey seemed to fight all the time these days, boxing and wrestling as easily as some people spit, and it was clear to me that part of Grey’s excitement about our plan was because his brother was not part of it. They were not identical twins—none of the twins in the family were identical—but Alma’s boys looked more alike than either set of Aunt Carr’s girls. They were both tall and rangy, with skin that tanned dark, and hair that went red-brown in the sun. Garvey was better-looking, with crystalline blue eyes and a sharp little cleft in his chin that was strangely endearing. Grey had a half-mean look about him. His eyes narrowed too easily, and he frowned all the time, even after Aunt Alma got him a pair of metal-frame glasses. Grey hated those lenses and wore them only when one of the uncles was around to slap him for wasting his mama’s money.
“That Grey’s getting bad habits,” Uncle Beau said to Reese and me once. We said nothing, since of the two brothers, both of us liked Grey best. He might have looked meaner, but he had a sweetness about him that Garvey didn’t. He’d always given us stolen candy and never pushed us around like Garvey did. But unlike his brother, Grey just didn’t have any luck. When he turned thirteen, he suddenly began to grow thick red-brown hair on his chest and arms. He tried to shave it off with his daddy’s straight razor, but that only made it grow back thicker. Garvey made fun of him for it, and in defense, Grey pretended stubbornly that he was proud of his “manly growth,” of how he was “turning into a bear.” It did make him look more different from Garvey—a lifelong ambition anyway. The only problem was that the hair didn’t grow back thicker, just patchy, and it itched him. It ruined his tough-guy image, the way he was always standing around scratching at the reddish-brown hair on his forearms and the backs of his hands. Sometimes he’d seem to fall into a kind of trance, looking off into the distance, frowning and scratching.
I found him standing like that back of Woolworth’s Friday night. It was late—well past midnight—and I’d had trouble sneaking out of Alma’s house quietly enough not to wake Reese, so I was nervous and itchy myself. Grey scared me, standing out in the parking lot with the light pouring down from the Texaco sign across the street lighting up everything. A shadow hid the potato sack between his legs, and for a minute I thought he’d forgotten my hook.
“Don’t sweat it,” he laughed when I demanded the hook. “I got it right here.” He squatted down and opened the sack, pulling out a four-pronged blackened object trailing a chain.
“You ruined it!” I hissed.
“I fixed it!” he almost yelled, and then looked over his shoulder and around the lot. “The paint will make it invisible when we throw it up the wall.”
I grimaced and reached out to trace one paint-spattered point. It was still sharp, but the scary razor-and-steel feeling was gone. I swallowed hard. I had really loved the shine of it.
“Those suckers had too much gleam on them for safety.” He sounded proud of himself for thinking of it. “Specially after I sharpened the points a little.” He dropped one shoulder and leaned close to me. “I just toned down the light-catching side of the thing. Still kept it sharp. The hard part was painting the chain. Did each link separate so it wouldn’t get all stiff and gummy. That’s a heavy-gauge chain there. Soldered, I think.” He grinned and scratched his hands happily.
I knew he was just trying to sound important, be the man and all, but it was hard for me to swallow my anger and nod back at him. “It’s all right,” I finally managed. He looked pissed, so I ran my hand along the chain and nodded again. “Good job.”
“Damn right!”
Son of a bitch, I told myself, but said nothing more to him. It didn’t matter what he thought he was doing. This whole thing was really about what I was doing. It was my plan, and the hook didn’t matter as much as getting into the Woolworth’s did, and I knew what he didn’t. The way in was over the roof and through the fan vent. There wasn’t any chance my tall, hairy, man-proud cousin would fit through the vent. He’d have to hold his pride and wait down below for me to open a door for him. And if he made me too mad, he could stand around and scratch his hands all night.
When it came down to it, there was a moment when I thought I wasn’t going to make it. Grey had an easy time swinging the hook high enough to bite into the back roof of the Woolworth building, and I had only a little trouble shinnying up the rope with my feet braced against the wall. It was a little tri
ckier at the top, where they’d stuck broken glass on the edge, probably to discourage people with ideas like mine. But the rope didn’t fray, and I jumped the glass easily enough. I got a little cocky then, feeling good about myself. It was quiet and cool and clear up there on that roof. Greenville lay spread out to the east of me, the buildings gradually getting taller over toward the airport and the highway. I could see people standing under a streetlight two blocks away and cars speeding along the overpass above the Texaco station and the railroad siding. I spit off the roof and heard Grey cursing below me.
“You okay?” he whisper-yelled.
“Fine. Now shut up ’fore you get us in trouble.” I walked toward the exhaust housing on loose crackly tar paper. At some point they’d covered the exhaust fan with chicken wire and a lattice of wooden slats. The chicken wire was rusty and pulled free pretty fast. I kicked at the slats until two broke off.
It was the fan blades that worried me. I could slip around them, I was sure, but the engine block was big and oily. That would be a tight piece. I sat back for a minute and looked around again. I felt strange and strong, like I had sipped some of Uncle Earle’s whiskey or sucked on one of Uncle Beau’s green pipes. The rooftop sparkled and shone in the glare of the streetlight.
It was the exhaust fan at the VFW that had given me the idea. There were no wood slats or chicken wire there, and the motor itself was small. I’d seen Uncle Beau’s girls climb through it the weekend of the Baptist Mission Fish Fry. Myer Johnson had run the girls off and complained that he was always having to work on those fans—the only one he never had to mess with was the one on the Woolworth building. I’d known Myer was trying to sound important for my cousin Deedee’s benefit, so I hadn’t paid much attention. But later it came back to me so strong that I’d shaken suddenly in the middle of dinner and caught Mama’s eye.
“You all right, honey?” I’d nodded and gone off to the bathroom by myself. Standing there wetting my neck and looking into my own eyes in the mirror, I’d worked it out. I hadn’t actually been inside the Woolworth’s in years, not since Mama had caught me stealing Tootsie Rolls, but I had a pristine memory of it—the long rows of counters and the lazy fans turning high up on the ceiling, with the big exhaust vent toward the back over the notions counter. Greenville summers were hot and sticky, and the Woolworth building was designed for them with its high ceiling and fans. The vent had a seal they put on for the winter and took off at the end of April, but I remembered seeing it come down once. It was nothing but a loosely fitting frame with cotton insulation in the top of it. The insulation had to be replaced pretty often, since the vent leaked when the rains came hard.
That vent would snap free with one good shove. It was as clear in my head as the face of the man who still managed the store—Tyler Highgarden. I knew his nervous, skinny-faced children from Greenville Elementary School. If they hadn’t been such sorry miserable creatures, I’d have gotten the cousins to beat them up for their father’s sins, but they’d never looked worth the trouble. Still, Tyler Highgarden and the Woolworth’s humiliation had itched at me for years, always in the back of my mind. The revelation that there was something I could do about it was too exciting not to act on.
The fan blades weren’t sharp, just greasy and covered with dust. I reached through and measured carefully, and then went back over to the water tower and pulled my hook free. I coiled the rope up and tied it around the prongs. I would push it ahead of me into the darkness. I didn’t think it would get stuck, any more than I thought I would. I didn’t even think of it as a weapon. All I knew climbing over the dirty blades and wiggling around the engine block was that I wanted those razor points with me. I was a little scared and half convinced I might get caught, but those points were sharp and certain and tangibly dangerous, the way I wanted to be. I couldn’t leave them behind.
The exhaust pipe widened on the other side of the fan, and there was a filter there made of prickly stuff that bit my fingers. I unfastened it on my side, crawled through, then fastened it again, pushing the hook ahead of me in the dark. There was no warning at all when the hook suddenly banged against a sharp bend in the pipe and swung out of my hand. I fell after it, my shoulder hitting a thick cushion of cotton batting and the edge of the frame that held up the insulation and sealed the vent. The frame thudded and slipped sideways, dropping free on one side and swinging open. The hook fell ahead of me with a crash. I caught the edge of the vent cover, held myself an instant, then followed the hook. I bit my tongue as I fell, and it was a miracle I didn’t scream. I hit the side of the rack that displayed pattern books and slammed into a glass countertop that broke with a dull snap under me. I gasped and registered immediately the points of the hook sticking up from another case just inches from my butt.
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “Sweet suffering Jesus.” My hip ached where I’d hit, but nothing seemed broken.
I was suddenly soaking wet and shaking. I rolled off the counter, my sneakers breaking the rest of the glass as I tried to get to my feet. When I finally stood in the aisle, I saw that my hands were covered with a fine dust that glinted like diamonds in the slanting light. I took a deep slow breath and looked around. Above me the vent cover hung open, dirty cotton insulation still attached to the frame. Up near the front I thought I saw a shadow move. That was probably Grey waiting for me to let him in, but inside the store everything was perfectly still and musty, smelling of sweet toilet water and cheap starched clothes.
I pulled my hook free from the case and started toward the front doors. Broken glass from the notions case crunched under my feet. I stopped and looked down. Plastic thimbles, bobbins, and pins were scattered before me. Half a dozen pocket mirrors lay in an overlapping line. A shine reflected up into my eyes. I smiled and started forward. The candy counter had been moved further up front. I could see the double-stacked case of nuts right next to the popcorn machine. I swung the hook back and forth in my hand as I walked toward it, feeling the grin on my face widen and a looseness move down my back. How long was it since I had been in here? How long since I’d stood in front of the candy counter and smelled the peculiar Woolworth’s smell of dust and cheap goods? I swung the hook back and forth, back and forth, letting the loose part of the rope slip through my fingers, back and forth—and let go, right into the nuts case. The glass shattered and the nuts poured out. I felt a shock of electricity shoot up my arm to my shoulder; a river of nuts was flooding out of the case, a tide of nuts, an avalanche. I started to giggle, a high-pitched nasal laugh. When the sound stopped I saw that the case was a sham. There hadn’t been more than two inches of nuts pressed against the glass front, propped up with cardboard.
“Cheap sons of bitches,” I said out loud. There was a thin layer of nuts lying there, some still rolling away. “Goddam cheap.”
I heard Grey pounding on the front door and hurried to him. He was so impatient to get in I was afraid he was going to break the glass. “Stop it,” I yelled, and went for the jack on display in the window. But Grey kept rapping on the glass while I dragged it over to the door. “Stupid fool,” I hissed at him, but he just grinned. I got the brace fixed against one door and the lever wedged in the crack against the other. Two turns of the crank and the doors popped open with a snap. Grey shot past me like a dog with his tail on fire while I shoved the jack out of the way. I wanted to climb up and shut that vent again, but looking back I saw there was no way I could reach it. I had imagined Tyler Highgarden shaking his head and wondering how we had done this to him. But with that insulation hanging down everybody’d know how we had gotten inside the store.
“Goddam!” Grey crowed, and I heard more glass break. He’d cracked the front of the knife case and was happily stuffing his pockets with jackknives of all sizes. I wrapped my arms around myself, hugged my shoulders, and shrugged. A breeze whistled in through the open door and stirred the dust along the floor. I looked past Grey at all the things on display. Junk everywhere: shoes that went to paper in the rain, clothes tha
t separated at the seams, stale candy, makeup that made your skin break out. What was there here that I could use? I remembered the rows of canned vegetables and fruit at Aunt Raylene’s place—rows of tomatoes and okra, peaches and green beans, blackberries and plums that stretched for shelf on shelf in her cellar. That was worth something. All this stuff seemed tawdry and useless. I bit my lip and went back to get my hook.
Grey was running up and down the aisles, grabbing stuff and then dropping it. “Goddam, we’re a team,” he whispered at me, shook his head, and laughed. He snatched up a pillow case from the linens, took it up to the front, and started filling it with cigarettes.
“Yeah,” I whispered. I kicked at the case in front of me. It was full of picture frames-wood, plastic, and metal gilt. The big ones were in the same style that James and Madeline had for their family pictures. For a moment I wanted to smash them, but these weren’t theirs, even if they were the same cheap brand they wouldn’t admit they had bought. I swung my hook back and forth, trying to think what it was that I really wanted, who I really wanted to hurt. My eyes ached, and my palms were raw and stinging. I felt like I was going to cry. Grey whooped “Goddam” again, and I felt something hard and mean push up the back of my throat.
I hugged that hook up tight to my midriff and ran back to the door, calling for Grey as I went. He was still grabbing things and throwing them down, the pillow case now looped into the waistband of his jeans. It took him twenty minutes to finally come up and join me. He was trembling, his dark-tan face streaked with sweat and dust. His mouth worked, opening and shutting, but no sounds came out. He had his shirttail tied tight around his middle to hold the stuff he couldn’t carry. I put my hand on his arm.