Braz hesitated while greed warred with reality, then confidently typed $350.
The fountain pen had been in the pocket of an old Navy jacket, part of a defaulted self-storage locker his stepfather Arn had bought last week down near Jacksonville. The locker had held a bent bicycle frame, a fairly new love seat with matching chairs upholstered in black leatherette, and a pair of tarnished and dented pole lamps. His eyes on the resale value of the furniture, Arn had been high bidder at one twenty-five. Only after he’d paid over the money could they enter the locker and check out what else was there. Usually it wasn’t much. This time, over behind the love seat, where no flashlight could reach, they’d found a boxy WWII vintage suitcase.
The old suitcase was locked, and they’d had to wait till they got back to their current base to open it with Arn’s set of picklocks. Vintage luggage in good condition brought decent money these days, and Arn was careful not to bust the catch.
Inside was pay dirt. A carefully folded American flag and a small gold-fringed banner with a gold star pinned to the middle lay atop the dark blue wool uniform of a Navy noncom.
American flags were always good sellers at Southern flea markets, and authentic uniforms moved briskly, too, around the military bases that dotted the South.
“Know what we got here?” Arn had said. “This must’ve been a kid got killed in the war and his folks just packed everything up when they sent his things home.”
Beneath the uniforms were yellowed letters with certain parts carefully razored out by a wartime censor. No envelopes, to Braz’s disappointment. Old envelopes were what collectors wanted.
But while Arn leafed through the letters, Braz shook out the clothes and surreptitiously felt the pockets. When his fingers discovered the pen, he’d palmed it slicker than an add-up agent working a razzle-dazzle.
Unless it was extremely old or immediately recognizable as valuable, his stepfather never had much patience with anything paper. He preferred hard goods that he could turn over quickly at a decent profit. “A quick dime’s better than a slow dollar,” Arn always said, and he’d tossed the packet of letters Braz’s way, along with a couple of Zane Grey books and a New Testament that had been in the bottom of the suitcase.
A half-dozen tiny black-and-white snapshots slid out of the Bible. Uniformed boys younger then than he was now stood on the deck of a ship, and in the background was another ship with big white numbers on its bow. It would take some detective work, but if he could figure out what ship it was, he could write an ad to put on the Internet auction site that would bring in a few bucks for the pictures. World War Two memorabilia always sold. Let Arn go for the quick dime. He’d take the slow dollar any day.
Like this fountain pen. Arn would’ve put it out to auction with no reserve price, happy to take the high bid of whoever happened to be online that day. Ten dollars or a hundred, Arn wouldn’t care, Braz thought scornfully. He was like any other carny. All he cared about was the quick profit. And yeah, Ames Amusement Corporation was growing, but it was never going to be big-time. And even if it grew big as Strates, wasn’t like his mother and Arn would ever cut him a major piece of it. Not while baby brother Val was around.
He completed the ad, using an e-identity that neither Arn nor Val knew about, then exited from the program and turned off the laptop. As the screen went dark, he closed the lid, neatened the makeshift desktop, switched off his lamp, and stood up to stretch his cramped muscles. It was a little past two A.M. and time to hit the hay, hay being a mattress on the floor by the rear door. He’d quit sleeping in the family’s two-bedroom trailer four years ago, preferring to stake out his own private space here in the back of the eighteen-wheeler’s van rather than share a pop-out with his younger half-brother when they were on the road.
Most of the trailers around him were dark and silent. Somewhere, though, a radio was playing soft jazz, and when he stepped out into the airless night, he heard a burst of laughter that sounded like his mother. She and Polly and some of the others were probably over there sipping ice-cold beers and cutting up jackpots. Arn and Val would already be asleep inside the trailer. Neither of them were the night owls he and Mom were.
He thought about going over and scoring a cold one himself, but on second thought, after what happened last night, maybe not, he decided.
A shower would feel good, but hot as it was, might as well wait and take one when he woke up. Be fresh for if that little blond townie came by tomorrow like she said she would when she was flirting with him at the Dozer tonight.
What couldn’t wait was the need to empty his bladder. Portable donnikers were down near the Tilt-A-Whirl, convenient to the midway. Quicker and easier was to go around back to the bushes that grew at the edge of the field where they were parked.
It was dark back there and he’d just finished his business and was zipping up when someone came around the corner.
Male.
Big.
Moving with purpose.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a second figure by the truck’s front fender.
Before he could speak, an iron fist to his midriff bent him double with pain. Another to his chest spun him around so hard that the third punch landed bruisingly on his right shoulder blade as he crumpled to the ground.
“This is from Polly,” the man grunted as he gave a bone jarring kick to Braz’s left buttock and another to his ribs. Not enough to break one, just enough to hurt like hell.
Instinctively, Braz drew up his legs and covered his head with his arms in a fetal position as the punishing blows and kicks continued. Pain blossomed through his body, and he cried out.
At that, someone called in a low voice, “That’s enough, Sam! Let him alone!”
The attacker gave Braz another halfhearted kick. “Try to mess over Polly again, you little shithead, and you won’t get off this easy. And you better not go running to Arnie or Tal, either. You and Skee keep your mouths shut. They hear about this, I’ll beat the crap out of both of you. You got that?”
“He’s got it,” said the newcomer, a small elderly man. “Now get the hell away before somebody comes.”
