“I’ll be all right. Sorry I woke you up.”
My mom was at the door then, so I said, “Okay if I close the door? Now that I’m up…well, you know…”
Harvey laughed his fake laugh and put an arm around my mom. He closed the door.
I pulled a paper cup out of the dispenser in the bathroom. I turned the cup over and scratched the street numbers for Mackie and Topper’s, then put the matchbook back where I found it. By now, I was so scared I really did have to go, so I didn’t have to fake that. I flushed the toilet, then washed my hands. Finally, I put a little water in the cup. I opened the door. I turned to pick up the cup, and once again thought to myself that one of the things that stinks about crutches is that they take up your hands. I was going to try to carry the cup in my teeth, since it wasn’t very full, but my mom is great about seeing when I’m having trouble, so she said, “Would you like to have that cup of water on your night stand?”
I nodded.
Harvey watched us go into my bedroom. He went into the bathroom again. My mom started fussing over me, talking about maybe taking me to a new doctor. I tried to pay attention to what she was saying, but the whole time, I was worrying about what Harvey was thinking. Could he tell that I saw the matchbook? After a few minutes he came back out, and he had this smile on his face. I knew the matches wouldn’t be on the floor now, that he had figured out where he had dropped them and that he had picked them up. He felt safe. I didn’t. I drank the water and saved the bottom of the cup.
The next morning I got up early and went into the laundry room. Harvey ’s clothes were still in the bathroom, but I wasn’t interested in them anyway. I put a load of his wash in the washing machine, checking his trouser pockets before I put them in. I made sixty cents just by collecting his change. I put it in my own pocket, right next to the waxy paper from the cup.
I had just started the washer when my mom and Harvey came into the kitchen. My mom got the percolator and the toaster going. Harvey glared at me while I straightened up the laundry room and put the soap away.
“You’re gonna turn him into a pansy, lettin’ him do little girl’s work like that,” he said to my mom when she brought him his coffee and toast.
“I like being able to help,” I said, before she could answer.
We both waited for him to come over and cuff me one for arguing with him first thing in the morning, but he just grunted and stirred a bunch of sugar into his coffee. He always put about half the sugar bowl into his coffee. You’d think it would have made him sweeter.
That morning, it seemed like it did. Once he woke up a little more, he started talking to her like a guy in a movie talks to a girl just before he kisses her. I left the house as soon as I could.
Before I left, I told my mom that I might be late home from school. I told her that I might catch a matinee with some of the other kids. I never do anything with other kids, and she seemed excited when I told her that lie. I felt bad about lying, even if it made her happy.
All day, I was a terrible student. I just kept thinking about the matchbook and about Mary Theresa’s father and Harvey and leopards that don’t change their spots.
After school, I took the city bus downtown. I got off at South Street, right in front of Topper’s.
The buildings are tall in that part of town. There wasn’t much sunlight, but up above the street, there were clotheslines between the buildings. The day was cloudy, so nobody had any clothes out, although I could have told them it wasn’t going to rain that afternoon. Not that there was anything to rain on-nothing was growing there. The sidewalks and street were still damp, though, and not many people were around. I was a little nervous.
I thought about going into Topper’s and asking if anybody knew a guy named Mackie, but decided that wouldn’t be too smart. I started down the street. The next address was 1405, Linden ’s Tobacco Shop. I had already noticed that sometimes they skip numbers downtown. I stopped, thinking maybe that was where Harvey got the smoke on his clothes. Just then a man came out of the door and didn’t close it behind him as he left the shop. As I stood in the doorway, a sweet, familiar smell came to me, and I felt an ache in my chest. It was pipe tobacco. It made me think of my father, and how he always smelled like tobacco and Old Spice After Shave. A sourpussed man came to the door, said “No minors,” and shut it in my face. The shop’s hours were painted on the door. It was closed on Sundays.
I moved down the sidewalk, reading signs, looking in windows. “Buzzy’s Newsstand-Out of Town Papers,” “South Street Sweets-Handmade Chocolates,” “ Moore ’s Hardware-Everything for Home and Garden,” “Suds-O- Mat-Coin-Operated Laundry.” Finally, I came to “The Coronet-Apartments to Let.” The address was 1417 South Street. The building looked older than Mary Theresa’s mother.
Inside, the Coronet was dark and smelled like a mixture of old b.o. and cooked cabbage. There was a thin, worn carpet in the hallway. A-3 was the second apartment on the left-hand side. I put my ear to the door. It was quiet. I moved back from the door and was trying to decide what to do when a man came into the building. I turned and pretended to be waiting for someone to answer the door of A-4.
The man was carrying a paper sack and smoking a cigar. The cigar not only smelled better than the hallway, it smelled exactly like the smoke on Harvey ’s clothes. It had to be Mackie.
Mackie’s face was an okay face, except that his nose looked like he had run into a wall and stayed there for a while. He was big, but he didn’t look clumsy or dumb. I saw that the paper sack was from the hardware store. When he unlocked his door, I caught a glimpse of a shoulder holster. As he pulled the door open, he saw me watching him and gave me a mean look.
“Whaddaya want?” he said.
I swallowed hard and said, “I’m collecting donations for the Crippled Children’s Society.”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh yeah? Where’s your little collection can?”
“I can’t carry it and move around on the crutches,” I said.
“Hmpf. You won’t get anything there,” he said, nodding toward the other apartment. “The place is empty.”
“Oh. I guess I’ll be going then.”
I tried to move past him, but he pushed me hard against the wall, making me drop one of my crutches. “No hurry, is there?” he said. “Let’s see if you’re really a cripple.”
That was easy. I dropped the other crutch, then reached down and pulled my right pant leg up. He did what anybody does when they see my bad leg. They stare at it, and not because it’s beautiful.
I used this chance to look past him into his apartment. From what I could see of it, it was small and neat. There was a table with two things on it: a flat, rectangular box and the part of a shot they call a syringe. It didn’t have a needle on it yet. You might think I’m showing off, but I knew it was called a syringe because I’ve spent a lot of time getting stuck by the full works, and sooner or later some nurse tells you more than you want to know about anything they do to you.
Mackie picked up my crutches. I was trying to see into the paper sack, but all I could make out was that it was some kind of can. When Mackie straightened up again, his neck and ears were turning red. Maybe that’s what made me bold enough to say, “I lied.”
His eyes narrowed again.
“I’m not collecting for Crippled Children. I was just trying to raise some movie money.”
He started laughing. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a silver dollar. He dropped it into my shirt pocket. “Kid, you earned it,” he said and went into his apartment.
I leaned against the wall for another minute, my heart thumping hard against that silver dollar. Then I left and made my way to the hardware store.
No other customers were in there. The old man behind the counter was reading a newspaper. I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, sir, but Mackie sent me over to pick up another can.”
“Another one? You can tell Mackie he’s got to come here himself.” He looked up at me and then looked away really fast. I’m used to it. “Look,” he said, talking into the newspaper, “I’m not selling weed killer to any kid, crippled or no. The stuff’s poisonous.” That’s the way he said it: “crippled or no.” Like I had come in there asking for special treatment.
I had too much on my mind to worry about it. I was thinking about why a guy who lived in a place like the Coronet would need weed killer. “What’s weed killer got in it, anyway?” I asked.
He folded his newspaper down and looked at me like my brain was as lame as my leg. “Arsenic. Eat a little of that and you’re a goner.”
