Ask the Dark Page 3

  And let me tell you something else, too. You know what was going on at home for me and what I needed to do, I mean make all that money and with only ninety days to do it.

  So that’s what I was thinking about, the house and the money, because no way I tried could I forget it. It was always pushing me on. And maybe if something like that was pushing you, you wouldn’t be so smart yourself, and miss a few things when you seen’m, till you got a chance to add’m all up later on.

  I got to Shatze’s round four o’clock and I seen Marvin all ready with a heap of white bags on the counter. I asked’m’f I could tag along and he said sure so I grabbed the bags. Big armload they was, and with Marvin holding the door for me I went out, past that old fat counter lady, Miss Norris, looking nasty at me over the counter, ’cause she caught me taking candy once. I go round back, and there’s the van. Marvin follows, limping on that busted foot he got, and I dump the bags in the bin between the seats and sit. Marvin, he gets in beside me and starts up the motor.

  We drive a bit, wind blowing over us ’cause that van’s the sort that ain’t got no doors and you gotta watch your ass not to fall out. Marvin’s got the list of addresses he wrote in his hand on the steering wheel, and I watch the houses and yards and the sun bright over everything, people walking their dogs or just standing in their gardens and the birds singing everywhere.

  Then I turn to Marvin.

  Shit’s going on, ain’t it? I say.

  He nods.

  Yup, he says. Sure is. Lots of shit. Nothing but shit. Same old shit.

  He says that all the time. Same old shit, I mean. S’where he’s coming from.

  They found Tommy Evans, I say. He was beat up bad, I hear. Ain’t a good way to go.

  No way’s a good way, Marvin says. You just make sure you don’t go getting in no strange man’s car, you hear me?

  I hear you, I said.

  I was looking up the street at how the sunshine came down through the trees and leaves and still looked green on the black of the street, same color like the leaves.

  Then I say, Marvin, I need forty-eight thousand dollars.

  He looks at me, eyes buggin’. What the hell for?!

  Bank’s taking my daddy’s house, I said.

  For a second he don’t say nothing. Then he looks at me. Shit, he says. You mean your house.

  Same one, I said.

  God’amn, Marvin says, sort’f breathes. Looks at me. Why can’t your daddy make it?

  He’s too bad hurt, I said. Fell off that roof, remember?

  God’amn, he says again. That’s some mean nasty shit you got coming down on you. Some mean nasty shit.

  Uh-huh, I said. But I gotta make it. Th’money, I mean. Promised Leezie. Ain’t got no ideas, though. Least no good ones.

  Now Marvin, he looks at me, and I know what he’s thinkin’, can just tell from the squint of his eyes.

  And he says, You ain’t gonna start slippin’, is you?

  Slippin’ where? I say, but I know what he’s talking about.

  Back to where you was a couple years ago, he says. You was a crazy kid, Billy. Actin’ out every way, saying you was here when you was really there and stealing everything that ain’t nailed down! Used to scare even me, and I’m a man who done some crazy shit in his day. Boy, back then I wouldn’t’ve even let you in the van with me, you was so damn wild. So don’t you slip. I don’t want to see you in jail or no boys’ home, you understand?

  I was smiling now, looking at’m. I said, Naw. Ain’t slippin’. I swore.

  How swore?

  To my mother, afore she died, I said. On her grave, too.

  He looked at me a minute, eyes right on me, his face all empty now ’cause the feeling run out of it. I weren’t smiling no more, neither.

  Well that’s good, Billy, Marvin says. I know what all that meant to you, seeing her pass. Seen the change in you myself, if nobody else round here did. So don’t go slippin’ now that trouble’s come. Listen. I been in shit myself years back, deep shit. No money, no job, and children, too. But it all comes right in the end. You gotta believe that, and hold yourself together.

  It felt good hearing him say all that, so I promised I would. Of course, me I’m thinking, I went after that mower—was that slippin’? Didn’t tell about finding Tommy, what about that? Hell, worst of all is I go and promise Leezie I gonna get forty-eight thousand—and to get that done right is like askin’ for a world of slippin’.

  I guess hearing ’bout the house riled’m—Marvin, I mean—’cause after a minute he pounds the steering wheel and says, Shit! And I mean shit. See, that’s the thing. Boy like you ain’t got money. And your daddy ain’t got money, ’specially now that he got hurt and can’t go to work and your poor mother died, bless her soul. And if there’s one thing I know, nobody gonna dig you out.

  That’s the truth, I said.

  Damn right, Marvin says. Fact is, less you got, the less you get. And that’s true for both black and white. Rich man ain’t ever gonna give you nothing, even if you and yours is right outside his doorway starving yourselves to death. ’Specially in this damn neighborhood. Rich folks, they all plain crazy, and that’s the god’amn truth.

  I hear you, I says.

  All this time we talked we was making deliveries, him stopping and me running up, and now we gone to a couple more houses. One of’m I got to tell you about. I mean Simon Hooper’s house. You prob’ly seen him around, though he don’t get out much, ’cept to walk his dog. I had a whole mess of drugs for ’is mother, who they say lives in the back room and ain’t come out her bed in six years, though I never seen her. Say she’s big and fat and don’t never take a bath, and if she do, it’s Simon who helps’r. We all used to make fun of’m for that.

  I got outta the van and went up. House is narrow and brown and dirty and covered over with bushes and trees that ain’t ever been cut for years, and lots of old dirty junk mud-specked in the yard and ten/twenty old newspapers on the porch, still rubber-banded but the paper looking all mushed and spackered from rain. Big board fence all round the place, higher’n my head, and the house next door, too, this old empty house that I can just see through the trees.

  I knock and course the first thing I hear’s the dog barking, big huge nasty barks that raise the hair on my arms.

  Door opens. There’s Simon. Holds the screen door tight. I can see his face just barely through the dirty screen. He about my age. Long face and droopy nose and long hair, real greasy.

  Shit. Now I’m thinking ’bout all the times me’n lots of other boys called him names and threw things at him and chased him home, and I’m wishing I could take those times back, ’cause there right with him he got his dog, Bear, he calls’m, holding’m by the scruff of the neck. Damn dog’s jaws’r all growly with the skin pulled back and spit going everywhere, and he’s the biggest dog I ever saw, head right up to my chest, four foot. Simon, I seen him training Bear in his yard, behind the board fence, and that dog’ll do anything he says. Got’m three years ago at a police dog show, and ain’t nobody teased him since then, believe me, ’bout giving ’is mother baths’r nothing.

  What do you want? Simon asks.

  I come from Shatze’s, I say, acting like I don’t know him even though I know him good. He looks at what I got in my hands, the white bags, then looks at me again with nothing in his eyes and says, Stay there a minute, and closes the door.

  I hear him dragging Bear back and the dog’s big feet and claws scratching the floor. Then it’s all quiet and I stand there all alone, waiting and looking down into Hooper’s yard, smelling busted-up acorns and brown leaves, a sort of dead, dirt smell, all mulched’n soggy, ’cause he prob’ly ain’t raked’m up in five/six years.

  I back up’n look around. Ain’t nobody can see me, ’cause his yard’s all full of trees and bushes. I listen for Simon inside but I can’t hear nothing. I brung him stuff before, and I know I got plenty of time to wait, ’cause what he gonna do now is go back and get his mother to writ
e a check, and then hunt around for whatever cash they got on hand to tip me. And all that takes forever, ’cause anybody can see by the way they keep house, nothing ever stays in the same place for them to find without going searching for it, fishing under the bed or under stacks of magazines for cash and checkbook both. So real fast I get up on the railing and jump to the board fence. Second later I’m down in the yard, next-door house. I’m thinking about the forty-eight thousand, sure, and wondering if there’s anything in there worth taking.

  House is empty, like I said. Nobody lives there. I knew that ’cause I went in about a year back and seen nothing but empty rooms. But I couldn’t say what might’f happened since. Sometimes these old houses is used for storage by the folks who owns’m, and you never know what you might find. ’Cause you hear stories. Stories about crazy rich people with bed bags full of money, or hunks of gold in old cold furnaces, or certificates and deeds all forgotten about stuffed in drawers not opened for twenty years. And while most of that’s plain hooey, sometimes it’s for real, too.

  I chin up to a window and look in, but I can’t see much. Window’s covered on the inside with black plastic, prob’ly a trash bag, but one side’s loose and I can see just past. Some people been by, yeah, maybe using the house for storage, ’cause there’s a pile of old clothes on the floor. Some cardboard boxes, too, pretty big ones, with pictures of tomatoes printed on the sides. But the lids’s all closed up so I can’t see inside’m. And me, I’m thinkin’, Bingo. ’Cause while it might not be worth no forty-eight thousand, you ain’t never gonna know for sure till you look.

  I hear a noise and think maybe Simon’s coming back, so fast as I come I’m over that fence again and standing at his door.

  Door opens and he’s there. Ain’t got Bear this time. He unhooks the screen and puts his hands out. Gives me a check and takes the bags. While he does I get a lil’ nosy looking past him to see whether what they say about his mother is true. But the house is gloomy and the doors and windows is all shuttered so I can’t see nothing ’cept shadows over piles of cluttery junk.

  Here, he says, and his hand comes out past the screen door, with a buck in it. I take it and turn and the last I hear he’s shut the door and Bear’s in there scratching and barking.

  Chapter Six

  So that’s the first time I seen it. The house, I mean, the house I come to call the dark house, ’cause there never was a light on inside. And all I seen in it was just coats and boxes. So I don’t care how smart you are, there weren’t nothing mysterious, and there sure weren’t no way right then for me to know what was really inside, hid in the attic and cellar. All’s that interested me was them boxes and what might be in’m. I was feelin’ real excited, thinkin’ there was prob’ly lots more stuff too, upstairs and in other rooms. And even though I’d just had that talk with Marvin, I gotta say, my mind was already workin’ on findin’ a good time to sneak back in.

  Last place we went I saw Richie Harrigan was out front workin’ in the next yard, carrying some boxes up on the porch. He waved but couldn’t stop and talk ’cause the man he was working for was standing there watching him, bent-looking old man who didn’t look too friendly, so I just waved back, and didn’t say nothing.

  House I’m going to is next door, so I go up. Lady comes to the door and for some reason she wants me to come round back, so I jump down off the porch and slip through the side yard. I get to the back and there she is, old lady ’bout Marvin’s age but white, and she takes what I give’r and I get a buck in return.

  I’d told Marvin to drive on without me. That was our last delivery, and he said for me to keep whatever tip I got all for myself.

  So I go through the backyard gate and out into the alley.

  Now, usually, afore just walking out like that, I’d’f checked the way. And I’d’f listened. But I s’pose I didn’t care that day or my mind was all cluttered up thinking about that house next door to Hooper’s, ’cause by now I was pretty hard-stuck on seein’ what was in them boxes.

  But I wish I had looked, ’cause right then I heard a boy call out to me, and not too friendly, neither.

  Zeets! What the hell are you doing around here? he says.

  I look over. I know the boy. It’s Jimmy Brest.

  For a second I stand there and think maybe I’ll run, just dart back through the yard and see’f I can make it out. But he’s bigger, and runs faster, so I stay where I am.

  Making deliveries, I say. Just done with it.

  Haven’t you come to rob me again? he says, and he grins a little, like that’s funny.

  I never robbed you, I say.

  Bullshit! he says.

  He’s got in his hands a basketball, been throwing it up to the hoop over the garage door he’s standing at, and now he hits that basketball one hard dribble on the ground. It says, Bap!

  I know you did, he says. You stole my bike, you little piece of shit.

  Now he stares hard right at me.

  I don’t say nothing.

  Of course, that’s just natural, he says, grinning again. It’s like your whole family.

  Nothing wrong with my family, I say.

  Nothing? he says. You’re a redneck. A grit. You, and your father and your sister. Everyone in this neighborhood thinks you’re just trash. They want you to leave. Why don’t you leave? You don’t have any right to live here. Everyone hates you.

  Ain’t true, I say.

  Now, you all know there a lot of people down my way who don’t like me. I stole too much and busted up too much to be anything like popular. But if I had one worst enemy in the whole world it was this boy, Jimmy Brest. He thinks I’m dirt, and always did, ever since I was a little kid, chasing me and beatin’ on me, saying I’m no good at all for the place he lives, and my family, too. He a colonel’s son with plenty of money, and all the time new bikes and scooters he never let me ride, and goes to a school that costs tons, where all his friends think they’re just better’n gold, their parents, too. He whupped me good more’n once before, though I’d be lyin’ if I didn’t say I fought back tooth and nail to let’m know just who he was fuckin’ with.

  I’m standing there and I start shakin’, face all quivery, because I ain’t never said nothing to nobody bad as what he says to me. But he goes on, saying awful things, even calling my sister a whore, which sure as hell ain’t true, talking so much ’s like he’s crazy with it. He’s tryin’ to make me cry but I won’t give it to’m, and ’cause of that he’s lookin’ madder’n hell.

  Then suddenly—wap!

  He chucks that basketball square in my face.

  I fall down. Blood’s coming out my nose and I feel my face all wet with it. Hear his shoes scraping on the pavement coming toward me and I curl up.

  Get up! he yells. Get up and fight!

  I yelp out but that’s all. My face hurts like crazy, nose is busted I think, though it ain’t really, and I tuck my head down, knees up, so’s if he starts kicking I’ll maybe not get hit too bad. Through my knees I can just see his feet in them fancy sneakers he wears and I’m thinking maybe I fuckin’ had enough when, God damn.

  Damnedest thing happened.

  Them fancy sneakers fly right up off the ground and a second later, me still looking through that space of my knees, I see his whole body come crashing down on the concrete ’bout eight foot from me, and he’s looking like he sees monsters.

  I sit up. Blood’s everywhere on my face and shirt but I don’t care, I’m too surprised. I see Jimmy Brest there on the ground, and another boy, a man, standing over him.

  Richie Harrigan.

  He’s looking down at Brest, who don’t move. Looking at Brest with this sort of mean look, animal look, lips pulled back, but his arm’s out pointing at me.

  What you call him! he says.

  Then he pitches back a leg and drop-kicks Brest’s ass.

  What was it! You call him trash? What about me, fucker? You think I’m trash?

  He kicks him again, and Brest sort’f scuffle
s back a bit.

  Me, I pick trash, Richie says. Thumps his own chest with’s fist saying that. You think I’m trash ’cause I pick it?

  Richie kicks him again, not hard but sort of disgusted. Then he steps back a yard and I swear to God he spits right on’m.

  My daddy got more money than your daddy, Richie says. You know that. I bet you do. C’mon. Get your ass up. You want to fight so bad, come on and fight me.

  Brest don’t move, just lies there moaning.

  Richie shoves’m with’s foot.

  You call him trash again, I’ll get you. You know I can. You know what I did to your brother. I kicked that pussy’s ass.

  Richie ain’t tall as Brest but he’s brawny, like I said. Got big muscles on his chest and arms. I know he whupped Brest’s brother once, the one who later died in the war. Happened back when they was in school together, year they won the trophy with the big silver man on it. Richie, he looks like that trophy. Top-heavy, I mean. Everybody knows he can whup anybody.

  He’s going on about beating Brest’s brother and I’ll tell you, no matter how hurt I felt from what Brest said and how he hit my face, it’s kind’f mean what Richie says, ’cause everybody remembers how Brest cried when his brother died, cried right out on the street. I mean, for a second there I was glad Richie come to help me, but now it was all just a nasty fuckin’ mess, the sort of thing I hope you never see. ’Cause Richie says so much and scares him so much he starts to cry.

  And Richie starts to laugh.

  He looks at me. Looking at Brest, Richie’s mouth was funny, lips pulled back tight over his teeth and his whole face savage like nothing I ever seen ’cept in some horror movie, but when he looks at me he shakes that off and smiles.

  You gonna tell me if this fucker punk does it again?

  I’ll tell, I say. I gotta agree ’cause I sure don’t want him mad at me. Fucker scares me, that’s the goddamn truth.