Ask the Dark (5 page)

Hi, son, he says. He kind’f leans up and scratches, then leans back. And that’s all he does.

Leezie, she’s over the side of the room near the hall where I come up, sort’f quiet but huffin’ and puffin’, her eyes all red with rage. She got a lot of makeup on’r face and I swear she looks like a sort’f angry, pretty clown.

Daddy says, Billy, next time you go out do me a favor, would you? Get some boxes.

What for? I say.

We gotta pack, he says. He’s just staring at the dead TV set.

For what? I say.

We gotta move, he says.

Why don’t you turn the TV on? I say.

He can’t!
Leezie screams. She’s standing right next to me and she yells it right in my ear and I jump back.

Dang, girl! I says. You screamin’ in my ear! Let up on me, will ya?

The TV’s been turned off, she says.

I look around at the lights. What, the whole thing? They shut off the electric? How come the lights is on?

Just the cable shows, my daddy says, staring ahead.

I look over at the TV set. I can see us reflected, standing there in the green/gray screen.

God damn, I says.

Don’t curse, Leezie says.

Scuze my language, I say.

I stand there a minute and I’m thinking.

Then I go on up to the TV. Stood there with my back turned.

I can’t tell you how I felt. It was like the whole house was sitting on me, and nobody was doing nothing, and nobody was gonna even
try
to do anything. ’Cause you can see with what I’m telling you that nothing was comin’ from Daddy or Leezie, ’cause all they wanted to do was mope and give up and get boxes and move out to God knows where, ’cause there weren’t no place I knew we could go ’cept maybe the street, and that’s one thing I ain’t ever gonna do.

They all just waitin’ on me,
I thought. So I turned around and started.

Daddy, we ain’t moving, I say.

What? he says. He jerks like I kicked him.

I said we ain’t moving. Ain’t losing the house. I won’t have it.

What the hell are
you
going to do about it! Leezie shrilled.

Make money, I says. Like I promised you.

Ha!

She moves crost the room and sits next to Daddy. Then she looks at me.

You make any money today?!

A little, I said. Yesterday and today.

How much little?!

I figure, I got twelve for lawn mowing, Richie gave me five, and out with Marvin eleven more.

Right now, twenty-eight dollars, I say. But more’s comin’.

That’s nothing! she says.

Might pay the TV bill, I say. How much we get from Social Services?

I didn’t say it before but there’s a whole pile of mail on the table in front of Daddy. Something like thirty envelopes. Them people at Social Services, they love sending letters. They tell you how much you spent, how much you got, when it started, and when it all gonna end. Any little thing you do they send you a letter about, and if you don’t keep up, they cancel all they giving you. You can see it on the computer if you got one, ’cause everything they put on paper they put there, too. But we ain’t got one, a computer, I mean.

Wouldn’t matter anyway. Daddy ain’t opened none of the letters.

They want me to go to a meeting, he says. I missed it.

About what?

Job. Job counselor.

You going?

Missed it, he said again.

What? I said. He sort’f mumbled and I couldn’t hear him.

He said he missed it!
Leezie yells.

Quit yellin’, I say, ’cause I’m just about sick of her razzin’ me. And then I look at her good, sitting there next to Daddy on the sofa. She looks scared, sure, but there’s some-thing else, too. With all this yellin’ and all that makeup on her face and’r eyes blazin’ at me I start to wonder—
What’s she up to?
Do she got something on’r mind? ’Cause she gets that way sometimes, all sneaky and full’f secrets she don’t tell nobody till whatever it is ’s all over and you can’t do nothing about it. So I’m feelin’ suspicious, ’cause Leezie’s just ’bout the most stubborn girl you ever met, and once she’s set on something you best not get in’r way.

But just what she was after right then I didn’t know, ’cept it weren’t about helpin’ me make no money to save the house, that’s for damn sure.

It’s too far away to go, Daddy says. I took the bus but it was just too far. It got late. You need a car to get there.

He don’t look good, Daddy. Short like me, and stocky, too, but all tired out. Gray. Gray all over. And when he moves he’s stiff. He’s only fifty-four, but he’s done, I can tell it. Done with workin’. With living, almost. Worried me, seein’ that. He needs help, I’m thinkin’. Got to get back on ’s feet. But exactly what to do about it I couldn’t say.

He can’t ride the bus all day to get there, Leezie says. It’s way out in the county.

God damn,
I think.
Oh, God damn.

All right, I say. Well how much we get?

Eight-fifty, Daddy says.

Cash? I say.

He nods.

We can’t never live on that,
I think. I seen enough rent posters in the neighborhood, and even worse neighborhoods when I’m out with Marvin.

Need at least twice that, I say.

How? Leezie says.

I look at her. She looks at Daddy, pats his gray arm. He’s still looking at the dead TV set. Then they both look at me, waiting for answers, and I can’t say nothing ’cause it’s just me an’ four eyes staring at me.

I’m going upstairs, I say.

Had me enough for a while.

I put ice on my nose and slept a few hours. When I got up it was dark outside. Dark inside, too. Red numbers on my lit-up clock said nine thirty. My nose still hurt and I was feeling a bit frazzed getting hit by Brest and thinking how now that Richie beat’m he really gonna be coming after my ass, which with everything else going on was just one thing too much. What Leezie said stung me hard, and I felt bad about it. I mean, there she goes one day getting me to promise, and the next day laughing in my face like it’s something I can’t do. But that’d been her way ever since our mother died, crying one minute and bossy the next. And now she was wearin’ all them skimpy clothes and that makeup, and going out nights to places I don’t know where, with Daddy too sunk in hisself to stop’r, and me just wonderin’ what’s she set on.

But even more than that I was thinking ’bout that house next to Simon Hooper’s, and what was in those boxes lying on the floor in there, and if there was other stuff I might find if I went inside to look.

And it weren’t easy, thinking that.

The truth is, more happened between me and my mother than just what I said to Marvin. One night close to when she died, she took my hand and pleaded for me to swear to the Lord I wouldn’t do another thing like that, so’s there wouldn’t be no more stains on my soul like them nuns at school say, and so’s she could go to her rest without worrying about me so much. And I went ahead and swore like she wanted. And that made thinking ’bout going in that house real hard.

But I gotta say the idea’d come to me that to save our house I might just have to do exactly what I swore I wouldn’t. What would my mother say to that? What if I
got
to slip to help Daddy and Leezie?

Thinking like that, my mind sort’f made itself up, and I thought,
Tonight,
’cause I couldn’t see no other way. And bad as it sounds I gotta say the old thrill came back, and I felt the hair on my arms risin’, just thinking of what I might find.

Few minutes later I went down. Daddy was still there, sitting on the sofa in the dark. Leezie, she was upstairs.

I don’t say nothing, but Daddy says, Billy?

I’m headed to the door and stop.

Yeah, Daddy?

Know what I seen today? he says. I was going to that job counselor. It got too late, so I got off the bus. Went to this shop I saw. I stood out there an hour looking at that shop.
FRESH FISH
, it says on the sign, and the name of the man who owns it. Wish I had that.

He turns his face to me, just enough light from the streetlights outside come in the window to shine rings off his glasses. Can you imagine that, Billy? he says, sort’f whispers. It’d take care’f us all. And you could work with me.

I smile.
He’s just dreamin’,
I think.

Fish? I say.

No, not that. He looks down, then up again, slow.
Fruit,
he says. What your mother loved. Remember how she used to set a bowl out every day?

Yeah, I remember, I said.

He nodded. That’s what.
FRESH FRUIT,
right there on the sign. Can’t you see that? Right on the sign with my name on it. And your name on it.

He sat up a bit. Looked at me.

Well, maybe it ain’t just a dream,
I’m thinkin’. ’Cause for a second there he had more life in’m than he had all day, and even smiled a little.

Then he slunk back on the sofa in the dark.

All right, Daddy, all right, I say, and I opened the door. Then I turned and put the money I made on the sofa beside him.

You pay the TV cable, I say.

He don’t budge.

Then I go.

Chapter Eight

I went up the alley behind the houses so’s not to get seen, and after a while I sat and waited until I seen most house lights go out and I figured it was past eleven. Then I went on, and after a few minutes was out back Simon Hooper’s. I listened to hear if Bear was out, ’cause if he is you can hear’m pawing the ground or his collar jangling, and it’d be no good for him to sniff me out and start barking and tryin’ to get at me. But everything was quiet. So a minute later I was climbing over that board fence into the yard of the house next door.

No lights was on at the house. There was trees all round, and bushes, all of’m overgrown, so going up on the porches was no trouble, but the doors’n windows were locked. I’d figured on that. So I went around side, where the yard was narrow near the board fence. I chinned up to the window I’d looked in earlier, and tried to shove it open, but it was locked tight. Then I tried a few more windows, all round the house, and none of’m budged an inch. So I looked up at the shadows of the trees. One had a branch overhanging the second floor roof, so I climbed up and dropped down.

I crawled over the roof till I found a window I could open, and real quiet I got to work. I couldn’t see inside ’cause behind the window, it was hung with black plastic, kind you get from a big trash bag, sort you might use for bagging up leaves you raked. I figured it was there ’cause either the folks who owned it didn’t want nobody looking inside or else they’d sprayed for bugs and didn’t want to let no air in.

After a minute I wiggled open the window and slid it up, didn’t even squeak. Then I put a leg in and ducked inside, tearing away the plastic as I moved. I stepped down real soft, no noise at all, and I went on.

I gone through three/four rooms, stopping every couple feet to listen, but never heard a thing. Couldn’t see nothing. Every window in there was covered with that black plastic. House was empty. Somebody’d been around, sure, ’cause here and there I walked over trash and cans I felt crush under my feet, beer cans, and I smelled old stale cigarettes and reefers’n such. Whole place stunk bad with never getting aired, lemme tell you.

Ever once in a while wind would move through the rooms and them bags on the windows would sort’f puff out, I mean inflate a little, and it spooked me, seeming like the whole house was breathing.

I come downstairs’n went around and saw the kitchen. In there on the stove was a frying pan. Somebody’d had a bite to eat, I could see that, because the pan weren’t washed but dirty with grease, prob’ly just warmed some takeout. A little clock dial on the stove was lit and that was the only electric I seen on in there. Course I never tried no light switches.

Next I come in the room I’d looked in when I was at Hooper’s. Like I said, the plastic on the window there had come away one side where it was stapled, and that let a little light in, just the faintest.

First thing I done was check out the clothes I seen earlier. What I found was a dark flannel thing, more like a shirt than a coat, same sort lumberjacks wear. I stooped and grabbed it. Close to my face I could just see it was green plaid, with black boxy lines on it. Nothing in the pockets, so I tossed it down. There was a few other coats lying there too, prob’ly put in here for summer storage. I picked one up.

That flannel shirt was sized for a man, but this coat was a boy’s and would’f fit me if I’d tried it. I held it out and seen it was a winter coat, one’f them puffy ones all filled with feathers some boys wear, with a pair of mittens fixed to the sleeve. I felt around’n unclipped some sort of buckle, and they came loose. So’s not to drop’m I stuffed’m in my back pocket, mittens, I mean. Pockets was empty on the coat, and I was gonna toss it but I seen something wrote on the collar and I was curious. I wished I had me some sort’f light, ’cause I could see it was initials, wrote in Magic Marker, way a boy’s mother writes when she don’t want him to lose his coat at school. But try all I could, I couldn’t make them letters out, ’cause they was too faded.

And then I just shook my head, thinking what a dumbass I was to’f busted in a house to find something worth taking and now was trying to read letters on some boy’s coat, so I tossed’t to the floor, disgusted.

Now I seen them boxes. I opened one of’m, and what I found first was just junk. I don’t mean trash, but just stuff like can openers and cups and saucers, sort’f things you might use if you was maybe camping out in a house but not really living there.

I closed it good so nobody’d know it been touched, and I went ahead and opened the next one, just to see. It was the same. Old cups and plates and knives and forks, and I cussed under my breath at the luck of it.

I was gonna give up when my finger went under a lip of cardboard and I lifted it. It was there making the box have two layers, a top one with the cups and such on it, and another underneath. I didn’t want to pull it up and knock all the cups out ’cause’f the noise, so what I done was just feel around, and my little finger caught on something sharp, so I pulled it up and out.