It sounded like enough metal was being moved around inside the house to build a bridge.
The plywood door came open and Marcel Marx said, “Come on. Hurry up.”
Sometimes being stupid is like falling down a flight of stairs: once you trip on that first step there’s not a whole lot you can do to stop from going down, down, down. I followed Sparky in.
The plywood door closed behind us and Marcel threw five or six locks and bars.
The house smelled like Poofy hadn’t been out in a couple of months. The inside was lit up by a couple of candles and with all the nasty fumes from the dog in the air it seemed like the crib could blow up at any minute. I started breathing out of my mouth.
That orange extension cord from next door was attached to a little black-and-white TV that had sheets of aluminum foil hanging off the antennaes, it was on channel 12 and hard man Marcel Marx was watching Little House on the Prairie.
I kind of sniggled.
Marcel said, “What you laughing at, punk? You ever watched it? The cable man’s supposed to be coming out sometime today between four in the morning and midnight, until then that’s the only channel that TV will get. Besides, once you watch Little House for a while you see what a straight-up wholesome show with a lot of good family values it is. Besides, who you to be laughing at anyone, shouldn’t you be changing some grown man’s diapers?”
Sparky said, “Whatever. Marcel, we gotta take care of a little business.”
Marcel said, “When you start getting high, Sparky?”
Sparky said, “I don’t, man, I need something else from you.”
Marcel waved his arm around the room and said, “Welcome to Marcel’s House of the Deep Discount, you know I’ma cut you a deal, bruh, what you need?”
I looked around the dark room. There were televisions and radios and cameras and boxes of CDs and VCRs and car stereos and cell phones and about twenty different kinds of guns lined up against the walls.
“Naw, Marcel,” Sparky said, “I’m not looking to buy nothing, I’m here about Poofy.”
“You got someone wants to fight him?”
“Not really,” Sparky said, “I’m gonna sue Stonegate Meadows and I need to get bit.”
Marcel and I both said, “You need what?”
“Seriously, dog, I need a straight-up bite, and I heard you got the gamest pit bull in Flint so I figured who else to do it.”
Marcel looked at Sparky to see if he was for real. He said, “You know I’m running a business here, baby, I’m just like the bus company, we don’t do free rides! I’ma have to charge you, Poofy’s had a lot of expensive training, I can’t let him bite no one for free.”
I said, “Sparky, look at the size of that dog, how’s that supposed to look like a rat bite?”
I pointed over to the far corner of the room. Poofy was there with a chain around his neck thick enough to pull down the Statue of Liberty. The other end of the chain was wrapped around a big block Chevrolet 454 engine.
The dog was sitting there just about perfectly still except he was shaking and trembling like he was a nervous wreck. His two little beady eyes were locked on Marcel Marx.
I guess Sparky hadn’t noticed the dog. He looked in the corner and said, “Aw, snap!”
Poofy looked exactly like a snub-nosed crocodile. His head was about two feet wide and his little eyes looked like they were sitting right on top. Even with just the light from the candles and the gray glow of the black-and-white TV you could see the scars and cuts all over his face. His left ear was completely gone.
Marcel laughed. “Yeah, I think I can let him bite you for a percentage of what you get when you sue, ‘cause I can just about guarantee once the judge sees what Poofy does to you you’ll be getting paid big-time! Check this out.”
Marcel picked up a piece of two-by-four and said, “Poofy!”
The dog jumped to attention. A high-pitched whine came from his lizard head.
Marcel threw the block of wood toward the dog and said, “Hit it, boy!”
The dog’s mouth came open and he caught the middle of the piece of wood. There was a terrible splintering crack and the piece of wood blew up into a million toothpicks.
Sparky said, “You know what? I’ma have to pass on that, Marcel. All I want is a bite, I’m not trying to get nothing amputated off of me. Thanks, bruh, but it looks like I gotta do something else.”
Marcel said, “Hold on, dog. I might be able to help you out. Poofy’s got a couple of puppies that can give you a rat-size bite.”
Sparky said, “Oh yeah?”
Marcel opened a door that led into the kitchen and came back with two little pit bulls in his hands. The puppies saw us and started that high-pitched whining and snapping like they were ready to give Sparky what he wanted.
Marcel said, “I’m not gonna have to charge you as much for one of these to bite you, Sparky, we can go with a flat rate instead of a contingency fee, but I do have to warn you about something.”
Sparky said, “What?”
“Well, they’ll bite you if I tell ‘em to, but we might have a problem ‘cause some of the time these bad boys want to lock up.”
I said, “What’s lock up mean?”
“They might bite you and not let go for a while.”
Sparky looked at the snarling pups and said, “So how long’s a while?”
Marcel said, “You never can tell, it might be fifteen seconds, it might be twenty minutes, but it might be three or four hours.”
Sparky said, “Four hours? And what am I supposed to do, walk around wearing these dogs like a charm bracelet for four hours? You know what, Marcel, I really do appreciate you giving me a discount on the puppy bite, I really do, but I seriously gotta pass on that, too.”
I was proud of my boy, he said, “Come on, Luther, let’s bounce. I’ma fall back on plan B.”
When we got back in the ride he said, “So have you rented out that crib yet?”
“Which one?”
“Come on, Luther, you heard what Dontay said, we gotta work this as a team now, you know what I’m talking about.”
“Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, Sparky, but I don’t know which house you mean.”
“The one on Rankin with that sick rat.”
I laughed. “So you’re going back over there and what, smear some baloney on your arm so the rat comes out and bites you? Then I guess you’ll tell him you’ll break a little somethin’ off for him if he comes down to the courthouse with you.”
“Listen, bruh, like I told Dontay, you let Jesse rob this train, just answer the question, have you rented it out yet?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Then can you get me the key?”
“What you need the key for?”
“Look, Luther, can you get me the key?”
“You know I can.”
“That’s all I need to know. Don’t worry, bruh, like I said before, when I get paid I’ma break a little something off for you.”
“I’ll get you the key. Then count me out, I don’t want anything to do with this. But one thing you do have to do for me, you better not let anything happen to that house. The Sarge’s already inspected it and I gotta show it to some tenants on Wednesday.”
The phone rang a few days later.
“Hello?”
“What’s up, Luther?”
“Not a thing, Sparky, what’s up with you?”
“Slow motion, bruh, but I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Uh-uh, I’ll be by in a minute, this is something you gotta see to believe. You know how I’ve eaten a lot of them MREs and ramen noodles at your crib for all these years?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’ma let you in on a little somethin’-somethin’ and after I do we’re gonna be dead even, bruh. After this you might even owe me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! In a minute.”
A little later I answered the front door for Sparky. He was huffing a
nd puffing and there was something that looked like one of those end tables from Bo’s momma’s house with a red and white tablecloth over it on the porch behind him.
I said, “What’s this?”
He said, “Come on out, you’re not gonna believe what I got to show you. But one thing that you are gonna believe is that your boy is looking out for you.”
You know how it goes, whenever he has a chance to trip down the stairway of stupidity Luther T. Farrell will be there, tumbling big-time. I closed the door behind me.
Sparky said, “Squat down real close to it.”
Why not?
“Closer.”
When my face was a couple of inches away from the cloth Sparky said, “My brother, our days of financial worry are officially finito, after this we are outta Flint forever!”
He snatched the tablecloth away.
The first thing my brain picked up on was that Sparky had put a cage on the porch. I noticed the shiny, skinny silver bars running up and down. Then I noticed something gray and gigantic and furry with a wide-open, very pink, very wet mouth, with very long, very yellow teeth coming at me like a fist.
Adrenaline is cool. I saw this show on the Medical Mysteries Channel about how you’ve got this gland that triggers something in you called fight or flight response, something that decides in a snap if you’re gonna stay and battle whatever it is that has scared you or if you’re gonna try to get on out of there.
What I got must’ve been a supersized shot of adrenaline ‘cause it triggered both fight and flight in me at the same time: I was gonna get out of there, and I was gonna fight anything that tried to stop me from getting out of there.
By the time the rat’s teeth rammed into the bars of the cage I was on the other side of the porch scratching at the wall and making twitchity little animal sounds.
Sparky said, “Oh, snap! Check it out, he almost went and bent the bars of the cage!”
It’s kind of hard to get your dignity back when you’ve been mewling in a ball like a sackful of day-old kittens, but I pulled it off.
I stood up and said, “Are you out of your mind?” My legs were like Jell-O.
It was that same nasty rat, and it didn’t seem like he’d missed a meal since the house on Rankin was cleaned out. The only thing was that his lurvy was getting worse, it had gone from being the size of a quarter to being the size of a dollar bill and was running down off his back all the way onto his left rear leg. The dirty gray of his fur and the bright pink of his skin and the neon green of his infection made a real nasty combination. The two Designer Dudes on Home and Garden TV would’ve called it “a most unfortunate color palette from which to choose.”
The rat made another charge at the bars of the cage. This time when he hit, a spray of slobber came out of his mouth. The whole cage jerked two feet across the porch, making a sound like someone was trying to slide an upside-down shopping cart across a concrete floor.
With all this drama the rat had knocked himself a little woozy, he must’ve took a pretty good pop ramming himself into those bars and he stood there shaking his head a couple of times after that last hit.
Sparky said, “It’s all right, he’s like a bird in a cartoon, once you get the cloth over the cage he chills right out.”
Sparky tossed the tablecloth back over the cage just as the rat made his third charge.
Sparky said, “What’d I tell you and Dontay? He takes care of his end of the teamwork and I’ll take care of mine!”
I still hadn’t caught my breath. “Where’d you get that?”
“I called the Humane Society all naive and innocent and told them there was a racoon in my backyard that looked like he’d been eating Cool Whip. They were out there in a hour with one of them live-catch cages.
“I borrowed the cage, mixed up some Spam and Velveeta and molasses and stuck it on a piece of bread and set the cage and the bait in your momma’s house and the next day, instant rat! My only problem now is trying to decide what I’m gonna wear when the D.O.G. puts my picture up on that wall!”
I said, “I don’t know, Sparky, I think you got problems that run a whole lot deeper than that.”
Sparky said, “Now, I know I don’t have the rep for being real smart, but I really don’t think that’s the tone of voice you should be using on your partner who’s about to be a half-a-millionaire, is it?”
I told him, “All I know is you better get that rat outta here before the Sarge or Darnell or Little Chicago sees it. What if it got loose in the group home?”
Sparky said, “That’s the other thing we gotta talk about, Luther. I already took care of my part of the teamwork ”— he pointed at the tablecloth-covered cage—“and Dontay’s about to take care of his, so the way I see it there’s only one person who’s kinda letting the team down.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
Sparky said, “I know you said you didn’t want nothing to do with this, but I thought it’d only be right if I gave you a shot at getting bit too. We could say you tried to stick the garbage in the Dumpster and the rat bit you then I went heroic and tried to pull him off of you and he got me.”
I laughed even harder.
Sparky said, “I thought you might react like that, but you’ll feel different when Dontay slides us a check for a couple hundred Gs.”
I said, “Sparky, I’m serious, what if the Sarge comes up here and wants to see what you’ve got under that tablecloth? You gotta get that outta here.”
He said, “That’s cool, but I’m not leaving till you help me.”
“Help you how?”
“It’s like this, Luther, I tried to let that rat bite me, but every time I stuck my hand in the cage and he’d charge at me I just couldn’t hold still. Something kept making me pull my hand out at the last second.”
I said, “It was probably the last brain cell you got that’s still working.”
He said, “Go ahead and hate, but I just couldn’t do it. So what I need is for you to blindfold me and hold my arm still when I put my hand in the cage.”
He stuck his hand in his back pocket and pulled out an old do-rag and reached it toward me.
I laughed again.
He said, “Go ahead and laugh, but I’m not leaving till you do it. Womb to tomb, baby, birth to earth.”
I saw the serious look in his eyes and knew he meant it. I thought about it for a second. What are friends for if they can’t help you make your dream come true?
I snatched the do-rag away and said, “Take it in the backyard.”
He smiled and said, “I knew I could count on you, bruh!”
Holding your blindfolded best friend’s hand in a cage so he can get bit by a diseased rat isn’t as easy to do as it sounds.
Sparky washed his hand real good with antibacterial soap and we tried three times to hold it still enough for the rat to get at it. But every time Sparky heard the rat scrambling across the cage to bite him he got strength like Superman on ‘roids and yelled and jerked away.
Sparky took the do-rag off his eyes and looked real discouraged.
The only thing I could think of saying to help was “Why don’t I go in the house and get some cotton balls? We can stick them in your ears and that way when the rat comes busting across the cage to bite you you won’t be able to hear him, and if you can’t hear him you won’t know when to pull your hand away.”
Sparky thought for a second, then said, “You know what, Luther? I’ma have to do a reality check on my life. If the only way to get out of Flint is by me getting bit by a rat with lurvy something ain’t right. Something’s missing.”
I said, “How come you always wanting to get out of Flint so bad? You’re doing better here than a whole lot of folks.”
Sparky said, “Look who’s talking, Mr. I’m Gonna Move and Go to Harvard One Day. You know just like I do, Flint’s nothing but the Titanic, Luther. And the last life preservers they handed out were jobs in the factories back in 1976. Nowadays if you don’t go to college you mi
ght as well start practicing saying ‘Would you like to Jumbo-Size that Chuckie meal?’ Back in the day my uncle said even if you didn’t finish high school you could still get a job on the line in the factory and make enough cash to buy a new Buick every four years or buy a house or buy some clothes from Hudson’s or afford cable TV or a legal satellite. You can’t do that now, you can’t do nothing with two minimum-wage jobs now. Seems like the only way to get paid is being a stickup kid, booming weed or suing someone.”
He said, “That’s how come I can’t see why you keep knocking your hookup with the Sarge. Ninety-nine percent of the fools in Flint would kill to be set up like that.”
I said, “Well, that’s exactly what they’d be, fools.”
It was like I said before, you don’t know what someone else’s life is like until you live it. Here me and Sparky were thinking that each other had it made in the shade, me because his momma didn’t put any kind of pressure on anything he wanted to do, and him because he thought the Sarge and her cash was where it was at.
Sparky sighed and said, “Could you take me back over to Rankin Street? I think the best thing I can do is give this rat a ride back to his house, let him go and think of something else to do.”
To cheer Sparky up I thought of a couple of other ways for the rat to bite him but his mind was made up, it was like something had died in him. My boy was seeing things in a different way.
She did it again.
Right in the middle of fifth period Shayla “I See Dead People” Patrick and Eloise Exum started whispering back and forth and I know they were talking about me. Shayla looked so beautiful it made me want to cry. She was leaning in toward Eloise and looking deep into her eyes and smiling and nodding her head, the same way I imagined her doing it with me. They were having a great time.
Finally I had enough, I just wanted to get into their conversation somehow so I whispered to Eloise, nice as anything, “Why don’t you two shut up?”
Eloise laughed and, right after she rolled them, Shayla’s beautiful brown eyes filled with disgust.
I kept thinking about that tired old song that Darnell plays in his Rivy Dog all the time, “It’s a thin line between love and hate.”