Bucking the Sarge

  The cop told her, “Not according to the papers he showed us. Now you gotta go.”

  The woman was probably telling the truth. I’m sure the Sarge had found one of her Friendly Neighbor Loan victims who works at the court to backdate the paperwork. That old Sargeism was right: “Don’t ever believe your lying eyes until you see it written on paper.”

  The woman said, “Where am I supposed to go with no kinda notice?”

  The cop said, “I’m sorry but that’s not our problem. Are there any other possessions of yours that you need to get out of the house?”

  The woman screamed, “I already told you all we have is in the trunk! But you know that’s not the point! He hit my son in the face with a loaded gun! What are you gonna do?”

  The cop was getting tired of this. “Ma’am, if you don’t get in your car and leave, what I’m gonna do is arrest you for trespassing.”

  The second cop decided they’d do their version of that good-cop, bad-cop thing you see on the Real Life Detective Channel; this version was called bad-cop, bad-cop.

  He said, “That vehicle of yours is violating every noise and emission law on the books, the plates have expired and I just know you don’t have any insurance. But I’ma let you slide. Get in your vehicle right now and leave the area or we’ll impound your car, arrest you, and call Social Services to look after your daughter until you can make bail.”

  Still squeezing the little girl’s shoulder like an eagle clutches a rabbit on the Nature Channel, the woman started easing off the porch.

  Sound finally came out of the little girl’s mouth. She could have been auditioning for American Superstar, she let out one note and she was nailing it. It was real high and loud and kind of made the hair on the back of your neck start twitching. She musta had lungs as big as a hot-air balloon.

  Once they got down to the sidewalk the woman pimp-slapped the back of the girl’s head four or five times and screamed, “Shut up! How’s that supposed to help anything?”

  The little girl’s note died but her mouth stayed open.

  The woman snatched open the rear door of the car, shoved the little girl in and slammed the door. Then she opened the driver’s door, got in and slammed it, all the while screaming. “All you ever do is think about your own self! You think I want this to happen?” The girl scooted over into the arms of the boy in the backseat.

  Then, as if my sleep wasn’t going to be shaky enough for that night, the boy looked up and locked his eyes on me through the missing rear window. I was looking dead in the face of the third-place winner of last year’s Whittier Middle School science fair, Bo Travis. He’d been crying and there was a double trail of blood running out of his nose and around his lips before it joined up on his chin.

  Before I could say or do anything Bo’s yelling momma threw the old bucket in reverse, it chugged a couple of times and started backing out of the driveway. As it did, smoke from the exhaust slid over the rusty trunk and into the busted-out rear window.

  Bo took his arm from around his sister and flipped me the middle finger.

  You could hear Bo’s momma’s screams from two blocks away. You could hear the car even after she turned right on Black Street.

  I went to the pickup and got my broom, the big green plastic garbage can, the aluminum snow shovel I use as a dustpan, a box of plastic garbage bags, some rags, my scrub brushes, the bottle of Pine-Sol and two pairs of gloves, one cloth and the other rubber.

  By the time I lugged everything up on the porch Darnell and the cops were joking about something while Little Chicago tee-heed at everything they said.

  Darnell was telling the cops, “… can’t pay the rent but she’s down there on Wager every night buying that rock. Here it is five o’clock and she’s still laying up in the bed.”

  He told me, “Start in the kitchen. For as skanky as she was it looks like she didn’t leave it too bad.”

  She didn’t leave it bad at all.

  The living room was very clean. Except for some notebook papers and blue hair ribbons scattered on the floor, there wasn’t a whole bunch of stuff in it. Bo’s momma had nailed blankets over the windows like some curtains and the only furniture was a couch and two end tables. Both of the tables had rings of melted candle wax all over their tops. There was one of those metal TV trays sitting across from the couch, probably where they used to keep their TV.

  I set my broom on the living room floor and pulled my cleaning equipment into the kitchen. When I went back to get the broom Darnell and Little Chicago had come back in.

  Darnell snatched one of the blanket-curtains off the window. A bunch of dust jumped off the blanket and looked like a cloud of swirling, gold-flecked specks when the sun hit it. Darnell threw the blanket down and said, “Them fools had been living up in here with no electricity and no gas for six months. Only reason the pipes didn’t freeze and bust back in the winter was because the water’d been cut off in February. She just got it cut back on last week.”

  “Tee-hee! Tee-hee!”

  Now that it was lighter in the living room I could see that both of the melted-wax-topped end tables and the couch were covered with bedsheets. The sheet on the couch was brownish-looking, one of the end table sheets was light blue and the other one was a washed-out sheet that had Masters of the Universe printed all over it.

  There were more blue ribbons and a comb and a brush, and a open jar of Dax hair grease and a book called Tornado by Betsy Byars sitting on the couch.

  Darnell walked over to one of the end tables. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s a miracle that low-life crackhead didn’t burn the place down.”

  He flicked some of the hardened melted wax off the Masters of the Universe table, then kicked at it. It lifted off like it was light as a feather and flew across the room, bumping into the TV tray and sending it rattling to the floor.

  It wasn’t a table at all. It was nothing but a big empty box of Charmin toilet paper that had been covered up with a sheet.

  “Tee-hee! Tee-hee!”

  Little Chicago sent the other end table flying across the room. Another box of Charmin.

  He said, “Maybe she wasn’t as ghetto as you thought, D, at least she had enough class to buy matching end tables.”

  Little Chicago hadn’t heard anything so funny in his whole life. He sprayed tee-hees out like the roach man sprays Raid.

  That was more than enough for me. I could feel another irrational, inappropriate episode creeping up on me.

  With Darnell and Little Chicago kicking and tugging and pulling at everything in the living room it looked like a scene from the Animal Planet Channel where a pack of hyenas was slashing at what was left of a zebra.

  I got my broom and went back into the kitchen.

  Bo’s family really was clean and neat. I emptied out the kitchen wastebasket and instead of the usual nastiness that you find, there was only a box of Hamburger Helper, a bunch of those empty little packs of coffee creamer, two empty cans of tuna fish cat food, an empty jar of jelly and an empty jar of peanut butter. And when I say empty I mean empty! The jars and cans looked like they’d been scrubbed out.

  Most times cat food is a bad sign, it means there’s a nasty litter box somewhere in the house, but it looked like maybe the Bo family’s cleanliness even ran down into their pet. There wasn’t any cat smell anywhere.

  I opened the fridge. The only things in it were a box of baking soda, a bagful of little green apples and one of those plastic zip-up bags that you put six cans of pop in to keep them cool.

  If this was a movie on the Fright Network I’d unzip this bag and someone’s head or heart would be staring up at me. Or worse, a chopped-off hand would leap out and snatch me by the throat. I walked over to the sink with the bag and slowly undid the zipper. That way if I had to drop it quick I wouldn’t spill whatever was inside, I wouldn’t destroy any evidence. Once it was unzipped I pulled the top back.

  Inside was a small carton of soy milk floating in some water with a bunch of h
alf-melted ice cubes.

  This was going to be one of the easiest cleanups ever! The kitchen cupboards didn’t have anything in them except a box of cornflakes.

  It looked like Bo was getting some perks from his job at Halo Burger. The next drawer had a bunch of red and white Halo Burger napkins, a bunch more of the coffee creamer and some of those little packs of salt and pepper. That was it!

  I checked upstairs next. Other than a few loose sheets of paper and some old gym socks the place looked like it had already been prepped. There were no holes in the plaster, no mystery stains on the ceilings, just a few pictures of the space shuttle thumbtacked to one of the bedroom walls.

  I saved the bathroom for last, it’s always the nastiest, but the only thing in there was another stack of Halo Burger napkins sitting on the toilet.

  It was perfect! I wouldn’t even have to scrub the floors or the sink or the toilet or anything! This was a record. I’d be in and out in less than an hour!

  I’d gone back to the kitchen to get the garbage bag when I saw them. I don’t know how I missed them the first time through. The front door and sides of the fridge were plastered with a bunch of those flat little rectangular refrigerator magnets. They all said:

  GET WHAT YOU DESERVE!!!

  CALL ATTORNEY DONTAY ORLANDO GADDY

  FOR THE ORIGINAL PITBULL ACTION!!!

  REMEMBER:

  BIG OR SMALL

  HE WILL SUE ‘EM ALL!!!

  CALL 1-800-SUE-EM-ALL!!!

  On one end of each magnet was a picture of a dog showing his teeth. On the other end was a picture of the American flag.

  Maybe there’d be something to smile about when this was done after all. Sparky would get a real kick out of these magnets. I started peeling them off the sides of the fridge and making a stack for my dog. Then I noticed what it was the magnets were keeping up.

  It looked like not only being neat ran in Bo’s family, being smart did too. The magnets were holding up a bunch of tests and certificates and stuff. All of them had the name KeeKee Wilson neatly printed in the upper right-hand corner. That must be Bo’s little sister.

  Here were a bunch of tests that she got As and Bs in addition on.

  Here were a bunch of tests that she got perfect in spelling on.

  Here was a room C Citizen of the Month award.

  Here was a Book Worm award saying that she’d read eighteen library books in April.

  Here was a report card that was tattooed with nothing but As and Bs.

  And here were a bunch of one-page essays she’d got mostly As and B-plusses on.

  The one on top was called “Admiration.”

  She’d written, in penmanship better than mine, spaced out on the paper:

  My big brother is 14.

  He is smart.

  He cares if I’m hungry.

  He studies alot and works alot.

  I admire him because he is going to fly the space shuddle.

  And he keeps his promeses.

  And he doesn’t pull two hard when he brades my hair.

  His name is Bo

  And he loves me.

  Maybe that would’ve been too much right there. But I might’ve been all right if the last four of Dontay Orlando Gaddy’s magnets weren’t holding up a picture colored with bright crayons. She’d got an A on it, too. Her teacher had written, “Great Work, KeeKee!” It was titled “My Family” and showed three people standing outside of a house with a chimney that had smoke coming out of it. There was a little band of blue sky across the top and a little band of green grass across the bottom. There were five or six “V”s in the empty area under the sky that were supposed to be birds. There was a giant daisy growing next to a little tree. The number on the house was 4309.

  She’d drawn a dude and two ladies. The females had skirts that were perfect triangles.

  The male was the tallest and was in a burgundy shirt and black pants. Him and one of the females, who was just a little shorter, were reaching their stick arms to their sides and had joined up the three stick fingers that were on each of their hands. They both had bright Crayola red smiles on their bright Crayola brown faces and two black dots for eyes. The female standing off to the side of these two was about half their size and, maybe KeeKee had run out of black crayon, the little female had a red mouth but didn’t have any eyes.

  Under the male, KeeKee Wilson had printed “Bo.”

  Under the tall female holding Bo’s hand she’d put “Me.”

  Under the little eyeless female, KeeKee had printed “Mommy.”

  I leaned my back against the magnetless fridge and slid down until I was sitting on the kitchen floor.

  This was the kind of thing I was talking about, this was the scraps of a nightmare. This was the stuff that you couldn’t get used to. This was the kind of thing that would make you want to get that box of cornflakes and put a serious beat-down on Darnell Dixon, Little Chicago and the Sarge.

  There’s always something desperate and fake when you have to deal with someone who’s about to get evicted. They’ll say anything to try and get another rent-free week or two. That makes it easy not to listen to what they have to say, ‘cause you know there’s a pretty good chance they’re lying. It’s nothing to make your heart hard to that. Even if you feel bad for them odds are they’re not doing nothing but playing you, and who wants to get played?

  People will throw their babies in your face or have their sick, dying mommas cough on you or they’ll tell you the check’s in the mail or that the Department of Social Services computer is down or that they’ve got the inside word on what next Thursday’s number is going to be or any of a million other stupid excuses as to why they haven’t paid the rent in three months. It gets real easy to let those excuses slide right by you ‘cause it’s real obvious that they are what Ms. Warren calls rhetoric, or speech designed to influence.

  What’s hard is a stupid little picture drawn by a little mostly-As student who’s got a dope fiend momma. What’s hard is knowing that that girl was gonna be living in a busted-up Impala until her momma drags her into some other hole to live. What’s hard is wondering, and I know some philosopher somewhere has wondered this and probably figured it out to the day, how much longer that little girl has before she’s beaten down so bad that being room C’s Citizen of the Month doesn’t mean a thing. What’s hard is knowing that KeeKee may be six or seven now but that in three or four years she’ll be thirty.

  That’s the kind of thing that’ll have you back-slid up against a fridge with a stack of tests and essays and certificates in your hands so heavy that they’ve pinned your arms to the floor.

  That’s the kind of thing that has “irrational, inappropriate episode” written all over it.

  I don’t know how long I’d been sitting on the kitchen floor. I don’t know how long Little Chicago had been watching me from the door.

  He said, “Darnell, come here,” tee-hee, “I think your boy’s nutted out again.”

  Darnell looked in. “Soft little punk.”

  Tee-hee. “What you gonna do?”

  “Nothing, you drive the pickup back and just leave him here. I’ll send Patton Turner by later to pick him up.”

  Little Chicago said, “Who?”

  Darnell said, “You know him, Patton Turner. Luther’ll be pattin’ his feet on the pavement and turnin’ the corners to get his soft self home.”

  It was dark when I started walking. I’d picked up all of KeeKee’s tests and her library book and the picture she’d drawn and was carrying them and the fridge magnets in one of the plastic grocery bags. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them, but I couldn’t leave them. Forty-three-oh-nine North Street had just gone from being KeeKee’s home back to being the Sarge’s house.

  It’s funny how when you’re young there’re some things that old people do that seem to be so tight that you can’t wait to do them yourself. Things that make you stay awake the night before they’re ‘bout to happen ‘cause they got you so h
yped that you can’t even sleep. Things like when I just turned thirteen and the Sarge woke me up to tell me, “I’ve noticed the rapport you have with the men over at their group home, it seems to me like there’s a genuine affection between you and them when you’re working over there.”

  Uh-oh.

  Most times if I woke up and found her standing over me my ears would be ringing from one of her “Good morning” pops to the head. Most times her wake-up words were something like “How come you didn’t…” or “Do you realize what time it is…” or worst of all, “There seems to be a little discrepancy in what I requested and what was done.” So these words about me doing a good job at the group home didn’t quite feel right.

  All I could say was “Really?”

  She did that thing that she thinks is a smile and said, “Really. So, even though you’re young I’ve made a decision.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Tomorrow night at eight you and I are going to the Secretary of State’s office over on Clio Road. Peter Thompson is going to cut you a driver’s license. You’re ready to drive the bus.”

  It wasn’t until later that I learned I should always wait for what we philosophers like to call the other shoe to drop. Back at thirteen I was still young and naive. I just about jumped out of bed and said, “I get to drive? Seriously?”

  She said, “When have you known me not to be serious?”

  This was great! She’d made Darnell Dixon start to teach me how to drive the bus a while ago and he told her, “Are you kidding? That bus costs more than eighty thousand dollars. You gonna let him drive it?”

  “Just in case,” she’d told him. “You never know what tomorrow will bring. Besides, when you start making the payments you can question me about who drives my bus.”

  I got pretty good at it in a couple of months and now I was actually going to get my learner’s permit! I’d probably be the only thirteen-year-old in the universe who would have one.

  That’s when the questions started creeping in.

  I said, “But … wait a minute, isn’t the Secretary of State’s office closed at eight at night, and don’t you have to be sixteen to get a learner’s permit?”