My father shakes his head. “Everybody liked our old place. Should be able to move back in two weeks. Three at the most.” My father looks around at the Chudleys’, which appears to be occupied by messy campers. “Hauling all our stuff up here for two weeks didn’t make sense.”
“Two weeks is a long time to go without sleep,” Mrs. Kelly says.
“I’ve got the crew working as fast as they can, but there was a lot of damage,” my father tells her.
“Have you tried taking her button box?”
We all shake our heads. Nobody wants to take Nat’s buttons away, mostly because more often than not, it actually makes matters worse.
“At least she’s been quiet.” My mother’s voice is strained. “We’re so close to the warden’s house now. She pitches a fit and . . .”
“Ahhhck,” Mrs. Kelly groans. She’s heard enough. “Have you tried Moose’s toothbrush?”
We nod.
“Let’s rack our brains, people. I think the buttons are the answer. I’m just not sure how.”
“I know.” I raise one finger.
“Let’s hear it,” Mrs. Kelly commands, her palms up, her fingers wiggling like I should come out with it.
I look at my dad. “The button she gave you.”
“What button . . . oh,” Dad says. “My first day of work button.”
“Do you have it?” my mom asks.
“Do you think I would lose ninety-seven? Whose father do you think I am, anyway?” He smiles as he reaches into his pocket for the simple, silver four-hole button.
“Let’s get her in here. We’ll make it a ceremony,” Mrs. Kelly declares.
“What kind of a ceremony?”
“A button ceremony,” she says.
Whatever that means. I can tell she’s making this up as she goes along.
“What’s the ceremony for?” I ask.
“What if she can’t control whether she goes to sleep or not?” my mother squeaks.
“It will be like a talisman,” Mrs. Kelly says. “Isn’t that what it was for your dad? A good luck button?”
We nod.
“Then this use will be consistent with the button’s previous symbolism.”
She can’t be serious. If I wasn’t so desperate, I’d laugh.
“Let’s tell her you’re going to give her the button at night, and in the morning you’ll take it back. She’s not to have it during the day for any reason.
“Moose, you’ll get down on your knees. And hand her the button like it’s a diamond ring,” Mrs. Kelly says.
“She’s my sister. I’m not proposing to her.”
“I’ll do it,” my dad jumps in. My mom hands him a folded towel and he puts the button on top and we all trudge into Nat’s Chudley room.
“Okay, sweet pea,” he says. “I didn’t want to have to do this. But I don’t see any other way. I’m going to have to give you your button back.”
This gets Nat’s attention. Her eyes rove across my father. “I like having it in my pocket,” he continues, “but you need it so you can sleep at night.”
“Sleep at night,” Nat says.
“That’s right,” my father says. “Where do you want me to put it?”
“In my room,” she says loudly and clearly.
“Okey dokey then,” he says, placing the button on the milk carton table by her bed.
“No, my room. Number 2E.” Nat cries, “My room, 2E!”
“Natalie’s Chudley room,” Mrs. Kelly says.
“Number 2E, 2E,” Nat belts out.
“We’ll be back to number 2E soon, but Nat, they have to get it fixed up. They can’t work on it with us underfoot.” My father is still on his hands and knees. He looks like he’s pleading with her now.
“No wait, Dad. Nat’s right. We should listen to her. We could do this, you know. We could take our blankets and pillows down to 2E.”
“Number 2E,” Nat says. “Buttons in 2E. Sleep in 2E.”
“We could live up here and when it’s time to go to bed, head down to 64,” I say.
“Bea Trixle will have a conniption,” my mother says.
“She’s going to have a conniption when we move back anyway. May as well get it over with,” I say.
“Who would you rather have pitch a fit, Helen . . . this Trixle woman or Natalie?” Mrs. Kelly asks.
“Bea Trixle,” I say.
My mother sits transfixed for a moment. But then she nods her head. “Moose is right. When you pitch a fit, it puts you one down, no matter who you are. Better Bea Trixle than Natalie.”
“I like the way you’re thinking, Moose,” Mrs. Kelly tells me. “And by the way, how’s the work on your sister’s eye contact coming along?”
Mrs. Kelly just never lets up, does she? We haven’t even solved this crisis and she’s already on to the next.
“Working on it,” I mumble.
• • •
That night when it’s bedtime, we all gather our blankets and traipse down to 64 building. Nat puts Dad’s good luck button and the swatch of blanket in her button box. She also has my baseball glove. I don’t know how she got that again, but I’m not going to cross her right now.
We watch as she climbs in her bed. There are no sheets, no pillow. She can’t wait for any of that. Within minutes she’s snoring.
“We should have listened to Natalie,” I whisper. “That’s what she was saying all along.”
My father shakes his head. “Don’t I know it,” he says, reaching for Mom’s hand.
15. The Chinless Man
Saturday, January 25, 1936
The next day I peek in at the cockroaches in their cardboard home on top of the bookshelf in Jimmy and Theresa’s room. I can’t believe I’m relying on ten greasy bugs.
“Don’t do anything without me,” Theresa warns Jimmy, Annie, and me as we hover around the cockroaches.
Jimmy squints at Theresa. “Where are you going?”
“I got to work for Piper this morning,” Theresa reports.
“We’re doing this now,” Jimmy informs her. “You want to be a part, you have to stay.”
Theresa crosses her arms and stamps her foot, her bottom lip puckered out. “Nuts,” she says.
“Why isn’t Piper coming down, anyway?” Jimmy asks. “Doesn’t she know we’re running the cockroaches today?”
“She said to let her know if it got interesting,” Annie says.
“Not everyone thinks cockroaches are as much fun as you do,” I tell Jimmy.
“Their loss,” Jimmy tells me as a cockroach crawls up his arm.
“What’s the plan, anyway?” I ask.
“We got to watch the dock guards, first thing. We can’t do this when they’re paying attention,” Jimmy says, moving the cockroach from his armpit back down to his wrist again.
“Or we’ll get in trouble,” Annie says.
“Right.” Jimmy nods.
“Is Trixle on duty?” I ask.
“Yeah. My dad is too, for part of the time,” Annie says. I give Annie a second look. It’s hard to get used to tall and thin Annie when she’s always been squat and sturdy Annie.
“What are we watching for?” I ask Jimmy.
“We got to see when the guards turn their backs,” he says, taking a second cockroach out of the box and letting it scamper up his other arm.
“I don’t know, you guys. Maybe we shouldn’t . . .” Annie says.
“What’s the harm?” Jimmy asks. “We aren’t getting near the cons, the cockroaches are.”
Annie crosses her arms in front of her chest and raises her blond eyebrows. “It’s not your dad working today.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Jimmy asks.
Annie frowns. Her eyes focus on the bottle cap curtain, which separates Theresa’s side of the room from Jimmy’s.
“Annie,” I say, “if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.”
Jimmy and I exchange a look. Annie doesn’t like to do things that might possibly be against a rule the adults haven’t thought to make yet. We wait for her to say something else, but she doesn’t.
“So where should we go?” I ask.
“Best view is from the balcony,” Jimmy says, capturing both cockroaches and putting them back in the box.
“And remind me why exactly we’re doing this?” Annie asks.
“We’re hoping the cons won’t be able to resist the opportunity to brag,” I say.
“But we can’t just stand on the balcony gawking at the cons,” Annie says.
Jimmy takes the cockroach box under his arm. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured out,” he says as we head through the Mattaman living room to the front balcony.
Annie stands watching us, her mouth open, ready to object. I think she’s not going to come, but when I look back, there she is.
Jimmy heads for the balcony right outside his apartment. We sit cross-legged in a semicircle by the railing. Jimmy takes out a piece of paper and folds it up into a triangle and we play a lame game of flick the paper football. “We have to pretend to be busy,” he whispers.
It doesn’t take long before Indiana, the guy with no eyebrows, notices us.
“Morrrrrrrrning Annie, Jimmy, Mooooooose,” he calls out, waving with both hands, like he’s washing windows with two hands at once.
We don’t answer.
“Who wants to say good morning to someone that creepy?” Annie whispers.
“It’s his eyebrows,” I say. “He must shave them off.”
“I wonder what he does with the eyebrow hairs?” Jimmy asks.
“Seems like you need a special place for eyebrow hairs,” I say.
“An eyebrow hair receptacle,” Jimmy adds.
“Exactly,” I laugh.
“You know, this really isn’t something I want to think about,” Annie says.
“The problem is his chin, anyway,” Jimmy says.
“He has no chin,” I say.
“That’s the problem,” Jimmy agrees.
“Never trust a man with no chin.” Me again.
“Even if he had eyebrows and a chin, he’d still be creepy,” Annie decides.
There’s no way the cons can hear us, but something about how they’re watching is disturbing, like they’re better at this than we are. “C’mon you guys, we have to move. We’re too visible,” Annie mutters.
“Let’s try the corner by the stairwell,” I say.
“Too far away. We won’t be able to see the cockroach from there,” Annie says.
“Let’s just stay here. They’ll forget about us,” Jimmy says.
Jimmy’s right, they get bored of us and go back to work. Which is the good news and the bad news, because now watching them is as exciting as observing the currents in the bay. Who cares?
But then slowly I begin to notice little things. Lizard, Indiana, and Count Lustig are friends and they’re always nodding to each other, sweeping next to one another, and saving each other a place in line. When Indiana is in the back of the pickup, Lizard is the one tossing laundry bags to him. When the Count is planting flowers by the switchback, Lizard is carrying the potting soil.
Indiana is the weirdest of the three, but Lizard is a close second with his big fleshy face and skinny legs. The Count looks perfectly normal. Normal height. Normal posture. Normal brown hair. He blends in. You would never pick him out of a crowd.
When the count bell rings, the cons line up. Then Trixle comes by and counts them himself or sometimes he has them count off. This is to make sure no prisoner has escaped. He reports the count to the dock officer, the dock officer writes it on a slip of paper, then he attaches the paper to a guy-wire at the bottom of the dock tower. The tower officer operates the pulley, and the message zips up the fifty feet to the tower. Then the tower officer calls in the count to the control room in the cell house.
The whole transaction takes five minutes, sometimes longer—depending on who is on dock duty. If it’s someone Trixle likes, he takes a cigarette break and they discuss the Seals game or some boxer guy like Baby Arizmendi.
“Jimmy, let’s send our bug man out,” I whisper as the balcony shakes with the clickety-clackety of high heels.
“Mr. Mattaman,” Bea Trixle shouts down.
Jimmy’s head pops up. “Yes, ma’am.” He swivels toward the sound of Bea’s voice.
Clickety-clackety. Bea appears. She’s breathing hard, teetering on her high heels, which, so far as I know, she never takes off. Even her slippers have high heels on them. She shakes her finger at Jimmy. “How dare you?”
“How dare I what?” Jimmy asks.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
“Wouldn’t notice what, ma’am?” he asks politely.
“Fifty dollars has up and gone. Fifty dollars!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” Jimmy says.
“Don’t lie to me, Jimmy. The money is gone and you’re the only one who could have touched it.”
“That’s nuts,” Jimmy says, looking her straight in the eye. “I’ve never stolen one penny in my whole life. Not from you. Not from anyone.”
Her face softens with doubt, but then she revs up for a second round. “I took you into my store because your folks needed money. I gave you a job and this is what you do to me?”
Jimmy stands firm. “I’m not a thief.”
“Moose here probably put you up to it. I’m going to tell the warden and call the police. Let them sort it out. You watch me!”
“Mrs. Trixle, ma’am, I didn’t take your money.” His voice doesn’t waver.
“And I didn’t put him up to it,” I say.
“The least you can do is be a man and fess up.” Her eyes are trained on Jimmy.
“Nothing to confess. I—didn’t—take—your—money,” Jimmy repeats slowly, as if she doesn’t speak English.
“I will expect you to pay it back, do you hear me? But not from working at my store. No sirree, buster. You are fired.”
“That’s crazy talk, ma’am. You can’t accuse me like this.” Jimmy looks at her, his face full of defiance.
“Oh yeah? You watch me.” She turns on her heels and clickety-clacks back across the balcony.
My mouth hangs open. Annie’s eyes pop out of her head. “What was that all about?” she asks.
Jimmy flaps his hand like it isn’t a big deal.
“Are you kidding me? She accused you of being a thief,” I say.
He shrugs. “She does it all the time. She makes mistakes with her bookkeeping, then she claims I’m stealing from her.”
“But fifty dollars . . .”
“It’s never been that much before,” he agrees. “Once it was two dollars. Once eleven fifty. Another time twenty. She’s a barrel of laughs to work for, I’m telling you,” he says, though his voice has a catch in it—like what just happened is starting to sink in.
“You lost your job,” I say.
He shrugs. “She always hires me back. She can’t run the place without me.”
“Does she ever apologize?” Annie asks.
“She brings me up a piece of pie, then mumbles about there being a mistake in the books. Never that she makes the mistake. The books were mistaken.” He smiles. “Then she says: ‘See you tomorrow?’”
“And you say yes?”
“You see a lot of jobs on this island for kids? I earn half my mom’s grocery money,” Jimmy says as Mrs. Caconi wheezes past us on the balcony. The smell of baking
powder and sweat fills the air.
I shake my head. “Still,” I whisper, “you’d better go talk to your mom. Bea said she was calling the police.”
He sighs. “She’ll never do it. It will make her look like a fool when they discover it’s a bookkeeping error. I’ll tell my mom as soon as we’re done. Let’s get our cockroach out there.”
“Jimmy,” I whisper, “you don’t think the missing money could be related to the fire in some way?”
Jimmy jumps up. “She probably added wrong. That’s what she always does. C’mon, if we’re going to do this, we better get on it before they go to lunch.”
“So what are we going to ask them? The cons, I mean,” Annie asks.
“What they know about the fire,” Jimmy explains. “My dad says they know everything that happens on this island.”
“People always say that, but I wonder if it’s true,” Annie says.
“You have another idea?” Jimmy asks.
Annie shakes her head.
“Let’s just ask flat out,” I say.
What do you know about the fire? Annie writes because she has the best handwriting.
I roll the note into a tight cylinder. Jimmy takes thread and ties the roll, like a diploma, then secures it to the cockroach’s back. It’s amazing how good he is at this, like he’s been tying messages to cockroaches his whole life. “We need to target one of the convicts. Which one do you think?”
“The Count,” Annie says.
“He’s the most normal,” I say, rearranging my legs, which are cramped from sitting for so long.
“Okay, Count Lustig, then,” Jimmy says. “When Trixle finishes with the convict count, I’ll give the sign and we’ll go.”
I keep one eye on Trixle moving through the men and one eye on Jimmy. When Jimmy nods, I spring into action, fast-walking across the balcony and down the stairs. On the dock level, I toss a chunk of cookie. It lands near Count Lustig. He glances at the cookie, but doesn’t reach for it. He goes about his business scrubbing the deck.
I run across, sticking close to the front of 64, then toss another cookie chunk between Jimmy and the Count. Jimmy releases the cockroach. The cockroach stands still.