Part 14 (1/2)

PHILISTINE.

The word came out different than a field whoop but just as loud. Whatever the word was she meant it.

At the same time she switched the knife to her other hand in one quick move for a better angle and plunged the blade into Ara T's other arm. All the way in. Up to the yellow handle.

The knife went in as easy as when Mam opened a ripe watermelon on the kitchen table. Ara T could whet a knife better than anybody.

Mam motioned for me to get behind her as she backed away from Ara T. The blood had begun to ooze from around the yellow handle. Ara T let out another animal sound and started toward us and that was when I heard a commotion from behind and something lifted Mam and me to the side in one motion like we were checkers on a checkerboard.

Big Sack.

It's done, Ara.

Ara T looked up at Big Sack and then reached down for a piece of the chair that had fallen to the floor. With the arm that didn't have a knife sticking in it he raised the stick of wood over his head and swung it.

Big Sack caught Ara T's arm at the wrist. He gave a twist and the piece of wood fell to the floor. Big Sack gave another twist to the arm and I heard it pop like when I threw a hard one into Rat's catcher's mitt.

Ara T's eyelids closed and then he dropped to the floor. Not like how cowboys fall down in movies but like when a coat falls off a hanger and crumples.

The phonograph record had finished playing but it was still going around with the needle making a scratching sound.

Big Sack started telling people what to do but he wasn't talking fast like he was nervous.

Get me that gin bottle, Silk.

A guy in a blue s.h.i.+rt grabbed a half-full bottle and handed it to Big Sack who emptied the bottle on Ara T's bleeding arm. It came to me straight then that Silk was the one who had run by me earlier to get Big Sack.

Hold him, Silk.

Big Sack wrapped a white handkerchief around Ara T's arm where the knife had gone in and grabbed the yellow handle with the other hand. He yanked.

Ara T's eyes opened and he rose up to let out a yell that had no match anywhere in the zoo then slumped back down on the floor. Blood gushed until Big Sack put down the knife and tied the b.l.o.o.d.y handkerchief tight around Ara T's upper arm. Big Sack grabbed Ara T's old coat and wrapped it around the b.l.o.o.d.y arm too. He turned to Silk.

Pull Ara's wagon to the door and bring his cloth.

Where we takin' him, Big Sack?

They'll be shootin' dice in back of Hatty's. We'll roll him there and get him st.i.tched.

Mam left my side and walked around Ara T's head. She picked up the knife from the floor and wiped the blood from the blade on a sleeve of Ara T's coat and slid my watch off of his wrist. She stood to face Big Sack.

You knows I had a right.

None said you didn't, Miss Nellie. It's done. You best clear out with the boy.

Mam folded the blade in and put the knife in the pocket of her uniform with my watch.

Big Sack knelt down and gave more orders.

Get a mop and rags from back. And some motor oil and sawdust. Fix a record on that player. Show here's over.

Everyone watched Mam as she reached down to pick up her black handbag I had brought in.

She took the yellow-handle knife and my wrist.w.a.tch from her uniform pocket and put them in the handbag and then walked to the table in the middle of the room. She moved the gla.s.ses and bottles to one side as easy as if she was clearing the dishes in our dining room after supper. She pushed my coins into a pile like she did with peas after she had finished sh.e.l.ling them and raked all the coins into her handbag. She carefully picked up the three pieces of Mr. Spiro's dollar bill and our photograph and my Ryne Duren baseball card. She put everything in my billfold and put the billfold in her handbag. Mam snapped it shut like she wanted everybody to know that everything was over and done with like Big Sack had said.

Mam put her arm around my shoulder and we started for the back door as calm as if we were leaving choir practice on a Sunday night. We walked past Big Sack who was sliding Ara T onto the canvas tarp that Silk had brought in. Even down on his knees Big Sack was looking me straight in the eye.

Ara T won't bother you again, Little Brother.

I nodded because I took Mr. Big Sack to be the kind of man who meant what he said.

As we walked outside past Ara T's cart I reached in and got Rat's newspaper bags.

I wanted to look back through the open door of the red building but I wasn't going to if Mam didn't. Mam had done a needle story about a woman in the Bible leaving some bad city and when she looked back G.o.d turned her into a block of salt. I don't know if the story was real but I wasn't taking any chances.

Mam didn't say the first word until we were on the Union Avenue bus by ourselves.

We'll talk in the morning whilst the house is empty. You lay back and rest easy now.

I nodded but wasn't sure I could do much resting. Mam held her handbag in her lap with both hands on top. She looked straight ahead.

As we got closer to our stop I remembered I had missed out on Mr. Spiro's fourth word. That word was important to me. Whatever it was. And once I missed out on something like that I knew I hardly ever got a second chance.

Chapter Eighteen.

I wasn't surprised the back doorbell buzzed so early the next morning. I looked at my wrist.w.a.tch that Mam had put on my desk. It was six o'clock. But it seemed to me that the Memphis police should have come to the front door.

The only people that buzzed at the back door were the grocery boy or sometimes Rat if he couldn't see Mam in the kitchen. But six o'clock in the morning was too early for Rat to be back from his grandparents'.

I decided I would just stay in bed until the policemen came up to my room to handcuff me and take me and Mam to jail. I wondered if they would be in blue uniforms or if they would wear coats and ties like the two Dragnet guys on TV who always talked like they were reading out of a book.

The police would ask me questions and I would start stuttering up a storm and telling them I didn't remember anything because I was so scared and maybe they would feel sorry for me and Mam and let us out of jail after a few days. Fact was I could remember everything about the stabbing like it was a movie that kept running over and over in my head.

I must have turned the movie into dreams because when Mam called up to my room it was after eight o'clock.

You gonna sleep to noon up there?

I smelled sausage frying so I put on clean shorts and a s.h.i.+rt and went downstairs.

Who was at the s-s-s-s-back door?

Nice man on a cycle.