Bluff City Pawn
Authors: Stephen Schottenfeld
For my mother and father
and for Susan
There once many a man
mood-glad, goldbright, of gleams garnished,
flushed with wine-pride, flashing war-gear,
gazed on wrought gemstones, on gold, on silver,
on wealth held and hoarded, on light-filled amber,
on this bright burg of broad dominion
.
—Anonymous, “The Ruin,”
eighth century
(translation by Michael Alexander)
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.
—Theodore Dreiser,
Sister Carrie
Contents
Opening the store takes
thirty minutes, but today, the Monday after daylight savings, he leaves twice that just to get in front of what might go wrong. Someone at the door saying it’s nine and Huddy correcting eight and the guy saying we’re both here. Daylight savings, a busted day, a day that won’t get done. Time doubled over and Huddy’s head blurred between what it was and what it moved to, a new hour that doesn’t yet fit.
He unlocks the steel shutters and folds them back. Two men walking loosely down Lamar—both far enough away that Huddy won’t worry about them running up. He unlocks the door and locks it behind him, turns off the alarm and locks it, too, because he doesn’t want the customers’ hands on the panel. Hits the lights and looks around for damage or items out of place, anyone hiding. He stares up at the ceiling, not that he’s expecting a cut hole, but you never know. Then he walks back to the loan counter, unrolls the paper, and turns on the computer.
The pawnshop bust has moved off the front page, and Huddy checks to see if it’s buried elsewhere. It’s gone. Fast Pawn over on Winchester, only open a year, which means to Huddy they were criminal from day one. It’s been over a year since a pawnshop got busted, that one on Park, where the guy got in so deep and stupid he was giving orders: You think you can get me computers, stereos, jewelry? And then before that the shop near the tool plant, where the owner had the employees from the plant stealing from the factory, and you’d walk in there and see shelves and shelves of brand-new industrial tools. These stories happening just often enough to make people think every pawnshop has a truck parked out back, doing these midnight deals. And sure, some of what’s here is hot, you can’t stop all of it, especially if no one’s gonna write down serial numbers, but he’s more often a buffer against crime, if anyone would ask him. The customer needs fast cash and they get a collateralized loan instead of robbing someone. The shops, Huddy would tell them, are
stopping
the crime.
He opens the gun room, sliding up the fencing, and puts out the pistols locked in the gun safe. Then he changes out the video, gets the oldest tape from the cabinet and rewinds it and sets it in. A newer technology would make things easier, but he’s waiting for his brother Joe to pay for the hard drive, the same way he’s waiting for Joe to fix the broken curb, so the customers don’t keep tripping into the store. Or stripe the lot, so they know where to park. Huddy glances outside. At closing it’ll be darker and the lot won’t be lit up, even when he already complained to Joe. The lights are under city contract, so it won’t really be his brother’s fault, but Huddy still blames him. Joe far off in the suburbs, with a different mayor. “I don’t want to live around all them Democrats,” he’d said, which Huddy knows means blacks.
He gets the drawer set up. He checks the default list, checks the tickets, prices the merchandise up, goes to the back and starts pulling the inventory. A gun, a fishtank, two saws. He’ll give Mister Terry a few extra days on the gun, because Mister Terry is always good on his loan, surprised he’s defaulted, but the other items he’ll put out on the floor. The fishtank: He can already hear the customers coming in, saying, “Hey, man, you’re taking fishtanks? I’ll get you a bigger one.” Give him a month, he could turn the place into an aquarium. It’d be the same way if he bought an accordion, a bowling ball, frozen steaks. Whatever he buys, the street always wants to bring him more. “Steaks, man, I can get you beautiful cuts. All packed up, ready to go.”
He cleans the tank, wipes and tests the saws. Deanie, his employee, who helps with the cleaning and ticketing, isn’t here yet, and he wonders if she’s confused the time, until he realizes she’d be earlier, not later, so it’s him doing the confusing, and the forgetting—since he now remembers her saying something about the doctor. This nerve damage they can’t figure out what from. Maybe it was even surgery, the conversation returning, so Huddy’s alone today.
He goes to the back door to make sure there’s nothing strange. Then he opens the valuables safe behind the loan counter. Keeps the handle down, so it looks locked. Puts the jewelry out. The bank opens at 8:30, but he won’t go, not because of Deanie but because he went last Monday, so this week it’ll be Wednesday or Friday. Instead, he’ll Windex the showcases. He finishes and eyes the clock. Flicks on the signs, unlocks the door. No rain, so he wheels the two mowers and the bike from the entrance to outside, chains ’em up. The merchandise outside means you’re open more than the Open sign does. He comes back in and decides to call home before his phone starts ringing. “Hey,” he says when Christie answers.
“Hold on. Cody, no no no . . .”
Huddy waits. “If Harlan calls, give him my number. I already gave it . . .” Huddy’s younger brother, Harlan, phoning last night to say he was leaving Florida, gonna try Memphis again. “Memphis?” Huddy had said. “You hate it here.”
“No, I hate it
here
. New bunch of apples, new bunch of worms.”
Huddy sorry for that but also happy to have him back. And Harlan always makes being around Joe bearable, feels less poor up against him.
“He give a time?” Christie asks.
“Wouldn’t matter.”
“Well, that’s helpful. He going straight to you or here?”
“Guess that depends on the time.” Someone at the door now. “I’ll check in later,” he says. “How are you today?” Huddy asks, always saying hello to see what’s given back. A direct hello, or eye contact. Even a nod, a mumble.
“I’m shopping.” “Just looking.”
He’ll take anything. The first customer is a loan, a guy pawning a Cold Steel knife, the next is Miss Daws paying the interest. Miss Daws could’ve bought the ring ten times over, all the years she’s bringing in her twenty. Then it’s Mister Isom picking up his tackle box. Huddy’s gonna have to be careful with pickups today. Each one will be: Do I trust this person to leave on the floor while I go back to storage? And who else is here and in the lot? And what about the late-afternoon rush? Huddy might need to ask customers to wait outside.
A young mother with her two-year-old, making her way forward, until the kid bumps his head against the hard knob of the mitre saw, and he starts to cry, rubbing his head. “No, that didn’t hurt,” his mother says. “Shake it off. Come on, you’re a tough kid.” She yanks at him, but he drops to the floor, bawling, just when the father comes in carrying an infant. “I told him to stay close,” she says, “and he goes and whacks something.”
“Tyler, come over here,” the father yells. And now the infant is crying, too. The father steps forward and scoops the son up, both arms full with crying, and he looks at Huddy and then at her and says, “Just get done with your business and come on.” And he bangs outside.
Quiet again, but the woman is weakened by the time she reaches the counter, the item she’s pawning turning cheap and bad in her hand. Her wrist, actually, the watch coming off. “I’m wanting to know what I could get for this,” she says softly and Huddy holds it.
“Accutron,” he says. “The first electronic watch. But it’s a difficult watch to repair. Getting to be like a dinosaur. Sorry,” and he hands it back, but she doesn’t take it.
“I was hoping to get something for it.”
“Yeah,” he says. “This was really something back in the sixties. Kind of an innovation. But now, it’s just a dinosaur,” he says again, and he repeats the gesture, and this time she takes it.
She gives this dashed squinch. “I might could find something from home.”
And Huddy watches her spread her hand out on the counter, look at her fingers, at the missing rings and stones.
“When you figure he’s gonna start honking at me?” She looks around the store, like suddenly she’s a buyer. “You know what I really need? I need about a week where everything’s free. Either that or a lucky penny.”
Huddy nods. And by the time the horn starts, she’s already at the door. No one there to replace her, and Huddy sees a picture of the four of them, huddled in an empty house, wind going through open windows, the sound of the U-Haul driving the furniture away.
The car door slams. He wonders what bind they’re in, what job got lost. Or maybe it’s dope, drinking, gambling, people falling into everything. If they could keep out of these things in life, they wouldn’t need him.
“Thought I’d check your pistols,” a gun buyer says, and Huddy switches to the gun counter. Huddy’s never seen him before, but he knows the type: hat, vest, pocket pants, fifties, white, wearing a beard. “Show me that Government .45,” the man says, and Huddy unlocks the case, grabs the mat and sets it on the glass, grabs the gun and opens the chamber, closes it and transfers the gun to the mat, the handle facing the man, the nose away from both of them. He shuts the gun case and half-steps away.
The man lifts the gun, flips it over and back. “Looks real clean. Not shot much.”
“I don’t see any ring pounded on the back of the chamber,” Huddy says.
“Yeah, that’s right. Doesn’t have a lot of wear. I like to shoot Governments. I like the man-stoppers. You know? Uncle Sam started doing these Governments in 1912.”
Off a year, Huddy thinks. Gun buyers love to talk and he just lets them go.
The man glances at the ticket price dangling on the string. Flicks it with his finger. “I’m a big gun buyer. Buy lots of guns. You call me anytime you get a good one.”
Huddy only listening with his eyes now, the man setting the gun back down on the mat.
“Might buy this tomorrow. I’ll be in about the same time.”
“There might be somebody from yesterday saying the same thing.” The man smiles and leaves, and Huddy returns the gun to the case. He knows the pawnshop flies, like this guy Del waltzing in now who shows up twice a week, only buying if you’ve made a mistake. Because that was Huddy, before he worked here. He’d come for tools, but more than that, he liked the action, the treasure hunt. What’s in today, what’s behind door number three? And he liked the contest, your skills against theirs. “I gotta have a hundred and a half for this.” And the owner Mister Jenks one day said, “You make a good presentation. You need a job?” And Huddy did.