Bluff City Pawn (36 page)

Authors: Stephen Schottenfeld

BOOK: Bluff City Pawn

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Joe shifts to change subjects, but can’t. “He said, ‘Mama’s skin was so good, she even looked good in the casket.
’
” He steps away from the counter, even though the case has been moved around and under. Huddy watches him dig a finger at the corner of his eye.

And then Huddy starts telling a Harlan story, too. From their days working together, when an old customer, Miss Lottie, came in about a heating problem in her house, and she got to talking about her health, about her recent stroke, her sense of direction real bad with new places, but her head’s mostly clear. “My memories is strong,” she said, and to prove it she said, “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, First Samuel, Second Samuel.” And when Harlan heard her, he said, “Look at that, she’s a historian.” Huddy tells all the way to the Bible books, but then realizes his own memory is wrong. The story didn’t happen with Harlan. It happened later, after he was gone, months after Joe’s phone call. Huddy had shared it with an imagined Harlan, the Harlan inside himself, who gave the punchline. Joe looks at Huddy, at the collapsed tale. Huddy could tell it anyway, replace parts of it—the woman says her line and Huddy supplies his Harlan answer—but Huddy doesn’t want to lie to Joe, and he doesn’t want to say Harlan was there when he wasn’t. And since the whole point of telling the story was that he was, the end of the story can’t be told. Still, it feels wrong to Harlan to leave him out; the punchline feels like some belated words that Harlan somehow said. Huddy waves his hand to forget.

Instead, he says to Joe, “Lucky you got me here. I’m in and out, here and there. It’s best to reach me at home, these days, at night, if you’re looking.” He hears the information extend to invitation, and Joe tries to reply, mumbles at the phone on the counter. Next week is bad, Joe says, but after is better, a visit tentative enough for both to agree upon.

Joe shifts to leave, but then stays still. His eyes squint. “He . . . had . . . this cigar box.”

“Huh?” Huddy says, at the slow talk.

“I had my rubber baseball that daddy gave me,” Joe says, and it’s only after hearing daddy that Huddy understands the meaning. “And you had your toy gun.”

“We all had guns.”

“Yeah—but you had yours
more
, you know?”

Huddy nods. “Banner-50.”

“And Harlan had his cigar box. With a knife in there, right?”

“Case knife. Granddad’s.”

“Was it?” Joe asks.

“Yellow handle.”

“You remember that?”

“He also had an arrowhead,” Huddy says, and for a second he has to double-check he’s not recounting the noonday auction table, but he can place the item in both spots. He sees Harlan studying it with a magnifying glass, which was there, too. Which Huddy lists to Joe. Harlan eyeing the surface, examining a color or detail. He’d use the glass against his other objects.

“Yeah. He’d be staring through that thing with full force,” Joe says. “He’d wake up and he’d go to that box. He was real quiet with it. Seemed like the only time he was quiet.”

“Found the arrowhead with me.”

Joe’s eyes level then lowered, wondering where he was, all by himself and far apart, his two brothers elsewhere together.

Huddy remembers roaming the woods, no, a field, and he looked over and Harlan was crouched to the ground, lifting the flint out of the grass. Huddy wanted to snatch it, to claim he’d seen it the same time and not second, but the feeling passed and the prize was Harlan’s without struggle. Still, Harlan saw how Huddy hated not finding it, so the two of them searched the field all over for a double, their heads bent to the spaces before their feet.

“Arrowhead. Magnifying glass. Pocketknife,” Joe says, his fingers diagramming a triangle, to see these objects separate and not lumped together in his mind. “What else?”

The box on a bedroom shelf. Harlan pulling it to the floor. “I think there was a magnet,” Huddy says.

“Yeah. That’s right,” Joe smiling, the flood of memory warm and sudden. “Lot of little things in there.”

“His treasure,” Huddy says. “His little pile of goodies.”

“Lucky Strikes,” Joe says. “Half a pack. At least, that’s when I remember seeing ’em. Probably other things. But that’s most of it.” Joe nods to himself. They’ve remembered enough of Harlan’s collection. But then he closes his eyes to get more. “Forgetting anything?” His eyes strain half-open.

“Can’t think of much else,” Huddy says, but he can—there are so many trinkets to swap and mix with the contents of the box—so Huddy thinks hard and sharp on it. A key chain, a button, a whistle? Toy car, train? Huddy lifting the lid wide, his eyes searching end to end. A shell, a buckle, a lure, a pin, a medallion, a lighter to burn things with? No, he tells himself, none of those was there, and nothing else’s been missed. “That’s all of it.”

“You sure?”

Huddy raises the top again, gazes inside over and over. “That’s everything.”

A sly smile from Joe, and his body trembles in a laugh. “That brain of yours, it sure done remember stuff.” He shakes his head. “Even stuff that scatters to the wind.”

“Scatters and comes back. I just saw your baseball, auctioned off.”

“What?”

Huddy grins, and Joe sees he’s taken the bait. His body sways another laugh.

“Hey, my baseball never wore out.” He cups his hand like he’s holding it. “Might fetch a good price, still.” Thumb rubbing fingertips; Joe signals the money being made. He clenches his lips, his fist, and nods. Then he leaves once more, and Huddy watches the car back out and turn toward Lamar and accelerate up, and Huddy looks beyond him to the busy street where a truck barrels along the outside lane and Huddy winces at collision, but Joe is still gliding up to the lot’s edge. He coasts and brakes and waits for the truck to pass, and then for a car speeding, and then his brake lights switch off and he surges east.

A man walks in after and asks about ladders. “Got two of ’em,” he says, and Huddy says, “Let’s see.” The man comes back with them, splits the legs. “They got some hiccups. Some age.” He steps onto the bottom rungs.

“There he goes,” the blood donor says, from the other side of the room, and Huddy didn’t see him re-enter, he must’ve lost track of the man’s whereabouts when Huddy was staring down at the case. He watches the man gaze upward, and Huddy turns back to the ladder.

“See,” the customer says, stepping higher, then climbing two more till he’s past halfway and stops. Huddy stares at the climbing man as the ladder legs shake and steady, and the man calls from above, “Now I’m up here.”

Acknowledgments

This book was informed by many conversations, and I would like to thank the following individuals for sharing their time with me: To Vince Miles, for the years of friendship. To Carole Hinely, for leading me into Germantown. To Charles Salvaggio and Hank Akers and Joe Kroboth, for the lessons in home building. To Jeff Brown and Barry Brown, for welcoming me into their shop. To Mary Liz Foster and Tempe Chancellor, for showing me their horses. To Jeff Todd, for the drives. To Ken Strong, for the pond.

To Vince Higgins, John Mayr, John Bates, John Kanne, Thomas Mitchell, Don Yount, Mimi Atkinson, Warren Balman, Joel Barron, Martin Boldt, Kenny Brooks, Fred Calcagno, Amber Dermont, Michael DeSain, Ronald J. Engelberg, Hans J. Farnung, Sgt. Michael Freeman, Sr., Don Grove, Ruth Irick, Kordell Jackson, Dave Kielon, Brett Krasner, David Krasner, Blaine M. Mattison, David Merz, Vernon Paradise, Michael Picow, Holiday Reinhorn, Frances Rosenberg, Lamar Todd, Walter Wills.

To my former colleagues at Rhodes College, especially Marshall Boswell. To my colleagues at the University of Rochester, especially Joanna Scott (thank you, Joanna, for all of your wisdom and advocacy), James Longenbach, John Michael, Jennifer Grotz, and Kenneth Gross.

To my agent, Ethan Bassoff, for his belief in the book and his indefatigable work ethic; to all the folks at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin. To my editor, Rachel Mannheimer, for her guidance and judgment; to George Gibson and everyone else at Bloomsbury.

To my parents, for everything, and to Susan, who listened and encouraged and saw what this book was long before I did.

A Note on the Author

Stephen Schottenfeld
is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and have received special mention in both the Pushcart Prize anthology and
Best American Short Stories
. He teaches English at the University of Rochester in New York.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Schottenfeld, Stephen.

Bluff City pawn : a novel / Stephen Schottenfeld.

pages cm