Christopher Paul Curtis (10 page)

Bo'd skipped all his classes since they got evicted and I was kind of glad because seeing him was something that I wasn't trying to do. Having all of KeeKee's papers around was like a bad omen or something but I couldn't just throw them away.

When Bo didn't show up on Friday I asked if anyone knew if he was coming back to school or where he was living
now. Someone told me that he'd picked up a second job at Burger King during the day but other than that no one knew nothing. No one knew and no one cared.

Oh well.

When I got home after school I took
Tornado
out of the bag, then threw KeeKee's stuff in the garbage. I mean, I really had tried to get it back to her but finding Bo looked like it just wasn't going to happen. The book had KeeKee's school's name on it so I could drop it off after I picked up the Crew.

In the Whittier Middle School pecking order Bo is kinda off the chart. Me and Sparky and Shayla and Eloise are really at the bottom of the barrel but Bo and a couple of other kids at the school don't even register on the scale. Mostly they're the loners, people like Bo who don't mess with no one and who don't want no one to mess with them.

KeeKee's papers were putting me in what we philosophers call a moral dilemma. On the one hand since I didn't want to see Bo and I had tried to get the papers back to him it was all right for me to throw the papers away. If they were all that important his family would've taken them when they were getting evicted, right?

On the other hand they had to be important to KeeKee. She must've worked real hard on them, even though I'm not hating when I say getting all As in the second grade ain't exactly as tough as winning the Nobel Peace Prize for Rocket Science. But for a little kid you can see how that might seem like a big deal.

The bag with all KeeKee's junk sat in the garbage at the home for about fifteen minutes before I pulled it back out.
When you're looking a real tough philosophical problem like this in the eye there's only one moral thing that you can do: you start making compromises.

I figured the best way I could get these papers to Bo was to go by the Halo Burger on Saginaw Street at night and drop them off real quick. I could walk in all blasé, order me a cheeseburger deluxe, heavy on the olives, a cherry Coke and some fries and after I got my grub I'd tell whoever took my order, “Oh yeah, could you give this bag to Bo Travis.” Then I'd jet. That way there wouldn't be any embarrassing scenes with words like “How come your momma threw us out,” followed by flying fists.

That night I got the Crew settled down for bed, took KeeKee's bag and headed downtown.

I drove around Halo Burger twice, trying to peek into the kitchen to see if Bo was working, but no luck. Then I saw a bike chained up to the Dumpster out back and was pretty sure it was the one he rode all over Flint.

There weren't any other customers when I got inside, just a real short brother in a purple baseball cap, a purple shirt and black pants wiping down tables.

Even though I knew what I wanted I pretended to look up at the menu, at the same time trying to get a peek in the back to make sure Bo was working.

From studying life I've learned that when you're doing the right thing you get little signs of encouragement some of the time, little things that seem to be saying, “Hey, Luther, you're on the right road, my brother, keep on pushing.”

As I waited for someone to come take my order I heard from behind me, “Hey, Luther!”

I turned around.

The little table-wiping dude ran up to me and pushed his face into my chest and wrapped his arms around my waist.

He said, “Pretty darn good to see you again, Luther! How's Mr. Baker doing?”

It was P.D., he used to be one of the clients at the home. About a year and a half ago he went on a special program where some of the clients got to live on their own if they could hold down a real job.

I hugged him back.

I said, “P.D.! When did you start working here?”

He said, “About six months ago. I gotta wipe all the tables and clean off the trash and make sure there ain't no garbage on none of the floors. I'm doing pretty darn good at it too!”

“Yeah, I see, it looks real good in here!”

He said, “Yeah, I been meaning to come on by and visit with you guys again but, man, they keep a brother hopping down here and I'm taking me some classes, too, so I just haven't had the time to do it. How's Mr. Baker doing?”

I said, “That's cool. Mr. Baker's still the same old same old.”

P.D. laughed. “Yeah, man, what a guy! Tell him P.D. said hello.”

“OK.”

He looked over his shoulder and said, “I get in trouble if I stand around talking too much, Luther, this night manager is pretty darn tough.”

I told him, “All right then, you better get back to work. Peace.”

P.D. turned around to get back at his table.

Then it hit me, this was the little sign that I needed to show I was on the right road!

I said, “P.D., is Bo Travis working tonight?”

He said, “Oh yeah, pretty darn nice guy, that Bo Travis.”

“Could you give this to him?” I handed P.D. the bag.

“Sure, Luther, I should've known you two were friends 'cause you're a pretty darn nice guy too.”

“Thanks, P.D.”

He said, “Wait just a minute, I'll go get him.”

I said, “No! That's all right, I'll catch him later. I really gotta bounce.”

P.D. said, “Cool, Luther, I'll give it to him right now. Don't you worry, you know if I say I'ma do something I do it.”

When I got in my ride and drove by the front of the restaurant I could see Bo standing near the counter looking down into the bag.

That was all I needed, I turned right onto Fourth Street smiling my head off.

Doing the right thing is like that, you get a strong feeling of relief, sort of like a giant rock has been lifted off your back. Or like the dump you take the day after you eat the ten-taco special from Los Aztecos.

I know there's no way I can help most of the folks that are trapped in the Sarge's Evil Empire, but it sure does feel good to help even one.

This is one feeling the Sarge never has to worry about
because she's never done anything decent for anybody. Me and her just look at things different.

But that's cool 'cause one of the things I've learned from studying philosophy and watching Judge Judy is that there are always two sides to every story. Things aren't ever what they seem to be when you first look at them. What's important is that you keep your mind wide open and try to understand what's going on from a lot of different angles. That's what I try to remember every time I talk to the Sarge or think about her or try to understand why she is the way she is.

It finally sunk in that she wasn't like most other moms when I was in the third grade. It was back in the day when me and Sparky still hung with Eloise and Shayla, and I can let you know straight up that we didn't bunch together because we were the siddity committee. Kind of the opposite. We each had something real whack about us that made us stick out as much as it made us stick together.

Sparky was messed up because he never had any money and came from a family with a long tradition of breaking and entering. Eloise was whack because she was smart and didn't try to hide it and didn't mind beating the mess out of anybody, male or female. I was uncool because even the dumbest of my classmates was starting to pick up on the fact that I was a lot more maturer than most anybody else (and maybe because word had leaked out that even back in third grade I had to change the Depends on some of the Crew), and Shayla had a bad rep 'cause not only was she smart, but she lived in a house full of freshly dead corpses.

Me and Sparky and Shayla and Eloise had been on the playground at school when Eloise, just out of the blue, upped and said to me, “My momma said that your momma loans money to people at exorbitant interest rates.”

What kind of third grader used words like “interest rates”? Who could ever understand what Eloise was saying half the time? But I could tell from the way she said it that this wasn't something that you'd wanna have your momma called.

I said, “Why are you telling me that? If you wanna borrow some money you've gotta go ask my mother.”

She snorted and said, “I don't think so. My momma said the Bible says, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’”

My boy had my back. Sparky said, “Who cares what your momma says?”

Eloise said, “It's obvious that a little gangster wannabe like you wouldn't care,
Dewey!”

Uh-oh.

I wouldn't've minded watching a good fight but I wanted to see where Eloise was going with this money-borrowing stuff so before Sparky had a chance to go off on her I said, “So what? I know my momma tries to help people out when they're broke. That's why she gives them those Friendly Neighbor Loans.”

Eloise laughed right in my face.

Maybe there was going to be a good fight after all. When it came to keeping your respect it didn't matter if Eloise was the toughest fighter in the school, no one laughed in the face of Luther T. Farrell.

Before I fired on her I said, “Why don't you say what you got to say, Eloise?”

She said, “OK, but when you're sitting at home crying your eyes out like a baby later on remember you're the one who asked me to tell you. Friendly Neighbor Loans my foot. My momma says your momma is nothing but a loan shark, and that that hoodlum, Darnell Dixon, shakes people down when they can't pay her back!”

Then, like I was stupid or something, she spelled it out, “L-O-A-N S-H-A-R-K.”

It would've been a lot more helpful if instead of spelling it she would've defined it, but whatever this “loan shark” stuff was I knew it wasn't a compliment.

I said, “She is not!”

Eloise said, “She is so!”

“Is not!”

“Is so.”

“Uh-uh!”

“Uh-huh!”

I had to get loud on her. I said,
“Uh-uh!”

She went,
“Uh-huh!”

I said, “You don't know nothing.”

She said, “I know how to speak proper English, and I know a couple of morons when I see them!”

It was a close argument but when me and Sparky were walking home after school he told me I'd won it. He also said if me and her had started fighting he'da pulled her off before she got to whipping me too bad.

We gave each other some dap.

I asked him, “What's a loan shark?”

He said, “I don't know, Luther. But me and Jerome seen this movie called
Jaws
about this thing called a great white shark. You do the math, my brother, sounds to me like she's trying to say your momma is a great big white woman.”

“Uh-uh!”

“Uh-huh!”

I couldn't let Eloise get away with saying that, but that was back in the days when I'd still check with the Sarge if I had any questions. If I was going to fight Eloise Exum I wanted to be sure it was gonna be for a good reason. I mean why get beat up for something that wasn't all that bad? From watching the Undersea Life Channel I knew that sharks were at the top of the food chain, so maybe me and Sparky were wrong, maybe Eloise
was
giving the Sarge a compliment.

Back then the Sarge only had two pieces of rental property and was still working at the Buick, so I had to wait for her shift to be over before I could ask her to translate what Eloise Exum had been talking about.

I knew I had to catch her before she went to take her shower and headed off to the U of M—Flint for her classes so at exactly 4:35 I was at the front door waiting.

Before she even had a chance to put her books and her lunch box and her tools down I said, “Momma, what's a loan shark?”

She sat on the bench by the door and pulled her boots off. They always smelled like the factory.

She slid her socks off and started rubbing her feet. The smell of the oil from the shop had even leaked down into
her socks. It was such a strong smell that it seemed like when she got to work she might've been taking her boots off and walking around in her stocking feet. I turned my head away, not so much because of the smell, but because I never liked looking at the Sarge's feet, back in the days before her weekly pedicures they always used to be swole up real bad and had knobs and knots and humps and bumps on the toes.

She finally arched her left eyebrow and said, “Why do you want to know about loan sharks?”

I told her, “Someone at school was talking about them.”

She said, “Who?”

Luther T. Farrell has never been a snitch. I lied, “I don't know.”

She kept rubbing her left foot.

“So,” she said, “I'm assuming my name came into the conversation you had with Mr. I Don't Know, correct?”

“Kind of.”

“And what did you say when this anonymous person called me a loan shark?”

“I told her you weren't one.”

The Sarge said, “And you were right.”

She put her socks inside her boots and sighed. “Actually what I do is supply an infusion of capital into a segment of society that is shut out from standard, traditional forms of credit.”

So much for translation. They talked so much alike that some of the time I wondered if Eloise Exum wasn't the Sarge's long-lost daughter.

The Sarge had given me that fake smile thing and said,
“OK, maybe I'd agree with Ms. I Don't Know if she said I was a loan barracuda, but ‘loan shark’ paints much too aggressive and violent a picture for my little enterprise.”

I said, “So what are interest rates?”

She stopped rubbing her feet and said, “Eloise Exum.”

Before I could even think I said, “How'd you know?”

“She and that little Patrick girl are the only two of your contemporaries intelligent enough to talk about such things, and the Patrick girl has had enough home training to know better than to say something so rude.”

“So what are interest rates?”

“Interest rates are the cost of borrowing money, it's what the lender gets for making the loan.”

I said, “She used another word talking about the interest rates, ex-something.”

The Sarge stood up, stretched and said, “Exorbitant.” She laughed. “That's a relative term meaning too high. But the way I look at it no one's putting a gun to anybody's head to make them borrow my money and they know the rates going in, so
caveat emptor.”