Magic Line (12 page)

He sat down by the bag lady and stared across the street some more.

‘I'll give you two dollars,' a scratchy contralto voice said, ‘if you'll help me get these bags up to my house.'

Zeb looked around. The old lady with the bags was the only person here; it must have been her voice. He would not have expected it to be so strong. She was watching him through thick glasses. A floppy straw hat hid the whole top of her head. All he could see was a small mouth and pointed chin. She looked harmless, but so did his mother, who could reduce him to stammering shame with a raised eyebrow. This woman looked much older than his mother and had wild hair and a weird hat – he didn't want to deal with her at all. But she had said the magic words: two dollars.

He said, ‘Where's your house?'

‘See those big buildings back there?' She pointed back toward the apartment block where Zeb had spent the night. ‘My house is a couple of blocks behind them.'

‘Two bucks to carry bags all that way? Not a great rate of pay.'

‘Well, you're not having a lot of success panhandling, are you, dear? Maybe you should take a shot at honest labor.'

He opened his mouth to tell her that usually the people who praised honest labor most were the ones who never had to do any. But he was completely out of money and getting hungry again, and she was right about his poor track record as a beggar. So he said, ‘How about five?'

‘Two and a half and a ham sandwich.'

For the hell of it he said, ‘Three and you put a slice of cheese on it.'

‘Done.' She got up and pointed to the two canvas tote bags. ‘Take these.'

‘Whoa,' he said, when he picked them up. ‘What's in here, rocks?'

‘Groceries. Including the ham and the cheese. Can you walk?'

‘Of course I can walk,' he said. It wasn't easy, though. He had his bedroll on his back, too – ordinarily no great burden, but together with the bags . . . he put the bags down while she gathered her things.

When she had her purse settled on her left shoulder she picked up the third bag, a small string satchel with a few items in it. Turning toward the apartment building she said, ‘What's your name?'

‘Uh . . . Zeb.'

‘You don't seem very certain. Do you want me to call you something else?'

‘No. Zeb'll work.' He winked. ‘Since that's my name.' There was no way she could know his full name was Zebulon, although what else could it be?

‘OK, Zeb. You can call me Doris, for the same reason. We're going right up this street here.' She pointed east on Camino de la Tierra.

Doris was small but spry, leading the way. The sun rose higher and the morning heated up. Climbing the shallow slope, Zeb got hot and then hotter. In a few minutes his soaked T-shirt was plastered to his rib cage. Sweat trickled into his ears and down the insides of his legs.

Surely this old white-haired woman needed a rest. Any minute now she would say so. But for what seemed like a long time she didn't stop or even slow down. Finally he gasped, ‘Need a breather!'

He put the bags down and leaned against a light pole. His new employer – not much of a boss, but she was certainly not a friend – watched him critically.

‘You're kind of a weenie under those silly tattoos, aren't you, dear? You must be Zeb the Couch Potato, is that it?'

‘Hey, these bags are heavy.' He touched one with his foot. ‘How'd you expect to get them home if I hadn't come along?'

‘Well, Valerie was supposed to pick me up.' She wasn't looking at him any more. ‘But she was late, or maybe she forgot. Reliability isn't her strong point.'

‘Oh? What is?' Zeb didn't care but he wanted to keep her talking so he could lean on the pole a little longer.

‘Oh . . . she's good at climbing ladders, she's not afraid of heights. And she reads well, when she can calm down enough to sit still.'

Showing her age now, Zeb thought – talking crazy. Climbing ladders and reading? Go figure. He had heard about older people getting this Alzheimer's disease. Hadn't seen it before – his mother made unreasonable demands, but she wasn't crazy. She knew exactly what she was doing – busting balls. This woman sounded more like she was drifting through time. One minute Valerie sounded like a child, unable to sit still, but then what would she be doing up on a ladder? Or driving a car?

He was uneasy around people he didn't understand, so he picked up the bags and said, ‘Ready?' as if Doris had been the one who asked for a rest.

They had already passed the side of the big apartment block where he'd spent last night. His sister would be at work now, so he was not concerned about her – she lived over on the other side, anyway.

He'd never walked along this street before, or wondered what was back here. There were clusters of small, single-family houses behind walls, then random mixes of mobile home parks and ill-kept duplexes. It was a street without a plan, he thought, and still slanting gradually upward. His arms were definitely going to fall off.

The old woman pointed to a gated driveway in the next block and said, ‘My house is in there.'

Zeb said, ‘Nice driveway. Let's stand here and admire it a while.' There was nothing much to look at really, a glassed-in booth in the middle of a driveway, gates that were open now but could be swung shut. This dowdy little woman didn't look well off enough to live in a gated community. Could she be a servant? She looked too old for that.

Not that he gave a damn why she was here if she'd feed him and pay him. Zeb worried that she intended to get her bags home and then try to stiff him. How much of a hurt would he have to put on her to get her to pay up? He couldn't quite see himself eating a sandwich in front of a whimpering old dame he'd just raised a lump on.

Then again this whole scenario seemed so unlikely, walking bags of rocks 'n' groceries up an endless hill with Evil Granny Doris – off and on he considered that maybe heat and stress had done a number on his brain and he was making it all up. But Evil Granny kept bringing him back to earth with little verbal jabs, asking if he was going to faint and like that. She knew perfectly well how heavy these bags were – she'd been sitting at the bus stop because she couldn't carry them herself. Now that she'd made him her slave, though, she was enjoying herself, mocking his pain. His sense of grievance, never far from the surface, came back big time. This had better be one hell of a ham and cheese sandwich he was sure as shit going to get. If, that is, he didn't die of exhaustion before he made it to that stupid gate that was,
fuck!
, still a block away.

By the time they turned in at the driveway he was wondering if doctors amputated dead hands or just let them hang there. He wanted to ask why there was no attendant in the booth but decided to save his breath. Doris led him along a curved street, around another curve and into a cul-de-sac.

The houses were all double-and-triple-wide manufactured homes – neat plastic houses permanently installed in small yards with flowers. Doris marched up a sidewalk between a pale pink double-wide with white trim and a carport where a car crouched under a fitted cover. She climbed two steps, unlocked a white door and said, ‘Come in.'

The front of the house was a carpeted living room that continued down one side to a dining-room table with a light over it. There was a counter on the other side of a divider with a kitchen behind it, a butcher-block island with stools on one side.

‘Whaddya know, we made it,' the lady said. She swung her string bag up onto the butcher block and turned on an overhead light. ‘Put everything up here and sit on that stool. I'll put these things away and— My goodness, you look tuckered. You need some water?' She fetched him a glass with ice. ‘Soon as I get these groceries stowed I'll make us something to eat.' She started slamming doors and humming. Rest seemed to be the farthest thing from her mind. How had she stayed so strong – was she a witch? Zeb had to hold onto his arms to keep them from shaking.

When he could let go, he drank some water and then some more. By the time the glass was empty he was strong enough to get up and pour a refill from the pitcher she'd left on the counter. When he was near the bottom of the second glass she put a plate in front of him with a big ham sandwich on dark rye, with potato salad and a dill pickle. Zeb took a bite out of the pickle and felt his taste buds wake up and sing.

They were almost finished with lunch when the front door flew open without warning. A young female with a yard of brown hair, three nose rings and very short denim pants stood in the open doorway, squinting into the room, and yelled, ‘Gram?'

‘We're right here, dear,' the old lady said. ‘No need to yell.'

The girl slammed the door and stomped over to where they sat, talking fast. ‘Where in hell have you been? You had me worried sick! I waited and waited at that filthy bus stop. Stinking diesel, Omigod, I think my lungs are destroyed.'

‘What a shame,' Doris said. ‘I guess that makes us even – I waited a long time for you, too.'

‘Gram, we said eight o'clock, don't you remember?'

‘No, Valerie, we said seven. You told me you had an early class so you couldn't give me a ride home today, so I said I'd shop early and you could pick me up at seven. This is Zeb, he helped me get home.' She nodded toward him, waved a hand toward the noisy, almost-pretty girl, and said, ‘My granddaughter, Valerie Duncan.'

Zeb said, ‘Hi.'

Valerie looked him over and turned back to her grandmother with a snarky little smile. ‘Now, where'd you pick up Zeb, Gram?' She had switched, all of a sudden, to a jolly, teasing tone. ‘Tell the truth – you been hanging out in the bars again?'

‘No, dear, that's your thing to do. Are you hungry? Do you want a ham sandwich?'

‘At nine o'clock in the morning? I don't think so.'

‘It's ten-thirty, Valerie.'

‘Whatever. You got any granola?'

‘Sure. On the usual shelf, help yourself. Here's a bowl.' Valerie rummaged in a cupboard and filled the bowl, spilling some on the floor. She left it there, came back with her full bowl and parked herself on a stool by Zeb, still without speaking to him. Then she seemed to detach from her surroundings temporarily, staring around the room, itching her arms and sniffing, until Doris handed her a spoon and a carton of milk.

Her hands shook when she poured the milk, Zeb noticed. The seam was coming out of one side of her shorts, on the hip nearest him, and the underpants that showed through the tear didn't look very clean. Valerie didn't appear to be in much better shape than he was, digging into her cereal like a starved puppy. Was it possible her last twenty-four hours had been something like his? She ate fast, with little slurping noises and a lot of crunch. Like a child, he thought, but just then she raised her head, her gaze crossed his face like a scythe and she said, ‘So, Zeb, you live around here?'

‘Not exactly.'

‘I see.' She wiped milk off her lips with the back of her hand, sat back on her stool and sniffed a couple of times, looking at him like he was the morning news and she only had time for the headlines. ‘You don't exactly live around here but you drop by the bus stop from time to time to see if any older ladies need some groceries carried home, is that it?'

‘Which they always do if their granddaughters spaced out the time.' He picked a paper napkin off a pile in the middle of the table and handed it to her. ‘Here, have a napkin.'

‘Ah, you lend a hand to younger women too, isn't that special?' She snatched it so fast, she had it in her lap before he realized he had a scratch on the back of his hand. ‘Kind of like Robin Hood with tattoos.'

‘Valerie,' Doris said suddenly, pulling her head out of a cupboard where she had been rearranging groceries, ‘shouldn't you be in school? What happened to your early class?'

‘Oh . . . it got cancelled. But I do have a lab pretty soon, I better go. Dang, I forgot my wallet in my room, Gram, could you . . .?'

‘Sorry, sweetie, I spent my last bit of cash in the grocery store. You can use your campus card for lunch, though, can't you?'

‘It's in my wallet. Isn't life a bitch? So can I take this apple? Thanks.' She planted a kiss in the air three inches from her grandmother's cheek and flew out the door.

Zeb heard a car start and roll away from the house.

He sat quiet a minute, waiting for the dust to settle behind this strange person, who seemed balanced somewhere between middle-class respectability and chemically-induced sleaze. Not that he gave a damn about her, but his attention had been caught by the fact that when she asked for money, her grandmother claimed to have none in the house. Doris had come through with the sandwich and then some, but was she going to try to weasel out of the three dollars she owed him? He watched her covertly, thinking a little arm-twist should be plenty to throw a scare into her. His arms still ached from those bags; he wasn't leaving without the money.

Doris was over by the door now, watching the back of Valerie's car pull away. Still with her back turned, she snatched a handful of tissue out of a box on a table, buried her face in it, and walked past him, blowing her nose. He heard her run a lot of water in the bathroom. When she came out after a few minutes, she carried three dollar bills to the island where he was sitting and laid them down in front of him on the butcher block.

‘There you go. Honest pay for honest labor. How does that feel?'

‘Very good!' He had hated the carrying but he did feel good about getting the money without a fight. He had been thinking there was no way you could spin beating on old ladies to make it look like great deeds. He drank the last of his third glass of water and asked, ‘OK if I use your bathroom before I go?'

‘Sure.' Then, as he reached for the money, she laid her hand over it and said, ‘But how would you like to make these turn into a ten?'