Christopher Paul Curtis (6 page)

If the rat had wanted to kill me and Sparky we were there for the taking because all either one of us could do was hold our breath and stare at him with our mouths and eyes wide open.

The rat looked back at me with black, shiny, marble-sized eyes and shook himself like a wet dog. He jumped off the truck and strolled about two feet past me as calm as anything, then waddled up the front steps onto the porch and back into the house. He was being so cool that I was surprised he didn't slam the door behind him after he got inside.

Sparky finally squealed and scrambled backward into the trash that was already in the truck. Then he jumped right out of the pickup's bed onto the street.

I told him, “She must be crazy if she thinks I'm gonna load this mess up.”

Sparky was already inside the pickup's cab with the door locked behind him.

By the time I got behind the wheel, he was cranking his window up. I locked my door and said, “I'll tell you what, that's it for me. She's gotta get her exterminator out here before I pick up one more box or bag!”

I started the truck.

Sparky was shaking like a cold Chihuahua. He said, “I thought I was through. Man, that rat was diseased, did you see that thing on his back? Looked like he had lurvy or something.”

“Had what?”

“Lurvy, that disease sailors used to get if they didn't have no vitamin C.”

“Whatever. But that's one trash pile that won't be seeing Luther T. Farrell until a professional exterminator can give me documented proof that he's killed everything in it. And the Sarge doesn't have all day to get it done, either, I'ma give her two hours or she's gonna have to get someone else to haul that trash. I got other things I can be doing with my time.”

Sparky and I had a good old time laughing about the rat and telling each other how we were about to go off on the Sarge. But with every block that we got closer to her place, the laughs and the jokes got fewer and fewer.

By the time I pulled into the Sarge's driveway the inside of the truck was dead quiet.

Sparky looked at me and said, “Well, let's get this over with. I wonder what she's gonna say?”

I didn't have to wonder.

When we walked in the Sarge was just hanging up the phone.

She didn't even look at me. She picked up a logbook, started writing in it and said, “I know you couldn't've moved that rubbish that quickly. What's up?”

As a great philosopher, whose name escapes me at the moment, once said, “Fools rush in where wise folks would never stick a toe.”

Sparky blurted out, “Mrs. Farrell, you won't believe what happened! I picked up this big heavy box and a rat as big as a rottweiler came rolling out of it! Then he strolled up in the house like he owned the place! He had some kind of skin disease!”

She finally looked up. “And …”

Sparky said, “And? Well… and … and Luther said we wasn't going back out there until you get all of them boxes and junk exterminated. And you gotta get it done quick, Luther says he's only got two hours before he has to take care of some other business.”

That's my dog.

I could tell the Sarge liked this. It's not like she smiled or anything, but there was a certain, I don't know, cheerfulness in her usual Billy Goat Gruff voice. She said, “Is that right?”

She tipped her head at me. “Listen. I don't care if you pick up one of those boxes and Smokey the Bear comes strutting out of it.”

She looked at her watch. “It's currently fourteen hundred thirty hours. When I drive by there at seventeen hundred hours for inspection I want to let you know that there are two, and only two, outcomes to this little drama that I'd find acceptable.

“The first: I go by there and see a nice clean curb in front of a nice clean house. That I'd find acceptable.”

Poor Sparky, he stood there listening and nodding like there really were going to be some choices given here. I took on the right pose for one of these lectures, I kept my eyes on my feet.

The Sarge said, “The second outcome that I can live with is that I drive by there and see that the trash is still on the curb. In that case the next thing I'd better see is signs that a violent confrontation has taken place. And there in the torn, bloodied grass I expect to find your fibula or one of your kidneys or some fragment of your skull covered with giant rat tooth marks, something that shows you put up a struggle of Biblical proportions before you were eaten. That, too, I'd find acceptable. Sad, but acceptable.”

The left eyebrow arched. “Need I say more?”

When we got outside Sparky said, “You do know you're on your own, don't you? I mean you do understand where I'm coming from and where I'm going, right? Peace out, baby.”

He started walking home.

Just like most times it was me against the world.

That's why I was so unhappy to come up here today and see the Riviera with the anticootie sheet and the pickup truck.

I opened the door to the Sarge's.

Darnell and Little Chicago, or as I call them behind their backs, Satan and Satan Lite, were just getting ready to leave.

Darnell told me, “Forty-three-oh-nine North Street. Give us about a half hour, that crackhead calls herself refusing to leave. It shouldn't take too long to make her see the error of her ways.”

Little Chicago did his sick stupid laugh. He said, “Oh yeah, she's gonna see it like she's got fifty-fifty vision!” He's the only person I know who really goes “Tee-hee” when he laughs.

As Darnell walked past I could see he'd put his 9-millimeter pistol in the back of his waistband.

Great.

Ever since that time I had what the Sarge called “an irrational, inappropriate episode of misplaced sensitivity” at one of Darnell's evictions I've been excused from going to them. That was way back when I was a young pup and I cried and actually hit Darnell in the face with a box of Sugar Frosted Flakes when he slapped this six-year-old boy that he was evicting.

I was a kid back then and Darnell let me off on the temporary insanity defense.

He took me aside and told me, “You're messing with my rep, but everyone's entitled to one mistake. Slapping me
with Tony the Tiger was yours. I don't care who your momma is, don't make another.”

After the Sarge gave me the 4-1-1 on what was going to happen today I went home to take care of my crew, then chilled for another hour just to make sure Darnell and Little Chicago'd had plenty of time to get these folks on North Street out.

As soon as I pulled up on North I knew I hadn't waited long enough. There were two police cars at the curb and a tired, old, leaning-to-one-side, four-door hoopty sitting in the driveway of 4309. I parked behind the back cop car and got out.

The hoopty was running, coughing out thick clouds of smoke and sounding as bad as a big old Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Both windows of the car's back doors had been busted out and had been covered with cut-up black plastic garbage bags that were being kept up by duct tape. The rearview window, over the trunk, was busted out too. They must've run out of duct tape or bags, though, 'cause it wasn't covered. Inside the car I could see the back of someone's head. He was sitting in the rear seat of the hoopty with his chin tucked down into his chest.

The woman who was getting evicted was standing on the porch yelling at two cops. There was a little six- or seven-year-old girl standing next to her. Half of the girl's hair was done up in real neat cornrows with small blue ribbons on the end of each braid. The other half was standing straight up like it'd just been combed out. The woman's right hand squeezed the little girl's shoulder while her left hand pointed and stabbed at the air in front of the cops.

She told them, “How you gonna just stand there and let that fool stick a gun in the nose of a fourteen-year-old boy? I wanna press charges.”

The little girl was standing stiff as a statue, her eyes were clenched closed and both of her hands were balled up in fists covering her ears. Her mouth was wide open.

One of the cops said, “Look, Ms. Wilson, we checked, Mr. Dixon has a CCW permit and he said your son threatened him. Besides, the witness said Mr. Dixon never pulled his gun. There's nothing we can do.”

She screamed, “If he didn't pull the gun out how come my son's nose is bleeding? How'd that happen? You think he bust his own nose up like that? How you gonna let a grown man pistol-whip a boy?”

The cop sighed. “Ma'am, I don't have time for this. You've been legally evicted, and you've got to move on.”

The woman yelled, “How's that legal? I know my rights, they didn't give me no sixty days' notice!”

The cop said, “Well, the eviction notice says you were served two months ago.”

“The notice is a lie. That crazy dog Darnell Dixon came by two days ago, on Sunday, and told me I had to get out!”

The cop told her, “Not according to the papers he showed us. Now you gotta go.”

The woman was probably telling the truth. I'm sure the Sarge had found one of her Friendly Neighbor Loan victims who works at the court to backdate the paperwork. That old Sargeism was right: “Don't ever believe your lying eyes until you see it written on paper.”

The woman said, “Where am I supposed to go with no kinda notice?”

The cop said, “I'm sorry but that's not our problem. Are there any other possessions of yours that you need to get out of the house?”

The woman screamed, “I already told you all we have is in the trunk! But you know that's not the point! He hit my son in the face with a loaded gun! What are you gonna do?”

The cop was getting tired of this. “Ma'am, if you don't get in your car and leave, what I'm gonna do is arrest you for trespassing.”

The second cop decided they'd do their version of that good-cop, bad-cop thing you see on the Real Life Detective Channel; this version was called bad-cop, bad-cop.

He said, “That vehicle of yours is violating every noise and emission law on the books, the plates have expired and I just
know
you don't have any insurance. But I'ma let you slide. Get in your vehicle right now and leave the area or we'll impound your car, arrest you, and call Social Services to look after your daughter until you can make bail.”

Still squeezing the little girl's shoulder like an eagle clutches a rabbit on the Nature Channel, the woman started easing off the porch.

Sound finally came out of the little girl's mouth. She could have been auditioning for
American Superstar
, she let out one note and she was nailing it. It was real high and loud and kind of made the hair on the back of your neck start twitching. She musta had lungs as big as a hot-air balloon.

Once they got down to the sidewalk the woman pimp-slapped the back of the girl's head four or five times and screamed, “Shut up! How's that supposed to help anything?”

The little girl's note died but her mouth stayed open.

The woman snatched open the rear door of the car, shoved the little girl in and slammed the door. Then she opened the driver's door, got in and slammed it, all the while screaming. “All you ever do is think about your own self! You think I want this to happen?” The girl scooted over into the arms of the boy in the backseat.

Then, as if my sleep wasn't going to be shaky enough for that night, the boy looked up and locked his eyes on me through the missing rear window. I was looking dead in the face of the third-place winner of last year's Whittier Middle School science fair, Bo Travis. He'd been crying and there was a double trail of blood running out of his nose and around his lips before it joined up on his chin.

Before I could say or do anything Bo's yelling momma threw the old bucket in reverse, it chugged a couple of times and started backing out of the driveway. As it did, smoke from the exhaust slid over the rusty trunk and into the busted-out rear window.

Bo took his arm from around his sister and flipped me the middle finger.

You could hear Bo's momma's screams from two blocks away. You could hear the car even after she turned right on Black Street.

I went to the pickup and got my broom, the big green plastic garbage can, the aluminum snow shovel I use as a
dustpan, a box of plastic garbage bags, some rags, my scrub brushes, the bottle of Pine-Sol and two pairs of gloves, one cloth and the other rubber.

By the time I lugged everything up on the porch Darnell and the cops were joking about something while Little Chicago tee-heed at everything they said.

Darnell was telling the cops, “… can't pay the rent but she's down there on Wager every night buying that rock. Here it is five o'clock and she's still laying up in the bed.”

He told me, “Start in the kitchen. For as skanky as she was it looks like she didn't leave it too bad.”

She didn't leave it bad at all.

The living room was very clean. Except for some notebook papers and blue hair ribbons scattered on the floor, there wasn't a whole bunch of stuff in it. Bo's momma had nailed blankets over the windows like some curtains and the only furniture was a couch and two end tables. Both of the tables had rings of melted candle wax all over their tops. There was one of those metal TV trays sitting across from the couch, probably where they used to keep their TV.

I set my broom on the living room floor and pulled my cleaning equipment into the kitchen. When I went back to get the broom Darnell and Little Chicago had come back in.

Darnell snatched one of the blanket-curtains off the window. A bunch of dust jumped off the blanket and looked like a cloud of swirling, gold-flecked specks when the sun hit it. Darnell threw the blanket down and said, “Them fools had been living up in here with no electricity and no gas for six
months. Only reason the pipes didn't freeze and bust back in the winter was because the water'd been cut off in February. She just got it cut back on last week.”

“Tee-hee! Tee-hee!”

Now that it was lighter in the living room I could see that both of the melted-wax-topped end tables and the couch were covered with bedsheets. The sheet on the couch was brownish-looking, one of the end table sheets was light blue and the other one was a washed-out sheet that had Masters of the Universe printed all over it.