Christopher Paul Curtis (9 page)

“I know all that, but I still got to insist you get your highly educated, highly motivated self in there and scrape out Mr. Baker's funky drawers again, I can smell the man from outside, or is that too much to ask of a genius-in-training?”

A great philosopher, whose name escapes me at the moment, once said, “The greatest of truths are often said in jest.” And even though Sparky was fronting that he was being funny I knew he meant everything he said. There are some things that don't need to be exchanged between friends.

Sparky had crossed the line and he was about to get his wish. I wasn't going to hit him for talking about my momma or for teasing me, but oh yeah, I was going to hit him. I was going to hit him 'cause this felt like a flagrant foul. This felt totally unnecessary. There are things I wouldn't throw in his face, things I wouldn't remind him of, but I guess he didn't feel the same way, so now it was lesson time. Why would someone who was supposed to be your boy try to go off on you where they thought they could hurt you? Besides, I didn't come out of my house on a night like this to be disrespected by my so-called best friend.

Everything moved in slow motion, the way it does when you're about to get in a fight or a car wreck. I raised the tile over my head and this time Sparky's eyes got big instead of shutting. He started to raise his left hand but wasn't quick enough. I snatched my arm down and the tile caught him right above his left ear. This time when it hit, my arm didn't shimmy, it shook. All the way back to my shoulder.

A gusher of thick red blood exploded from a gash on the top of his head and the tile broke clean in half. It seemed like things were going so slow that I even saw a little cloud of reddish-brown dust raise up from where the tile popped him.

Sparky took three steps back, then fell in a pile limp as a towel you just dried off with after a shower. It seemed like all of his bones had been Jell-O-fied.

He moaned, “Oh, no …, oh, no …,” and propped himself on his left elbow, trying to get back up.

I dropped the half tile I was holding and started over to help him.

A woman's voice came loud and strong, even with the wind pounding on everything around. “Hey,” she yelled, “you better leave him alone! We saw you hit him! The cops are on the way!”

I looked over toward the Taco Bell. The manager and two of the kids who worked there were standing in the doorway. She waved a cell phone at me, she'd really called 911!

“Uh-oh, Sparky, quick man, get up! They saw what happened, come on, we gotta get outta here!”

I pulled Sparky to his feet. Blood was running down the left side of his face.

He still hadn't figured out what was going on. “Luther? Bruh?” He kept bringing his hand from the cut down so he could see the blood. “Why'd you hit me like that, man? What'd I ever do to you?”

“Sparky, the Taco Bell folks saw what happened, it's over, we got to move. Besides, you might need to get to the hospital, your head's running like a spigot!”

He finally understood what was going on. I took off toward the alley and he stumbled along just behind, trying to keep up with me.

We were back at the home in two minutes.

I used my key on the back door and guided him down into the basement. I led him right into my bathroom. Blood was coming out of his head real fast.

I knew the Sarge would kill me but the closest thing to stop his bleeding was one of her good white towels. We'd just had a state inspection so the everyday towels were still hidden in the linen closet upstairs.

“Here,” I said, and handed him the white towel, “press this on the cut, it'll slow the blood down. I'll go get the keys and drive you to the hospital.”

My roommate, Chester X Stockard, looked up from his bed and gasped. That was the most I'd seen him react to anything. Maybe he'd had some bad experience with blood before.

I told him, “It's all right, Mr. X, Sparky had a little accident, I'ma take him to the hospital.”

He closed his eyes.

I left Sparky leaning over the tub and ran back upstairs.

As soon as I opened the kitchen door the Sarge was standing at the sink. Sparky's run on bad luck was still going strong, she almost never came over here at night.

She said, “I thought you'd gone to bed.”

“Uh, I thought you had too.”

She said, “Tomorrow I want to change Mr. Baker's medication, seems to me like he's getting a little too—”

There are some knocks that have bad news written all over them. They're a little too hard or a little too soft, whichever, but you know when that first knuckle hits the wood that whatever's on the other side of the door it ain't someone telling you you hit first prize in the Lotto.

The Sarge looked at the clock in the microwave, then at me. “You expecting someone?”

“Me? No. Uh-uh.”

Her eyes stayed on me a second too long as she wiped her hands on the dish towel. I started back down to the basement.

“Hold on,” she said. “I got a feeling about this, you follow me.”

I jumped when the knock came again.

The Sarge peeked through the peephole, then looked over at me. The muscles in her cheeks squeezed her jaw tight. She opened the door.

“Flint police, ma'am.”

“Yes, Officer, how may I help you?”

“Ma'am, sorry to disturb you. We're checking out an assault and attempted robbery that occurred at a fast-food restaurant a few minutes ago.”

“An assault?”

“Yes, ma'am, the witnesses said the victim chased after the suspect. We followed a trail of blood to your house. It seems to have disappeared just down there.” I saw the beam from the cop's flashlight swing across the yard. “Have you heard or seen anything unusual in the past few minutes?”

“No, Officer, I haven't, but I will keep my eyes open.”

The cop acted like he wanted to ask more, but the Sarge was through. He'd get more information from a fire hydrant than from her.

“Thank you, ma'am. Do you mind if we look in your backyard?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Even before she had the door shut I was already slipping downstairs.

“Front and center!”

I went back.

“Assault and attempted robbery?”

“Momma, it wasn't nothing like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

“Well, Sparky …” I forgot, the Sarge didn't take to nicknames. “… Dewey, had this plan to scam Taco Bell's insurance company and so he made me bust him in the head with one of their roof tiles and he started bleeding real bad and I was supposed to take him in so they'd call an ambulance and then he'd sue them. He was gonna give me some of the money.”

She said, “And?”

“And some people at Taco Bell saw me hit him so we had to call it off.”

The Sarge rolled her eyes.

“So where is that idiot? He's not getting blood all over my floors, is he?”

“No, ma'am, I got him a …” Uh-oh. “… a rag before he came in, he's leaning over the tub downstairs.”

“Get him.”

I walked as slow as I could back down into the basement. If it wasn't for bad luck … It's just the way things go in the life and times of Luther T. Farrell that the one time the cops take less than an hour to answer a 911 call it's when they've been called on me.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I got back into the basement. Chester X was out of his bed and was leaning over Sparky washing around the cut on his head with soap and water.

I said, “Mr. X! You gotta get back in bed, I told you he was gonna be cool, just get your sleep.”

He mumbled something, then shuffled back to his bed.

I told Sparky, “See what you did? Now he's all riled up and probably won't get back to sleep.”

Sparky said, “I didn't do nothing, I just looked up and there he was, 'bout scared me to death.”

I told him, “She wants to see you.”

“Who?”

“Who you think? Come on upstairs.”

He stood up.

“Wait,” I told him, “give me that.”

I took the Sarge's good towel from him. It was heavy with blood.

“Lean over the tub in case that starts bleeding again.”

I ran cold water over the towel and poured some liquid detergent onto it before I rubbed the stains. I lifted some of the stinking clothes out of the hamper and put the towel at the bottom. The Sarge would never see it there and I'd wash it when I did the rest of the laundry on Saturday.

I looked under the vanity for something to put on his head. The only thing there was the rag I use to clean the toilets. It was curled around the top of a bottle of Pine-Sol, so stiff and dry that it felt like it had been carved out of gray, petrified wood.

Oh well.

I pulled a couple of the longest hairs off and ran some water on it until it softened up a little.

“Here,” I said, “use this instead.”

Sparky looked up and took the rag. He pressed it back into the gash in his head.

I checked to see if Chester X was back asleep. Then me and Sparky started upstairs. About halfway up he said, “Man, this cut has really started stinging.” He pulled the rag down. “And what's that smell?”

He put the rag to his nose. “Awww, no. No you didn't. You give me a rag that's been soaked in Pine-Sol? You trying to kill me?”

“What?” I said. “It's a disinfectant. Read the bottle, it says ‘Kills germs fast.’ I'm looking out for you.”

“Oh, I guess that stinging is the germs getting killed, huh?”

He pressed the rag back onto his head.

The Sarge was waiting in the kitchen.

Sparky gave her a weak smile.

“So, Dewey, what's the deal with your head?”

“Uh, nothing, Mrs. Farrell, I, uh, kinda walked into a door. But it wasn't one of your doors, and it wasn't your fault, it was all the way my bad.”

Uh-oh, I forgot to tell him the Sarge had already shook the truth out of me about what happened.

She just stared at him.

He said, “And besides, even if it was one of your doors I'd never tell anyone that it happened here, I swear I wouldn't. I swear to God.”

“A door, huh.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Let me see.”

The Sarge pulled the rag away from Sparky's head. The blood was starting to cake up in Sparky's hair and the rag came away making a sound like Velcro.

I gotta give my boy his props, that had to hurt. He squinched one eye shut but he didn't say a word.

The Sarge's expression never changed.

“You gotta go home now. Tell your mother to trot your ignorant, lying little self to the hospital, you're going to need seven or eight stitches to close that. I'd take you myself but, sad to say, I've got a certain minimum intelligence level that I require of people who get in my car, and I don't think the two of you added together can reach it.

“How are you going to fake an injury and set it up right in front of the place you're scamming? I suppose neither one of you could've thought to pop his head somewhere else, then have him stagger into Taco Bell?”

The Sarge laughed and said, “Then to top it off, not
only do you two waste this good wound, after you put on a public display you act like Hansel and Gretel and leave a little trail of blood for the police to follow you back home.

“Dewey, I can't say I don't like your initiative, but in the future, I'd suggest you stay away from any schemes that involve you getting hit in the head. The way I see it, you're only a concussion or two away from checking into one of my homes as a client.

“You”—she looked at me—“get down in that basement and clean up, it'd better look like Mr. Clean's been through there when you're done, if you get my drift.

“You.” It was Sparky's turn. “Go home. I feel like I'm losing points off my IQ just from being in the same room as you. Good night, gentlemen.”

Ah-ha! There's justice in the world after all! Fifteen minutes ago Sparky'd been panning on me for having to listen to the way the Sarge was in my grill all the time and now that it was his behind in her sights, all of a sudden she wasn't one bit funny.

She waited a second to see if either one of us was foolish enough to say anything, then arched her left eyebrow and left the kitchen.

I opened the back door for Sparky.

He waited until he was outside, looked back into the kitchen to make sure she was gone, then said, “You better check the Sarge, Luther, she ain't got no cause to imply nobody's stupid. My momma didn't raise no fools.”

I looked at his head, with the left side swollen twice the size of the right. I caught the odor of Pine-Sol coming off
the nasty rag that was at this very moment re-Velcroing itself to his scalp, and the only thing I could think was that the Sarge was softening up in her old age. Only
implying
that Sparky was stupid could be seen as being downright compassionate.

The next week was a real drag for a bunch of reasons. Sparky'd talked himself into believing that he was about to have a stroke and had been blowing off school because he was getting “unexplained” headaches. The state was coming back to reinspect the home and I was so busy trying to get everything straight that I was only on the third item on my science fair project list. To top it all off I'd had KeeKee Wilson's bag of things in my locker waiting to give them back to Bo for more than a week.