Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(64)

As Max stood there listening to the music coming from inside the apartment, layers of possibilities stacked up inside his head. Maybe Maggie Sue was sick. Maybe she’d fallen and lay on the floor unconscious. Maybe an intruder had gotten in and…anything was possible. Growing more concerned by the second, Max left the building, walked back to the Owl’s Nest, and dialed her number. No answer.

He returned to the building and banged on the door with both fists. “Are you okay Maggie Sue?” he yelled. When there was still no answer he slammed his shoulder into the door and tried to force it open. The door didn’t budge, but Max’s shoulder screamed in pain.

Max left the building, got back into his car, and headed home. Once back at the house he retrieved the crowbar he’d hidden in back of the garage, then returned to Maggie Sue’s apartment. He walked up the stairs and with the first swing of the crowbar sent the doorknob flying across the hall. Seconds later he had pried the door open.

A startled Maggie Sue stood there wearing nothing but a skimpy black brassiere. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You didn’t answer the door,” Max stammered. “I thought maybe you was hurt or in trouble.”

“I didn’t answer the door ’cause I was busy.” Maggie Sue looked like she could run a dagger through Max. “Now get on outta here, and leave me be.”

Max felt the heat of shame spreading through his body. As he turned and walked down the stairs, he felt smaller than he’d ever felt before. “Screw you, Maggie Sue,” he said. “There’s plenty more pebbles on the beach.”

Max drove back to the Owl’s Nest, paid the outstanding tab, and bought drinks for the house, which was only Freddie and the two drunk fellows standing at the end of the bar. He drank until closing, then bought a bottle of bourbon and went home.





Max Sweetwater





Maggie Sue’s a tramp. A flat-outt, no-good tramp. If I had a shred of dignity I’d cut a wide circle and stay clear of the woman, but I can’t. I know she’s trash, I know she sidles up to whoever’s got money in their pocket, but when I’m with Maggie Sue she makes me feel like a man. Nobody else ever done that.

I ain’t like Jim; I never had stuff handed to me. Everything I got I had to work for or steal. Know why? Because I’m Jim’s brother, that’s why. People called him Big Jim, like he’s some kind of god. Me they called Short-shit, thinking it was funny. Well it wasn’t funny to me. Pork Berger used to say I was made outta scrapings leftover from Big Jim, and then the big jerk would double over laughing. You know how it feels to always be hearing stuff like that? Shitty, that’s how it feels. Live a life like that, and pretty quick you learn you gotta grab hold of whatever fun you can get.

The truth is Big Jim owes me. He could’ve stuck up for me more. He could’ve told Pork he’d knock the bejesus out of him if he called me Short-shit again, but he didn’t. You know what he did? He slapped Pork on the back and said, Stop picking on the kid. That’s it. He don’t never say nothing to Pork, but me he takes aside and says I ought to just ignore such name-calling. Yeah, like he’d ignore it if they did it to him. If you don’t get your feathers in such a ruffle, Pork would stop doing it, Jim says. Sure he will, I’m thinking. When hell freezes over.

I just gotta forget about people like Pork and concentrate on Maggie Sue. She’s what makes me feel good. All I need to keep her happy is the jingle of money in my pocket, and I’m gonna get it one way or the other. I can almost see Maggie Sue’s eyes popping wide open when I tell her this house is mine. Knowing her, she’ll be wanting to move in. Maybe me and her will take that big master bedroom. She’d like that.

Since day one Big Jim got everything, and I got scraps. Well, he’s dead now, and I’m gonna take what’s rightfully mine.

You’ll see. When I get hold of this house, people’s gonna respect me same as Big Jim. Ain’t nobody gonna be calling me Short-shit then.





A Chance Meeting





Two days passed before Max came out of the room again, and when he finally did it was in the wee hours of the morning when darkness shrouded the house and people were lost to their dreams. During those two days he drank glass after glass of bourbon and spent endless hours recounting the misery that had been handed to him.

It began the day he was born. A tornado tore through town and blew out half the windows in the house. Bertha Sweetwater was in her early twenties at the time and expecting her second baby. She’d gone to the basement with a third load of laundry when the tornado hit and shook the house to its foundation. Furniture was tossed from one room to another, and the living sofa came to rest smack in front of the basement door. Bertha was trapped down there for six hours, and by the time a rescue team worked their way through the rubble Max had arrived. He weighed less than three pounds and was barely breathing. For months Bertha went around telling people that Max was good as dead until she found a stack of newspapers and bundled him inside the Help Wanted section.

Bertha Sweetwater wasn’t ready for Max, and neither was the world. It became the story of his life. He was an out-of-place boy who came wrapped in newspaper. It was a thing that stayed with him and caused him to be the object of ridicule. A joke. Years later when Bertha would tell and retell that story, Max found himself wishing there had been no newspapers.