Jack (Gilead #4)(24)
And the guard did turn to him. “Don’t you get smart with me!”
People said this to Jack fairly often, absolute strangers he had no thought of getting smart with. So it wasn’t really a bad beginning. He said, “Good morning,” a slight catch in his voice. He believed he was smiling. Leave, Della!
“You! I am sick of the sight of you, buster! I should have called the cops on you a hundred times before now! This time I’m going to do it! Don’t think I don’t know what’s been going on here. Sleeping off a drunk is one thing, but bringing along a colored gal—we’ve got dead people in here!” He fixed Jack with a stare, decency much offended. Jesus, don’t let me laugh. She was still lingering, watching. He felt like telling her, “Not literally a hundred times,” since that would have made a very bad impression. Probably no more than a dozen times. What a foolish thing to worry about. Why was she standing there watching? He put himself through this humiliation so that she could walk away, and she was seeing him look at his shoes and sweat and plead, more or less, for another chance, sir. If she stayed any longer, he would have to punch the guard to give her an opening to get away, which would mean prison for him, and maybe for her, too, if there were any witnesses. He couldn’t look up from his shoes to be sure. Dear Jesus, don’t let me punch the guard. Then she left. Three steps and gone. He felt a little surge of what was probably joy, nicely timed, because he was able to agree feelingly with every remonstrance—that’s what the old gent called them—that the guard rehearsed for him. Yes, certainly, he would consider his life. He really would. He knew it was a shameful thing to burden society, to contribute nothing. He felt this intensely. And yes, he was still young enough to turn it all around. At some point he had doffed his hat.
Joy is an earnest emotion, and visible. The guard must have seen a light in his eyes, realization, yes, there could be a good and respectable life ahead of him. In fact, it was relief that she was gone and he had not been driven to violence, which never went well for him. The bruised reed he did not break. Not for lack of trying. Don’t talk like that. The guard allowed that he had, at one time, pretty well given up on himself, remarkable as this might seem now. Bad friends! They’re the worst thing that can happen to a fellow! Jack almost put in a word for bad enemies, then thought better of it. The guard checked Jack’s face for any sign he might be less than serious. Then he said, “I’ve given you fair warning, bud. Now move along. I don’t want to see you around here again, understand?” He was already distracted. There was another bum shambling down the road in need of castigation. Jack thought, My lucky day. He’d had to leave his bedroll and could not possibly go back for it, testy as the guard had been, but that might just make him change his life.
* * *
And so it was. After he had shaved and washed up and slept a few hours and put on the shirt he kept in decent shape, he actually stepped into the shoe store with the yellowing HELP WANTED sign and offered his services. The old woman at the counter said, “Nobody wants to work here. I don’t want to work here. The pay is terrible and there aren’t any customers. If you want the job, you’re welcome to it. At least it’ll keep you out of the weather. That’s about all I can say for it.”
Clearly this would not be too abrupt a change in his way of life to be sustainable. “Jack Boughton,” he said, thinking, reasonably enough, that the information might be of interest to her.
“That’s fine, Slick,” she said. “Hang up your hat.” Then she went back to staring resentfully out the window, jilted by the passing world, a woman left waiting at the altar of commerce. “Every damn person on earth needs shoes,” she muttered, as if that fact proved there was malice behind all the public indifference. “Shoes are shoes,” she said, as if to fend off the suggestion that the same six pairs had been posed in that window while far too many seasons passed. “By the way, those knots in your shoelaces look bad. Get yourself some new ones. I’ll take ’em out of your wages,” she said, and laughed.
At some point she had said, in that half growl of hers, something that included “Beverly.” He wasn’t sure whether it was a first name or a last name. It might seem rude to use it in either case. So in his mind she was “the woman.”
All right. The absence of customers meant fewer people to deal with. No one would think to look for him there. The question was what he should do with himself, how to create some slight impression that he was of use, in case anyone happened to look in the window. He suggested that he might take down the HELP WANTED sign, but the woman shook her head. “I’d just have to make another one.” So he might not last long enough to work off the shoelaces. He had thought, over the years, that by indenturing himself he would sometime observe practicality at close range, to glean the lessons and rituals of productive life. St. Louis was a vast hive of enterprise, grocers and barbers and barkeeps doing whatever they did well enough to be there from one day to the next, one year to the next. His wanderings in the city had all confirmed this. Yet he had managed to find his way to a business that resembled busyness so little it surprised him every morning to find the door unlocked and the lights on. And when he walked in each morning, she seemed a little surprised. “You again!” she said once, and it took him a second to be sure she meant it as a joke, so that was bad, and worse was the fact that she noticed his hesitation and apologized. Actually she said, “Kidding.” He’d flinched, that reflex of rigid pride and low expectations that had sent him out other doors, walked him away from personal items—a few books, two hats—he could not afford to lose and could not make himself go back for, since they exposed his instant of confusion, always out of proportion to the near-nothing that was at stake. His pride! How could that blasted thing have survived the thousand embarrassments it had cost him? Well, the woman apologized again—“Kidding”—and he had nodded and hung up his hat. And he reminded himself to move the hat rack nearer the door, where he might notice it if he sometime found himself making a sudden exit.