Right by My Side

by David Haynes

  “What’s settled? I don’t get it.” He rolls over: he isn’t going anywhere.

  “Ain’t no way I can do all that. I might as well let it go. Get some rest rather than even waste the time.” He pulls up the covers to show he means it.

  “You usually do it,” I am coaxing him, but it sounds more like I am cursing him. Who’d expect he was this lazy?

  “Look here: when does it snow this much? Huh?”

  He had a point: hardly ever.

  “And old Porter usually helps me—he’s too sick. So that’s that.”

  Which is when I think fast: “Artie and Todd and me.” I don’t see his reaction because I’m busy figuring how I’ll manage waking those two. “Hurry and we can make it.”

  Big Sam hesitates and then gets himself going. Even if he hates plowing, he knows and I know we need the money.

  How could you live like Sam—with no planning ahead, never expecting the worst, which people like me figure’ll happen sooner or later. Never even acknowledging the good luck such as having a crazy overgrown moose kid. Too busy always trying to cover your own behind.

  *

  While Sam dresses I run up the hill and climb the wooden back steps at the store, which, being covered with snow is like scaling a peak in Alaska. Each step is heaped with snow up to the next one. I go over to Artie’s window and knock and wave. He lets out a big scream which brings Miss Ida running. She opens the back porch door, rifle at the ready.

  “Marshall? That you? You’re lucky to be alive. Come away from that window and get in here,” she hollers. “Hold it: brush off real good first.”

  I am covered from head to toe with snow. Artie must’ve thought he’d seen the Abominable Snowman.

  “For what are you out here at this hour? Somebody sick or something?” Miss Ida turns on a kettle of water. She has let me into her kitchen.

  “It’s Sam,” I say. I’m still panting from the climb. “He’s gotta plow. He needs help.”

  “I don’t do no plowing,” she says. I nod toward Artie who is standing there in his baby blue pajamas, rubbing his eyes.

  “It’s awful cold,” she starts to protest. Then she orders Artie to get dressed. She says it will be good for him. As we leave she wraps him up tight in a hand knit muffler, a purple one which just happens to match his new maroon parka.

  “Be careful,” she warns him. Like we were off to the North Pole or something. She kisses him on the forehead and lets us out through the store. There’s no need to risk Mount Everest twice.

  By now only tiny snowflakes blow like dust in the air. The wind is down. Now and then the moon breaks out to shine on the chalky snow. There is dead silence, save a few tied-up half-frozen dogs that stir as we crunch and splash down the hollow and across the tracks towards Todd’s house.

  You can almost see the invisible line between us and them—the houses become smaller and older, tar paper replaces shingles on many shacks. I can count on one hand the times I have been here, though I can see down here from the window in my bedroom. It’s a good thing Todd seems to know when to show up. I only went to his house one time. We were in sixth grade. We had a special project to work on for social studies—we had to make a relief map of the world.

  I came down here and a woman opened the door—a heavy set woman with dirty brown hair.

  “You want something?” she said.

  “Todd here?”

  The woman didn’t say anything. She just closed the door in my face. Todd opened it a minute later.

  “Come in, Marshall.”

  I had never been in a white person’s house before. I don’t know what I expected. I was surprised that it was so … plain. Bare yellow walls. A few sticks of furniture.

  The woman who came to the door sat over at a sewing machine in the corner. She pumped the pedal like she was driving. The machine whirred and roared. Her fingers were laced up in there like it was them she was sewing.

  “That’s my mother,” Todd said. “Mom, this is Marshall.”

  She nodded at me.

  Back in Todd’s room was a different story. He had plastered the walls with baseball posters and baseball cards and baseball stats. He was into the game back then. Before he found out it cost money he didn’t have to join a team, and talent he didn’t have to play.

  We sat on his bed and plotted out the map on a big piece of card-board he had. We would put the clay on later. Rose bought that for us. It was up at my house. After we’d worked for a while, Todd’s mother brought us two glasses of milk and some cookies. I remember those Oreos were kind of stale.

  Just before we finished I noticed that there was a man standing in the door. A tall man with red-blond hair. He didn’t say a word. After he’d gone I heard Todd’s mother call his name.

  When he returned it was time for me to go. Todd walked me out the door and up the hill halfway to my house. He stopped me in the street a little past his house.

  “That last window back there, see it?” He indicated it with his finger. “You ever need me, go straight there and tap. No one will bother you.”

  I was never invited back and he never said anything more about that day. Not much about the people behind the door either. until recently. He acts like they don’t exist. Like they are some kind of dirty secret.

  Tonight we give Todd’s system its first try. Both Artie and me hang back: everyone knows these folks down here keep hunting guns and pit bulls. I finally get the courage to go to the window, crouching low in the dark to do it. Artie hides behind a scraggly black walnut tree.

  I tap on the window three times, cross my fingers, say a little prayer.

  Todd squints out into the night. In the glass I can see him mouth my name as if it were a question. I beckon him with my hand. He points in a direction behind me and makes the word “depot” nice and clear. I nod and take off.

  Artie and I hustle up the road and wait by an old abandoned railroad station. Sam says his granddaddy and them built this depot eighty years ago hoping to make the trains for the city stop. The train never stopped here. The tracks are pulled up now, and the only thing left is a beat-up booth covered with graffiti and a faded sign saying Washington Park.

  Artie and I stand moving against the cold. Before I can find the place I’ve painted my own name, we hear, “What’s up boys?”

  I explain the situation and we start walking up Dorset Road. I suggest we go straight to the landfill. Sam’ll already be there. I hope. As we cross King Drive I can make out Sam up ahead, on foot, heading for the shed.

  I want to yell, “Hey, old man,” but instead we just trot up the hill and fall in step at his side.

  “Ready,” I say.

  Sam looks over his help. “Let’s get to it,” he nods.

  I guess we’ll do.

  Inside the shed—which is just a large corrugated iron box really—the winter supplies are stuck in back behind lawn mowers and rakes. This storm, most unexpected, it seems, caught Sam unprepared. Around the walls, around the room, Sam’s usually neat organization is showing the wear of the last few months. Crude white outlines on the pegboard wall suggest pitchforks or mallets, but there are no pitchforks or mallets to be seen. The dump truck is usually ready to go. I hope it is tonight.

  Not quite: the snow blade needs to be hitched up. Sam takes over.

  “First, get a shovel down for each of you. Couple of you clear that sidewalk out front and then run across the way and get the county office walk.”

  Todd grabs Artie saying “let’s go,” and they take off to do those jobs.

  “Marshall, dig in the desk and find my map copies.”

  I go into the little office which is tacked onto the side of the shed like a lean-to. The desk top is inch-deep in paper—another victim of the times. I shuffle through the tangled invoices, the receipts for gasoline and repairs. In the middle drawer I find a stack of crude maps copied on white paper.

  “Bring that here,” he says. He lays the map on the running board. “Look at what I do h
ere. I mark off the streets we clear, and the two sidewalks—get me a pen,” he orders.

  I do, and he marks an “X” through the walkways drawn in front of two squares on the copy.

  “Assuming them boys get it done,” he says.

  “They will,” I assure him.

  “Good,” he says. “What I do is I sign this form and run it over to the commisioner’s office so they know I done my job. All folks care is the streets are clean and the garbage gets picked up. Best to have your proof, though.”

  Sam and I unload a bunch of fertilizer bags and rakes from the truck-bed. Pretty quick Artie and Todd come in huffing and puffing.

  “Done,” Artie pants. He leans on a post clutching one side as if he were having some sort of spasm.

  “Now we gotta get that blade over here.” Sam says. He’s got this down to some kind of a system. What system, I don’t know.

  It takes three of us on one side with Sam on the other, but we manage to haul it around to the front of the truck.

  “On the count of three, lift her up and set her in these grooves here. I’ll bolt her down.”

  Sam counts and we hoist our end, but the first time we miss the two slotted arms and drop the blade with a loud slam. It just misses Todd’s foot.

  “Son of a bitch,” Todd says.

  “Easy, boys,” Sam laughs. “Take your time. Get a good grip. We’ll try her again.”

  Sam counts again. The next time we are successful.

  “That’s the way she goes,” he cheers. “While I tighten this up, you fellas clear the way to the back door—get all that mess out of the way. Then open the door and start shoveling those cinders into the bed.”

  So we do that. Todd and Artie team up to move giant bags of cement. Artie collapses on the pile of bags after the third or fourth one, but before I can go tell him how worthless he is, Todd signals me to help him finish moving them. Pretty soon Artie is up again carrying all the little stuff around—two empty buckets, a rake, a gallon of paint.

  The rockpile out back looks like a giant scoop of ice cream. In order to get to the cinder and salt mixture we pull the plastic cover from the top. It is weighted with a layer of heavy, wet snow.

  At first we go shovel by shovel, until Todd spies an old wheelbarrow. We fill it and then run it up to the truck bed on an old piece of board. Todd and I load, Artie runs and dumps.

  A harsh roar cuts the silence as Sam fires up the big truck. He jumps out, tosses our makeshift ramp aside and backs the truck directly to the mound.

  “Now we’re in business,” he announces. He grabs a shovel and starts heaping mounds of cinders into the truckbed. It looks as if to him they were as light as feathers.

  “Fill her up,” he adds. “It’s from last year’s budget and there’s plenty.” All three of our shovel loads wouldn’t fill one of his. Simultaneously, almost as if we’d planned it, we three boys stop and lean on the shovels, taking a breath.

  Sam lets out a belly laugh. “You not giving out on me yet?” he says.

  We dig back in.

  The storm is completely over and the sky has taken on the purple blue of early morning. Our steamy breath rises into the sharp, clear air. Us boys sweat streams of water and have stripped down to sweaters and hats only. No one says anything, except Sam, who steams on unwinded, encouraging us with “just a little more” and “heap it up” and, finally, “last load.”

  Our job, then, is to ride in back, feeding cinders out of the truckbed, while Sam plows the lane. Sam creeps along slowly. The blade makes a loud scraping sound. Just as we start to relax, Sam orders us off the truck to clear an intersection, open up a curb, expose a fire hydrant.

  “Can’t you move that shovel no faster,” he bullies. We are past caring with exhaustion.

  *

  Just as the sun pops up red, setting the fresh snow on fire, the truck jerks to a halt in front of Miss Ida’s store. The cleared streets of Washington Park—Sam Finney’s pride and joy—turn a defiant, cindery black eye to the new morning.

  Inside the store it is already steamy warm, so thickly welcome warm almost to reach beneath the clothes and massage our tired muscles. Sam blusters in, wanting to know “what they’ve got in this joint for a hardworking man.”

  Betty Lou, behind the counter, points up the back steps to indicate there waits paradise. She and Sam exchange shy smiles, and though Todd and I wave at her, Artie rustles right on by without as much as a grunt. Betty Lou’s eyes shut for just a quick moment, and I think I can even hear her heart break a little more. She bravely ushers us up the steps to the apartment.

  On the table Miss Ida has set out cups of juice and hot chocolate. It seems as fast as we sit down, she sets a stack of pancakes at each place.

  Sam quickly sips some coffee and says he’ll eat later. He waves as he is leaving.

  I’ll look after them,” Miss Ida says down the steps.

  The food knocks us out. No one remembers where we fell asleep, though sleep we do, soundly, not at all aware of the strong sun already melting all the snow from the steep roof just above our heads.

  10

  I’D NEVER SEEN Sam with a dustrag.

  So on that day during winter break when I came out from my room because there was a commotion, my jaw about drops off.

  “What are you doing?” I ask in a way that is more challenging than inquisitive.

  “Cleaning up this joint,” he says.

  I ask him why. He says something about the joint needing it. Then he says real casual, “We may be having some holiday visitors.”

  It seems to me there are people in and out of this joint on a regular basis.

  “I’m gonna be entertaining,” he adds.

  Now, Sam usually does most of his “entertaining” at various sundry locations such as Miss Ida’s and—most importantly—at the Elks.

  You know the Elks, down on the corner of Dorset and King, the big cinder-block box. It, together with Park Baptist, makes up what might be called downtown Washington Park.

  In addition to a full selection of (so I’m told) watered-down drinks, an antique pinball machine, and a juke box featuring a lot of old-timey R & B records, the Elks is mainly a large parking lot in which a couple of dozen Caddies and pickups can park comfortably.

  On Saturday night and a lot of other nights and days, too, every old geezer from Washington Park hangs out down there. The younger ones stay inside and play pool while the older folks stand outside near the mostly newer Cadillac Sevilles and run down the younger men inside. Sam is at a rather transitional stage where sometimes you find him inside and sometimes out.

  Sam says the Elks is a club, but as far as I can tell the only requirements to get in are a beer gut and good cash money.

  I’m remembering the time when I was seven or so and Rose was looking for Big Sam for supper. She told me to run down to the Elks and tell him to do something such as get his butt home fast. Rose’d’ve gone herself except women aren’t encouraged at the Elks. Ladies, that is. Women you can find: a certain Betty Lou Warner is known to be a frequent and a welcome guest.

  So off little Marshall goes to fetch Big Sam.

  Back in those days Sam was more of an inside man. I remember pulling open the heavy wooden door. In that door was a diamond-shaped yellow window, and the only bright light in the Elks entered through it. Once inside I felt like I’d entered a cave—everything was rich browns and reds, including all the clothes and skin. Red neon from Busch and Budweiser signs cast a hot glow on everything, and a bare yellow bulb swayed low over a pool table off to the side. Soupy stale air thick with smoke and smelling of beer filled my lungs. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dark as I looked around to find Big Sam.

  Being just suppertime there weren’t too many folks in there, except a half-dozen or so, clustered at the bar. A couple of these dudes were Sam’s running buddies, and there was also this woman next to Sam. She wore a pink outfit. I recognized Sam as the tallest one and also as the focus of activity: he was showin
g-off—telling a story about some gangsters or something that had “junked an old car full of loot up at the dump.” This tall tale had grown even since the last time I’d heard it, so I stood back and listened.

  Sam goes on, “I got my feet up having some coffee and here comes this old dago in a fancy suit. ‘Say boy’ he says to me, and I says ‘yassuh’ and he asks if a couple of days ago did a couple of guys leave an old black Ford here and I look at him just like this here.” Sam makes for all to see a dumb face with his lip let out low.

  The pink woman laughed a loud horsey laugh. “You a crazy fool,” she said. She slapped him on his upper arm. All the old boys laugh, too.

  “Let me finish,” Sam goes on. “‘Yassuh,’ I says ‘I seems to recollect a car just such as the one you speaking of,’ and I shuffle off with him down back, you remember where I had all them old cars. A big rat come (“No, no,” hollers the pink lady, grabbing Sam all up in his arm) a big rat about the size of a raccoon run out in front of us. That old dago boy took off—flew out of there.” Sam bent over, moving his arms back and forth as if he was running.

  “Just like that, he run. Come back the next day with two big heavy dudes. Guess he figured they’d save him from some damn rat.”

  The round of laughter was interrupted by one of Sam’s cronies—an almond-colored man with hair only around the side of his head.

  “Looky here,” he said, nudging Sam and pointing to me. “They startin em younger every day.”

  I ran over quick and wrapped myself around one of Sam’s legs. His hair was all black back then, and he wore his favorite outfit from those days: jeans, a jean jacket and an old yellow-brimmed “CAT” hat. He didn’t take to overalls until he got that belly.

  “Here’s Mister Marshall,” he said. He hoisted me up to sit on the bar. “I thought we’d cut you off from drinking.” He put me right where the pink lady stood. She’d moved down to the end of the bar.

  I told him, “Mama says you gotta come home right now for supper.” That caused a lot of snickering in the crowd.