For my mother and father
and for Susan
There once many a man
mood-glad, goldbright, of gleams garnished,
flushed with wine-pride, flashing war-gear,
gazed on wrought gemstones, on gold, on silver,
on wealth held and hoarded, on light-filled amber,
on this bright burg of broad dominion.
—Anonymous, “The Ruin,” eighth century (translation by Michael Alexander)
The true meaning of money yet remains to be popularly explained and comprehended.
—Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Author
One
Opening the store takes thirty minutes, but today, the Monday after daylight savings, he leaves twice that just to get in front of what might go wrong. Someone at the door saying it’s nine and Huddy correcting eight and the guy saying we’re both here. Daylight savings, a busted day, a day that won’t get done. Time doubled over and Huddy’s head blurred between what it was and what it moved to, a new hour that doesn’t yet fit.
He unlocks the steel shutters and folds them back. Two men walking loosely down Lamar—both far enough away that Huddy won’t worry about them running up. He unlocks the door and locks it behind him, turns off the alarm and locks it, too, because he doesn’t want the customers’ hands on the panel. Hits the lights and looks around for damage or items out of place, anyone hiding. He stares up at the ceiling, not that he’s expecting a cut hole, but you never know. Then he walks back to the loan counter, unrolls the paper, and turns on the computer.
The pawnshop bust has moved off the front page, and Huddy checks to see if it’s buried elsewhere. It’s gone. Fast Pawn over on Winchester, only open a year, which means to Huddy they were criminal from day one. It’s been over a year since a pawnshop got busted, that one on Park, where the guy got in so deep and stupid he was giving orders: You think you can get me computers, stereos, jewelry? And then before that the shop near the tool plant, where the owner had the employees from the plant stealing from the factory, and you’d walk in there and see shelves and shelves of brand-new industrial tools. These stories happening just often enough to make people think every pawnshop has a truck parked out back, doing these midnight deals. And sure, some of what’s here is hot, you can’t stop all of it, especially if no one’s gonna write down serial numbers, but he’s more often a buffer against crime, if anyone would ask him. The customer needs fast cash and they get a collateralized loan instead of robbing someone. The shops, Huddy would tell them, are stopping the crime.
He opens the gun room, sliding up the fencing, and puts out the pistols locked in the gun safe. Then he changes out the video, gets the oldest tape from the cabinet and rewinds it and sets it in. A newer technology would make things easier, but he’s waiting for his brother Joe to pay for the hard drive, the same way he’s waiting for Joe to fix the broken curb, so the customers don’t keep tripping into the store. Or stripe the lot, so they know where to park. Huddy glances outside. At closing it’ll be darker and the lot won’t be lit up, even when he already complained to Joe. The lights are under city contract, so it won’t really be his brother’s fault, but Huddy still blames him. Joe far off in the suburbs, with a different mayor. “I don’t want to live around all them Democrats,” he’d said, which Huddy knows means blacks.
He gets the drawer set up. He checks the default list, checks the tickets, prices the merchandise up, goes to the back and starts pulling the inventory. A gun, a fishtank, two saws. He’ll give Mister Terry a few extra days on the gun, because Mister Terry is always good on his loan, surprised he’s defaulted, but the other items he’ll put out on the floor. The fishtank: He can already hear the customers coming in, saying, “Hey, man, you’re taking fishtanks? I’ll get you a bigger one.” Give him a month, he could turn the place into an aquarium. It’d be the same way if he bought an accordion, a bowling ball, frozen steaks. Whatever he buys, the street always wants to bring him more. “Steaks, man, I can get you beautiful cuts. All packed up, ready to go.”
He cleans the tank, wipes and tests the saws. Deanie, his employee, who helps with the cleaning and ticketing, isn’t here yet, and he wonders if she’s confused the time, until he realizes she’d be earlier, not later, so it’s him doing the confusing, and the forgetting—since he now remembers her saying something about the doctor. This nerve damage they can’t figure out what from. Maybe it was even surgery, the conversation returning, so Huddy’s alone today.
He goes to the back door to make sure there’s nothing strange. Then he opens the valuables safe behind the loan counter. Keeps the handle down, so it looks locked. Puts the jewelry out. The bank opens at 8:30, but he won’t go, not because of Deanie but because he went last Monday, so this week it’ll be Wednesday or Friday. Instead, he’ll Windex the showcases. He finishes and eyes the clock. Flicks on the signs, unlocks the door. No rain, so he wheels the two mowers and the bike from the entrance to outside, chains ’em up. The merchandise outside means you’re open more than the Open sign does. He comes back in and decides to call home before his phone starts ringing. “Hey,” he says when Christie answers.
“Hold on. Cody, no no no …”
Huddy waits. “If Harlan calls, give him my number. I already gave it …” Huddy’s younger brother, Harlan, phoning last night to say he was leaving Florida, gonna try Memphis again. “Memphis?” Huddy had said. “You hate it here.”
“No, I hate it here. New bunch of apples, new bunch of worms.”
Huddy sorry for that but also happy to have him back. And Harlan always makes being around Joe bearable, feels less poor up against him.
“He give a time?” Christie asks.
“Wouldn’t matter.”
“Well, that’s helpful. He going straight to you or here?”
“Guess that depends on the time.” Someone at the door now. “I’ll check in later,” he says. “How are you today?” Huddy asks, always saying hello to see what’s given back. A direct hello, or eye contact. Even a nod, a mumble. “I’m shopping.” “Just looking.” He’ll take anything. The first customer is a loan, a guy pawning a Cold Steel knife, the next is Miss Daws paying the interest. Miss Daws could’ve bought the ring ten times over, all the years she’s bringing in her twenty. Then it’s Mister Isom picking up his tackle box. Huddy’s gonna have to be careful with pickups today. Each one will be: Do I trust this person to leave on the floor while I go back to storage? And who else is here and in the lot? And what about the late-afternoon rush? Huddy might need to ask customers to wait outside.
A young mother with her two-year-old, making her way forward, until the kid bumps his head against the hard knob of the mitre saw, and he starts to cry, rubbing his head. “No, that didn’t hurt,” his mother says. “Shake it off. Come on, you’re a tough kid.” She yanks at him, but he drops to the floor, bawling, just when the father comes in carrying an infant. “I told him to stay close,” she says, “and he goes and whacks something.”
“Tyler, come over here,” the father yells. And now the infant is crying, too. The father steps forward and scoops the son up, both arms full with crying, and he looks at Huddy and then at her and says, “Just get done with your business and come on.” And he bangs outside.
Quiet again, but the woman is weakened by the
time she reaches the counter, the item she’s pawning turning cheap and bad in her hand. Her wrist, actually, the watch coming off. “I’m wanting to know what I could get for this,” she says softly and Huddy holds it.
“Accutron,” he says. “The first electronic watch. But it’s a difficult watch to repair. Getting to be like a dinosaur. Sorry,” and he hands it back, but she doesn’t take it.
“I was hoping to get something for it.”
“Yeah,” he says. “This was really something back in the sixties. Kind of an innovation. But now, it’s just a dinosaur,” he says again, and he repeats the gesture, and this time she takes it.
She gives this dashed squinch. “I might could find something from home.”
And Huddy watches her spread her hand out on the counter, look at her fingers, at the missing rings and stones.
“When you figure he’s gonna start honking at me?” She looks around the store, like suddenly she’s a buyer. “You know what I really need? I need about a week where everything’s free. Either that or a lucky penny.”
Huddy nods. And by the time the horn starts, she’s already at the door. No one there to replace her, and Huddy sees a picture of the four of them, huddled in an empty house, wind going through open windows, the sound of the U-Haul driving the furniture away.
The car door slams. He wonders what bind they’re in, what job got lost. Or maybe it’s dope, drinking, gambling, people falling into everything. If they could keep out of these things in life, they wouldn’t need him.
“Thought I’d check your pistols,” a gun buyer says, and Huddy switches to the gun counter. Huddy’s never seen him before, but he knows the type: hat, vest, pocket pants, fifties, white, wearing a beard. “Show me that Government .45,” the man says, and Huddy unlocks the case, grabs the mat and sets it on the glass, grabs the gun and opens the chamber, closes it and transfers the gun to the mat, the handle facing the man, the nose away from both of them. He shuts the gun case and half-steps away.
The man lifts the gun, flips it over and back. “Looks real clean. Not shot much.”
“I don’t see any ring pounded on the back of the chamber,” Huddy says.
“Yeah, that’s right. Doesn’t have a lot of wear. I like to shoot Governments. I like the man-stoppers. You know? Uncle Sam started doing these Governments in 1912.”
Off a year, Huddy thinks. Gun buyers love to talk and he just lets them go.
The man glances at the ticket price dangling on the string. Flicks it with his finger. “I’m a big gun buyer. Buy lots of guns. You call me anytime you get a good one.”
Huddy only listening with his eyes now, the man setting the gun back down on the mat.
“Might buy this tomorrow. I’ll be in about the same time.”
“There might be somebody from yesterday saying the same thing.” The man smiles and leaves, and Huddy returns the gun to the case. He knows the pawnshop flies, like this guy Del waltzing in now who shows up twice a week, only buying if you’ve made a mistake. Because that was Huddy, before he worked here. He’d come for tools, but more than that, he liked the action, the treasure hunt. What’s in today, what’s behind door number three? And he liked the contest, your skills against theirs. “I gotta have a hundred and a half for this.” And the owner Mister Jenks one day said, “You make a good presentation. You need a job?” And Huddy did.
He worked as an assistant for three years. The old man was amazing. Remembered every loan and could price the merchandise instantly. Books about guns, guitars, pool cues, everything on a shelf behind him, but never reaching there. And hardly ever testing the jewelry. Once in a while rubbing a ring against the touchstone, but mostly just knowing it with his eyes and hand, seeing the tone being off, feeling the weight, knowing the trademarks, how it’s stamped, manufactured. Mister Jenks knew it all. Sorry, miss, it’s not gold. He knew a person before they had two feet in the store. A quick glance—he knew every gesture and expression, every sob story and hustle, every thought and feeling moving beneath their skin.
But still, the guy wouldn’t maximize. He didn’t like the twenty-year-olds acting wild. Except, Huddy thought, what about a twenty-year-old bringing a fine diamond ring? Mister Jenks, as he got older, taking less risk, even shying away from electronics. He didn’t understand the video games, the PlayStations. Customers coming in nonstop, “You got CDs, you got DVDs? You got Game Boys?”
“You’re crazy, Mister Jenks, not taking in this stuff.”
“I don’t like the product. I don’t like the customer. Why bother with videotapes? They’re not even copies. They’re copy-copies. I don’t need the dollar sale.”
Huddy thought he could do better. It would take time to learn jewelry, but in other merchandise he was solid. Like when that guy tried selling a fake guitar, just slapped a Fender sticker on it, and Huddy could tell from the weight, and the bumps on the frets, and he said, “It’s a real nice, light guitar,” and handed it back. Liked watching the guy’s face fear up.
When the chance came, when the old man wanted out, Huddy couldn’t buy his way in, but Joe’s second marriage was ending—time to hide the assets—and Huddy said, “Set me up here,” and Joe even bought the building. Silent owner plus landlord. Two more things for Joe to have, on top of the construction business, the foundation company, the gravel pit. Now a side cash business and a rent check. Huddy standing in the store one last time with Mister Jenks. Any final advice? And Huddy thinking he’d hear something tired, “If you don’t know, loan low,” but Mister Jenks just smiled, like he’d slipped Huddy a silver-plated store when Huddy thought he’d paid for sterling. But Huddy threw a counterfeit grin right back: Get going, this place is mine.
Huddy increased the size of the yellow-pages ad. He had a billboard built. Joe even paid for it. Bluff City Pawn. Same name, but now you see it. Gave the building a bath, fresh coat of paint. Put new showcases in, new velvet displays—Huddy unlocking one of the cases now for Del, who’s looking for watches. “Man, I love watches,” Del says, “never can have too much time. Let me see that wind-up.”
Huddy slides the door, reaches in. Del examines the watch and names his price and Huddy won’t bother negotiating, because Del knows the markup rate almost as much as Huddy does. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d cracked the pricing code at Cash America. Del thinks he won, but Huddy won, too. Buy low, the selling takes care of itself.
Del hands him the money and starts talking about pipe cutting and threading. “Having a devil trying to find it.” Huddy nods, doesn’t need to tell Del to check back, since he sees a guy like this too much. “You gonna miss this?” Del says, twirling the watch on his finger.
“I think the universe is full of stuff, and you gotta just jump in and grab it.”
“I’ll tell my wife you said that.” Del closes his fist, and Huddy hears the metal click.
The mail lady, Miss Theresa, comes through the door and Huddy’s glad to be done with Del—turning from pawnshop fly to pawnshop parasite.
“Next time,” Del says, “just tell me what’s mismarked, so I can go right to it.”
He tips his hat, but Huddy’s eyes are off him with the phone ringing. “Bluff City,” Huddy says, and listens. “We have one laptop,” he says, and hears thank you.
Miss Theresa hands him the mail, and then steps over to the jewelry, leans on the glass. “I need something to go out.” She’ll do layaway and she’s good about payments, but sometimes when she stretches it, he feels like she’s treating the mail like money—“For you, Mister Huddy”—when of course it’s only bills. “Ooh, that one,” she says, and Huddy follows her finger.
“That’s a nice dinner ring,” he says.
“Ah,” she says, and then pushes away from the counter. “I’ma look at it more tomorrow. Don’t you let anyone touch it. Heard about the robbery next door.”
“What robbery?”
“The liquor store. Saturday.”
Huddy checks his watch—Mister Barnes opened at ten. “Anyone
get hurt?”
She shakes her head. “Just robbed.”
And when she leaves, Huddy locks up and steps outside to peek in. Mister Barnes is reading the paper, and Huddy enters, doesn’t see blood or bandages. “What happened Saturday?”
“What happened? Turn my back to get the liquor off the shelf, turn back there’s a gun in my face.” Mister Barnes saying the last part into the paper.
“What’d they look like?” Huddy figures it’d be good to know if they’ve been in his store, or what to look for if they do.
“Look like. They looked like three young thugs. Thug clothes, thug everything. You tell your brother Joe he’s losing a tenant.”
“Oh, come on, you don’t mean that.”
“Sure do. I must be crazy thinking I could run this place without bulletproof glass. Right now, we should be talking, there should be bulletproof glass between us, and if you want to say something there’s a little airhole to do it, and you put your money through the slot—like a bank—and I put my liquor through the chute. That’s how King’s Liquor down the street doing it. They got all the liquor behind the glass, and if a customer wants to be robbing, he’s gonna have to rob himself.” His nostrils flare like all his liquor got skunked. “Whatever. It’s too late for changes. I’m out.”
“You’re gonna let them run you?”
“Listen. I go down to the station, they give me the pictures, see if I recognize anyone. I recognize everyone. I’m flipping through the pictures, they all my customers. Half the people that come into my store. Now I’ve been held up three times and I chased ’em out twice, but all them photos, forget it. Time is up.”
“You give the police a description?”
Mister Barnes shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “A description.”
Huddy microwaves his lunch, and while he carries the plate to the counter, he has a thought: He’ll be alone. Not in the store today but around him all days. The grocer, Mister Sanders, on his left closed out six months ago, and now it’s Mister Barnes, on his right. And this should give him leverage with Joe, who owns all three bays—you’d think he’d protect his last tenant and his middle brother—but it’ll only make him increase the rent. He did that when Mister Sanders left, and Huddy knew the talk of taxes was a lie to cover the difference.
Bluff City Pawn Page 1