Daddy had been home a lot since he broke his leg. Too much, maybe. He lay on the couch in his robe and underwear, with his plaster cast hanging over the armrest, and watched TV all day. Sometimes when he got bored with that, he read or tried to paint, or napped. But mostly he watched TV. Today, when I got home from school, his mood was bad and there was no pleasing him. My stomach had begun hurting even before I’d walked in the door. “Well, it’s about goddamn time,” he growled at me, not wasting time with hellos. “Here.” He nodded toward the cluttered coffee table. “I want that ashtray emptied,” he said, “and get me another beer from the refrigerator.” The ashtray was overflowing with butts and empty, crumpled Camel packs, and used Kleenex. I picked it up from the table and balanced it carefully while walking into the kitchen and dumped it into the small trashcan, which was itself overflowing and stinking. Then I got his beer—the last one— from the refrigerator and brought it to him with the emptied ashtray. He had a bottle opener on the coffee table; he groped for it and snapped off the bottle top with a loud quissshh! sound, then guzzled half the bottle before the top had stopped bouncing and rolling over the wood floor. He let out a long, loud belch and set the bottle on the coffee table, then dragged another cigarette from the pack on the coffee table and lit it. I watched as he sucked in a huge lungful of the smoke and blew it out like a long sigh into the air above his head. He was watching The Edge of Night on TV, but I could tell he wasn’t really seeing it. Something was missing from his dark eyes. He kept looking at his wristwatch.
I made a move toward the stairs, and Daddy said “Where do you think you’re going?”
“Upstairs,” I told him, “to play.”
“Not now,” he said. “I want you to go down to the bus stop and wait for your mother. Tell her I want her to get some beer for me at the store.”
“Right now?”
He shot me a threatening look, but didn’t say anything; the look said it all.
“I mean, yes sir, Daddy,” I said to him, quickly, hoping the ‘sir’ would make up for what I realized was a stupid question. Daddy liked for me to call him ‘sir’.
He kept his eyes on me for a long moment, until the threat in them grew soft and melted. “C’mere,” he said, and reached his arms out for me. I stepped toward him, slowly, still not sure what he intended to do, and when I got close enough he pulled me further toward him into a hug. His whiskers and breath were about all I could stand, but I kept my mouth shut. “I love you, son,” he said to me, and there was something like sincerity in his voice.
“I love you too, Daddy,” I said.
“Go on,” he said then. I left.
Outside, I was grateful for the open air again; the house was stuffy and smelled of cigarettes and beer and body odor like rotten onions.
Mama’s bus stop was only a half block away from our apartment, about a two-minute walk. There were a couple of people already waiting there, an old Negro man, and a teen-age white girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen. The man wore a white linen suit that seemed almost too clean for this neighborhood. He had a matching hat on his head with a blue-green peacock feather in the band. The girl sat on the curb with her pink sandals on the cement next to her, dabbing red polish on her toenails. She glanced anxiously every once in awhile down the street to where the bus would be coming from, working her jaw open and shut, snapping a small wad of chewing gum. She was humming something that sounded like Itsie-Bitsie Teeny-Weeny Yellow Polka-dot Bikini. I suddenly realized I was getting hungry.
The man was studying his little bus-schedule pamphlet. He looked at his wristwatch, then back to the schedule, then down the street. He shook his head a little, and then put the schedule in his coat pocket. He stared down at the girl painting her toes, and a look came across his face, funny and sad at the same time.
We waited. Lots of cars went by, but still no bus. I was getting hungrier by the minute. The growling in my stomach only seemed to get worse when I thought of how long it would take Mama to cook dinner after she got home, not to mention how she’d probably make something nasty-tasting, like spinach or Brussels sprouts or liver or black eyed peas or any of a hundred other things I couldn’t stand and ended up having to throw behind the refrigerator when no one was looking. I’d long ago given up trying to feed the stuff Mama cooked to the cat. Even he wouldn’t eat it.
I hated this waiting. I looked at the man, who was again studying his schedule. “Is the bus late?” I asked him.
“Beg pardon?” he said. He turned toward me and held his free hand to one ear. “You say sumpin’?”
“I said, is the bus late?”
The man smiled as much as his leathery face would let him. “Hell, boy,” he said, “this bus always late!” He let out with a chuckle that turned abruptly into a hacking cough. He reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a neatly-folded white handkerchief and wiped something greenish-brown from off of his tongue, then folded the cloth once more and stuffed it back into the pocket. “Yessir,” he said, swallowing thickly, “that bus come now, even though it late, we might have to call it early, if you know what I mean.” He winked an eye at me and chuckled and coughed some more, then resumed his watch down the street. “Yessir,” he said again, nodding.
At any other time I might have thought the old man’s joke was funny, but right now I was hungry, and what he’d said just seemed to add to the growing pain in my stomach. But then, as I thought about it more, I realized a late bus might not be such a bad thing. The Corner Market was only a half block farther down the street, and the bus had to drive by it to get up to here. I figured as long as the bus was going to be late anyway, I should be able to make it to the store, swipe myself a Milky Way or Snickers bar, and still have time to get back up the street before the bus arrived. If nothing else, I should be able to hear the bus going by from inside the store, and I could easily run up the street and catch Mama.
I couldn’t help smiling at my plan. I left the girl and the man at the bus stop and jogged down the block toward the store. At the corner, I stopped long enough to look up Hahn Street, where the bus would be coming from. Nothing. A couple of cars, maybe, but no bus. Gobs of time, I told myself. I could already taste my candy bar.
I skipped across the street and went into the market. A tinny-sounding electric bell announced my arrival: ding! The tiny store smelled of overripe apples and cigar smoke and the slight odor of mildew. There weren’t many people inside. The clerk, a roly-poly looking man with a cigar stub hanging on the side of his mouth, and a name tag that read “Chuck” pinned to his green apron, was at the checkout counter, busy counting the change in his register and writing on a clipboard. Chuck twisted his head around on its thick neck at the sound of the bell and nodded at me curtly as I came in. I knew Chuck, sort of: he was the one who usually took the note from me that listed all the groceries Mama wanted, the folded notepaper wrapped tight around the dollar bills and coins. Then Chuck would walk up and down all the aisles, reading from the list, pulling flour or molasses or whatever Mama had asked for from the shelves, while I waited for him to bring it all up to the counter. “How ya doin’, kid?” he said now, balancing his cigar stub on his lower lip. He turned without waiting for me to answer and continued his counting.
“Fine,” I said, though I didn’t think he heard me. I headed past Chuck and down the aisle where the candy bars were, and located the Snickers, which I’d decided was the only thing that would satisfy me right then. I pretended to be pondering my decision, waiting for the moment when Chuck would be busy checking a customer’s groceries.
Again, I had to wait. Chuck finished his counting and closed the register, then stood casually watching me, rolling his cigar in his mouth. The massive fans behind the coolers and freezers were noisily cranking away, something I guess they’d always done, except they were much more noticeable now that there was no one else in the store. Chuck took a toothpick from the counter behind him and began picking at his nails with it, rocking back and forth on his feet, and I thought I might have a chance, except that he was still facing toward me. The back of my neck was growing hot; I was sure my ears were turning red. If Chuck saw them he’d know something was up, and I’d never make it out of there without getting caught. I grabbed a Big Hunk and turned it over in my hands thoughtfully, then put it back. I did the same with an Almond Joy, some Sugar Babies, a box of Good N’ Plenty, a Baby Ruth and Butterfinger. Then I picked up a Snickers bar. Suddenly everything seemed frozen in time, and for a second I remembered an episode of Twilight Zone where that was exactly what happened, time had stopped completely, and people everywhere were frozen still except for this one guy with a magic pocket watch that could stop time. And I remembered wishing, stupidly, that I could have something like that magic watch. The things I could do!
Just then the electric bell at the entrance went off, ding!, and things were set in motion again, including my now-racing heart. Chuck turned himself in the other direction, and I heard him say “Hey, there, Mrs. Dillon.” A second later, I’d shoved the Snickers down the front of my pants, into my underwear, and covered up the bulge with my shirt front and started for the front door. Chuck looked at me as I rounded the corner of the checkout stand and frowned. My heart jumped. Oh, God, I thought, has he seen me? The sudden terrifying image of Daddy, swinging his belt, came into my head, and for a half second I thought I should run, if I could just make it to the front door, I could—
“Hey, kid!” I heard Chuck’s voice booming behind me. “Kid!” I froze, my stomach filling with ice water. Oh, God, I thought again, please don’t let me be caught. I promise I’ll never steal another thing again as long as I live, just please, God, get me out of this. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out in tears. I stood there frozen for another second, and then turned slowly to face Chuck.
“What?” I squeaked at him.
Chuck was still looking at me with that frown. I was sure he was going to ask about what was in my pants. Instead, he reached behind him into a large glass jar and pulled out a red Jolly Rancher candy, then threw it at me. It bounced off my chest and onto the floor in front of me. I looked back at Chuck. “You looked like you could use a little pick-me-up,” he said, grinning.
I breathed. Mrs. Dillon, a stooped over black woman, showed up at the counter with some mayonnaise and lunchmeats, and Chuck turned to begin punching at the keys of the register. “Thanks,” I said weakly. I bent down carefully and picked up the candy, and walked as casually out the front door, the ding! of the electric bell announcing my departure, my freedom.
Outside, the sudden breeze across my face told me I’d been sweating. My heart was finally beginning to slow. I pulled the Snickers from my pants mere feet from the store entrance and tore into the brown paper, and stuffed the candy nearly whole into my mouth. There were people nearby up and down the sidewalk, but no one seemed to notice me or care about what I was doing. The sweetness of the candy made the back of my throat burn just a little, and the exquisite taste of chocolate and peanuts was, for this moment, the best thing I’d ever had.
It wasn’t until I’d nearly devoured the Snickers bar that I looked up the street. I saw the bus stop, but the old man and the girl painting her toenails were gone. There was no one there at all. Again, the ice water, rushing so fast into my gut that I was afraid I might throw up the candy bar. Farther up the street toward where I lived, where my angry father lived, I could just make out against the light of the setting sun a small speck, making its way slowly but deliberately up the sidewalk, a shadowy form I knew was my mother.
I never had the chance to try to catch up to her: barely had the thought of trying to catch her crossed my mind, when I saw Mama move sharply to the right, walking, I knew, along the short concrete walkway that led to the shorter path to our front door, and even then I could see Daddy, turning to look at Mama as she came in, asking her in that voice, where the hell is Billy? And, seeing her holding nothing more than her purse, demanding, Where the hell is my goddamn beer?!
I took my time walking home then. Barely a minute after I’d seen her turning toward our apartment, I saw Mama appear back out on the sidewalk, looking down the street in my direction, only to turn and walk away again a few seconds later. I knew she’d seen me, was satisfied, I guess, that I was on my way. I figured that was a good thing; it would be bad enough as it was without my making them come looking for me.
And as I finally arrived at my family’s apartment and opened the door, I weighed in my mind what was happening, what was about to happen. I couldn’t help wishing then that it were just fifteen minutes earlier, that I was still standing at the bus stop with the old Negro in the clean white suit, watching him as he watched the teenaged girl painting her nails. I missed how clean the air smelled when I’d first stepped outside, how easy it had been to breathe. I even missed the feeling of being hungry. And I missed believing The Twilight Zone was real, and that God answered prayers, and that children never went to hell.