Читать книгу Maggie Boylan - Michael Henson - Страница 9

Black Friday

IT WAS the day after Thanksgiving at the Once Removed secondhand store and Maggie Boylan burst through the door, already talking. Sarah Hunter was on the phone with her mother, her poor sick mother in Columbus, but you could not shush Maggie Boylan.

“Sarah, I got to get some money,” Maggie said. She was dressed in a big, loose, oversized denim coat with the sleeves rolled back, jeans all out at the knees, and a pair of men’s work boots. But she held out a pair of shoes—flawlessly white walkers like nurses wear and a pair of jeans, crisp and new and embroidered with flowers and spangles, hung over the shoulder of that big loose coat.

Sarah Hunter had hoped for more customers today. She had put up her Christmas decorations and she had discounted some of the better items. But there had been hardly anybody in all day. Now, at midafternoon, two women stood over by the children’s bin, rummaging for school clothes. They eyed Maggie carefully. They were in their own big coats. They continued to turn over jumpers and T-shirts but their eyes worked back and forth from Maggie to Sarah to the bin.

Maggie set the shoes and the jeans on the counter where Sarah could not miss them.

“Hold on,” Sarah said into the phone. “I’m getting interrupted.”

“I need you to help me,” Maggie said, “Christmas is coming up. I got to get my babies’ presents out of layaway.”

“Let me call you back,” Sarah told her mother. “I got to deal with something here.”

“You know I’m sober now,” Maggie said. “Can you tell? I’m getting fat.”

Maggie was not getting fat. She raised her shirt to show her belly and she was not fat at all. Her ribs were like a line of coat hangers; her belly was gaunt. In fact, Maggie Boylan was all elbows and knees; she flopped about in her open coat like a horsefly inside a tent. Sarah Hunter had known Maggie since they both were girls. They had grown up friends and she could not bear to look at the hollow of her belly. She could not bear to look at the bones of her face.

“See? No more of that crack. No more Oxys. I can’t live without my Vicodin on account of my back, but I don’t do no more of that crack.”

Sarah looked at the shoes and the jeans. Brand new; neither had ever been worn. But there was no tag on either one. “Where’d you get these, Maggie?”

“I got them for myself,” Maggie said. “But my babies come first. How about ten dollars for each. Those are fifty-dollar jeans.”

“Maggie, where’d you get them?”

“I got them at Target.”

Sarah shot her a skeptical eye.

“I swear,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Dennis Hunter limped out from the back office with a stomp and a shuffle. He was in his coveralls and he had a wrench in his hand. The truck was up on ramps out back and muffler parts were strewn across the yard. He had been stomping and shuffling in and out for tools and warmth all day.

“There’s your old man,” Maggie said. “He’s the one I want to talk to.” She grabbed up the shoes and the jeans. “Hey, Dennis,” she called. “Dennis,” she said. “I got to talk to you.” She pushed him back into the office and slammed shut the door.

“Well damn,” said one of the women at the children’s bin. The women looked at one another, raised brows, looked down for a moment, then back to the office door. The first woman asked, “You gonna leave her alone with your man like that?”

“If it was me,” the second one said. “I’d bust that up real quick.”

Sarah Hunter would have joked about it if she had been in a joking mood. But she did not trust these two and her mother was sick and she was in no mood.

“You got to watch Maggie Boylan like a hawk,” the first woman said.

“I won’t let her in my house no more.”

“The jeans, she might have got legal, but those shoes is definitely hot.”

“They probably come straight out of Walmart.”

“Or Payless.”

“Or Pay-Nothing.”

“She comes in your house, you got to watch her ever minute. If she ain’t stealing now, it’s cause she’s casing the joint for later.”

“Ever time she comes in my house I end up with something missing.”

“Like your CD player.”

“She got that for sure. I can’t prove it . . .”

“But you know.”

“That’s why I don’t let her in my house no more.”

“And hell if she ain’t doing crack. She had to stand up twice to make a shadow.”

“She must of lost fifty pounds.”

Sarah interrupted. “Well,” she said, then trailed off. She did not know what to say, exactly, but she wanted to hear what was going on in that office.

“You sure you want to leave Maggie back there with your old man?”

Sarah tapped a cigarette out of her pack. She could hear Maggie Boylan from behind the door. Her husband’s quieter, gravel-yard voice was in there too, but not so often as Maggie’s. Sarah tapped her cigarette on the counter.

“She kind of give you the brush-off, didn’t she?”

“She knows I won’t put up with none of her bull.”

“And she thinks he will?”

Sarah shrugged. “I reckon he can handle Maggie Boylan.” She was not at all sure he could handle Maggie Boylan, but she was not about to tell these two. She was of half a mind to go to the office and bust them up, but she lit her cigarette, put her elbows on the counter, and waited. She kept an eye on the women at the children’s bin, too. They might talk about Maggie, but the two of them were not above slipping a little something into the oversize pockets of their coats—a little dress if they liked it, or a pair of shoes. They would be happy to have Sarah turn her back.

The first woman held up a child-size blouse with a frilled collar. “What do you want for this one?”

“What’s it say?”

“It don’t have a tag.”

“Look again.”

“It don’t have a tag.”

“Two dollars.”

The woman raised a brow.

“Buck-fifty, then.”

The women shuffled and bargained over a few more items before Maggie banged open the back-office door.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”

She continued to thank her way up the aisle. “Thank you,” she said again. “You don’t know what this means. My babies can have a merry Christmas.”

“Bless you both,” she said to Sarah, then banged her way out the door and into the street.

Dennis limped behind her with the shoes and the jeans. “You reckon these’ll sell?”

Sarah Hunter tried to keep it to a whisper, but it was hard to do. “If you want to sell them,” she said, “get yourself a store and sell them yourself. Personally, I don’t want nothing to do with them.”

“Why not?”

“Cause they’re hotter than a two-dollar pistol.”

“She said she bought them herself.”

“And didn’t show no receipt to prove it. And the tags is off but they never been worn. And here’s Maggie Boylan, the biggest thief in five counties telling you some bonehead story. And you think they ain’t stolen.”

The two women at the children’s bin decided it was time to settle up. Sarah rang them up and bagged them up and helped them out the door, all with one critical eye on her husband.

She waited until the women had started gossiping down the street before she lit into him for real.

“What,” she wanted to know, “did you think you were doing?”

“I bought some clothes. We’re in the business of selling clothes.”

“Think a minute.”

“Think what?”

“Where’s Maggie Boylan gonna get the money for clothes like that?”

“How do I know?”

“Her old man’s been in jail all these months because he took the hit for her and all’s she can do for him is to sit out in that little house in the country and stay high on OxyContin. She ain’t got one dime to rub against another and she’s gonna come in here with some new kicks and a pair of britches look like they come off of Shania Twain’s ass and it don’t occur to you there might be something fishy about the whole damn deal?”

He shrugged. He was good for errands and for fixing things up, but he had no business sense at all.

He started back to the office.

“So how much did you give her?”

“Twenty bucks.”

“Twenty bucks!”

“Twenty bucks.”

“You know she’s probably smoked your twenty bucks by now. Or she’s put it up her nose. You know it ain’t for no Christmas toys in layaway.”

He rattled around in the back room looking for his tool. “Do you know where that hacksaw went?”

“Do I ever use a hacksaw?”

“I thought I’d ask.”

“So what were you two talking about for so long back there?”

“About how her kids wouldn’t have no Christmas if she couldn’t put some money down on layaway. How they got her old man locked up over nothing. How the county’s keeping her from seeing her kids . . .”

“Because she’s an unfit mother.”

“So I felt sorry for her.”

“I reckon you felt a little more than that.”

“What are you saying?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Now you’re talking crazy.”

“You were thinking with the wrong head. That’s what I was saying.”

He waved the hacksaw at her and clumped and shuffled out the back door.

* * *

TWENTY MINUTES later, a girl stalked in with metal in her lip and a shaky fire in her eye. She looked straight at Sarah and asked, “Has Maggie Boylan been in here?” Her fire died quickly and she lost the track of Sarah’s eye. Then she became just a girl with metal studs in her lips and nose, a nervous young girl who could not look Sarah in the eye. And that was what gave Sarah the clue.

“She stole my clothes and I want to know has she been in here?”

Sarah shot Dennis another glance—this time it was an I-told-you-so glance.

“I know she’s going around trying to sell my stuff, so I want to know has she been in here?” She pulled a bulky, spangled purse off her shoulder and set it on the counter.

Sarah pulled the shoes and the jeans from behind the counter. “These look familiar?”

“They’re familiar enough. How much did she get you for?”

Sarah silenced her husband with another sharp glance. “She didn’t get us too bad,” she said.

“I don’t have anything to pay you with.”

“Then don’t pay nothing.”

“Well, I hate for you to have to take the hit for what she done.” She sucked in her lower lip and chewed on a stud. She reached for the shoes, but Sarah set her hands across them.

“She’ll get hers in the end,” Sarah said.

“I reckon.”

“She’ll do the wrong person and that’ll be the end of Maggie Boylan.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Sarah folded the shoes and the jeans together and put them in the spangled bag. “If she ain’t died of an overdose first,” she said.

“She sure could,” the girl said. She stretched out her hand for the bag, but Sarah held on a moment more. “It’s a shame,” Sarah said. “I knew her when she was a girl and she was as good a girl growing up as there was.”

The girl nodded, but she did not seem to hear. She was eager to get out the door. She put the bag under her arm, nodded briefly, and turned toward the street.

Sarah followed her out the door, then watched from the front step. The girl ran to the corner, got into a car, started it up, and pulled into the street.

And sure enough, there in the shotgun seat, sat Maggie Boylan, smoking a cigarette, and laughing. Laughing like this was the biggest joke in the world.

The bitch.

* * *

FOR THE rest of the afternoon, her man continued to work on the truck. They would need the truck for pickup and delivery and that was the sort of thing Dennis was good for. It was cold to be working out of doors and it was hard work with all the heavy parts and climbing up under the truck, and his mangled leg hurt him. So every half hour or so he stumped and shuffled in for coffee and to warm his hands. She said nothing more about Maggie Boylan and the girl with metal in her mouth. She had said enough. He said nothing at all.

She tried to call her mother back and got no answer. She straightened the children’s bin and handled customers and totaled up the day’s receipts. Finally, near closing time, as the short day darkened, she heard the truck fire up. It hummed with a nice new-muffler hum. She heard his step, stomp and shuffle, stomp and shuffle, into the back office and the clink and clank as he put his tools away.

“Are you done back there?” He did not answer. He stomped and shuffled and clanked as if he had decided to move everything in the room.

“Say,” she said again, “you about done in there?”

She heard him stomp and she heard him shuffle and heard him clink and clank.

He’ll be a minute, she thought. She turned the store lights out and went to the window to flip over the CLOSED sign. A line of Christmas lights ran around the window. She could see other lights up and down the street and she could see the lights of the crèche on the courthouse square and she decided to leave her lights on like the rest.

She took out another cigarette and lit it. He would stretch out his shuffling and clanging as long as he could just so as not to talk to her. He would get over it soon enough, but he might not talk the whole way home.

I reckon she could have done it to get her old man some cigarette money, she thought. She would like that to be true. She knew it was unlikely, but she wished something like that could be true.

But no, she thought. Maggie’s bought herself something to smoke or snort. And when that’s gone she will pass off those shoes and those jeans on some new sucker. And then that girl will come right after with her little lie, and then they’ll go on to the next.

Her man stomped and shuffled in the back office and Sarah Hunter stood in the window and smoked her cigarette. Christmas lights dressed every window up and down the square and around the courthouse and even over the door of the jail where Maggie’s husband sat out his sentence. The bud of a cough had set up in the back of her throat, the bud of a tear in her eye. I should quit these things, she thought. She wished she had quit them long ago. She wished things were different in so many ways. She wished she were able to take care of her mother. She wished Maggie had not become such a wreck of a woman. She heard her man clanging and shuffling in the back and she wished she had not learned to sharpen her tongue.

She wished she could take back this whole damn story.