Darkness Under the Sun Read Free Page A

And twenty-three dollars change. You can’t buy all this for seven dollars or twice seven, for that matter.”
    “Now that you know, I guess you’ll want your seven bucks back.”
    “No, no, you’ve earned it. This is a bargain. You did so well, I’m of a mind to make you take at least another ten. What did your mother say, you packing up a picnic like this?”
    “Mom’s at work all day. She works hard. She wants me to be with a sitter. But I don’t want a sitter, and she can’t afford one. And anyway, I know how useless a sitter can be.”
    “Corrine? That was your sister’s name, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah. She has a summer job over at the Dairy Queen. She’s gone all day, too. Nobody saw me making lunch.”
    “The chips are good,” Mr. Blackwood said.
    “Sour-cream-and-onion flavor.”
    “It’s like having the dip built right into the chip.”
    “I like Cheetos, too.”
    “Who doesn’t like Cheetos?”
    “But we didn’t have any,” Howie said.
    “These are perfect with beef sandwiches.”
    For a while, neither spoke. The chips were salty, the Cokes were cold and sweet, and the sun pouring down on the roof was warm but not too hot. Howie was surprised by how comfortable silence was between them. He didn’t feel the need to think of things to say or the need to be careful of what not to say. Ron Bleeker, Howie’s nastiest and most persistent tormentor among the kids in town, taunted him with a lot of names, including Butt-Ugly Dugley, and said that he was the president for life of the Butt-Ugly Club. Mr. Blackwood had probably beencalled butt-ugly more times than he could count. So you could say that a meeting of the Butt-Ugly Club was now in session—and it was a cool event, up here on the roof, above everyone, with good eats and good company, and nobody better than anyone else just because of the way he looked.
    Eventually Mr. Blackwood said, “When I was a kid, my father told me never to talk to anyone, and when I did, he always caned me.”
    “What’s caned?”
    “He beat me with a bamboo cane.”
    “Just for talking to people?”
    “It was really because I was so ugly and he was ashamed of me.”
    “That’s not fair,” Howie said, and for the first time, he felt sorry for Mr. Blackwood, who until this moment had seemed to be still a little scary—though Howie couldn’t say why—but who was mostly someone to envy because he was so big and strong and sure of himself.
    “When your father does something mean,” Mr. Blackwood said, “you think it must be partly your fault, you disappointed him somehow.”
    “Is that what you thought?”
    “The first few times he caned me, yeah. But then, no. I saw he was just a bad man. If I was the most obedient boy in the world—and the handsomest—he would have beaten me for some other reason.”
    A large black bird circled over the roof twice, then landed on the northwest corner of the parapet, where it stood solemnly.
    “That’s not just a crow,” said Mr. Blackwood. “That’s my raven.”
    Howie was impressed. “You have a raven for a pet?”
    “Not a pet. He’s my guardian. He always stays nearby. He gave me something once … showed me the night, its secrets. But that’s a long story. I’ll tell you some other time. These pickles are good. They have snap.”
    “They’re crisp,” Howie said.
    “That’s right. That’s the exact word. Crisp.”
    The bird didn’t appear to have been drawn by their food. It remained at the distant corner of the building, preening its feathers with its busy beak.
    When they finished eating and were packing up the debris, Mr. Blackwood said, “Was it that your dad didn’t want your mother to have custody of you?”
    Howie was rendered speechless by the insight that the question revealed.
    Into the boy’s silence, Mr. Blackwood said, “If he couldn’t have his son, nobody could have you. That’s pure jealousy, and it’s a sin. There’s envy in it, too. And pride and murderous hatred.