Paperboy Read Free Page A

again.

Chapter Three
    My favorite place to read in the summer is outside on the covered brick patio in our backyard sitting on the Wicked Furniture.
    Rat was at our house a couple of years ago when a truck delivered the new white furniture my parents had bought on a trip to New Orleans. My mother asked Rat if he liked our wicker furniture and Rat asked me later what made the furniture Wicked.
    I spelled out for Rat the right way to say it but he said he liked Wicked better. I’ve called it Wicked ever since because it’s easier for me to say it that way. I get upset when other people use the wrong words since it’s so easy for most everybody to make any sound they want. I guess I should be mad at myself for substituting Wicked for Wicker but you can always count on me to take the easy way out when it comes to getting words out of my mouth.
    I was trying to read a book about Babe Ruth that my father had brought me from his last trip out of town but I was having a hard time thinking about what was on the pages. The first night of collecting was only a few hours away. It was pushing down on me like a history test I hadn’t studied enough for. I didn’t know if I was going to have the guts to ring a doorbell and wait for somebody to come to the door and then make the hard
P
sound that started
paperboy
.
    About that time a cart came jangling down the alley. It sounded like Ara T’s cart with all the bits and pieces of metal clanking on it. Ara T was a junkman who pushed his cart up and down the alleys and did odd jobs for white people. Ara T could whet a knife or a pair of scissors razor-sharp.
    Just about any doodad that Ara T could find on the street that had a shine to it or made a noise ended up nailed on his pushcart that was made from pieces of scrap wood and old bicycle wheels. I unlatched the fence gate and went into the alley even though Mam had told me that she didn’t like me hanging around Ara T.
    How do, Little Man?
    Ara T probably had heard Mam call me that because he was all the time picking through cans behind our house. I pulled my knife from my front pocket and handed it to him.
    s-s-s-s-Needs sharpening.
    He took the knife and flicked open the blade and pushed up the sleeve of his old coat and dragged the knife across the curly hairs on his arm. Even in the middle of summer Ara T wore a heavy coat.Mam always said she could smell Ara T coming before she heard him and if you couldn’t smell him and his stinking coat you could smell the Bugler tobacco that he made into cigarettes by licking thin pieces of paper he kept in the top pocket of his coat. The cigarettes in his mouth always looked like they had been chewed on more than they had been smoked. He never bothered to take the cigarette out of his mouth like most grown-ups did so when he wanted to blow smoke he would just use the other side of his mouth and then keep puffing.
    Sure do. This knife won’t do for hot butter.
    He made a big show out of feeling around in his coat pockets.
    My whetstone’s at my place but I can have your knife for you directly.
    Ara T stood looking at me with my knife in his hand. He turned it over and over like he was studying both sides of the blade.
    s-s-s-s-Don’t need it till s-s-s-s-tomorrow.
    We stood staring at each other. Ara T ran his thumb back and forth across the blade.
    I’s needin’ me some oil to whet with. Advance me some coin for a smite of a can.
    I always had a bunch of money in the desk drawer in my room. When my father came home from his trips he would wink and ask me if the bank was open and then empty all the coins from his pocket into the drawer. He also gave me paper dollars when I swept leaves off the patio or cleaned the mud off his hunting boots. Rat’s father also paid me sometimes to untangle the rolls of chain andrope at his hardware store. He said I was the best he had ever seen at untangling things. I liked doing it. At least if I couldn’t untangle my words I could get something else