Cry of Angels

20

2O THAT NIGHT Tio CAME STRUGGLING UP THE GULLEY WITH A SLAB of fatback, some flour wrapped in newspaper, and a small jar of molasses. We fried the fatback and crumbled molasses in it and I sopped it with shards of the hoecake he made in the skillet. "Did you go by the hospital?" I asked. "Yeah." "How is he?" "I didn't get to talk to him. They said he got to raisin' so much hell the doctor had to knock him out again." "Boy, what a mess," I said. "That house for Ruben Johnson was the only one he had too, and now with him laid up in the hospital . . . Hey! I wonder if we could finish that house! I could round up Skeeter and Carlos and the shop boys and . . ." Tio held up his hand, listening. He got up and went to the window and then I heard it too, the sound of a siren turning in by the fairgrounds . 185 A C R Y O F A N G E L S "Well, you can forget that idea," Tio said. It was a fire truck, roaring down the hollow toward a red glow over Fletcher Bottom. Tio shook his head. "I'll bet everywhere that Bobo steps, he kills the grass." I sat down at the table. "What's coming next . . ." "I don't guess you've heard from Jojohn. Well, don't you worry, old papa Tio won't let you starve." And he kept his word. Every night he came with sardines, a few sprouting potatoes, pigs knuckles, salt mackerel, and even a porkchop when he could snitch it. We both felt bad stealing from Mr. Teague, until we hit on the idea that Tio was just opening a secret account for me. We would keep a careful tally of everything he brought, and I would pay for it as soon as I was able. That relieved both our consciences, and when the stealing switched to simple debt, Tio started stealing a better class of goods. But other problems began cropping up, things I'd never thought about before, such as laundry. At the boardinghouse my dirty clothes had always disappeared magically and turned up clean in the drawers . Now they just piled up in the corner and lay there. I tried putting them in the washtub and stomping around on them while I bathed, and tying bricks in the legs of my jeans to pull out the wrinkles while they hung from the limbs to dry. That worked fairly well for the jeans, but my shirts were stopping people on the street. Gwen finally called me aside one day at school. "Earl," she said, "you've got to do something!" Finally Tio brought me an old iron without a cord he had traded off of somebody, and I heated it on the stove and destroyed my one white shirt with it. It was the infernal bleaching. I remembered Farette putting in Clorox with the whites, and I did that. What I didn't remember was the careful rinsing, and made do with a swish and a wring. When I put the iron to it, it developed large brown holes and the collar came loose at one end. "For God's sake," cried Tio, "get what clothes you got left and let's take 'em to Grandma Tyne!" "What'll I pay her with?" "We'll think of something. But you go through another washday, you gon' be naked!" 186 B O O K T W O Grandma Tyne was a knotty little black woman in a red-roofed house on the river with somebody's wash always drying on the porch rail. As usual she was on the back porch prodding in her old wringer machine with a boiled white stick, suds and bluing soaking through the floor boards and foaming off into the garden. "Got your list of what you want from the store this week, Grandma ?" Tio asked. Grandma Tyne poked a ballooning overalls pocket under the rinse water and pursed her lips. "Better bring me some flour, a bag of dry beans—don't matter what kind—navy's all right. Need a can'a lard, some Peach snuff . . ." "Wait a minute." Tio took his pencil out of his pocket and rummaged in her safe until he found a piece of paper bag. He looked in the oven...