Mam turned off the stove eyes and grabbed her black pocketbook from the pantry. I followed her out the door and down the back steps. Even as fast as I could move it was hard to keep up with Mam.

Even more strange than where she put her ap.r.o.n was seeing her leave the house in her white uniform without her little round black hat.

Mam stopped at the end of the driveway.

You get on up to Mr. Rat's now.

I didn't move or say anything.

Listen to me strict now. I've got some business that's mine alone. You mind me now and get on up to Mr. Rat's house.

I turned away from Mam and started walking up Melrose. Slow as I could walk. She went the other way in her fast walk. I knew she would make a line straight for Ara T's shed.

When I came to the corner to turn onto Rat's street I looked back and saw Mam was almost to Ara T's alley. A new plan came to me. I watched Mam head into the alley and then I took off running back down Melrose.

I ran so fast I couldn't hear my tennis shoes. .h.i.tting the sidewalk. I turned up Harbert just before I got to Ara T's alley and kept running up the street past Mrs. Worthington's house. Three houses from the end of the street I cut into the driveway and ran beside a wooden fence that came out near Ara T's shed.

Before I reached the alley I heard Mam yelling for Ara T. A few more steps and I was in the alley. Mam was pounding on Ara T's secret shed door. Some of the door's chipping gray paint floated to the ground like snowflakes. Snowflakes in Memphis in July.

Mam pulled at the shed door but it was locked tight. I started wondering if I should tell her how I had seen Ara T open it by pulling out the two nails on the side and sticking something through the small hole. Right then Mam reached up and grabbed the top of the shed door with her hands. She gave the door a yank with all her might. The door came loose from its hinges and crashed to the ground with splinters and gray snowflakes going everywhere.

Mam stepped into the doorway and threw back the tarp covering the inside of the shed. The yellow lightbulb came on and I heard shovels and rakes falling and crates being emptied. Then a few seconds of quiet. Mam came back out the door of the shed and stood in her white uniform with her hands on her hips. She looked straight at me like she knew I had been there all the time.

You disobeyed me.

I was ready for whatever Mam had for me because I was going to tell her that I wasn't leaving her. I was going wherever she was going next and there wasn't anything she could do about it.

She seemed to know what the inside of my head was saying.

You have carfare money?

I patted my front pockets and felt the coins and wadded-up bills from the night of collecting. I couldn't spend any of that but then I remembered Mrs. Worthington's five-dollar bill in my back pocket. I pulled it out and handed it to Mam. She took off down the alley with the door to Ara T's shed lying flat on the ground and the yellow light still shining. My mother always liked to say that Mam would walk barefoot across burning coals to turn off a light.

We turned on Bellevue and walked the one block to Peabody and past the paper drop where I had folded newspapers all month. I thought about how all the paperboys would be at the drop the next afternoon handling their papers and cutting up with Rat and asking him about his month at the farm. The paper drop was empty. If I had been by myself just seeing that spot would have given me the lonelies but Mam and I were headed for some business with Ara T. Walking faster and faster.

We crossed Peabody to a bus stop where Mam usually would hum a church song while we waited. She stepped back and forth on the curb trying to spot a bus.

Where we s-s-s-s-going?

I knew most of the answer but it seemed like I needed to ask the question anyway.

You know Ara took your money and your things and I'm going to get 'em back. Right quick like.

I had never heard her call Ara T just by his first name.

My first thinking was to say not to worry about the money and that my father would just fill the desk drawer again with change from his pocket but thinking about Ara T with my Ryne Duren card and the photograph of me and Mam at the zoo and especially Mr. Spiro's words written on the three pieces of a dollar bill stirred me up on the inside.

The bus was empty when we stepped on. Mam handed the driver the five-dollar bill and then she gave me the change to put in my pocket and sat us down on the first seat on the side opposite the driver. He gave her a look but Mam spoke before he could say anything.

Do this car cross Lauderdale?

The bus driver said it did.

Mam stared straight out the front window of the bus with her two hands holding the top of her black handbag like somebody might try to yank it away. Mam had been in her white uniform all day. Had cooked breakfast and lunch in it and walked to the store and back with groceries on this hundred-degree day and her uniform was still white and morning fresh.

The one thing Mam did on the bus that surprised me was to open her handbag and take a pinch from a bottle of Garrett's with her thumb and finger and put it in her lower lip.

Mam had never taken a dip of snuff in front of me.

Where did your yellow-handle knife come from?

s-s-s-s-Don't know. s-s-s-s-Just always had it.

You'll have it again, Little Man, and all your other stuff. Don't you be worrying.

Chapter Seventeen.

Mam stood up a full block before we got to Lauderdale and pressed against the front doors of the bus instead of pulling the overhead cord and going out the back like we usually did.

She held my hand waiting for the bus door to hiss and fold open. Mam had not done that in a long time.

We walked down streets that were new to me. I read the signs. Lauderdale. Beale. Linden. Pontotoc. Vance.

I didn't know Vance came downtown so far. The two-story houses on this part of Vance looked like they had been nice houses a long time ago but most of them had old cars parked in the dirt yards and sofas and chairs with the stuffing coming out lined up on the front porches. Men were sitting on red Coca-Cola cases turned on their ends and women were fanning themselves with pieces of cardboard. Everybody was laughing and talking loud and looking like they were having a good time. The people in my neighborhood would all have been in their houses at that time of night with the attic fans blowing but everybody in this part of Memphis was outside and stirring.

We came to a store with a gla.s.s front that was bright on the inside and full of whiskey bottles. The rows of bottles looked like books lined up on library shelves.

We kept walking down Vance with Mam stopping to pop her head in the small stores and places with music playing.

More Juke Joints 'round here than the law should allow.

What's a s-s-s-s-Juke ... s-s-s-s-Joint?

Where the choirs of the devil sing.

Some of the signs on the stores were lettered in a bad hand with the words misspelled. When we got to the corner of Vance and Orleans Mam made sure I knew her rules in this part of town.

No matter what, Little Man, you stay close. If I tell you something, there won't be any disobeying. You hear me?

I nodded. Double.

Mam turned the corner at Orleans and started walking back toward Union Avenue. She stopped dead still at the first alley we came to. In the back of a small red building were a bunch of junkmen's pushcarts with their handles sticking out. Mam tightened down on my hand as we walked down the alley toward the red building.

A bare lightbulb over the top of the back door of the building lit up the jumble of old carts full of the usual junkman's junk. Mam shoved one cart out of the way to get a better look at one in the middle. No mistaking. It was Ara T's cart with its tarp and plastic doll head and all the shiny foolishness tacked on it.

Mam stood straight with her hands on her hips looking at the other carts and sizing up the red building. I could tell that she was making a plan. Before Mam did anything big at home like taking the rugs out to beat them or waxing the wood floors she would always stand with her hands on her hips to come up with how she wanted to go about things. When she was finished making her plan she would start in on her work and never miss a beat until the work was finished.

Mam squeezed my hand tighter when she moved closer to the back door of the building. She cupped her left hand to her ear and leaned against the door. The alley was quiet so it was easy to hear the music inside the house. It sounded like a woman singing but then the song ended and another one started up and I could tell then it was just a record playing. People were talking and laughing inside and bottles and gla.s.ses were clinking together.

Mam moved back closer to Ara T's cart and pulled up the old tarp.

Listen to me strict now. Take my pocketbook and crawl up under here. Don't you peep out for nothin' or n.o.body.

Climbing up in Ara T's smelly old cart was not something I wanted to do but I knew I didn't have a choice if Mam had her plan worked out. I stepped up on the handle and then slipped under the tarp. Mam covered me.

Be back directly, Little Man.

She patted my head like she always patted my foot when she left my room at night.

I couldn't tell if Mam had been gone for five seconds or five minutes. I hadn't moved a muscle under the tarp because I was listening hard and could hear only car horns honking and a few sirens every now and then.

The heavy canvas and the cart smelled as bad as Ara T did and without getting any of the little breeze from the alley it was getting harder to take a full breath. I counted to ten in my head saying Mississippi after each number.

1ne Mississippi 2wo Mississippi 3hree Mississippi 4our Mississippi 5ive Mississippi 6ix Mississippi 7even Mississippi 8ight Mississippi 9ine Mississippi 10en Mississippi I know that's not how you type numbers but that's how I see them in my head because I can't separate the numbers and the words. I counted to ten again. And again.

I was sweating and having trouble getting my breath. I couldn't stay under the tarp any longer. It was time to get out and go see about Mam. She would just have to be upset with me because staying in that cart was making me sick to my stomach. I needed air even if it was the sticky summer Memphis kind.

I saw by the light of the single bulb on the building that I had been lying on Rat's two canvas newspaper bags I had left in the alley near Ara T's shed. I thought about Rat who would be coming home the next day and then I thought about Mr. Spiro and his merchant marines and how much I would like to have both Rat and Mr. Spiro and all his marines with me now. But they felt a gazillion miles away.

I eased up to the door of the red building and cupped my hand to my ear like Mam had done. A record was playing like before but there was not as much talking or clinking gla.s.ses. I looked for a doorbell but then decided that it wasn't the kind of place to have one on the back door. Or the front door. Holding Mam's black handbag as tight as I could I opened the door and stepped inside.

The place was darker than the alley and the thick smoke from cigarettes made it even harder to see. The smell was not as bad as inside Ara T's cart but close. I walked on my toes with my hand against the wall through a narrow hall that led to the front of the building where the music was coming from. The song on the record confused me at first because I thought it was a song that I remembered Mam and her choir singing about Letting Your Light Shine. It didn't seem right that they should be playing a church song in a Juke Joint but when I listened closer I figured out that the song was talking about letting your Love Light Shine and that was a different kind of light and probably a different kind of love from the kind Mam sang about in church.

Just then a man in a shiny blue shirt came running lickety-split down the hall toward me. I plastered myself against the wall and he zoomed past me and out the back door. If he saw me he didn't let on.

The narrow hall was dark but the room that opened up in front of me had colored lights around the walls like you see at Christmastime on front porches. As I walked through the door everyone inside the room was standing at their tables staring at something on the far wall. The record about the Love Light was still playing but everything else was quiet.

My eyes started getting use to the dim light. At an empty table near the middle of the room I saw my brown leather billfold. Scattered around it was a pile of paper money and coins. I went a little closer and saw Mr. Spiro's three pieces of a dollar and my Ryne Duren card and the picture of me and Mam at the zoo. The rest of the table was covered with gla.s.ses and brown bottles and sliced up red onions and opened cans of Vienna sausage. Ara T's stinky coat was hanging on the back of a wooden folding chair.

The thing that everybody in the room was staring at was Ara T in a torn shirt and his old hat holding Mam up against the wall with both of his big hands around her throat. Mam's white shoes were dangling with her toes pointing down trying to touch the floor. When she tried to hit Ara T in the face with one of her fists he spread his elbows like a chicken wing to block her arms. Even as strong as Mam was and as good as she was with both of her hands she couldn't get in a solid lick.

A man in a fancy red hat standing at one of the tables picked up a wooden chair with both hands and eased up to Ara T's back. He lifted the chair to his side to swing it but Ara T saw him and grabbed the chair with one hand and smashed the chair on the man's head. Pieces of the chair went everywhere and the man backed away. Ara T still had Mam pinned against the wall with one hand. He held a piece of the chair in his other hand.

Mam's white uniform was whiter than white in the dark room. Her arms were spread out and flapping. She looked like one of the angels on the front of the songbooks at her church getting ready to fly to heaven.

With his chewed-up cigarette in his mouth Ara T was cussing loud at Mam and then laughing and then letting out a cry that sounded more like an animal at the zoo than a human. Ara T never had a loud voice when he talked to me in the alley but it sounded like he was talking into a loudspeaker for everyone in the red building.

I'm killin' this b.i.t.c.h this time.

Ara T then screamed into Mam's face.

Just likes I killed your skinny-a.s.s brother.

Mam was still swinging at him with her arms but I could tell her strength was leaving. Something was oozing out over her lower lip that I first thought was blood but then saw was her Garrett's. She didn't see me because she was looking straight into Ara T's eyes. Not like she was afraid of him but like she was trying to come up with a plan even though time was running out.

That was when my plan came to me.

I put Mam's handbag on the floor at my feet and reached with my right hand for a brown bottle with a long neck on the table next to me. The people at the table didn't see me because they were standing and watching Ara T choke the life out of Mam with one hand and swinging the piece of the broken chair with the other.

The bottle was empty and the neck was wet and slippery. I wiped it off with my hand and then I wiped my hand on my shorts until my right palm was good and dry. I felt the weight of the bottle. I opened and closed my fingers around the neck until the bottle was balanced just where it needed to be. The neck of the bottle fit my hand like it was made for it. Better than even a baseball or a newspaper.

Ara T's dirty hat against Mam's white uniform made a perfect target. I held the bottle above my right ear and spread my legs for balance putting my left foot out ahead just a little. Just like my newspaper throws.

I c.o.c.ked my arm. In my mind I could already see the brown bottle flying toward Ara T's head.

I yelled as loud as I could. So loud Mr. Spiro could have heard it in Timbuktu. Vowel sounds aren't my best but this one came blasting out of my mouth and no stutter in the world could have stopped it.

ARA T.

At the same time I said his name I let fly with the bottle. As hard as I could throw. Even harder than throwing rocks at the moon.

The bottle came out of my hand in a perfect end over end.

I should have thought about the way Ara T's floppy hat sat high on the top of his head. If I had taken dead aim at his ear the bottle would have caught him between the eyes and dropped him right there on the spot but it hit him on the top of his head when he turned toward me. The bottle knocked his hat flying and then hit the ceiling where it crashed with a loud pop. Brown gla.s.s sprinkled down on Ara T and Mam.

Ara T dropped his hand from around Mam's neck and the piece of chair in the other hand fell to the floor. He had opened his mouth when the bottle hit him and his crooked cigarette had fallen out.

Mam slid down the wall with her hands clawing at her throat and gulping for breath. Ara T rubbed his forehead where the bottle had smacked him. He staggered a little but got his balance quicker than you would have thought after taking a bottle to the head.

He grinned and started toward me and I saw his gold tooth shining like the headlight on my Schwinn.

I probably could have made it out the back door of the building without Ara T laying a hand on me but I couldn't take my eyes off Mam leaning against the wall pulling at her throat.

Ara T reached out for me with his big sweaty arms. Still grinning his crazy grin.

Looks like I'm gonna breaks me a white boy's neck now.

Ara T's voice was booming and his gold tooth shining. I saw for the first time that the reason the tooth was so bright was because there weren't any other teeth around it.

If you were just walking into the room and saw only his face you would have thought Ara T was smiling and kidding around but if you were up close looking into his wild eyes you would have known he was serious.

Ara T's extra-strong junkman's hands closed around my neck. The next thing I saw was my watch around Ara T's wrist but he had it on upside down. That bothered me and then I decided I had more to worry about than how he was wearing my watch.

I managed one good kick at his knees because I knew he would block my arms but he pinned my legs against a table with his body. His red eyes were wide open like some monster in a comic book. His gold tooth was shining in the dark of his mouth and his breath smelled like it was on fire. Vienna sausages. Red onions. Cigarettes. Whiskey. All that was missing from my list of worst smells in the world was my mother's mothb.a.l.l.s.

My eyes wanted to close but over Ara T's shoulder I saw Mam get to her feet and wobble toward Ara T's old coat hanging on the back of the chair. I worried that Mam was thinking about just throwing the coat over Ara T's head and that probably wouldn't do us much good because Ara T was getting a grip on my neck like you grip down on a baseball bat at home plate. I thought I knew what being strangled felt like because I choked on my words all the time but this kind of choking made me want to close my eyes and just go to sleep. I could barely see Mam but could tell that she had started moving faster.

In my mind I was trying to tell Mam that she needed more than Ara T's coat and then I saw her jerk something out of one of the pockets. I didn't see her open it because she did it in such a quick move but then I saw the shiny blade of my yellow-handle knife slash across Ara T's arm that was closest to her. On the bias. Ara T let out a quick yelp and grabbed his sliced arm with his good one.

Mam backed up a half step to get a better balance. Then she yelled.