PHILISTINE.

The word came out different than a field whoop but just as loud. Whatever the word was she meant it.

At the same time she switched the knife to her other hand in one quick move for a better angle and plunged the blade into Ara T's other arm. All the way in. Up to the yellow handle.

The knife went in as easy as when Mam opened a ripe watermelon on the kitchen table. Ara T could whet a knife better than anybody.

Mam motioned for me to get behind her as she backed away from Ara T. The blood had begun to ooze from around the yellow handle. Ara T let out another animal sound and started toward us and that was when I heard a commotion from behind and something lifted Mam and me to the side in one motion like we were checkers on a checkerboard.

Big Sack.

It's done, Ara.

Ara T looked up at Big Sack and then reached down for a piece of the chair that had fallen to the floor. With the arm that didn't have a knife sticking in it he raised the stick of wood over his head and swung it.

Big Sack caught Ara T's arm at the wrist. He gave a twist and the piece of wood fell to the floor. Big Sack gave another twist to the arm and I heard it pop like when I threw a hard one into Rat's catcher's mitt.

Ara T's eyelids closed and then he dropped to the floor. Not like how cowboys fall down in movies but like when a coat falls off a hanger and crumples.

The phonograph record had finished playing but it was still going around with the needle making a scratching sound.

Big Sack started telling people what to do but he wasn't talking fast like he was nervous.

Get me that gin bottle, Silk.

A guy in a blue shirt grabbed a half-full bottle and handed it to Big Sack who emptied the bottle on Ara T's bleeding arm. It came to me straight then that Silk was the one who had run by me earlier to get Big Sack.

Hold him, Silk.

Big Sack wrapped a white handkerchief around Ara T's arm where the knife had gone in and grabbed the yellow handle with the other hand. He yanked.

Ara T's eyes opened and he rose up to let out a yell that had no match anywhere in the zoo then slumped back down on the floor. Blood gushed until Big Sack put down the knife and tied the b.l.o.o.d.y handkerchief tight around Ara T's upper arm. Big Sack grabbed Ara T's old coat and wrapped it around the b.l.o.o.d.y arm too. He turned to Silk.

Pull Ara's wagon to the door and bring his cloth.

Where we takin' him, Big Sack?

They'll be shootin' dice in back of Hatty's. We'll roll him there and get him st.i.tched.

Mam left my side and walked around Ara T's head. She picked up the knife from the floor and wiped the blood from the blade on a sleeve of Ara T's coat and slid my watch off of his wrist. She stood to face Big Sack.

You knows I had a right.

None said you didn't, Miss Nellie. It's done. You best clear out with the boy.

Mam folded the blade in and put the knife in the pocket of her uniform with my watch.

Big Sack knelt down and gave more orders.

Get a mop and rags from back. And some motor oil and sawdust. Fix a record on that player. Show here's over.

Everyone watched Mam as she reached down to pick up her black handbag I had brought in.

She took the yellow-handle knife and my wrist.w.a.tch from her uniform pocket and put them in the handbag and then walked to the table in the middle of the room. She moved the gla.s.ses and bottles to one side as easy as if she was clearing the dishes in our dining room after supper. She pushed my coins into a pile like she did with peas after she had finished sh.e.l.ling them and raked all the coins into her handbag. She carefully picked up the three pieces of Mr. Spiro's dollar bill and our photograph and my Ryne Duren baseball card. She put everything in my billfold and put the billfold in her handbag. Mam snapped it shut like she wanted everybody to know that everything was over and done with like Big Sack had said.

Mam put her arm around my shoulder and we started for the back door as calm as if we were leaving choir practice on a Sunday night. We walked past Big Sack who was sliding Ara T onto the canvas tarp that Silk had brought in. Even down on his knees Big Sack was looking me straight in the eye.

Ara T won't bother you again, Little Brother.

I nodded because I took Mr. Big Sack to be the kind of man who meant what he said.

As we walked outside past Ara T's cart I reached in and got Rat's newspaper bags.

I wanted to look back through the open door of the red building but I wasn't going to if Mam didn't. Mam had done a needle story about a woman in the Bible leaving some bad city and when she looked back G.o.d turned her into a block of salt. I don't know if the story was real but I wasn't taking any chances.

Mam didn't say the first word until we were on the Union Avenue bus by ourselves.

We'll talk in the morning whilst the house is empty. You lay back and rest easy now.

I nodded but wasn't sure I could do much resting. Mam held her handbag in her lap with both hands on top. She looked straight ahead.

As we got closer to our stop I remembered I had missed out on Mr. Spiro's fourth word. That word was important to me. Whatever it was. And once I missed out on something like that I knew I hardly ever got a second chance.

Chapter Eighteen.

I wasn't surprised the back doorbell buzzed so early the next morning. I looked at my wrist.w.a.tch that Mam had put on my desk. It was six o'clock. But it seemed to me that the Memphis police should have come to the front door.

The only people that buzzed at the back door were the grocery boy or sometimes Rat if he couldn't see Mam in the kitchen. But six o'clock in the morning was too early for Rat to be back from his grandparents'.

I decided I would just stay in bed until the policemen came up to my room to handcuff me and take me and Mam to jail. I wondered if they would be in blue uniforms or if they would wear coats and ties like the two Dragnet guys on TV who always talked like they were reading out of a book.

The police would ask me questions and I would start stuttering up a storm and telling them I didn't remember anything because I was so scared and maybe they would feel sorry for me and Mam and let us out of jail after a few days. Fact was I could remember everything about the stabbing like it was a movie that kept running over and over in my head.

I must have turned the movie into dreams because when Mam called up to my room it was after eight o'clock.

You gonna sleep to noon up there?

I smelled sausage frying so I put on clean shorts and a shirt and went downstairs.

Who was at the s-s-s-s-back door?

Nice man on a cycle.

Mam always p.r.o.nounced it Sickle like in Popsicle.

He said he owed for the paper. Said he wanted to pay 'fore he left town.

Mam handed me the envelope from her ap.r.o.n pocket. I could tell it had more than coins in it. I folded it in half and stuck it in my back pocket instead of running upstairs to my room to open it. Mam always said I liked things to simmer a bit.

Mam poured a tall gla.s.s of cold milk to go with my sausage and eggs and biscuits. Mam usually didn't make biscuits on Sat.u.r.day morning but there was a plate heaping high on the table next to a bowl of sausage gravy. I hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before and Mam knew that her biscuits and sausage gravy would fill me up if anything would. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the breakfast table in the chair across from me. She hooked her thumb around the spoon that always stayed in her coffee cup.

You eat and let me talks a spell.

I could tell that Mam had been thinking a good while about what she needed to talk to me about.

What happened last night shouldn't have, Little Man. We're going to talk about it this one time and then never again for all our born days.

She looked at me for a nod. I gave her one. And then I promised again with my eyes.

She went back to the beginning and told how she had known Ara T when she was growing up in Mississippi. He lived with a family who worked on the farm next to the one Mam's family worked on. She figured Ara T was about five years older than she was and told how he was all the time getting into trouble by taking stuff that didn't belong to him and picking on kids smaller than he was. Especially her brother. The two had gotten into fights and her brother always watched Ara T plenty close when he came around. She said most everyone was afraid of Ara T because he would fall into the fits without any warning. The only one who wasn't afraid of him was Big Sack who lived on another farm near Coldwater.

On the night her brother died Mam heard a scream on Coldwater Creek that ran between her house and Ara T's. Her brother had been to town to sell eggs so he could buy flour and sugar for her family. When they found him in the creek the sack of flour was scattered up and down the banks but the bag of sugar was gone and Mam's brother was dead.

Mam's father always suspected that Ara T had killed his son for the bag of sugar but never could prove it. Later on Ara T left Mississippi to come to the city. Mam had been in Memphis almost a year before Ara T started coming around our neighborhood. She told him to keep away from our house but he said the alleys were his and he could go where he pleased because Memphis was a Free State. Mam said she had asked Big Sack to keep his eye on Ara T. Big Sack told her the day he came to our door that he had seen me hanging around Ara T.

Mam got up to get me some more sausage gravy from the stove.

Will the s-s-s-s-police come?

The Memphis law don't pay much mind when harm comes to somebody like Ara T.

Why did s-s-s-s-Big Sack say that Ara T would never s-s-s-s-bother us again?

Big Sack is a man who makes things right. He'll see that Ara T moves on. Ara T knows not to buck Big Sack.

Will s-s-s-s-people in the red s-s-s-s-building who saw what s-s-s-s-happened tell?

Some will talk in the devil's places. But nothing will come of it. People know Ara T got what was due him.

s-s-s-s-Will you tell the s-s-s-s-police what Ara T did to your brother?

Mam explained how her people cleaned up their own messes and didn't depend on white people and their police. She said her people had always done it that way in Mississippi and then in Memphis and it always worked out best like that.

Mam told me to ask all my questions because when we got up from the table Ara T would never be talked about again.

s-s-s-s-Was Ara T the one who s-s-s-s-busted your face?

She nodded.

I caught him comin' out of his alley shed and told him to keep away from you ... and I told him I knows what he did to my brother.

s-s-s-s-When did he s-s-s-s-bust you?

I told him I's going into his shed to find your knife and he spun me around and hit me. I gots in a couple of good licks but he bested me ... that time.

I asked her if she thought she was going to die when Ara T had her slammed up against the wall with his hands around her neck.

I fear no man the likes of Ara T. No matter who has hold of me I know the Lord will protect my soul.

I had asked my mother one time after church to explain what a Soul is and she said we would talk about it when I got older.

s-s-s-s-What's your soul?

Your soul is the part of yourself that n.o.body can see. But it's the best part of a body's life because G.o.d has control of it.

I had more questions about the Soul but I knew it had to do with the Bible and I was going to have to think on that more before I could ask the right questions.

I asked her how she knew my yellow-handle knife was in Ara T's coat pocket. She said she had felt the Lord himself move her to the knife with a sure hand and she knew what had to be done.

Where's the s-s-s-s-knife now?

Buried so deep the Hounds of h.e.l.l can't dig it up.

I sat at the table while Mam sipped her coffee. My mind went back to the night before. I could see Ara T's hands around Mam's neck and then feel them squeezing my throat. I could see the yellow-handle knife slash and then go deep into his arm. I could see the blood ooze and then begin to spurt.

The tears started from deep behind my eyes without me knowing they were coming and then came gushing out like water out of a busted pipe. I never cried much but I couldn't turn these tears off and stopped trying after a while.

Mam sat at the table with me until I emptied my eyes. She smiled when I wiped the last tears away.

You threw that bottle with a mighty heave, Little Man. Just like David.

I remembered Mam's needle story about the boy who busted a giant with a rock from a slingshot.

I was glad I had a bottle to throw. I'm not as good with a slingshot.

Chapter Nineteen.

Summer heat waves in Memphis usually end with thunder and lightning and rain that floods up over the curbs but the hot spell on the first Sat.u.r.day in August broke a little after noon with a puny drizzle.

The breeze coming in my window was just how I liked it. I sat at my desk with the envelope Mr. Spiro had given Mam. I opened it to find three quarters and two dimes for the week's Press-Scimitar. And the last piece of Mr. Spiro's special dollar.

I opened my desk drawer where the night before Mam had put my billfold and all the coins and paper money she had brought back in her handbag. I took the three pieces of the dollar and put them together in the desk drawer so the breeze from the attic fan wouldn't blow them away.