The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead Page 0,49

of it—he didn’t understand this, and he considered himself a student of the human animal—and the limp breezes between the buildings carried the smoke all over. The fire engines screamed as they scattered across the city on the avenues and side streets.

That, plus the rats.

He sighed. In every argument he took whatever side stuck it to the Man, rule one. Cops and politicians, fat-cat businessmen and judges, the assorted motherfuckers working levers. “They got ’em by the balls, they should twist,” he said. “They’re working men.” Mayor Beame, Nixon and his bullshit, it was almost enough to make him want to vote. But he avoided the government whenever possible so as not to push his little bit of luck.

“Why don’t you sit down, baby,” he said. “I’ll get it together.”

“I already did it all.” Even put the kettle on for his hot-water bottle. It whistled.

Trash-fire smoke snuck in through the window so he opened the one in the bedroom for cross ventilation. She was right. It’d be a true hassle if this strike went as long as the last one. It was terrible out there. But it was good for the rest of the city to see what kind of place they were really living in.

Try his perspective for a change. See how they liked it.

The news anchor offered the holiday weather and gave a brief update on the strike—“talks continue”—and told the viewers to stay tuned for the Nine O’Clock Movie.

He tapped her glass with his. “You’re married to me, now—here’s the ring.”

“What?”

“From the movie. Sidney Poitier says it.” Holding up the chains that bind him to the redneck.

“You should watch what you say.”

Sure, the dialogue changed depending on who was saying it and who you said it to. Like the ending of the movie. On the one hand, neither convict made it out. Or you look at it the other way and each of them could’ve made it to freedom if they’d let the other one die. Maybe it didn’t matter—they were fucked either way. He stopped watching the movie a few years later when he realized he didn’t watch it because it was sort of corny, or they got the facts wrong, or it marked how far he had come, but because watching it made him sad, and a nutjob part of him sought out that sadness. At a certain point he learned the smarter play was to avoid the things that brought you low.

That night, though, he didn’t see the end of the movie because Denise wore a denim skirt and her big thighs sticking out distracted him too much. He reached over when that antacid commercial came on.

The Defiant Ones, then sex, then sleep. Fire engines in the night. Tomorrow morning he had to get up and out, back pain or no, because at ten he was going to meet the man and buy the van. He had a roll of bills tucked in his boot under his bed and he’d miss the satisfaction of adding twenty bucks to it on payday. Tore down the flier in the laundromat so no one else could beat him to it: a ’67 Ford Econoline. Needed a new finish, glossy, but the guys on 125th owed him one. And then he’d supplement his Horizon shifts with his own jobs. Weekends, too, bring on Larry so he can pay off his old lady. You couldn’t count on the Department of Sanitation, but Larry bellyaching about his child support was as dependable as U.S. Steel.

He decided to call his company Ace Moving. AAA was taken and he wanted to be at the top of the phone book. It was six months before he realized he picked the name from his time at Nickel. Ace: out in the free world to make your zigzag way.

CHAPTER TWELVE

There were four ways out of Nickel.

One: Serve your time. A typical sentence fell between six months and two years, but the administration had the power to confer a legal discharge before then at its discretion. Good behavior was a trigger for a legal discharge, if a careful boy gathered enough merits for promotion to Ace. Whereupon he was released into the bosom of his family, who were very glad to have him back or else winced at the sight of his face bobbing up the walk, the start of another countdown to the next calamity. If you had family. If not, the state of Florida’s child-welfare apparatus had assorted custodial remedies, some