The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead Page 0,64

to find Mr. Gladwell, who sat in a big rattan chair at the edge of the sweet potato fields. The man stood and squinted at Elwood.

“Say what now? Guess I can smoke,” he said, and relit his cigar. He barked at his charges, who had stalled their labor at the sight of the messenger. “That doesn’t mean you can quit, now. Get to it!”

Elwood took the long way back, around the trails that circumnavigated Boot Hill and took him past the stables and laundry. He was slow with his steps. He didn’t want to know if Turner had been intercepted, or if the boy had ratted on him or simply taken his letter up to his hideout and put a match to it. Whatever waited for him on the other side would still be waiting for him whenever he got there, so he whistled a tune he remembered from when he was little, a blues tune. He didn’t recall the words or whether it had been his father or mother who sang it, but he felt good whenever the song snuck up on him, a kind of coolness like the shadow of a cloud out of nowhere, something that broke off something bigger. Yours briefly before it sailed on its way.

Turner brought him to his warehouse loft before supper. Turner had a license to roam, but Elwood didn’t, and he shook off a wave of fear. But if he wrote that letter, he was bold enough to enter the warehouse without permission. The hideout was smaller than in his imagination, a cramped recess Turner had chipped out of the Nickel cave—walls made of crates, a dingy army blanket, and a cushion from the rec-room couch. It was not the hideout of a canny operator but the slim refuge of a runaway who had stepped into a doorway to get out of the rain, collar hugged tight.

Turner sat against a box of machine oil and cradled his knees. “I did it,” he said. “I put it in a copy of The Gator. In the newspaper, like at the bowling alley when Mr. Garfield slipped a payoff to the fucking cops. Ran up to the man’s car and said, ‘I thought you’d like a copy.’ ”

“Which one did you give it to?”

“JFK, who else?” In disdain. “You think I gave it to that dude from The Honeymooners?”

“Thanks,” Elwood said.

“I didn’t do shit, El. I delivered the mail, is all.” He put out his hand and the boys shook on it.

The kitchen staff brought out the ice cream again that night. The house fathers, and presumably Hardee, were satisfied with how the inspection had gone. At school the next day, and on Community Service that Friday, Elwood waited for the reaction, like he was back at Lincoln High School and waiting for the volcano to bubble and smoke in science class. The National Guard didn’t screech into the parking lot, Spencer didn’t put his cold hand on his neck and say, “Boy, we have a problem.” It didn’t happen like that.

It happened as it ever happened. At night, in the dormitories, flashlights crawling over his face when they took him to the White House.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She read about the restaurant in the Daily News and left the clipping by his side of the bed so he wouldn’t miss it. It had been a while since they’d had a night out together. Three months on, his secretary Yvette still left the office early to care for her mother, which had him playing catch-up at the end of every day. Her mother was senile, but they called it dementia now. As for Millie, it was almost March so the annual madness had descended, April 15 coming up and everybody scrambling. “They have a level of denial that is positively insane,” his wife said. She usually got home in time for the eleven o’clock news. He’d canceled date night twice already—date night was some women’s magazine thing now embedded in his vocabulary like a splinter—so Millie was not going to let him miss this one. “Dorothy has been twice and says it’s amazing,” Millie said.

Dorothy thought a lot of things were amazing, like gospel brunch, American Idol, and organizing a petition against that new mosque opening up. He held his tongue.

He left at seven, after taking a crack at decoding the new health plan Yvette had dug up for Ace. It was cheaper but was he getting ripped off in the long run with the co-pay