Glass Houses(22)

Today, though, was one of those days. It was one thing to believe in Civil Rights, which he did. It was one thing to believe that black Americans were behind in the race for the American Dream because generations of legalized discrimination had put them there. That was something he believed, too. It was another thing to assume that your behavior had no effect on the way your life worked at all, or that the fact that your great-great-grandmother had once been a slave in South Carolina meant you could do anything you wanted and be okay with it. That was what Charles Jellenmore seemed to believe, and Tyrell was about to kill him.

They were in the little utility room at the back. Tyrell could see through the door to the main security mirror over the counter and to the counter itself, which was necessary because the cash register was there. Charles was sitting on a packing crate, looking sullen. Tyrell was standing up. The store was empty.

“What were you thinking?” Tyrell demanded. “Were you thinking? Did thinking even occur to you? Two of those guys are on parole, for God’s sake. You’re on probation. One phone call from me and you go right to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Which, by the way, is about what was in the till last night when I closed up. And you didn’t get it. Or anything else. Lord Almighty, Charles, you’re not even a good thief.”

Charles mumbled something. Out in the store, the front door bells tinkled. Tyrell looked up at the mirror and said, “What?”

“Z-bok said you was an old man,” Charles said, suddenly very loud. “He said even if you was here, it wouldn’t be any trouble—”

“On my worst day,” Tyrell said, “on my oldest, most rheumatoid, most decrepit day, I could take your friend Z-bok and twist him into a pretzel. And what’s with the grammar this morning? You spend a night with Z-bok, you don’t know verbs anymore?”

There was a customer in the store. It wasn’t somebody he recognized. It wasn’t even somebody who looked like somebody he should recognize. It was a white woman, dressed up as if she were a lawyer going to court, or one of those “ladies who lunch” on the way to an expensive restaurant.

“I’d better go get the lady what she wants,” Charles said.

“I’ll get the lady what she wants,” Tyrell said. “I’m not finished with you. I should fire your ass right this minute, and you know it. Breaking the lock on the back door, for God’s sake. You know I’ve got security cameras out there. You know I’ve got them in here.”

Charles mumbled something again, and then, when Tyrell cleared his throat, said, once again too loudly, “Z-bok said we could take out the security cameras.”

“You failed,” Tyrell said.

“We wasn’t doing nothing,” Charles said. “We just needed some money and shit, that was all. We was all flat broke and needed some money to—”

“To?”

“Eat,” Charles said.

“Horse manure. I gave you dinner here myself last night, and it wasn’t small. And don’t tell me Z-bok needed to eat. All that boy ever eats is dope, and you know it. And don’t say ‘shit’ in this store. And it’s we were, not we was. How do you ever expect to get out of here and get on in the real world if you sound like an ignorant—”

“Watch out,” Charles said. “You’ll say one of those words you’re always telling me you’ll fire me for.”

Tyrell was watching out. That was one of the words he did not say, along with most of the swear words that seemed to constitute more and more of the vocabulary of the kids who came through every year. He could see the woman in the security camera looking over the large display of potato chips near the back wall.

“Listen,” he said, “the good news is that you didn’t get anything, and I was the one who caught you. If the alarm had gone off without me here and the police had come, you’d be dead meat. The bad news is I’m mad as hell, and I’m not about to get over it soon. So if you don’t want to land in jail, you’ll un-load the soda crates and put the stock out while I attend to the lady. Then you and I will have more of a talk.”

“I don’t wanna talk,” Charles said. “Talk’s a lot of shit.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” Charles said.

Tyrell thought of railing on the kid for the use of the word “shit,” but he didn’t have the time. His interior monologue had started up again. What were you supposed to do in places like this? The answer wasn’t as easy as it seemed when one side or the other started putting out their Holy Writ on How to End Poverty in Our Lifetimes. Tyrell wasn’t even sure he wanted to end poverty. He wasn’t even sure he knew what that was. What he wanted to end was this thing half of everybody seemed to be into, this attitude, this mess. There was a part of him that was sure that if they could just get the fathers to stay with the mothers, and the mothers to stay with the fathers, and everybody to go to church and throw out their television sets, it would all turn out all right.