I finished off the last bite of my eggs and biscuits. “Maybe we should tell Uncle Tinsley that we’re working for Mr. Maddox,” I said. I took my plate over to the sink and rinsed it. “I feel bad. He’s been good to us, and we’re sneaking around behind his back.”
“I’m none too big on giving advice,” Aunt Al said. “Most times when folks ask for advice, they already know what they should do. They just want to hear it from someone else.”
“Enough of this jawboning,” Joe said. “Let’s go get us some apples, cuz.”
In the bird wing that night, I told Liz what Aunt Al had said about the bad blood between Mr. Maddox and Uncle Tinsley. “It doesn’t feel right working for someone Uncle Tinsley hates.”
“We need the money.”
“Still, he’s letting us stay here and sharing his stew, and we’re lying to him.”
“We’re not lying, we’re just not telling him everything,” Liz said. Look, she went on, if Uncle Tinsley would be realistic, admit that we needed money for school clothes and school supplies, that would be one thing. But as long as he was going to pretend we could wear debutante clothes from the forties and didn’t need to worry about buying schoolbooks and cafeteria lunches, then we had to do what we had to do. “You don’t need to tell people everything. Keeping something to yourself is not the same as lying.”
Liz had a point, but I still felt funny about it.
The next afternoon, when Liz came back from work, she said she’d asked Mr. Maddox about his clash with Uncle Tinsley. Mr. Maddox had told her that he and Uncle Tinsley had indeed had some disagreements over how the mill should be run. Uncle Tinsley lost the argument, Mr. Maddox said. He hadn’t mentioned it before because he didn’t want to sound like he was badmouthing our uncle. But he wasn’t too surprised to find out that Uncle Tinsley, or someone else around town, was badmouthing Jerry Maddox, and he’d be happy to give us the real story if we wanted to hear it.
“I think we should take him up on his offer,” Liz said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I was glad Mr. Maddox was willing to give his side of the story. After all, he was the boss, and we were the ones who needed the money. He didn’t owe us any explanation, and it made me feel like he cared what we thought of him.
Sometimes Mr. Maddox worked the day shift at the mill, but sometimes he worked nights and weekends, which gave him weekdays to conduct other business. This particular week, he was working afternoons but had his mornings free, so the next day after breakfast, Liz and I pedaled our bikes into town and parked them in Mr. Maddox’s carport, next to his polished black Le Mans. As usual, Doris had the TV on and she and the kids were on the Naugahyde couch, watching cartoons.
Mr. Maddox was in his office, sitting at his desk, feeding sheets of paper into a machine that shredded them into spaghetti-thin strips and spewed them into the wastebasket.
“Never just wad papers up and throw them out,” Mr. Maddox said. “Your enemies will go through your trash to find anything they can use against you. Even harmless stuff. They can twist and distort it. You have to protect yourself.”
Mr. Maddox shredded the last sheet of paper. His desk was clean, and that was the way he liked it. One of Liz’s jobs was to make sure all his papers were filed away in the correct folders in the filing cabinets, which he kept locked.
“So you want to hear what happened between me and your uncle?” he asked. “That doesn’t surprise me. Only thing that surprises me is that it took this long.”
Mr. Maddox got up and closed the door. “I’d be happy to tell you,” he said, “but you tell me something first.” He took the two folding chairs out of the closet and had us sit down. Then he rolled his chair over until he was a few inches away from us. “Does your Uncle Tinsley know you’re working for me?”
Liz and I exchanged glances. “Not exactly,” she said.
“I was willing to bet that would be the case.”
“We wanted to tell him,” I said, “but . . .”
“But he probably wouldn’t be too happy,” Mr. Maddox said.
“We love Uncle Tinsley—” Liz began.
“But sometimes Uncle Tinsley doesn’t see things the way they really are,” Mr. Maddox said. “Sometimes Uncle Tinsley doesn’t see what needs to be done.”
“Exactly,” Liz said.
“So I think it’s a good idea that you don’t tell him,” Mr. Maddox said. He smiled that smile he got when he found a situation privately amusing. “Let’s keep it between ourselves.”