“But other people already know,” Liz said. “You keep introducing me as Tinsley Holladay’s niece.”
“Also, I told my Aunt Al—Al Wyatt,” I said. “Joe Wyatt, too.”
“The Wyatts,” Mr. Maddox said. “Wife works the late shift. Husband’s a shirker who claims he’s got white lung. That girl of theirs used to do some babysitting for us, but things started going missing, so we had to tell her to hit the road.” He leaned back and slapped the arms of his chair. “Anyway, just because a few people know you’re working for me doesn’t mean your uncle will find out. He doesn’t get around much these days. And if he does find out, we’ll handle the matter when it comes up. But I think this gives you an idea of the headaches I had dealing with him.”
Mr. Maddox explained that the Chicago company brought him in because the mill was losing money. The new owners said there were two choices: cut costs by thirty percent and try to eke out a profit, or shut down the mill for good, disassemble the entire operation, and sell it—looms and all—to a factory in Asia.
“People at the mill hated me for firing their friends,” Mr. Maddox said. “The fact of the matter is, they should have been down on their hands and knees, kissing any part of my body I wanted kissed, thanking me for saving some of their jobs. The slope heads in Asia are willing to work for twenty cents an hour, and they’re eating our asses alive. Meanwhile, I have your uncle with his panties in a twist, pissing and moaning about keeping the baseball team going and how the quality of the bath towels isn’t what it used to be. As if people give a shit about quality these days. They’re looking for something to dry their butts with, and all they care about is price.”
Mr. Maddox leaned forward, his thick arms on his knees, looking back and forth between me and Liz with his intense blue eyes. “So,” he said, “Uncle Tinsley had to go.” He smiled again. “The news that he was getting the boot spun him around like a top,” he said. He pointed his forefinger in the air and made a circling motion. “Woo, woo, woo. Round and round. Like a faggoty little ballerina.”
Mr. Maddox stood up, raised his arms above his head, and did a mincing pirouette. Then he sat back down. “Don’t get me wrong, I think your uncle’s a great guy, but you have to admit his judgment sometimes sucks.” He looked at the two of us. “Well, don’t you?”
I shifted in my seat. Liz studied her fingernails. There wasn’t a whole lot to say.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mom called once a week and talked first to Liz, then to me. Life in New York was exciting, she said, but also more challenging than she’d expected. It was expensive, for one thing. The only affordable apartment she could find had a bathtub in the kitchen and was in a rough neighborhood with a crummy school. Lots of kids in New York went to private schools, but they were way beyond our budget. Liz and I rightly belonged in one of those special public schools for gifted students, she explained, but it was too late to apply this year, so what we needed to do was start the school year in Byler—Uncle Tinsley had said he’d be happy to have us stay on at Mayfield—then, once she’d found a cheap apartment in a neighborhood with a good school, she’d bring us up to New York, and the Tribe of Three would be together again.
That was fine by me. Frankly, Mom had begun to get on my nerves. By now, it was early August, and whenever I felt like talking to a grown-up, I’d go see Aunt Al. We’d sit with Earl at the kitchen table while she nursed a glass of the iced tea she made by the potful and talked about things like the time when she was a girl on the family farm and the corn didn’t sprout because of a drought, so her pa made the kids dig up the kernels to plant the next year. She also told me stories about my dad, like the time he built an entire car out of junkyard parts, the time he held Ruth upside down over a bridge so she wouldn’t have a fear of heights, and the time he gave Aunt Al a ride on his motorcycle and she accidentally stuck her foot in the spokes, ripping her shoe to pieces.
Uncle Clarence was a certifiable curmudgeon, and I suppose Aunt Al was right that it was on account of his hard life. But it seemed to me that Aunt Al also had it really tough—working the late shift at what Mom would call a dead-end job, coming home to make her family breakfast, grabbing a few hours’ sleep, and getting up to make them dinner. Her grouchy husband was disabled, one son was off at war, her youngest wasn’t quite right, but she never complained. Instead, she was always talking about how blessed she was and how many wonderful things Jesus had brought into her life, what with people like me showing up out of the blue. But her greatest blessings were her kids, and most of Aunt Al’s conversations came around to them—Truman, the proud serviceman; Joe, who could do anything he set his mind to; Ruthie, who had spent the summer nursing Aunt Al’s sister and was going to get herself a good office job; and her little special Earl. She loved them all, and they loved her back. “I swear, they think I hung the moon and scattered the stars,” she told me more than once.