The Silver Star(49)

One Monday afternoon in November, shortly after I’d read my “Negrophobia Essay”—as everyone in class had taken to calling it—Liz biked into town with plans to go to the bank, withdraw the money, and bring back the guitar that day. The guitar had a strap, and she was going to bike home with it slung upside down across her back. She was pretty excited.


By the time the light started fading, it was chilly enough to see your breath. I had put on a navy pea coat of Mom’s that I found in the attic—unlike most of the stuff, it didn’t look old-timey—and was out in front of the house raking leaves into big piles you could jump on when Liz came pedaling up the driveway. She didn’t have the guitar.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did someone else already buy it?”

“My money wasn’t in the bank,” Liz said. “Mr. Maddox took it out.”

She parked the bike under the carriage overhang, and we sat down on the front steps. After going to the bank, she’d gone over to the Maddoxes’ to find out what the heck had happened to her money. Mr. Maddox told her that he’d moved the money out of her account, since the interest rate was so low, and instead invested it in T-bills, which had a much higher rate of interest but couldn’t be liquidated until maturity—one year out. It was a shrewd move, he said, and if he hadn’t been so busy, he would have explained it to her before. When Liz told him she wanted the money to buy a guitar, Mr. Maddox said she was a fool to waste her money on a passing fancy. Most kids who decided they wanted to play a musical instrument lost interest after a couple of months, he said, and they or their parents were out the cost of the damn thing while it just took up space in a closet.

“I can’t believe it,” Liz said. “That’s my money. Mr. Maddox can’t tell me what to do with it.”

The very moment Liz uttered those words, Uncle Tinsley came out of the house carrying a ladle. Dinner was ready.

“Mr. Maddox?” he asked. “Jerry Maddox? What about Jerry Maddox?”

Liz and I looked at each other. It was one thing to avoid telling Uncle Tinsley what we’d been up to. It was another thing to outright lie now that he’d asked point-blank.

“Mr. Maddox won’t give me my money,” Liz said again.

“What do you mean?” Uncle Tinsley asked.

“We’ve been working for him,” Liz said.

“It was the only job we could get,” I added.

Uncle Tinsley looked at the two of us for a long moment without saying anything. Then he sat down next to us, put the ladle on the step, and pressed his fingers against his temples. I couldn’t tell if he was upset or angry, disgusted or worried. Maybe he was feeling all those things at once.

“We needed money for clothes,” Liz said.

“And we wanted to help out with the expenses,” I said.

Uncle Tinsley took a deep breath. “Holladays working for Maddoxes,” he said. “I never thought it would come to that.” He looked over at us. “And you kept it from me.”

“We just didn’t want to upset you,” I said.

“Well, now I know, and now I’m about as upset as I could possibly be,” he said. “So you might as well tell me the whole story.”

Liz and I explained it all, how we hadn’t wanted to be a burden, so we’d gone looking for jobs and Mr. Maddox was the only one who’d give us work, how he’d set up the passbook savings accounts but now when Liz went to get her money to buy the guitar, Mr. Maddox had invested it in these T-bills and so she couldn’t have it.

Uncle Tinsley took another deep breath and let the air out with a sigh. Now he seemed more tired than anything else. “If you’d come to me in the first place, I could have told you something like this would have happened sooner or later with Maddox. It always does. He’s a vile snake.” He stood up. “I don’t want you to ever have anything to do with him again.”

“What about my money?” Liz asked.

“Forget the money,” he said.

“But it’s two hundred dollars.”

“Write it off to experience.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


I’d been sharing Liz’s room ever since the day I’d found out about my dad. That night, when Liz turned out the lights in the bird wing, the moon was so full and bright, it cast shadows across the floor. We lay side by side in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“I’m going to get my money,” Liz suddenly said.

“How?” I asked. “Uncle Tinsley told us not to have anything to do with Mr. Maddox.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “That money’s mine. I worked for it.”