A Hole in the Universe - Mary McGarry Morris [51]
“Almost got it,” Gordon grunted, wedging the tip of the slender screwdriver down alongside the tape spool. “Same thing,” he muttered. “That one little wheel’s slipped.”
June sat on a crate, sipping blue Gatorade. She’d just had a weak spell. Six customers waited in line at the next register. Serena was ringing up orders and doing her own bagging.
“This is ridiculous!” said a disheveled woman in a stained white uniform. Her two small children wailed because she’d just smacked their hands for taking gum after she’d said no.
“Can’t somebody do that register?” another woman asked, pointing.
“Where’s the kid? Why isn’t he bagging?” Neil asked, looking around for Thurman.
“He went out to round up carts,” June said, wheezing, and smirked at him. “Ten minutes ago.” He had gone out for a cigarette.
“Oh, Jesus.” Neil started for the door. Out on the street, a slight, thin-haired man in a gray suit was shouting at Thurman, who was a head taller than he was. Just yesterday the boy had blown up at Leo and stormed out. When his grandmother got home from work, she’d marched him into the store and made him apologize to Leo and Neil.
“Fuck you!” Thurman’s voice exploded through the opening door. With Neil’s arrival, the man gestured angrily at Thurman, who stood in the hot sun, glaring in his long-sleeved white shirt and baggy prison pants. Neil patted the man’s shoulder and tried to bring him inside, but the man looked back and said something. The boy lunged and the man shoved him away, but the boy came at him again. Neil pushed between them. The man’s round, fair face blotched with rage as he strained against Neil to get at Thurman.
“Gordon!” June implored, pulling her tank to the door, but he was numb, frozen.
“Oh, my God!” a woman in line cried out, saying she knew the boy’s grandmother.
“He pushed them right into me,” the man panted as he came through the door.
“They’re hard to stop sometimes,” Neil said, then, seeing the boy on his heels, ordered him to go home and cool off. With that, Thurman charged inside, shouting that the asshole had driven into the carts on purpose, that’s how his car got scratched.
“He wouldn’t wait!” Thurman insisted.
“Yeah, right,” the man said, straightening his tie. He stared at Gordon.
“Ask him what he called me!” Thurman said to Neil. “Go ahead, ask him!”
“Get the hell outta here! I’m not going to say it again. You go home and cool off. Now!” Neil ordered.
“No!” Thurman bellowed. “I’m not leaving! I didn’t do anything! He’s the one, not me! Ask him what he said! Go ahead!”
“Look, that’s it! I’ve had enough of your mouth, you hear me? What do you want? You want me to fire you? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what you want.” Neil had gotten Thurman to the door.
“You’re Loomis, right?” The man’s eyes raged with turbulence. His head trembled.
Gordon nodded.
“I want you to ask him! Go ahead! Ask him what he called me!” the boy demanded as the man advanced on Gordon.
“Here, look! Look at this.” The man held out his open wallet with shaking hands. “See! See that beautiful face? That’s all that’s left because of you! A picture,” he said, his low, anguished voice running into Neil’s and Thurman’s.
Gordon’s head jerked away from her joyful smile. Twenty-five years ago, her pictures had made her seem so much older than he had been then. Now he realized how young she had been, how pretty.
“Fucking spick, that’s what he said! That’s what he called me,” Thurman said through the closing door.
“You son of a bitch,” the man spat. “You don’t even care, do you. At least Cox had the decency to blow his fucking brains out as soon as he got out.”
Gordon stared down at his huge, sweaty feet in these absurd blue-and-white sneakers. At least in a cell the bars had been visible.
“But it’s over for you, right? You did your time. You just come back, start over, what the hell do you care! She wasn’t anything to you, right?” He paused,