Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [103]
“Cheap sons of bitches,” I said out loud. There was a thin layer of nuts lying there, some still rolling away. “Goddam cheap.”
I heard Grey pounding on the front door and hurried to him. He was so impatient to get in I was afraid he was going to break the glass. “Stop it,” I yelled, and went for the jack on display in the window. But Grey kept rapping on the glass while I dragged it over to the door. “Stupid fool,” I hissed at him, but he just grinned. I got the brace fixed against one door and the lever wedged in the crack against the other. Two turns of the crank and the doors popped open with a snap. Grey shot past me like a dog with his tail on fire while I shoved the jack out of the way. I wanted to climb up and shut that vent again, but looking back I saw there was no way I could reach it. I had imagined Tyler Highgarden shaking his head and wondering how we had done this to him. But with that insulation hanging down everybody’d know how we had gotten inside the store.
“Goddam!” Grey crowed, and I heard more glass break. He’d cracked the front of the knife case and was happily stuffing his pockets with jackknives of all sizes. I wrapped my arms around myself, hugged my shoulders, and shrugged. A breeze whistled in through the open door and stirred the dust along the floor. I looked past Grey at all the things on display. Junk everywhere: shoes that went to paper in the rain, clothes that separated at the seams, stale candy, makeup that made your skin break out. What was there here that I could use? I remembered the rows of canned vegetables and fruit at Aunt Raylene’s place—rows of tomatoes and okra, peaches and green beans, blackberries and plums that stretched for shelf on shelf in her cellar. That was worth something. All this stuff seemed tawdry and useless. I bit my lip and went back to get my hook.
Grey was running up and down the aisles, grabbing stuff and then dropping it. “Goddam, we’re a team,” he whispered at me, shook his head, and laughed. He snatched up a pillow case from the linens, took it up to the front, and started filling it with cigarettes.
“Yeah,” I whispered. I kicked at the case in front of me. It was full of picture frames-wood, plastic, and metal gilt. The big ones were in the same style that James and Madeline had for their family pictures. For a moment I wanted to smash them, but these weren’t theirs, even if they were the same cheap brand they wouldn’t admit they had bought. I swung my hook back and forth, trying to think what it was that I really wanted, who I really wanted to hurt. My eyes ached, and my palms were raw and stinging. I felt like I was going to cry. Grey whooped “Goddam” again, and I felt something hard and mean push up the back of my throat.
I hugged that hook up tight to my midriff and ran back to the door, calling for Grey as I went. He was still grabbing things and throwing them down, the pillow case now looped into the waistband of his jeans. It took him twenty minutes to finally come up and join me. He was trembling, his dark-tan face streaked with sweat and dust. His mouth worked, opening and shutting, but no sounds came out. He had his shirttail tied tight around his middle to hold the stuff he couldn’t carry. I put my hand on his arm.
“Come on. We an’t gonna lock the door, you know.” I squeezed my fingers and felt his excitement in the rigid band of muscles. “And your hands are full anyway.”
He blinked at me, pushed his face close to mine. “I an’t never gonna forget this, Bone,” he told me. “Never in this life.” I nodded solemnly back at him, and a smile broke out on his face. “Goddam!” he whispered once more as he went out the door, sounding this time like a happy child.
I pulled the double doors together so that