Blow the Man Down (Ch 1-10)

1

He felt a root under his back, long and narrow, with a slight curve to his right side.  The chill from a cool breeze made Jerrod wipe his nose.  The moisture making the nose feel cold and lumpy to the back of his hand, as if it wasn’t connected to the rest of his damp face.  Laying his hand back down to his side, he flexed his fingers and felt the moist grass, feeling the dirt work its way up under his fingernails as he tightened his hand into a fist.  The memory of his night before started drifting back to Jerrod, like blood seeping into a sleeping arm.  He heard the whistles and squawks of birds.  His favorite had a slow, rising warble, which ended in a higher-pitched whistle, like someone had just let the air out of a balloon.  Concentrating on that bird held his memory at bay, at least for the moment.  Jerrod didn’t want to think about why he was there.  Deep inside he knew those thoughts would start a chain of thinking that would take a while to weave his way through.

Jerrod turned on his right side, trying to get some comfort away from the root on his back.  As he turned, he felt heavy, as if the thoughts inside him had turned to stone.  Some grass was on his face.  He wiped at it.  His cold rough face felt gritty and greasy at the same time, like grunge on a stove top.

The grass on the ground now reached inside his shirt collar.  Reasoning began to take form.  A breeze blew again, sending a shiver down his spine.  His neck tickled.  It was slight, but perceptible, like the way his scalp settled back on his head from the eyebrows back when he relaxed.  With his left hand, Jerrod reached up to scratch his neck.

The tickling moved down from his neck to his stomach like a cotton ball blown by a soft breeze.  Jerrod looked inside his shirt at his chest.  The sun shone through the burnt orange jersey he wore and cast a dark pumpkin glow on the inside of the tent formed by his shirt, head and body.  He saw three half-dollar sized spiders crawling in opposite directions as if they had just left the huddle of an arachnoid’s football game.

Jerrod let out a voiceless shout, only with air and a raspy croak.  He ripped his shirt off over his head and the spiders disappeared to the ground or in the folds of the shirt, he didn’t know.  Flicking the shirt with such zeal, it caught on a branch about 12 feet high on a nearby tree.

Breathing hard and pacing rapidly in odd-shaped circles, Jerrod could hear his heart beating in his eardrums.  As he paced, he could feel twigs under the grass, his bare feet filthy with blades of wet grass and mud.  Frantic, Jerrod found and sloppily put on his boots while standing on one foot, then the other, not thinking until later that he could have been bit or stung on a foot by something that had camped out for the night in his boot.

The birds had stopped their music during his tirade, but new sounds emerged.  Jerrod watched the water slip by the river bank on which he stood, certain he could hear it, though no ripples could be seen.  Trees dotted the edge of the river, hanging over the edge as if in deference to the flowing water.  A still mist hung just over the slow-moving current, giving the impression of water moving through a tunnel.  Jerrod’s breathing slowed as he sat down on the bank.  As if it wasn’t there before, the sounds of the city behind him drifted in and out of his consciousness, the way the pungent smell of a dead animal touches you before you see the carcass.  As long as he didn’t look, it might drift away.

At last, he looked over his shoulder.  Immediately, the entirety of the prior day’s events washed over him like a bucket of water had been tossed over his head.  Jerrod spun around on his butt, feeling the wetness of the cold earth seep into his jeans.  To his right, he could see a four-lane street dividing a sea of 2 and 3-story brick buildings dating back to the early-1900s.  Beyond those buildings, rising up like a mirage, was downtown St. Louis.  To his left, the four-lane road created an infinite dividing line between the Mississippi River and a collage of fast food restaurants, low-end strip malls, and used car lots.   

Jerrod sat back down, running his grimy hands through his wiry sand-colored hair.  Squinting as if he could see through the buildings, he pictured the homes beyond, including the one-story brick house with the lattice-topped fence.
2
“How do you expect me to understand what you want if you don’t speak to me like something human?” Sarah asked.  “I’m sick of the grunts, half words, and partial sentences that sound like I’m living with a caveman!”

“D’jou get it?” she mimicked in her best attempt at a gravely voice.  “How ‘bout sumpin while yer up?” she continued.  “Honestly, Jerrod, I don’t know how you keep your business going if you can’t communicate in your native tongue.”

Jerrod had zoned out, looking in the magazine rack filled with magazines from months ago.  Down at the bottom were a couple beer bottle caps and a handheld electronic Yahtzee game.  He pushed the start button, but there was nothing on the screen.  He pushed again, this time harder.  Jerrod looked at Sarah and then back at the Yahtzee game, pushing the start button a third time.  Then he pushed other buttons and turned the game over.  He opened the back to find two old Duracell batteries seeping a brown crusty fluid.

“Any triple-A’s?” he asked, holding the Yahtzee game up.

Sarah stopped still and stared at him.  She turned and stomped out of the room, slamming the door as she entered their bedroom.  Jerrod knew that if he went into the bedroom, she would have closed herself in the master bath to cry, creating a double layer of insulation from him.  It used to upset him and he’d stammer out a few stilted pleas for her to come out and talk about it.  “I’ll be out in a few minutes,” she’d say in a sallow voice.  Or Sarah would say helplessly, “I’ll get over it.”  But with each recovery, the emotional scar tissue would re-heal a little thicker.  Jerrod noticed that it was getting less common for her to run to the bedroom to cry.  And it was getting easier for Jerrod to persuade himself the she’d get over it without saying a word.

Sarah was completely dependent on Jerrod for income.  She had often considered going back to work in advertising sales as she had done for the newspaper 6 years ago.  She had done quite well with her sales.  Part of that may have had to do with her looks.  She had a pale face which accentuated her dark eyes.  Her lips were tight and seemed to have a constant, half smile which was hard not to stare at.  But her most unique feature was her hair.  It was shoulder-length and as black as ink, with a bluish hue in the light.  She spent hours every week caring for her hair.  She knew the sheen of her hair was eye-catching, and she wanted to ensure that that it remained that way.  It also didn’t hurt that her feline figure was usually dressed in black, causing men and women alike to think of her as dark and sensual.

Now, she tended to add a bit of hair coloring to keep the depth of blackness, but her cat-like qualities remained.

Sarah had met Jerrod when she worked for the paper.  Sarah had been working her way through the Yellow Pages, calling companies to solicit their business for the paper.  When she had gotten to the category on pawn shops, she called the Pawn Castle.

“Pawn Castle, Jerrod speaking,” he answered. 

“This is Sarah Rennert from the St. Louis Post Dispatch and I’d like to offer you a special-priced opportunity to advertise in the Sunday paper.  Have you ever advertised in the Dispatch before?” she asked. 

“Lot-of-times,” replied Jerrod, “only never for Pawn Castle.  Used to have a 976 number which people could call to hear their fortune told, but your paper doesn’t allow those ads anymore.  Anyhow, I shut down that business to work on Pawn Castle.”  There was static on the line and some of Jerrod’s words were garbled.

“Are you on a cellular phone?” Sarah asked.

“Uh, ya why?”

“How can you be on a cellular phone if I called you on the business’ main number?”  She was getting suspicious, but intrigued.

“I have the main number forwarded to my cell phone so I’m not stuck in the store all the time,” Jerrod replied.  “Truth is, we haven’t really opened the Pawn Castle yet.  You probably got the number from the Yellow Pages.  I thought the business would be open by the time the book came out.”

“I see, so when will the pawn shop open?” Sarah asked.

“Three weeks, if everything goes right.  And, yes, I would like to put an ad in the paper.  I  better wait, though, til we been open a couple weeks.”

“Maybe we could meet and design the ad, so that when you’re ready, all you need to do is call me,” Sarah suggested.

Jerrod and Sarah met a week later.  Jerrod was thin with brown, stringy hair.  He wore a red Cardinals baseball cap.  Sarah looked at him and thought how he looked just like his voice sounded.  His eyes sparkled as he spoke about being an entrepreneur.  He would start sentences off slowly and build up to a crescendo, waving his hands for emphasis.

The two were designing the ad for the Pawn Castle at his office, which was really a trailer, when Jerrod looked at Sarah and said, “What are you wearing?  I mean, what’s the perfume called?”  Sarah stared at his eyes.  They were locked on hers.  Her eyes felt hot.  Could he read her thoughts?

“I’m not wearing any perfume.”

Jerrod let out a hiss through his teeth.  “I never said this to anyone, I swear, but you are the most…” He looked away.  “I’ve just never been near anyone that makes me feel the way you do.”  There was a long silence.  She opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

“Tell me you’ll go to dinner with me.  This isn’t a pick-up line, I just, well, I just work all the time and never have many chances.  I mean to meet people, and have fun.  Feel like I’m missing part of what life’s about.”  Jerrod thought about how desperate he sounded, and philosophical.  He stared at her.  Her jet-black hair pulled back with one little group of strands hanging down on her forehead, stopping on the bridge of her nose.

She blew with her mouth up her face, as if reading his mind.  The group of strands went up and to the side.  “You’re pathetic and a lot of other things.”  After a long pause, “Yes, but I’m paying.”

After dinner, they walked along the park underlying the St. Louis Arch.  “Do you think any of your ventures will ever amount to anything?” She asked.

He stopped and pulled her to look straight at him.  His face looked solemn and hopeful.  “I’m hoping that this will be the best and longest-lasting venture of all.”  With that he kissed her with a passion that took her breath away.  That hadn’t happened in a long time.  Their eyes locked again.  “I’m falling, falling, falling…” Sarah thought to herself.

3
Six weeks later, the pawn shop opened.

Jerrod was a self-proclaimed entrepreneur who intended to make his first million by age 35.    Jerrod was so filled with energy that he was constantly moving.  Biting a nail, cracking a knuckle, stretching his neck, bouncing his leg.  He was thin and wiry, hair disheveled, always something a little off.  A button undone, a missed spot from the morning shave, a gouge out of the toe of his shoe.  He was a risk-taker, whose eyes would sparkle with enthusiasm as he spoke of his next venture.  Truly a dreamer, but one with plans to follow-through.  His eyes were darting all over the place as he talked.  Sarah though he was exciting.

They were married three months later in Las Vegas.

The pawn shop was sold a year later at a loss.

Six years later, Sarah gave birth to Dylan and quit her job at the paper.  Dylan, eight now, was already a lot like his father, but maybe it only seemed that way because Jerrod often acted like an eight year old.  Jerrod, now 42 was still working on that first million, after having been involved in numerous ventures that would make them “filthy rich.”  The businesses were always on the edge of social acceptability.

Now, Jerrod ran an auction house named Auction Central in St. Louis.  Auction Central took consignment of estates and conducted a variety of types of auctions, including sealed bid, on-site, tag sale, and bankruptcy auctions.  He had learned never to take certain items to sell, such as water beds and guns.  A local mover would move the items from the estate to his warehouse where he conducted the auctions about once a month on Sunday afternoons.  Monday through Saturday, people could come to the building and preview everything that would be for sale at the next auction.  During the preview period, the warehouse is crammed haphazardly with furniture like an attic.  Most of the furniture looks worn, with doors crooked, dents and scrapes on tops, and chair seats threadbare.  What stands out is how big much of the furniture is, with armoires and cupboards standing nine feet tall.  Jerrod thoroughly checks out the furniture, because sometimes he finds money and jewelry which had been hidden by the often-deceased owners.

Saturday night, everything gets stacked in the back room.  A stage is set up with lights and 200 chairs are set up.  Two to three hundred people would show up for the auction.  Free beer, wine and popcorn added to the festival atmosphere.  Jerrod made pretty good money on this business, since he kept 20-25% of the sales price on most items.
4
The sun was starting to make Jerrod sweat as he looked at the rows of homes.  A breeze blew against his back.  Jerrod could hear a barge putt past him on the river behind.

South St. Louis hasn’t changed much over the past three decades.  Jerrod had grown up there in the very house they lived in now.  Sarah had resisted moving into that home when Jerrod’s father died.  She wanted a new life, not a small home without a mortgage.  Jerrod had convinced her that this was only temporary, until his video poker business got off the ground.  At that time, 4 years ago, he had mortgaged the house to buy 9 video poker games which he placed in 6 different bars around St. Louis.  He ended up selling those poker machines for about what he paid for them 8 months later, when he needed the money to buy a used limousine for his next new venture.

As Sarah sobbed in the bedroom, Jerrod lit a cigarette, turning the Yahtzee game over and over in his hand like a bar of soap.  “How am I gonna change the world today?” he said out loud.  Just then his cellular phone rang.  Wondering which of his many ventures this call could relate to, Jerrod let it ring three times, then picked up.

“Jerrod Taylor.”

“You got Blow’s shit, man,” came the voice on the other end of the line, “an you gonna cooperate or we cap yo ass.”  It was very syncopated like a rap song, but it didn’t rhyme.  Jerrod immediately looked over at Dylan, who was on the floor in the corner pulling the head off his GI Joe action figure.

“What do you mean?  Who are you?” Jerrod asked.  His own voice sounded high and nervous to himself.

“Me an my set be visitin yo auction house on Sunday.  An all, I mean all uh Blow’s shit better be there.”  A chill swept over Jerrod’s spine.  Up to this point, his auction business had been the best of his ventures.

5
Jerrod had picked up one estate sale recently of an elderly black woman named Josephine Baxter.  Josephine had died alone in the poorer section of East St. Louis, but had a small house that was full of items collected over a lifetime.  Her only son had been murdered eight months before she died, which surely contributed to her depression and ultimate heart attack.  Someone had attempted to break into Josephine’s house following her death, but had been chased away by patrolmen who routinely police the area.

Jerrod received a call from Craig Hall, a public administrator a week before.  “Jerrod,” he said, “you did good auctioning off the Wilson estate, so you get the chance of a repeat performance disposing of Ms. Baxter’s estate.  She owed a good bit of money for credit cards and her house, and she has a thirty-five hunert dollar tax bill.  She was intestate with no survivors, so whatever you collect from the estate sale will go to the state.”  Ms. Baxter’s estate, if you could call it one, had been in probate for 14 months, while the state-appointed public administrator searched for any surviving relatives.  The administrator had served notice to Josephine’s creditors, inventoried the estate, and was now in the process of disposing of the personal property.

“Nobody left?” Jerrod asked.

“No.  Her son was killed about two years ago by a gang and she was alone besides him.”

Jerrod went through her home carefully, verifying the administrator’s list of everything that might be sold in the auction.  He put stickers on each item so that he could identify it on his list.  She had quite an assortment of items she had collected over the years.  The big furniture was all well worn.  A couch with dark blue and maroon stripes and a number of unidentifiable stains.  A wooden kitchen table with three chairs that had speckled egg-yolk colored vinyl-covered seat cushions.  A bed set with a white pine headboard and a matching dresser.  For end tables, Josephine had covered milk crates with a square board and a piece of fabric which hung down to the floor.  Her son’s bedroom was just a bed, dresser and floor lamp.

The more interesting items in the auction business tended to be the sentimental ones.  Josephine had a set of pocket watches that must have been handed down that were neatly set in cotton in a shoe box.  She also had a set of ruby-colored earrings that Jerrod figured he would buy himself to give Sarah on her upcoming birthday.

The photographs always haunted Jerrod as he inventoried a home.  These would be packed away in a box and ultimately thrown away.  Something about the pictures looked distant and sad, and it felt like the deceased were watching him give their lives away.  There are also always boxes of papers.  Most of the papers are useless past bills, tax records, receipts, warrantees from products purchased long ago, and product information.  Josephine also had a full file drawer of Reader’s Digest Clearinghouse Sweepstakes forms which contained her submission numbers and orders to continue her chances of winning.  This was the one file drawer that seemed organized.  She, like most people, also had her drawer full of old letters and memories.  Jerrod always kept these in the back of the pawn shop until he’d forgotten the faces in the pictures.  Every now and then, he would look through the boxes before throwing them away.  But it always made him feel like he was eavesdropping.

6
“Us…and…Them…but after all, we’re all only ord-in-ary men…”  Pink Floyd oozed from the radio to awaken Jerrod.  He could see Sarah’s body curve under the covers.  He gently pulled the covers back to look at her.  He always diverted his eyes when she was awake, but now he looked at her without caution.  Sarah’s head was cocked upward and mouth open, as though she was a baby bird awaiting her morning feeding.  Her arms folded at the elbows and hands tucked underneath her chest.  He could see the areola of the left breast through her sleeping shirt.  Legs in a semi-fetal position, feet together.  Her face looked pasty and he could smell her warm, moist and pungent breath, coming from the dark cave of her mouth.

Jerrod got up and took a shower.  Stepping into the shower, he thought to himself, “I’ll make this a quick one so I have time to read the paper.”  Once he got into the hot water, he kept turning the heat up, thinking about the call he’d received the other night.  Fifteen minutes later, he climbed out of the shower.  In the fogged mirror, he looked red and sinewy.

After putting on his auction clothes, brown sansabelt slacks, a striped shirt and a wide tie, he went to tell Sarah he was leaving.  She briefly looked up at him.  “Don’t forget to pick up weights for Dylan’s pinewood derby car when you finish today,” she said.

Jerrod climbed in the 1989 stretch black Town Car.  He’d bought it with the money from the blackjack machines two years earlier and, for about three months, drove clients around the bay area himself.  Wild things would happen in his limo. 

One time, a guy and his girl asked Jerrod to drive them to a restaurant in downtown St. Louis.  When the couple left the restaurant, the guy asked Jerrod to drive across the river to a “club” in East St. Louis.  He left the girl in the car and asked Jerrod to hang on a minute.  He was gone about 15 minutes and came back with a black prostitute.  She got in before the guy and the girlfriend started shouting, “Get this bitch out of here!”  She took a liquor bottle from the sidebar and hit the hooker in the head with it.

The hooker started swearing and Jerrod was yelling at the woman about damage to the car.  Soon the guy got in and pushed the hooker down and lifted her shirt.  The girlfriend was disgusted and spit on his back.  As she tried to get out, the guy pulled her down and tried to kiss her.  She hit him with the liquor bottle, dazing him.  He fell to one side and she sat back on the seat.  The hooker sat up, breasts sagging, looked at the woman and said, “That’ll be fifty bucks sugar for the dominatrix scene.”

After the hooker left, Jerrod drove the couple home.  The guy awoke and the girl said how sorry she was for the bruise on his head.  They started kissing and ultimately put on a show for Jerrod which would have made Larry Flynt blush.
7
Jerrod reached Auction Central at about 9:15; the auction would begin at noon.  He unloaded the watches and some old china from the limo’s backseat.  Some old books, papers and pictures were in the trunk, which he figured he’d hold onto for awhile and then pitch.  Meg and Mel, the couple that Jerrod had bought the building from, would arrive at about ten and get the paperwork in order.  Mel had retired 10 years ago as a machinist for Delphi Automotive, where he’d worked for 25 years.  Mel had bought the building with the intent of starting his own machine shop for auto repair, but that never materialized.

The moving boys would also get there around ten to finish setting up the stage.  Mel was responsible for set-up and would auctioneer when Jerrod got tired of calling.  Meg registered bidders when they arrived and worked the register when people left.  People generally arrived about 20-minutes before the auction started, and would continue to stream in and out throughout the bidding.  Each unit had a tag which, once the item was sold, would be marked with the winning bidder’s number and price.  The moving boys would move the items to the checkout area immediately after the piece was auctioned.

The auction began a few minutes after noon with over 200 bidders already there to bid. Something specific would draw people to the auction, and then they would hopefully end up buying several items in the heat of the auction.  The owners of the property were also often there to monitor the selling of their personal items, as was the administrator of the Baxter estate.  It was over 90 degrees, and the fans were struggling to keep the cavernous space of the warehouse cool.  They only seemed to blow the hot air around the mostly-white congregation of bidders.

Jerrod had planned to first auction the items which had been received from a wealthy family that had bought a house already filled with furniture.  The wife of the seller had decided that she needed a complete change and, thus was selling the living and dining furniture from the old house.  These items were quite nice and Jerrod’s hope was that they would set the stage for a successful auction that day.  Jerrod, looking at the bidders, could tell that getting high prices would be difficult today.

When Jerrod sold the Bernhardt dining room set for $1100, the seller gasped.  In fact, the gasps became more audible with every stick of furniture Jerrod sold.  The bidders were enjoying the reaction of the seller and, thus were not inclined to compete with one another for the high-ticket items.  As much as Jerrod would attempt to push the prices higher, he knew that the bidders had turned against the seller and the cause was lost.  The embarrassment was palpable as Jerrod would attempt to get the bidders to raise their hands on a cherry entertainment center.  His own voice sounded like he was pleading for bids, which is always a bad sign for an auctioneer.  Auctioneers are taught to sound confident and a little bit arrogant, to keep people interested and engaged in the action.  Silence is the enemy of an auctioneer during bidding for an item.

The second lot to be sold in the auction would be the Baxter estate, followed by two other lots and then three interesting collections from another estate which included Wedgwood, Norman Rockwell plates, and Lladro figurines.  These last collections would be the highlights of the auction, thus keeping bidders through the much less interesting items of the Baxter estate.

As Jerrod was selling the last item of the first lot, he felt a low vibration pulsating like a heartbeat.    He could feel it before he could hear it.  It made his chest feel like there was a low current passing through it, rhythmically warming his insides.  At first the feeling was good, but as it got louder near the back door of the warehouse, the bass from the car sounded ominous, as if its grip would be more powerful than he could ever hope from which to escape.  The sound stopped while Jerrod was in mid-sentence, attempting to raise the bidding for a settee to $150.  Nobody was paying attention to Jerrod when the door in the back of the warehouse opened.

The three people that entered personified the deep bass that had just penetrated the warehouse.  They slinked into the room, every step with a different swagger to it.  Timberland boots, oversized pants pulled half-way up their butts, back pockets down to the back of their knees.  Untucked hockey shirts with gold chain-like necklaces.  One with a baseball cap backwards and a ring through his nose, one with a shaved head and a scar across his left cheek, and one with tight braids, a single long braid hanging down his back.  The look of aggression on their faces.

The quick look by the bidders and Jerrod’s hesitation in the bidding brought a celebrity status to the intruders.  Jerrod gave the bidders one more round to bid on the settee, just to appear unaffected by the mood change in the room, even though he knew that there would be hesitation by bidders, not wanting to be singled out by the potential villains.

“Yo home-boy,” thundered one of the intruders from the back.  This gave life to the illusion that drifted in a moment before.  Not only were these characters here, but they intended to take a roll in the auction.

Jerrod ignored the comment and moved on, “Next is a color Zenith television set, one of the best and most reliable brands in the business.”  One of the intruders raised his hand.  Jerrod, attempting to be fair-minded acknowledged the question.

“Do it play both white and black porn, or is colored tele-vision just show black porn?”  The other two intruders gave quiet smiles and bumped fists with the speaker, heads cocked back, oddly reminding Jerrod of how Sarah’s head looked that morning on the pillow.

“I’m sorry fellas, but we run a clean auction here, please keep your jokes to yourselves.”  Jerrod’s voice wavered just enough to encourage the intruders’ confidence.  A couple that had been together bidding on the prior estate stood up and walked toward the door.

“Shit, man,” he said toward the leaving bidders, “don’t tell me you don’t like the smell of the brothas in yo house.  Auction this,” and he grabbed his baggy crotch.  “He takin her home to watch some colored porn on his tele-vision right now,” he said quietly to the other two, but loudly enough that everyone heard him.

Jerrod couldn’t tell if he was sweating from the heat or the awkward situation.  “Do I hear $200 for this TV?  Two hunert dollars-d-d-d-d-d-two-d-d-d-two-d-d-d-d-d-two.  $200 for a good operating television.  $200.”  No one raised their hand.  No one moved.  A little louder on the microphone this time.  “Who’ll give me $100?  One hunert-d-d-d-d-one-d-d-d-one.  Look, I don’t care how much you pay.  You can steal it for all I care.  Who’ll give me $50?”

The bald intruder yells, “That box be stolen once already!”  To his comrades, “This guy ain’t sellin shit.”  The laughter from the bald guy sounds like a hissing sound.

“Let’s move on to the coffee table.  Solid maple.  This table is classic early-60’s furniture.  Who’ll offer $50?  Lookin for $50.”

“Ten dollars,” a hand with a yellow card raised.  Mel, who was the spotter, shouted and pointed to the raised hand.

“I have $10, do I see $20.  Twenty-d-d-d-d-d-twenty-d-d-d-d-d-twenty-d-d-d-d-d-who’ll give me $20 for this fine piece of furniture.  Still has the levelers on the feet.  Who wants this table for $20?”  He can feel it before it happens.

The leader of the gang gets up and starts a slow gait up to the podium.  Big, slow steps.  All heads turn to watch him as everything stops.  Silence.  Putting his arm around Jerrod’s shoulder, he says “Ain nobody gon pay no more.”  Jerrod smells the dense musk of marijuana smolder from the intruder.

“Mel, you take over,” Jerrod says.  He could feel the breath of the gang member, warm on his neck as he resisted looking at him.  Mel reluctantly picked up the bidding at twenty dollars.  One of the moving boys started spotting.

“OK,” Jerrod said to the intruder, “what do you want?”  They stepped outside using the side door.

“You gimme Blow’s papers.”

“Who?”  Jerrod asked.  “I don’t know who Blow is or what papers your talking about.”

“The old bitch that died, whose shit you be sellin.  She be Blow’s ma.”  He looked at Jerrod out of the corner of his eyes, head cocked down and a little to the right.  “I want all the papers from that crib, man.  Some uh dem papers belong to me, an I want em now.”

Jerrod thought of the box full of papers and pictures in the trunk of the limo.  “Don’t have any papers from the Baxter estate,” a little late on the delivery.  Why Jerrod didn’t just walk to the car and get the box for him, he didn’t know.  The two other hoods had strolled up to Jerrod and their leader.

“Don gimme that shit, man.  I smoke you right here, turn you into white ash.  Dem papers is mine.”

“I’ll have to ask the estate administrator where they are.  What types of papers are you looking for?”

“You get his ass onna phone right now.”

“It’s Sunday, he’s not in the office and I don’t have his home number.  I can call him tomorrow.”  Jerrod was surprised how clearly he was talking, though he had a tight feeling everywhere on his body, like he was wearing a diver’s wet suit.

“You gimme the number, I take care of it.”  The three were now all around Jerrod.

Jerrod now knew he had to carry on with the lie.  The administrator would say that Jerrod had the papers already.  “You want a chance to get them, you need me to call him.  He knows me.  It won’t raise any suspicion.  Wait, I have his cell phone number, I’ll try him on that.”  Words were just coming out of him now, and he was unwittingly becoming their accomplice.  This was getting worse.  “If you’re looking for stocks or cash or bank account information, those are already seized by the administrator.”

“Ain none o yo bus’ness what I want.  You jes call him, we wait.”

They followed Jerrod to the back of the warehouse, where he had a small office, his mind racing through his options.  All he wanted, at this point was to get them to leave.  He went through the actions of looking up Craig Hall’s number, picked up the phone and pretended to dial.  The three glanced around the warehouse, glaring over at Jerrod every few seconds.

Dial tone humming in his ear, Jerrod said loudly, “Craig, it’s me Jerrod; look I’m not sure I got everything from the Baxter estate.”  Pretending he was leaving a message, “Some neighbors of Ms. Baxter stopped by and asked about her pictures and I said that, well, I didn’t know anything about any pictures and that I’d have to call you.”  By now the dial tone had turned into a howler tone which was much louder.  Pressing the receiver close to his ear, Jerrod continued, “If you’d give me a call, Craig, and tell me if there were any pictures or other items that I might not have received, then I’ll go pick them up.  Thanks.”  Then he hung up.

Jerrod walked out to the trio with the loud tone still cycling in his ear.  “He wasn’t there, but I left a message and he’ll call me back.  How do I get a hold of you fellas once I find out about any papers?”

Their mood had intensified while he was on the phone.  “Lis’n bitch,” said the leader pushing Jerrod back against the two other gang members, “You be fuckin wit me and I cap yo ass.  We come back here tonight at ten an you best have dem papers.  If not, we smoke dis joint, we fuck yo bitch and we plug yo ass.”  Jerrod’s heart was racing so fast he thought it would explode.  This was the first mention of his wife.  He noticed that the auction had stopped in the other room.

Jerrod sat down on the office floor when they left.  He pushed his hands back over his scalp, through his hair, and left them on the back of his neck.  He heard the pulsing bass start up with the car.  And the danger faded with the beat.

When he looked up, Meg and Mel were standing over Jerrod.  “What the hell was that all about?” Mel asked.

Jerrod just looked at the door they just left through and said, “They lost something and they think I have it.”

“Do you want us to call the police?  What can we do?  You know people aren’t going to want to come to our auctions if they feel any danger,” Meg added in rapid succession.

“I’ll handle this.  You two go back to managing this auction.”  The moving boy was calling the items and doing a pretty good job, but he didn’t look right for the part.  He wore a T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots.  He had two-day's stubble, was missing a couple lower teeth and had one earring, reminding Jerrod of a pirate.  His hands were broad and dirty and he wore a baseball cap with oily hair curling out from underneath.
8
At 6:30 that day, when the auction was over and everyone had left, Jerrod opened the back door and looked around.  Somehow he thought the gang might have staked him out to see what he did next.  He went to the limo and took the box of papers out of the trunk.  He was breathing hard from the blend of emotions that he felt.  He dropped the box from knee-high on the concrete floor.  A picture fell from the top of the box, the glass breaking on the floor.  Jerrod turned the picture over to see a photograph of the mother and son in the mouth of a cave.  The boy was probably 13, and had a short-shaved haircut.  You could see a scar extending from his left temple straight up and into his hairline, creating a natural part in an unnatural location.

He pulled out the other pictures, respectfully and gently setting them down on the floor.  The Reader’s Digest clearinghouse sweepstakes took up the top quarter of the box, he set those aside.  Now Jerrod came to a pile of old letters, receipts, invoices, coupons, all mixed together, some dating back to four years ago.  Typically, the estate administrator goes through the deceased’s papers, carefully looking for a will, any stock certificates, bank account statements, insurance policies and the like.  Then they dump all the other papers into boxes to be disposed of.  So Jerrod knew that it was pretty unlikely that there was anything of value overlooked by the administrator.  Nevertheless, Jerrod pulled out handfuls of the paper, sifting through each handful for anything unusual.

Mid-way through the box, Jerrod came to some homework reports that must have been done by the boy.  The boy’s name had been Jordan.  There were seven or eight of the reports, some on books he’d read, others on research projects, such as the biography of Abe Lincoln.  Grades on the reports were average, but clearly Jordan and his mother had been proud of them.  Nothing in this box that Jerrod could see would be of interest to the gang members from earlier in the day.  Jerrod put the box in the corner of the warehouse, near the trash.

Walking back toward the office, Jerrod passed the unsold furniture from the day’s auction.  Not much left.  He did notice a couple pieces from the Baxter estate.  He noticed the bureau from the boy’s room and walked over and sat on it.  He pictured the three thugs from earlier, wondering what he could have done to avoid the whole mess.  Swinging his feet out and dropping them to hit the front of the dresser – one last kick before he got up.  As his foot ricocheted off the front of the bottom drawer, he heard and felt an extra thump inside.  He must have knocked the track off the bottom drawer.

“Goddamit!” he yelled as he pushed himself off the dresser and yanked the bottom drawer out.  As the drawer came out, it sent a blue spiral-bound notebook skimming across the polished concrete floor.  He looked inside the vacant opening to see a folder which was partially hanging by duct-tape to the inside-back of the dresser.  The blue notebook must have been inside the folder before it came unattached from the wood.  All sound seemed to be blocked out.  The air still.

Jerrod sauntered over and picked up the notebook.  He fanned through the pages.  Lots of writing in a rough hand.  Some pages torn or dried after getting wet.  A picture fell out face down on the floor.  On the back, in another person’s scrawl it said, “Congrats Blow, on your trophy.  Now you’re in.”  It was signed, “Rat and Spade.”

Jerrod picked up the photograph, turning it over at arm’s length.  He was reaching the point of needing reading glasses, but had held off, hoping it was just his imagination.  A tingling sensation crept up his spine similar to the one he has at church when the choir inspires him.  But this finding was not inspiring.  The photo contained what looked like three black gang members standing aside an Asian teenager who was hanging by a rope around his neck.  The Asian’s face was as dark as the blacks, and his white shirt was torn with scrapes on his torso.  Presumably, it was own black tie that acted as the noose.  Two of blacks, though older now, had been at the auction earlier.  The third was the same face as in the other pictures in the Baxter estate; presumably Jordan.  The gang members had a look of satisfaction on their faces, their pupils red from the flash.

How long he looked at the picture, Jerrod couldn’t tell, but when he became alert again, he had let the notebook fall from his other hand.  Jerrod picked it up carefully, he suddenly felt very tired.  Inside, the rough handwriting took on a new texture.  The wording was not carefully selected, but it was concise and unashamed.  One section read as follows:

6/12/94:  Rat took Shayron’s cat and tied it’s tale to a rope and the other end of the rope to the bumper of his car.  He drove down the road and back about 50 MPH.  The cat’s head came clean off.  He took the rope off the bumper and tied it to Shayron’s tree, hanging what’s left of the cat.  We see if Shayron tells more lies about us now.

Jordan Baxter had kept a journal of their escapades.  Looking at the picture again, Jerrod guessed that the one with braids was “Rat,” with the long braid down his back.  The bald one, then, must be “Spade.”  A siren went by the auction house.  For the next hour, Jerrod read Blow’s journal.
9
“Wassup, Scoop?” Jamal asked his friend.

“Nuthin, J-Dog.  Wassup wit you?”

“Ain nuthin happenin here.”  Jamal replied.  He was standing at the door of his house.  Scoop had just arrived and they were going through their usual exchange, bumping fists and flipping their hands on their chests to show the Blue gang symbol.  The gang didn’t start with kids this young, but in the ghetto, even ten year olds grow up fast to be like their big brothers.

“Where yo mama, J-Dog?”  Scoop asked.

“Who know?  I barely ever see her no more.  Sometime she leave money or food for me, but she like a ghost aroun’ here,”  Jamal said, eyes darting around the room.

“I here dat.  My mama been out getting dates.  Shit, she ain got no life no more fo me.”  They were getting uncomfortable with how sad this talk was going.  “Come on, man, lets go see if we can find some car sounds.”

“Awright, Scoop,”  Jamal shot Scoop the Blue hand signal.  They shut the door to the house and walked with an exaggerated gait.  Around the neighborhood were people, moving slowly, tending to nothing, mainly watching.  Old Tom was sitting on a lawn chair with blue and white striped vinyl straps on the step in front of his house across the street.  The man two doors down was looking at his bumper on his faded red Nova.  A woman to the left opened her front door, walked out to the street in her worn blue feathered slippers and turned around and went back inside.

“Wha’s Rat up to?”  Scoop asked Jamal.  Rat, Jamal’s brother, was famous among the younger boys because he’d brought a lot of them into the Blue gang.  He taught them how to earn respect from the other brothers in the gang.  He would bring the younger boys along on jobs and reward them with an occasional twenty or a joint.  He made a ten year old feel like he meant something in the rough neighborhood.

“Rat’s up on a job.  I don know what, but I seen him loadin up his gun and whisperin wit Spade.”  The boys arrived at a strip near the jailhouse that had five or six storefronts offering bail bonds twenty-four hours a day.  A woman drove up in a Ford Bronco and got out.  The boys looked at each other and flashed the Blue signal.  She was a heavy-set black woman that shuffled her feet to the door of a bail bond shop and went inside.

“Let it happen cap’n,” Jamal said to Scoop.  The boys ran to the car, Jamal slipped a metal strip out of his pants and into the door slot and within ten seconds Scoop climbed into the car.  After a couple attempts at prying out the CD player, he pulls it out of its sleeve and yanks it from its wires.  Away they run, leaving the car door open.  They run farther than they have too, their hearts are beating fast.  Jamal and Scoop stop between a fence and some bushes, panting.  They look at each other and laugh, flashing the Blue signal to one another once again.

10
“Can I help you?” asked the receptionist at the front desk of the Police Station.  Jerrod had never been in the station and he was uncertain about the proper protocol for notifying the police about a crime.

“My name’s Jerrod Taylor and I have some information regarding a potential crime or series of crimes,” he said quickly, as if reporting for duty.  He carried the blue spiral-bound notebook in his hand.

The woman at the desk cocked her head to one side.  “Please take a seat and fill this out,” handing Jerrod a clipboard with a form on it and a pen.  She picked up the phone and dialed four digits.  “Tommy, we have a visitor with some information he’d like to share with us.”

“Officer Durham will be here in a moment,” she said to Jerrod.

Jerrod was nervous, wondering if he needed his own lawyer.  He’d seen so many movies where good deeds backfire.  Suddenly the thought crossed his mind that they might consider the notebook his own.  His handwriting on the form looked foreign to him, jerkier than normal, and the pen had a gummy tip so that the ink lines looked blotchy.

“My name’s Officer Tom Durham,” said a deep voice above him.  Jerrod looked up to see a large black man with a thin mustache.  His hand was extended.  Jerrod took the hand, feeling small and vulnerable in the firm grasp.  “I understand you have something to tell us.  Why don’t you follow me to a meeting room?”

They walked past a couple small meeting rooms that reminded Jerrod of the rooms at a car dealership where the salesman pressures people into buying cars.  One room had a woman sitting alone crying.  Another room had a police officer speaking with a teenage boy in hushed tones.

“Now,” Officer Durham began, closing the door, “what do you have to tell us?”

“I’m an entrepreneur in the St. Louis area,” said Jerrod, “and one of my businesses is an auction business.  I found this notebook among the items of an estate I’ve been contracted to dispose of.”  He laid the notebook on the table.  Pushing it across to the officer, “I don’t know if it’s the work of a budding fiction writer or true tales from a gang member.”

The officer opened the cover of the notebook and read.  The first few pages did not contain any graphic violence, but stories of binge drinking, drugs, and getting layed.

“The stories get more graphic,” Jerrod started to say, but was waved off by the officer.

Ten minutes of silence later, the officer looked up at Jerrod, his jaw slackened by what he had read.  “How do I know you didn’t write this?” he asked.

“For one thing, my handwriting is different.  For another, I found this picture in the notebook,” laying the picture on top of the notebook for the officer to see.

Officer Durham studied the picture, front and back, and set it down, only touching the edges while holding it.  Jerrod thought how stupid he had been by not being more careful in his own holding of the photograph.

“We’re familiar with these boys.  They’re bad news,” he rubbed his eyes with his big hands.  “The one they call “Blow” was murdered a couple years ago, we think by a member of another gang.  This information you’ve brought to us could be very helpful to justify an arrest.  I need to speak with a couple people here before you can leave.  Do they know you have this notebook?”

“The one in braids and the bald one came to my auction house today and threatened me if I didn’t get the papers that had been left in the old woman’s house.  The woman, who died recently, was Blow’s mother.  Somehow they found out I was auctioning the woman’s estate off today.”

“Why didn’t you give them the notebook?” asked the officer.

“I don’t know.  I had the box of papers in my car because I usually don’t try to auction those off.  I guess I was curious about what might be so important to them.  Anyway, the three hoods that came to my auction are coming back at ten o’clock tonight.  I’m afraid my curiosity might have put me in danger.”  Just then, Jerrod’s cellular phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Jerrod, this is Sarah,” she said desperately, “thank God you answered the phone.  Where are you?”

“I’m out…it’s a long story.  What’s wrong?”

“Get back over to the auction house, I just got a call that it’s on fire.”  Jerrod looked at Officer Durham.

“Sarah, get Dylan and meet me there.”