Rock Island Line by David Rhodes (i am reading a book TXT) 📕

back to their neighborhood he heard them saying not only that July’d had a loaded gun that he was shooting with a silencer, a blackjack, cleats on the heels of his shoes which he could easily and with accuracy kick above his head, years of military training, but that in some miraculous way he’d managed to get himself thrown down into the cellar stairwell so that he’d have the chance to kill all of them. Earl realized what they were saying and accepted it as easily as a breath of fresh air; and within the privacy of his mind he would take July down, notch by notch, until he’d reduced him from a figure of awesome respect to the face in the flashlight. The sensation was even better than before, and he actually sank swooning to his knees when the first wave of it hit him. Al and Marty took hold of him to lift him up, but he yelled at them, “Leave me alone, please leave me alone.”

So the following morning didn’t turn out to be a second chance for July after all. Clearly, Al and Marty had no wish to begin any trouble with him, and communicated this by way of exchanging quick glances.

He felt Earl was different, and for several weeks afterward July found occasion to test himself, gathering all his courage to go over near 21st and Market, giving Earl a chance to start something—which he didn’t. But he also didn’t stop looking at July with a contemptuous expression, even if only when he thought himself unobserved. Several weeks more and Earl was gone. It was said he’d been accepted into a private school of some sort in upper Michigan. Al and Marty grew a littlefriendlier after that and the three of them often talked several minutes before they set out in the morning, though July never felt very comfortable with them, especially with Marty, who seemed to be able to pick up the bundles of newspapers with no effort at all.

That spring July talked to the fat man in the newspaper booth beside City Hall. At first he hadn’t been friendly, but as July stayed with him he loosened up; and after stopping by every day for two weeks, always pleasant but always about the same thing, July won him over and they formed a kind of partnership—an agreement for mutual gain. In the beginning the agreement was enforced by the fat man, Ed Shavoneck. When he arrived at the stand with the key, he’d open up and take out a small hand truck and give it to July, who would be there waiting. July would make two trips from the pickup—seven bundles—and bring them back to the green plywood stand. Then every paper he took to sell himself would cost him five cents instead of three cents, but he would also be purchasing the privilege of being able to sell them down under City Hall amid the streams of people going to work or shopping.

He could still roam when he felt like it, but as the weeks and months went on he felt less and less like doing so. It was simply too easy to stand in one place; he sold more papers; he saw more girls in bright dresses, an interest he was beginning to acquire at a distance. Butch could spend every day with him. All in all, it was undeniably better. He missed the feeling of autonomy that being in a new area gave him, but it was replaced by a sense of belonging in some mysterious way to that organ of the city beneath City Hall, and being in a way a part of everyone passing through it—even the girls. More people came to know him than ever before. He could tell by their expressions that they recognized him and even the ones who never bought a paper accepted him. He was a part of their lives. It came to be said of him that he actually lived somewhere down in the tunnels.

When Ed Shavoneck began to trust him, their partnership unfolded. He gave July a key to the stand so that he could get the hand truck, bring the papers back, set up the display racks, candy, cigars, magazines and key rings, and have three jelly rolls and a cup of coffee with one and a half packages of sugar there waiting for him when he arrived, forty-five minutes later than if he’d had to do all this himself. In the afternoon he could go home just that much earlier. Then he taught July how to keep the kind of records he wanted and let him run the stand by himself on Saturdays and Sundays on a fifty-percent basis. Then Shavoneck began taking every other Wednesday off. His life seemed much better because of the extra free time. For several months, every time he returned after leaving the stand to July he counted everything and tried again to figure out how he could be being cheated unawares. Then later he didn’t bother, and his life was pleasanter still.

This might well have been the end of the story of July Montgomery. He’d raised himself from having seventy-four things to having a job bringing in a steady income. He took comfort in being well known. He learned it was important to keep your clothes clean and bought enough pants, shirts, socks and underwear for a change every three or four days and washed them in the laundromat at two-week intervals. He learned about leaving tips for waiters and the good feeling he could generate by dropping his street voice when he talked privately to someone. He found that his personality was not fenced in by being a newsboy, even when he was in the green stand. He was taken for being the kind of person he acted. He had responsibility and a small Coleman heater, the kind used for ice fishing, to keep his room an even seventy-two degrees. He