Small Steps Read online

“You ought to grow your hair out,” Kaira told him as she handed the plastic bag back to him.

  Seven marriage proposals, and she’d never had a boyfriend.

  “Okay, here’s the deal,” said X-Ray. “Here’s the deal. They just added Austin to her tour because of some kind of screwup in San Antonio. Tickets go on sale day after tomorrow. Fifty-five dollars a pop.”

  “Fifty-five dollars for just one ticket? I don’t think so.”

  “In Philadelphia two front-row seats sold for seven hundred fifty dollars. Each.”

  Armpit couldn’t believe it. “Seven hundred and fifty—”

  “Each,” X-Ray repeated.

  “She’s got a nice voice,” said Armpit. “Kind of sassy, and playful, you know? You can always tell it’s her.”

  X-Ray looked at him like he was crazy. “I don’t want a critique! I want six hundred dollars.” He spoke as if to somebody else. “He gives me a critique. Now he’s a critic.”

  “Well, if I didn’t think she could sing, I wouldn’t give you six hundred dollars.”

  “So you’re going to give me the money?”

  He was considering it.

  “See, here’s the deal,” X-Ray explained. “They only let you buy six tickets. So together we can buy twelve. Six hundred and sixty dollars. I’ve already got sixty, so I just need the rest from you. You won’t have to do a thing. I’ll do all the work. Then we’ll split the profits.”

  Armpit slowly exhaled. “Six hundred dollars,” he said.

  “You’ll make that back on one ticket,” said X-Ray.

  “No one’s going to pay six hundred dollars for a ticket.”

  “They paid seven hundred and fifty in Philadelphia.”

  Armpit picked up his shovel and began filling in the dirt around the pipe.

  “Okay, let’s say we only sell the tickets for two hundred,” said X-Ray. “After three tickets you get your money back. I won’t get any of that. Then I get my sixty back out of the next ticket, and we split the rest right down the middle. So really there’s no risk to you at all. You know we can sell three tickets.”

  Armpit replaced the sod, stomping it down with his boot.

  “Think of it this way. It’s like someone is offering to pay you to stand in line for him. What if your boss says to you, he says, ‘Armpit, instead of digging today, I want you to stand in line for me, and I’ll pay you a thousand bucks to do it.’ Wouldn’t you do it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Same thing!” X-Ray said. “Some dudes are going to pay us a thousand bucks to stand in line for them. We just don’t know who they are yet. See, you got to think outside the box.”

  A siren blared over the radio.

  “Oh! Oh!” X-Ray exclaimed as he fumbled for the cell phone attached to his belt.

  The siren noise had been made by an electric guitar, which slowly wound down and transformed into a flurry of notes and chords. It was the intro to Kaira DeLeon’s biggest hit.

  I hear a w-w-warning sound

  Every time you c-c-come around.

  Should you ch-chance to glance at me,

  Threatens my security.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” X-Ray said into his phone.

  Red Alert!

  My hands are sh-sh-shakin’.

  Red Alert!

  Stomach’s achin’.

  Red Alert!

  The earth beneath my f-f-feet is quakin’.

  “Yeah—no, wait!” X-Ray said into the phone. “Just wait a sec—”

  He scowled as he returned his phone to his belt. “Sixth,” he griped. “Can you believe it? Sixth! Fifth caller gets two free tickets. Man, I hate this phone. The speed dial is too slow. How you supposed to compete with those rich white kids who have newer phones?”

  “Too bad,” said Armpit.

  “That woulda been at least another four hundred for us,” X-Ray said.

  “For us?”

  “Sure man, we’re partners now, right?”

  Armpit considered this question seriously. If he gave the money to X-Ray, at least he’d still have two hundred and fifty-seven dollars left.

  “Right?” X-Ray asked again.

  Red Alert!

  My head is filled with a s-s-siren sound!

  Red Alert!

  All systems are shutting d-d-d-d-down!

  “Yeah, we’re partners,” Armpit agreed.

  X-Ray patted him on the shoulder. “You won’t regret it.”

  He already did.

  3

  Interstate 35 goes from the Mexican border all the way up to Lake Superior, and some of the heaviest traffic is along the two-hundred-fifty-mile stretch between San Antonio and Dallas. The steady flow of cars and trucks divides the city of Austin in half, not just geographically, but also economically, and to some extent, racially.

  Armpit’s home was in east Austin. The house was a duplex, with two identical front doors that faced each other across a wide front porch, 141A and 141B. Armpit’s family lived in 141B. It was just him and his parents. He had an older sister who was married and lived in Houston, and an older brother serving eight to ten at Huntsville.

  A white woman and her ten-year-old daughter, Ginny McDonald, occupied the other half of the house.

  “S-s-six hun-did d-dollahs?” said Ginny. She was small for her age, with skinny arms and legs. She wore glasses that were so thick it was a wonder they could stay up on her tiny button nose.

  “Hundred,” said Armpit.

  Ginny concentrated. “Hun-dred,” she said. “That’s a lot of m-money.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Armpit.

  They were walking around the block. Ginny’s left hand kept holding on to, then letting go of Armpit. Her right arm was bent at the elbow, and rigidly upright, although she wasn’t aware of it.

  “Relax your arm,” Armpit reminded her.

  Ginny glanced at her arm as if it was a separate being from herself. It took a moment for her brain to send the proper signals, and then her arm lowered.

  She reminded Armpit of a marionette who was also her own puppeteer. She had to figure out which string to pull to make her arms and legs move properly.

  She had been born with cerebral palsy. A few neighborhood kids called her spaz, and retard, but most treated her with respect because she was a friend of Armpit’s, and because she was willing to answer their questions.

  “What’s wrong with you?” someone might ask.

  If there was a taunt in the question she never noticed. “I had bleeding inside my brain wh-when I was born.”

  And that seemed to satisfy whoever asked the question.

  She and her mother had moved into their half of the duplex when Armpit was still at Camp Green Lake. Her mother was ready to move away when she found out that the boy next door was a violent criminal who would soon be returning home.

  She was now glad she hadn’t.

  Ginny and Armpit hit it off from the beginning. She didn’t fear him, and he didn’t pity her.

  Not long after they started their daily walks, Ginny stopped wearing her leg braces, claiming they pinched her. She had a walker as well, but only used that if she needed to move quickly, like at school when they went outside for recess.

  But as much as Armpit helped her, she helped him even more. She gave his life meaning. For the first time in his life, there was someone who looked up to him, who cared about him.

  Together they were learning to take small steps.

  “She s-sings like I talk,” said Ginny.

  “How do you mean?”

  “H-hands are sh-sh-shaking!” sang Ginny.

  Armpit laughed. “You know that’s just part of the song,” he said.

  “Yes. But I l-like it.”

  “Me too,” said Armpit. “So if you had the money, would you pay fifty-five dollars for a ticket?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about seventy-five?”

  “Yes.”

  “A hundred?”

  “No.”

&nb
sp; He laughed. “They paid seven hundred and fifty dollars in Philadelphia.”

  “No way!” said Ginny.

  “That’s what X-Ray said.”

  “You c-can’t believe everything X-Ray s-says.”

  She was right about that.

  “You sweat a lot.” With just one finger extended, she delicately touched a large circle of sweat under his arm.

  “Yeah, well, it’s hot out.”

  “I don’t sweat,” said Ginny.

  “You will when you get older.”

  “And I will w-walk and t-talk better.”

  “Yes, you will,” said Armpit. “But sweating’s got nothing to do with your disability. It’s just because you haven’t reached puberty yet.”

  Ginny giggled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You s-said puberty.”

  Armpit laughed too, not at the word, but at her reaction to it.

  Ginny was still laughing as they headed up the cracked driveway to their shared house. Weeds poked up through the broken cement.

  “What are you two laughing at?” asked Ginny’s mother, who had come out to the front porch.

  “Something,” said Ginny.

  Armpit winked at her.

  Ginny tried to wink back. She closed and opened both her eyes together.

  Even though the two families lived inside it, the house was smaller than most of the homes in west Austin where Armpit planted shrubs and installed irrigation systems. An oak tree in the front yard shaded almost the entire house.

  There were few trees this size in west Austin. That half of the city was mostly built on solid white limestone, with only a little bit of topsoil above it. Dirt had to be trucked in whenever Raincreek Irrigation and Landscaping planted anything.

  According to Armpit’s father, the cost of air-conditioning the homes in west Austin, with their high ceilings and grand entrances, was greater than the amount he paid in rent.

  Armpit’s father worked in the daytime as a meter reader for the electric company. At night he was a dispatcher for a taxicab company. Armpit’s mother worked as a checker for H-E-B, a local supermarket chain.

  Armpit said good-bye to Ginny and her mother, then went inside. His parents were in the kitchen chopping vegetables.

  “Hey, how’re things goin’?” his father called.

  “They’re goin’,” Armpit muttered as he continued down the hall.

  “Hold on, I want to talk to you,” said his father.

  Armpit sighed. “What about?”

  “Just come here.”

  Armpit stepped into the kitchen. “Look, I been working all afternoon and I’m hot and dirty and sweaty. Can’t a person just take a shower without going through the third degree?”

  “No one’s accusing you of anything,” said his mother. “Your dad hardly gets to see you since he started working for Yellow Cab.”

  “Fine, now you can see me,” Armpit said.

  “I don’t appreciate your attitude,” said his father.

  “Sorry, I’ll change my attitude,” Armpit said. “Whatever that means.”

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” his mother asked him.

  “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I’m tired.”

  “How you get home?” his father asked.

  “Hernandez.”

  “I want a sample,” his father said.

  “Why, because he’s Mexican? Actually, we were working at the mayor’s house. Maybe you think I got stoned with the mayor?”

  His mother laughed. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  “The mayor shook my hand,” Armpit said. “She said she admired me.”

  “What’d she mean by that?” asked Armpit’s mother.

  “You know. Working hard, goin’ to school. She’d read about Green Lake.”

  “And how does she know you were at Green Lake?” his mother asked.

  “I guess my boss told her.”

  “That’s supposed to be confidential,” his mother said. “Those records are supposed to be sealed.”

  “It’s no big secret! Everybody at school knows.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “I give up!” Armpit said.

  Most parents would be proud if the mayor said she admired their son!

  “I want a sample,” his father repeated.

  “Why, because I’m tired after working all day?”

  “No, because you’re being very defensive. If you’ve got nothing to hide . . .”

  Armpit marched off to the bathroom, where he got a plastic cup out from under the sink.

  After he returned from Camp Green Lake, his parents bought a home drug-testing kit. They weren’t going to stand by and let him ruin his life, like his brother. He had tried pointing out that the reason he’d been sent to Green Lake had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol, but that didn’t make any difference to them.

  “Drugs and alcohol can lead to violence,” his mother had said.

  So could a bucket of popcorn.

  4

  Armpit showered again in the morning, dried off, then ran a stick of deodorant three times under each armpit. He splashed his face with aftershave lotion. He only shaved every other day, but he put on aftershave lotion every day.

  There was a girl in his speech class who smiled at him a lot lately. Her name was Tatiana.

  He sprayed Sploosh on his feet. He didn’t have a problem with foot odor, but when your name was Armpit you had to be extra careful. He sprayed some Sploosh under each armpit for extra protection.

  One of the guys from Camp Green Lake had sent him a whole case of Sploosh. It was probably meant as a joke, but the guy’s father had invented the stuff, so maybe not.

  The phone was ringing when he stepped out of the bathroom. It was X-Ray.

  “Hey, partner. You know the six hundred dollars?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to stop by the ATM after school.”

  “Good. Only you need to make it six hundred and sixty.”

  “I thought you were putting up sixty,” Armpit reminded him.

  “I am,” said X-Ray. “I am. The thing is, there’s a five-dollar service charge on each ticket. So even though the tickets are fifty-five dollars, they cost sixty.”

  That made no sense at all.

  “Better make it an even seven hundred,” said X-Ray. “Just in case.”

  Seven hundred. That would leave him with only a hundred and fifty-seven dollars. A hundred and fifty-seven dollars after three months of working.

  “That’s not a problem, is it?”

  “No. No problem,” said Armpit.

  “You’ll still double your money,” X-Ray assured him. “Guaranteed. So really, you’ll be making more money this way.”

  Despite all his efforts, he was sticky with sweat after walking the five blocks from home to school. At eight-fifty-five in the morning the temperature was already in the mid-eighties, and the humidity made it seem even hotter.

  Tatiana had her back to him when he entered the room. She was talking to her friend Claire. Tatiana had two long braids, which actually connected at the tips, forming a giant V. He’d never seen any other girl wear her hair that way, but everything about Tatiana was a little bit goofy. That was what he liked about her. That, and the fact that she smiled at him.

  “Hey, Tatiana,” he said, trying to sound casual, but he was too casual and she didn’t hear him. He said it again, a little louder and more abruptly.

  She turned. “What?”

  “Uh, nothing. Just wanted to say hi.”

  “Hi,” she said, but without the smile.

  Speech class always made him nervous even when there was no speech due. Coach Simmons sometimes called on students to speak extemporaneously. Armpit had a fear of standing at the front of the room, not knowing what to say, sweating, as Tatiana stared at him. He had a hard enough time even when he’d prepared a speech.

  Fortunately, there were no extemporaneous speeches this day.
Most of the class period was spent discussing the next major assignment. Everyone had to bring a stuffed animal to school and give a campaign speech for it. Then there would be an election to see which stuffed animal would be elected ruler of the world.

  “I don’t even have a stuffed animal,” Armpit said aloud as he walked out of the classroom.

  There was a laugh, with just a little bit of a snort mixed with it. “You are so funny,” Tatiana said, touching his arm.

  He didn’t even know she was there, and hadn’t tried to be funny, but he was glad she thought he was.

  “I hear you’re going out for football next year,” she said.

  “No, I just wanted Coach Simmons to think that. He gives better grades to football players.”

  “So you lied to him?” asked Tatiana. “Isn’t that kind of cheating?”

  Armpit shrugged.

  How could it be cheating? It was unfair that the coach gave better grades to football players, and he was just trying to even things out. However, by the time he put those thoughts together Tatiana had already walked away.

  His other class was economics. Armpit liked Mr. Warren, a bald-headed white guy, but he had trouble understanding all the graphs. Somehow by looking at the graphs he was supposed to be able to tell what would happen to the price of a cup of coffee if there was a drought in Brazil. It made about as much sense to him as a fifty-five-dollar ticket costing sixty dollars.

  Part of his problem was that half the stuff Mr. Warren talked about had nothing to do with the assignments.

  “I have here a ten-dollar bill,” Mr. Warren said, taking it out of his wallet and holding in the air for all to see. “I’ll sell it to the highest bidder. Do I hear fifty cents?”

  Armpit wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, and he wasn’t the only one. Most of the class seemed confused, but then Matt Kapok, a kid in the front row, offered fifty cents.

  “Going once, going twice—”

  “Wait a second,” said the girl who sat next to Armpit. “You mean you’re going to sell your ten-dollar bill to Matt for fifty cents?”

  “Yep,” said Mr. Warren. “Unless I get a better offer.”

  “Sure, I’ll give you sixty cents for it,” said the girl.