Eighteen

A clap of thunder shook the window of the Nut Shoppe just as I walked in. “Hi! Got room on the ark here?” Cary was in back of the store, emptying a tin into one of the nut bins.

“How you’d get here so fast? I’ve just been here five minutes myself.” She put the tin down and we smiled at each other.

“Ran all the way. How’re you doing?”

“Good. How about you?”

“Same.” Not a very exciting conversation, but I loved it.

All of a sudden, the sky darkened and the rain came, drumming against the window and door. Outside, people ran past with newspapers and briefcases over their heads.

A streak of green lightning forked down the middle of the street. “Did you see that?” Cary said. Thunder shook the windows again, the lights flickered, and the peanut-roasting machine stopped. Cary turned off the gas on the machine. There was a moment of eerie silence, then another flash of green lit the sky, and the lights went out.

“There’s a fuse box in back,” Cary said. In the dark, we fumbled toward the back room. “Ouch!” she yelled. She must have run into something. A moment later, we collided. “Oh, sorry,” she said, “I can’t see a thing.”

“That was terrible. Uh, I’m hurt. Uh, uh.” I groaned and groped hopefully toward her, but she was already past me.

“I can’t find a fuse,” she said. “See if you can find one, will you?”

“Negative.”

“Great. I bet Mr. Blutter will find a way to blame me for that, too.”

“Blutter? As in Blutternut?”

“Blutter, as in raging bull. If you knew that man—I cringe every time he comes in here. He doesn’t know what it means to talk like a human being. Last week he popped in to tell me—excuse me! I mean yell at me about a few million things I was doing wrong. I went home shaking.”

We went back into the shop where there was some light from the street. “Why don’t you get another job?” I said.

“Think they grow on trees? I did housework before this, and even with Mr. Blutter, this is better. I really hated cleaning other people’s messes.”

“Why’d you do it then?”

“Same reason I stay on this job.”

“Doesn’t the county social services department, or whatever they call them, pay for things for you?” I said.

“Sure, basic stuff. Room, board, clothes—sort of—and medical bills. If I want anything extra, it’s up to me. Mom and Dad don’t have a lot of money either, you know. Do you get an allowance? I bet your uncle is really generous.”

“Well, he is, but I work for my money too,” I said, a little defensively. Obviously, my working for Gene was a whole lot different from Cary’s working for Mr. Blutter.

We peered out the window. The whole street was dark. Rain poured down in hard gray sheets. There wasn’t a soul in sight. “You know what,” I said, “a fuse wouldn’t do you any good anyway. The whole area’s down. It’s probably a transformer.”

“That’s what I was just thinking. I better call darling Mr. Blutter and let him in on the good news.”

“No power?” I could hear him as clearly as if he were bellowing in my ear. “Close up! I’m not paying you for time you don’t work. Close up!”

Cary banged down the phone. “How am I supposed to close up in the dark? He has fits if I miss a millimeter of a peanut when I sweep.”

“I’ll help you. Where’s the broom?”

By the time we were finished the rain had let up, but there still weren’t any lights on. I wasn’t eager to leave. It was cozy being in the dark store together. “Why don’t we hang out here for a while?”

“Are you kidding? I shouldn’t have let you stay this long. If Mr. Blutter ever found out I had a friend here—” She drew her finger across her throat.

“Let’s go to my house, then. It’s just a couple of blocks away.”

“I don’t think so, Pete. My mother has fits if I don’t come home on time.”

“Cary, are they your parents or your keepers?”

“Look, Pete, they love me. When people love you, they don’t let you just run wild.”

I heard Mrs. Yancey in those words. I could have argued the point—was coming home a few minutes late now and then running wild? But I bit my tongue—I’d already said enough, and upsetting Cary was definitely not my first mission in life.

But a moment later she peered at her watch and said, “Actually, I have an hour—if I don’t miss the bus …”

“You won’t,” I said. “I promise you won’t.”