HE’S GOT A KNIFE. A BIG ONE.

“If . . . if . . . ahhhh . . .” he says, almost stabbing me in the back.

I turn the corner, trip over a beer bottle and a bum, jump up and keep running. My left leg cramps. My arms hurt. But if I stop, I’m dead.

“Who . . . who . . . you think you are. Knocking on my door. A-a-accusing me,” Melvin yells, chasing after me.

I’ve been running for five blocks. And I still have three more to go. I don’t think I’ll make it . . . home . . . to my grandparents’ house. Not without getting cut.

And it’s like he can run forever, even though I’m way younger than he is. But somebody killed my grandfather. I just wanna know who.

I fly up the street faster than a hot motorcycle; feel my sneaker come off and pieces of glass sticking to my feet like sprinkles on a cake. I cross myself, because this might be it. Then all of a sudden he stops. Just like that. And sits on some steps, wiping sweat and giving me the finger.

I can’t go no further either. I sit down just a few houses up, ready to die if I have to. “He . . . he . . . I liked him . . . your grandfather,” the guy shouts, holding his chest. “That the only reason you still living.”

I’m breathing so hard I have to hold my chest too— hurts too bad otherwise. But my grandfather didn’t raise no fool, so I start walking away fast, toward home, even though I still don’t know who shot him.

I’m not on the block two minutes before Kareem asks me if the store is open. Before I can tell him, he asks where my sneaker is. “Gone,” I say, staring at my bloody toes.

Kareem’s house has the most steps on the block: twenty-two. He’s sitting on the top one, squirting me with his water gun. “I’m coming with you. To open up the store,” he says, standing.

I’m wet and tired. I need a shower. And time to get the store set up, I tell him. So he shoots me in the back of my head and stays where he is.

When I get up the street my legs are still shaking, so I sit down at the curb in front of my grandfather’s store. They killed him in there. It happens a lot in this neighborhood, so the police are taking their time figuring out who did it. The neighbors put flowers and teddy bears out front, and spray-painted his name on the pavement outside the place, so they think they’ve done their part.

My grandmother and me argue a lot over this store. She wants it shut down. So instead of going inside the house where she is, I go in through the garage—his store. There’s a shower in the back.

Once I’m clean and back in the clothes I had on earlier, I start putting cookies and candy in jars. I bought this stuff with my own money, since she won’t give me any. But as soon as I unpack the Oreos and Twizzlers, here she comes, pointing at me with that cane.

“I told you what I wanted you to do, right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“So just do it.”

“No.”

“Didn’t he get shot? Didn’t they just walk into this here store,” she says, stabbing the floor with her cane, “and shoot him dead?”

“Yes, ma’am, but—”

“Then shut it down. Today.”

“I . . .”

“Don’t sass me. And don’t think I don’t know what you been doing out there . . . behind my back.”

I stand over her. “I been doing just what you did. Going after them,” I say, kicking the stool so hard one of the legs cracks.

She scratches underneath her wig, then straightens it. Then takes a pinch of snuff out the bag and sticks it between her orange lips; shoving it between her gums with her tongue. “You do what I did and . . . You not from around here, boy. Quit doing things like that . . . please.”

After my granddad died a few months ago, my grandmother sat at the window every day and yelled at guys walking by. “You know my husband? Who shot him?” Or she would be at church—her friends would tell my mom— asking boys my age what they knew about the killing. She quit doing that after I came three weeks ago. Didn’t want to make me no target, she said. But I just took over where she left off, only in my own way. Now she says for me to quit it, before something bad happens to me, too. I usually do exactly what I’m told. But not lately. Lately I feel like getting even. Paying back. Only I guess I need to be smarter. Going empty-handed doesn’t make any sense. I’m not sure why I thought it would.

My granddad didn’t make any money in this store. Nothing cost more than a dollar and a half, and lots of time kids got candy for free. How could anyone hurt an old man like that? And everybody who says they loved him keeps quiet about who did it. Now my grandmother is telling me to let sleeping dogs lie, and shut down the store. That’s not right. They got the money, even the shoes off his feet. Now they get the store—everything he was working for—if we close it.

My parents, my uncles and aunts want it shut down too. The neighborhood’s bad. The people are getting what they deserve, they say—no place for their kids to buy candy or soda or to hang out when it gets hot. I’m fourteen. And I’ve never spent a full summer at home. Here in his store is where I like to be. They’re wrong for trying to take it away from me.

My grandmother and I keep going at it. Before I know it, she’s doing what she did yesterday, asking for her inhaler. “You alright? You okay?” I say, coming back from the house with it.

“Help me to that chair, baby,” she says, holding on to me and her throat at the same time.

This is what happened three p.m. yesterday, right before she ended up in the emergency room. I don’t want her dying because of me. So I give in, right after she sits down and can’t get up for a whole hour. Then I put her to bed, and watch over her for thirty minutes. I say it again: I’ll close up the store. Her breathing gets better then. “But I’m staying with you all summer,” I say, swinging a bat my grandfather kept at the store for protection. “Let ’em come after me, too, if they want. I got something for them.”

After she’s asleep, I go back to my granddad’s place. Kareem’s waiting there.

“Y’all open?”

“Go home, Kareem. We closed, for good.”

He walks in anyhow.

“But what you gonna do with all them cookies?” His tongue sticks out the side of his mouth. “And how ’bout those?” He’s pointing to the Slim Jims and cheese packs in jars on the counter.

Kareem is like I was when I was little—always here at the store. But he don’t just come for candy. He comes and tells me things. They found one of my grandfather’s shoes, thanks to him. It was in a vacant building; cut wide open, toe to toe. Grown-ups in this neighborhood don’t snitch. But little kids sometimes do. I never asked Kareem how he knew the shoe was there. He just told the police he was playing and he saw it. So anything he wants from me, he can have. I remember that and reach for the cookie jar.

Kareem is nine, and little for his age. He wobbles when he walks. My grandmother says he’ll be a little person when he grows up. She’s wrong. He’s already a little person. He was born that way. Because he’s little he overdoes everything, like driving his dad’s car five miles once and crashing it. Or sneaking out the house one night, and ending up in the police station with some guys twice his age. Kareem is the one who gave me Melvin’s name and address; the guy who almost cut me today. “Don’t do me no more favors, Kareem. I almost got killed today because of you.” I sit on a stool and tell him everything.

“I thought it was him,” he says, finishing his cookie. “You sure he ain’t do it?” He sits on my grandfather’s stool and tells me that we’re gonna find the right person for sure if we don’t give up. Then he asks me to open the big jar on the counter.

“Pickled eggs never rot or nothing. They keep ’em in the store like for a year before they throw ’em out.” His short, fat fingers go straight for the biggest, slipperiest egg. Then he tells me about the time he put six eggs in his mouth at once. Kareem makes things up sometimes. He lies, I guess you could say. But he’s a kid, so I figure it’s okay. And he wants to be big inside, my grandfather used to tell me. He would let him run the cash register, since the thing about Kareem is that he knows more about money than the people who run the numbers house six blocks away, I bet. And he knows everybody and all the streets around here, too.

I get to work, standing seven grocery bags in the middle of the floor and putting candy in them. Here’s what I figure: I’ll give some to Kareem and his sisters, then knock on doors and just give the rest away.

“What about Llee?” Kareem asks. “He wants some.”

It’s like Llee and Kareem planned it, because right then Llee shows up. “You giving stuff away today?” he asks.

I look at Kareem, then at Llee, who is seven and a half. Just like me and Kareem, he can’t stay away from this store. “Where we gonna get candy now?” Kareem wants to know. Llee asks why they can’t get candy here. Kareem explains. I keep working, taking down the frame on the wall with the first dollar bill my grandfather ever made. I’ll put that in my room.

They eat and talk and try to change my mind. And then Llee says, “I know who killed Mr. Jenson.”

He’s said it before. I’m not falling for it again, especially after today. So I change the subject and bring up the Boy Scouts. I’m starting a troop for them this summer. A few minutes later, Llee and Kareem bring up the shooting again. It’s always on their minds. There’s something wrong with that, I think, little kids always talking about death.

Kareem starts talking about my grandfather’s shoes. “You think who killed him spent the money?” he asks.

Granddad wore penny loafers. There were nickels in them that my great-grandmother gave him when he was little. Those nickels were eighty-five years old. And he swore they were worth a thousand bucks each. That wasn’t true, my grandmother said the day of his funeral. But he told everybody that story. Someone believed him.

Otherwise we would have buried him in those shoes.

Llee sits on the floor, dumping candy between his legs, counting each piece twice. “I wasn’t listening, but I heard,” he says, chewing sticky candy, then scratching his front tooth like a lottery ticket, trying to get it off. “He said Pokei was mad at your grandfather because . . .”

“Who said?”

Llee’s sucking red Kool-Aid from a straw, pouring the rest in his hand, licking it until it’s gone. “Is my tongue red?”

“Who are you talking about, Llee?”

“Pokei.” He crosses his eyes and stares at his tongue.

“Who’s Pokei?” I change my mind. “Forget it, don’t tell me.”

“I don’t know. My uncle just said Pokei did it.”

I live in the suburbs, sixty miles from here. I only know the kids on this block, and a few a couple of blocks away. The older ones won’t tell me anything. They say I’m lame. Soft. And they’re not getting killed for me. So I listen to Llee and Kareem, even though I should know better.

Kareem wants to know what kind of gun killed my grandfather. I used to know, but I forget. “Nobody’s gonna shoot me,” he says, aiming his finger at me. “ ’Cause I’m gonna get ’em first.”

“Me too,” Llee says. He points at me. “I want a rifle when I get your age. That’s a big gun.”

I wanted a Game Boy when I was his age. Kareem walks over and stands beside me. “If you had a gun, would you shoot him?”

“Shoot who?”

“Him.” He’s looking at my granddad’s empty chair. “The man that took his shoes.”

“My grandfather hated guns. He wouldn’t want me doing something like that.” That’s what I’m saying, but that’s not the whole truth. Lately I’ve been thinking if I got my hands on one . . . if I found out who did it . . . then they’d know how it felt. I don’t ever let Llee and Kareem know what I’m really thinking, though, or how much I want to get even. “Let’s talk about the Boy Scouts.” I pull out my old belt, the one with over a hundred badges on it. “What’s the first badge we’re gonna work on? Let’s see . . . there’s cooking, sewing, babysitting.” They both start talking at once, asking if I think they are girls or something. I ask them what Boy Scouts do.

“Hike.”

“Help people.”

“Camp.”

They remember what I taught them.

“I been wanting to go camping since I was born,” Llee says.

I sit down. Kareem is practically in my lap. “I went hiking once,” he says. “But next time I wanna make a fire by myself, and eat marshmallows off a stick and tell scary stories.” Then he asks if I’m sure the Scouts will give me a troop.

“Sure they will,” I say, reminding myself to call and find out.

They chill out after a while, and help me pack bags. We even go outside and throw a few balls. But as soon as we get back inside, drinking orange soda and finishing off a bag of Hot Cheetos, Kareem whispers to Llee, “I know where Pokei lives.”

My mouth is dry. My fingers won’t stay away from my head, scratching my scalp so much you’d think I had lice. “Just finish filling up the bags.”

“Do you think he cried?”

I look over at Llee.

“Do you think Grandpop Jenson cried when he got shot?”

I don’t want to talk about this, so I ask them to leave. Only inside, way deep down inside, I hear a voice say, If you don’t find ’em, who will? If you don’t handle your grandfather’s business, who’s gonna?

They get quiet, and then Kareem asks me if I want him to take me to Pokei’s place. That just makes me mad. “We don’t even know if he even did it! And what if he did?” I say, taking a bag of good candy and dumping it in the trash can. “Who’s gonna say he did? Nobody. Because nobody tells on nobody around here, even when they kill a nice old man who gave candy away for free.”

Kareem knows when to back off, so he changes the subject. “What color uniform we gonna wear? Where we gonna meet?”

I’m thinking about Pokei now, not the Scouts. I go and sit down by Llee. “Is your uncle the only one saying Pokei did it, or did you hear it somewhere else too?”

He puts up two fingers like a Scout. I taught him that. “Everybody’s saying it.”

Kareem digs down to the bottom of the egg jar. “If Mr. Jenson had a gun, he wouldn’t be dead. Pokei would be dead. And the store wouldn’t be closing.”

“Bang. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pokei’s dead now, good.” Llee’s got one knee on the ground, and a finger aimed at Kareem, who stands up and fires back.

I slap his trigger finger. “Quit it,” I say, “and go home. I have to fix my grandmother lunch.” I don’t, but my stomach is a little queasy. That happens sometimes when I talk about this stuff too long. I’m wondering about Pokei, though. What if he is the one? What if he cashed in the nickel and still has the shoe?

“I can take you to his house,” Kareem says. “Right now if you wanna.”

Kareem isn’t always wrong. Llee either. Once my grandmother lost her purse and they took her to the house of the kid who found it. The money was gone, but not the credit cards. “You two need to leave,” I say, picking up two big bags. “Come on, Llee, you’re first.” I walk out the door. Llee’s right behind me. If I go to Pokei’s place, I’ll take something with me, I think. Gotta protect myself.

Llee and Kareem live on opposite ends of the block, and neither one of them has brothers, so I don’t mind looking out for them. Llee hugs me when I drop him off, and asks if I’ll take them to the basketball court later. “Sure,” I say, heading back to the store.

When I come back for Kareem, I ask for Pokei’s address, just in case. Then I pick up two bags and start walking him up the street. Kareem’s older sister, Sahara, answers the door and asks if I’m nuts, giving him so much junk food. “You know he hyper,” she says, telling him to put that candy away until their mom gets home.

I’m halfway up the street when I hear Kareem yelling my name. “Take this,” he says catching up to me. The brown paper bag is wrinkled and greasy. “My father work at a garage and people leave stuff. You can have it ’cause you gave me all that candy.”

“What is it?”

He sits on the curb, opening the bag like it’s lunch he’s not sure he wants to eat. Out comes bunches of old newspaper. Kareem tells me to look in the bag. He’s smiling. Proud of himself.

I’ve never seen a real gun before.

Kareem stares up at me. “One time Mr. Jenson bought me a coat. He said mine was too small. I still got it.”

He stares into the bag, reaching inside.

I stop him. “Don’t do that.”

Kareem is like Llee. He’ll do what I say. So he sits with his hands in his lap. “My father forgets about it,” he says. “But sometime I go outside . . . and practice.” He unties a shoelace.

“You do what?”

He asks me not to tell, then says how sometimes he sneaks out while his parents are working and pretends to shoot the trees. “But one day I’m gonna do it for real.”

“Shoot trees?”

“Shoot something. Something . . . big.”

My fingers can’t tie his laces without shaking. “You have to put it back, Kareem.”

“But Pokei shot Mr. Jenson.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe he ain’t do it. But I bet he knows who did.”

Since I came here last month I’ve been wanting whoever took out my grandfather to be dead too. Getting even, that’s what’s been on my mind; in my dreams. I can’t talk to my parents about it. They’d say nice boys don’t think that way. I can’t tell my grandmother because she’s got her own problems. My uncles are lawyers—two of them, anyhow. If I say something like this to them, they’ll tell me that the law gets even for people. Only Llee and Kareem know what I think. They know what I want, what we all want: for someone to do what the police can’t or won’t. I swallow. I tell myself that people like me don’t do stuff like this. But I ask for the bullets anyhow. “How do you put them in?”

He wants to show me. “Just tell me,” I say.

His father goes hunting, and takes him sometimes. He showed him how to load and unload last year. Kareem shot a possum, a raccoon, and three mice—nothing human, he tells me. But he’s ready to, he says.

I dig down deep until I feel metal. The barrel. The neck. The handle. Then I grab the bag and start running. Kareem follows, like usual.

We run up the street and into the store, locking the garage door behind us. The bag goes on the counter. We sit on stools, staring at it. It’s real, that gun. “And it kills,” I say, watching my fingers shake. I look inside. When I pick it up it feels like it’s mine already. I relax a little.

“You can do it,” Kareem whispers.

“Huh?”

“They do it all the time on TV; around here, too.” He’s got his fingers in the egg jar again. “I ain’t scared of nobody . . . nothing. So when I’m your age and somebody mess with me, they gone.” He pulls his dripping wet hand out of the jar and turns it into a gun. “Let me show you how to do it.” Pink water drips on the stool like blood.

“Do what? I say.

“Show you how to kill.”

I sit myself down—so I don’t fall down. Kareem keeps talking, asking if I think my grandfather’s in heaven.

Before I answer, he’s on to Llee. “I let him hold it once.”

I look at him.

“Llee’s afraid of guns. But he ain’t gonna be soon.”

Everything stops—the hum from the cooler, the water dripping from Kareem’s fingers, even the ant sneaking across the floor. I think about Llee and Kareem all by themselves with guns and nobody to stop ’em from shooting each other.

Kareem can’t keep quiet. He’s been thinking, he says, asking me to promise not to tell nobody what he’s about to tell me. But before I can promise, he’s talking. His father’s gun spent the night with Llee one time. “By accident. I forgot it. We play with it over there sometimes, but don’t nobody know. I’m the cowboy . . . ’cause it’s mine.”

All of a sudden, my bowels get so loose so fast I almost don’t make it to the bathroom. I’m in there so long; Kareem knocks on the door three times, asking what’s wrong.

By the time I finish and figure out what to do, Kareem is done eating half a box of donuts. I sit at the counter with him, telling him to wipe his mouth. I stare at the gun, and then at the frame with the dollar in it. I ask Kareem if he wants it. I don’t know why. Then I hand it to him. “He never hurt anyone, Kareem.”

“I know. That’s what I like about him. He was nice.”

I wrap the gun up in brown paper, like sausage, and put it in the bag. I do the same with the frame, making sure Kareem understands that he’s got to take care of it. “Let’s go,” I tell him.

He jumps down and follows me. He knows a shortcut to Pokei’s place, he says. But he thinks we should check out the jitney station first. “He be there day and night.”

I’m locking the door, looking at the stuff over by the curb. Yesterday somebody put new shoes there. “So you can walk all over heaven, Mr. J,” a note says.

We stop in front of Westina’s house. She worked at the store too. Then we pass the twins’ house. They’re in college. My grandfather would send them each twenty bucks a month. Llee’s house is next. Then Kareem’s. He passes it by, though, and doesn’t look back until he’s almost at the corner. By then I’m up his steps and ringing the bell.

“No!”

He runs back to the house, pulling at the bag while I lean on his doorbell again and again.

“Give me that.”

I hold it high over his head.

“I’ll put it back. Promise.”

He jumps up and down, grabbing for it. “Don’t get me in trouble.”

My feet get stepped on. My legs get pushed. I don’t budge.

Kareem is a little kid, and all little kids cry when they know they’re about to get in trouble. So does he. “I won’t do it no more,” he says, hanging on to my legs, begging.

I hand his dad the bag. “Kareem gave me this.”

I hear Kareem just as clear as I hear my grandfather sometimes tell me to take care of things while he’s gone. “Snitch,” he says.

His father opens the bag and looks at me. He stares at Kareem, pulling him inside with one hand. “Thanks,” he says to me. “His mother been sayin’ we need to get him some help. Guess we better.”

I head for the store. Summer won’t be the same now. Everything’s messed up. Kareem might not even want to join the Scouts. And Llee, what’ll he do if he’s not at the store, bugging me?

I open the store door, then close it right back. Before I know it I’m walking up the steps of my grandparents’ house. I sit on the swing, thinking of ways to get my grandmother to change her mind. People need this store—I do too—even if it’s not a real store; just a garage full of candy. Besides, can’t nobody fill my grandfather’s shoes but me. And can’t nobody talk to Kareem and Llee about getting over getting even but me, either. Otherwise we’ll all be trying to get even until the day we die. And Granddad would say that’s a stupid way to live.