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“Uh . . . yessir?”
“Tell me how much you make.”
“I don’t get but four cents on every dime, but that ain’t the big thing, sir. Mostly what I like is the
prizes. They’re way better than the ones you get selling Cloverine Salve. Nuts to that! I goan get me a
.22! My dad said I could have it.”
“Son, do you know you’re being exploited?”
“Huh?”
“They take the dimes. You get pennies and the promise of a rifle.”
“Lee, he nice boy,” Marina said. “Be nice. Leave alone.”
Lee ignored her. “You need to know what’s in this book, son. Can you read what’s on the front?”
“Oh, yessir. It says The Condition of the Working Class, by Fried-rik . . . Ing-gulls?”
“Engels. It’s all about what happens to boys who think they’re going to wind up millionaires by
selling stuff door-to-door.”
“I don’t want to be no millionaire,” the boy objected. “I just want a .22 so I can plink rats at the
dump like my friend Hank.”
“You make pennies selling their newspapers; they make dollars selling your sweat, and the sweat of
a million boys like you. The free market isn’t free. You need to educate yourself, son. I did, and I
started when I was just your age.”
Lee gave the Grit newsboy a ten-minute lecture on the evils of capitalism, complete with choice
quotes from Karl Marx. The boy listened patiently, then asked: “So you goan buy a sup-scription?”
“Son, have you listened to a single word I’ve said?”
“Yessir!”
“Then you should know that this system has stolen from me just as it’s stealing from you and your
family.”
“You broke? Why didn’t you say so?”
“What I’ve been trying to do is explain to you why I’m broke.”
“Well, gol-lee! I could’ve tried three more houses, but now I have to go home because it’s almost
my curfew!”
“Good luck,” Marina said.
The front door squalled open on its old hinges, then rattled shut (it was too tired to thump). There
was a long silence. Then Lee said, in a flat voice: “You see. That’s what we’re up against.”
Not long after, the lamp went out.
13
My new phone stayed mostly silent. Deke called once—one of those quick howya doin duty-calls—
but that was all. I told myself I couldn’t expect more. School was back in, and the first few weeks were
always harum-scarum. Deke was busy because Miz Ellie had unretired him. He told me that, after
some grumbling, he had allowed her to put his name on the substitute list. Ellie wasn’t calling
because she had five thousand things to do and probably five hundred little brushfires to put out.
I realized only after Deke hung up that he hadn’t mentioned Sadie . . . and two nights after Lee’s
lecture to the newsboy, I decided I had to talk to her. I had to hear her voice, even if all she had to say
was Please don’t call me, George, it’s over.
As I reached for the phone, it rang. I picked it up and said—with complete certainty: “Hello,
Sadie. Hello, honey.”