He got money as a kid by scouring the hospital hallways for coke machines and newspaper carrels, checking the change return slots. A lot of people in the hospital forgot their change. Pay phones were the best. That was how he got cokes and candy bars.
He was surprised to find it still worked.
After visiting the Black and Lovely Grocery on Adams he drove back a couple of blocks to the south and parked. Selecting the peanuts from the package one by one, he counted to fifty between to stretch them out.
He would share with Connie, but they always had to hide from Johnny so he wouldn't take the peanuts and shoot them through a straw. Connie was too short to reach the phones.
Without exactly realizing, he'd parked in the playground of the old schoolyard. The city's historic cemetery was next to the main building. Against the evening sky stood a civil war guy on a horse and several crosses.
Mac got out to look down the long hall. The doors were locked and the lights were on. Nobody was in there. Mostly black kids went here now.
Johnny told everybody the graveyard was there on purpose to say Look here, kids, this is what it all comes to. So the grades don't really matter, do they.
The hallway was spookily unpopulated, with hundreds of identical lockers to either side.
Mac stood there with his hands over his eyes.
It wasn't any better that way.
When Mac awakes dark night is all around. A pleasant feeling of ease and freedom from pain resides in his chest. Something grand has come to him and he cannot say if it was dreamed or not. The excitement of it makes him sit up straight, keeps him from falling back to sleep.
He has been in the Fury's back seat in the same clothes he has worn four days now, behind the abandoned old Safeway on Oliver road. The niche is securely hidden and safe for a while. It is an old neighborhood, deeply shaded by sycamores.
Two and a half hours have passed since sunrise when he is able to enter the TG&Y where he shoplifts a small steno-sized notepad of yellow paper and Pentel Superball black ink pen.
Taking the materials is easier than he would have ever imagined, a thing never attempted before. If he found himself caught, arrested, that would merely fall within his plan. But it doesn't happen.
In Forsythe Park he leans back behind the steering wheel until deep afternoon, writing, correcting, nurturing a canned coke from loose coins recovered beneath the tennis court benches. There, in the park, he observes each cruiser passing through. Broun, Tom, then Pat. Each recognizes him, waves. Pat slows down, pulls over, takes an appraising look at the new foot-size dents all around the Fury. And the missing window glass.
"A little bad luck, huh?"
"Yeah. Would have hollered at you but there was nothing you could do, you know. Thanks, anyway." Pat nods, is soon driving away on rounds. Old Mac.
An hour or so later, the rookie cop Tim pulls up beside him. "You ain't got nowhere to go? You been here about five hours. Sitting." Mac nods, habitual politeness showing through. Tim takes his shades off, slowly recognizes the guy Pat knows. "Oh."
Deep annoyance as Mac hands over the folded papers. He asks Tim to read it later when he stops somewhere for coffee.
"You'll find me," Mac says. "You don't know what I mean now, but you will. I won't be any trouble."
Whatever.
