“Did he say that?” Mr. Wallace asked. “That you don’t have brains?”
“Naw, but he implied it.”
“Perhaps have another talk with him and ask for his reasoning—ah, ah,” Mr. Wallace said, pulling a black canister from my hands. “Careful, this shouldn’t be with the polish.” He placed it on a side table.
“What is that, sir?”
“Toxic chemicalsthat willburnyour skin to the bone if you touch ’em!” Mr. Wallace crooned like a dramatic stage performer. “I should have warned you before leaving it out on the worktable.” He stretched to pull a safe box down from a top shelf. “Mrs. Millie has forgotten the combination to her late husband’s safe box and has asked me to crack it open.”
Mrs. Millie was my neighbor. She was about seventy years old, and one of the first to buy land some twenty years ago from Mr. Gurley when he started selling plots to Negroes looking for a new start. Lots of my elders was coming from tenant farms where they worked like slaves for a tunic and some cornmeal.
Since Greenwood was new, we still acted like folks on the run. We were real secretive with our money, like storing cash in a shoe-shiner’s shop secretive. If the white folks ever came to loot us, they’d go straight for the banks, never here.
Mr. Wallace screwed the top off the canister. He dipped a pipe cleaner into the soppy stuff and then rubbed it along the door of the safe. “This locked safe? Think of it like your life. You could waste it trying to find the perfect series of clicks to open the door. Or you could work smarter and not harder.” He continued to delicately rub the substance in a rectangle. I could already smell burning steel from what it was doing.
“There are many ways out of a trapped situation,” my mentor said calmly. “Not just one combination. My personal favorite issulfuric acid, otherwise known asgrease. This stuff is highly dangerous, son—you may want to stand back.”
In seconds, the grease caused the metal door to curl and melt off the safe, sending tendrils of dark smoke into the air between us. Inside was an ocean of banded dollar bills.
“What?” I exclaimed. “That’s slick!”
Mr. Wallace let out a long whistle as he pulled some money out and inspected it, seeming impressed. “Never knew Old Man Francis had it like this.”
He was fascinated with the sight of money—typical for the son of Easter Wallace. His father was a reckless kleptomaniac who stole his old master’s safe before escaping his farm for Greenwood. He taught his son safecracking, and though Mr. Wallace followed a more legitimate career, best believe he still knew how to crack one open.
“Say, out of curiosity, how do you make that st—” My question hadn’t left my mouth before a hard object smacked me on the side of the head, landing with aclackat my feet. “Ow!”
The object was still rattling slightly between my brogans—a small pebble that had been hurled in from outside.
“What in the—?” Mr. Wallace limped toward the window and barked, “Who’s there?”
“Sorry!” came a familiar voice. “I didn’t mean to throw it that hard.”
I felt a throbbing in my temple as my old friend’s open hands appeared in the shop window.
“Sorry, Mr. Wallace,” Isaiah repeated.
“Don’t be throwing rocks through my windows, boy!” Mr. Wallace screamed.
I started laughing.
“Sorry!” Isaiah called, backing away across the grass. “Sorry!”
Mr. Wallace turned around. I stood up and ran toward the window, sprouting out of it so my upper half could be outside.
“A pebble?” I asked. “Really?”
“Just trying to toughen you up.” Isaiah sauntered forward with a smile, drawing closer to me across the field. “What time do youget off? I wanna show you the Vanderbilts’ estate.”
Ah, the Vanderbilts. They were the rich family he’d become a groundskeeper for. Isaiah moved up in life faster than me, that’s for sure.
I pulled out my watch and found the hands showing five p.m. “Right about now! But I’m supposed to be home before the sun goes down.”
“Well, move back! I’ll help you finish up.”
I moved, and he climbed clumsily through the window and landed with athud.
Mr. Wallace was stringing up a money bag with Mrs. Millie’s cash. He raised an eyebrow at Isaiah. “You break something, you paying for it!” he said, then left to go back up front.
