Maggie Boylan. Michael Henson
where’d you get them?”
“I got them at Target.”
Sarah shot her a skeptical eye.
“I swear,” Maggie said. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
Dennis Hunter limped out from the back office with a stomp and a shuffle. He was in his coveralls and he had a wrench in his hand. The truck was up on ramps out back and muffler parts were strewn across the yard. He had been stomping and shuffling in and out for tools and warmth all day.
“There’s your old man,” Maggie said. “He’s the one I want to talk to.” She grabbed up the shoes and the jeans. “Hey, Dennis,” she called. “Dennis,” she said. “I got to talk to you.” She pushed him back into the office and slammed shut the door.
“Well damn,” said one of the women at the children’s bin. The women looked at one another, raised brows, looked down for a moment, then back to the office door. The first woman asked, “You gonna leave her alone with your man like that?”
“If it was me,” the second one said. “I’d bust that up real quick.”
Sarah Hunter would have joked about it if she had been in a joking mood. But she did not trust these two and her mother was sick and she was in no mood.
“You got to watch Maggie Boylan like a hawk,” the first woman said.
“I won’t let her in my house no more.”
“The jeans, she might have got legal, but those shoes is definitely hot.”
“They probably come straight out of Walmart.”
“Or Payless.”
“Or Pay-Nothing.”
“She comes in your house, you got to watch her ever minute. If she ain’t stealing now, it’s cause she’s casing the joint for later.”
“Ever time she comes in my house I end up with something missing.”
“Like your CD player.”
“She got that for sure. I can’t prove it . . .”
“But you know.”
“That’s why I don’t let her in my house no more.”
“And hell if she ain’t doing crack. She had to stand up twice to make a shadow.”
“She must of lost fifty pounds.”
Sarah interrupted. “Well,” she said, then trailed off. She did not know what to say, exactly, but she wanted to hear what was going on in that office.
“You sure you want to leave Maggie back there with your old man?”
Sarah tapped a cigarette out of her pack. She could hear Maggie Boylan from behind the door. Her husband’s quieter, gravel-yard voice was in there too, but not so often as Maggie’s. Sarah tapped her cigarette on the counter.
“She kind of give you the brush-off, didn’t she?”
“She knows I won’t put up with none of her bull.”
“And she thinks he will?”
Sarah shrugged. “I reckon he can handle Maggie Boylan.” She was not at all sure he could handle Maggie Boylan, but she was not about to tell these two. She was of half a mind to go to the office and bust them up, but she lit her cigarette, put her elbows on the counter, and waited. She kept an eye on the women at the children’s bin, too. They might talk about Maggie, but the two of them were not above slipping a little something into the oversize pockets of their coats—a little dress if they liked it, or a pair of shoes. They would be happy to have Sarah turn her back.
The first woman held up a child-size blouse with a frilled collar. “What do you want for this one?”
“What’s it say?”
“It don’t have a tag.”
“Look again.”
“It don’t have a tag.”
“Two dollars.”
The woman raised a brow.
“Buck-fifty, then.”
The women shuffled and bargained over a few more items before Maggie banged open the back-office door.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
She continued to thank her way up the aisle. “Thank you,” she said again. “You don’t know what this means. My babies can have a merry Christmas.”
“Bless you both,” she said to Sarah, then banged her way out the door and into the street.
Dennis limped behind her with the shoes and the jeans. “You reckon these’ll sell?”
Sarah Hunter tried to keep it to a whisper, but it was hard to do. “If you want to sell them,” she said, “get yourself a store and sell them yourself. Personally, I don’t want nothing to do with them.”
“Why not?”
“Cause they’re hotter than a two-dollar pistol.”
“She said she bought them herself.”
“And didn’t show no receipt to prove it. And the tags is off but they never been worn. And here’s Maggie Boylan, the biggest thief in five counties telling you some bonehead story. And you think they ain’t stolen.”
The two women at the children’s bin decided it was time to settle up. Sarah rang them up and bagged them up and helped them out the door, all with one critical eye on her husband.
She waited until the women had started gossiping down the street before she lit into him for real.
“What,” she wanted to know, “did you think you were doing?”
“I bought some clothes. We’re in the business of selling clothes.”
“Think a minute.”
“Think what?”
“Where’s Maggie Boylan gonna get the money for clothes like that?”
“How do I know?”
“Her old man’s been in jail all these months because he took the hit for her and all’s she can do for him is to sit out in that little house in the country and stay high on OxyContin. She ain’t got one dime to rub against another and she’s gonna come in here with some new kicks and a pair of britches look like they come off of Shania Twain’s ass and it don’t occur to you there might be something fishy about the whole damn deal?”
He shrugged. He was good for errands and for fixing things up, but he had no business sense at all.
He started back to the office.
“So how much did you give her?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“Twenty bucks!”
“Twenty bucks.”
“You know she’s probably smoked your twenty bucks by now. Or she’s put it up her nose. You know it ain’t for no Christmas toys in layaway.”
He rattled around in the back room looking for his tool. “Do you know where that hacksaw went?”
“Do I ever use a hacksaw?”
“I thought I’d ask.”
“So what were you two talking about for so long back there?”
“About how her kids wouldn’t have no Christmas if she couldn’t put some money down on layaway. How they got her old man locked up over nothing. How the county’s keeping her from seeing her kids . . .”
“Because she’s an unfit mother.”
“So