Sherman paused him with a finger, then, as if feeling the texture of the gum with his tongue, he took it from his mouth and stuck it into the workings of the refrigerator. Sherman unwrapped the stick, folded it into his mouth, then lay there on the floor chewing. “Do you have any chewing gum?” Sherman asked.Īs it turned out, Douglas had, in his pocket, the last stick of a pack of Juicy Fruit, which he promptly handed over. The skinny man removed the plate from the bottom of the big and embarrassingly old machine and looked around. With that, Sherman got up and walked back into the kitchen, Douglas on his heels. Certainly he wanted the machine fixed, but what if this man just liked to take things apart? What if he made it worse? Douglas imagined the kitchen floor strewn with refrigerator parts. “Your compressor is a little shot,” Sherman said.ĭouglas looked at him, not knowing what he was talking about.ĭouglas didn’t know what to say. Douglas felt the vibration of it through the soles of his shoes. “What were they after, Sherman?” Douglas asked, but he didn’t get an answer.Īs they sat there, the quiet of the room was disturbed by the loud refrigerator motor kicking on. He picked a seed from his teeth and put it on his plate. “To hurt me,” Sherman said, his mouth working on the tough bread. “What did they want?” Douglas put to him. Douglas sat across the table from the man, watched him take a bite of the sandwich. I don’t know first aid, but I can make a sandwich.” Douglas made the man a pastrami and Muenster on rye sandwich and poured him a glass of barely cold milk, then took him to sit in one of the three booths in the shop. “I’ll make you a sandwich,” Douglas said as he stepped behind the counter. “You want me to call the cops?” Douglas asked. He locked the glass door behind them, then took Sherman over to the counter and helped him onto a stool. “Come, let’s get you inside.” Douglas helped the man to his feet and into the shop. “Are you all right?” Douglas asked, realizing how stupid the question was before it was fully out.īut Sherman’s response was equally insipid as he said, “Yes.” Sherman Olney crumpled to the ground, moaning and clutching at his middle, saying he didn’t have it anymore. They did however show proper respect for the discharging of the.32 by running away. The men were not overly impressed by the light, the bigger one saying, “Hey, man, you better get that light out of my face!” He returned to the scene with the powerful flashlight his son had given him and shone the light into the faces of the two villains. Douglas ran back inside and grabbed the pistol he kept in the rolltop desk in his business office. He stepped out into the November chill and discovered that the sound was actually that of the larger man’s fists finding again and again the belly of Sherman Olney, who was being kept on his feet by the second assailant. Douglas had been drawn outside from cleaning up the storeroom by a rhythmic thumping sound, like someone dropping a telephone book onto a table over and over. Beside his shop was a seldom-used alley and above his shop lived a man by the name of Sherman Olney, whom Douglas had seen beaten to near extinction one night by a couple of silky-looking men who seemed to know Sherman and wanted something in particular from him. Bill Henderson with the Pushcart Prize editors, 1998.ĭouglas Langley owned a little sandwich shop at the intersection of Fourteenth and T streets in the District. “The Appropriation of Cultures” also appeared in The Pushcart Prize XXII, ed. Rowell (New York: Westview Press, Perseus Books Group, 1995). “Randall Randall” appeared in Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe, ed. Clarence Major (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). “Age Would Be That Does” also appeared in Calling the Wind: Twentieth-Century African American Fiction, ed. Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications in which these stories have appeared: Callaloo, Fiction International, Idaho Review, New York Stories, Story, and Triquarterly.
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