Free Zack by William Bell Page A

side had been slaves not many generations ago.
    For the next few days I had been pretty confused. I’d feel low, then get mad at myself—why should I feel bad? I’d ask—then get angry at everyone. Dad thought I was worried about school. Mom raised her eyebrows at me when I grouched at her and gave me one of her patented understanding looks that droveme nuts. Jen told me more than once that she was the only female in the county that would put up with me.
    But by the time I had finished my research on Pawpine I was proud of my African forebears. Maybe they didn’t have a coat of arms, maybe there were no towns named after them, but, like Grandpa had said about the Lazarovitches, they had made a place to stand on.
    I wanted to get to know my maternal grandfather and meet my American relatives, and the only way I could hook up with them was to go to Natchez, Mississippi.
    But I couldn’t tell my parents. Any hint to Mom that I wanted to contact my grandfather would be like throwing a bucket of water on a gasoline fire. Not to mention the fact that my parents would never agree to let me take a trip alone in the family pickup truck.
    It took a lot of persuasion, with many reminders that I wasn’t a kindergarten kid incapable of taking care of myself for a week or so, before Mom and Dad agreed that it wasn’t necessary to send me to live with my grandparents during their absence. I pretended that I didn’t want to be away from Jen—which was true, except I didn’t tell them that Jen was flying with her parents to Calgary for two weeks.
    My last problem was a biggie—money. I had maybe sixty or seventy bucks in a bank account saved from cash birthday gifts and odd jobs, but I would need a lot more than that for gas and food andstuff. I didn’t have to think very hard before I came up with the solution.
    When I entered the jewellery store Mr. Piffard was in his chair behind the counter reading a newspaper, glasses perched on the end of his prominent nose. A cup with a tea-bag string hanging out of it sat on the glass beside the oblong of red velvet.
    He looked up when the bell tinkled and his cigar migrated in jumps from one corner of his mouth to the other.
    “Afternoon,” he said.
    “Hi, Mr. Piffard.”
    “Nice day.”
    “Er, yeah,” I agreed, fingering the gold nugget in my pocket. “Really nice. Sunny. Nice and sunny.”
    I would have gone on with more of the same babble and made a bigger fool of myself but he interrupted.
    “What can I do for you?”
    I placed the gold on the velvet. “I came to take you up on your offer to buy this from me.”
    Beside it I laid a forged letter. Jen had written the note giving me permission to sell Pawpine’s gold and signed it with my father’s name.
    “It’s too neat,” I had told her when she had presented me with the first version. “Dad’s a university prof. You can hardly read his writing.”
    Jen had tossed her hair in agitation. “Then whynot do it on the word-processor and I’ll just sign his name?”
    “Because it has to look as if he jotted it down quickly, like it’s not that big a deal.”
    “Then why don’t you write it?”
    “What, and do something dishonest?”
    Jen had balled up the letter and bounced it off my nose. It had taken two more drafts to get it right.
    Mr. Piffard scanned the paper. “This is your father’s phone number?”
    “He can be reached there during office hours.”
    That was only half a lie. It was the modem number, in use most of the day. If the jeweller called he’d get a busy signal—that was what I was counting on.
    “You’re sure you want to sell this thing?”
    “Well, er, pretty sure. No, yes I do.”
    “All right, then.”
    I left the shop with almost four hundred dollars in my pocket. As soon as the door clicked shut behind me I knew I’d made a colossal mistake. I had sold off a precious piece of history, a link with the man I had come to admire so much I felt that I knew him. The gold would be melted and