When I Was the Greatest Read Online Free PDF Page A

won’t pretend he was a mastermind knitter or anything. I mean, he would just sit there on the stoop every day, in the middle of what had to have been the hottest summer ever, speaking in his soft way to all the neighbors walking by, freestyling, and knitting. But it’s not like he was making something. He was just knitting to be knitting. Every time he would make a stitch or two, his arm would jerk and the stitches would come loose. See, the syndrome sort of moved from his mouth to his hands, as long as he was holding those needles. So my mother was right, he wouldn’t blurt out crazy wild stuff as long as he was knitting, but his body would jerk instead. Every few minutes his arms would just shoot out in any direction. You never knew when it was coming, and you never knew in what direction they were going. But every time it happened, he would have to redo the whole knitting thing from the beginning. That would’ve made me crazy, but not Needles. He’d just start all over again like it was no big deal.
    But something was bugging me—it was bad enough Needles was sitting outside in the middle of the summer, in the hood, knitting, but what made it worse is that he was using purple yarn. Like . . . purple. How could my mother be so smart, and not even question what that might look like? Anyway, me and Noodles took care of it. The first chance we got, we went and found him some black yarn to mess with. Well, we didn’t exactly find it. We went and bought it, which by the way, was quite a situation.
    The first thing we had to figure out was where to get yarn from. It’s funny. When you don’t know nothing about something, you really don’t know where to even begin to find stuff that goes with the thing you don’t know nothing about.
    I threw out a few suggestions, like the hardware store, or the grocery store, but none of them were really making any sense. Then Noodles had a brainstorm.
    â€œI know where we can get some,” he said suddenly. We were walking up the block, headed toward Fulton Street. Fulton Street has all the shops, from wig joints to rib shacks. They even got a spot that sells TVs, Jamaican flags, leather jackets, and incense all in the same place. So we knew that if there was going to be a store that had yarn, it was going to be on Fulton Street.
    â€œWe can go check the pet store,” Noodles said. He was pretty confident about this suggestion, but it made absolutely no sense to me.
    â€œThe pet store? What you talking about?” I said.
    â€œYeah, fool, the pet store. Ali—cats. They play with yarn.”He looked at me and bugged his eyes out. “Do they or do they not play with yarn?”
    â€œThey do.”
    â€œAight, then. Let’s do it.”
    The pet store was really only half a pet store. Not even that much. It was really a barbershop, and the dude who owned the shop, Brother, also sold animals and pet food and stuff like that. The only reason Noodles and I knew this is because Brother cut Noodles’s and Needles’s hair, and lined me up whenever I needed. Brother pretty much cut everybody’s hair in our neighborhood. He was mean with the clippers. He could even make a young dude like myself, with no beard, look like I got a little something.
    So we walked up to Fulton until we got to Brother’s. The sign on the door said WELCOME TO BROTHER’S BARBERSHOP, WHERE EVERYONE IS FAMILY . Inside, the place smelled like a zoo. Dogs and cats and little gerbils in cages. And then there were the barbers. Farthest from the door was Trini, an old man from Trinidad who we all thought might be a barber, even though he never cuts anyone’s hair. He also never says anything. I mean, nothing at all. He just cleans his clippers all day long. Next to him there was Cecil, who’s pretty much the guy who cuts the old heads. He does that razor shave stuff with the cream and the towels. All the old guys come in and go