by Tim Green
“Why?” Mr. Starr chuckled.
Ryder couldn’t think why exactly, because if he was being honest, he’d risk his own life to save his mom’s anyway. He knew that. After all, it was just the two of them against the world, and the thought of it made him grit his teeth.
The elevator stopped and opened smoothly with an innocent little ding, as if it hadn’t just tried to kill them. Mr. Starr directed him to the back door, where a ramp had been cobbled together out of warped and graying plywood sheets and two-by-four boards. The wood bowed and crackled as Ryder rolled the chair down the ramp and he began to feel less safe than he had on the elevator, but they reached the safety of the alleyway and started on toward the subway.
The elevator in the subway smelled like stale pee. Ryder tried not to breathe through his nose and when the doors finally opened, he’d never felt so relieved to inhale the stale funky air off the subway tunnel. They rode to Penn Station on the C line. On board the subway, Ryder watched the horror flash across people’s faces at the sight of Mr. Starr and he burned with shame as they looked quickly away, keeping their eyes off of him as if the sight would turn them to stone. One woman covered her little boy’s face and hurried him away, into the next car. Ryder tried not to notice, but it was so obvious that he suspected he knew why Mr. Starr was so bitter.
Out on the street, it hadn’t been so bad. He’d been aware of the looks, but people were moving and so were he and Mr. Starr, so he’d been able to ignore it. Here, though, crowded and locked into the rumbling metal tube, there was no escape. Ryder looked around, then let his hands slip from the chair’s grips. Slowly and artfully, he moved half a step away, as if he wasn’t with Mr. Starr. From his new spot he could see the twisted side of Mr. Starr’s cheek and the unblinking eyeball staring straight ahead. Ryder was horrified to be there, but even more horrified with himself for disowning the man who was doing all this for him.
At Columbus Circle, two older teenage boys with long hair and wearing crested blazers got on, but didn’t look away. Instead, they stared at Mr. Starr and nudged each other with their backpacks, giggling and groaning and making horrible frozen faces of their own until they burst out laughing. Ryder boiled. There was nothing he could say, but he took hold of the chair again. He sputtered trying to come up with the right words, but none came and now the boys began to laugh at him, stuttering and pointing.
Without thinking, Ryder sprang across the subway car and poked a finger into the chest of the taller boy, stabbing it into his flesh just below the crest on the jacket pocket like a dagger. “What do you think you’re staring at?!”
The boy jumped back with a yell and made a fist.
Ryder made two and his eyes blurred with fury.
“What’s wrong with you, dude?” The whine in the older boy’s voice told Ryder he had the upper hand.
“You think something’s funny?” Ryder snarled. These boys were older and bigger than Ryder, but he wasn’t thinking. He was on fire. “Just shut your face!”
The second boy stepped back, slipping into the crowd of people like a mouse desperate for its hole. The taller boy’s red face turned purple. “You’re a loon, you and Frankenstein. I’ll call the cops!”
“Good. Call them.” Ryder took another step and shook a fist, still burning and really wanting a fight. The older boy jumped and squirmed back into the crowd like his friend, running and shouting about calling the cops as he made his way to the other end of the car.
Ryder looked around. Everyone stared. His brain cooled. He let his fists drop and returned to the back of the chair where no one would look. The subway stopped and Ryder’s heart galloped at the sight of the two boys in blazers rushing off toward a transit cop and pointing back his way. The cop looked over and widened his eyes at the sight of Mr. Starr, before looking up. Ryder met the cop’s eyes without blinking. The cop said something to the boys and shrugged and the subway doors hissed shut and they continued on to Penn Station.
Finally, Mr. Starr spoke in a bored voice. “If you fight everyone who gets a laugh out of my face, we’ll never get to Atlanta.”
“They . . .” A single angry flame burst to life inside Ryder and he clenched his fists again. “Jerks.”
“Ruby’s son for sure,” Mr. Starr said.
“Why do you say that?” Curiosity doused the flame.
“When she first came to the building, every guy under the age of eighty was interested in her. There was this punk on the second floor who sold pot on the corner. Thought he was a player. He comes by your apartment. You were a baby. I hear shouting and came out—I still could get around back then on crutches. Saw your mom hit that guy with a frying pan. Ha!” Mr. Starr barked and people in the subway glanced at him, then quickly looked away. “I thought that was only in cartoons. Had a lump on his head like a pineapple.”
“I never saw her do anything like that,” Ryder said. “She takes deep breaths and counts to ten.”
“Did you ever step in dog poop?” Mr. Starr asked.
Ryder wrinkled his nose. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“Do you stop and put your fist in the pile you just stepped in?” Mr. Starr sounded like he was enjoying himself.
“No. That’s gross.”
“What do you do?”
“Wipe it off?” Ryder said.
“With your fingers?”
Ryder’s mouth twisted into a frown. “No. On the grass.”
“Right,” Mr. Starr said. “You keep walking to get away from the smell and you wipe it off on the grass as you go.”
Ryder thought about what he was saying. “Yeah, okay. I get it. Those idiots are dog poop.”
“I’m serious.” Mr. Starr did sound serious now. “Do not do that again.”
“But . . .”
“I mean it, Ryder. You’re not helping anyone.” Then his voice softened. “I appreciate that you tried to defend me, and I was half hoping you’d bust him right in the mouth. But please, if I have to be defended by a twelve-year-old boy, how do you think that makes me feel?”
Ryder shrugged, trying to understand. He gripped the handles on the wheelchair tight and glared at anyone who tried to sneak peeks at Mr. Starr as they rode along.
When they arrived at Penn Station, Mr. Starr directed him to the Starbucks. Ashleigh Love stood waiting for them with a satiny blue Yankees jacket over her nurse’s uniform. She had a small duffel bag of supplies over her shoulder and wore a worried look on her face. She immediately took control of the chair from Ryder, heading toward the handicap bathroom as she chided Mr. Starr for his crazy idea.
“You can’t just go to Atlanta,” she said. “You’ve got to have therapy and you’ve got to stay clean. You’ll get an infection and then you’ll be in the hospital.”
They reached the handicap bathroom. Ryder opened the door and in they went while Ryder stayed behind, closing the door on the sound of Ashleigh Love, a buzz now as she continued to tell Mr. Starr why he shouldn’t go. Ryder looked up at the big board listing the trains and found the one for Atlanta as the voices hummed back and forth from inside the bathroom.
He had no idea what they were saying, but when Ryder heard Mr. Starr suddenly shriek at her with a sound that punched right through the metal door, he stepped away. Ryder found a bench and sat down. He pulled the baseball out of his pocket, and wondered where Thomas Trent had given it to his mother. Were they out at a movie? Dinner? Maybe on a picnic blanket on some lazy summer day.
Ryder had plenty of those kinds of days together with his mom in Central Park at the Strawberry Fields. They’d spread their blanket, eat sandwiches, read books, toss a Frisbee. Then one day—Ryder was probably seven—a baseball rolled onto their blanket. Before the boys who’d been playing catch could get there, Ryder picked up the ball. He could still remember how right it felt in his hand, the perfect size, the perfect weight, and those wonderful red stitches.
He chucked that ball right back to one of the boys, surprising everyone when that ball snapped ba
ck into the boy’s glove like a gunshot.
“Wow.” The boy addressed Ryder’s mom. “Is that your little brother?”
Ryder’s mom smiled. “No, he’s my son.”
“Well, hey,” the kid said, “you oughta sign him up.”
His mother laughed. “No, he’s going to be a doctor, not a baseball player.”
“Well, with an arm like that, he could be both, right?” The boys laughed pleasantly and went back to their game of catch, but the words were locked in Ryder’s head.
From that moment, Ryder pestered his mom endlessly for baseballs and mitts and bats and to sign him up for Little League. Finally, two years later, she gave in. He’d never forget that moment either. It was the last night of sign-ups at the school.
They sat reading together, but he’d only spoken to her in single-word replies since dinner.
She slapped her book down on the lamp table and stood up abruptly. “Oh, I can’t stand it already. Get your coat.”
“Where?” Ryder asked.
“I’ll sign you up, but you better get all As. One B, and it’s over. Deal?”
Ryder grinned. “Deal.”
The bargain worked for both of them, but he could never figure why she’d always been reluctant about baseball. Even when she couldn’t contain her pride when he outshone all the other boys in a game, there was always something sad about her face, a smile that melted too quickly, laughter cut short by a faraway look.
The thought of that day in the park when that ball rolled onto their blanket made Ryder choke. He looked around the train station at the tide of people, coming and going, and shook his head at the craziness of his life, wishing he’d only not been so cheeky with his mom and stopped in his tracks, just to aggravate her. Then he wouldn’t be sitting in the middle of Penn Station, waiting to ride a train halfway across the country to try and find a man who might not even be his father.
Mr. Starr came out of the bathroom with Ashleigh pushing the chair. Ryder tucked the baseball away and they walked silently to Track 8. Ashleigh helped them board and get situated in their sleeper car. She took a white paper bag from her duffel and handed it to Ryder. Inside were some bananas and sandwiches and two bottles of water.
She looked at Ryder. “You’ll have to feed him, you know.”
“I figured. It’s no big deal.” Ryder tried not to look at Mr. Starr, but he felt those eyes on him and it made his face warm.
Ashleigh shook her head, then gave Mr. Starr a kiss on the cheek. “You be careful.”
“I promise not to run around on the train,” Mr. Starr said.
She smiled and shook her head one final time and left them.
Ryder looked at Mr. Starr from his seat on the edge of the bed. The train began to move, slowly gaining speed. He knew they were going down, through a tunnel under the Hudson River. It was amazing and as they went Ryder marveled at the things people could do. Suddenly, they emerged into the light of day.
“Okay, get the iPad,” Mr. Starr said, as if he’d only been waiting for them to officially leave New York.
Ryder got the tablet out of Mr. Starr’s bag and turned it on. Mr. Starr instructed him on how to link up to the train’s Wi-Fi and soon Ryder was looking at the Google home page.
“In 1997 four young girls were strangled in Harlem.” Mr. Starr’s eyes lost their focus as he stared out the window.
Electric poles shot past, ticking away the distance, and Ryder looked at Mr. Starr curiously.
“It didn’t get too much attention,” Mr. Starr said, “because the politicians and the police didn’t want people getting excited. New York was being marketed as a safe city and, after all, to them it was just Harlem. The cops were getting nowhere. Then I got the case to investigate for the newspaper. I did all this research, interviews. And I found him, a complete maniac. He was a pharmacist, with two little girls of his own, a town house out near the Throgs Neck Bridge. Unbelievable, but I found him.”
Mr. Starr locked his eyes on Ryder. “I’m trying to say that I know what I’m doing. We’ve got a good eighteen hours and the internet. We need to get inside Thomas Trent’s world, and we will.”
“Are we going to write another note?” Ryder asked.
“I don’t think we have time anymore to see if he reacts to a note,” Mr. Starr said. “I think you’re going to have to press him on the spot.”
“Press him?”
“Tell him you’re his son, tell him your mom needs his help, that he has to save her life. I know it’s going to be hard, but you’re going to have to do it, Ryder.”
Ryder nodded his head. He understood.
They worked all day and long into the night before Ryder helped Mr. Starr eat his sandwich, then get into the bathroom, then into the lower bunk. Ryder used the bathroom himself, then climbed up into the top bunk without a word. The train rattled and shook and clapped the rails, heaving them about in their beds. Ryder reached for his coat to use as padding to keep his head from banging the wall. He folded it, felt the lump, then unfolded it and dug into the pocket, removing the baseball, which he held in one hand.
They rode through a small town with streetlights that flashed past, casting their strobe on the ball. The squiggle of ink they believed to be Thomas Trent’s signature appeared and disappeared. The words RUBY and GEM jumped out at him, making him want to laugh and cry at the same time.
He remembered another man who loved Ruby, or Ryder presumed he had. Ryder had been so young that the man was one of his earliest memories. The man was always nice to Ryder, but he didn’t act like other people, didn’t laugh when you should, or yell when you should do that. He wore a long tan camel hair coat with dark brown gloves and shoes that reflected the light. Beneath his overcoat were suits so soft, Ryder liked to simply touch his arm. The ties around his neck were rich in color, knotted crisply against stiff-collared shirts. The watch on his wrist was gold with sparkling diamonds on its face.
Ryder’s mom would make dinner for them all and the man always ate with easy manners that made him seem warm as well as rich. The man wanted to take Ruby away. Ryder heard him say so. He wanted Ryder to go to a boarding school. Ryder heard that too with his ear pressed close to the crack in their bedroom door. Then he heard his mother yelling and the man never returned. Ryder never asked about the man, but he thought about him as he grew older and understood what it was really all about.
The train clacked and Ryder sniffed back some tears, trying to think positive thoughts. There were—after all—men in the world who could save his mother, save her still.
They left the lights of the town and everything was so dark he could no longer see the words on the baseball, but only feel the rough dry seams and the solid mass, something so dense and unbreakable that it might be the core of a future planet.
Ryder sighed and held the ball next to his cheek. As he dropped into sleep he allowed the image of Thomas Trent to spring up in his mind, heroic and strong and ready to save them all.
Ryder slept poorly and when he woke for good, the smell of diesel and the motion of the train left him feeling queasy. He found his baseball and, clutching it, hung over the edge of the bunk to see Mr. Starr lying in the bottom bunk with eyes wide open.
“You’re up. Good. Help me into the bathroom.” Mr. Starr sounded annoyed and Ryder wondered why he didn’t just wake him up if he was going to be mad about Ryder sleeping.
Ryder climbed down, stuffing the baseball into his duffel bag, and helped him into the bathroom. He tried hard not to hear any of the noises being made.
At the sound of the flush, Ryder paused, then asked if he should open the door. Mr. Starr said he should and he did.
“Thank you.” Mr. Starr’s voice barely slipped free from his mouth, so Ryder didn’t reply. “Help me into the chair.”
Ryder did.
“Now,” Mr. Starr said, using his eyes to direct Ryder, “take the credit card and get us some breakfast. A muffin and coffee for me. Get yourself whatever you like.”
“Nice work,” Mr. Starr said when they’d finished. “Now, back to Thomas Trent. I was thinking about everything we know. The Braves don’t play until tomorrow. They have batting practice later today, though. If we can get out to the stadium, we might get the chance to see him coming out of the players’ parking lot.”
They knew from their research that Thomas Trent drove a dark blue Maserati.
“If we miss him there today, we’ll try the dugout at the game tomorrow, because as much as I’d like to ambush him in his driveway at home, we’ll never get into the development.”
“I don’t want to go there anyway.” Ryder frowned at the thought.
Thomas Trent, like many of the professional athletes and music stars in Atlanta, lived in a gated neighborhood of mansions called Country Club of the South. On the internet, Mr. Starr had actually been able to bring up an image of the place Thomas Trent lived in with his wife and two young children. It made Ryder’s heart swell with envy—the tall white columns, the neatly trimmed hedges and trees, and the numerous rows of wide windows. The place looked more like a courthouse than a home and Ryder could only imagine what it looked like on the inside, maybe a five-star hotel like the one whose bathrooms his mother cleaned.
Ryder also knew—from their research—exactly how much money his father made. Twelve million dollars a year. It staggered him to even think about, but it also filled him with hope because, after all, for someone who made that much money, what was two hundred thousand? Pocket change.
“I’m glad you said that,” Mr. Starr said.
“What?” Ryder realized Mr. Starr’s eyes were on him, digging into his mind.
“That you don’t want to go there,” Mr. Starr said. “I think our best chance for success will be the kind of deal that leaves everything just the way it is for Trent.”
