Tom Finder

by Martine Leavitt

  “Come up. I got sunflower seeds, the kind with dried worms in the bottom of the bag.”

  Tom climbed. He was nervous. Climbing made you vulnerable to gravity’s tricks, especially when you had a sore hand. The platform was covered in down coats.

  “You sleep here at night?” Tom asked.

  The black kid nodded. “Can’t stand walls. Name is Jeans.”

  “Tom.”

  “After the train I seen you in the park a few times. Been tryin’ to figure you out. Maybe you a Head?”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you don’t know what it means, then you not it. Well, you don’t belong to my gang, so what are you?”

  Tom hesitated a moment. No one knew what a Finder was, and he didn’t feel like getting into that discussion. He said, “I’m a writer.”

  Jeans’s teeth flashed like a crescent moon. “Maybe you like to join my gang.”

  “Gang?”

  “Yeah. The Perfs. You gotta have a hole in you to join. Ever been shot or stabbed?”

  “No.”

  “Well, maybe you tell them you a writer and they’ll let you join ’cause of the hole in your head.” Jeans laughed and then stopped. “Just a joke, man. Here, have some sunflower seeds.”

  Tom took a huge handful.

  “I seen you runnin’ from the train cops,” Jeans said. “You a sweet nanny goat jus’ runnin’ its belly. Why don’t you jus’ buy a ticket?”

  “Can’t,” said Tom with a mouthful of sunflower seeds.

  “Can’t?”

  “Mean to. Mean to every time. But I’m savin’.”

  “Saving? Saving for what?”

  “Savin’ to be rich.”

  “Me too,” Jeans said.

  Tom wanted to smile, but his cheek muscles still hadn’t remembered how. “What are you getting rich to buy?”

  “Gonna buy me a ticket back to Jamaica. Got me a girl there name of Gina, and she waitin’ on me.” Jeans settled down into the nest of coats. A few feathers floated up.

  “Port Antonio is where she is, my girl Gina. I met her there while working as a chicken cooker. That’s how I got a hole in me—dropped a knife on my foot—but don’t tell Sasky that. I save my money, and I have just enough to buy her a gold weddin’ band. Then I begin to be thinkin’ about how I could buy a plane ticket with that money, how I should come to visit cousin Walter in Canada and make so much money. Gina, she says to buy that plane ticket, that be my ring. I say, no, that is your ring and your house and your microwave oven, don’t you see?”

  “But I didn’t count on all the walls makin’ me crazy. Chicken cookers work inside here. Almost go zoid in all those walls. But I gotta get back. Gina, she said she kill me twice, once for fun and once for sure, if I don’t be true to her. She gonna think I run off for good. She gonna marry somebody else, and that would kill me all by itself.”

  “Anyone that mean is still waiting for you,” Tom said, trying to comfort him.

  Jeans rolled in the coats. “You think?”

  “Sure,” Tom said.

  “You got a way with words, man,” Jeans said. “Maybe you a writer after all.”

  Tom ate the seeds from the top of the bag. “I’m looking for a job for now. A real job.”

  Jeans laughed. “Nobody gonna give you a job.”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause, don’t you see, you a street kid! What can you do?”

  Tom shrugged. “I can swim. And spell.”

  “You got a diploma? References? What your SIN? Hell’s bells, you don’t even have a address or a shower. You are what they call un-stay-bull.”

  Tom spat out some shells. “If you’re so smart, you tell me how to get rich.”

  Jeans leaned back into the coats. “You gotta get a university education.”

  “Yeah? How do you do that?”

  “Easy. You fill out forms, you pay tuition.”

  “Tuition?”

  “Money.”

  “Got some tuition in a locker at the Greyhound,” Tom said. “So, why don’t you get a university education?”

  “First I gotta get home and get my girl, Gina. I need a job.”

  “But you’re a street kid, too.”

  “Yeah, but I got somethin’ that’s gonna make them forget that: posture.”

  Tom gaped at him a moment. “Posture?”

  “Posture. You just look at them downtown folks. They all stand so straight and tall. You hunch over all the time, half in your pockets. Easy to tell you street-lovin’.”

  Tom thought about it a moment, then nodded. “I’ll try it,” he said. “Well, I guess I’ve got to go.” Tom began to climb down from the tree.

  “Hey, whatcha gettin’ rich to buy?”

  “A billboard,” Tom said. “I only need $5,326 now.” He was trying to keep his back straight as he climbed down.

  Jeans started to laugh. He laughed the whole time Tom was climbing down. When Tom touched ground and looked up, he could see feathers from holes in the down coats flying like snow.

  “You a writer for sure, man,” Jeans called down. “Nothin’ you say make sense.” Tom could see Jeans’s head, a spoon of a head only a little blacker than the night sky, leaning out from the platform. “Well, I forgot to tell you. I’m not just a writer. I’m a Finder.”

  “What’s a finder?”

  “I find things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like jobs. And money, and muffins. And other stuff.”

  “How you get to be like that?”

  “A medicine man told me I had the gift.”

  “Sheesh. Whatever. You let me know if you find a job with no walls, Mr. Finder,” Jeans said.

  “Sure,” Tom said. “By the way, do you know a kid named Pepsi?”

  “I do. He hang in the Devonian garden. He is there, but he not easy to find. ’Cept for you, maybe, huh?”

  Jeans’s moon smile floated a moment in the spoon sky and was gone. Rolling his pen between his fingers, Tom walked to his island.

  Tom found out that the Devonian garden was a huge indoor jungle. The downtown workers ate their lovely-looking lunches there. He went there the next evening.

  He didn’t know how anybody could hang out there. It was humid in the atrium jungle, and Venus gravity. He felt as if he were in an aquarium and any minute someone would reach in with a giant net and pluck him out. He hung out all evening, and he went back again the next day. That night he stayed until the last person left before lockup for the night. He hid under a huge umbrella plant until the lights dimmed and the footsteps of the security guard faded away. He and Pepsi both emerged from hiding at the same time.

  Pepsi was about his age, with his hair in a ponytail hanging out the back of his baseball cap. His hair was pink, and the shadows under his eyes were almost black. His lips were gray, and his eyes bloodshot red. His colors were in all the wrong places.

  “Pepsi?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Tom.” He held out his hand. Well-mannered, that’s what he was. He’d have to write that down. Pepsi ignored his hand and began picking at his neck, which was covered in sores. “I’m looking for a guy named Daniel. Daniel Wolflegs. I need to talk to him. Someone told me you might know where he was.”

  Pepsi considered him for a minute. “I heard you were asking for Daniel. I was thinking you look like a burb kid, and I’m wondering why a burb kid would be looking for Daniel.”

  “Burb kid?”

  “Burb kids come to the streets because they think the world is only as bad as their daddy. Come to think of it, you’ve been here too long to be a burb kid. Maybe you’re a freep. Are you a freep?”

  Tom stared at him.

  “Freep. Kids who come to streets a bit at a time, going to the bars and the pool halls, parties, couch-surfing. Then hard people start putting the pressure on them to earn their keep.” He smiled. “That was me.”

  “I’m looking for a job,” Tom said.

  Pepsi laughed. �
��You’re a funny man.” He took a half-smoked cigarette out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. He looked at Tom. “How old are you?”

  “Um . . . about sixteen,” Tom said.

  Pepsi sucked on the unlit cigarette. “More like fourteen. Did you know that there are only two words in the English language that end in g–r–y?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “Hungry and angry,” Pepsi said. Tom waited for him to light the cigarette, but he didn’t. “How come you never smile?” Pepsi asked.

  “My brain smiles,” Tom said. “It’s just that my face isn’t attached to my brain anymore.”

  Pepsi walked around him, and Tom kept turning to face him. “So. Everyone’s here for a reason. You’ve got your punch kids, and your diddle kids. Those ones are the runaways. Then you’ve got your throwaways.”

  “I just want to know where I can find Daniel Wolflegs. I heard you were his friend.”

  Pepsi sucked on the unlit cigarette again as if it were a soother. “As I was saying about throwaways . . . Daniel is a throwaway. His dad said he could do his drugs somewhere not in his house. They changed the locks on him.” Pepsi laughed low, then rubbed his eyes. “So, what are you?”

  “What am I?”

  Pepsi just looked at him hard with his red eyes.

  “I’m a Finder.” Tom didn’t know why he said it. Maybe just to hear Pepsi laugh. It worked. It made his face go from old to fifteen.

  “What’s a Finder?” Pepsi said, still laughing. “Some kind of superhero?”

  “They find things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what they’re looking for. It . . . it’s a gift. Daniel’s dad, Samuel Wolflegs, told me I had the gift.”

  “You’re messing with me.”

  “So have you seen Daniel around?”

  Pepsi came right up to Tom. “You’re zoid,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  Pepsi shoved his face into Tom’s. Tom wasn’t scared. He must have been able to fight before the Forgetting. Yeah, he was pretty sure he could remember what if felt like to get punched in the face. He had to write that down, that he could fight. Besides, Pepsi seemed thin and weak. Tom could take him.

  “Tough, huh?” Pepsi said. He grinned and backed up a step. He shrugged. “Can’t hurt me anyway since I’m already dead.”

  Tom remembered the old man under the bridge. “Dead?”

  “Cracked head,” Pepsi said, pointing to the top of his head. He laughed at the expression on Tom’s face. “It’s Forget. You know? People say it’s killing me, but I say that happened a long time ago.” Pepsi came close to him, but this time it was to put his arm around him. He spoke to him in a confiding voice.

  “See, Tom, when someone takes their first crack at it, that’s when they decide to die. They get high as heaven, but they can’t stay there. They keep coming down to dead, and every time they come down they’re deader than before. They try again, but heaven won’t keep them, and people keep charging them for a peek. Pretty soon they just want to be dead even if it means hell. One day they find out they’re so dead that the worms are eating them up, coming right out of the pores of their skin. They pick at them, and that’s what gives them sores, all that picking at worms.”

  “There’s no worms,” Tom said, looking at Pepsi’s neck.

  “You can tell them that. They might even believe you. But they still pick.” Pepsi flicked Tom’s cheek. “I tell you that so you’ll know. Forget means die.”

  Pepsi began walking away as if the conversation was over.

  “Hey,” Tom said. “Hey! Please, just tell me where to find Daniel. Look, I promise, I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. If he tells me to leave him alone, I will. Where could I find him?”

  “I forget,” Pepsi said, and he laughed. But in a moment he said, “Look, I don’t know where he is. He’s sick, you know? But you might try Jon Jonson’s. Jon’s a consumer, a real criminal element. Rents the Head house.”

  Tom wanted to ask what the “head house” was, but Pepsi didn’t stop talking long enough to ask. “Very uptight guy, has some sort of reputation to uphold. He golfs, man, if you can believe it. You could try the youth shelter, too. Daniel goes there sometimes when he doesn’t feel up to things.”

  “Thanks,” Tom said.

  Pepsi nodded. He butted the still-unlit cigarette on a bench and pocketed it again. He glanced at Tom as if he might have more to say, then walked away without looking back.

  Tom walked the other direction to the doors of the Devonian. He knocked ten minutes before a security guard came to let him out.

  It took Tom a day and a few more blisters to find the Head house. He knew it when he’d found it. It had a large wooden fence. One of the wooden gatepost tops had been carved into the head of an old man.

  Tom’s hand had been feeling better, but it throbbed once as he opened the gate. He held it up to his chest again.

  The lawn was trim, and the house had been painted a conservative gray with dark charcoal trim. Tall lilies grew by the porch. No one walking by would notice this house if it weren’t for the carved head on the gatepost. When Tom knocked, no one came to the door. He could hear music. After knocking a third time, he opened the door. There was hardwood flooring and a plant in a large pot in the hallway. Tom licked his hand, took a deep breath, and walked in. In the living room to his right, several people were splayed out on a couch and on the rug. One man with a short, neat haircut lifted his head from the back of the couch. He regarded Tom with calm eyes.

  “If you’re a narc, you’re too late. It’s all gone,” he said. He let his head fall back onto the couch.

  “I’m looking for Daniel Wolflegs,” Tom said. He was searching for Daniel while he said it, but Daniel wasn’t there.

  The man asked a girl beside him, “If a thief walks into my house, doesn’t that give me the right to shoot him or something?”

  Tom felt something beating in his chest area, but he couldn’t tell if it was his hand or his heart. “I’m just looking for Daniel Wolflegs,” he said. “Pepsi told me I might find him here.”

  The man didn’t raise his head again. He said, “And I’m looking for a reason to shoot you. Asking for Daniel is good enough.”

  “It’s just a kid,” the girl beside him on the couch drawled. “Daniel isn’t here, kid,” she said to Tom. “He hasn’t been here for a long time. You’d better go.”

  Tom and his hand were both glad to get out of there.

  Tom found the youth shelter next.

  A social worker with bright red hair told him that Daniel stayed there sometimes, but no one had seen him for a few weeks. She invited Tom to stay there that night. She gave him toothpaste.

  The shelter smelled of cigarette smoke so strongly that you couldn’t smell any other smell. A few kids were watching TV in the living room. They only glanced at him, but they did see him. One of us, their eyes said. It made Tom uneasy. He didn’t like the way others saw him. He wasn’t one of them. He wanted to make himself up. Tom went upstairs to a bed, sat on the edge, and took out his book and pen.

  He opened his book. Remembering that he hadn’t backed down from Pepsi, and sure of the memory of getting punched in the face, he wrote: Tom Finder can fight.

  He was making himself up, inventing the story of himself. You could do that when you didn’t know anything about yourself, when you’d forgotten everything. When you had only a few days of yourself to remember, you could write down everything you knew about yourself.

  He closed the book, then opened it again. He wrote: He is a man—yes, he liked that—who keeps a promise. He will find Daniel Wolflegs before he goes home. That was good writing.

  Tom lay on the springy mattress, which smelled of tobacco smoke and throw-up. He got his pen ready in case he thought up a nice design for the billboard.

  Wanted: Parents of Tom. Then what? He didn’t have a phone number. Maybe this: Lost son? Check Prince’s Island Park. No. Too many words. Besides
, that could be any number of boys. It had to be catchy and bold. His dad might be an advertising executive. He’d expect Tom to display some creativity.

  While he was thinking about it, a girl sat beside him.

  “You’re the poet,” she said.

  Tom stared.

  “We’ve seen you around, writing in that book. We call you the poet. What are you writing now?” she asked.

  Tom closed the book. “Nothing.”

  “Cool. That’s what I write, too,” the girl said. She looked overweight and malnourished at the same time, as if she ate only potato chips. Tom realized he had seen the girl before, standing on the street corner near the day care. Her hair hadn’t been washed in a while, and there was dust and lint stuck to it. She had pretty eyes, but there was something spooky about them. She wasn’t looking at his face or his haircut or his clothes or his crooked bottom tooth. She was looking at the backs of his eyes.

  Tom looked away.

  “I’m Janice. What’s your name?”

  Tom didn’t think he could look back into her eyes, even 58 knowing about nice.

  “Hey. Aren’t you going to answer her?” In the doorway stood another girl. She was the most beautiful real live girl he had ever seen. She was wearing a tight T-shirt that said CANADIAN GIRLS KICK ASS. He wished someone would kick his so he could stop reading her T-shirt.

  Tom swallowed and looked into the other girl’s spooky eyes. “I’m Tom.”

  “The poet,” Janice said.

  “Well, I just write things—not poetry, but—”

  “Oh,” Janice said. She stood up. “Well, I only talk to poets.”

  “Why?”

  Janice looked at him and turned away without answering. Tom saw the Canadian girl smile. She was going to leave with her. “Hey,” he said quickly. “Do you know a kid named Daniel Wolflegs?”

  T-shirt girl shook her head, but Janice nodded.

  “I need to talk to him. Can you tell me where to find him?”

  “Sorry,” Janice mouthed, with no sound. “I only talk to poets.”

  The T-shirt girl shrugged and smiled at him and began to turn away.

  “What if I was a Finder?”