Warrior Angel

by Robert Lipsyte

  Out of town, just before the parkway, Mom pulled off the road. Without a word they both got out and switched seats. It felt more like driving Stepdad’s boat than a car. He forced himself to concentrate on the road and to ignore the faces in other cars. They would try to distract him, make him wreck. Not this time.

  The parking lot at the mall was crowded. Mom said she wanted to start at the men’s store.

  “I’ll drop you two off there,” said Starkey, “park, and meet you inside.”

  “Well, I…” Mom seemed a little flustered. He could tell she really didn’t want him out of her sight with the car.

  “You don’t trust me, do you? All the talk about how much progress I’m making is just talk. You don’t think I’m making any progress at all, do you?”

  “That’s not true. You’re doing so well…but…” She turned in her seat. “I’m sorry, Allysse, I don’t mean for you—”

  “Trust is something we talk about a lot in Circle,” said PJ.

  That put her on the ropes. One big punch and the match was his. “It’s all a front, isn’t it, Mom, blue blazer with brass buttons so you can show me off at the club—see, Richard’s not a nutjob retard psycho loony, he’s just fine, just like my perfect daughters. But you don’t really think so, do you?”

  She sighed; tears welled in her eyes. She’s on the canvas, the ref’s counting her out. Will she get up?

  “I’ll stay with Star…um, Richard, while he parks,” said PJ.

  That nailed it. PJ and Mom exchanged meaningful glances. “I’ll be in the men’s store—meet you by the ties.” She kissed his cheek and quickly got out.

  He felt a moment of sadness. She would never trust him again. But the Mission came first. Sonny needed him.

  He waited until she had disappeared into the mall before he turned to PJ in the back. “Thanks, PJ, I owe you one. I can drop you off at—”

  “I’m going with you, Starkey.” She was already climbing into the front seat.

  “I’m going to Las Vegas.”

  “Cool.”

  7

  SONNY WAS PICKING at a room service hamburger and watching a baseball game with Malik and Boyd when Hubbard marched in with a stranger and announced, “Meet the top jock doc from the university, Dr. Gould.”

  Sonny looked up at a round-faced man with a bushy mustache. “What’s this about?”

  “Think we should talk to a professional,” said Hubbard. “The new mot-to in sports: You gotta get shrunk to get bigger.”

  Sonny started to shake his head, tell them all to take a hike, when Malik said, “You think Sonny needs a psychiatrist?” and Boyd said, “That’s crazy,” and they laughed their stupid laugh.

  Sonny stood up. Talk to the man just to get away from the fools.

  The doctor motioned Sonny to follow him into the bedroom.

  “The first time,” said Hubbard, “should be a family affair. We are all—”

  “My patient is Sonny, not the family.” He closed the bedroom door and dragged two upholstered chairs to face each other.

  “No couch?” asked Sonny sarcastically.

  “You can use the bed if you like.” He sat down.

  Sonny sat in the other chair. He looked the doctor in the eyes with the cold glare he used to psych opponents during the ring instructions and was surprised to find him looking right back, friendly, interested. Not intimidated.

  “Have you been in therapy before?” asked the doctor.

  “Physical therapy,” said Sonny.

  “There are similarities. We start with the premise that the pain you are feeling is a symptom of something that’s wrong, at least out of balance. We work on it, sometimes causing more pain but moving toward the cause and hopefully…”

  “I couldn’t get started,” said Sonny. “Couldn’t get combinations going.”

  “What were you feeling?”

  “Frustrated.”

  “At what?”

  “I been through all this. Read it in the papers.”

  “Why’d you come in here with me if you don’t want to talk to me?” It was an honest question, Sonny thought, no nasty edge to it.

  Tell him the truth, see what he does with it. “Get away from them.”

  Doc was cool, didn’t try to use that to make friends with Sonny. He just nodded. “Okay, you said you were frustrated. What were you thinking?”

  “That I didn’t know why I felt like that.”

  “Like what?”

  He could hear Hubbard and his donkeys braying outside. Might as well talk to this man a little. “Everything was heavy, slowed down. I pulled a muscle once, and Henry Johnson had me punch underwater while it healed. It felt like that.”

  “Did you think of anything else then?”

  “In the middle of a fight?”

  “Other places, people, feelings you had? Pictures in your head?”

  Sonny remembered the floating faces in the crowd, Mom and Doll and Robin, Alfred and Marty and Jake. This wasn’t going to work. He didn’t want to talk about them.

  “We don’t need to talk about this right now,” said Dr. Gould, as if he read Sonny’s mind. “Take me through the fight, as much detail as you can remember.”

  That was easy. He did it by himself all the time anyway. The fight was stored like a videotape on a shelf in his brain with all his fights. He let it unwind slowly. Dr. Gould stopped him from time to time, trying to get him to remember a feeling, a flash of memory, but he had none he wanted to share. He plowed on, boring himself, punch by punch. It must have been a boring fight to watch, he thought.

  When he finished, Dr. Gould leaned back in his chair, raked his mustache with his fingers, and said, “You know, if this were purely a mechanical problem, you could go back to the gym and work it out with your trainer.”

  “You think it’s in my head?”

  “You ever read about the major league catcher who had trouble returning the ball to the pitcher? There was also a case of a basketball player who suddenly started throwing bricks from the foul line. Athletes often act out their emotional problems athletically.”

  “So what’s my problem?” He heard his voice from a distance, tossing out a challenge.

  “I don’t know. You haven’t told me.”

  “You’re the doctor.”

  The doctor stood up. “That’s all we have time for today.”

  “Just like that?” He was sorry it was over.

  Dr. Gould said, “When the bell rings, time’s up.”

  Hubbard was waiting outside the door. Sonny wondered if he had tried to eavesdrop. “So, Doc, what’s he say?”

  “That’s private, between Sonny and me.”

  “I’m paying you.”

  “Talk to Sonny.” He walked around Hubbard and left.

  Hubbard walked into the bedroom. “So?”

  Sonny shrugged and climbed into bed with the remote. Hubbard stared at him and shook his head before he left. The baseball game was still on. Sonny watched the catcher throw the ball back to the pitcher. He remembered reading about the catcher who suddenly couldn’t throw the ball back to the pitcher. Guy was a head case. Am I a head case? His stomach hurt. He pushed the thought away.

  “Let us chant,” said Red Eagle, slipping silently into the room. He might or might not be a real Indian, but he moved like one. He was sprinkling powders into the steel bowl.

  “Not now. And get that dung out of here.”

  “You had time for the white man’s healer. Do you think his medicine is stronger than the medicine of the Creator?”

  Sonny grunted and rolled over on his stomach.

  He dozed for a while. The TV in the living room woke him up. A western. He could hear Indian war whoops and gunfire. Only Boyd was stupid enough to watch that here. He walked out into the living room.

  “Where’s Malik’s laptop?”

  “In his room, I guess. But he don’t like—”

  “Right.” He found it blinking on Malik’s bed, two animated kick boxers,
naked women, whaling each other on the screen saver. He took it back to his room.

  It took him a while to make his way through the porn sites that Malik had programmed to pop up at first touch. There was a New Mail message at his public e-mail address, champsonnybear@aol.com, from the Warrior Angel.

  Dear George Harrison Bayer,

  Getting closer, but not moving as the Hawk flies. Too dangerous. Hang on.

  Warrior Angel

  How did he know about the Hawk?

  It was in the book The Tomahawk Kid, by Martin Malcolm Witherspoon, a book that told too much and nothing at all. Why had he let that fat black owl rip him off, write a book that exposed him but didn’t set him free?

  Where was Marty now?

  He heard Boyd and Malik talking, then Malik’s heavy steps toward the bedroom door. Sonny back-paged to one of the porn sites.

  “Hey, man, whatchoo doon’ wit’ my…” Malik came around behind Sonny just as the screen filled with flesh. He grinned. “Feelin’ better, huh?”

  Food had no taste. Time stood still, a puddle of stagnant water. Hubbard had a treadmill brought up to the hotel room, and Sonny jogged on it for hours at a time, trying to imagine himself on a road in the Res. Then he’d sit in front of the TV for hours, watching the screen turn into a kaleidoscope of meaningless colors.

  Dr. Gould came again. The sessions broke loose old memories. Moving from the Reservation near Sparta in Upstate New York to Boston to Minneapolis to Santa Fe to Santa Cruz, California, as a kid while his mother tried to sell the jewelry she designed and made. Always coming back broke to the Res and his great-uncle Jake’s auto junkyard. Hiding in the backs of old wrecked cars, drawing pictures he tore up before anyone could see them. Helping Jake find parts in the old cars for his customers. Dropping out of Sparta High School after he was kicked off the football team. He had slugged a teammate, an elephant-assed tackle who had called him Tonto. Didn’t like football anyway. Too many rules. A white man’s game.

  He didn’t tell Gould any of it.

  He remembered running away to Times Square, falling in with Doll and her pimp, Stick, getting busted by Sgt. Alfred Brooks. Once, he’d thought that was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Now, he wasn’t so sure of anything.

  He felt trapped in the hotel suite, a prisoner. He felt as helpless as he had at the Whitmore Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility. That was almost three years ago.

  He had a dream.

  He was walking backward up to Donatelli’s Gym, slowly, feeling each step sag under his weight, hearing the old wood creak. He knew that Mr. Donatelli himself was waiting at the top of the three dark, narrow flights of stairs, and he knew the old man would be disappointed because it wasn’t Alfred. He was waiting for Alfred to come back, the real contender, not for this mixed-blood who couldn’t throw his combinations, who couldn’t walk out of his prison.

  But it was Jake sitting in a chair under a single naked bulb.

  “I’m back, Jake. I’m ready.”

  Jake stared right through him as if he were invisible.

  Sonny woke up sweating. I don’t exist to a dead man.

  He borrowed Malik’s laptop. Told him he wanted to check out the flesh.

  He sent a message to the Warrior Angel from his private e-mail address, Moscondagabrave@aol.com.

  He wrote:

  I don’t know where to go.

  8

  THE LAND ROVER was back on the highway, heading west, when Starkey spotted flashing police lights in a corner of the rearview mirror. He felt a dry lump rise in his throat. It’s finished before it even started, he thought. He imagined pulling off the road, sitting like a child as the cop swaggered over, demanded a license he didn’t have, registration and insurance he didn’t know where to find. He would have to try very hard not to react to the cop’s attitude, remember he was on a Mission for the Creator, that he wasn’t here to act out for himself.

  “Act out what?” asked PJ. The lump gagged him.

  The police lights began to grow in the mirror like poisonous flowers.

  He could make a run for it. The Land Rover had some power; he could feel it throb under him like a Thoroughbred stallion that wants to be turned loose. But it probably couldn’t outrun a souped-up police cruiser, and even if it could, there would be dozens of cop cars up ahead waiting for him. Planes and helicopters if Stepdad got into the action. Been there, done that.

  And there’s always a chance of a crack-up in a high-speed chase. I can risk that for myself if the Mission depended on it, but I can’t expose a Live One like PJ. The Archies are always hammering us on that. You’re down there to save them, not hurt them.

  “Who are the Archies?” asked PJ.

  The red flower filled the mirror.

  “The Archangels are like the elders of the tribe, the chiefs who know almost everything.”

  “Almost?”

  “Only the Creator knows everything.”

  He brought his foot up slowly on the accelerator.

  “Why are you slowing down?”

  Sirens.

  “Let me do the talking, PJ.”

  “Please don’t call me PJ anymore.” Her voice cracked. “That’s not me, PJ, I don’t want to be that person who can’t…”

  The cop car swept past. He felt his breath follow it out of his body and down the highway.

  “…get dressed, who can’t get on with her life. My name is Allysse.”

  He waited until he could breathe again. “You never said anything in Circle.”

  “I didn’t want to get anyone mad at me.”

  That was pure paranoia, he thought. I wasn’t going over the speed limit and it’s too early for Mom to have called the cops. He could imagine her still in the store, clerks smelling the limitless credit on her plastic cards, fluttering around as she examined a hundred shirts and ties. Been there, done that, too.

  But I’ll have to ditch the Rover, jack or hot-wire another car, maybe mix it up with a bus or train. Got to move fast. Ditch PJ, too.

  “Ditch me?”

  “Find a place to drop you off.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got a job to do, and I can’t take you with me.”

  She snapped open her seat belt. “Then I don’t care, drop me off here.” She opened the door and started swinging her legs out. He could see the highway flashing past below her feet. Was she testing him, or was she ready to jump?

  He imagined her hitting the highway at sixty miles an hour, leaving a trail of blood and hair until she rolled to a stop as a lump of warm roadkill. One way to get rid of her.

  Convenient.

  But wrong. The Creator would never forgive me.

  “Nooooo.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her back. It took all his strength to steer and hang on to her. “We’ll talk about it. After you close the door.”

  She closed the door. “Starkey, I’m not going back there. I want to be with you.”

  “Buckle up.” When she did, he said, “I’m not promising to go all the way with you.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for sex, Starkey.”

  He swallowed the laugh. Dumb but pure. One of the true Live Ones, the people the Band of Angels and the Legion of Evil are fighting over. But I can’t lose focus. She is not my Mission, she can only get in the way.

  “Okay. Find us a town with a north-south railroad line, rich enough so this baby won’t cause attention when we leave it in the parking lot. You really like Allysse?”

  “Ally, call me Ally.” She laughed and squeezed his leg so hard, his foot jerked on the pedal and the Rover burst into speed.

  He laughed with her, pretended that everything was all right now. “But first, Ally, get us some tunes. Driving music. No opera, no gangsta rap. No Locs ‘n’ Bagels.”

  “They’re over,” she said. “Phony interracial group put together by some music company hustlers.”

  “Awww-right, let’s go. We’re off to Vegas to save Sonny.”

  “Sonny the
boxer? But didn’t he win?”

  “He won the fight, but he’s lost. I’ll explain along the way.”

  He didn’t explain, of course. You only do that when you want to keep Live Ones off balance, when letting them think you are crazy is in the best interests of the Mission. And then there are the times when you need to step out of your undercover clothes and be a Live One yourself. That’s very tricky, because you might begin to think there is a crazy side to you after all, and you need to take the pills and listen to the shrinks who will bury it.

  “Have you been taking your pills?”

  Who am I kidding, how can this work? Live Ones are always trying to control each other. “What’s it to you?”

  “When you don’t, you sort of…go away.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “You know what I mean. I feel I can’t even touch you.” Her hand hovered over his leg.

  He was going to have to deal with this soon, dump the vehicle and dump her.

  The Harley Fat Boy was a hard, intense ride. It took all of Starkey’s concentration to keep it moving along the back roads of Indiana and Iowa. Stealing it was easier than steering it. Macho bikers are always leaving their hogs in packs outside bars, keys in the ignition, so sure nobody would dare mess with their rides.

  Ally held him tight, murmuring encouragement as he wove through farm traffic and passed tractor trailers on narrow roads. She seemed so unafraid, so sure of him, that he felt clear and powerful, the Warrior Angel at the top of his game, out of reach of the Voices and the powers that changed shapes. His vision was laser sharp, he could see around bends.

  Until he lost control on a patch of loose gravel and spilled out.

  They were wearing the helmets the biker had left hanging from the handlebars, and except for bruised shoulders and hips they weren’t hurt. But it broke the spell. Suddenly they were both exhausted. They took a room in a cheap motel off the highway, bought a huge bucket of fried chicken and a six-pack of sodas, and took turns soaking in the bathtub before they fell into bed. She was asleep immediately, so he didn’t have to deal with the touching thing.