Finding Mighty

by Sheela Chari

  “Peter,” I gasped.

  He saw it the same time I did. We all did. For a moment, no one said anything. When you see a word appear in the most improbable place, you can only think of how it got there. Then you think of the person who put it there. And in the end, maybe, you might think of the word itself.

  Peter kneeled down and stretched his hand through the spires of the fence, as if he might touch it, this single word left there like the voice of the dead. But the Om was beyond his reach. We could all see that. Watching him made my heart twinge.

  Dad touched Peter’s back. “Careful, son,” he said, in spite of the twin fences holding us in.

  “I’m okay,” Peter said.

  When he stood up, Dad looked at him gently. “You know what that word means?”

  I saw Peter pause. I wondered what he would say. How would he explain the way he’d behaved? “It means we’re here,” he said. “Us, and the person who made it.”

  Dad looked surprised and nodded. He smiled at Peter. “It must be very old, too. Look how faded the letters are. I’m surprised the city let it remain.”

  “It lasted,” Peter said in a small voice.

  “Yes, it’s a miracle,” Dad agreed. Just then, his phone rang. He walked ahead, and I could hear him telling Mom about the Om.

  “It was him,” Peter whispered as we walked behind my dad. “It was Pop who put it there.”

  “But how?” I wondered. “The bridge wasn’t even open all these years. And the fences.”

  “You should see his duffel bag, Myla. It’s filled with climbing equipment. I thought it was because he was a construction worker. Now I get it. He was a climber, too. If anyone could climb this bridge, it was my pop.” I heard a fierceness in his voice I’d never heard before.

  I considered. “But Peter, why did your dad leave it there where no one can reach it? Is it just one of his tags? Or is it telling us something important?”

  Peter frowned. He didn’t have an answer.

  *

  In the car we were all silent, immersed in our own thoughts. My dad was probably thinking about yoga, I was reflecting on how I’d walked across an entire bridge without puking, and Peter? What was he thinking? I saw him clenching and unclenching his fists.

  I got out my journal and wrote, Om on High Bridge. What does it mean??

  The apartment was dark when I woke up on the couch, sweating. I’d been this way, jumpy and waking up for no reason, ever since I almost got caught in Dobbs the other night. It was three weeks since I’d left Yonkers, and I was staying in a tiny apartment on West 173rd. The kitchen was just two burners and a fridge, plus a microwave that blinked. It could be worse. At least Tops gave me somewhere to stay. There was only one good thing about the place: From the window I could see High Bridge. But it wasn’t the funky arches that made me look. This bridge had a secret.

  I imagined Pop strapped to a rope, with those hooks and pulleys from the duffel bag to keep him in place. I didn’t know how to use that stuff, because you don’t use equipment in park-our. But I knew Pop did when he climbed. That’s how he must have painted that Om on High Bridge, easing down the side of the bridge with his ropes like a superman.

  He would always mix his own spray paint. I saw it myself, him on the balcony, swirling together a cocktail of oil paints and chemicals. He said it was how to make it permanent. I supposed that was why nobody was able to wash his tag off. Not even with all the money they spent fixing the bridge. That’s what made his tag so sweet, the way it’s lasted. Pop landmarked on High Bridge.

  I was at the window when the front door opened and the light was switched on.

  “Good, you’re awake,” Tops said. “Let’s go while it’s early.”

  “Early?” I squinted at the time blinking on the microwave: 3:15.

  Tops grabbed a few water bottles from the fridge. “In ten minutes, we go running.”

  Three thirty on a Monday morning, there’s not many people in Highbridge Park. Even the dealers are off sleeping. Technically the park’s closed, but that doesn’t stop two lunatics from running in the dark.

  “Keep your feet light,” Tops said. “Don’t pound your feet.” Then he overtook me, and it seemed like all I could see were the bottoms of his shoes. I looked down at mine, at the fake Jordans Ma wheedled off somebody in Yonkers. I can’t even explain the shame of knowing my ma was scraping by just so she could buy us these crappy sneakers, the ones the Points called out on day one. Nobody respects you for wearing fakes.

  I stared at Tops’s back—that black, ratty shirt he was wearing, the half-sweats. Looking at Tops, you wouldn’t guess he could train anybody. He had a gut, he was as least as old as my ma, and when his hair wasn’t in a ponytail, it was stringy and thin. But you should see him work the walls: He flew like a bird and landed like a cat.

  Tops first approached me at a PK meet-up in Central Park. It was early August, and Nike and I were practicing wall runs and climb-ups when who should start running next to me but this dude with the ponytail and flab. I knew who he was. Nike said Tops was the best PK runner in the city. I wasn’t so sure because parkour is this graceful sport and Tops was ugly as hell. But I knew Tops because he and Pop were friends way back. They ran in the city, and Pop told me Tops was the one who trained him to vault and precision jump. But that’s not the only thing I knew. In Pop’s black book, near the end of his writings, I’d seen Tops’s name with three lines through it. On the street, three lines meant you were a Fencer. I didn’t know if that’s what Tops was, or just plain bad news. So I tried to ignore him. I didn’t have time for losers.

  But that didn’t stop Tops. “Great climb-up, Mighty,” he called out to me.

  “Yeah,” I said, not like a question but a statement, because I still didn’t want to talk to him. So he shut up, and I thought that was that. But while we were taking a break on the rocks, Tops sat next to me, and that’s when I found out.

  “Mighty,” he said. “There’s something you need to know, something about your dad.”

  What he told me, I didn’t see coming in a million years. It started with parkour and him and Pop, and ended with the strangest story of all: diamonds hidden and marked by an Om. By my grandmother. Not only that, Tops said the final thing that was the noose around my neck—he’d help me find the diamonds, because I was Omar’s son.

  Nike, who was sitting on the other side of me, his eyes as big as dinner plates, was right away, “Dope!” But I didn’t crack a smile. If somebody tells you he knows your pop’s secret and he’s going to help you, likely he’s after the same thing. “So you want me to find my grandma’s Om?” I asked. Maybe that was it. I was a pawn in his game of Find the Diamonds.

  “Forget her,” Tops said. “I think your dad found the diamonds and hid them somewhere else. Then he marked it with his own Om.”

  Now I was blown away. “You’re tripping. We wouldn’t be sucking it if my pop had his hand on real money like that.”

  “Maybe he died before he could figure out what to do. It’s not easy selling stolen diamonds.”

  Well, he had a point.

  “Look, we talked about it all the time,” Tops said. “What your dad would do if he found the diamonds. He said he’d never endanger all of you. He would keep them away somewhere safe.”

  He and Pop talked all the time? Sure, they were friends, but nobody my pop was really down with. Who was this guy? “If Pop found the diamonds,” I said, “how come he didn’t tell you?”

  Tops puckered his face. “I can’t say. But the way he was training with me made me think he wasn’t just running—he was looking. Looking and writing stuff down in that black book of his.”

  At the mention of the black book, my pulse quickened, and it even seemed like the air around me stirred as Tops watched carefully to see my reaction. But I said and did nothing, as motionless as the rock I was sitting on.

  Finally, Tops went on. “My theory is he was looking for a place most people can’t reach, a place where he coul
d hide something without it being found. Tagging was his way of marking the spot for himself. A spot that’s out there, Mighty, waiting for us to find it. Now, if you believe me, I’ll train you. Just like I trained your father.”

  “Train me?” I wasn’t following. “I’m already training with Nike here, and we’re fine.”

  “No, this stuff ’s amateur. We’ll train harder, go further. After that, we’ll check out your dad’s PK runs—where he went all the time when he was alive. We’ll see if he left anything behind. A clue, a tag, or who knows, the real thing. But you’ll have to learn a lot more PK. So are you in?”

  I looked at his stringy hair, his gut hanging over his waistline, and the sweat sliding down his face. “Do I have to call you Tops?” I asked.

  He and Nike laughed, and that’s when I decided. Not because I wanted to be Mr. Parkour. It was because there’s this thing about training. It loosens you. And I don’t mean your joints. You train with somebody, you find yourself telling things. That’s how Nike knew so much about me. So I figured, a few weeks with Tops, and he’d be spilling it all. Then I wouldn’t need his help. I would find my pop’s secret hiding place on my own. I’d collect the diamonds and make our family rich.

  But there was something more than that. And this was the part I didn’t tell anyone, not even Nike. It was the way Pop died, falling from a building when he was at work. Like some fool who didn’t know how to strap on a harness right. Like someone who didn’t know the first thing about climbing, or how to landmark an Om on High Bridge and live to tell about it. It never made sense to me, my pop dying a sorry way like that. I knew there was something else, starting with that phone call Ma got the night after Pop died, the one that had scared us all. Were the diamonds behind that phone call? Were they behind the way Pop died? Here was my chance to find out. Not just about the diamonds, but how my pop had been taken away from me.

  Long as I didn’t keel over now.

  Just when I didn’t think I had another breath left, I saw the playground up ahead. Tops made his hands into a foothold in front of the fence enclosure. I knew the drill. We’d been doing it every night. With a grunt I hoisted myself up off his hands, but as usual I couldn’t reach the top.

  “You keep trying too hard,” Tops said. “Aim for the right place with your foot.”

  Again and again I tried, until my palms got sore. Finally I heaved myself over.

  I watched as Tops took out a ball of chalk from his pocket and rubbed his hands with it. Then he ran at the fence. I knew the science, how your foot has to find the right place to reach the top. So far, I’d never done it by myself. But Tops’s foot hit the magic mark, and he lifted himself in one move. Then he flipped himself over the fence like a trapeze artist and dropped down near me.

  For the next hour we worked hard. We did everything: jumps, vaults, rolls. The playground was perfect with metal bars, slides, and play equipment, and different levels to practice jumping. Tops said you had to start small, and there was no place smaller than a playground.

  “You’ve got to roll more at an angle, where the meat is on your body,” he explained. “Remember, when you land from somewhere, the roll is what absorbs the shock, not your bones.”

  We took a break as Tops drank from his water bottle and I took out a Sharpie. “Leave no trace,” he said, watching me. “That’s the parkour way.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You never tagged?” I was thinking of his tag in Pop’s black book.

  Tops shook his head. “Omar sketched out my tag. But it wasn’t me.” He shifted his weight. “Also, have you forgotten the other night? At the train station?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t get caught, did I?”

  “Because of me!” Tops exclaimed. “I was the one who drove you out of Dobbs.”

  I thought of him there. Normal people would be grateful, but I wasn’t. It meant I owed him, and I hated that. “How did you know? I never told anybody.”

  Tops laughed an ugly laugh. “Mighty, you’re as predictable as the moon.”

  Predictable? I didn’t like that. I wasn’t a dog doing tricks. I uncapped my pen. I worked the outline slowly . . . it was important to get the “O” right, with enough roundness to make it a circle, not an egg. In my mind, I always pictured a sun. The “m” was different. It was low, like a lion in the grass. But without the grass.

  Tops was still watching me. “A few weeks ago, when I saw one of your Oms at a subway stop, I knew it was you. I thought, that has to be Omar’s kid.”

  I felt my chest tighten. I thought of when I first started painting Pop’s tag. How those two letters made my father come alive for me. But since I’d met Tops and heard the story of the diamonds, something had changed. Now I also thought of the person who called my ma. I thought of that caller telling her Pop was dead because he had something he shouldn’t. Was it the diamonds, I didn’t know. But whoever that caller was, he could eat dirt. And every time I painted an Om, every time I left one in plain sight, it was me telling the world that.

  Tops finished his water. “Do you even know what Om means?”

  “It means,” I said, “what it means.” In the morning, a piece of Pop would be here along with this stone. And it would be the bad-ass stone of the playground.

  Tops shrugged. “Well, this was your dad’s favorite training spot. Maybe he wrote about it in his black book?” He said it so casually, I knew right away something was up.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never saw it.”

  “But your dad always carried one. And then he stopped. That’s why I was wondering.”

  I kept quiet. I could hear the change in Tops’s voice, the way he was reaching. But I was like a steel trap, and I knew the black book was safe with Petey. I didn’t have to tell a thing.

  He cleared his throat. “Did you guys ever run here? Since Omar liked it so much.”

  “We ran.” I finished up the shadowing of the letters. “Just not here.”

  Pop and I didn’t exactly run together. He’d slip out at night and run along the parkway, and I’d follow without him knowing. He’d climb up walls, and scale the top in a way that left me breathless and scared and busting with pride. The only time I didn’t follow him was when he went on the train. I’d go as far as the station and see him sitting inside a lit compartment. Then it was like he and the other passengers were shuttled away like ghosts to someplace else in the universe. Those nights were sad, and I’d have to go back home. Then one night I met Nike, and that’s how it started, my dance with paint, my street bombing with the crew.

  Tops stretched his leg muscles. “This is where your dad told me your grandma’s secret.”

  I capped my pen. “I suppose we’ll meditate on that for another month.” So far, my time with Tops had been a big fat zero. We hadn’t even started looking for the diamonds. When I asked, he was all “In due time, in due time.”

  He smiled faintly now. “You’re ready to kill me, I can see that. Your landings are shaky, and your foot placement needs work. But your roll is decent and you’ve got good balance.”

  “So?” Was this his way of telling me I sucked?

  “So, you’re ready. At least ready enough. We start your dad’s PK run tomorrow night.”

  In spite of myself, I got excited. But I would be a cool cat, watching and waiting for Tops to make the first mistake. The sun was starting to rise as we headed back, when Tops got a call.

  “No, we’re busy,” he said on his phone. Then, “Fine, give us an hour.”

  I stared. “Who are we meeting?” I was feeling my eyes close. I was ready to crash.

  Tops tossed his empty bottle in a recycling bin. “Some guys who’ll help us find the diamonds. They call themselves the Fencers.”

  “The Fencers!” I repeated. What could those punks tell me about the diamonds? I didn’t know much about them, but in Yonkers, my crew and I would see those three lines and stay away. We weren’t interested in a turf war. We wanted to be left alone to do our paint. But now things
were suddenly different. I was getting a bad feeling in my gut.

  Tops saw my face. “Relax. They’ll tell you everything you need to know. It’s not easy finding diamonds in the great state of New York. You’ll need their help—how to avoid the police, how to know what’s real and what’s fake, and how to sell them when the time comes.”

  It sounded like a bogus list. “Tops, are you a Fencer, too?”

  He tried to laugh it off. “They’re the ones who know about the diamonds. Not me.”

  That didn’t exactly ease my mind. But in the end, I went along with him. Maybe it was important to find out who these guys were. If they knew about the diamonds, then they were after them, too. And if they were, maybe they were planning to ambush me soon as they saw my face. On the other hand, they might know something about Pop and the way he died. It was worth going, even if I was walking myself into danger.

  Besides, Tops would be there to help me. I still didn’t know why he thought I was his key to the missing diamonds. But I

  saw the way his eyes lit up every time the black book was mentioned. Maybe that’s what he wanted, and until he got his hands on it, he’d make sure I stayed in one piece. The black book was my one protection. At least for now.

  We were meeting them at a coffee shop on St. Vincent Ave in the Bronx. Inside, the shop was empty except for a dark-haired girl near the window reading a book, which was kind of weird, but maybe she was on her way to school, and at the other end sat three people drinking coffee. One of them was old, like he was a crime boss wearing glasses, and the other two were young and trashy-looking. These were the Fencers? They looked like somebody’s grandpa and loser cousins hanging out for . . . that’s right, coffee. Okay, maybe this meeting wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  At the counter, the lady asked, “What will it be?”