My mom put on the diamond earrings—the diamonds quite small—that my dad had given her on the publication date for All But the Shouting, and they went out.
“Back soon!” They practically ran down the stairs.
I stayed home with Pendleton. He lay down by his water bowl, gazing at me; his normal gaze, not particularly intelligent, maybe not intelligent at all. Still, wasn’t he sort of one of the Outlaws of Sherwood Street? I knelt beside him, took off the charm and held it out for him, just to see what happened. He gave it a lick, then lost interest, laying his chin on the floor and exerting zero energy. The charm itself remained unaffected, doing its usual masquerade as a cheap bit of costume jewelry.
“You’re not much of a help,” I said. “Don’t you even want an update on where we are?” Pendleton’s eyes closed. I started in on an update anyway, just to get things straight in my own mind, and was good and tangled up when my phone rang. I checked the screen: Ashanti.
“Hi,” I said. “I was just explaining one or two things to Pendle—”
“He called,” Ashanti said.
“Mr. Wilders?”
“Who else? I started telling him about the tunnel, and he got real excited.”
“Did you tell him about the C-H-A-R-M?”
“Not exactly. But I think he suspects something like that. He wants to meet us there.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Now? But—”
“It’s simple,” Ashanti said. “You tell your parents you’re going to my place, and I’ll tell my mom I’m going to yours.”
“Your dad’s not home yet?”
“Huh? What’s that got to do with anything?”
Yikes. Of all the things I could have said, why that? “Um, my parents went out to dinner.”
By total accident, that sounded like it might connect to that stupid question about her dad. Ashanti was silent for a moment, then said, “Leave them a note.”
Objections and questions rose in my mind, demanding to be dealt with.
“Come on, Robbie—he’s already on his way there.”
But not demanding hard enough.
• • •
We rode the train, our car empty except for the two of us. Our faces were reflected in the window on the opposite side of the car, vanishing against the white tile walls of the stations, reappearing against the darkness of the tunnels. Maybe it was the harshness of the lighting in the car, but we looked kind of young to me. I recomposed my face, tried to look older. You’d think my stupid glasses would help with that, would have at least that one crummy benefit, but they didn’t seem to.
“Did he say anything about Tut-Tut?” I said.
Ashanti shook her head. The train went around the bend, making a kind of scream.
“What about Silas?” I said.
“I called—he’s on his way.” She took out some gum, offered me a stick. We chewed gum.
“Silas is a pretty cheerful guy,” I said. “Considering.”
“Considering his weird father, crazy brother, all that?” Ashanti said.
“Yeah.”
She blew a bubble. “It’s all part of that impervious thing he’s got going.”
“Impervious meaning?”
“Like the way peer pressure doesn’t get to him. My guess is he isn’t even aware of it.”
“Must be nice,” I said.
“Yeah? I’d say the same about you,” she said.
“Me?”
“Maybe not.”
We laughed. Ashanti gave me one of those punch-taps. I gave her one back. The train slowed down and came to a stop between stations, as sometimes happened, in this case just before ours. We sat.
“I wonder if we’re right under those skeletons at this very moment,” I said.
“I was thinking the same thing,” said Ashanti.
The train started up again and rolled into the station. The doors opened, and we got out. There were cops around, another subway thing that sometimes happened; could have been anything—turnstile jumpers, purse snatchers, out-of-control drunks, kids fighting, adults fighting, a false alarm. None of the cops even looked at us. We hurried up the stairs and out into the cold night.
It was raining again, one of those steady drizzles that misted over everything, including my glasses. We turned left, headed for the Gunn Tower construction site on the next block. A long black car going the other way blew past us, the driver with only one hand on the wheel. He was lighting a cigarette with the other, and the flickering match light illuminated his face and that of his passenger. The driver was Harry Henkel the arsonist, so dangerous to me because he’d seen my face. The passenger was Mr. Kolnikov.
“Did you see that?” I said.
“Yeah,” said Ashanti. “What’s going on?”
“No clue.”
Now there were more police around, some on foot, some in squad cars with their blue lights flashing, plus an ambulance and a TV truck pulling up, all of it blurry to me. I rubbed my glasses on my sleeve, but only made everything blurrier. Without a word between us, we sped up, and soon were running. Bright lights shone on the scaffolding, the fence, the looming tower inside; curtains of mist waved in the night. Down below, across the street and right against the plywood fence, stood a bunch of people, most in some kind of uniform. We were drawn there as though we were getting pulled by a giant magnet, couldn’t have stopped ourselves if we’d wanted to. The next thing I knew, we were squeezing through the crowd to the front.
A man lay on the sidewalk, a tall, thin man with long braids: Silas’s dad. EMTs knelt beside him, one holding a mask over his face, another messing with some tubes, a third pressing her gloved hand against the side of his head, pressing hard, but that didn’t stop the bleeding.
“We’re losing him,” one of the EMTs said.
“Stay with us, sir! Stay with us!”
Wilders stared straight up, his eyes blank.
“Oh, no,” I said. “No.”
Silas’s dad’s eyes shifted, his gaze passing over me, coming back, and stopping: locked right on me. He recognized me, no doubt about it. Under the mask, his lips moved. Mr. Wilders was trying to talk. I could hear the sound of his voice, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“Easy, there, sir. Easy. Just stay with us.”
But Mr. Wilders didn’t want to be easy. He raised a hand to the mask, tried to take it off.
“Not a good idea, sir.” An EMT took his hand; Wilders’s thumb was bent in an impossible way. “We’re going to get you into the ambulance, and—”
At that moment, blood came surging out of Mr. Wilders’s nose and mouth. It filled the mask and overflowed. The EMTs crouched closer around him, hands raised as though for action, but no action followed.
“Sir,” said one of them, very quietly.
Silas’s dad stopped struggling. His eyes, still on me, clouded over and closed. That was when Silas came strolling up.
“Hey, dudes,” he said. “What’s all the fuss?”
We grabbed him and turned him away, but not fast enough. He saw.
17
My mom rented a minivan—like lots of New Yorkers, we didn’t own a car—and drove Ashanti and me upstate to the funeral. The minivan had a TV in back, something about an upgrade, and after a while I switched it on, maybe to push back at all the gloom in the air. Bad idea, it turned out. The first face that appeared on the screen was Dina DeNunzio’s.
“Captain Leary, what can you tell us about the cause of death?”
The camera drew back, revealing a police officer with lots of gold on his hat.
“Nothing at this time,” Captain Leary said. “We’re still awaiting word from the medical examiner.”
“Do you suspect foul play?”
“For the moment, we’re treating this as an accidental
death.”
“Accidental?” Dina’s tone sharpened, and she thrust the mic closer to the captain’s mouth, almost like a jab.
“The subject,” said Captain Leary, shooting Dina a quick, cold glare that he might have thought would be just between them but that seemed to happen in slo-mo under the TV lights, clear to anyone, “appears to have fallen while attempting to scale the barrier around the Gunn Tower construction site.”
“Scale the barrier?” Dina said. “Were there any witnesses?”
“I can’t comment on that at this time.”
“Are you aware, Captain, that Professor Wilders was a vocal opponent of the Gunn Tower project and was even arrested at a demonstration within yards of where he eventually met his death?”
“I can’t comment on that either. The investigation is ongoing.”
“Arrested,” Dina pressed on in that relentless way she had (and I was starting to admire it, except when it was aimed at me), “and presumably booked by the NYPD, Captain.”
“The investigation, as I said, is ongoing.”
“Do you have any concerns about the recent involvement of Russian investors in the Gunn Tower project?”
“I don’t see why that would be a matter for the NYPD.”
“Some of those Russian oligarchs have a rough-and-ready way of doing business, don’t they, Captain?”
“Russia is not my beat,” the captain said with a smile, like he’d just scored some points. “My job is to protect and serve the people of New York.”
Dina’s eyes narrowed. She might have been about to say more, but maybe she heard some cue in her earbud, because she faced the camera and said, “Dina DeNunzio, live at One Police Plaza.” Captain Leary was giving her one last glare when the TV people cut back to the studio.
Ashanti and I exchanged a look that meant, Accidental death? No way.
“Was that Dina DeNunzio?” my mom called from the front seat. “Talking about Professor Wilders?”
“Yeah.”
“No wonder I haven’t heard from her—she’s got bigger fish to fry.”
Was that the reason? I doubted it. Dina had just been using my mom to get to me. I switched off the TV.
• • •
This was my first funeral. It was probably different from most funerals, because it didn’t take place in a church or any other kind of religious building, but also like them because of the sad speeches and all the crying that went on. Maybe not a whole lot of crying, actually, but some.
We sat in a meeting hall next door to a small casino on Native American land. There were two long rows of benches, nearly every seat filled. My mom, Ashanti, and I were about halfway back on the left-hand side. Silas sat up front on the right, next to a woman with dark curly hair whom I took to be his mom, and an older kid, who looked a lot like her and had to be Thaddeus. Beside them was a space, and on other side of that, all by herself, sat an older woman whose white hair had just the faintest tinge of red in it. She cried the most.
“The worst thing that can happen,” my mom whispered to me. “The child dies before the parent.”
The speeches were all about the life of Professor Wilders, but concentrating mostly on the importance of his studies to the Native American community and touching hardly at all on his roles as father or husband. There was also some news: a benefactor had started the Jim Wilders Memorial Scholarship to help Native American kids go to NYU. Some applause started up at that announcement, applause that faded fast when the tall guy at the podium, some kind of chief, revealed the name of the benefactor: Sheldon Gunn. A silence fell, and then I thought I heard a grumble or two. The chief raised his hand in a way that seemed to mean “this is no time for pettiness” or maybe simply “be good.” The grumbling stopped at once.
• • •
“I appreciate your coming,” said Silas’s mom in the parking lot when it was all over.
“We’re so sorry,” my mom said.
“Thank you,” said Silas’s mom. Up close she looked nothing at all like Silas: she was thin and dark, her eyes filled more with worry and anxiety than sorrow, at least in my opinion. She kept glancing at Thaddeus, standing by himself and kicking halfheartedly at a crusty snowbank. Thaddeus had his mother’s curly hair, except his hadn’t been cut in some time and grew wildly in a huge dark halo.
Ashanti and I stood close to Silas, one on either side. He didn’t say much. I squeezed his hand, realizing as I did so that it was balled up tightly inside his mitten. Ashanti leaned over and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
• • •
My mom dropped us off on our street before returning the car. We stood halfway between our two houses.
“Accidental death?” I said.
“No way,” said Ashanti, her eyes hard. “He was going to meet us. Why would he try scaling the fence before he knew what we had to say?”
“Maybe he got impatient.” I couldn’t think of any other reason.
That remark got me a real irritated look from Ashanti. “But why?” she said, as we came to our block and started down the hill. “We weren’t late. And he’s—he was—a smart guy.”
“What about the scholarship thing? How does that fit in?”
Ashanti was opening her mouth to enlighten me on the so-therefore part, when a woman appeared on the street, coming in our direction. She was tall, walked in a regal way, and wore a dark fur coat, but there was something odd about her. Her feet. Yes. Her feet were bare, and it was much too cold for that.
“Oh, my God,” Ashanti said. “Mom?” And then she was running.
My first instinct was to run after her. Then I thought it was none of my business. But resuming my normal pedestrian pace seemed kind of uncaring. Why was everything so complicated? I ended up doing a kind of speed walk.
As I got closer, all the details grew clearer, details like the richness of the fur, most likely mink, which I knew on account of Nonna also having one, although not this glossy; Ashanti’s mom’s bare feet, so beautifully shaped, the left-foot toenails painted bright red, the right-foot toenails unpainted; and Ashanti’s mom’s face, probably the most beautiful face I’d ever seen, at least the way she looked on the old framed Vogue cover on their living room wall, but now much too thin. And the eyes: so dark and frightened.
Ashanti already had her by the arm. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
Her mom looked annoyed. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m just getting some fresh air, that’s all. I can’t stand being cooped up one more minute.”
“But—”
“Not one more second! Not even one more whatever’s smaller than a second!”
“But Mom!” There were tears in Ashanti’s eyes, not something I’d ever seen. “It’s cold outside.”
“Of course it’s cold,” her mom said. “Why do you think I resurrected my mink?”
Resurrected her mink? I missed that one, although it still made me uneasy, and I was already plenty uneasy.
“Mom!” Ashanti said. She lowered her voice. “You’re in bare feet.”
Ashanti’s mom gazed down at her feet. The expression in her eyes changed, like she was waking up.
“Where’s Dad?” Ashanti said, even softer than before.
“Working,” said her mom. “He must be working. He works so hard. I feel guilty.”
“Don’t feel guilty, Mom,” Ashanti said. “Come on—let’s get inside.”
“Inside is depressing.”
“But it’s warm.”
At that moment, Ashanti’s mom appeared to notice me. “Hello, Robbie,” she said. “You look very pretty in those glasses—don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said, and then stood there kind of stupidly before blurting out, “but it sure the heck is cold out.”
Ashanti’s mom studied my face for a moment, then nodded. “You’re a clever girl. Ashanti, sw
eetheart? Let’s go home.”
Ashanti led her mother to their stoop, giving me one anguished backward glance.
• • •
Back at home, Pendleton was lying on my bed, very comfortable. I squeezed in beside him.
“That thing about sorrows coming in battalions—where are you with that?” I said.
Pendleton didn’t open his eyes, but did raise his tail slightly and let it thump gently back down. Meaning what? I had no clue. On the other hand, closing my own eyes seemed not only like a good idea, but unstoppable. Pendleton cuddled in closer, or maybe tried to push me off the bed.
• • •
My sleep was all about wandering through dark tunnels and dodging cave-ins. Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard Tut-Tut screaming, “Help me! I’m buried alive.” My eyes snapped open at that point, and I found that one of Pendleton’s floppy ears had flopped right on my face.
“Pendleton!” I gave him an angry shove, moving him about an inch. After that I rolled around sleeplessly until the first gray light of dawn came through my curtains. I got up right away.
“Come on, Pendleton. We’re going for a walk.”
His eyes remained closed. Somehow, without actually doing anything, he made himself seem heavier, less moveable. I didn’t even try. Instead I went into the bathroom and got ready for the day, checking myself in the mirror, glasses on and glasses off. Did I look clever? Not that I could see. I got dressed, went past my parents’ silent bedroom and downstairs, slipping on my jacket as I opened the front door.
And closed it, real quick. Because standing right across the street—and checking her watch, a lucky break for me—was Dina DeNunzio.
I stood in the downstairs hall, just breathing. What was Dina doing here? What did she want? It had to be about Mr. Wilders. Had he told her about meeting some kids just before her interview with him? And then she’d seen us at the scene of his death, and thought . . . what, exactly? I tried to ride herd on all the facts, the speculations, the imaginings, and force them into some kind of order, and was getting absolutely nowhere when Mitch the landlord’s door opened, and Mitch himself stepped into the hall.
The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor Page 13
