Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street

by Peter Abrahams

  No one was shooting hoops. There was only one person around, a kid I’d seen in the halls. What did they call him? Tut-Tut? Yes, that was it, on account of his stutter. He’d arrived from—Where was it? Haiti?—two or three years before, a scrawny kid with modified dreads and a sweet face. Right now he was squatting down on the pavement just a few feet from the fence, drawing with chalk. Tut-Tut didn’t seem to notice me at all; I could feel his concentration. He shifted around a little, and I saw what he was drawing.

  Hey! It was beautiful: a red bird, maybe a parrot, with a green head and yellow eyes, so lifelike that it looked as though it could actually fly off the pavement at any moment.

  “It’s great,” I said.

  Tut-Tut glanced up, startled. He almost tipped over backward.

  “Is it based on a real bird?” I said.

  Tut-Tut’s mouth opened, and his lips moved a bit, like he was forming a word, but no sound came out.

  “Or did you just make it up?” I said.

  “N-n-n-n-,” said Tut-Tut. “T-t-t-th-th-th-th…” He went silent.

  “It’s real?” I said.

  “T-t-t-t-th-th-th-th-the b-b-b-bb-bb-bbb-bbbb-bbbbb-bbbbbb…” He went silent again, took a deep breath, and nodded yes.

  A real parrot, meaning it had a name, maybe a parrot he’d seen in Haiti, or even kept in a cage. I had lots of follow-up questions, but I didn’t have the heart to watch Tut-Tut trying to answer them. Plus, that strange pressure ball thing in my head was back, not electrical and powerful like on the basketball court, more just letting me know it was there.

  Tut-Tut licked his lips. “W-,” he began. “W-w-w-w-w-

  w-w-wh-wh-wh—”

  The pressure thing grew. And the more Tut-Tut tried to say whatever it was he wanted to say, the stronger it got. “W-wh-wh-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha—” Now I felt the electrical component, and my vision started going funny. My imagination playing tricks? I took off my glasses, watched the world grow clearer.

  “Wh-wha-wha-wh-wh-wh-w-w-w-w…” Tut-Tut gave up.

  And the moment he gave up, my vision began deteriorating back to normal. The pressure in my head vanished. I put on my glasses. If this was my imagination, it was suddenly getting good at tricks. The streetlights went on.

  “I better get going,” I said.

  Was I coming down with something? I took off my glove and touched my forehead; it felt cool. And in fact I felt fine all over, head to toe, the way you do after running around for a while. There were also growing pains to factor in: lots of possible explanations for something that would probably never happen again. “Anyway, cool bird,” I said.

  Tut-Tut grunted.

  I walked off. A block away, waiting for the light to change, I felt the silver heart. It had heated up again, but now cooled quickly under my touch. The light changed. I glanced back. The school yard was empty.

  It was almost fully dark when I turned onto my street, climbed for a couple of blocks, and reached the top of the slope. The western view opened up: the river, which still somehow had a glow to it, like it was clinging to daytime; the Brooklyn Bridge, looking like it was built of lights alone; Manhattan. A million-dollar view, which was probably an underestimate. People said a million dollars weren’t what they used to be; maybe it would be better to go back to when they were. But that was off topic, the kind of mind wandering that kept me from being a straight-A student, according to my first-term report card, or getting any A’s at all, the grading at Thatcher turning out to be much stricter than at Joe Louis.

  The best part of the view, in my opinion and maybe mine alone, was how it disappeared behind the nearby buildings slice by slice and piece by piece on the way down the other side. Hard to explain why, and also off topic. I headed down the street, passing Local, the new cool neighborhood bar, and Zimmy’s, the used-to-be-cool neighborhood bar, then Au Boulot, the bistro that had been cheap until it got a great review, I couldn’t remember where, and Monsieur Señor’s, the coffee place where my dad sometimes worked when he got sick of being alone at home. And there he was at one of the window tables, espresso cup in front of him and laptop open—although he didn’t seem to be working, instead was talking to a guy at the next table, also with espresso and laptop. He saw me, smiled, and waved me inside. I went in—the air always so different from ordinary air, like landing on planet Coffee—and walked over to Dad’s table.

  “Hey, there,” he said. “How was your day?”

  “Good.”

  “Shep,” he said, turning to the other guy, “this is my daughter, Robyn. Robyn, meet Shep van Slyke.”

  I shook hands with Shep van Slyke, remembering too late that maybe you were supposed to take off your glove first.

  “Shep wrote that book you loved so much when you were little,” Dad said.

  “One Snake, Two Snakes?” I asked. An important book for me: it had taught me how to count, for one thing, and not to fear snakes, for another.

  “No, no, no,” Dad said. “The one where everybody’s a baker.”

  “Too Many Pies?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I turned to Shep van Slyke. He was watching me kind of intently, like… like, was he waiting for me to say something about Too Many Pies, some kind of compliment?

  “Um,” I said, no compliments coming in time.

  Shep van Slyke blinked. “I’m a fan of One Snake, Two Snakes, too, Robyn,” he said. “And—”

  “Robbie.”

  “I’d be interested in what you liked most about it.”

  “The pictures, I guess,” I said. “I really liked your pictures, too,” I added, which was true, although for some reason the story in Too Many Pies hadn’t grabbed me. Not even the story, so much, but the… what was the word? Started with C. I couldn’t come up with it.

  “My pictures?” said Shep van Slyke.

  “In Too Many Pies.”

  “I didn’t do the pictures.”

  “Oh.”

  “Just the text,” he said. “And the concept, too, of course.”

  Concept: that was the C word I’d been searching for.

  Shep van Slyke glanced at clock on the wall. “Look at the time.” He folded his laptop and rose. “Keep in touch, Chas,” he said, and to me, “Nice meeting you.”

  “Bye,” I said. Shep van Slyke wrapped his scarf around his neck and left. I sat down next to my dad.

  Hugh, the barista who was in the middle of having all those tattoos removed, called over, “Hi, Robbie. Hot chocolate?”

  I glanced over at my dad; he nodded.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said.

  “And an espresso for me,” Dad said.

  Hugh brought over the espresso and a mug of hot chocolate, much darker than the hot chocolate you usually see and without the whipped cream swirl on top; whipped cream swirls weren’t the style at Monsieur Señor’s. I took a sip—steaming, not too sweet, delicious. I didn’t have a sweet tooth, took after my mom that way. Over the rim of my mug I watched Dad stirring sugar into his cup. I had a very young-looking dad; his face pretty much unlined, his hair without a touch of gray, always sort of scruffy, like a college kid who’d just gotten out of bed. He was turning forty next fall.

  “He’s not such a bad guy,” Dad said.

  “Who?”

  “Van Slyke. Disney’s looking to turn one of his books into a movie.”

  “Too Many Pies?” I couldn’t see how you’d make a movie out of that.

  Dad shook his head. “A new one—it’s not out yet.” He sipped his espresso. “His agent’s one of the best.”

  “Oh,” I said. My dad was between agents right now, exactly how and why not too clear in my head. But I knew agents were important from conversations I’d overheard my dad having with other writers. They talked about agents a lot, way more than the stories they were dreaming up. “How’s the novella going?” I said.

  “It’s actually more of a memoir, but with a fictional interface, clearly distinguishable, of course.”

  I f
ailed, one hundred percent, to understand. My dad was a brilliant writer, had already published two books. The first one, All But the Shouting, had come out the year I was in kindergarten, and… what was the expression? Made a splash? So books that failed made no splash, just sank to the bottom? And books that succeeded made a splash and then sank to the bottom? My dad’s second book, published last year, was On/Off, a huge novel, over a thousand pages, that I’d heard him calling “kind of an experiment, in retrospect” on the phone not too long ago.

  Memoir was about memories, right? “Memories of what, Dad?” I said.

  He smiled. My dad had a very nice smile, except lately there’d been some question about tooth grinding in his sleep, and now he needed some implants. And wasn’t he supposed to go easy on those late-afternoon espressos?

  “That’s what I’m working on now,” he said.

  I was confused. “You’re working on the plot, Dad?”

  “Plot,” said Dad, making air quotes around the word, “is problematic. I’m talking about what and who the memories will be attached to. In other words, I’m starting with pure memory and working back.”

  I had trouble following that, but at the same time, it reminded me of scenes in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, so it couldn’t be all bad: those books had sold in the billions! At that moment, Dad’s eyes shifted, a look I was long familiar with; it meant he was getting an idea. He turned to the laptop.

  “Finished your hot chocolate?” he said, fingers gliding toward the keyboard.

  “Just about. I saw this homeless woman lying on the sidewalk today.”

  “Oh?”

  “They took her away in an ambulance.”

  “Probably just dehydration,” Dad said, his fingers now on the keys. “Pendleton could use a walk.”

  I drank up, rose. “Are you coming?”

  “After I make a note or two.”

  I knew that those notes, even one or two, could take time. “See you.”

  Dad nodded.

  I walked home. Home was only a block and a half farther down the hill, an apartment that took up the top two floors of an old brownstone. There were two heavy wooden doors at ground level. The one on the left led to Mitch’s apartment; he was the landlord, worked on Wall Street. The door on the right was ours. I unlocked it, climbed the steep staircase to the inner door, unlocked that, too. I could hear Pendleton whining—or possibly crying, the family not being in agreement on what to call that sound—somewhere inside.

  I closed the door, double locked it, shrugged off my backpack, which hit the floor with a dishearteningly heavy thump. “Pendleton?” I called. “Where are you?”

  The whining or crying stopped.

  “Pendleton?”

  No response.

  “You’ve done something bad, haven’t you, Pendleton?”

  Nada.

  “And now you’re feeling guilty.”

  I heard him on the stairs to the top floor, meaning he’d been in one of the two bedrooms—mine or my parents’—or possibly the tiny bathroom up there.

  He came around the corner, into the living room where I could see him. Yes, bad and feeling guilty. The thing with Pendleton was that doing bad and feeling guilty about it often happened at the same time for him—more than once, just watching him, I was pretty sure he sometimes actually felt guilty first. Another thing about Pendleton was how often he was the first to provide the evidence of his misdoings, sort of cop and perp in one body; one huge body in his case. Right now, for example, he was dragging along my dad’s favorite bathrobe, soft white terrycloth with the words Hotel Amanjena, Marrakech, stitched over the chest pocket, a pocket no longer quite attached.

  “Pendleton!”

  He turned away, but didn’t go anywhere. His head swiveled back to give me a sheepish look. Maybe not the right word, sheepish, since sheep were probably fiercer than Pendleton. But never having been close up to a sheep, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Drop it.”

  Pendleton sank down to the floor, rolled onto his side.

  “For God’s sake.” The fabric had gotten hung up on one of Pendleton’s teeth, not a first and no surprise at all, on account of how enormous his teeth were. I knelt down and got everything untangled, then held up what was left of the robe. “Realize the kind of trouble you’re in? Look what you’ve done.”

  Pendleton showed no interest in doing that. Instead he stuck out his pink tongue and gave me a lick.

  “That won’t work with Dad,” I told him. I rose. “Time for your walk.”

  This city was full of dogs cooped up all day who couldn’t wait to get outside. Pendleton wasn’t like that. He preferred the indoors, only wanting to go out when he was desperate, and he was capable of holding on for amazing amounts of time. I took the leash off the door, hooked it to his collar.

  “Up.”

  Pendleton didn’t move, just lay there on his side, tongue hanging out a bit, eyes vacant. I tugged on the leash, couldn’t budge him. “All right, all right—you can have a treat.”

  He bounced up—maybe not bounced, but he did rise of his own accord—and hurried into the kitchen, stopping in front of the broom closet, where his treats were kept. Pendleton had proved over and over that he knew some words—outside, walk, come, no, and bad, for example—but treat was the word he knew best. I took a box of biscuits, giant size, from the cupboard, and rattled it in front of his face. Now he was mine. I stuck a biscuit, just one, in my jacket pocket, collected a baggie and the scooper. He trotted after me to the door—his trot was clumsy and shambling, with a lot of side-to-side motion—down the stairs to the outside door and onto the street.

  “Where to?” I said. We could go up the hill toward Monsieur Señor’s or down past a long line of brownstones with a tree in front of every second one, trees which interested all the neighborhood dogs except Pendleton. He chose neither, instead ramming his snout against the pocket with the biscuit inside.

  “First you have to perform,” I told him. He gazed at me for one of those long, still moments of his. I jiggled the leash, hoping to break the spell. He did some more gazing, then turned right and headed down the hill. That was his usual choice, but I could see he regretted it almost at once, because coming the other way was another dog, a very small dog being walked by a very small old lady. Pendleton backed up and cowered against me, almost knocking me down. The very small dog yipped at Pendleton as it went by; the old lady had a grim smile on her face. I jerked on the leash and got Pendleton restarted.

  “What’s your problem?” I said. Pendleton was a shelter dog, but we’d had him for almost two years now, two years of living like a prince. “Wag your tail. Show some spirit.” His tail, a strange little stub, remained in the hanging-down position.

  We walked down the block, Pendleton ignoring every tree. The wind rose. I glanced up at the night sky, saw no moon or stars, just the dirty pink city glow. We went by the vacant lot with the fence that always had a big hole even though it got repaired all the time—Pendleton slowing down but not quite stopping—and came to Vincero, a fancy restaurant on the corner. A limo idled outside. And what was this? A guy wrapped in a blanket sat on the sidewalk, a paper cup in his gnarled hand. There seemed to be more street people around these days. I started getting tense, not sure why.

  Pendleton shifted onto the street, getting as far as possible from the guy in the blanket. I was tugging at the leash when Vincero’s door opened and a fat man came out, laughing and buttoning his leather coat. The driver jumped out of the limo and opened the rear door. The fat man moved toward the limo. He stepped in front of the guy in the blanket.

  The guy in the blanket said, “Sir? A little help here?”

  The fat man paused and stared down at the guy in the blanket. “Three simple words,” he said. “Get. A. Job.” Then he turned toward the limo, the lights from the Vincero sign gleaming on his heavy gold watch.

  I felt the silver heart flutter on my wrist. And then: wham. The pressure ball in m
y skull awoke just like that, but far more powerful than before, and passing through its stages much faster. First the pain—but there and gone so quickly I wasn’t sure I’d even felt it—and the electric currents to my eyes, this time somehow knocking my glasses right off my face. Then, flashing from my eyes—my vision suddenly perfect—came that red-gold beam, now hot: I heard the air sizzle. The beam struck the fat man’s heavy gold watch as he got into the limo, and then faded in an instant. The limo drove off.

  My vision went back to fuzzy right away. I bent down, found my glasses, unbroken in the gutter, and put them on. That was when I spotted the gold watch, lying just a few feet away. Whoa! What exactly had just happened? Beam or no beam? If beam, how was it possible no one else had noticed? And if no beam, what was the story with the watch? Now I was scared a bit, but of what I wasn’t sure, and was still bent down in the gutter, kind of stunned, when the guy in the blanket brushed past me, scooped up the gold watch, scuttled through the hole in the fence, and vanished in the shadows of the vacant lot.

  Dad came home about an hour after I got back from walking Pendleton. I could smell the takeout from Your Thai even before he opened the door. I was starving.

  “You must be starving,” Dad said, as we sat down at the kitchen table.

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  Dad poured himself a glass of wine, swirled it around, and sipped. I opened the cartons. Yes: kaeng phet ped yang, my addiction. Red curry with roast duck, the look, the smell, the taste, all amazing. Plus I liked saying the Thai words even though I didn’t even know which one was duck. We ate with chopsticks, Dad and I, handling them no problem; we were good with chopsticks in this family, excluding Nonna, of course.

  “Dad?” I said, after I’d cleaned my plate twice. “Remember what you were saying about the imagination playing tricks?”

  “When was this?” He refilled his glass.

  “I don’t know—a while back. When you were talking about memoirs and stuff.”