Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street

by Peter Abrahams

  “Video games, Mom,” he said. And then to me: “Gotta go.” Click.

  I wrote down 550 trucks, a number that just jumped into my head.

  That night sirens woke me up, real loud sirens racing down our street, one after another. I got out of bed and went into the hall. Mom and Dad were already there, gazing out the window.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “Must be a fire somewhere nearby,” my dad said.

  I squeezed in between them, checked down at the street. Firefighters were hauling a hose toward a hydrant, and there were already spectators, some in winter jackets and pajama bottoms.

  “I should really see this,” Dad said.

  My mom gave him a funny look.

  “I want to go, too,” I said.

  “Get back to bed,” she told me.

  “Come on, Mom. How can I sleep with all the noise?”

  “She’s right,” Dad said. “Let’s all go.”

  Mom shook her head. “Too ghoulish,” she said.

  So just my dad and I went, but fully dressed. “Are we pajamas-on-the-street kind of people?” my dad said, I guess teaching me that we weren’t. We followed the hose down the block and around the corner, and there, on the far side of the street, a three- or four-story row house was on fire, flames roaring up to the sky and firefighters on ladders and on the ground spraying water in jets that looked kind of puny.

  “Hey,” said my dad, “I love that building.”

  I’d never noticed it before. The building seemed like lots of others around, maybe narrower than most. “What’s special about it?”

  “It’s a landmark building,” he said, “one of the only original Federalist examples in the neighborhood.”

  “What does landmark mean?”

  “The owner can’t make any important changes—it has to be preserved.”

  But it was much too late for that. As we watched, a whole big wall collapsed, flinging fiery debris into the night. The firefighters shouted for everyone to get back, and as we withdrew, I took notice of some of the people around me.

  Such as: a man and a woman in tears, both in long coats and barefoot. She held a painting of some flowers, he held her, and they both gazed at the fire, tears streaming down their faces.

  And: way at the back, leaning against the shuttered wall of a bodega, a little long-nosed guy who also couldn’t take his eyes off the fire. But no tears from him: he looked fascinated and kind of excited. Was there a word for people who got excited by fires? I couldn’t think of it at the moment, and was about to turn away from the guy when I saw that he had a briefcase in his hand; in his hand, but also resting on a stoop. There was something familiar about that briefcase. I sidled a little closer, took a better look. Yes, a battered and scuffed-up briefcase, just like the one Egil Borg had been carrying. In fact, so much like it that—

  The power hit me. Hit was the wrong word this time, and there was certainly no zap. Now the power seemed to come slowly and gently, trailing the slightest headache, hardly worthy of the name of pain. I had a second or two to take off my glasses and stick them safely in my pocket before my vision changed.

  I kept my eyes on the long-nosed guy and waited. The pressure built behind my eyes and then the red-gold beam flashed out, invisible to everyone but me. The beam homed in on the briefcase, specifically striking the two ends of the handle. Then came two tiny sparks. The briefcase wobbled slightly on the stoop, but remained upright; the long-nosed guy didn’t feel the movement because the briefcase was no longer connected to the handle, and he didn’t feel a change in the weight because he hadn’t been bearing any of it.

  I glanced at my dad—he was writing in his notebook—and sidled over some more. At that moment, there was an enormous KA-BOOM, and a big chunk of the roof exploded high into the air, sparks shooting all over the place. The long-nosed guy, still holding the severed handle, got this ecstatic look on his face, the fire shining in his eyes. I swiped the briefcase in one smooth move, tucked it under the back of my jacket and partly beneath my belt, and quickly made my way through the crowd to my dad’s side.

  “I’m ready to go home,” I said.

  “Me too—it’s just as I would have imagined,” my dad said. We walked off. “Where are your glasses, by the way?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said, taking them out of my pocket and putting them back on. But the power still lingered in me, so my vision actually got blurry.

  “You’ll have contacts before you know it,” my dad said. “Just be patient.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Back in my room, vision returned to normal, sirens no longer sounding, the night pretty quiet, and Mom and Dad asleep, I switched on my bedside light and took the briefcase out from under my bed. It was one of those rectangular, hard-bodied ones, with two brass fasteners that released when you dialed the right combination. The combination lock was made of brass, just a flat piece between the fasteners with four numbers showing—at the moment, 8657. I tried 1111, just in case Egil Borg or the long-nosed guy thought no one would be that stupid, and when that didn’t work, I clicked through 9999 and then my birthday, followed by a bunch of random numbers. Nada. Even if I could cut through the hard body with a kitchen knife, it meant going downstairs in the middle of the night, clattering around in the knife drawer, and maybe waking someone and leading to a scene that wouldn’t be good. I shoved the briefcase under my bed, switched off my light, and lay sleepless for a while. Then I thought, Combination lock! And closed my eyes.

  I saw Ashanti at basketball the next day. She and her mother—her father was on a shoot in LA—had slept right through the fire, hadn’t heard a thing.

  “How is that possible?” I said.

  “My mother’s a real light sleeper, so we had the place soundproofed,” Ashanti said. “We even have quadruple-paned windows. It’s like living in…” She searched for a word.

  The country? I thought. A tomb? Before Ashanti came up with whatever it was, Ms. Kleinberg blew her whistle and yelled, “What are you two gossiping about? Five laps.”

  We ran around the gym five times while the rest of the team also ran, but through this maze of cones and dribbling basketballs at the same time, a drill that always ended in chaos.

  “Stay low,” Ms. Kleinberg called to all the dribblers. “What do you have knees for?”

  Balls began bouncing all over the place, and Ms. Kleinberg had no more time for Ashanti and me. While we ran, I told Ashanti all about Egil Borg, the long-nosed guy, the briefcase.

  “Borg’s the one who wrote that threatening letter to Heinz Mott?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You think he paid the long-nosed guy to set the fire?”

  “He’s the fixer,” I told her. “My mom said a fixer is a—”

  “I know what a fixer is,” Ashanti said. I suppose that was a strange thing about Ashanti, the way she could snap at you unexpectedly; even stranger was the fact that I was starting to like it. “The question,” she went on, “is whether Silas is ready with his combo-busting app.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” I said.

  “We need to get together,” Ashanti said. “You, me, Silas, briefcase.”

  “Yeah, but where?”

  “Your place after school?”

  I shook my head. “My dad might be there. Or he could come back any time. How about your place?”

  “Yeah, right,” said Ashanti.

  “Silas’s?”

  “Nope—his big brother’s back.”

  “Silas has a brother?”

  “Thaddeus. He’s some kind of genius.”

  “Home from college?”

  “Rehab,” Ashanti said. We ran a few more steps, came to the scorer’s table, where we’d started. “That’s five,” Ashanti said. We stopped running, huffed and puffed a bit, hands on hips. “So where?” Ashanti said.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said.

  “Girls?” Ms. Kleinberg called over. “That’s only four.”


  We began running again.

  “How about we make it six?” Ms. Kleinberg said. “Just in case there was anything on purpose about that miscount.”

  We met on Saturday at Tut-Tut’s office inside the Sherwood Street warehouse, Tut-Tut, Silas, Ashanti, me. I’d told my dad—Mom had to work—that I was hanging with Ashanti, and she’d told her mom she was hanging with me. All totally true, depending on the precise legal meaning of “hanging with.” Silas had told his brother he was doing some research, and Tut-Tut had no one to tell, unless you included Jean-Claude.

  Tut-Tut had found a space heater from somewhere, so it was nice and warm. He also produced two more swivel chairs. We sat around the desk like businessmen.

  “Wow,” said Silas. “A real clubhouse.”

  Ashanti turned to him. “How old are you?” she said.

  “Thirteen-point-two-five.”

  “Then act it.”

  Tut-Tut laughed. Had I ever heard him laugh before? He had a great laugh, the contagious kind. Soon we were all laughing. Tut-Tut opened the desk drawer, took out his can of purple paint, rolled his swivel chair to the wall, hopped up on it, and above all the faces sprayed HQ in his tagging style, a sort of warping, ballooning thing, almost like the letters might move around at any moment.

  “Exactly,” said Ashanti. “This is headquarters.”

  I had an odd thought: Tut-Tut is a great communicator.

  Now,” said Ashanti, “what are we going to call ourselves?”

  “The Brooklyn Krewe?” said Silas. “You know, with a K, like the parades? Mardi Gras? New Orleans, anybody?”

  Ashanti’s eyes shifted to him.

  “Maybe a little too… um?” Silas said.

  We sat in silence, swiveling a bit from time to time.

  “Let’s think of what we’re trying to do,” I said.

  Tut-Tut nodded. The others nodded.

  “The Sheldon Gunn Is a Monster Boys?” Silas said. He glanced around the desk. “And Girls?”

  Tut-Tut laughed again. Yes, a lovely laugh, with no hesitation or effort. On the other hand, wasn’t laughter, with that repeated ha-ha-ha, kind of like stuttering? I got the feeling that was the sort of idea my dad might have had at a moment like this, and pushed it aside.

  “What?” said Silas. “No one likes it? Let’s vote.”

  We ignored him.

  “How about the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Anti-Project,” Ashanti said.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Silas jumped up. He was turning out to be more excitable than I’d first thought. “That’s catchier than mine?”

  Ashanti glared at him, but the glare faded quickly. “Maybe not,” she said.

  We went back to sitting and swiveling. Tut-Tut doodled with a pencil on a scrap of paper. At first I couldn’t make out what it was, and then I did: my bracelet from all sorts of different angles.

  “But,” said Ashanti after a while, “is that what we’re doing really, stopping the project?”

  “What else?” said Silas. “He’s kicking people onto the street.”

  “We can’t let him,” I said.

  “No,” said Ashanti. “But I’m talking about our motto.”

  “What’s our motto?” Silas said.

  “Something wrong with your memory?” Ashanti said. “Robbing from the rich, giving to the poor? Ring a bell?”

  Tut-Tut’s eyes opened wide.

  “Do you like that motto?” I said.

  “Y-y-ye-ye-,” said Tut-Tut, getting so close to yeah that we all yelled out “yeah!” together. Then we were all laughing again, like this tight little band…a band, in fact, of outlaws.

  “Hey!” I said. “How about the Outlaws?”

  “Cool,” said Ashanti.

  “Dyn-o-mite,” said Silas.

  “Y-y-ye-ye—”

  “So we’re agreed?” I said. “The Outlaws?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ashanti. “Shouldn’t your name be in there somewhere?”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “The power started with you,” she said. “Maybe it even comes from you.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “It’s in the bracelet.” But was I sure about that? No.

  “Yeah?” Ashanti said. “Then how come the bracelet wants to be on your wrist and nobody else’s?”

  “Like it’s for a meant-to-be reason—Ms. Robyn Forester?” Silas said.

  “What are you talking about?” Ashanti said.

  “Forester?” said Silas. “Robin Hood? I mean, how obvious can you get?”

  “Zip it,” Ashanti said.

  Silas reddened, a strange look on his particular face, with the freckles actually getting lighter. “Maybe more surreal, when you come down to it,” he said.

  Tut-Tut raised his hands, pretended to shoot an arrow at Silas. Ashanti gave him a long look, possibly starting to realize how smart Tut-Tut was, something I already knew.

  “Okay, Silas,” she said, “How about this? The Outlaws of Sherwood Street.”

  Perfect.

  Ashanti laid her hand on the desk. Silas laid his on top of hers, then Tut-Tut, then me. Four hands, very different, but there was something powerful, seeing them stacked up like that.

  “Aren’t we leaving someone out?” Silas said.

  “Who would that be?” said Ashanti.

  “Pendleton’s paw should be in here somewhere,” Silas told her.

  “Can we rely on Pendleton, Robbie?” Ashanti said.

  Rely on Pendleton? That didn’t compute in any way. “The big problem is we can’t even really rely on the power,” I said.

  “What power?” Silas said. “I don’t have it.”

  “Yeah, you do,” I said. “When you handed me that sheet of paper, the one about Heinz Mott, and it burst into flames? You felt an electric ball thing in your head, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you’ve got the power.”

  “But I can’t do anything! You’ve got the laser, and Ashanti can fly, for God’s sake—”

  “It’s more like soaring,” Ashanti said.

  “But what can I do?” Silas said. “Or Tut-Tut, for that matter?”

  Tut-Tut frowned, like he’d just been insulted. “I c-c-c-c—”

  “When the power’s in him, he talks better than all of us put together,” I said.

  “Say what?” said Silas.

  Ashanti separated Silas’s hand from the others and gave it a smack.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “My guess,” I said, “is that Silas’s power is still out there somewhere.”

  “But when will I get it?” Silas said. He glanced at Ashanti, and even though she wasn’t watching him, stuck his hands in his pockets, real quick.

  “The point is,” I said, “what have you got for us today?”

  “Huh?”

  “The app, Silas. Didn’t you tell Ashanti it was ready?”

  “The one-point-oh is ready,” Silas said. He wagged his finger. “That’s an important caveat.”

  “Keep it to yourself,” Ashanti said.

  I laid the briefcase on the table.

  Silas peered at it. “Where’s the combination lock?”

  “Right there,” I said, pointing. “Those thingies.”

  “But I’ve been working on the other kind,” Silas said. “You know—that hang on lockers and stuff.”

  “A combination lock is a combination lock,” Ashanti said. “You’re wasting time.”

  Silas took out his cell phone, pressed a button or two, then pointed it at the briefcase. He checked the screen and smiled that huge metallic smile of his. “Eureka moment, everybody,” he said, and showed us the screen. Four numbers: 7, 3, 9, 1.

  “Who wants to do the honors?” Silas said. When no one spoke up in the next microsecond, he went on: “How about the inventor himself?”

  The inventor himself reached out and clicked through the numbers on all four dials until they came up 7391. “And presto,” he said. The two brass snaps stayed where t
hey were. He frowned, pressed some more buttons on the phone, again pointed it at the briefcase, and checked the screen. “These are the right numbers.”

  “Maybe give the briefcase a little tap,” I said.

  “You call that science?” said Silas. He turned all the dials, set them back at 7391. Nada.

  “Hmm,” he said. “Wonder if…” He pressed more buttons. The space heater made a sudden sizzling sound and then cut off. “Hmm” Silas said again. He repeated the whole button-pressing, phone-pointing routine again. A beeping sound came from the direction of the elevator and then it shuddered and started going down. We all jumped up, hurried to what was now just a hole in the HQ floor, and watched the elevator until it touched down on the warehouse floor below—quite far below, I realized for the first time.

  “We could hang from each other,” Silas said, “kind of a chain with the…” He felt our gazes and went silent.

  A moment or two later, the elevator started back up. It reached our level, shuddered again, and stayed put.

  We returned to the desk.

  “Nothing to be alarmed about,” Silas said. “Quite typical for a one-point-oh version. Give me a few days to work out the bugs and—”

  Tut-Tut tapped the side of the briefcase, not very hard. It sprang open.

  Empty?” Ashanti said. “How can it be empty?” She turned to me. “I thought you said—”

  “But it was,” I said, voice rising, heart sinking. “It was full of money. Stacks and stacks.”

  Ashanti turned the briefcase upside down and shook it. No money fell out, not a single stupid bill. Then all eyes were on me. Wasn’t I supposed to be some sort of leader? Not that I’d ever wanted to be a leader—class president, team captain, any of that. I was happy not being a leader. But without pushing or scheming to be the leader, I’d kind of fallen into the role and, in my very first act, blown the whole thing.

  My instinct was to apologize to everybody, tell them I didn’t want to be the leader, withdraw into the background. Were instincts usually right? Go with your gut: that was what my dad always said. Check everything and then check it again: that was my mom. On this one, I went with her.