Finn (20 page)

Later that night, I saw something which changed my mind. King D had decided all the smaller cases. No one came forward when Tenant waved his giraffe fingers. King D looked tired. He got up to go, but Tenant whispered something in his ear. King D was shocked by the news. He started pacing. He rubbed his temples. He spat. He asked Tenant some questions. He told one of his bimbos to shut up. He told the other to bring him some mineral water. Then he nodded wearily and sat back down on his bench.

Tenant came back with a prisoner, a young man in a black hood. His hands were tied behind his back and he was barefoot. He walked delicately, as if his feet had eyes. Every few steps, he tried to clean off the soles of his feet, wiping them on his shins, but Tenant kept pushing him. The prisoner was brought in front of King D and made to kneel down.

King D began to ask him questions. He was very alert talking to the prisoner. Tenant kept a big hand wrapped around the man’s neck, and shook him when it was time to answer. The questioning didn’t take long. One time, the prisoner didn’t answer, and Tenant punched him in the back of the head. After that, the prisoner was crying. I could tell because the hood was getting wet where it gathered at his chin.

King D sat for a while in silence. It was time for the verdict. King D didn’t say it out loud. Instead, he silently made the shape of a gun with his thumb and fingers, held it up to the prisoner’s hooded face, and pretended to pull the trigger. Tenant nodded and took the man away. From the way he struggled, he must have known what was in store.

After that, I stopped watching. I crawled back to Silvia, who was sleeping sweetly, and lay my head on her belly. I needed to hear the baby’s heartbeat. I felt like throwing up, but there was no food in me. I felt like digging down in the clay. I wanted my fingers to bleed from clawing at the ground. What right did King D have? Who did he think he was? Not even telling the man his sentence. No one deserved a trial like that, not even a monster. There was no law behind King D, except his own, and when I finally understood that, I knew I was in the wilderness.

I
probably would have slept through the night, all twisted up, my ear on Silvia’s belly, if someone hadn’t grabbed my ankle, shouting, “Don’t tell me you done stole my stash!”

It turned out that James wasn’t the only one who knew about our cave. Some insane drug dealer—another little boy, really—hauled me out of the cave by my leg. He started slapping me and demanding his stash. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I really didn’t. I had felt around in the cave. There wasn’t anything in there except some beer cans and some other gross stuff, which Silvia and I tossed out when we put down the newspaper. I told the little drug dealer that, but he refused to listen.

That vicious punk might have hurt me if Tenant hadn’t pulled him off, lifting him kicking and screaming way up in the air and then throwing him down on the ground like those wrestlers on TV, only this was for real. I started to thank Tenant, but he put a gigantic shoe on my chest and said, “Stay down.”

We were brought before King D, and for a while I was still groggy and annoyed at being woken up and called a thief, so I was pretty rude. But then I remembered where I was.

King D asked me a bunch of questions, like what was I doing there and who was I working for. I told him I was just sleeping and minding my own business. The punk called me a skanky lying bitch, which I didn’t exactly appreciate. King D told him to shut up. I was about to explain some more when Tenant called out from the mouth of the cave. “There’s another one!” he cried.

“Show me,” King D said. Tenant pulled Silvia out from under the rock. He dragged her over by her armpits. She was limp.

“She with you?” King D asked.

There was no point denying it. Now that Silvia was out in the open, there was no protecting her. Our fates were linked.

“This ain’t no place for a white girl,” King D said. “Middle of the night like this.” He stared at Silvia, and
hmph
ed like a disappointed father. “Why ain’t she up?” he asked. Silvia’s arms were spread open because Tenant was squeezing her armpits so tight. The rest of her body was slack on the ground. Tenant took her jaw in his long fingers, tilted her head back, and answered. “She still asleep.”

King D shook his head disapprovingly. “Woman was put on earth to take care of her babies,” he said. The bimbos murmured in agreement. Then he looked at me. The moment of judgment was at hand. “What you seen tonight ain’t none of your business,” he said. “Maybe King D ought to tie you up, lay you down in the river. That what he should do?”

“No,” I croaked, although part of me said
yes, please, just get it over with.

“That’d get it for you, and for her,” he said, nodding at Silvia. “But not the baby. Crime of the mother ain’t no crime of the baby. Ain’t that right.”

“No,” I said.

“No
what?”
King D snapped.
“No, that ain’t right,
or
No, King D, you wrong?
”

He was confusing me with all the words. Every answer seemed to be “no,” but that couldn’t be right. Tears were running down my cheeks. I was so angry and humiliated. The bimbos were laughing at me. Their eyes seemed to say:
It’s too late.
“You got everything right,” I said weakly. “That’s all I meant.”

“Well, all right, then,” King D said, relaxing back into the park bench. He lolled his head back. “Hear that?” he asked Tenant. “King D got everything right.” Tenant’s laugh sounded like someone blowing into a huge glass bottle. Then King D sat up on the very edge of the bench. His weight was up on his toes. His leg muscles rippled under the exercise suit. He rested his chin on his fist, flexing his forearm and frowning like that famous statue, The Thinker. He idly spun the pinkie ring with his thumb. The ruby-eyed skull looked like a jeweled planet, spinning in its tiny orbit around King D’s pinkie.
Just like the rest of us,
I thought.

I imagined myself splashing down in the river, wrapped in plastic, the foul water seeping in, the rainbow fingers of the oil slicks on the surface closing over me like the folded hands of a mummy. King D stared right through me.

I was shivering. There was nothing to do. Everything was out of my hands now, like I was little again, and my whole existence rested on my father’s words. For some reason, I remembered the time he took me up Sugarloaf Mountain. We drove as high up as we could. Then we left the car behind and walked to the top through a scraggly grove of pines. I complained the whole way. It was foggy. There was no view. I was thirsty. I had worn the wrong shoes and I had a big blister under my toe. I told him I hated this trip, but we just kept climbing. I couldn’t see the top, not even when we reached it—the fog was just too thick. My father had to tell me we were there, that we couldn’t get any higher. He sat us down on a rock and pulled roast beef sandwiches and bottles of lemonade out of my backpack, which I had made him carry from the car.

The picnic surprised me. I hadn’t seen him pack it. He said: “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your little head.” He said he was trying to quote Shakespeare. I told him it was a fairly condescending thing to say. We sat and waited for the fog to clear, and when it finally did, my teeth were chattering, even though he had his arm around me. The wind opened up a kingdom of green land and sunlit air. We saw fields and a silver river and mountains all the way to the horizon. “I wanted you to see your country,” my father said, but what I saw was how happy it made him to show it to me.

I remembered all of that and it broke my heart. I had to swallow the word “Daddy.” That’s how much of a struggle it was not to cry.

King D sat back and fixed his yellow eyes on me. He said, “You still here?” as if he expected me to be gone.

He turned to Tenant. “Call them a cab,” he said, matter-of-factly. Tenant let go of Silvia and pulled out a tiny cell phone. It looked ridiculous in his huge palm. He had to use the corner of a fingernail to dial it. He turned away when he started talking into it, as if he didn’t want us to see him being polite.

Silvia was rubbing her eyes. “Chica, what’s all this?” she asked me.

“Nothing,” I said. “We’re getting a cab.”

T
he name on the cab license said, “Ramanujan Punjab.” Mr. Punjab was an old Sikh with a very clean white turban. His moustache was stained yellow in the middle from smoking a pipe. He was smoking it now. It made a wet sucking noise, as if he was drinking the smoke through a straw. The pipe smell gave the cab a nice homey feeling.

The cab’s squeaky vinyl seat felt like civilization. “We’re in,” I said giddily, but Mr. Punjab didn’t leave until Tenant tapped the hood. As we pulled away, he said, “Yes, boss,” even though the windows were rolled up and Tenant couldn’t possibly have heard him.

“Not a neighborhood for dilly-dallying,” Mr. Punjab said. “Where am I taking you?”

“Two Hemlock Way,” I said. It was Marion’s address. Her house was the only place I could think of. I’d never been there, but I remembered the address because it sounded like old money. “It’s in the suburbs,” I added.

Mr. Punjab tapped his turban. “A complete map of the city resides in my brain,” he said.

Mr. Punjab’s cab had a digital readout for the speedometer—big green numbers. On narrow city streets I watched it climb to fifty-five, fifty-eight, and back down to three when we were stopped at a light. It never went down to zero, even when the car was standing still. Mr. Punjab noticed me looking at the speedometer. “The engine is thinking about going, even while at rest. A workaholic, this car.” Then he laughed musically, which for some reason made me think of a goat.

We zoomed through the empty city. Mr. Punjab was a very good driver, so it felt safe and reckless at the same time. I was getting used to the idea of a nice long cab ride. The memory of the trip to Sugarloaf had sprung a leak, and now I couldn’t stop remembering things about my father. It was torture, but also necessary, I suppose, like when a cowboy in the movies has to pull an arrow out of his bleeding leg. The memories kept coming, good and bad, but mostly good. I felt like a room filling up with water. It made me think of a dream I used to have of our house flooding, and me swimming through it, up and down the stairs, around the banister, floating five feet above the rugs, the water softer than my parents’ Sunday morning bed, and not being afraid because for some reason I could still breathe—I had turned into a water creature.

Silvia lifted her head away from the window on her side of the cab. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Just kind of tired,” I said. She nodded and dozed off, saying, “It’s been a long night.”

I loved being in that cab, bouncing around on the backseat. I wasn’t even afraid of what the ride was costing.
So what if it’s a hundred dollars and I can’t pay?
I thought.
What can Mr. Punjab do to me?

I was ready to ride half the night—that’s how far away I thought Marian’s house must be from the projects. But the whole ride took less than fifteen minutes. The meter said we owed twelve dollars. Even Silvia, who always argued with cab drivers because she thought they were all thieves, thanked Mr. Punjab when he helped her out. He wouldn’t accept my money. “That would be unheard of,” he said, waving off the cash. “Your ride is a courtesy,” he said. When I thanked him, he said, “No. Not me. You owe your gratitude to your benefactor, Mr. King D.” He clucked his horn for us when he turned the corner. It was nice, the kind of thing the parents at the Field School did when they saw you walking home.