Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street (10 page)

“Robbie.”

“Hi, Mitch.”

Then he noticed Tut-Tut, realized that Tut-Tut was with me, and gave him a long look. I went inside, motioning Tut-Tut after me. He followed. I closed the door; by that time Mitch had turned and was walking off.

“The landlord,” I said on the way up the stairs. “Not that bad of a guy, really.”

Tut-Tut grunted, a single unstuttering sound, actually quite pleasant for a grunt.

I like our apartment, but it’s nothing fancy, not as apartments go in this neighborhood. Fancy is high ceilings and polished hardwood floors and Persian carpets and tall windows with amazing views, and we have none of that, except for the hardwood floors. And one Persian rug, not very big, and stained forever by Pendleton during his younger days. All in all, nothing fancy, but Tut-Tut stood in the doorway, amazed.

“It’s nothing fancy,” I said, maybe not the right remark, but what was? At that moment, Pendleton ambled in. He saw Tut-Tut and shrank back. Tut-Tut shrank back, too.

“Guys,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

After not too long, I got Tut-Tut to sit at the kitchen table; Pendleton settled in underneath. I made hot chocolate—not in Monsieur Señor’s class, but not too bad—poured it into two mugs, and set one in front of Tut-Tut. These were mugs I’d never taken much notice of—I think my mom got them in Vermont—but Tut-Tut seemed mesmerized by his. He ran his fingertip over the shiny glaze and traced the outline of the happy-looking cow.

“Drink up while it’s hot,” I said, sounding like a mom myself.

Tut-Tut took a little sip. The expression in his eyes changed: he liked it. He took another sip, liked it even more. Were these his first tastes of hot chocolate?

“I’ll just go up and get your stuff,” I said.

I went upstairs, took Tut-Tut’s flip-flops and his spray paint from under the bed. The flip-flops were falling apart, and what good were they in winter? What Tut-Tut needed were sneakers that fit. I had extras in my closet, and our feet looked to be about the same size. The logical thing was to kick off my own shoes and try on the flip-flops, just to make sure, which I did.

Then, as I stood in front of my mirror in Tut-Tut’s flip-flops—they fit fine, by the way—something illogical started to happen. I had three or four pairs of sneakers, maybe more, in different colors, and it occurred to me that Tut-Tut, being artistic, might have color preferences, so I called downstairs, “Tut-Tut, come up here for a sec.”

Only that didn’t quite happen. What came out of my mouth was “T-t-t-t-t-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-” No matter how hard I tried to say “Tut-Tut, come up here for a sec,” I couldn’t. I could only sound just like Tut-Tut.

I
’d never been so scared in my life. This… power, or whatever it was—obviously I didn’t really understand it, but one thing I’d taken for granted was that it had to be a force for good. Now here I was standing in Tut-Tut’s flip-flops, and I couldn’t talk. My first reaction was to kick off those flip-flops like they were on fire. Totally crazy, because how could two crappy pieces of rubber or whatever flip-flops were made of have anything to do with stealing my ability to speak? I opened my mouth and tried to say the first thing that popped into my mind, which was, “Please don’t let this happen.” But all that came out was “P-p-p-p-p-p.…”

I saw my face in the mirror, a terrified version of me I hardly recognized. It was like my whole life I’d been standing on a nice safe floor and all the time just underneath there’d been a pit of fire or a nest of snakes or some other horrible something.

“P-p-p-p-p-p-,” said this cracking-up me in the mirror. And then, just when I was on the point of collapsing in a screaming heap, I thought of the bracelet. I grasped the silver heart between my index finger and thumb. It was hot, almost too hot to hold, but I held on to it anyway. In fact, I couldn’t let go; it seemed to be locking my hand in place. And as I held the silver heart—or it held me—I saw something amazing: wisps of smoke rose from Tut-Tut’s flip-flops and they began to melt. I can’t be sure about the time, but it seemed to pass very quickly, from the start of melting—a strange, heatless melting—to the complete disappearance of the flip-flops, nothing left at all, not even the smoke.

“Oh, my God,” I said. Not “o-o-o-o-o,” but the complete sentence, no problem. Meanwhile the silver heart was cooling fast; my grip on it unlocked and let go. “Fourscore and seven years ago,” I said, just to make sure I was back to my old talking self. Fourscore and seven years ago—however many years that was, exactly—came through loud and clear.

I sniffed the air, smelled a rubbery smell, not too strong. I opened the window, let in the cold wind, and in moments the rubbery smell went away.

Back to normal. But just to be sure, I said, “Our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation.” I took a deep, deep breath and let it out slow. “Everything’s
going to be all right,” I told myself out loud. I went into my closet, chose a pair of white sneakers with navy trim, grabbed the spray paint, and started downstairs. And on the way, I got hit by an idea, maybe obvious, but exciting anyway, all about Tut-Tut and those flip-flops of his, now gone forever. I took the last steps two or three at a time and raced into the kitchen.

Tut-Tut was still sitting at the table, clearly finished with his hot chocolate, because he was holding the mug upside down and examining the bottom.

“Hey, Tut-Tut!” I said.

He looked up. “W-w-w-w-w-,” he said. “Wha-wha-
wha—?”

Which took the wind out of me; I’d been so sure that the disappearance of those stupid flip-flops would free up his speech. That was the first time I had the conscious realization that the power was a flaky kind of power.

I put the spray paint on the table. Tut-Tut nodded and tucked it away. “And here are these,” I said, holding out the sneakers. “They’ll fit.”

He shook his head.

“Come on,” I said. “I don’t need them.”

“N-n-n-,” he said.

“I’ve got others,” I told him. Suddenly it was very important that Tut-Tut took those white sneakers with navy stripes. I couldn’t remember where or when I’d
gotten them: I’d never even liked the stupid things. Which wasn’t the reason I wanted Tut-Tut to have them. Or could it possibly have been a small part of the reason, that I hadn’t even been aware of? My dad talked about the subconscious sometimes, this shadow self in each of us that’s not always lined up with the conscious self. I remembered hearing that the second three or four hundred pages of
On/Off
were about what the first three or four hundred pages were about, except from the subconscious point of view. But I really didn’t understand much about that, and I also didn’t want to think that my motive with the sneakers was mixed in any way.

“Look, Tut-Tut,” I said, bending down and yanking off those way-too-big cast-offs he was wearing, “just take them. It makes total sense, and I don’t want to argue.” Tut-Tut’s feet were bare, very nicely shaped feet and pretty clean. I slipped on the white sneakers with the navy trim, laced them up, and rose.

Tut-Tut gazed down at his feet. He turned them this way and that, viewing his new sneaks from different angles. Then he looked up at me. The perfect word for describing the expression on his face came to me: dignified. It was a dignified expression. And I realized at that moment that Tut-Tut was dignified in all sorts of ways.

“Th-th-th-,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” I told him.

I offered more hot chocolate or something to eat, but Tut-Tut refused. Soon after that, he left, knotting the laces of the cast-offs together and slinging them over his shoulder. I went up to my room, suddenly very sleepy. Just before I fell asleep, I said, “Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition,” just to make sure I could. And I could, like a champ.

We had an intrasquad scrimmage at practice after school the next day, Ms. Kleinberg reffing. She divided us up by uniform numbers, odds against evens, meaning Ashanti, number six, was on one team and I, number thirty-one, was on the other. I’d passed her earlier in the halls, and she hadn’t looked at me. And now, during the scrimmage, she wasn’t looking at me either, just waltzing by a couple of times for easy layups.

“Position, Robbie,” Ms. Kleinberg called. “Get those feet in position.”

Ashanti took a pass, dribbled down on me again. I concentrated on my feet, trying to get them square to Ashanti’s path, but Ashanti’s path changed at the very last split second and she blew by me one more time. Easy layup. And again without seeming to see me, or even be aware of my existence. That was the most infuriating part.

“Arms, Robbie—get those arms up!”

Plus I was getting real tired of Ms. Kleinberg yelling at me from courtside. Why couldn’t she yell at someone else? Were they all playing like LeBron James? While I was having those thoughts, the ball bounced my way and I grabbed it and headed down the court. For once I hadn’t even the slightest wish to pass, only wanted to spring up and jam the ball through the hoop (an absurd fantasy, of course, since I couldn’t get within two feet of the rim jumping my highest). And smash the glass to smithereens, too, while I was at it, as I’d seen on TV once or twice—also part of my fantasy, maybe the best part.

But in the end, I didn’t even get close to the basket, never mind actually putting points on the board. I’d barely reached the top of the key when Ashanti swept in from the side and stole the ball, just plucking it clean out of the air in mid-dribble.

Ashanti circled around and started dribbling the other way, easily faking out a player or two. I took off after her, so mad I wasn’t thinking at all. Ashanti was a way better athlete than me—I was under no illusions about that—but I’m a pretty fast runner, an ability I’ve never worked on, just had from when I was little. And of course Ashanti was dribbling the ball, and that slows anyone down.

I got closer and closer, till the squeaking of Ashanti’s
sneakers on the hardwood seemed to grow very loud, and finally caught up to her just as she was taking that last little stutter step and gathering the ball—with her right hand at the bottom and her left hand on the side, the way Ms. Kleinberg had taught us—before going up for the shot. I reached in for the ball, trying to knock it away from her just as she’d knocked it away from me, but I missed completely, hitting her in the side instead. Then somehow our legs got tangled up. We both went flying—the gym spun in a complete three sixty in front of my eyes—and crashed down on the floor, real hard.

We lay there side by side, making those noises people make when they’re hurt. But not badly hurt; at least I wasn’t. The other kids came running up. Ashanti turned to me—our heads were only a couple of feet apart—and glared.

“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” she said.

“Right back at ya,” I said. Pretty lame, I know, but nothing better occurred to me.

Ashanti rose with a grunt of pain. Then, not actually looking at me, she held out her hand. I took it. She helped me up, just the way the jocks do it on TV.

Ms. Kleinberg blew her whistle. “Ashanti shooting two,” she said.

We took our places around the key, Ashanti at the line.

Ms. Kleinberg glanced at me. “Nice aggressive play, Robbie,” she said. “Sometimes a foul’s the right move.”

She handed Ashanti the ball. Ashanti hit two. I took the ball, inbounded it to our other guard, and headed down the floor. Ashanti elbowed me as I went by, but not hard, in fact sort of friendly-like, if elbowing could ever be friendly. I suddenly got hot—if that’s what it was: my first-ever time being hot, so I couldn’t be sure—and hit three quick baskets before the final whistle. No electric ball, no red-gold beam for aiming. Just me, firing it up there.

Ashanti was waiting for me on the street when I left school. She gave me one of those cool gazes of hers, looking down, on account of her height advantage. “There’s stuff about you I don’t like,” she said.

“I picked up on that,” I said.

Then came a surprise. Ashanti shook her head and started laughing. “See?” she said. “And then you do something like that.”

“Like what?” I said.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Whether we like each other or not, I mean. The point is we’re in this together.”

“In what?” I said.

Ashanti didn’t answer, waited for some kids coming out of Thatcher’s front door to go by. Then she came a
little closer, lowered her voice. “Stopping the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project, for God’s sake! What else?”

“Stopping the project? What are you talking about?”

“Do you think it’s just Mr. Nok and that soup kitchen? Sheldon Gunn is driving people out of their places all over town.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because of this blog I found.”

“What blog?”

Just as Ashanti started to answer, Ms. Kleinberg came through the door. She saw us, paused for a moment, then came down the steps, quick and light on her feet. “Way to leave it on the court, girls,” she said as she went by. “Nice practice.” She crossed the street and went around the corner, moving at twice the speed of all the other pedestrians.

“Leave what on the court?” I said.

“No clue,” said Ashanti.