The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor

Also by Peter Abrahams:

The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Stealing from the Rich

The Echo Falls Series:
Down the Rabbit Hole
Behind the Curtain
Into the Dark

Reality Check
Bullet Point

Quacky Baseball
(with Frank Morrison)

PETER ABRAHAMS

Giving
to the
Poor

P
HILOMEL
B
OOKS

An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

T
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NE'S
F
OR
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Y
D
AD,
W
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PHILOMEL BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group. Published by The Penguin Group.

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Copyright © 2013 by Pas de Deux. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

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Published simultaneously in Canada.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Abrahams, Peter, 1947– Giving to the poor / Peter Abrahams. p. cm.—(Outlaws of Sherwood Street ; 2) Summary: “Robbie and friends, using a magical charm, protect a Canarsee Indian burial ground from urban developers.”—Provided by publisher. [1. Conduct of life—Fiction. 2. Justice—Fiction. 3. Magic—Fiction. 4. Cemeteries—Fiction. 5. Indians of North America—New York (State)—Fiction. 6. Neighborhoods—Fiction. 7. Schools—Fiction. 8. Family life—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 9. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.A1675Rnc 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012026862 ISBN 978-1-101-60323-9

1

S
entimental crap,” my dad said, poking his head into the living room where Mom and I were watching
A Christmas Carol,
the old black-and-white version. My dad—Chas Forester, in case you're looking for him on the bookstore shelves—is a writer, so his opinion counts when it comes to stories. His first book,
All But the Shouting,
came out my kindergarten year—I'm now in seventh grade—and almost got made into a movie.
On/Off,
his second novel, was over a thousand pages long, a completely amazing accomplishment all by itself, in my opinion, and now he was working on what he called a fictional memoir, which sounded brilliant based just on that, and had already sent in fifty pages to a publisher or maybe an agent, I couldn't remember which.

“Then why are you still watching?” my mom said. My mom's a lawyer, always real quick with the killer question. But it was true. Dad was lingering in the doorway, his eyes fixed on the screen, where Scrooge was leaning out of the window and asking the surprised kid on the snowy street whether the prize goose was still at the poulterer's, my favorite moment in the movie. And were my dad's eyes suddenly a little misty? I turned for a closer look, and he was no longer there.

We weren't the kind of family that made a big deal out of Christmas. Dad screwing together the parts of the flimsy little artificial tree; Mom stocking up on organic eggnog from Ditmas Dairy;
A Christmas Carol
on TV; and Christmas music, mostly Al Green, coming through the speakers—that was about it. Pretty close to a nonevent, but this year I was looking forward to it like never before. I needed a break, wanted things to slow down for a while. My Outlaw friend Silas—the other Outlaws being Ashanti and Tut-Tut—had once explained how fast we were really moving—the earth doing a three-sixty every day and also zooming around the sun once a year, and meanwhile our galaxy, the Milky Way, was rotating, too, and at the same time the whole big mess, like a gigantic Frisbee, was flying away from where the big bang happened, meaning we were now, like, ten thousand miles from where we were when Scrooge asked about the goose, and the kid hadn't even run out of the frame yet! Silas was smart—he'd taught himself calculus just so he could make an app for popping open inconvenient combination locks, an app that had worked like a charm when we needed it, actually better in some ways than the real charm we'd had at the time—but all the same, I needed a break.

Scrooge walked off into the sunset with Tiny Tim, who no longer needed his cane, maybe because he was eating better now that Scrooge had doubled his dad's salary.

“Mom?” I said. “We're, like, a million miles from where we were at the start of the movie.”

Mom gave me a look. She has dark, watchful eyes, which look best, in my opinion, when they're softening, like now.

“What an interesting thought,” she said. “Do you mean in terms of what the movie has taught us about generosity, things like that?”

“Not really,” I said. In fact, for the first time in my life, I was edging toward my dad's take on the movie. I explained the whole Milky Way thing, probably not well.

My mom's eyes started unsoftening. “If true,” she said, “does it have any actual meaning for us down here?”

I was pretty sure it did, but no way could I argue the case.

“And even if it did,” Mom went on, “what could we do about it?”

“Hit the brakes,” I said.

Mom laughed, checked her watch. “How does Thai sound?”

“Great.”

She handed me some money. “How about taking Pendleton?”

“Sure.” Pendleton lay by the artificial tree. “Pendleton?” I said. “Pendleton?”

No response. His eyes remained closed. His tail didn't even twitch. Pendleton didn't like the cold. Nor did he like the heat. Wind bothered him, and also rain. The one time he'd seen hail had turned into a nightmare. I went by myself.

• • •

We live in an apartment that takes up the top two floors of an old brownstone in Brooklyn. Mitch, the landlord, lives on the ground floor. I heard him practicing his saxophone, pretty much all he did since losing his Wall Street job right after Thanksgiving. It's a fine building, with good bones, my mom says, on the shady side of the street and halfway up a hill. As you climb the hill, the western view opens up in stages, like you're rising in an elevator: the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan. It was only about six o'clock, but the sky was already dark and the lights of the city glowed and blinked on the water. We'd had a big snowstorm, which, looking back, couldn't have come at a better time, but in the city the snow gets removed as fast as possible—because the mayor's reelection depends on it, my dad says—and what remains quickly turns crusty and black. I crunched over a frozen snowbank full of half-buried things—a beer can, cigarette butts, a glove, poop that hadn't been scooped—turned onto the next block, went past the halfway house for guys with mental problems, all of them inside at the moment, meaning it had to be dinner-time—and came to Your Thai.

Your Thai, the best takeout in all of Brooklyn, was one of those places below street level. I went down the stairs and stepped into a world full of smells from a warmer land. The kitchen part was behind the counter at the back. In front stood a few tables, but there was only one customer, a woman bent over a bowl of soup, her face hidden by her long blond hair; nicely cut hair, I noticed, with subtle golden highlights, and sort of fluffy, like it had just been blow-dried. I'd been on the lookout for highlights lately, planned on raising the subject with my mom as soon as I'd nailed down the exact right shade of vermilion.

Mr. Nok, the owner, was chopping onions—red, yellow, and white—at amazing speed, his knife a silvery blur. He used a huge knife and wore the tallest chef's hat I'd ever seen, but was himself a tiny man, barely coming up to my chin, and I'm maybe a very little bit above average for my age, which happened to be twelve for the time being.

Mr. Nok glanced up and saw me. “Miss Robbie,” he said, and gave me a big smile. I didn't like being called that and had told him “just Robbie” a few times, but it hadn't taken.

“Hi, Mr. Nok,” I said, moving toward the counter, past the woman with soup. I had the feeling she looked up as I went by, but when I checked, her head was down again. “I'd like some takeout.”

“Let me make some guessing,” he said. “
Kaeng phet ped yang
?”

My favorite dish in the whole world—although it took me a moment to catch on to Mr. Nok's pronunciation—a kind of red curry with roast duck, the taste indescribable, at least by me.

“Yeah,” I said.

Mr. Nok laughed and pumped his fist like he'd just won some big prize. I couldn't help laughing too, even if the knife was still in his hand, making his fist-pump kind of scary if you looked at it in a certain way.

“Plus
tom yum
soup,” I said, which my mom loved, “and the grilled shrimp salad with coconut-lime dressing,” always my dad's go-to dish from Your Thai.

“Coming up right,” said Mr. Nok. He called something toward the back of the kitchen, and Mrs. Nok entered through a beaded curtain—an even smaller figure than Mr. Nok, her long black hair so glossy and alive—and got to work. “In the meanwhile,” Mr. Nok said to me, “maybe you would be so kind as helping me write notice in English.”

“Sure, Mr. Nok,” I said. “What kind of notice?”

He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “You remember when you and your tall friend—”

“Ashanti?”

“Yes, Ashanti—when you were here and things was going not too good?”

“Last month?”

“So hard for understanding,” Mr. Nok went on, “American lawsuit problems.”

“I heard,” I said, and again thought I felt the gaze of the soup-eating woman on my back. I lowered my voice and said in a vague sort of way, “Something about the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project?” Actually, I probably knew the whole story better than anyone in the world: how the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project—just a fancy name for the greedy dreams of Sheldon Gunn, who was already one of the richest men in the world—started raising rents all over Brooklyn in order to drive ordinary people out of their homes and businesses so Sheldon Gunn and his people—which sort of included my mom's law firm, Jaggers and Tulkinghorn, although not her, personally, but still a complication—could build gigantic malls and towers for other rich people, and how we, meaning me, Ashanti, Tut-Tut, and Silas had somehow stopped him with the help of a tiny charm, lost at sea in all that wildness at the end, and also without anyone knowing. Not so easy to put in a nutshell.

“Yes, yes, the redevelopment,” Mr. Nok was saying. “They wanted big, big pile money from me. And then is come a miracle—someone pushing all the money I was needing and more in here through the mail slot.”

“Yeah?” So much fun, that
yeah,
like I was one cool dude.

“But who?” said Mr. Nok. “For this I want to put a notice on wall, to thank the good person.”

“Uh,” I said, “I'm sure just knowing everything's all right and you're still in business would be enough thanks.”

“I do not understand,” Mr. Nok said.

I tried again, but he didn't get it.

“It is important to thank the good person,” he said, pushing a sheet of paper and a pen my way. “Write, please—thank you, good person. Please eat for free for the rest of your life here at Your Thai. Mr. and Mrs. Nok.”

I wrote
To the good person or persons who recently helped us out—you are welcome to eat for free. The Noks.
I read it aloud.

Mr. Nok shook his head. “No Noks,” he said. “Mr. and Mrs.”

“Okay,” I said, and made the change.

“And what about for the rest of the life?”

I added that in.

“Read again, please.”

I read it again.

Mr. Nok nodded. “Many thank-yous.” He took the notice, walked out from behind the counter, and tacked it up on the wall. At the same time, Mrs. Nok came up to the counter with my bag of takeout.

“On house,” said Mr. Nok, handing it to me.

“What?” I said. He knew? “Oh, my God!”

“For writing me the notice,” he said.

“Oh, that.” For a moment, I'd thought the truth had suddenly dawned on him and I'd hit the free-for-life jackpot, a bad and probably dangerous idea. “Um, I really couldn't, Mr. Nok.” I took out the money my mom had given me. He made a pushing-away gesture with his hands.

“Thanks, Mr. Nok,” I said, feeling like it was justified this once, since no way I'd ever be claiming that lifetime thing. I took the bag and walked out and, as I did, heard the squeak of a chair and then footsteps behind me. I turned and caught my first clear look at the soup-eating woman's face, which was hard and narrow, the last thing you might expect to be framed by that cheerleader-style hair.

I knew her. No, didn't know her, exactly, since we'd never met, more like I knew who she was, as did maybe hundreds of thousands of other TV watchers. This was Dina DeNunzio, a reporter for one of the New York stations. I'd also once seen her in person, when I'd been part of the crowd on the street where she'd interviewed Sheldon Gunn about a mysterious fire at one of his properties; although we, the Outlaws, knew it was no mystery to Mr. Gunn.

She followed me up to street level—following, beyond doubt. It felt different from just happening to climb the stairs one after the other. So I wasn't surprised when, at street level, I felt a tap on my shoulder and she said, “Excuse me?”

I stopped and turned. Dina DeNunzio gazed at me through narrowed eyes.

“You look very familiar,” she said.

“I'm not,” I told her.

“Where do I know you from?”

“Nowhere.”

I turned to go. Dina DeNunzio put a hand on my arm, but very gently, a surprise that held me there: me, a streetwise city kid.