Flight (48 page)

“Gordian knot. Who’s got time for all the
fancy stuff? Grab your coat and careful with them scraps.”

Before he enters the apartment, Bob Tom taps
the exterior wall flap back in place.

“Noby, find me a piece of paper, and a
pen.”

As soon as Joe returns with the supplies, Bob
Tom folds the sheet in half, scribbles a note about hemming the
curtains and writes, “Ms. B” in large block letters on the
outside.

“Noby, tape that over the cut, will ya, while
my nose starts workin.”

Joe has been in Prissi’s room at Dutton so,
despite the open drawers and scattered papers, it takes a minute
for him to decide whether he is just seeing a bigger version of her
dorm room or whether someone has been searching the apartment. It
also takes him awhile to find any tape, but after he does, Joe
covers the evidence of their break-in with the note.

While Bob Tom remains standing in the middle
of the living room, the teener wanders aimlessly around the
five-room flat, touching things and thinking about how different
Prissi’s life is from his. When Joe gives him a look as he passes
by in his meanderings, Bob Tom declares, “Ya gotta let em come to
you. A good dog’s a still dog.”

The old man does the same motionless inquiry
in each of the other rooms. Finally, after a quarter hour he says,
“Well, she ain’t here.”

Joe sputters.

“So, I guess we’ll go where she was.”

“And where’s that?”

“Well, I reckon we orta take a look at that
liberry she was at and that market where them food wrappers come
from in the kitchen and, probly, that school where them kids in the
pitcher in her room go to. I’d say that’s a start.”

Joe goes back to look at the pix in Prissi’s
bedroom of a dozen kids of various sizes and colors standing close
together. Prissi is in the background with a half-grin. A skinny
black boy with a keyboard wide smile, holding a soccer ball tightly
to his chest, stands front and center.

The boy in the pix, but two two years older,
and, with his shorn scalp and rough-sewn stitches, looking somewhat
the worse for wear, is standing behind the counter when Joe and Bob
Tom come through the door of the EZ-Lam Global Market. As they walk
up and down the aisles, Bob Tom keeps whistling through his teeth
and muttering “Jeezm” as he looks at the diversity of food for
sale.

“Makes squirrel and coon and even bear look
pretty damall tame. My gut’s haingry, no denyin that, but I ain’t
so sure my mind is gonna let it eat most here all of this
stuff.”

Joe reaches for a package of mbatata
biscuits.

“Let’s try these. Prissi told me she loved
them.”

Bob Tom draws back a step as if Joe is
holding a mongoose cage, which might spring open at any second.

“What is it?”

“Biscuit.”

“Damall, boy, who you foolin? I growed up
with biskits and these here shore don’t look like any bisket I ever
et before. What’s in im?”

An exasperated, but laughing, Joe says,
“Damall your own self, Bob Tom, you shore ain’t much of a city man.
I reckon flour or sumpin pretty close to flour’s in im.”

“Well, hells bells, Noby, lime, lye and rat
pizen look sumpin like flour. Here, give em to me.”

Bob Tom grabs the box and stomps toward the
front of the store with Joe in his wake.

The young man behind the counter looks at the
pair warily.

“Excuse me, young'n, what’s in these here?”
The riverman rattles the box like a maraca.

Joe interrupts, “Bob Tom, they’re fine.
They’re Prissi’s favorites.”

“Well, there ain’t no easy way to verify
that, now is there, since she ain’t around to ask.”

“Which is why we need to get something to eat
and get moving if we’re going to have any chance of helping her.
Let’s just pay and go.”

Joe looks at the young man behind the counter
whose face is flash frozen with distrust. The teener reaches into
his pocket and pulls out the pix they have taken from Prissi’s
room. Acting as if he doesn’t realize that the clerk in front of
him is the same person holding the ball in the pix, Joe points,
“This girl. Prissi Langue. She’s a good friend of ours. She lives a
couple of blocks from here. We think something bad may have
happened to her. Do you recognize her? Have you seen her
lately?”

As he tries to figure out what is the right
thing to do, Jiffy reaches out a hand for the pix. He studies it
for a long time before he murmurs, “Yes, I think, she comes in here
sometimes.”

“Lately?”

“I don’t think during the last few days.”

Jiffy pauses while he considers whether to
say more. Prissi doesn’t need any more enemies, but she certainly
could use some friends. While she was healing, Prissi had told
Jiffy about how Nancy had abandoned her. She also told him who she
thought was after her.

“Son, you’re taking a long time thinkin. How
bout you let us in on what’s got yore tongue.”

Jiffy’s body shifts slightly to the right so
that his hand is closer to the p-button. Joe notes the movement and
figures he knows what it means.

“Stop, Bob Tom. That’s not doing any good.”
Joe turns back to the counterman. “If you know Prissi very well at
all, you probably know she goes to a school in Connecticut. A
school called Dutton. I go there, too. Here. See. Here’s my
id-card.” As he hands over the card, Joe keeps talking. “Prissi and
I, we’re good friends. Bob Tom and I, we know someone, maybe even
someone from my family, may be after her. See my pix, how it
doesn’t look like me? It’s because I ran away. Maybe you heard?
Now, I’m hiding, but, when I found out from another friend what was
going on, Bob Tom and I thought that we should try to help. If
Prissi doesn’t need help, that would be great. But, if she does,
then we want to do what we can.”

Jiffy makes up his mind.

“She went below. To get away. I helped
her.”

Bob Tom looks at Joe, “What’s below?”

Joe shakes his head, “I don’t know.”

Jiffy nods his head, “Below. There’s a world
down there. In the old subway tunnels.”

“Son, I’m old, but I ain’t feeble. You can’t
tell me livin in a sewer is safe.”

Jiffy’s hand rises to his head. As he touches
his stitches he says, “Not always.”

“No, I reckon not. So, why did she go
below?”

“Because she thought it would be safer than
being above. She thought whoever was after her knew her i-tag code,
but it wasn’t that. Someone…..” Jiffy paused and stared at Joe, “…
put a TRK-R on her. I found it, the TRK-R.”

“Whoa.” Bob Tom leans across the counter.
“Pup, you’ve more’n seen her, you’ve helped her.”

“I did.”

“So, where is she?”

Jiffy shakes his head. “I don’t know. I left
her three days ago. She’d been hurt. She was getting better. She
was planning to come back up and try to get away.”

“Away where?”

“She wouldn’t say. I don’t think she wanted
anyone to know.”

Bob Tom’s face darkens, “Because she didn’t
trust you.”

Jiffy’s anger propels him forward a step, but
after looking at the old man’s face, he retreats, “No, because she
didn’t trust herself. People who have tried to help her, like her
father and me, have gotten hurt. She didn’t want that to happen
again.”

Although Joe has a restraining hand on Bob
Tom’s arm, most of the riverman’s torso is leaning across the
countertop. Jiffy’s body is pressed against the wall.

“How bout you take us where she is…or, was,
if that be the case.”

Jiffy shakes his head emphatically, “I’m not
going back down there. I’ll help you get down, but I won’t go with
you.”

“Because yore feart?”

“Because I doubt Prissi is down below, but
I’m fairly sure there are people down there that I don’t want to
meet again.”

“What kinda folks?”

Jiffy begins to tell the story of what had
happened to Prissi and himself with the zies.

After the bleeding, disoriented Jiffy had
been discovered in the tunnel by Yoli and Lavie La, and nursed for
a day, they had shown him another way back to the surface which not
only lowered the boy’s chances of running into the zies but also
offered an easier exit.

That path presents no difficulties in Bob Tom
and Joe in their descent and their going remains smooth until the
approach the Lafayette Street station. Even before they can see
into the station, they can hear a stew of shouts, songs and
screams. They approach the end of the tunnel cautiously. From where
they remain hidden in the darkness, they watch something that is
less than a melee but more than an Italo-Irish wedding. Two stocky
boys with round heads, no necks and ears as big as conch shells are
pounding something raggedy and hairy with rough-cut swords of
badboard.

“I guess the circus has reassembled. You
ready, Noby?”

“We’re not going in there.”

“Of course, we are. I’m eighty-one, have
never missed a party, and don’t reckon to start now.”

“It’s not a party. It’s a fight.”

As Bob Tom strides into the light, he turns
back toward Joe, “Well, Noby, scuse me, but where I come from,
there ain’t much difference.”

A second later, a small group of zies,
dividing their attention between the thrashing and a roaring fire
fueled with a mattress, notice the winged stranger walking toward
them. Without a word spoken, like a nest of ants, the whole group
mills in agitation for a few seconds before some rush to collect
rocks, bottles and clubs. As the armed crowd begins to surge toward
the riverman, Bob Tom stops and bellows, ““We welcome you today. We
welcome you to play. We see. We say….”

As the old man yells out the word, “Pray,” he
leaps forward toward the motley of zies, flares his wings, and
commands, “Kneel. Kneel and obey or wear my wrath like a fiery
garment.”

The crowd slows, then huddles like cows in a
summer storm. Bob Tom strides forward and, trailing behind, with
guilt as a propellant, Joe emerges from the shadows.

“Kneel or suffer, my weak and wounded troth.
Kneel before my magic fells you like lightning slays the tallest
tree.”

The stunned Joe, who is now tagging along a
couple of steps behind the old winger, is even more astounded when
Bob Tom pulls the butt end of his fly rod from its case and whips
it through the air. Except for two old men who drop to their knees,
the rest of the zies retreat several steps. As the rod slices
through the air, the riverman yells, “Beware. Its hiss is nothing
compared to its bite. Kneel in thrall, churls, or bid this sunless
day adieu.”

The riverman beats his wings and launches
himself toward the mob. Before his wings have flapped twice, all of
the zies have prostrated themselves onto the pocked and filthy
subway concrete. After Bob Tom lands at the edge of the cowering
zies, he whips his fly rod back and forth like a manic d’Artagnan.
Finally, Bob Tom spreads his legs, stomps a foot, then, with a
voice loud enough to echo from the curved ceiling high above,
bellows, “Call me king.”

“King, king,” is heard from the crowd. But,
other words, “Kill im. Kill em,” can also be heard.

A small monkey-like man, leaps from the crowd
and catapults himself toward Bob Tom. Bob Tom slashes his face with
the rod and the zie falls to the floor. Bob Tom bows before he
turns to Joe and using one wing as an impromptu cloak waves the boy
forward.

“Give way to the prince.”

Joe pauses alongside the momentarily
leaderless crowd, which is beginning to wriggle on the floor like
maggots on a trash can lid, before he hurries toward the opening at
the far end of the station. Bob Tom stands guard until Joe is safe
inside the tunnel, then he walks over to an over-stuffed chair,
which looks to have begun its life in the lobby of the Black Hole
Hotel. When Bob Tom smacks it with his rod a mushroom cloud of dust
arises.

“I claim my throne. Any subject who dares
touch my throne forfeits his life. I will return aneigh with food,
freedom and foolery.”

As Bob Tom flies toward the tunnel opening,
he murmurs, “Awright, boys and girls. Show’s over. Git up and git
back to your kind words and deeds. Thank ya all for your attention
and homage. I could git used to it, but King Damall’s got to carry
on the quest.”

As Bob Tom flies deeper into ancient inky
tube, he spies Joe ahead running alongside the moldy curved wall at
full tilt. He languidly beats his wings until he catches up,
“Damall, Noby. I never had no one beat a retreat from one of my
performances, a right good un I might add, as fast as you
done.”

“You’re crazier than they are.”

“I certainly hope so, Noby. I surely do.”

When they come to the door that Jiffy has
described, they are not surprised to find it locked. Joe rattles
the lever handle before pounding on the door itself. Nothing
happens.

“Move aside, son.”

The old man pushes down with all of his
weight onto the handle. When the door remains closed, he puts his
shoulder to it and pushes until his groans begin to sound like a
locomotive leaving a station. The ancient steel door finally moves
a half-centimeter in its rust-covered frame. The old winger grunts
in approval.

“Where’s your cue card, Noby?”

Joe keys his mypod and listens to what Jiffy
has entered. He whispers under his breath, falters and then tries
again. When he thinks he has it, he puts his mouth close to the
edge of the door and shouts in garbled Arabic.

Joe and Bob Tom hold their breaths, but hear
nothing. Joe repeats his lines in a voice so loud that he is afraid
that the syllables will be distorted beyond meaning. They wait
another minute in silence before Bob Tom bangs on the door with his
mallet-sized fist. After a dozen strikes that grow to two dozen
with their echoes, he gets a small battered lumenaid from his pak
and methodically drags the narrow beam over the seams where the
door fits into its frame.