Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street (6 page)

Tut-Tut.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You scared me to death.”

“S-s-s-s-,” said Tut-Tut. “S-s-s-s—”

We stood there. I saw that Tut-Tut had very nice eyes: the shape of them, the color, and this impression of depth. Also, he was shivering a bit, his lips ashy from cold. His hoodie was of the thin kind, and he wore flip-flops way past the season for flip-flops; his jeans were torn, but not in a cool way.

“Do you live near here?” I said. “Did I see you this morning?”

Tut-Tut didn’t answer. He went to the door, peered through the glass. I looked in, too. Dark inside, but not so dark you couldn’t see the money scattered on the floor. Had Tut-Tut caught me pushing it through the slot?

“Tut-Tut?” I said. He turned to me. “This is not what…” That feeble try ran out of gas. This is not what it looks like? Such as what? A robbery in reverse? Meanwhile Tut-Tut was staring at me with those eyes of his. “What?” I said. “What?”

“B-b-,” he said. “B-b-b-b—” He pointed through the glass. “M-m-,” he said. “M-m-m—”

“I know,” I said. “It’s kind of complicated. I don’t want you to—”

At that moment came a cry from across the street. “Hey! Is that my man Tut-Tut?”

I turned, saw three boys on skateboards, all bigger
than me and Tut-Tut. They glided quickly over, clattered up onto the sidewalk.

“Hey, Tut-Tut, my man, wha’s up?” said the biggest. I recognized him from Joe Louis, a rough kid a year or two ahead of me, the kind of kid who scared the parents of kids like me into forking out all that money for private school. “Tell us a story, little man Tut-Tut.”

“Yeah,” said another. “Like how come you don’t have no green card.”

“I-I-,” said Tut-Tut, “I-I-I—”

“I-I-I-,” the rough kids said. “I-I-I-I-I-ay-ay-sombrero.” Then they circled around us on their boards, laughing and starting up on “G-g-g-g-green c-c-c-c-card,” and stuff like that.

I said, “Leave him alone.”

They all turned on me. “Who’s this geek?” said the biggest one.

“Why don’t you guys just move on?” I said, but don’t make the mistake of thinking I sounded tough: my voice was real shaky.

“Why don’t you guys just move on?” the big one said, mimicking me and making a limp-wristed move.

Then one of the others reached out and flicked my hoodie back off my face. “It’s one of those rich kids,” he said.

And the third one snatched my glasses and held them
just out of reach. No glasses, so of course my vision got blurry.

“We’ll let you buy ’em back,” said the biggest one. “How much you got on you, rich kid?”

“I’m not a rich kid,” I said, pretty close to crying. “Give me my glasses.”

“Four-eyes rich kid wants her glasses,” said the kid who had them, tossing them in the air and almost not catching them.

“St-st-st-,” said Tut-Tut.

“St-st-st-st-st-,” went all three guys, spit flying from their mouths.

This was bad, and I had no idea how to keep it from getting worse, but then came some surprises. First, Tut-Tut stepped up, getting in between me and that biggest guy. Of course the biggest guy had no fear of Tut-Tut, grabbing him by the front of his hoodie.

“St-st-st-,” said Tut-Tut.

At that moment the whole electric ball thing sprang to life in my head, the pressure getting real intense, the pain very bad, but no force lines or whatever they were connecting to my eyes, although my vision got better at once. The biggest guy shoved Tut-Tut aside like nothing, and he would have fallen except that he bumped into me and I caught him. And as I held his skinny chest, I felt those force lines, not moving toward my eyes this time
but down my arms like Tasers or something, so powerful, sparking hot off my fingertips and jolting Tut-Tut’s chest.

“Ow,” he cried out in pain; at the same time, my own pain was gone, utterly.

“What’s with you, you little wimp?” said the biggest guy. “I barely touched you.”

Tut-Tut straightened. He faced these mean kids. So brave! But he was going to get the crap beat out of him, and probably me, too. Then Tut-Tut opened his mouth, and I got the biggest shock of my life. Tut-Tut spoke, and he spoke in a strong, clear, commanding voice.

“Give back her glasses,” he said, no stuttering, no pausing, no struggle; he had a slight accent, kind of French. “And then,” he went on, “get out of here.”

Dead silence. The three rough kids all gazed at Tut-Tut, astonishment on their faces. The kid with my glasses handed them back to me, his movements slow, like he was hypnotized. Then he and the third kid backed away; only the big one stayed where he was. “You could talk all this time? You’re playing a big joke on everybody?”

Tut-Tut took a step toward him. He was much smaller than the big kid, but it didn’t seem that way. “I have a knife,” Tut-Tut said, in this new voice of his, “and I know how to use it.”

Zoom. All three of them bolted, not even taking
their boards. We watched them till they rounded a corner and vanished from sight.

Tut-Tut turned to me.

“I’m scared,” he said. He started shaking.

“Why?” I said. But I was scared too. Maybe Tut-Tut knew the reason. I sure didn’t.

“Because I can talk,” he said. He shook more and more. “What’s going on? I’ve never talked in my whole life. Except inside my head, only now it’s getting outside, too.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s good.” Maybe my lamest remark ever.

“And when you caught me just now?”

“Yeah?”

“When your hands were on my chest?”

“Yeah?”

“I felt a jolt. It went right through my body.” Tears ran down his face.

“And then you could talk?”

“Yeah,” Tut-Tut said. More tears, and suddenly his face was shining. The shaking stopped and Tut-Tut raised his hands to the sky. “I can talk,” he cried. “I’d stopped thinking this could ever happen. I can talk! I’m talking!” He looked at me, his eyes so bright. “You know what’s funny?” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

He started laughing. I laughed, too. Then we were hugging. I could feel the bones of Tut-Tut’s spine and all the ribs under the skin of his back.

“I can talk,” he said. We let go of each other, stepped back a bit. “Listen to me,” Tut-Tut said. “I’m speaking English! Also I can speak Creole.” And he spoke something in a foreign language that sounded a little like French. He laughed again, then clasped his chest and spun in a circle. “I can ask questions,” he said.

That had to be amazing. “What’s the first one?” I said.

“What’s your name?” he said.

“Robbie. What’s yours?”

“Tut-Tut.”

“I mean your real name.”

“Toussaint.”

“Cool. I’ll call you Toussaint.”

He shook his head. “Tut-Tut’s better. It’s my nickname, my American nickname.” He glanced through the door, down onto the floor of Bread where the money lay. “So did I see what I thought I saw?” he said.

“I can explain,” I said. But could I? Where to begin? The basketball game, or cut right to Sheldon Gunn’s $3,100? And while I was trying to line things up in some sort of order, my vision, still in that hawklike phase that
always accompanied these—fits? Was that the word? I shied away from it. But the point was my vision was deteriorating back to normal again, all the fine details of Tut-Tut’s face growing less fine. “Bread has to close up because they can’t make rent. Some money… fell into my hands, and—”

“Yeah?” he said. “Like how?”

“Well,” I said, my vision getting blurrier, “something really strange has been happening to me.” I put on my glasses.

“Yeah?” said Tut-Tut. “Like wha-wh-wh-wh-wh-w-w-w-w…”

“Tut-Tut?”

His eyes, his mouth, all opening wide: the look people get when they’re about to get mowed down or blown away by something terrible, like an earthquake or a hurricane. “I-,” he said. He tried so hard, on and on, veins popping out in his neck, his face swelling up. “I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-” But it was no good. Tut-Tut put his hands over his ears and screamed, a long unstuttering sound, but not speech.

“Tut-Tut!” I reached out to him. “What’s happening? Try to get back to how you were feeling when—”

But before I could even finish with whatever dumb notion that was going to be, Tut-Tut had wheeled away and taken off. He ran right out of his flip-flops, and
something fell from his pocket. Tut-Tut was very fast, the fastest kid I’d ever seen. I’m a pretty good runner, too, but catching him was out of the question. All I could do was pick up the flip-flops and the thing that had fallen from his pocket, which turned out to be a can of purple spray paint.

I took a long detour on the way home. I’ve always liked walking, but that didn’t explain this particular walk, which led me past the subway stop a block and a half from school; it was more that my feet simply wanted to go in that direction.

What I was hoping for was to see the old homeless woman back in her usual spot and return the bracelet, but she wasn’t there. I went into the newsstand and up to the counter. The man behind it was busy with a Sudoku puzzle. He glanced up.

“Hi,” I said. “Um, the old woman? Who sits out front all the time? I was wondering whether…”

“She died,” the man said, and went back to his puzzle.

My knees got weak; it turned out not to be just an expression. I felt a train rumbling down below.

A
fter that came the illness part. I remember walking home with the flip-flops and the spray paint; I remember seeing that neither Mom nor Dad was back yet; I remember feeling way too hot, and also way too tall, which was very weird, plus, everything looked yellow at the edges, like old newspapers. Then I was in my bed, and hotter than ever, and Pendleton was beside me, licking my face from time to time. His tongue felt nice and cool.

Time passed, maybe not a lot. When you’re sick, time loses its strict shape, starts ballooning and/or shrinking, like an image in a funhouse mirror. Mom and Dad appeared, standing over me. My temperature got taken—I didn’t like the feel of that glass stick under my tongue; worried looks got exchanged; headaches were mentioned. Did I have one? No, but I’d had a few lately. The worried looks grew more worried, as though
the guy who painted that
Scream
picture was doing their portraits.

Whispers went back and forth:

“Headaches? Didn’t your father…”

“Chas, must you always jump to the most…”

Whispers buzzing around like insects, but not as loud, more like insects with mufflers. That phrase “insects with mufflers” went round and round my brain, round and round my brain, and wouldn’t stop. A strange idea hit me—that I now understood stuttering from the inside—and vanished almost right away. Insects with mufflers, insects with mufflers.

Then there were phone calls. “One-oh-four-point-five.” And a taxi ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, with me lying back and the whole structure, all those beams and arches, lit up against the night sky, a scary image for some reason; and walking into the hospital, although Mom and Dad were kind of holding me up; and there was my uncle Joe, wearing a white coat and with a stethoscope around his neck. Uncle Joe—my dad’s older brother—was a surgeon at the hospital.

“Hey, cutie,” he said to me, laying his hand, so nice and cool, on my forehead. He looked like my dad except shorter-haired, heavier, and a lot older, although the difference was less than two years. “How’re you feeling?”

“Joe,” said my dad, “she’s got a fever of—”

Uncle Joe held up his hand. My dad went silent.

“How’re you feeling, cutie?”

“Not perfect,” I said.

Uncle Joe smiled. We didn’t see Uncle Joe very often, pretty much just Thanksgiving and maybe for dinner at his house in Saddle Brook (which Dad called Saddle Poop), New Jersey.

“We’ll soon see about that,” he said.

Crazily enough, I started feeling a bit better at that exact moment. Out in the hall, Dad was talking in a low voice to some other doctor: “…my wife’s father, so I was wondering about the possibility of a genetic—” The door closed.

“Let’s talk about these headaches,” said Uncle Joe. “When was the last time you saw the eye doctor?”

“Last summer,” I said. “Just before school. Right eye minus three, left minus two-point-five.”

Uncle Joe flashed a quick smile, looked a lot younger for a second or so. “And was that a change from the time before?”

“Yeah. I got new glasses.”

“The ones you’re wearing now?”

“Uh-huh.”

“They look nice.”

“Yeah? Thanks, Uncle Joe. The funny thing is when the headaches come, I don’t need them.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I can see just fine, but it doesn’t last.” And then there was the whole red-gold beam part. When was the time for bringing that up? Maybe it was all unreal, part of a fever dream. And what if something really bad was wrong with me? That five-letter word, starting with
T,
ending with
R
? I didn’t even let my mind form it, although of course my mind kept trying and trying. Insects with mufflers, insects with mufflers. The next thing I knew, I was hotter again, and a nurse was feeding me ice chips. I remembered my dad once saying, “Joe’s hopeless when it comes to that kind of thing.”

“What are you hopeless at, Uncle Joe?”