Authors: John Gilstrap
She stood still for a long moment, peering through the library's French doors into the living room, and beyond it into the front yard, Behind her, the chair moved again, and she heard a shuffling as the boy rose to his feet.
I guess I'll just have to have those cookies all by myself." When she heard the giggle, she spun around and clasped her face with both hands. The boy was peering around the side of the desk, just his huge bright eyes grinning past the corner. "There you are!" she exclaimed, and the boy jumped the rest of the way out in a classic ta-da" pose. "You little stinker, you really had me guessing!"
He giggled again and brought both fists to his mouth-a gesture of pure glee.
"Would you like a cookie?"
The hands stayed in front of his mouth as he nodded.
"Are you going to let me give you a bath?"
Another nod.
"Okay, then, come with me."
Susan faced the kitchen and held out her hand. The little stranger showed no hesitation at all as he hopped over to her and grabbed on to a finger. As they touched, Susan felt a rush of warmth, as if someone had turned on a light inside her body, and her eyes filled with tears. She was getting through to him. This little boy, who was so frightened and alone just a few hours ago, was trusting her now.
She did a funny little Charlie Chaplin walk as she led him through the side door of the library down the short hallway into the kitchen, and the sight of her made him giggle again. She realized then that she was becoming addicted to that sound.
She took him to the pantry-a big walk-in affair lined with shelves that bore far more pasta and soup cans than they did sweets, but somewhere in here she knew they had a box of vanilla wafers-a full box if Bobby was true to his word about dropping a few pounds. "I know they're here somewhere," she told the boy as she rummaged through the shelves, rocking the items on the front of the shelves out of the way of the items hiding in the rear.
Finally she found them, tucked all the way back behind the frosted flakes that Bobby refused to outgrow. Brownie points for her husband: the box remained unopened.
"You like these cookies?" The look she got in return told her that brand names didn't matter. This kid just wanted a cookie. The expectant anxiety in his face made her laugh. "Okay, then, let's just pry this box open."
The three wafers she offered to the boy disappeared in seconds, prompting her to offer three more before declaring, "That's it for now. Nobody needs more than six cookies." She heard these words from her own mouth and smiled at just how motherly she sounded.
As she placed the box on the cooking island, she noticed for the first time a note, written in Bobby's nearly illegible hand:
Dear Suz,
I couldn't sleep and I couldn't sit still, so I decided to go out and grab a few supplies. Be back around noon.
Luv B
So, that was where he'd gone. She'd figured he'd run off somewhere to get his head together-that's how he always dealt with stress-and she was glad to hear that he was putting the time to good use.
"Okay, Mr. Stinky-Pants," Susan announced to the boy, "it's time for you to get cleaned up."
She halfway expected another romp through the house, but was pleased to see that the little guy understood when a deal was a deal. He led the way back up the stairs, using both hands to steady himself on the stairs as he scampered up to the second floor and on into the nursery. Doesn't he ever just walk?
She figured he had maybe a five-second lead on her, and by the time she caught up, he was already back in the nursery, staring eye to eye at a stuffed tiger someone from Bobby's office had bought for Steven as a shower gift. It was a plush toy-probably more expensive than Susan wanted to know-and it looked like a cross between the tiger on Bobby's cereal boxes and Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. Most importantly, this little boy with the filthy body and stinky diaper had obviously fallen in love.
"Do you like that tiger?" The boy's head whipped around to display a huge smile. Susan laughed. "You can give him a hug, if you'd like."
The boy responded instantly, gathering the tiger in a two-arm choke hold. If he wasn't careful, that grin would rip his face. "Aw, that's a nice tiger, isn't it, sweetie?" The boy nodded.
"Would you like to keep him?"
If possible, the nod became even more enthusiastic.
"Okay, then, Tiger is officially yours."
The purity of the joy brought tears to her eyes all over again.
"Okay, now it's time to get you clean."
This time Susan led the parade as they marched into the bathroom off the nursery. "Diaper first," she said, and the boy knew exactly what to do. Never loosening his hold on Tiger, he lay on his back on the little rug in front of the vanity and presented himself for a diaper change. Susan ran the water hot in the sink while she removed the messy diaper and threw it away, then cranked it down to warm before soaking a washcloth and wringing it nearly dry.
The boy made her look better at it all than she truly was. He knew when to raise his bottom and when to lower it, and Susan found herself following his lead.
The bathwater came next, and she checked and rechecked the water temperature a dozen times before settling on tepid.
"Okay, sweetie, can you climb in the tub?"
The boy hesitated a moment, clearly in a quandary over what to do with Tiger. Finally, he gently laid the toy on the floor, then braced himself with his hands on the edge of the tub and swung his legs one at a time over the side.
"Not too hot, is it?"
No answer.
"Too cold?"
No answer.
What was wrong? she wondered. Why had he stopped speaking?
As she soaped up a new washcloth and gently scrubbed him clean, she hummed softly and made sure that she met each of his glances with a smile. Hush, little baby, don't say a word, Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. . .
She took care to use soft, gentle strokes on him, avoiding a brilliant purple bruise over his left shoulder-no doubt the remnants of his collision with the tree-and worried about finding another painful spot by accident. "Did you get a boo-boo? Oh, that looks sore. Do you have any others?" Truthfully, she didn't expect a reply anymore, but the steady
stream of words seemed to keep him calm, while preventing her mind from wandering to the problems that lay ahead.
So, what did she know about this boy? He looked healthy enough, besides that one bruise, and to her admittedly untrained eye, he looked well enough fed. Certainly, he didn't look like any of the starving children they paraded across the television screen during late-night appeals for money. For what it was worth, she noted that he was uncircumcised, which in her mind translated to a poorer upbringing, and when she washed him down there, he didn't recoil from it, leading her to believe that he'd at least avoided the most hideous forms of abuse.
In a wild, disjointed thought, she wondered if bathing a child without a parents permission constituted a crime during these times of hypersensitivity to children's issues. In an instant, her pulse rate doubled. The list of laws they'd broken in the past few hours spun wildly through her head, making her dizzy, and closing an invisible hand around her heart.
Oh, my God, she thought, I'm going to jail.
She felt a kind of paralysis looming over her brain, like a dark shadow that threatened to block out any other thoughts. But what had they done wrong? All they had done was rescue a child.
And kill a man.
Well, what else were they supposed to do? She couldn't just leave this baby out there all by himself. He might have frozen to death. As it was, he was lucky some animal hadn't already mauled him to death. And she certainly couldn't let that terrible man with the bloody teeth have him.
These were stupid, self-destructive thoughts, and she knew it. She pushed them away, turning instead to the needs of the little boy whom God had sent in answer to her prayers.
"Lean your head back for me, honey," she said, and the boy did just that while she poured a stream of water over his long hair, then rubbed in some shampoo. He closed his eyes, and when it came time to rinse, he leaned way back again.
When they were done, she lifted him from the tub and wrapped both the boy and Tiger in a thick green towel and gathered them onto her lap while she gently combed the tangles out of his hair. Her breath caught in her throat as she realized that she'd never seen so beautiful a child. With the grime scraped away, those eyes got bigger still, and that look of growing contentment turned her heart to Jell-O.
"Are you ready to talk to me, sweetie?" she asked as she carefully carved a part into his dark brown mane. "You want to tell me your name?"
It was as if he couldn't even hear her.
"Well, silly, you've got to have a name. Everybody has a name." She tickled him and he giggled again, but he still refused to say a word.
"Okay, then, I'll just give you a name, how's that? A special name. We'll call you Steven. Steven Martin. My son. And you can call me Mommy."
APRIL'S PURSE FELT hot against her shoulder, as if everyone on the bus and on the street could see the wad of cash inside. In her mind, the money glowed, a great neon beacon to everyone in this miserable neighbourhood who wouldn't hesitate an instant to kill her for seventeen dollars, let alone seventeen hundred.
She should have haggled more. She should have left the dealership in a fit of moral outrage, and tomorrow, after she had her son back, and everything was safe again, she would undoubtedly kick herself for being such a wimp, but for the time being, it was worth a $1,000 a minute just to keep Justin from enduring any more fear or pain or misery than he had to. And now that she had the money for his release, she prayed that she would be allowed to keep it from the street thugs long enough to give it to the street thug of her choice.
The bus driver looked oddly at April as she made her way to the door, as if to ask if she knew what neighbourhood she was stepping into. It was a kind gesture, she thought, and she acknowledged it with a little nod before climbing down the three short steps into hell. Fear tugged at her heart as the bus pulled away from the curb, cutting her off from her only route of escape, but she calmed herself with the observation that the streets seemed uncharacteristically clear. An outsider might have been confused by the stillness of the place, but April had spent enough time on this very spot to know that the neighbourhood's primary business flourished only at night.
How was it, she wondered, that everyone in the world knew where Patrick Logan lived, and what he did for a living, but the police could never figure it out? How was it that the mayor and the city council and all those other fat cats who made speeches every four years about the necessity of strong neighbourhoods and safety for the children never seemed to make it down here in time to see what really went on? As long as the drugs and the AIDS and the used condoms stayed with the locals, no one seemed to give much of a shit; and on the occasions when a more noble resident of the city was found among the bodies in the Dumpster, the media-driven crackdown that followed never lasted more than a week-two, on that one occasion when the corpse turned out to be an assistant to the mayor.
April started down the street, then paused to make sure she had her bearings straight. As if it were possible, she would have sworn that the neighbourhood looked even worse than when she'd last left it, nearly four years ago. Gang tags marred every surface, from the once-grand stone walls of the brownstones to the roll-down metal grates that locked the homeless out of the abandoned buildings that might have provided some shelter from winter's bitter cold. Nothing was spared destruction in this war zone. Broken glass littered the streets, trash cans overflowed, and the heavy, sweet stench of trash permeated everything.
Just being here brought a flood of memories that April thought had been permanently exorcised from her brain. Thanks to the drugs that ran her life in those days, the memories were more visceral than visual, bringing back feelings of continuous fear and unrelenting cold. She'd made a living back then, such as it was, dancing in any number of the sleazy strip joints that lined the block, but she'd never once succumbed to Patrick Logan's daily entreaties to join his band of whores.
It was the one source of pride that she could take with her from those awful times, though looking back on it all now, it seemed like precious little.
A half block ahead, on the opposite side of the street, three punks in designer jeans and bulky winter coats talked and played grab-ass at the base of the steps leading to a brownstone that was conspicuously devoid of graffiti, and whose windows above the street level were free of the ubiquitous iron bars. This was Patrick Logan's house, and those coats on his bodyguards concealed more firepower than a SEAL team. As April approached, the grab-ass stopped, and the three of them closed ranks. They seemed genuinely surprised when she stopped and addressed them.
"I need to speak to Logan," April said, getting right down to business. Beneath her jacket, her heart hammered at a thousand beats a minute, but to have any chance at success, she knew better than to show it.
The two thugs on the outside turned to the taller thug in the middle. "Yeah?" said the middle one, growing even taller. "Well, I don't think Mr. Logan is taking visitors this morning." The formality of his tone made the other two giggle.