Listen Ruben Fontanez (15 page)

“It's okay,” Marty says, and reaches out with his right hand. Danny takes it and then he shakes the paws of each of my monkeys. They have an alliance, you see. Harry Meyers has nothing to fear any longer. “We got our plans too,” Marty says.

“I gotta get rid of this beer belly if I'm gonna be any use, though,” Danny says. “I never should of let you guys get me the way you did—”

“It was three against one,” Marty says. “And we got tricks—”

“The spots,” Ruben whispers. “Show him the spots.” “Once is enough.” Marty's voice is sharp. Ruben is quiet.

“But I don't know what Jackson's brother looks like, see, and in the dark, you—”

“It's okay. You were just doing what we would have done, right?” Marty says. “We should've identified ourselves—”

Then Danny explains to them about living with me for a few days, until I am better, and Marty suggests that they share the assignment. He says that if Danny has to go to work in the morning, they can return and take a shift. I sit on the edge of my bed and wonder if I will be able to sleep again. Now that I have lost a day my schedule is off. Well. That is all right also. I can watch over Danny while he sleeps and make certain he does not attack other visitors. Carlos is much bigger than Ruben. I could not assure a happy ending there.

“I bring you the surprise,” Ruben says. He is sitting next to me while Marty and Danny make their arrangements.

“Of course,” I say. Manuel is in the corner again, smoking. Perhaps I will talk to Mr. Greenfeld. I cannot be responsible, after all. I wonder who else will be visiting today. Morris is late.

From under his shirt my monkey slips something. “I seen you,” he says, and puts the glossy papers in my lap. I turn the night-table lamp on, so that my likeness may look also. “This the surprise,” Ruben says. In my lap are the pictures from the bulletin board. I laugh. They are not the ones I will request when the year ends, but the others, the ones that tell of the future. “When we finish with our work, we sneak into the school and I get them for you from the wall. It give you something to read while you sick.”

“Thank you, Ruben,” I say, and not without pleasure, I look at the full-color pictures which are so familiar to me. With Danny only a few feet away I read again about the gift of life from the dead: the man's kidney rushed into the body of Mr. Wolf Sturmer of Cleveland. If he is restless, I will let him read sections also. We should share such things. Ruben smiles. His gift, he sees, has pleased me. Wolf Sturmer's body struggles against the tissue of an alien kidney, and, temporarily victorious, he puffs happily on a cigar. Ceramic hip joints, silicone rubber breasts, blood pressure regulators: Harry Meyers may have need of them, after all. I do not hold it against you, Sarah. How could you know. If I go beyond sixty-nine it will have to be on my own. It is best that way. “Nobody seen us,” Ruben says. “We hide in the laboratory when the janitor go by. We have fun going through the building with nobody there.” He laughs. “Manuel, he want to hide in Mr. Greenfeld's closet to wait for him in the morning, but we get him out—“A woman's life is prolonged by being tied up to a pig's liver. The pig's snout sticks out from under blue sheets and it amuses Ruben. Silently, Manuel has crept to us. He leans over Ruben's shoulder, entranced by the pictures. He has stopped smoking. Marty and Danny continue their discussions while, with my monkeys, I consider the question put to us: will women be content with prefabricated embryos?

“We be going soon,” Ruben says to me. My eyes close momentarily, and this time I see nothing. “We just come by to check.” Manuel holds a picture in his lap: a wine-red monkey fetus is being withdrawn from its mother's womb. Gently, the doctor's fingers lift its veined body. Manuel's eyelids rise.

“He thinks that one of the sewer babies,” Ruben says to me.

“Of course,” I say. Perhaps I will get copies made and give them to the old men who walk to the synagogue each morning so that they too will be prepared. It is something to consider. Manuel's finger traces the outline of the fetus across the page. The colors are vivid. When I have removed my pictures also, there will be little in the school to interest students. Before I leave I should give my suggestion concerning mirrors to the principal. It would be something.

“In the projects lots of the girls put them down there,” Ruben is saying. “Sometimes they not born all the way.”

“Of course,” I say.

“Manuel, he think if you go crawling around the sewers and tunnels under the city, you gone to find armies of these kids that been growing up there.”

“It is a thought,” I say. I place the article on my night table. I feel the glands move along my throat. It would be nice if the fireplace had not been sealed over, I think. We could have a good talk now, the five of us. Manuel hands me the page. He goes back to his corner. “What you think?” Ruben asks. “You think it really could happen—?”

“It is a thought,” I say.

Ruben nods. “There enough garbage and small animals there for them to live on, but most of them, when they get born, the women wrap them in newspapers before they drop them down.” He is thinking.

“It could happen,” Marty says, joining us. “There've been kids brought up by wolves and things.”

“Indians,” Ruben says, his eyes beginning to glow. “You have told us.”

“And once there were a few packs of them roaming around, they could take care of the new ones that got dropped in—but what you have to think about is how they get past that first year or so, when they can't cope for themselves, right?” He stops and looks at me.

“What you think, Mister Meyers?” Ruben asks.

“It is a thought,” I say.

“Okay, kids,” Danny says, and his hands actually touch the shoulders of my students. “How about taking off now so Mister Meyers can get some rest. We'll see you tomorrow morning, okay?”

“Marty is an expert on the American Indian,” I say. I will contribute something also, I have decided. It is not fair merely to take from my visitors, to be only an audience. “He knows a great deal.”

Ruben's eyes shine. “That the truth, mister,” he says to Danny. “He can walk up high with the steel men and not get scared, like the Indians do in Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn—?”

“Gowanus,” Marty explains. “Where all the Mohawks live. North Gowanus, actually—you're from Brooklyn, right?”

“Yeah, but I never—”

“If you come with us when Meyers here gets well, I'll introduce you to some of them.”

“They are beautiful,” Ruben says. “Their hair is like coal, their skin is copper.”

Marty nudges me with his elbow. “You know what I think is gonna happen?” he says to the others. The room is hushed. “I think the Indians are waiting, just waiting. And they're gonna be here when we're all dead and gone, and then they're gonna go down into the sewers and rescue all the packs of wild kids.”

Manuel edges forward. His eyes are on fire. Ruben is nodding vigorously. “We are part Indian,” he says, proudly. “Marty has told us. Indian and Spanish and Negro.” He looks at Manuel. “But more Indian than Spanish and more Spanish than Negro—”

“Yeah,” Marty says. “Sure, Ruben baby. The Spanish weren't so hot to the Indians either, you know.”

“That is why Manuel and I gone to learn to walk high,” Ruben continues, and he steps lightly across the room, one foot behind the other in a straight line. “Someday we will own the land again, Mister Meyers. You gone to see. It has been written.”

“It is a thought,” I say.

“C'mon, c'mon,” Marty says. “We gotta settle down for the night and let Meyers here rest up.”

“It has been written,” Ruben repeats. “You gone to see, Mister Meyers.”

“Cool it, Ruben—let him get some shut-eye.”

Perhaps, I think, the great Don will return to lead the packs of children. Marty would appreciate the thought, I know. The book is not on my desk. I had intended to give it to Ruben, though I do not recall doing so. I look through the three shelves of my bookcase, next to the desk, but it is not there either. I check my night table. “C'mon, c'mon,” Marty says. “Let's split out—” He seems nervous. I ask if anybody has seen a copy of
Don Quixote
in the room, and my monkey exchanges glances with his leader. Manuel slides more deeply into his corner. It seems ridiculous, yet I know at once what has happened. Harry Meyers has not been a teacher all these years for nothing.

“You took the book,” I say to Marty. “This morning.”

He shrugs.

Danny moves toward him, his arm pulled back, his fist clenched. “Hey,” he says. “If you kids are stealin' from—”

“Hold your horses, Danny boy,” Marty says. “It's only a book.” He looks at the floor. His back is to the fireplace. “What do you think—people
own
books? What makes you think it belongs to you, huh? Books are books, Meyers. You're supposed to be the teacher, you should know that, right? So explain to me: how can you
own
a book somebody else wrote, huh?”

Danny is about to grab my young scholar. “It is all right, Danny,” I say. “I must have left it at school. It is all right.”

“If you need it so bad, we'll get you another copy,” Marty says. “I'll give Manny the order, right?” He adjusts his shoulders and picks at his braces with his fingernail. “I'm surprised at you, though, Meyers, thinking that way.” He is himself again. His uneasiness is gone. “The Indians, see, most of them didn't think things like books belonged to anybody. The same with land. That's how come they got cheated so much.” Ruben moves his head up and down. His education continues, you see. Danny does not seem very certain of things. Well. I will reassure him later. “Private property,” Marty says. “Where's it get you in the end is what I want to know—”

“Yeah? Well you just watch yourself,” Danny says. “Indians or no Indians. You write your reports for school—I got nothing against that, but you leave your cock-eyed theories behind if you want to be able to come here again.”

Marty laughs. “Sure,” he says. “I'm with you, Danny boy, don't you know that?” He takes him into his confidence, apart from his two monkeys, and whispers to him what he has already told me, about keeping his assistants in line. That is the reason for the speech we have just heard. His stories, Danny admits, patting him on the back, have something to them. He predicts that Marty can be a marvelous salesman someday, if he wants. He opens the door. “It has been written,” Ruben says again. “You gone to see, Mister Meyers. Someday—”

On my night table I look at my new reading material. There was no real need to complain about the loss of my book. I should have considered more carefully. “Listen,” Marty says and once again Harry Meyers is in his confidence. “I want things to be straight between us, you understand?”

“Of course,” I say.

“About the book, I mean.” I nod. “We're all entitled to our theories, right?”

“Of course,” I say.

Ruben is speaking to Manuel of the sewer babies and the great day on which they will all be released into the sunlight. “I mean, we understand one another, right?” His breath is sweet, though I cannot place the fragrance. I realize that I have forgotten once again to look into my monkey's eyes, to see what color they are. He will be back in the morning, though. When I first began teaching at Public School 50 the gypsies lived in storefronts along Broadway. Their scarves were of beautiful silk, brightly colored. They wore no shoes. If you did not watch out they would come in the night and steal your children. Ruben would have loved them, I know. Perhaps Harry Meyers did find some pleasure in his teaching then. But it was not much. “I just didn't want you thinking I was one of these guys on some kind of Give-America-Back-to-the-Indians Crusade. That's a lot of crap, right?”

Ruben is speaking to Manuel of Señora Rosa's prophecies. Danny is becoming impatient. “And don't let any of the propaganda the National Indian Youth Council puts out fool you.” If visitors continue to come, perhaps I will stay indoors for a while. At least until the end of winter. The subways, the slush, the ice: there is no need for such things, after all. I am entitled. “They're young and nationalistic, sure, but if they've got three thousand members they've got a lot, right?” I wonder what Manuel's sister looks like. It is something I can ask Ruben tomorrow morning. It is too late now. If they are all here together when I awake, perhaps Danny will ask me to tell the story again. It would be a way for Harry Meyers to contribute something. “The way I see it, and here I'm not just telling stories, they're not gonna have to take it back, and nobody's gonna give it to them.” He licks his lips. I am grateful to Danny, you see. I only hope he will be able to sleep well in the easy chair. I will reassure him again about the book. Marty's voice rises. “Like I said before, if you don't believe in property and competition, you don't have much chance to cope in this world, right? So they're waiting, that's all. Waiting, you hear me—?” His hand tugs at my bathrobe sleeve. There is urgency in his voice. “They'll still be here when the white men are all under the ground, when—” He seems aware suddenly of his intensity, the passion with which he has been speaking, and he breaks off. “It's just a theory,” he says, shrugging. “We're all entitled, right?” His green bag is slung over his shoulder. “And we know all that crap about confusing our wishes with—you know—” He moves away from me. “Every joker has to have his way of coping in this world, right, Meyers?”

“Of course,” I say.

He winks at me. “One of these first days,” he says, and gives me a brief wave of farewell. Let me tell you something: there will never be enough policemen to guard the hospitals. I am certain of it. The picture of what will happen, though, is too much for me to contemplate now. It is enough if I think about returning to school. I laugh to myself. Harry Meyers cannot even do what he does not want to do. Well. It is something to think about.