Tom was walking away when the man called, “What's your byline?”
“Tom,” Tom called back. “Tom Finder.”
“Where you go at night?” Jeans asked Tom the next day.
“I'm looking for someone.”
“Daniel still?”
“Yeah. I'm going to a men's shelter tonight, check it out.”
“Them gray, roofy places, Tom.”
“It's okay. I can write, remember? Come with me.”
Jeans nodded.
The Drop-in Shelter for Homeless Men was full of men who rarely looked up. Gravity had got to them.
It had gotten into their ear holes and filled their brains. It made their heads hang down and their hair hang down and their hands hang down and made their eyes always look at their feet. It made them slow-moving. Their words fell out of their mouths. You didn't get to a drop-in center by floating or flying or climbing, or even by walking. You dropped in, gravity's baby.
Tom figured if you stayed on the streets long enough, eventually you just couldn't fight it anymore. It probably felt good after a while not to fight anymore. You just let it press you down.
Jeans said, “Pretty close walls in this place.”
Tom nodded.
“Yup,” Jeans said. “Pretty close.”
Tom knew how you could be all right to be here. Sometimes, at night, alone in the dark, Tom felt gravity sitting on his chest, like an animal perched there. At first it felt okay because you had air in there, but after a while you had less air and soon you couldn't breathe. Maybe one day that was all you could do anymore: sleep pinned to your cot, and it didn't matter where.
One of the volunteers was speaking to a man who looked like he'd been sat on by gravity one too many times.
“You know the stains on the pavement better than you know your own face, Jenks,” the volunteer said.
Jenks didn't smile. He mumbled something incomprehensible. Tom remembered him. He was the old man under the bridge, the man who saw ghosts everywhere.
“Takes more muscles to frown than to smile,” the volunteer said. Maybe it took fewer muscles to smile, Tom thought, but those smiling muscles had to work against gravity. Besides, Jenks wasn't really frowning. Tom could tell he was just letting gravity pull his face down.
“Can I help you?” the volunteer said to Tom and Jeans.
“I'm looking for Daniel Wolflegs,” Tom said.
“Haven't seen him for a long time,” the man said. “Need a bed tonight?”
Tom shook his head. Jeans shook his head.
“I seen him,” Jenks said.
“Where?” Tom asked.
“With the dead,” Jenks said. “Floating.”
Jeans made a sign with his left hand.
“Never mind him,” Tom said. “He sees ghosts everywhere.”
“You'll never find him if you don't look among the dead,” he said.
“Yeah? Where do I go for that?” Tom asked.
“You don't wanna go there, where the dead are. Don't wanna go there.”
Tom felt all the little hairs on his back lift up like antennae.
“Where?” Tom asked again.
“You won't find him,” Jenks said.
“I have to,” Tom said. He had to for the book to be true. He had to if he was going to find his parents.
“He's been sick,” Jenks said. “Acorn took care of him.”
“Acorn? Where do I find him?” Tom asked.
“Her. No address. Over the bridge, but doesn't have an address.”
Then he shuffled away.
“Come on,” Tom said. He left with Jeans close behind him.
When they were out, Jeans leaned against the wall. Sweat was dripping from his hair.
“I'm going to find this Acorn person,” Tom said. “Coming?”
Jeans shook his head. “I meet you later,” he said weakly. “Gonna see my girl fish.” He walked away.
Tom crossed the bridge and walked among the houses south of the river. He didn't have any idea where he was going. But he was the Finder. He had the power. He concentrated on Daniel, on everything he knew about Daniel, on the things Samuel had told him about his son. He knew of a row of small, rotting houses just past the bridge. He'd start there.
He walked past house after house, knowing each house wasn't it. At the end of a long block that ended near the river, he stopped. There was something strangeâthe last house had a huge yard, and the walkway seemed to be too far to the right of the house. He couldn't see in for all the trees. Tom stood for a time, then turned into the walkway. Instead of curving in toward the house, it curved in the other direction.
The walkway was overhung by branches. The roots of the trees broke up the cement blocks of the walkway. Soon the walkway was almost completely covered in pine cones and old pine needles. The trees were so large that he couldn't see the house until he was right on it. It was a log house, and the door was ajar. Bats flew around a large kerosene lamp that sat on the porch.
Tom called into the door, “Hello! Anyone here?” He could hear a woman humming. “Hello?”
A girl with green hair emerged from the shadows, carrying a candle. “Welcome,” she said.
“I'm sorry. It must be late.”
“Peace,” she said. “Something brings you here. Come, sit down.”
She led him into a room full of ferns and tropical plants. There was a bamboo curtain, and cushions everywhere. A yellow and green bird chirped on a kind of swing. There was no cage.
“Are you Acorn?” Tom asked.
“I am,” she said. “How did you find me?”
“I am a Finder,” Tom said. He figured anyone with a name like Acorn could handle it. A fountain burbled in the corner, and Tom could see there was a turtle in it. Two cats jumped up and ran away as Tom sat down. “I'm looking for Daniel Wolflegs,” he said. “I heard he comes here sometimes.”
She sat cross-legged on a cushion and put the candle in front of her. She stared at the flame. “Yes. He comes here. He's not here now. What do you need him for?”
How could he explain what he needed Daniel for? Because finding him would make true what he thought about himself. Because finding Daniel meant he could do anything in the world, and gravity didn't win. Because finding Daniel meant he was a poet.
“His dad asked me to find him,” he said simply, and that was true, too. “He's been looking for him for a long time.”
She shifted on her cushion. “Daniel is my friend. I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to see his dad.”
“His dad loves him. He'll die looking for him. Samuel is . . . good.”
“He passed on his genes, then,” Acorn said, smiling. “There's no one like Daniel. Drugs sometimes make people mean. They just make Daniel softer. I think he's dying. I think he's dying because some people want him to. He's obliging that way.” She tilted her head. “Why do you care? What do you get out of it?”
Tom could see that he had to answer this question, and the answer had better be right. He took out his notebook, opened it, and began to read. The pages were a bit damp. Twice he looked up. Once Acorn was softly nodding her head, as if agreeing. The second time her eyes were closed and she was very still. While he read, both cats and a big dog came into the room and settled on cushions around him. It was quiet except for the whine of mosquitoes and the breeze in the trees outside.
He closed the book.
After a moment, she said, “There's an old man named Jenks.
Daniel was kind to him, protected him from some drunk teenagers who thought it would be fun to torment him. Jenks takes care of Daniel, when he's sober. He'd probably know where he is.”
“Jenks? But he's the one who told me to come here.”
She shook her head. “Just trying to get rid of you maybe. He'll know where to find Daniel.”
Tom found Pam, fortune-teller in hand, on the baby stroll. He'd run the whole way.
“You don't have the cops after you, do you?” She was wearing tight shortie shorts and a belly shirt that said S
AVE THE
B
EAVERS
. “I don't have a business license.” She laughed.
Jeans saw him and came over. “Find Daniel?”
“No. The girl said Jenks knows, but that old drunk doesn't know anything.”
“Hey,” Pam said, smiling. “Be nice.”
Tom didn't feel like smiling right now. Right now, he was angry to find her here again, talking to the other women like they were friends, like she was one of them.
“In business? What about school?”
“I quit,” she said, hard, as if she was swearing. She looked at him as if she were a foot taller than him.
“Why don't you go home?” Tom asked. But he wasn't asking, he was ordering. “Why don't you ditch stupid Cupid and go home. You remember: HâOâMâE.”
Pam stared at him. Jeans stared at him. Jeans broke out in loud, uncomfortable laughter. He punched Tom in the arm, hard. “You know these poet-types, heh, heh. You never know what outbursts they gonna have. Not their fault,” he said confidingly to Pam and pointing meaningfully to his head. “ 'Sides, he goin' nuts lookin' for his friend Daniel Wolflegs. You seen him, Pam? No? Well, gotta goâ”
“Check the abandoned Spaghetti Factory,” she said. “Squats a lot of kids these days. Landfill. Janice is there now, too.” She clicked her paper fortune-teller over Tom's head. “Hey, mister, tell your fortune.”
“Just tell me I'm gonna get lucky,” a man said behind Tom.
Tom didn't look back. He and Jeans just moved out of the way.
“Man, you got a way with words,” Jeans said to him after they had walked awhile. “But not always a good way.”
Tom felt sick. What had happened to nice? To being good with girls? And where were his parents? Why hadn't they flooded the media with pictures, pleas for public assistance? “Tom is a good boy, he'd never run away. Please help us find our son.” He had to think of something true right now, or he was going to think the whole world was a figment of gravity's imagination.
“Jeans, I've been thinking. What if words are in charge of the world? What if it's words that makes things real to us, or at leastâmaybe they're what make us imagine what is real. If that's true, then the most powerful thing in the world you could be is a poet . . .”
“Money is what's in charge of the world,” Jeans said.
“We've got money.”
“Listen, friend, that liddle stash of yours won't get you much more than a basement apartment for a couple of weeks.”
“No, I don't need money. I need to be a better writer.”
Just then he saw something blown flat against the glass of a bus shelter. He knew he'd found something. It was a card of some kind. He picked it up.
“It's a library card,” he said to Jeans.
Jeans looked at Tom strangely. “Were you lookin' for this?”
“No,” Tom said.
“Yes, you was,” Jeans said. He smacked him with the back of his hand. “You always sayin' you was just pullin' my leg, but I been watchin' you, and I be damned if you not a Finder like you say. God tryin' to tell you somethin'.”
“Like what?”
“Like how should I know? All I know is, the back o' your brain was lookin' for a library card,” Jeans said.
“Maybe.”
“It's gettin' cold at nights. You sure you don't want to sleep in my nest?”
Tom nodded. “See you in the morning.”
“You know you ain't never gonna get enough money for a billboard. You know that, don't you, Tom? I'm tellin' you that as a friend.”
They parted to take separate streets.
The Spaghetti Factory was a big empty building with boarded-up windows and crumbling bricks. Tom stood inside the door while his eyes adjusted to the dark. People had lit a few small fires on the cement floor and were gathered around it in quiet groups. Where was all the partying he had expected? Someone bellowed as if he was in pain. It echoed. The place was like a dungeon.
“Tom?”
He turned. It was Janice. She'd lost weight, and her hair was longer. She was pretty now, in a whited-out sort of way. She held something in her arm, and it was a moment before Tom could see that it was a baby doll.
“Welcome to the persons' garbage dump,” she said. “Did you come to see Pam? She's over there.”
She took his hand. As she led him, she told him how she'd walked into a hospital one day and picked up a baby and wouldn't put it down.
“So they put me in the hospital, too. Psych ward. They said I had postpartum psychosis. They put me on these little purple pills, which I mostly remember to take.”
She stopped before a group of kids sitting around a fire. They were just sitting, smoking, talking in quiet voices.