“Pam, look who's here,” Janice said.
Pam smiled a little and stood up. “Hi.”
Janice put her doll on her shoulder and moved away.
“You're not going anywhere, are you, Janice?” Pam asked.
“No. I am definitely not going anywhere.” She walked away.
Pam turned to the others gathered around the fire. “Guys, this is Tom.”
A boy flicked a cigarette stub into the fire and wiped his hand on his jacket before he held it out to shake Tom's hand.
“You're among friends here,” he said.
“Jeffrey-Jones is a cook,” Pam said. “Sometimes he brings us leftovers from the restaurant where he works. This is Morocco.”
A girl nodded and smiled at Tom from the floor. “Hey, Tom,” she said.
“Morocco is a dancer,” Pam said.
“I'm a ballet dancer,” Morocco said, “but I'm doing clubs until I get a gig.”
“Dance for us, Morocco,” another boy said.
As if he'd asked her to pass the salt, she got up and started dancing. Someone Tom hadn't met yet started playing a blues tune with a harmonica.
“That's Rain on the harmonica,” Pam said. “Not his real name. These are all street names. He's good, isn't he.”
Still another person began to sing. It all blended together, and Morocco danced a slow, sad song in the firelit dungeon.
“What's your story, Tom?” Jeffrey-Jones asked.
Tom looked at him blankly.
“He means how did you get here,” Pam said. “Everyone has a story.”
Tom didn't know how to answer. All he had was a whole ream of fiction.
“You don't have to say anything,” Jeffrey-Jones said. “Everything's freedom here. Have a seat. The fire's free, the warmth is free.”
Tom stood stupidly until Pam gave him a little push down on his shoulder. All three of them sat.
“I value freedom,” Jeffrey-Jones said. “When I was a kid, my dad would tie me to a chair when I was a bad boy. Last time it happened, he left me tied up and went on a big drunk. When he got back two days later, I stood up in my wet pants and walked out and never went back. That's freedomâyou don't care about anything and anything doesn't care about you.”
Rain told his story, and Baby told hers. Morocco only danced, so Jeffrey-Jones told her story. Tom listened, but he couldn't relate. He had great parents, a nice home, two cars. His parents were probably planning to get him an old beater for his sixteenth birthday, whenever that was. He wasn't going to sit around an old warehouse all his life. He was going to get an education.
“Tom writes his story down,” Pam said proudly when there was a silence. “He's a poet.”
It felt good to hear her say it. Was it true? He hadn't found Daniel. The others looked at him expectantly.
Other people were dancing now. The smoke in the factory air was wavy with music and dancing. “I just came to find Daniel Wolflegs,” he said.
“Haven't seen Daniel in a while,” Jeffrey-Jones said.
Tom stood.
He didn't belong here.
“Tell him I'm looking for him,” Tom said.
He turned and walked away.
Pam said goodbye, but he pretended not to hear.
Youth, do you believe in the tongue's game?
â Act 1, scene 15
Tom didn't sleep for the cold. He rose when it was still dark. He could hear his joints creak when he stood up.
He took the long way around to avoid Samuel. He could see him there on the bench, sitting still as a statue. His hands were in his lap, and he was staring into the river as if his son were going to float by like a message in a bottle.
The Fas Gas washroom was locked. He walked around trying to find another station with open bathrooms, but they were all locked. Finally, he relieved himself in an alley, then went to the bakery.
Someone had gotten there before him. There were a few smeared cardboard boxes lying on the ground. Tom picked them up and threw them back into the dumpster. He didn't want to give the owner any reasons to not share his garbage.
It was too windy to work. There was no sign of Dreadlocks or Tattoo. Tom was cold and hungry when he walked into the library. At a desk with a sign saying INFORMATION sat a big woman wearing small glasses. She was reading a book.
“Can I help you?” she asked without looking up from her book.
“Are poets rich?” Tom asked.
“Poetry section is on the third floor,” she said, pointing to the elevator doors.
He took the elevator to the third floor, then found a study carrel near a window. He shivered over the heating vent. When he'd warmed up enough to bend, he put his head down on the desk and went to sleep.
A woman was standing beside him when he woke up.
“The library does not allow indigents,” she said.
She was dressed all in black, and her gray hair was piled on top of her head in a bun. She was tall and so thin that all you could see was bones under her dress. She might have been a skeleton but for the skin on her head and hands. Even her hands were bony, crackable.
“What's an indigent?” Tom asked, trying to sound awake.
“Someone with no place to stay.”
Tom licked his chapped lips. “I'm not an indigent.” He wasn't exactly lying. He had his island.
Tom opened his backpack and slowly took out his notebook and pen. “I want to be a poet,” he said.
The woman straightened her spine. Tom thought he could almost see breasts beneath the dress.
“See, I've got this book and this penâit's hard to explainâbut when I write in it things happen . . . I'm trying to find out if poetry is a true thing about me.”
“One does not declare oneself a poet,” she said.
“Who does, then?” Tom asked.
“Well-read persons with credentials,” she said. “People who have the verbal sensitivity, the theoretical background, and the formal training are those who declare who is a poet and who is a fraud.” She looked him up and down. “It is unlikely that a person who does not know the meaning of the word
indigent
could be a poet.”
Tom felt woozy. He hadn't eaten much in a couple of days, and nothing at all this morning. He steadied himself and tried to focus on something.
“If you faint in my library, young man, I shall be more than angry. Already the other librarians say the only people who come into this section are those who come accidentally or those who want a quiet place to read. If an indigent faints in my section, I shall never hear the end of it.”
“I'm fine,” Tom said, nodding his head. But the nodding motion made him see black spots before his eyes. He sat down, but the floor seemed to be trying to tip him out of his chair.
The woman vanished, then reappeared. He figured he must have lost time because he didn't see her walk away or walk back.
“Drink this,” she said.
“What is it?” he asked, but he started drinking before she could answer. He couldn't tell if it was a drink or soup, but his head cleared instantly.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Now, Mr. Poet, you will be leaving.”
“I have to stay,” he said. “I have a library card.” He fished it out of his pocket and flashed it. “You can't kick me out if I'm here to read.”
He didn't know if that was true.
They looked at each other. Finally, she said, “Very well. You will not disturb me with any noise or behavior of any kind. And if you are here to read, you will read. You will read what I give you to read.”
Tom nodded.
“Come,” she said.
She led him to a shelf and pointed to a book.
“That's a poem?” Tom asked, lifting the book from the shelf.
“This is a collection of poems by Christina Rossetti. Here,” she rifled through the book. “Read this one. They say it is suitable for children.”
Tom took it back to his desk.
The poem was entitled “Goblin's Market.”
He read it.
He read it again.
He read it three times, each time more slowly.
The words were things you could hold; they had weight and shape and smell: fruits, lick, melon, golden. He wrote some of the words in his book. It wasn't stealing, he decided. It was more like collecting, like stamps or comics. When he read this poem, it was easy to see why his own wasn't working, wasn't finding Daniel, or home.
He went to the librarian's desk. In the corner was a broom with eyes painted on the straw and a little gingham ruffle under the eyes like a skirt. Tom stared. He was pretty sure that the broom had winked at him.
“Did you read the poem?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She studied him carefully. “And?”
“I see what you mean about being a poet.”
She took the book without looking at it. She was looking at Tom. “You liked it?”
She handed him another book. “Try this. It's modern.”
It seemed to Tom that she looked at him almost hopefully.
The modern poems didn't let him in easily, but he didn't give up until he got something. He had to read a poem three or four or ten times before it let him in, before he could squirm between the lines, curve into its o's, hang from the tails of g's and q's, leap from period to period like rocks in a pond. Sometimes he could get between the letters and the page, and see the poem backwards: its opposite. If you didn't give up, it let you in to play. It was like a maze of mirrors, or a Nintendo game. You just had to try everything, and eventually something happened and you understood. Except you could never beat the game. And when you quit the game, you couldn't see the world the same anymore.
From each poem, Tom took a word. If he could just get good enough . . .
He stacked the words one on top of the other like blocks. Sometimes two or three went together in a row. He made houses and bridges and roads out of them. Once he looked up and saw the librarian looking over his shoulder. She was reading his word collection with slightly parted lips. Tom covered them possessively. She put another cup of the warm drink on his desk. “For the poet,” she said softly. Shortly after he drank it, he left to find Pam.
Just as the sun was going down, he found her. Pam ran a hand through her hair when she saw him coming. Tom was jealous that she could just run her hand through her hair whenever she wanted. He didn't know how she could stop after just once.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. I got an education today.”
“In one day?”
“I read a real poem,” Tom said.
“Oh.”
“No, I mean a real poem. It was about these two sisters who see goblins at dusk, and one tastes the goblin fruit, and then she's going to die if she can't get more, but the goblins won't come for her after that, and so her sister has to save her life, and . . .” He stopped. “It doesn't sound the same when you talk about it.”
“Tom, when was the last time you ate?”
“I could never be a poet like that,” he said.
“No. You can be a poet like yourself.”
Being close to her like this gave him the courage to speak his fear. “Pam, what if poetry doesn't do anything? See, I had this dumb idea that words were in charge of the world . . .”
“That's not a dumb idea. It's like telling fortunes.”
“Yeah,” he said. The wind was blowing hard. Any harder and it was just going to blow him right over.
“Tom, when did you eat last?”
“This librarian, she gave me some stuff to drink. It was different. I can't describe it, but it made me feel better for a while . . . You know how gorgeous you are?”
“You're still wearing whatever it was she gave you,” she said, laughing low. “You've got a mustache of it.”
Tom felt himself blushing and lifted a hand to wipe his mouth, but Pam stopped him. “Here, let me,” she said.
She placed her hands on either side of his head. She licked his upper lip, a small quick lick. Tom thought for a moment that gravity had disappeared and he was flying off the world. She licked again, a dry lick, like a kitten, and then again, slower and wetter. And again.
“Mmm, good,” she whispered, and she licked it all off and Tom didn't move until she was done and then he kissed her mouth and tasted the stuff again in her mouth and he couldn't stop until Pam pushed him away. He was breathing as loud as a braking bus.
“I was right the first time,” he said.
“About what?”
“About poetry, my book. I wrote in it that everything's going to be okay.” He kissed her again. He wanted to plant a flag on her. “Pam, do you love that boyfriend?”