The Brave Read online

  The pain from Hoffer’s illegal uppercut was a distant ache. He almost enjoyed feeling it. Thanks, Furbag, if you hadn’t done it, maybe I wouldn’t be on the road now, finally getting out of this dump. For good, this time.

  For seventeen years, he thought, all my life, she always dragged me back to this sad-sack Reservation when things went wrong for her, and they always did. It was always just for a week that turned into a month, a summer that stretched into a year. Mom would always say, Don’t worry, Sonny, this is just a pit stop in the big race, we’ll find our own special place real soon, but first I need to nourish my soul, touch the good earth, breathe the clean air, talk to the real people, before we face the world again.

  The world always kicked us back to the Res again. Syracuse. Santa Fe. Leave school, leave my friends. Anytime Mom couldn’t get her life together, or sell her jewelry, she’d pack us up and head back to the Res. From Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Santa Cruz. Why bother making friends? There was always room at Uncle Jake’s—he’d take us in and feed us. And after a while she’d take off again and leave me. Just a few weeks, Sonny, she’d say, give me a few weeks, Sonny, I’ll send for you, there’s a gallery in SoHo, New York City, loves the earrings. That was six months ago.

  Thinking about his mother dulled his senses. He didn’t feel the vibrations under his feet until the truck was bearing down on him, a speeding shadow without headlights. He leaped out of the way. The truck made a screaming half-turn and stopped in a gravel storm.

  “Sonny.” Jake clambered down stiffly from the cab. He was wearing the tee-shirt and boxer shorts he slept in. His skinny old legs were bean poles in the moonlight. “Where you going?”

  “New York. She’s gotta sign the papers now.”

  “She won’t do it, Sonny.” Jake’s voice was tired. “You gonna have to wait till you’re eighteen.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “You know better, Sonny. She lost her father and brother in the Army, she ain’t…”

  “And my dad. Only Indians count?”

  “Wasn’t around long enough to count.” Jake’s false teeth clacked together. That shut him up, thought Sonny. His sore spot. Mom was always his favorite niece, she was everybody’s favorite, smart and beautiful and talented, and the first girl off the Res to go to a big-time white college. And then she had to have a baby with a white guy. Every time they look at me, they remember that.

  “C’mon back,” said Jake.

  “I’m going.”

  “Maybe I been too hard on you, Sonny.”

  “It’s not you, Jake. I got to do this.” He suddenly realized he would miss the old man.

  “I’ll drive you to Sparta.”

  “I can walk.”

  “Catch an earlier bus. Be in New York sooner.” The old man looked sad.

  “Why not?” Sonny unhitched his pack and slung it into the back of the truck. He climbed up into the cab.

  They were almost off the Reservation before Jake said, “You think the Army’s going to be different?”

  “Be different from this.”

  “Still got to get along with people, follow rules, control yourself.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Maybe.” The tone in his voice was doubtful. “How’s it going to be different from football?”

  “Coach didn’t like me.”

  “Didn’t like you punching out people.”

  “Nobody walks over me.”

  “You take what you got to take till your time comes,” said Jake.

  “Maybe that’s the Redskin way. Not my way.”

  Jake grunted and turned off the dirt Reservation road onto the paved county highway. They were silent until the lights of Sparta appeared on the horizon. Jake said, “No man ever got to be a Running Brave without taking a dangerous journey. Maybe this is it for you.”

  “No more old stories, Jake.”

  “Woods, city, don’t matter. Got to survive, get strong as the buffalo, speedy as the deer, wise as the owl. Be a leader for your people.”

  “Sell it to Hollywood.”

  They were in Sparta. Jake stopped for the first red light of the trip. He turned to Sonny. “You got to follow the Hawk.”

  “I’ll look him up in the phone book.”

  “Find the Hawk inside you and let it loose and follow it.”

  At the green light, Jake turned the corner. A Greyhound was idling at the curb outside the bus station. The driver was loading baggage.

  Jake said, “Good luck, Sonny. You can always come back.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.” Sonny climbed out of the truck. “Thanks for the ride.”

  By the time Sonny came out of the station with his ticket, Jake was gone. The driver looked him over, registering the beaded headband, the ponytail, the embroidered denim shirt. His voice was hard. “No booze on my bus.”

  “Don’t have any.”

  “Then we’ll have no problems, boy.” He punched the ticket.

  The closer to the Res, thought Sonny, the more they hate Indians. For the first hour or so, he knew, no one would want to sit next to him. After that, everybody would want to sit next to an Indian, especially kids. He climbed into the darkened bus and took a window seat in the rear.

  He opened his backpack to get his headphones and cassette player. His sketchbook and the box of pencils and charcoals were near the top. He had packed them last, unsure if he really wanted to bring them along.

  Leave it, he had thought, it’s the old scared Sonny, trapped on the Res, hiding in the backseats of junkyard cars, drawing birds and leaves and sometimes even Running Braves.

  He had finally decided to bring the sketchbook, but throw it away when he got to the city. He didn’t want to leave it for someone back there to find and say, Look what goes on in that crazy, half-breed brain.

  He slipped a Grateful Dead tape into the player. It had been his dad’s favorite music, in college, when he’d met Mom.

  Sonny was asleep before the first tape ran out.

  3

  SONNY STEPPED OFF the bus and the city smacked him in the face, an explosion of moving bodies and sudden noise, gusts of diesel fumes, hot grease, sick flesh. He fought panic. When you’re going into the woods, Jake always said, first cut a path with your eyes.

  He tracked a skinny kid with cinnamon skin gliding out of a shadow to block his way.

  “Welcome to the Apple.” He offered a palm to slap. Sonny glared it away. “Right thing. Never touch a stranger. You people are wise. What tribe you from?”

  Sonny grunted and kept marching across the bus terminal, his ponytail slapping time to the rap of his boots on the marble floor. The kid skipped alongside in unlaced white sneakers. Sonny looked him over from a corner of his eye. He wore a round, brown leather cap on a boxy bush of orange hair. His body was lost inside a Free South Africa tee-shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts. He carried a walking stick, a thick, knotted, highly polished club with a steel tip at the bottom and an ivory snake’s head on the top. A black leather bag hung from his shoulder. He barely reached Sonny’s chin. He could be fourteen years old.

  “Never speak to a stranger who could twist your words. Right thing. No wonder you Native American peoples have survived.”

  “Beat it,” growled Sonny. He lengthened his stride to lose the little creep. This may be the woods, but I’m not the hunter here.

  “Hey, new face.” Sonny whirled into a neon smile. The blond girl had a sweet look under a mask of bright makeup. He slowed to let her keep up. “Don’t mind Stick. He thinks he’s mayor of the Port.”

  “Just the welcome wagon, Doll,” said the kid. “How about buying us some breakfast, Mr. Wagon?” Doll winked at Sonny. He felt warm and light-headed. Was it her or the mention of food? He hadn’t eaten since before last night’s fight. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon.

  “Ooo-eee,” moaned Stick. “You kids are cold.” He put a spidery hand on Sonny’s left arm. Before Sonny could shake it off, Doll was hanging on hi
s right sleeve. They steered him through the bus station crowd like expert canoe paddlers avoiding the rocks in the rapids, around lurching beggars, howling kids, sweating tourists. Stick used his snake’s-head club to poke people out of their way. Sonny was standing between Stick and Doll at a high table outside a doughnut shop before he figured out how he had gotten there.

  “The blueberry, my man, is numero uno,” said Stick. He snapped his fingers at Doll. “And let’s have some tall and chilly O.J. for the liquids and vitamins necessary in this hellacious weather.” He watched Doll hurry off to the counter. “The teen queen likes you. She’s usually real shy with strangers.”

  Sonny slipped off the deerskin pack and dropped it between his feet. He squeezed it with his boot heels. Nobody’s going to snatch this and run. Just how dumb you think I am, Weasel? He touched the fat wallet in the back pocket of his jeans. Call Mom again in a few minutes. He had tried the number every time the bus made a rest stop. If there’s no answer this time, I’ll just go to SoHo, wherever that is. Might as well get some free food first, hear what these hustlers have to say.

  “First time in New York?”

  “No.” He remembered the other times only from the pictures in his pack: his father in uniform, just before he went to Vietnam, holding him in front of a fancy toy store on Fifth Avenue; with his mother’s Mohawk cousins in their high-steel hard hats, and posing in front of her jewelry stall at a Brooklyn crafts fair, his little arms hung with necklaces and bracelets.

  “N.Y.C. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere,” said Stick, waving his club at the crowds surging back and forth across the terminal floor. “And you, my man, could make it here.”

  “What do you want?” It came out tougher than he had meant it to sound. Too tough. As if he was afraid of Stick.

  Stick smiled. Up close, he looked much older than Sonny had first thought. At least eighteen. “Right thing. I knew you were no fool. You could be chief.”

  “Of what?”

  “The street.” This time his wave included the shapes and colors swirling outside the bus station’s windows.

  “What are you talking about?” He tried not to sound too interested.

  “Big, strong, you got a different look. People gonna want a piece of you. Right thing. Long as you get yours.”

  “Here we go.” Doll slid a tray onto the table and served them each a blueberry muffin on a napkin and orange juice in a paper cup. She had bought herself a glazed chocolate doughnut and a container of coffee.

  “I can use you myself,” said Stick. “Need a bang-bang.”

  “That’s a security guy,” said Doll. She touched his headband. “That’s so fresh. What’s your name?”

  “Sonny.”

  She offered her hand, warm and damp. “Doll’s my street name. It’s really Heather, you believe that?” She giggled. Under the powder was a constellation of freckles on her cheeks and nose. She’s really younger and softer than she looks, Sonny thought. “You got a place to stay?”

  “Yeah.” With some luck, I’ll be in a barracks soon, he thought.

  “You could own the Deuce,” said Stick.

  “That’s Forty-second Street,” said Doll.

  “The Deuce, the Doofer,” said Stick, “crossroads of the world, the street where the elite meet to beat, cheat and greet sweet meat.”

  “You can be free on the street,” said Doll, “do what you want.”

  “Right thing,” said Stick. “Nobody on your case 24–7–365.”

  “That’s twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year,” said Doll.

  “Chief Sonny knew that,” said Stick. “You talk the talk.”

  Sonny nodded and Doll smiled. Her leg brushed against his under the table. He wondered if it was an accident. She ate very carefully, daintily, little nips off the doughnut, small silent sips of coffee. She blotted a crumb from a corner of her full red lips with a dab of her napkin. She leaned forward and her blouse opened. He could see her soft, freckly, milky-white chest. He wondered how much of the throbbing between his legs was from Hoffer and how much for Doll. Better do what I came to do before I forget what it was.

  “Got to make a phone call.”

  “Be my guest,” said Stick. He reached into his black leather bag and pulled out a cellular phone. “Hope you’re not calling friends in Tokyo.”

  “SoHo,” said Sonny. He fished the card with his Mom’s address and phone number out of his wallet.

  Stick flicked a switch and held the phone while Sonny tapped out the number. There was a busy signal. Stick pressed a button. “Memory. It’ll keep dialing till it gets through.”

  Doll said, “SoHo’s hot. Art galleries and great clothes. Stick, I told you he was an artist. Aren’t you?” Something in her voice made him want to say yes.

  “Well, sort of, not really…”

  “See!” She turned her back to Sonny, her brown eyes bright. They were small eyes, quick, pecking birds’ eyes. “I spotted you first.”

  “True story,” said Stick. The phone clicked seven times and growled a busy signal. He set it on the table. “Communications, lifeblood of the modern era.”

  Dope dealer, thought Sonny. Probably try to sell me some.

  “Love art,” said Doll. “Believe I used to do clay?” She wiggled her fingers, tipped with black paste-on nails decorated with little stars.

  A scarecrow shambled up, shaking a dirty paper cup. “Change?”

  Doll wrinkled her nose at the smell, and Stick snapped, “Space!”

  The beggar started to speak, took a closer look at the ivory snake head and shuffled off. Sonny was surprised by the hard mask that had slipped over Stick’s face.

  “The Port can get weird,” said Stick. “You need friends, extra eyes. This is a jungle of slimeballs and bonesuckers. Can’t trust anybody in the Port or on The Deuce. Especially the pig posse.”

  “That’s cops,” explained Doll.

  “They think they can do anything ’cause they got the tin.”

  “Badge,” said Doll.

  “There is this one pig boss who has dedicated his whole life to busting me,” said Stick. He tapped his forehead. “This is one deranged dude.”

  “Sergeant Alfred Brooks.” Doll shook her head. “I’ll point him out sometime. Got to watch out for him.”

  “Maybe he’s got to watch out for me,” said Stick.

  “Maybe later,” said Doll. She blinked hard and made a small gesture with her chin.

  “Right thing,” said Stick. “To be continued, Chief Sonny.” He slipped the phone back into the bag. “Bring him by tonight, Doll.”

  Sonny sensed movement around them, big men, black and white, shoving people out of their way.

  Stick scooted into the crowd, hunched over his phone bag, clearing a path with the snake head. He disappeared.

  “You’ll be okay, Sonny,” said Doll. “Just be cool, whatever happens.”

  The monster fluttered as the men surrounded the table, half a dozen of them in jeans and work shirts. He thought of the bigmouth bozos at the smoker.

  One of them said, “Where’d he go, Dolly?”

  “He was late for church,” she said sweetly.

  “Real funny. Take her.”

  Doll stepped away from the table. One of the men reached out for her. Sonny slapped his arm away.

  “Stay out of this, Tonto.” Another arm reached out for Doll.

  Sonny chopped it down and shoved the man back with a forearm to his chest. Sonny blocked the way as Doll slipped into the crowd.

  “Okay, young gentleman, that’s enough, it’s over.” Hands on his shoulders. He glimpsed a dark face behind him.

  Sonny pivoted and nailed it with a left, a short crisp hook to the side of a bearded black chin.

  As the man crumpled, Sonny saw the badge hanging on a chain around his neck. A cop!

  Clubs slammed against his legs and shoulders, one crashed against the back of his head. He went down under a
swarm of bodies. It was like football, yeah, just like football, Jake, nobody walks over me, sure, take it till your time comes.

  Time out.

  4

  HE NEVER BLACKED out. He swam through tunnels of darkness and pools of light. He was jerked to his feet, half carried up stairs, dumped into a small room that stank of sweat and smoke. He gagged. A light flashed into his eyes. A paramedic said, “He’ll be okay.”

  “Redskins are tough.” Police officers filled the room.

  “Look what they did to Custer.”

  “Look what he did to Brooks.” The cops laughed and surrounded him. Half a dozen hands patted over his body, up his legs. Sonny reached for his wallet. His back pocket was torn and empty. The belt loop was torn too. Did the cops have the wallet? Doll?

  “What’s your name, Tonto?”

  He concentrated on slowing his breathing. His eyesight was blurred by sweat, but he could see that the room had no windows. It was bare except for a table and two chairs and a long mirror on the wall opposite the door. Too many bodies blocked the way out.

  Voices battered him.

  “Resisting arrest.”

  “Striking a police officer.”

  “You are in deep, Geronimo.”

  White and black faces hovered in front of him.

  “Want to go to jail?”

  “Scalp you at both ends in jail.”

  Sonny’s hands curled into fists. Be cool, he told himself, ride it out. But the monster was in his chest.

  “So what’s your name, where you from?”

  The cop’s face bobbed into range. A straight right, then the hook. He began to raise his fists. What’s the difference between jail and being sent back to the Res?

  The door banged open.

  A cold, hard voice blew in. “Young gentleman, don’t even think about lifting your hands.”

  Cops scrambled out of the way. A chunky black man swaggered in. He was holding a frosty can of soda to a bearded jaw.