The Brave Page 5

  And why am I crouched in the corner of this cell like I used to be in the backseats of Jake’s junkyard wrecks, hiding from the world and drawing weird pictures?

  He sketched on the white Styrofoam trays from his meals, using the plastic tip of his sweatpants drawstring as a pen. For ink, he moistened the dark grime on the cell floor with spit.

  He drew Doll and Mom.

  He remembered how he would see things in a face he was drawing that he never saw when he was looking at it in the flesh. Doll’s eyes, quick and pecking, the eyes of a bird poised either to fly away or to swoop down on a morsel of food, were just like Mom’s eyes. Always looking for something, just over your shoulder, around the corner, in the next town.

  He drew Doll’s body as he imagined it, full and firm. He thought of them together. On her birthday. He would have taken her to dinner and to a club with his money from Stick. Was the Benjy really counterfeit? And if it was, did Doll know it? He didn’t want to believe she did. He concentrated on drawing her hair.

  The door clanged open. A guard said, “You got five minutes, Sergeant.”

  “Solitary confinement.” The door clanged shut. “You are so predictable, young gentleman.”

  He was glad to see Brooks, but all he could say was “What do you want?”

  “D.A. won’t lower your bail, and Jake Stump can’t raise it.”

  “You talked to Jake?”

  “I don’t have much time.” He spoke softly and quickly. “We’ve arranged for you to be released into the general population. First thing, the posses’ll try to recruit you. I want you to join X-Men.”

  “Why?”

  “You won’t have to do anything, not even the tattoo. Tell ’em it’s against your culture. Like the hair bit.” He snorted.

  “You think I made that up?”

  “I don’t care. Now, listen. X-Men don’t want you joining the Latin Knights or staying independent—looks like you’re facing them. So go along, hang with them a couple of weeks. You do that, tell me what you hear, then I can go to the D.A. and get the bail dropped and get you out of here.”

  Just another way to get at Stick, Sonny thought. Stick deserved to be in jail if he was selling death to kids. If you believed what Brooks said. But what about Doll? Would she go to jail, too? She had a baby somewhere.

  “I don’t know.”

  There was a knock on the door. “Minute, Sarge.”

  “You got to do it.” There was desperation in his voice. “We can bust these animals.”

  “I can’t narc for you.”

  Brooks took a deep breath. “You ever wonder how I knew you were on that bus?”

  “You followed me.”

  “Don’t have enough officers for that. You were a decoy. Stick let us know about you through one of our undercovers he’d made. We went after you while Stick sent out a major shipment with somebody else.”

  Brooks’ voice was bitter. “He must of laughed his skinny little butt off at me. And at you. Didn’t you learn not to trust anybody on The Deuce?”

  The door opened. “Gotta go, Sarge.”

  Sonny said, “Can’t trust you either.”

  Brooks squeezed the bridge of his nose. “You don’t have much choice right now.” He walked out. “It’s a done deal.”

  The guard beckoned Sonny. “Let’s go, chief.”

  Sunlight slapped his face, closed his eyes. He stumbled, blinking, into the dusty yard. Hundreds of young men milled, smoking, playing volleyball and basketball, lifting weights, soaking up rays.

  Someone shouted, “Sonny Bear!”

  They began to clap, a rhythmic pounding that slowly built into rolls of thunder as the games stopped, and they all turned to him and began chanting, “Son-nee, Son-nee, Son-nee…”

  The loudspeaker crackled, “There will be no demonstrations, repeat, there will be no demonstrations….”

  The chanting and clapping subsided gradually. There were boos.

  “Nobody liked Deeks,” said the guard who had brought him out. “You’re a hero. God help you.”

  At dinner he was passed up to the head of the chow line. The food servers behind the steam table winked and dumped extra portions on his tray. His table was crowded.

  “Deeks is history, man.”

  “Some liberties lawyer call from the city, heard what happen, say they sue for your rights, man, if they don’t let you out.”

  Was that the cover story, or had Brooks arranged that to happen?

  “What you hit him with, Sonny?”

  “You gonna turn pro, Sonny?”

  “Let the man eat, fool.”

  “Tomorrow, Sonny, when you see the shrink, tell her you got claus-tro-pho-bi-a, got to get a outside job.”

  “That dumb. He want the kitchen.”

  “So he be fat, like you?”

  “Fool, he can’t get no job till he be sentenced.”

  He let the conversation wash over him. The kids who clustered around him were the smaller, younger ones, looking for a protector, too weak to worry about appearing weak. The rabbits and the small deer of the forest.

  “So what kind of Indian you be?”

  “Moscondaga.”

  “That is cool.”

  There were others, who watched from a distance, measuring him. The wolves and the mountain lions.

  “They gon’ make you choose, Sonny. X-Men or Latin Knights. What you gon’ do?”

  Just before lights-out, he was assigned a top bunk in a barracks room with twenty bunk beds on each side. After the silence of solitary, the breathing of eighty bodies was a hurricane of whistles and snores and sobs. A guard and an inmate clomped through the barracks shining a flashlight into each bunk, checking off a list on a clipboard. Bed check.

  He waited until the hurricane settled into a steady moan in the dark before he slipped down from the bunk and padded across the wooden floor to the latrine. He blinked in the bright light. It was empty. He went to the farthest toilet before he pulled the piece of Styrofoam tray from under his shirt. Doll stared back at him.

  She was going to like this. With the sharpened point of his plastic drawstring tip dipped in blood from his earlobe, he would draw a beautiful red dress to cover her nakedness. It would be her birthday card.

  He heard shuffling feet, heavy breathing.

  There were five of them, huge and blue-black against the bright, white tiles. They stood in formation, four of them shoulder to shoulder, feet spread, wrists crossed, a tattooed X on the back of each right hand.

  The fifth, the leader, stood in front of them.

  “Welcome to Whitmore, Brother Sonny.” He extended his hand. It was limp. “I am X-One. We respect a man of color who stands up for what’s right.” His voice had a flat, robot quality. “X-Men are freedom fighters. You may join us.”

  “I am a member of the Moscondaga Nation. I answer only to the Clan Mothers and the Chiefs.” He enjoyed the sudden flare of old X’s nostrils. He wasn’t used to being talked to like this.

  “In Whitmore,” snapped X-One, “you answer to posse X.”

  The four X-Men behind him snapped into a martial-arts ready position. The monster chuckled and flexed. Fire the hook, Sonny, make X an ex.

  Maybe you just can’t go through life popping the hook, then letting whatever happens to you happen to you. Maybe you got to make a plan.

  The plan is, Mash the dude.

  “Posse sounds like a bunch of white men riding after my people.”

  My people. You want it both ways, white and red. Why not? I got stuck with it both ways.

  “I understand,” said X-One. “As a Indian, you don’t trust nobody, which is cool. But the black and the red peoples is united here.” His voice echoed against the white latrine walls. “X-Men are your brothers.”

  “My brothers are the warriors of the Moscondaga. You’re buffalo chips to me.”

  Sonny watched the X-Men shift, glance at one another. X-One was thrown off stride, he looked confused.

  Makes two of us
, thought Sonny.

  Brooks said I was predictable. He had me figured. Figured I’d mule for Stick, figured I’d punch out Deeks. Now what?

  Did he figure the big dumb Indian would join X-Men and narc for him, or did he figure I’d wipe these boxheads out?

  Maybe I’m not going to do either one. Figure that, Brooks.

  X-One scowled. “What’s funny?”

  Sonny turned and walked away. His bare feet slapped on the tile floor. The hairs on the back of his neck tingled.

  “You don’t got no choice.” X-One’s voice was shrill. “You don’t dis X-Men.”

  He thought he was going to make it. He was almost at the latrine door when they hit him, two on his back like wolves on a deer. He smashed one of them up against the wall, then stiffened with a sharp pain in his back. Another sharp pain in his side. Something heavy hit the back of his head.

  He fell. He felt the Styrofoam birthday card crunch under his chest. The cool tiles soothed his hot cheek. Before his eyes dimmed out, he saw his blood spill across the white floor. The color of Doll’s dress.

  10

  SONNY DREAMS he is walking the wind.

  Below him, beneath the clouds, are the purple-green hills of Moscondaga.

  A man moves swiftly up a trail, along a ridge, down a hill. He is a courier for the Nation. A Running Brave. He disappears around a switchback, reappears. Jake Stump. His face is scarred by his years, but his body is young and limber. He is carrying a message. “’S okay, boy, you gonna be okay.” His voice, soft and steady, is brought to Sonny on the wings of a hawk.

  There are two runners on the trail now, matching strides along the valley floor. The sun glints off the gun tucked against the small of Al Brooks’ back. “Young gentleman, you’re going to be fine.”

  “Can’t make him stay on the Res,” said Jake.

  “He’s dead meat loose in this city,” said Brooks.

  Plastic bags swayed above Sonny. Tubes snaked out of them into his arms.

  “Find his mother,” said Jake. “Maybe she’ll sign now.”

  “Won’t matter. Army won’t touch him till his indictment’s dropped.”

  “How long?”

  “Who knows? Courts are jammed.”

  The voices drift away.

  He follows them out to The Deuce where Doll is waiting. She wears beaded white buckskin. “Where’ve you been, Sonny boy?” Behind her, in the Grotto, Mo throws pizza dough.

  Sonny reaches for Doll, but up close the face is his mother’s. “Where’ve you been?”

  “Getting something going for us, Sonny. Mo really likes my rings and earrings—he’s going to sell them in his arcade.” Mom’s bird eyes peck at him. “I’ll make a bundle. I’ll send for you. We’ll have a tepee of our own.”

  He awoke to searing pain, to his own screams.

  “Nurse!” shouted Brooks.

  A pinprick high on his arm, and he walks the wind again.

  Below, they run the trails and talk.

  “Sonny hits you right,” said Jake, “you get up reeeal slow.”

  “Tell me about it. Some left hand.”

  “The best. And quick. But he won’t listen.”

  Sonny felt warm and safe, as if they were carrying him along the trail between them.

  “You been training him?” asked Brooks.

  “Some. Had him down to a gym in Sparta. Did real good for a while. Then some jerk started giving him a hard time and Sonny wiped the floor with him.”

  “Short fuse,” said Brooks.

  “Nope. Always been a real quiet kid, don’t say much, sneaks off to draw pictures, nobody supposed to know about that, and he lets himself get pushed around. Then, all of a sudden, look out.”

  “Passive-aggressive personality,” said Brooks.

  “Evil spirit,” said Jake.

  “You believe that?”

  “Ever see The Exorcist? Like that, only an Indian spirit. Got to come out or it eats you up inside, destroys you. Once it comes out, it’s a hawk you can follow where you need to go.”

  “A hawk,” said Brooks. “Gimme a break.”

  “While it’s inside, make you crazy. Like what happened with that guard.”

  “That wasn’t crazy—it was logical. To save his hair.”

  “Never cared about that before. Favored his white side.”

  “White side?”

  “Father was a white man. Killed in Vietnam. So they say.”

  Sonny tried to move closer to their voices. They were talking about his father. His mother always changed the subject when he asked about his father.

  The doctor pinched his big toe. “You were lucky, son. The tip of the knife was a millimeter from your heart.”

  Jake snorted. “Lucky wouldn’t of got cut a-tall.”

  The doctor chuckled politely. “So, you ready to get up and walk for me?”

  Two nurses swung his legs over the side of the bed. They had to lift him and support him. His legs couldn’t bear the weight.

  The pain amazed him, a scalding tidal wave. He gasped and lost his breath. The hospital gown was soaked with sweat and spotted with blood leaking out from the stitches that ran along his back and side.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” cheered the nurses.

  “Go, boy,” said Jake.

  The doctor said, “Another step for me now, Sonny.”

  He did it for Brooks, who sat silent and stony faced in a corner, staring at him, willing him on. He wanted to stop, to sink back into bed, to get a shot that would send him painlessly back to the clouds, but Brooks’ stare was pushing him one shuffling step after another with a nurse’s shoulder under each armpit like a crutch, the bags of intravenous solution swinging overhead from the metal pipe rack. Keep going, young gentleman, show me there’s more to you than just hit and run.

  “Attaboy,” said Jake.

  “Way to go,” cheered the nurses.

  The doctor was talking to Brooks. “Strong kid. He beat the infection. Now we have to reverse muscle atrophy and the loss of lung and gut function. Ten days is a long time to be on your back.”

  Ten days, thought Sonny. It seemed like hours.

  “He should be running in another ten days,” said Brooks.

  “Well, uh—” the doctor stroked his chin—“have to see how he progresses, um, talk about discharging him in a week or…”

  “Be out of here by Friday,” said Brooks. “Jake’ll have him on the road the following Monday. Easy mile to start.”

  “Isn’t he still technically, er, a prisoner?” asked the doctor.

  “Don’t sweat it, Doc,” said Brooks. “He is my prisoner.”

  He got a cute get-well card, a cartoon cat hanging by the tips of its claws from a rope held over a cliff by a grinning mouse. Inside was the printed line “Hang in there,” and, written in a childish scrawl, “To Sonny, All My Love, Heather.” There was no return address.

  When the nurses came to take him walking in the corridor, one of them taped the card to the wall of his bed and kidded him about his girlfriend. He felt good. He worked hard that morning, driving himself to extra laps around the nurses’ stations. When he got back, he pulled down the card and hid it. Brooks might know that Heather was Doll’s real name.

  Brooks looked too tired to notice anything when he arrived after dinner. He flopped into a chair by the bed. “Stakeouts kill you.”

  “Stick?”

  “I’ll get him.”

  “You really hate him.”

  “Long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

  “I’ll make it short. James Mosely was my best friend—we did everything together from kindergarten, stayed with me when my mother…anyway, he got in with a bad crowd, started shooting heroin. I helped him get clean. We joined the airborne together, must of saved each other’s life a dozen times in Nam. Got back home, they were waiting for him with the first free fix. Month later, he OD’ed. Every time I think about Stick, I think about James, all those Jameses
still out there….”

  Brooks wiped his eyes and left the room. It took Sonny a long time to fall asleep that night. He had never had a friend like James. To see him die after all they went through together. From drugs. Sold by someone like Stick.

  One night, as they watched a prizefight on TV, Brooks bobbed his head to the punches.

  “You box?” asked Jake.

  “A little amateur, when I was his age.”

  “You any good?” asked Sonny.

  “Quick enough. But no killer instinct, no big punch.”

  “How’d you get started?” asked Sonny.

  “I was going nowhere, neighborhood gang was giving me grief, so I went to learn to fight. Man’s dead now, but his gym is still there. Donatelli’s Gym, right on Hundred-twenty-fifth Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Friend of mine, Henry Johnson, runs it now. After Jake gets you in shape, you’ll train there.”

  Jake was nodding. “Al’s got a plan.”

  “You do want to be a fighter, don’t you?” asked Brooks.

  Sonny pushed himself higher in the bed. “I don’t know.”

  “Never know anything till you try.” Brooks pointed up at the screen. “You think those guys are better than you?”

  Two blurry shapes on the black-and-white set hanging from the ceiling pounded each other in quick flurries that left them panting. Sonny weighed his answer. He wanted to please Brooks. Finally, he said, “No.”

  “Wrong,” said Brooks. “You might have a better punch, you might even be quicker and smarter and stronger, but they got off their butts and did it, ran every day, put in hours at the gym, cut out booze and junk food, watched films of old fights, listened to their trainers.”

  “I could do that,” said Sonny.

  “They got control of themselves.”

  “I could try.”

  Brooks said, “We’ll see.”

  There was a party the night before he was discharged. The doctors, nurses, some of the other patients on the floor, crowded in to eat the cake, ice cream, soda, chips, that Brooks brought. “Enjoy it while you can,” said Brooks. “Once you’re in training, you can forget this stuff.”

  Mrs. Brooks showed up, a round-faced woman with an easy smile. Sonny had never thought of Brooks as being married, of having a life outside the Port. When Mrs. Brooks showed him pictures of their two little daughters, he felt jealous.