Can't Get There from Here (7 page)

“What revolution?” asked the man.

“The revolution that’s gonna start when people wake up and realize that the government floods ghettos and slums with drugs to keep all the poor and oppressed people stoned and complacent so they don’t rebel.” “If you believe that, why are you begging for drug money?” asked Rachel.

“Might as well enjoy it while I can.” Maggot grinned.

“We really better get going, Rachel,” said the man.

“Wait.” Rachel opened her bag and started to hunt around in it.

“You’re not serious,” her friend sputtered. “You know he’s going to use it for drugs.”

“That’s his choice.” Rachel pulled out a black wallet. The man looked around nervously, like he was expecting a gang of homeless kids to jump them.

Rachel took a five-dollar bill and held it just out of Maggot’s reach. “I want you to promise me that you’ll think about what I said. You don’t have to live like this.”

Maggot looked up at her like a puppy. It must have been hard for him not to snatch the bill out of her fingers.

“Promise?” Rachel asked.

“I promise.” Maggot took the bill from her. Rachel
turned to her friend, who shook his head like he couldn’t believe what she’d done. Together they went off down the sidewalk.

Maggot held the five-dollar bill flat and tight between his fingers. “Worked like a charm. The sign pulls them in, but you know what really ices the deal? Spelling marijuana wrong. It brings out all their middle-class guilt about the poor getting a crap education.”

“You gonna keep your promise?” OG teased.

“I promise …” Maggot heaved himself up to his feet, “to go find Lost right now. Later, compadres.”

“Hey, bring something back for us,” OG called after him, then started to cough again.

“Sure,” Maggot called back over his shoulder with a laugh. “I promise.”

Since the “Money For Maryjuana” sign
worked for Maggot, I tried it next. Pest squirmed out of OG’s arms and wanted to play again, so OG tied the rope to his backpack and Pest played tug-of-war with that instead. He growled and pulled but couldn’t get the backpack to budge. Then Tears came along dragging a clear plastic garbage bag half-filled with yellow and red McDonald’s cups and napkins and other garbage.

We tore open the bag and dug into the food, picking out mushy French fries, cheeseburgers with two or three bites taken out of them, and tall waxy cups with a few ounces of soda left in the bottoms. The smell of food filled the air.

“I told them to hold the pickles,” OG joked, using his dirty fingers to pull a slice of green pickle out of a half-eaten bun. Pest barked and wagged his tail eagerly. OG tore off a piece of hamburger and fed it to him.

I found half a Big Mac and bit into it. White sauce dripped down my hands and onto my pants. From the first bite my stomach growled like it was angry that I forgot to feed it for the past few days.

“Whose dog is that?”

We looked up to find a woman with frizzy red hair
standing over us. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt that said PETA.

“He’s mine.” OG put his hands around Pest and drew him close.

“You shouldn’t be feeding him garbage,” the woman said.

“It’s good garbage,” I said, holding up a partly eaten Big Mac. A clump of lettuce fell onto the sidewalk. Just to gross out the woman, I picked it up and put it in my mouth. “Good enough for humans.”

Tears raised her hand like she was in school. “What’s PETA?”

“People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,” the woman answered and looked back at OG. “Has he had his shots?” she demanded.

Whatever answer OG started to give was lost in a spasm of coughing.

“Have
you
?” Tears asked. I’d never seen her talk back to a grown-up before. She was learning to be a street kid.

“Of course he hasn’t had his shots.” The woman answered her own question. “You can’t even take care of yourselves, much less a pet. Is he fixed?”

“Get lost,” OG croaked between coughs.

“You shouldn’t be allowed to have animals,” the woman said. “You don’t know how to take care of them.”

“He’ll do a better job than you,” I said.

The woman put her hands on her hips. “That’s such
nonsense. Look at what he’s feeding him.”

“He loves him,” I said. “You don’t love nothing.”

“How would you know?” the PETA woman asked. She stared at me more closely.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m fixed and I had my shots.”

The woman frowned, then turned back to OG. “Someone should take that dog away and give it a good home. It’s just going to die out here on the street. If you really love that dog you should give it to me. I’ll find a good home for it.”

“Go away!” OG cuddled Pest more tightly.

The woman made a face. “You’re all sick.”

She stood there waiting for one of us to say something, but no one spoke. It was no use. People like her never listened. They made up their minds, told you what they thought, and that was the end of it. Finally she left. Pest yelped and struggled to get free, but OG held him close like he was afraid to let the little dog go until the woman was well out of sight.

“How comes she cares so much about a dog?” Tears asked. “What about us?”

“Nobody cares about us,” I said.

Rainbow was gone for days and I got
worried. She didn’t usually disappear for that long. I waited until night and then went to look for her. The air was cold and damp, and my breath came out in big clouds of white. I headed for the streets near the Lincoln Tunnel where men in cars prowled for young girls and boys before they drove home to their families in the suburbs. I was walking down a dark sidewalk when a sleek silver car pulled alongside of me.

The window on the passenger side went down. “Hey,” a man’s voice said. In the dark shadows of the car I could see that he was old. The lines around his mouth were deep and the hair on his head was so thin that unless you looked close you might think he was bald. He looked small for a grown-up. Not much bigger than me.

“You look hungry,” he said. There was something mean about his smile. Like he knew he had what I needed and it was simply a matter of reeling me in. He was wearing a tan-colored jacket with a green corduroy collar. It looked warm. All I had on was a T-shirt and a thin sweatshirt. I left my jacket somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where.

“Maybe.” I shivered, and my empty stomach churned like a washing machine with no clothes in it.

“Looks like you could use a bath, too.”

“Maybe.” It had been a week since me and Rainbow washed in the library bathroom, but I was already filthy again. My hands were almost black with dirt. My arms and face were streaked with it. I could taste it when I licked my lips. My hair was caked. When I scratched my head my scalp felt like it was full of sand.

“Why don’t you come with me?” he offered. “I’ll give you something to eat. And a bath.”

“What do you get in return?” I asked.

He grinned in the darkness. “I guess we’ll have to see.”

I heard a tap. Then another and another. A fat raindrop landed on my head. Another hit my ear. I felt a chill. The taps began to come faster as the big drops of rain pelted the sidewalk and me. I started to walk. The car moved along slowly.

“You really want to stay out here in the rain tonight?” the man in the car asked. “You’ll probably catch pneumonia.”

“Maybe.” I was already cold. Shivers ran up my back and arms, and I clenched my teeth so that he wouldn’t hear them chatter.

“So you coming or not?”

I didn’t answer.

He frowned. The rain was starting to go into his car through the open window. “What are you waiting for?”
he asked. “Money? Forget it. Fm not giving you any money. I’ll feed you and clean you up. But I know what you’ll do if I give you money. You’ll just spend it on drugs.”

“Maybe.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’d rather stay out here and freeze and starve and be filthy? Fine. There are a dozen kids just like you on these streets. You don’t want to come with me, I’ll find another one. What’s the difference? You’re all the same, know that?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe … Maybe …” he repeated. “Maybe you’ll starve or freeze to death out here tonight. Maybe in the morning they’ll find your body. Who’ll miss a homeless kid? You’re a waste. Not even a memory. Just someone who never was.”

The car window went up. The windshield wipers began to swipe back and forth as the man drove away down the dark wet street. I stood in the rain, feeling the drops hit my head and shoulders. He could find some other hungry gutter punk who wanted to get out of the rain. But it wouldn’t be me.

I spent most of the night searching the
streets around the tunnel for Rainbow, then slept for a while in a twenty-four-hour banking room where people came in and got money from ATMs. Toward morning the rain turned to snow and a brown security truck stopped at the curb. A security guard came in and kicked me out of the ATM room. Outside, the dark, snow-covered streets were empty. Skinny white icicles hung from the streetlights.

I walked downtown. The hood of my sweatshirt froze stiff and turned white with snow. I was cold, but I liked being outside. As morning came the darkness turned to a dull gray. For once the city was quiet and pretty. Hardly anyone was out. The streets were white, and all the storefronts were covered with metal gates and grates. The only footprints down the sidewalk were mine.

Soon the cold seeped deep into me. My teeth chattered. My feet were numb and each step I took hurt. My fingers grew stiff and throbbed with pain. Up ahead was that brick building with the big windows. The library—a warm, dry place that was open to the public. But all I could think about was that mean creep Bobby. As I
passed the building I looked in through the windows. It was dark inside. I could see the tables with all those computers that anyone could use. The chairs were empty and the computer screens were blank. No sign of Bobby, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t in there somewhere.

“Hello.” Coming toward me was someone wearing a long brown coat and a fuzzy cap of blue, red, and yellow wool. He was tall and carried two big shopping bags. It was the man who had blotchy skin like mine. We stared at each other.

“Vitiligo,” he said.

“What?”

He pressed a finger against a pale patch on his chin. “That’s what this is called. Have you always had it?”

I nodded.

“Me too,” he said. “Did you want to get into the library?”

I didn’t answer. I was confused. I thought he’d say more about our skin. But he acted like it was no big deal. Like it was the same as two people who were both lefthanded or had green eyes. Then I looked in the shopping bags he was carrying. They were filled with paper plates and napkins and plastic cups. I thought I could smell doughnuts.

“Well, I’m afraid it’s too early. We won’t be open for a few hours,” he said. Then he cocked his head and looked more closely at me. “You’re shivering.”

“Maybe.”

“What’s your name?”

“Maybe.”

He made a funny face. “We’re having a Martin Luther King celebration today. I came in early to set up. If you’d like to come in now you can get warm and I’ll give you something to eat.”

“What about Bobby?”

The man frowned. “How do you know Bobby?”

“The other day he hurt me and my friend.”

The man’s mouth fell partway open. “That was you? Tony told me what Bobby did.”

“Who?”

“Tony’s the security guard,” he explained. “I want you to know that you’re welcome to come in here any time you want and you will not be hurt. I’ll make sure Bobby leaves you alone. Of course, you’d be better off washing someplace else. If you need a place to do that, I can probably help you. Bobby won’t be here until later. You can come in now and get warm and have something to eat.”

He sounded sincere, like one of the nice ones. But you never knew. He might still want something. Everyone wanted something. He went past me and up the snow-covered steps, then took out some keys and opened the door. He looked back. “Still not coming?”

I wanted to so bad.

“You can eat and get warm and go. I promise. No one will hurt you.”

I followed him through the front doors, but stopped
inside where the air felt dry and warm. I stayed close to the doors. Just in case.

“You can wait here if you want,” the man said, leaving the shopping bags by the computer tables and going toward the back. I waited, still shaking from the cold outside, my stomach churning hungrily at the thought of food so close.

It seemed like a long time before he came back, but it probably wasn’t that long. He left his coat and hat somewhere and was wearing green corduroy slacks and a green pullover sweater with red and blue and other colors on it.

“That sweatshirt’s all wet,” he said. “Why don’t you take it off, and I’ll put it on the radiator to dry.”

I pulled the sweatshirt over my head. The hood and shoulders were soaked dark. The man held it with the tips of his fingers.

“That’s all you have?” he asked, looking at the torn, black T-shirt I still had on. It was also wet and clung to my shoulders. “You’re so thin. Wait here. I’ll be right back.” He left again, then returned with a white T-shirt and the brown sweater he wore the first time I saw him. The T-shirt said NEW YORK IS BOOK COUNTRY on the front. The sweater had buttons.

“Why don’t you put these on?” He handed them to me.

I took them and looked around.

“You need a place to change,” he realized. “Okay, come with me.” He led me between some tall bookshelves. “You can change here. No one will see. Promise
me you’ll throw that black T-shirt in the garbage.”

He left me there. I looked around to make sure he wasn’t hiding in the other rows watching, then I stripped off the black T-shirt and put on the white one. I didn’t like the sweater. But it felt soft and warm so I put it on.

I came out from the bookshelves. The library man had laid out my sweatshirt over the radiator.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

Once again I waited, listening to the steam radiators hiss and my stomach rumble. The man returned, drying his hands on some paper towels like he just washed them.