Flight (42 page)

When Joe looks to Bob Tom for approval, the
riverman gives it to him, but Joe’s glow doesn’t last long because
Bob Tom says as he shakes his hands to get the blood circulating,
“Having our hands free ain’t the same as bein free.”

The old man looks around the room’s murk
again before looking down at the pipe wrench which Joe has used to
hold the torch in place.

“Let’s just think bout this a minute or
two.”

“Well, we better not think too long because
if they find us with our hands free, we’re going to be in
trouble.”

Bob Tom shook his head dismissively, “I ain’t
afeered of a little trouble.”

Joe’s headshake at the riverman’s words
mirror Bob Tom’s own gesture.

After a minute Bob Tom makes his way to the
locker’s door, studies it, grabs the metal handle, tugs on it and
grunts. He walks over to the handle-less door that goes to the
engine room, studies it for a long moment and then puts his
shoulder against it. He shrugs, turns back, picks up the pipe
wrench and walks over to the old generator pushed against the
locker wall. It only takes him a few minutes to pry the casing off.
It takes much longer to get the generator’s magnet free. Once he
does, he slowly moves the magnet toward the pipe wrench. The
magnet’s pull is so strong than when it is still five centimeters
away, the wrench begins to move. When Bob Tom moves the magnet in a
small arc, the wrench obediently follows a similar arc.

“Well, I guess we got us a ticket out of
here, but a ticket don’t mean much if we don’t have a plan.”

For the next hour, the captives think about
what their course of action will be once they are freed from the
locker.

Once they figure out what they will do if
things go as they hope and what they’ll do if all hell breaks
loose, Bob Tom and Joe wait until the middle of the night. When the
time comes when they think it is most likely that all the crew will
be asleep except for someone at the helm, they carry the magnet to
the steel door that opens to the engine room. Being careful to make
as little noise as possible , Joe takes a sleeve he has torn from a
slicker and holds it against the door where the handle would be if
it had one. The sleeve muffles the noise when the magnet pulls Bob
Tom forward and attaches itself to the steel door. Before he begins
to move the magnet, Bob Tom studies the door almost as if he can
see the L-shaped handle on the other side and the metal hook it
fits into to secure it. Simultaneously pulling the magnet toward
him to create as much slack in the handle on the other side of the
door as possible, Bob Tom slowly moves the magnet in an arch. Joe
has his ear to the door to listen for any sounds that the handle is
turning. He hears nothing and despite the sweep of the arc, the
door remains locked. Bob Tom shifts the magnet and tries again. He
moves the magnet four times but each try ends with the same
results.

As the old man prepares for another attempt,
Joe whispers, “Wait.”

When Bob Tom is not inclined to wait, Joe
grabs his arm.

“Wait.”

He eases the old man to the side and then,
using all of his strength, he begins to work the slicker sleeve
from behind the magnet. When it is finally free, Joe steps aside
and says, “Try it now.”

“That ain’t gonna make no Damall
difference.”

“Try it.”

Bob Tom does and Joe’s ear picks up the
hollow sound of metal turning against metal. Twenty seconds later
the door is free and Bob Tom, holding the pipe wrench at his side
as a weapon, eases himself through the door.

As they had hoped, the engine room is empty.
As they move through the small hot, machine-filled room, Joe picks
up a ball peen hammer to arm himself. Above deck the two escapees
stay in the shadows as they reconnoiter the deck of the tug. Joe
finds a cache of flotation devices and carries them to the back of
the tug where Bob is working on releasing the hitch. As Joe ties
the PFDs together with a long coil of line, he watches until he
understands how the coupler works. As soon as he understands what
Bob Tom is doing, Joe grabs the PFDs, jumps aboard the first barge
and runs to the far end and begins to release that coupler. He can
feel the train of barges begin to change direction within seconds
of Bob Tom setting them free. Joe waits until he sees Bob Tom fly
over his head and land on the third barge. Joe frees the connection
between the first and second barge and leaps onto the second. The
excited boy has barely scrambled five meters along the wall of
lettuce crates when he hears Bob Tom’s anguished cry.

“T’ain’t here. T’ain’t here.”

A second later, whoever is captaining the tug
sounds the alarms. Joe hurries to the stern of the second barge and
begins to free it from the third as lights blink on the tug and
shadows begin to move across her deck.

As soon as Joe and the PFD’s make the jump
onto the last barge, the teener becomes cautious. Having heard his
cry, the boy thinks that Bob Tom might have fallen into a trap by
the kidnappers. Seconds later, Joe is pleased to find the old man
is alone.

Alone, but agitated.

“I cain’t find it.”

Their plan has been that in the confusion of
having the cargo break free, Bob Tom and Joe would hide on the back
of the third barge as long as possible with the hope it might
escape the current and make a run toward shore. If that didn’t look
like it was going to happen, their back-up plan was for Bob Tom to
pull Joe to shore while he rode atop the PFDs.

As a spotlight beam locks onto them and
shouts are heard from the tug, Joe says, “Your fishing pole? Forget
it. It’s probably on the tug.”

“I’m not leavin without my most favorite
pole.”

“C’mon, we have to go. “

“I ain’t goin til I get that pole. Them
buzzards are goin be too busy with them barges to be fussin with
us.”

Joe starts to push Bob Tom toward the stern
of the barge and out of the spotlight.

“C’mon! We have to go. What do you think they
think is more important? A bunch of lettuce or me?”

“Noby, I cain’t. I gotta have that pole. My
only daughter gave me that pole.”

When Joe pushes the old man a second time,
the old man pushes back. Feeling helpless to fix what he is
beginning to understand is something that has become unhinged in
the old man’s mind and absolutely determined that he is not going
to allow himself to be recaptured, Joe pushes past the riverman.
The boy races to the stern of the barge, clambers up on the rail,
and holding the coiled line in one hand and the half dozen PFDs to
his chest with the other, Joe jumps into the Hudson and back into
the scariest moments of his life.

Avenging Angels

Prissi thought it might have been a minute,
but, in actuality, it was two days later before she woke. She
returned as she had departed. In the dream she was flying through
clouds so dark and thick that they seemed to grab at her wings. She
was straining. She could feel her muscles tiring. She had to get
below the clouds before she was so exhausted that her wings would
falter and she would fall out of the sky. After she tipped her
wings and began to descend, she started looking for the bottom of
the cloud cover. Lower and lower she flew, but, even though she
could feel herself dropping, her altimeter read the same. She
angled her wings more. She flapped harder. The air was tearing at
her hair as she hurtled downward. Her heart was pounding in her
chest. She knew she had to be close to crashing into the earth, but
the clouds were just as thick and dark.

No, she realized, they were thicker. Her skin
began to burn and she became aware that there were things in the
clouds, sharp things, like the claws of small birds, that were
tearing at her. She was surrounded by a swarm of small orange
birds. They were raking her with their talons, but she couldn’t
tell if they were attacking her, or trying to slow her plunge.

Prissi awoke to a damp cloth wiping her
cheeks and forehead. Jiffy Apithy’s eyes moved across her face at
the same speed as the cloth he was using to cool her brow.

“Jiffy,” Prissi sighed in relief. “You’re
okay. I was so sure something had happened to you. Something that
would be my fault.”

Although his face was devoid of humor, Prissi
thought that she caught the slightest undertone of teasing as he
said, “I’m not okay. Look at this.”

Jiffy twisted his neck so that Prissi could
see the twelve centimeter square bandage on the back of his
head.

“Is that from the rock?”

Jiffy nodded, “Six stitches, although a real
doctor might have used twice that. I’d be angry, but I figure a big
scar on my head might help my soccer game or, maybe, my
reputation.”

When Prissi laughed, the noise sounded to her
like a chicken trying to escape from a bag, “Any better and you’d
be the best. That header you gave me saved my life.”

“Maybe the first time. Yoli and Lavie La
saved you the second time. I thought you were dead when they
dragged you in and I hadn’t even seen that thing on your leg, that
bite. When I did see it, I chucked. Can you imagine what was
growing in that wound between the germs in that zie’s mouth and all
the stuff that must be in the water? If they hadn’t found you and
brought you here, you’d definitely be dead.”

“Who are they?”

“A mix, but mostly from Darfur.”

“Where are they?”

“They waited as long as they could to see how
you were doing, but they had to go to work. You’ve been out for two
days.”

Prissi was stunned.

“Two days? How can that be?”

“Quite a vacation.”

Prissi had a hard time comprehending how she
could have gone somewhere for two days and not know it. What had
happened in that time? As soon as she asked herself that question,
she knew it was the wrong one to ask. The right question was, “What
hadn’t happened?”

The first, and very reassuring answer to
that, was that she hadn’t been found.

“Are we really safe? Am I safe? Who is Yoli
and the other woman, the one who is so thin?”

Jiffy grinned and when he did, his bright
pink gums and blazingly white teeth lifted Prissi’s spirits like
some exotic tonic.

“They’re friends of my friends. Someone from
Darfur found this place a couple of years ago. It’s hard to know
what it was. Maybe, a place to fix things. Like a machine shop. Or,
a room where there was a lot of equipment. It’s dark and the air
isn’t exactly enriched with oxygen, but none of us are walking
around with headaches unable to remember our names. The big lady,
Yoli, is a healer when she isn’t hidden in the back of a Togoan
restaurant on West 46th chopping vegetables. The skinny one is
Lavie. She’s sewing shirts down in Mudtown for a street vender.
There are fourteen more of them living here. Some working. Some
not. It’s like a village. Some work. Some cook. All share. They
pool money. As soon as they have enough saved, they buy a set of
ids for whoever’s been here the longest. Then, when that person
goes above, she has to send back twenty percent of her earnings
until there is enough for the next set. When that happens the first
person’s obligation is done. Two of the women down here, Samosking
and Winnie, have their papers, but they haven’t left because they
still have family below and they figure they can save money faster
by staying down here.

“You’re safe, I think. The zies took off
after you burned their village and none of the stragglers have been
seen down this way. I’ve been back to the store twice to work my
shifts. My father says everything is quiet and I haven’t seen
anything. You probably can stay down here as long as you want…as
long as you’re willing to help.”

With more edge to her voice than she
intended, Prissi said, “I’m willing to help, but I don’t know how
long I’m willing to hide.”

Jiffy took the cloth away from Prissi’s face
and held it tightly in a fist.

“What else can you do? If you go back up, how
long will it be before your enemies find out? Hours? A day?”

“That’s what I have to figure out. Someway
they have been tracking me. I got rid of everything I was wearing
and threw my mypod away. I thought that would do it, but they still
found me. I’m guessing that they must have found my i-tag
code.”

“How could they get the code? I thought it
was so secret.”

“Maybe it was in my dad’s stuff.”

“But, if it was in your dad’s stuff, how did
they find you the night before?”

“I don’t know. But what else can it be?”

When Jiffy shook his head, it looked to
Prissi like a dandelion flower gone to seed blowing in the
wind.

“Who knows? But, the important question is
what can you do about it.”

”I have to shut it down.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, yet. I don’t even know where
it’s implanted, so getting it out could be a little messy.”

Jiffy’s laugh was much deeper than his small
body would have suggested.

Hating the feeling of missing something that
was supposed to be funny, something that happened too frequently at
the Dutton dining hall for a girl raised in a vidless life in
Africa, Prissi had to work to keep an angry edge from her question,
“What’s funny?”

“Anyone looking at you—all of the bandages,
stitches, cuts and bruises—would think that someone already had
gone to great efforts to find your tag.”

Begrudgingly, Prissi’s laugh joined
Jiffy’s.

“Zeusus Mimi. I sure do hurt. I don’t even
want to think of anyone poking and prodding at me anymore. I wonder
if there is some way to shut it off while it’s still inside me.
What do you think?”

Jiffy shrugged. “I don’t know. My kind of
people are looking to get to where we’re the kind of people who
could afford an i-tag.”

Prissi, again, got the feeling that Jiffy was
making her pay another installment on the debt she had accrued the
night she had gone to the EZ-Lam Market for food for Jack. Thinking
of that night took Prissi back to the fluttery feeling she had when
first she was alone with Jack in the basement…and how that feeling
had turned to revulsion as she watched him eat. She recalled the
long hug he had given her. An embrace she had wished for before it
happened, but soon wished it would end as it had dragged on.