Taking Care of Terrific (12 page)

"Here we go, Head Honcho," he said gently. "Adventure time." Tom wrapped his arms around Seth's neck. I got out and closed the door. Behind me, Hawk was removing things from the car's trunk: the bolt cutter (I winced; but it didn't look as sinister as I had expected; it was like a large pair of pruning shears) and, to my surprise, his saxophone case. He saw my startled look and shrugged, grinning. "I never go anyplace without it," he explained.

We entered the Garden. George Washington's horse pawed the air, frozen in his eternal pose, and the general stared blankly ahead as we passed him. His bronze face was focused on his own battles, ignoring ours.

It was a short walk to the bridge that spanned the pond and across it to the other bank, where the dock was. The water looked black and calm,
and the ducks that usually quacked and paddled noisily were now sleeping in secret places along the edges of the pond and in the tall grasses that tufted its small island. None of us spoke. Even Tom Terrific, though he was wide awake now, riding in Seth's arms, was silent; his eyes were wide, but his usual giggles and questions were stilled by the night and the sense of mystery.

"Where are the bag ladies?" I whispered to Seth and Hawk as we went down the steps to the dock.

"They'll be here," Hawk whispered back. "They said they would."

Seth deposited Tom Terrific on the bench at the side of the dock. "Stay," he said, as if he were talking fondly to a puppy. Tom curled his little slippered feet up under him on the bench and stayed. I sat down beside him and held his hand.

The Hawk set his saxophone case on the dock beside us. "Watch my horn," he said, as he had said it to me before, in the park. I nodded.

Through the dim light I could see the figures of Seth and Hawk, both bending toward the water at the edge of the dock, and I could hear them murmur and whisper to each other. "There. Grab it now," I heard Hawk say in a low voice to Seth.

Then I heard the clank of the chain.

Out in the middle of the pond, together in a row, I could see the six Swan Boats floating. "Look," I whispered to Tom Terrific, and I pointed. "That's where the Swan Boats sleep at night."

He stared at them, wide-eyed, and put his thumb into his mouth. After a moment he withdrew his thumb and whispered in an awed voice. "They're waking up now."

He was right. The Swan Boats were beginning to move. They were silent, the six long necks of the swans arching in a row, their dark eyes as blind as the eyes of George Washington, their stiff wings spread. Slowly they glided, linked together, toward the dock. The only sound was the muffled clank of the heavy chain as Seth and Hawk pulled it together.

I shivered. So did Tom. I glanced around, but there was no one there: just Seth and Hawk, crouched at the edge of the dock, straining as they pulled, and me and Tom Terrific, huddled together on the bench. The bag ladies hadn't come. I held my wrist up in the pale light and read the time from my watch; it was five past twelve. We had done it for them, and they hadn't come. It was just the four of us now, in this all
alone. The chain scraped rhythmically against the dock as they continued to pull. The Swan Boats continued to glide, larger now as they came closer, majestic and mute.

"Here they come," breathed Tom. I squeezed his hand.

And finally they were there, the six boats in a line at the edge of the dock, the way I had seen them lined up in the evening after the last tourist had gone and they were ready to be secured for the night. Now Seth and Hawk stood up and moved silently, each of them to a different task, quick and efficient. I realized they had plotted this out between them, that like bank robbers or a team of surgeons, each knew his job. Without a word, they moved across the boats, unfastening things here and there. I heard chains slip from wood. I watched as they separated one Swan Boat from the others and brought it to the boarding area. The other five, still linked together, bobbed still and silent at the side of the dock. But one was now ours. One was alone and free, waiting for us in the summer night.

Hawk came to our bench and put the bolt cutter down. He picked up his saxophone case. "Come on," he whispered.

"Ready?" I asked Tom Terrific, and he nodded. He took my hand and padded in his soft slippers across the dock, beside me, to the swan.

Seth lifted Tom Terrific aboard, into one of the wide seats, and steadied the boat as I climbed on beside him.

Then I heard a noise. It was a barely perceptible sound, eerie and everywhere, as if the trees and flowers and statues were breathing and beginning to move. Tom heard it, too. He grabbed my hand. We turned and looked at the dock, where Hawk and Seth still stood, holding the boat, and beyond the dock to the shadowy Garden.

Coming now from behind the bushes, statues, and trees, silent and stealthy as ghosts, were the bag ladies.

None of them mumbled or shuffled or spoke. The only sound was that barely audible shift in the atmosphere, the whisper of air that told of figures moving through the night. They came separately, unlike the chained swans. One by one, as Tom, Seth, Hawk, and I all watched, they moved to the dock and gathered there. They were dark and motionless now, like a congregation standing in a dim cathedral.

While Seth held the boat, Hawk helped each bag lady aboard. Watching his tall, thin fingers in
the darkness, watching him bend at the waist as he held out his hand again and again to the figures in the procession, it struck me that he was as gracious, as gallant, as respectful, as the doorman at the Ritz, and that they were as dignified as anyone to whom a hand of help had ever been extended.

When they were all seated in the boat, I saw that something had been left behind in the shadows on the dock. Their bags! Each lady had put down her bag full of tattered secrets, and all the fragments of her everyday life had been left ashore when she took Hawk's hand and found her place on the swan. Each of us had done so. We had left our lives behind.

Quietly, Seth swung himself aboard and into the swan seat at the rear, from which he would pedal and steer. Hawk lifted his saxophone case over and set it down carefully. Then he unclipped a rope and pushed the boat along the side of the dock to give it a little momentum. Finally he stepped across the widening strip of water and sat down in the last seat himself. Now the swan was free. Together we all glided out into the dark pond.

I could feel Tom's little body, warm and soft, nestled beside me. Ahead of me I could see the
night sky with its splinter of moon and the city looming with its gray and geometric shapes; around me, the trees of the Garden and the smooth dark water of the pond. I looked back and saw Seth's head turn as he glanced to either side, getting his bearings in the dim light; his shoulders were straight and proud and taut with power.

Now I could hear small sounds as well. The breeze. Tom Terrific's contented sigh. The shiftings of the bag ladies as they adjusted to the motion of the boat, and the tiny click of the latch on Hawk's saxophone case. I heard rustlings, suddenly, in the grasses along the sides of the pond: the ducks were waking. With muted quacks and flutters, they slid from their nests into the water and began to swim; I nudged Tom and pointed. Toward the boat, and then beside it, in patterns as graceful and silent as that of the swan itself, the ducks—there seemed hundreds—now moved solemnly with us through the night. I turned to look at the ladies, seated in the rows around me, and although their individual features were lost in darkness, I could see their postures: erect, stately, like the most noble of rulers being carried through an honored populace.

Then, through the dark quiet, I heard the first notes as Hawk began to play. Melancholy fragments of melodies slid around and over us and through the night sky as the swan moved in a long semicircle at one end of the pond and then along the other shore to the bridge. I recognized bits and pieces of songs I had heard him play before; now he was letting them flow, one into the next, a concerto of memories. I could see from their outlines that some of the ladies were swaying slightly with the rhythm of the music. The swan moved now under the bridge, into hollow echoes and deep shadows, and out into the expanse of pond on the other side. Hawk eased the melody into the opening lines of "Stardust." One of the ladies began to hum.

The swan moved so slowly that it felt almost motionless, almost as if the only thing carrying us along was the song, its phrases sliding into each other smoothly until the end. Then, as we came around the curving corner at the far end of the pond, Hawk began the same song again, the same haunting sequence of notes, and the bag ladies began to sing softly.

"Sometimes I wonder," they sang, "why I spend the lonely nights..."

They were tentative voices at first. They were the voices of people who had not sung in a long time, who are uncertain, alone, and fearful. But as
the swan moved along, so did the song, and their voices almost magically grew stronger; they began to blend together. They became less hesitant. They became a choir.

"Beside a garden wall," they sang in unison, in tune, in a kind of wonderful rapture, "when stars were bright..."

I didn't sing. I didn't know the words. It was a song from a different time, a time that had never belonged to me. It was their time. Their song. Their night. It was my time only to listen.

It was while they sang, and I listened, hugging Tom close to me, that I saw the first police car drive up with its lights out and park beside the Garden. A minute later, the second and third. I heard the measured clop of a horse's hooves. Seth saw and heard them, too; he glanced at me. There was nothing we could do, and although we didn't speak to each other, I knew that Seth and I were thinking the same thing: as long as we can make this last, we will. We'll give them as much as we can of this night.

By the time we had glided under the dark hollows of the bridge again and were coming close to the dock, the song had faded away and the last saxophone notes were floating out into the Garden. I think the police had waited, as Seth and I had, for the moment to come to its own completion. There was an endless minute of absolute silence, which I hope was filled with memories of better times and less lonely nights.

Then the spotlights came on. The pond was entirely ringed now with police. The lights blinded us in every direction we looked, and through a loudspeaker a harsh, commanding voice, said, fracturing the night, "You are all under arrest."

There were so many police on the dock when we moored the boat that it looked like a convention of tourists waiting for the next ride. Some of them actually had drawn their guns; I suppose they thought it wouldn't be easy to arrest a group of twenty-five felons.

"I don't believe this," I heard one of them say. "It's a bunch of old ladies and kids." I saw him return his pistol to its holster.

"Cuff the black guy," the voice said through the loudspeaker, and with a feeling of powerless horror I saw two policeman grab Hawk as he stepped off the boat and handcuff his wrists together behind his back.

I was holding Tom Terrific tightly, waiting my turn to get off and watching in despair. There was chaos on the dock. But the chaos was coming from the policemen, who were jostling each other, shouting instructions. In the midst of them, with enormous self-confidence and dignity, the bag ladies were stepping over to the dock one by one.

Seth climbed out of the seat from which he had operated the swan and made his way to where I stood speechless, with Tom's arms wrapped in panic around my neck and his face buried in my shoulder. He put his arm around us both.

"I love you guys," Seth said. Then a policeman who had come aboard grabbed him, twisted his arm behind his back, and shoved him forward, leaving us behind.

Finally it was my turn; they called to me to come forward, and they helped me to the dock without any grabbing or twisting or handcuffs. They didn't take Tom from me. I stood there holding him, a policeman at my side, and watched them herding the bag ladies to the waiting cars.

After a few minutes of utter confusion, there were only a few of us left on the dock. Seth, with a policeman holding him. Hawk, handcuffed, with two policemen, one on either side. Me and Tom, with our policeman, who looked a little disgruntled that he'd been stuck with guarding the girl and the baby. And to my surprise, our own bag lady, who had been brought back from the group, her gray hair flying about her head, insisting that she was in charge of everything. A baffled policeman stood beside her, shaking his head.

There were bright lights everywhere, and I
was squinting uncomfortably, barely able to see. One of them seemed to be coming from a guy holding a camera.

"Names," ordered someone in a uniform, and I remembered vaguely something about the rules of war. You have to give your name, rank, and serial number, but nothing else. I wondered if this qualified as war.

The bag lady had told him something—her name, I suppose—and he wrote it down and turned to Hawk.

Even with his arms wrenched behind his back, Hawk stood tall and proud. "Wilson B. Hartley," he said with dignity.

"He's the Hawk!" called Tom Terrific, lifting his head.

Wilson B. Hartley smiled at Tom. "Sometimes I'm called Hawk," he told the policeman. "Because of the sax."

The policeman glanced up from the pad of paper he was writing on and smiled half a smile before he thought better of it. "I'm a Coleman Hawkins fan myself," he said gruffly.

"Now you," he said, turning to Seth. "Name."

"Seth Andrew Sandroff."

"Oh, no," groaned the man with the camera. "It's the Sandroff kid. The boss's son! We'll
never be able to use this!"

"And you," the policeman said to me, ignoring the TV cameraman. "Name."

"Cynthia," I mumbled miserably, thinking: Enid. Stupid. Sordid. Putrid. Squalid. Rancid. "Cynthia," I said more clearly. "Cynthia Crowley."

"And the kid?"

Tom Terrific held his head high and looked him in the eye, not even squinting in the bright lights. "I'm Tom Terrific," he said in a loud, clear voice.