Tom Finder (18 page)

“Do it, man.”

“Okay.”

Jeans gave Tom a hard, smacking kiss. “I will send you a wedding invitation,” Jeans said. “You just get yourself an address and see if I don't.” Tom grinned and ran from the airport.

He got back on the shuttle bus and headed back to the Core. He paid the fare for the bus and an extra loonie. He figured if he did that every time, he'd have his fine paid off in a couple of years or so.

On the way back, he read his notebook. He reread his collection of words. A treasure. Right here in his hands, a treasure. Hadn't the librarian called him a poet? Couldn't he spell like a damn? Hadn't he just sent Jeans back to Jamaica? He could spell
decide.
He could decide from now on what was true about himself, his good-speller, good-swimmer, gravity-defying self that had been there all along.

From the window Tom could see a plane taking off. It made his heart fly to watch that plane lift into the sky. What could gravity be if he could make a plane that big take his friend home? He felt like he'd just looked gravity in the face, made eye contact.

He read the notebook all the way back. Every word made his backside smile. He was getting that God feeling again, right there under his wishbone, and he wanted to kiss everyone on the bus.

But there was something else.

Something he had to do to make it true, to make it pure poetry. He had to rescue the fair maiden, of course.

Tom got off the bus and ran to the warehouse. Ran! He was fast! Why hadn't he tried out for track before?

He ran into the warehouse and searched every fire for Pam. He found her talking with Jeffrey-Jones.

“Pam.”

Jeffrey-Jones smiled at him, a great, generous smile. “Hey, Tom. Everything okay?”

Tom grabbed Pam and kissed her.

“I have to save you,” Tom said. What was he saying? “I mean, yes, everything is okay, or it will be, as soon as I save you.”

“All this mushy stuff is making me sick,” Janice said. She slapped her forehead. “Oh, yeah, I'm already sick.” She put her doll on her shoulder and stepped into the shadows.

Pam was looking at him with a puzzled smile. He didn't have a way with girls, but maybe he did with this girl. There was some true part of himself that didn't have anything to do with Bruce or school or anything under gravity.

Jeffrey-Jones stood up. He was going to say something, then he stopped. He looked around. “Do you hear something?” he asked.

“I hear Tom being a crazy person,” Pam said.

“I just saw Jeans off,” Tom said. “He's going back to Jamaica.”

Pam clapped her hands. “Oh Tom, that's great!”

“But something he said made me think—”

“Something isn't right,” Jeffrey-Jones said. “Too much smoke.” He called out, “Hey, somebody burning contraband?”

“I wrote you this poem on the bus,” Tom said, kneeling down beside Pam. “This is Pam's future: not a life behind glass, listening to the secrets of mannequins; not a world out of reach, lips pressed against the window; not a world for wanting and wishing, but a world for having . . .”

Somebody screamed, “Fire!”

A few people laughed. “No kidding!”

Then there was another scream, and another. Tom put his notebook into his backpack. He felt the building breathe out, a low trembling
whoosh,
then a moment of absolute silence.

Then mayhem. Screaming, shouting, crying. Tom could see a straight line of flame stitching the ceiling directly over his head. From the north side of the building where the entrance was, black smoke rose like a great muscled genie. Pam stood up, disoriented, as if she'd just woken up.

Tom grabbed her hand, but he couldn't tell which direction to go. People were running in every direction. “Janice!” Pam yelled.

“We have to get out now!” Tom shouted into her ear. They ran to the front door, but it had been boarded up. People were shoving and yelling, but the crowd wasn't moving.

A voice bellowed, “Over here!”

Tom and Pam and dozens of other people ran toward the voice. Someone had managed to pry a slat of wood from a window.

“Don't push!” a girl cried.

“Back off!” someone screamed in panic from the front of the crowd.

“I can't breathe!” Pam shouted in his ear. Tom could see people in the middle of the crowd, their eyes round, bulging in panic.

“Come on,” Tom shouted to Pam. “They're being crushed. Come on!”

He thought he could see another window. The heat was becoming unbearable; the smoke was choking him. There wasn't any air left in the smoke. As they ran, Pam saw Janice wandering as if she were looking for something. “Janice, come with us!” Pam cried. Tom grabbed her arm.

Janice pulled her arm away. “My baby . . . I can't leave her . . .” She disappeared into the smoke.

Tom couldn't see the window anymore. He dragged Pam. The smoke clutched at his lungs as he felt along the wall.

He found it, another boarded-up window. He began ripping at the board with his fingers. Pam was crying.

“Lie down!” Tom commanded. “Put your face on the floor.”

She collapsed to the floor. Tom's hands were bleeding, but the board was coming away. He grunted and cursed and pulled. Suddenly, someone else was helping. Tom heard the wood crack away from the nails and the sound of sirens just as a flaming something fell beside them. The window glass was cracked. Tom kicked at it with his boot, and the glass exploded outward.

“Out!” he screamed to Pam. She didn't move. He lifted her up and pushed her through the window.

He meant to swing his leg over the windowsill. He meant to lift his leg and fling himself through the window—there was air there—he could smell it, taste it.

But somehow he didn't go through the window. He was sinking. The window was getting higher, out of reach, so high that he'd never get his leg over that sill, no way. It was floating up and up, and then Tom felt his head rest on the floor, watching the window shrink into nothingness.

There was air down here on the floor, enough air for Tom to think straight enough to know he was going to die. He hoped they'd stop the fire in time to save his notebook. He remembered his mom, a way-back memory, back to when she loved him more than Forget. That window was just a pinprick of light now. He wished he'd talked to Samuel, told him that he was sorry, that he knew finding somebody wasn't the same as getting someone home.

He could hear the music of the opera, now. His ears were hallucinating. Then his eyes were hallucinating, too, because he could see Daniel Wolflegs, his face close to his, his eyes like a wolf's eyes, piercing the smoke.

“Are you dead?” Daniel asked.

Strange thing for a ghost to ask another ghost, Tom thought. He shook his head.

Daniel smiled, and then he lifted Tom, as if he were made of smoke. Tom could hear sirens, and answering sirens, as if they were speaking in code to each other.

Daniel had his arm around Tom's waist. “Just lift your leg, and I'll get the rest of you out,” he said. Sure enough, there was that window, as if it had just appeared out of nothing.

“Come on,” Daniel said. “Help me out here.”

Tom crushed his face against Daniel's hair. “Your dad will die if you don't go to him,” he said.

Daniel swore. “All right! All right!”

Tom lifted his leg with all his strength. He fell out the window, then Daniel fell almost on top of him, and just before the rescue worker came for them they lay together, breathing in sync.

Chapter 11

What joy it will be, if the gods remember us . . .

Act 2, scene 29

Tom and Daniel were given oxygen masks, and someone put a blanket around Tom's shoulders. The ambulance worker tried to give one to Daniel, but he shrugged it away. Over by another ambulance, Tom could see Pam. The red-haired social worker from the youth shelter was beside her with her arm around Pam's shoulders. Tom felt he'd grown inches in the last few minutes. The ground seemed far away.

Tom asked the paramedic, nodding in Daniel's direction, “Is he okay?”

“I think he's all right,” the worker said to Tom. “How about you?”

“I'm okay,” Tom said.

He was better than okay. He was alive! He could breathe! He could walk—he could up and walk in any direction he chose: back to Samuel, back to the cops to report an assault by Boyfriend Bruce, back to someone who would help him get back on his feet. He could decide.

The ambulance worker was checking out a kid who had just been brought to him. “This one's a transport,” he said to his partner. They loaded the kid into the ambulance. The kid looked about ten years old. He was wheezing like he had an old whistle lodged in this windpipe.

“That was Winter,” Daniel said. “He goes home in the summer, when his dad's away on the rigs. In the winter, he stays with us.” His voice was drowned out as the ambulance peeled away and switched on its sirens. Tom wanted to write down what Daniel had said about Winter.

The firefighters were laying some things neatly in a row. They were too busy to see Tom and Daniel. What were the firemen doing? Tom thought he was seeing everything through gauze. Maybe he was dreaming.

Tom came closer, until he could see for sure.

Morocco. Rain. Jeffrey-Jones. Laid out side by side.

He knelt by Jeffrey-Jones. He wasn't burned. He wasn't bruised, not that Tom could see. He was perfect, almost smiling, like he'd smiled when he'd told Tom welcome, it's all free.

“You know him?” someone in a uniform asked.

Tom nodded. “Jeffrey-Jones.”

“Spell it?”

Tom spelled it. He spelled it perfectly. He just knew.

Tom looked and made himself see. He made himself see that they were dead. This was something you had to remember. Real power wasn't in forgetting. It was in remembering. He would write it down and make people see that here were good hearts. He knew he could do it, knew he could make people see with his words. He knew what words could do now. They could make people see what had been real all along. He hoped Jeffrey-Jones was home now. H–O–M–E.

Pam wailed. They laid out Janice's body, still clutching a melted doll.

“Get these kids out of here,” a man with a clipboard ordered.

The social worker led Pam away, and Tom and Daniel were directed out of the cordoned-off area.

They walked away together without speaking. They both headed for the island.

Samuel was standing by the river when they came, his arms limp at his sides, his face crumpled as a blond raisin. He was as lean as Daniel, and Tom could see that Daniel looked like his father, and almost as old.

“Daniel,” Samuel said softly.

The old man put his hands on Daniel's shoulders hesitantly, as if he wasn't sure Daniel would really be there. Tom knew he'd be feeling what he felt: skin like paper, and underneath, fragile bones. Ghost bones. Skin as translucent as ghost skin. And dead eyes. There was no light in those eyes. They'd been bounced out of heaven one too many times, those eyes.

Daniel wavered, ghostlike, and Tom thought the boy would have floated away if Samuel hadn't had his hands on his son's shoulders.

Samuel shook. His huge hands lifted to cup Daniel's face. His hand went all the way around Daniel's skull. He felt his son's face with his thumbs, the bones of his jaw, back to his shoulders. It was if he couldn't really see him, as if he were blind and needed his hands to see him with. He bent down and dipped his hand in the water. He washed the soot from his son's face, as if he were an infant. He washed his sores.

“No one sees the river anymore but me,” Samuel said to Daniel. His voice was a chant. “I sat by it waiting for you, learning patience. It became my river. Now I give it to you. It is always the river, but the water in it is always new. Do you see, Daniel? You will always be Daniel, but the spirit in you can be new. Come home with me.”

Daniel put his hands over his father's. His hair flowed behind him. It seemed to Tom in that instant that the river was rushing too fast for such a slow, sad moment.

“I am sorry, son,” Samuel said. His voice was so clogged that Tom could scarcely understand him. “I am sorry. I love you.”

They embraced.

When Samuel opened his eyes, he seemed surprised to see Tom standing there still. “You can go home now, Tom Finder,” he said gently. “Go home.”

Chapter 12

A human being like you. What if I asked you who you are?

Act 1, scene 2

Tom sat down on the curb and stared for a long time at the burned warehouse. The building was crumbled and black. Gray smoke rose limply from the ruin. The bodies had been taken away. Men in hardhats were speaking in groups inside the taped-off area.