My father touches his officer’s cap to greet Seven Fingers. Seven Fingers nods, without meeting my father’s eyes. Darby curls his lip at my father. He and my father don’t agree about anything. Even the way my father says hello to the cons is a problem for Trixle. Too respectful. Trixle would have every convict on a leash like a dog if he could.
“All right, then, have a look, see what you think.” My father waves toward the bathroom.
Seven Fingers goes into the bathroom, Trixle stands outside, leaning against the wall, first one way, then the other. He shifts his feet, eyeing our living room sofa. He seems to decide that Seven Fingers will be all right, marches into the front room, and plunks himself down.
“Can I get you something, Darby?” my father asks.
“Don’t happen to have any of Anna Maria’s cannolis around, do you?” Trixle puts his shiny black shoes on the coffee table. “Ain’t nobody can make ’em the way she can.”
My father nods toward me. “Moose, could you run to the Mattamans’ and ask Anna Maria if she can spare a cannoli?”
When I get back with cannolis for Trixle on one of Mrs. Mattaman’s yellow flowered plates, Seven Fingers is in the living room. “Trouble’s worse than I thought. Them army pipes are three-quarter inch,” Seven Fingers says in a whispery tobacco voice. “They get jammered up real easy. Got some ’bout ready to burst. Need to replumb the whole dang place, sir.”
Trixle grunts. “Not going to replumb the whole dang place, that’s for sure. Get the ones ’bout to burst, then we’ll call it a day.”
Seven Fingers cocks his head like his hearing is bad. His eyes are on the cannolis.
“You heard me. Get a move on,” Trixle growls. Seven Fingers sidles back to the bathroom.
I stay on the couch until Trixle and my dad get to talking about politics.
My dad’s eyes are riveted on Trixle. “WPA’s gonna get the whole country working again,” he insists.
“Ain’t nothing but handouts,” Trixle shoots back.
“Can’t say I agree with you on that.” My father grinds his teeth.
This is my chance. I have to take it. But my legs feel like they are mortared to the couch cushion and my hands are wet with sweat.
“I understand you got yourself a problem with your little girl, Cam. But this ain’t about that.”
“Doesn’t have anything to do with Natalie, Darby.”
“I’m only saying your situation’s one thing and the WPA is another.”
I’ve made my legs move. They are walking me down the hall. Trixle and my dad don’t seem to notice. My heart is beating so hard it feels like little explosions in my chest.
Seven Fingers has the bathroom door half closed and the water running.
A towel is slung across the knob. “Seven Fingers?” I whisper. My mouth is so dry I can hardly get the words out.
I peek in, but Seven Fingers isn’t in the bathroom. I take a deep breath, turn, and push open the door to Natalie’s room.
The bottom drawer is open. The shadow of Seven Fingers stands behind the door. His tall thin chest slips past me and back into the bathroom.
My heart pounds in my ears. My arms are stiff as sticks of wood. “You stay away from her,” I say.
“This ain’t kid stuff,” he murmurs, the smell of bad breath and tobacco filling my nostrils. “We know where she sleeps.” The bathroom door shuts almost silently in my face.
23. SEVEN FINGERS’S CANDYBARS
Same day-Saturday, September 7, 1935
“We need to talk,” I tell my dad when Seven Fingers has gone.
“Can it wait until tomorrow?”
“No.”
A darkness falls across my father’s face. He slips his toothpick box into his pocket and motions with his head toward the door. “How about we go for a walk? Could use a little fresh air,” he says.
We tromp down the stairs to the dock and around the agave trail, which runs low along the water. The wind blows hard, as it often does late in the day. It feels like a giant hand pushing us back. But my father is determined. He’s headed for a spot on the hillside looking out across at San Francisco. We sit down on rocks jutting out of the hill.
I look into his kind golden brown eyes. “Dad, what if the Esther P. Marinoff School isn’t as safe as we thought?”
“What do you mean safe?”
“What if…” I work at a stone with my heel, try to loosen it from the dirt. “What if Natalie isn’t safe there?”
His eyes squint with the effort to understand. “Safe you mean how?”
“What if she was getting visitors?”
“Visitors? For crying out loud, Moose. What are you driving at?”
The rock comes free. I hold it in my hand. “I’m worried about the convict 105.”
“105?” my father says as a gust of wind blows his officer’s cap off.
“The gardener. He worked over here. Piper said he got released from Terminal Island a few weeks ago.”
“Oh yes, Onion. Why in the Sam Hill are you worried about him?”
“Because…” My voice trails off. I’m about to tell him how Seven Fingers said he knew where she slept. On the island? At the Esther P. Marinoff? Which is worse? I don’t even know.
“Because?” my father prompts.
“I dunno, I just-what if 105 visited Natalie at school?”
My father stares at me. “What on earth makes you think he’d do that?”
“I had a… a dream. A nightmare.”
He breathes out a huge gush of air. “For Pete’s sake, Moose. You had me goin’ there for a minute.”
“Could he find her?” I ask.
“Why would he want to, son? She doesn’t have money. We don’t have money. They could kidnap her, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be worth their while. She’s safer there than she is almost anywhere.”
“What about here then?”
“Moose, look at me.” He waits until my eyes connect with his. “I’d never bring my family on this island if I thought there was any real danger. That cell house is sealed up tight as a drum. Try to stop worrying so much. Ollie thinks your nerves could be triggering the hives.”
I find a smooth rock and sail it into the bay. “I don’t trust Seven Fingers.”
“Good! I wouldn’t want you to trust him.”
I find another rock and throw it as hard as I can. “I don’t want him in our apartment.”
My father nods. “Don’t much like him there myself. I wish those city plumbers didn’t cost an arm and a leg… But you know what? Our plumbing problems never seem to get that much better. It’s occurred to me that old Seven Fingers likes his chocolate bars a little too much.” He fishes in his pocket for a new toothpick.
Sometimes it feels like our life is made out of toothpicks and if I pull one out, the whole thing will collapse.
“I like the way you’re thinking all of this through. Sometimes life throws you a curveball. You can’t always accept what other people tell you; you have to reason it out for yourself.
“Once when Natalie was little, a doctor told us what she had was contagious. If we kept her at home with us, you could catch it from her. He said we should send her away to a ranch in Arizona where she would be quarantined so as not to infect others.
“You were so healthy. Everything I ever wanted in a son.” He sighs and presses his lips tight together. “I couldn’t risk you getting this terrible thing she has, this blackness that eats her up from the inside. But I couldn’t ship my daughter off like she was no more than livestock. I went around and around trying to reason it out, but in my gut I knew the answer. I wasn’t going to send Natalie off like that. If she were infectious, wouldn’t we have caught it already? The next week we went to another doctor who said there was no evidence her condition was contagious. None at all.