“There are no goats here,” said Saalim. “This is America. They keep the goats outside. No goats, no goatshit in a fine American place.”
“That is why we came so far. To destroy it and spread the will of Allah-”
“And to bring the goats inside, where they belong!”
Both boys laughed. They were lounging on a park bench on the southeast side of the Silli-Land Park, near the ticket office for the Ride-a-Log flume shoot, a twisty tube of water that enabled Americans the thrill of a downward thunder of a splashing ride, now vacant and unattended. From where they were, they were spared the disagreeable sight of Dead Man in Red upon His Throne. But they did see, everywhere, desultory Americans sitting crunched together, supposedly with their hands on their heads, though this imposed discipline had soon disappeared.
They were teenaged boys: their own discipline was not superb. They were supposed to keep iron eyes on their captives, to make certain little cliques didn’t form and plot some kind of revolution. But the Americans seemed to have no spirit for that kind of work and mostly just sat there, in a kind of stupor that both Saalim and Asad had seen among the struggling citizens of Wabra. Thus, Saalim and Asad found themselves occupied with chitchat, petty teasing, attraction to various girls, shows of adolescent bravado, and hunger for fast food, which was abundant in the now largely empty mall. That sometime soon soldiers or police officers would surely crash the place, guns firing, and probably kill them was of utterly no concern. Given the toughness of their lives, death held little sting.
But suddenly a crackle came over the earphones they wore under their shemaghs. It was the imam.
“You, Asad, that is your name, correct?”
“Yes, Imam,” said Asad, jumping alert.
“You remember what we discussed, you and I?”
It was true. He had a special mission.
“I do, Imam,” he said into the throat mike.
“Well, it’s time. You can find this place?”
He remembered. Second floor, NW Colorado, C-2-145. That was the destination. The imam had shown him on the bright-colored brochures with maps that guided them through the mall.
“I can, Imam,” he said.
“Good,” said the imam. “It’s time to go and get the babies.”
Humbly, Mr. and Mrs. Girardi approached the police officer at the farthest extreme from the mall. In fact, they could see it almost a mile away in the twilight, looking like a big tub upside down, surrounded by police cars and fire engines.
“Folks,” said the cop, “sorry, I can’t let you in any closer.”
“Sir,” said Mr. Girardi, “we’re looking for our son. He’s fourteen.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever let him go to the mall alone,” said Mrs. Girardi. “I usually take him or he goes with friends. But he wanted to do his Christmas shopping.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“We haven’t heard from him. Should we call him?”
“He hasn’t called you?”
“We haven’t heard anything. We just know what’s on the TV.”
“No I wouldn’t advise that,” said the officer. “He may be hiding or something, or hurt or-well, you just don’t know what his circumstance is and it’s probably better to wait until he reaches out to you.”
“Is there any information available?”
“No, sir. We’re trying to get a command structure set up and get organized. It’s a terrible problem and nobody is clear on what to do. To be honest, it’ll be several hours before we really get what’s going on, and even longer before we have information. I’m sure your son is okay. He’s young, he’s strong, he’s quick.”
“He’s not really. He has asthma. He’s very thin and frail.”
“Well,” said the cop, stuck for an answer. “Maybe the best thing for you to do is find the Red Cross tent. I think they’re set up on the western side. You can rest there and you’ll get information there sooner.”
“I never should have let him come to the mall by himself,” said Mrs. Girardi, as her husband led her away.
Lavelva Oates shushed the redheaded one. He was a handful. Maybe it was because he was a redhead, he seemed to want a lot of attention and had tendencies toward disruption. He kept picking on a little Asian girl who would do nothing but sit and weep when he addressed her. Smack him hard on his burry little pipsqueak head? That’s what Lavelva wanted to do, but she knew it was a mistake. Jobs were hard enough to come by these days and no one went around hitting damn babies.
“Okay, boys and girls, now let’s play a new game,” she said brightly. “In this game, I want you all to be playing Hide from the monster. When I say go, you go hide. We’ll pretend the bad monsters are here. But they won’t see you, and you’ll be all right. We can hide from the monsters together.”
“That’s a scary game,” said Robert. She knew he was named Robert because he had a big name tag pinned on: ROBERT 3–4. But it was past four o’clock and Robert’s mom hadn’t shown up. Maybe she was dead.
“I want to go home. Where’s my mom?” asked Robert.
“I’m sure she’s on her way,” Lavelva said.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Linda said.
“Peepee or the other?” asked Lavelva.
“Both,” said the child.
“All right,” said Lavelva. “Anybody else?”
A few hands came up.
“I’m going to take you back there”-the lavatory was in the rear of the room-“but we have to go on tippy-toes.”
“I don’t like tippy-toes,” said Larry. “It’s for babies.”
Lavelva was the day care service coordinator, afternoon shift, second floor. She had seventeen unruly kids, three through eight, under her charge. This was her first day! Goddamn!
She wasn’t sure what was going on. She was trapped in the day care center, a large room full of beat-up toys and pissed-on dolls, on the second floor. About an hour ago, she’d heard the shooting-loud sharp cracks, echoing eerily along the walls, the nooks and crannies of the mall, very frightening-and herded her kids to the back of the room and told them to them lie down. She went to the doorway and watched as the crowded corridor outside seemed to drain itself in a couple of minutes. People ran crazily, screaming, “They’re shooting, they’re shooting, they have machine guns.” She knew there was no way she could get seventeen kids through that mob and that the kids would be knocked down, separated, even hurt. Where was her supervisor? Mrs. Watney, head of mall day care, didn’t answer her calls or her texts. Maybe she’d raced out the door too. She tried her mom; couldn’t get through. She tried her brother Ralphie installing carpets, even though he’d told her never to call while he was on the job. It didn’t matter; couldn’t get through. She tried 911. No response. She was alone.
Lavelva knew two things immediately: the first was that she’d be much better holding the children here until someone in authority-a cop, a fireman, someone-came with instructions, and second that if there were men with guns around, she had to have a weapon. In her universe, inner-city Minneapolis, Twenty-Eighth and Washington, it was a tough life and all the young men carried. She’d seen them lying on the streets, bled out, eyes blank. That was the world. There was no other. All the newspapers were always jabbering about the tragedy of it, blah blah and blah, but words like tragedy held little meaning for Lavelva; hers was a more practical turn of mind, and it had to do with dealing with what was instead of dreaming about what could be.
She herded the kids back to the rear of the room and sent Linda in to do peepee and the other one. Suzanne, Mindy, Jessica, and Marsha went too. In fact all the girls went.
“Everybody gets a turn. No shoving. Stand in line. Make Miss Lavelva proud,” she instructed, knowing these passive little white girls would do exactly that. She couldn’t go with them, of course; policy was that no childcare coordinator could be alone in a bathroom with a child of either sex. But perhaps, on a day such as today, the rules had gone out the window. Still, it was better to obey policy, no matter what was happening outside. Here in the second-floor Mall Service Childcare Center, policies would be obeyed.