“Where’s his mother?”
No one knows.
“Do you know where you live?” I ask him, wanting to sleep.
He nods, says something I can’t understand.
A policeman pats the boy on the head (I am laughing), asks me what my story is. Goes away before I can answer. Someone calling him, another cop.
A wave passes through me. I close my eyes. The sun in my throat like a ball. When I stand, my legs are gone.
“We’re getting you some dry clothes,” he tells me. “And you don’t worry,” he says to the kid, who is no longer crying.
“My name is Christopher Steiner.” No one hears. My story is …
I walk away. Steiner. The police have their backs to me. Walk slowly away as if I’m not going anywhere. They will hear of me.
Someone is following. I have a sense of it, but don’t look behind (I’m Christopher Steiner), keep walking, then break into a run. There can be no peace without freedom. Feeling sick, I hold on to the wire fence of a miniature golf course. MINNIE’S ATOMIC MINI-GOLF — A FUN TIME FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY. There are no players. The nausea comes and goes in waves. I feel what it must feel to be an old man.
There is a kid standing next to me. Looking at me as if I owe him something. The same kid as before.
“It’s not polite to follow people, son.”
He looks at me dumbly, hands me a sweaty piece of paper.
To Whom It May Concern:
My name is Bartholomew Doyle.
I live at 105 Avenue M..
“What’s your name?”
“Bartdoyle,” he says as if it’s one word.
“I’m Christopher Steiner. I’m going to take you home. OK?”
“Let’s see your police.” He giggles, looks around, punches me in the side. “Are you his daddy?”
Whose? I wave at a taxi, which comes over at my signal. Bart climbs in, making machine-gun noises.
I look at my watch, which has pustules of water trapped under its eye. Very late. A flaming bottle hits the door of the cab. Machine-gun fire in the street. Someone running is hit. Keeps running. Three holes in his back. Falls. Since thinking about what will happen will do no good, close my eyes.
Curtis Parks is the first casualty of what is a new stage in the quest for peace. There can be no peace without war.
My father was about to beat Phyllis with his belt for having married out of the family. I jumped on him from behind and wrestled the belt loose. The two of us coming apart on opposite sides of the room. “I’m dying,” he said, picking up a chair to heave at me. Rosemary was standing between us. “There’s no need to fight,” she said. “I love you both.”
He dropped the chair, put his hands over his face.
“One eighty,” the driver says, “and you’re a free man.” I peel apart two wet dollars. Bart is already at the door to his house.
“I just killed one of the enemy,” I tell him. He smiles and makes a machine-gun noise in his teeth. “Ehhehhehhehhehh-ehh.”
It cracks me up. I feel like dancing in the street.
His grandmother offers me a glass of cherry soda. Tells me that Bart’s mother and father are separated. His mother is absentminded, has lost Bart before. “If it weren’t for my husband’s family, those people sick all the time — always someone dying — we would never have left Indianapolis.”
“He’s going to grow up to be a good kid,” I say.
Bart sitting on my lap. His grandmother talking about how much better it was before they came to New York. “Too many foreigners in New York is the trouble.”
“You have a friend here waiting for you,” my mother says. “I didn’t know what to tell her — you didn’t give us a time.”
“I won’t be home until it’s over.”
“We’re proud, son. Whatever you have to do, our hearts are with you.”
The grandmother lends me twenty cents, which I cannot promise to return. I return the glass of cherry soda to her half finished. Bart punches me good-bye.
I run the three blocks to the elevated, hearing the train in the distance, thinking I can make it if I hurry.
There are several planes flying directly overhead, bombers, a squadron of eagles. I feel their shadow across my back as I run. People move out of my way. An ambulance siren somewhere. The sound of big guns in the distance. The shelling recurs at fifteen-second intervals. Craters in the ground. Have to get through to someone. Get the word to headquarters. It was not expected of him, they will say. Nothing hurts anymore but memory. Parks killed in action. Others. A handful still left. Holding them off. The street on fire.
A dying man hands me a revolver. I go up the gray iron steps, thinking of Rosemary’s breasts (someday she will hear of me), gunning her enemy as they rise, two steps at a time, until, leg-weary, teetering, floating, I reach the top of the station. As I make my move, I hear the last train rumbling in. Knowing if I can get through in time there is hope. I take off like an astronaut, the countdown still ticking in his head, taking off. Fight fire with fire, my orders say. Fighting weariness, fears, doubts (“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the sound track), telling myself there’s no more to go this time, no more, no more, no more, I go up the final flight of stairs. It is three steps at a time this time, the final flight. There is no more to go after this.
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