Sal kept running. Marcus kept running. I started running.
“Hey! Hey—kid!” Marcus yelled. Naturally he had forgotten Sal’s name.
Sal took one look over his shoulder and started moving faster. He was almost to the corner. Traffic was flying by on Amsterdam Avenue.
“Sal!” I screamed. “Stop!” But he didn’t stop.
“Wait!” Marcus yelled. “I want to—” Then he finally seemed to figure out that Sal was running away from him. He slowed down. “Hey, look out!”
Sal was in the street, still running and looking back over his shoulder.
I caught up to Marcus. I think we both saw the truck at the same time. It was a big truck, moving fast.
“Stop!” Marcus shrieked at Sal. He was pointing at the truck with both hands. “Watch out! Watch out!”
I have no idea what the truck driver was doing—checking his delivery list, maybe, or changing the radio station—but he didn’t see Sal in the middle of the street, and he didn’t slow down.
I started screaming and covered my ears. I always cover my ears when I don’t want something to happen, like if I drop a glass and don’t want it to break. I wonder why I don’t cover my eyes or my mouth. Or try to catch the glass.
I saw Sal’s head start to turn, and I knew the exact moment he registered the truck. It was practically on top of him. Going forward meant getting hit. He was moving too fast to turn back. Stopping on a dime might have saved him, but there was no way he could do it.
My brain boomed inside my head: “Sal is going to die.”
“SAL IS GOING TO DIE.”
SAL
IS
GOING
TO
DIE.
Suddenly, the laughing man was in the street, his right leg flying out in a mighty kick.
The laughing man’s foot hit Sal’s body.
Sal flew backward and hit the ground, hard.
The truck hit the laughing man.
Marcus sat down on the ground and started crying like there was no tomorrow. Really sobbing his head off.
I ran over to where Sal was lying very still with his arm tucked underneath him in a way that was not right. “Sal!” I screamed. “Sal!” He looked dead.
The truck made a long screeching noise, and then the driver came running out and shoved me away from Sal.
Someone (I found out later it was Belle) led me past a heap of something awful in the street, saying, “Don’t look don’t look don’t look.” She walked me over to the curb and sort of propped me up next to the mailbox on our corner, and then she ran back to where the truck driver was hunched over Sal, doing something to his body. There was a shoe lying upside down at my feet.
I found myself staring and staring at the shoe. It was a black shoe with a two-inch platform nailed to the bottom. It was Richard’s shoe.
Everything started to spin. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cold metal of the mailbox. When I opened my eyes, I was staring at four words scratched into the blue mailbox paint. They were stacked one on top of another:
Book
Bag
Shoe
“Book,” “Bag,” “Pocket,” “Shoe.” I read the words over and over. And then my brain showed me some pictures. I saw the school-library book with your first note sticking out of it. I saw the tall paper bag full of bread that hid your second note. I saw your third note, pulled out of my coat pocket with last winter’s dirty tissues. And then my brain pointed my eyes at the shoe lying upside down at my feet. The shoe that had been stolen from our apartment.
I reached down, picked it up, and slowly turned it over. Inside was a small square of stiff paper just like the first three:
This is the story I need you to tell. This and everything that has led up to it.
Please deliver your letter by hand. You know where to find me.
My apologies for the terse instructions. The trip is a difficult one; I can carry nothing, and a man can only hold so much paper in his mouth.
I heard Sal cry out, and looked up. The truck driver was on his knees next to Sal, saying, “Thank God, thank God, thank God, it’s a miracle.”
On the other side of the street I saw Marcus, still hunched over on the curb and crying hard. I could see him shaking. Behind him stood the boys from the garage, so still and silent that they looked like a picture of themselves.
Sal was not dead. The laughing man saved his life.
You saved Sal’s life.
You were the laughing man.
You were the heap of something awful.
You are dead.
Difficult Things
That night, Richard stayed with me while Mom kept Louisa company at the hospital. Sal had a broken arm and three broken ribs, and he had to spend the night for observation.
Richard ordered a pizza. “Do you feel like talking?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said. “Maybe later.”
He nodded. “Just let me know.”
After dinner, I closed my door and sat on my bed with your notes spread out in front of me. “Think,” my brain said. “Think, think, think.” I got out my ropes, tied some knots, and tried to start at the beginning.
The trip is a difficult one. I will not be myself when I reach you.
The trip is a difficult one, and I must ask my favors while my mind is sound.
And then there was the strangest line of alclass="underline" The trip is a difficult one; I can carry nothing, and a man can only hold so much paper in his mouth.
I fingered the notes, so small and brittle. Had you carried them in your mouth?
The trip is a difficult one.
Difficult enough to scramble a persons mind and leave him raving on a street corner? What kind of a trip did that to someone? Who would deliberately take a trip like that?
My mind began a little chant: “And why? Why, why, why?”
To save Sal. That’s why you stood on our corner day after day. That’s why you were always doing those kicks into the street—you were practicing. It was all to save Sal. Because, somehow, you knew.
Time travel is possible, Marcus said. In theory.
I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
“Well,” I said out loud to no one, “you saved Sal’s life, but you failed miserably with goal number two.”
Richard knocked on the door, and I jumped.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I thought you might want to come out and have some grapes.”
Richard had brought me grapes. We watched some TV and ate a giant bowl of the most perfect tart green grapes in the world. They were definitely not from Belle’s.
It was nice, just sitting there watching TV together. My brain stopped asking me questions. I saw Richard glance over at me a couple of times, but he didn’t ask me any questions either. And that was nice, too.
When I fell asleep on the couch, Richard turned the TV off and said I should go to bed. But once everything was quiet, I couldn’t sleep. Your words were swimming in my head.
Please deliver your letter by hand. You know where to find me.
Louisa had told me that some of her old people died with nothing and no one. She said they were buried on an island somewhere north of Manhattan. I figured that was where you would be soon.
I was still worrying and feeling a little frozen when my bedroom door opened and Mom came over and sat on the edge of my bed.
“Sal is going to be fine,” she whispered, putting one arm around me. “The tests are done. He’ll probably be home in the morning.”
I didn’t say anything. I was afraid that if I spoke, I would tell her too much—I would tell her about the notes, Richard’s shoes, the two-dollar bills, everything. And I thought that if I did tell her, somehow Sal might not be okay anymore. So instead I just held on to Mom’s arm, and she stayed right there until I fell asleep.