Real Dragons

by Rebecca Shelley

"That's it." Alice pulled the sketchbook away from the boys. "I finally understand your mama, Weldon. Your pictures ain't real. You can't draw things into existence. Art be important. It be beautiful, and you can make a career as an artist, but dragons and fairies do not exist."

  "I'm not talking about dragons and fairies," Weldon said, shocked by Alice's vehemence. "I'm talking about thieves and murderers."

  Alice walked to the front door and pointed outside. "Go to school. We'll talk about this when you get back."

  "Mrs. Walker, you got to believe me," Weldon said as he retreated to the door. "Tom, tell her. Don't you remember?"

  Tom shook his head with a puzzled look.

  "Don't worry, Weldon." Alice patted his shoulder as he went outside. "Everything gonna be all right."

  A sick lump turned in Tom's stomach as he watched Weldon leave. Weldon seemed so nice. Tom hated to see him treated like this. He wished he could get another look at the jeweled brooches Weldon had drawn, but Alice slammed the sketchbook closed and carried it off to her bedroom.

  No matter, Tom didn't need the pictures to see the brooches clearly in his mind. To feel their cool weight in his hands. Weldon was right. Tom did recognize the brooches. But then Alice must be right too. The only way Tom could have ever held them or had them in his possession was if he had stolen them. Of course Alice hadn't gone so far as to accuse Tom of that, but the horrible guilty feeling that had nagged Tom since he woke up on the sidewalk intensified.

  "I think I'm going to be sick," Tom said, rushing to the bathroom.

  He came out later, sweaty and shaky and dizzier than before. What have I done? he thought. He found Alice working at the art desk, completely focused on the illustration she had to finish.

  Tom slumped down at the table and watched her for a while. He wondered if Weldon was right and the men really were coming back for him. Maybe he could just give them the dragon, but it seemed sealed tight around his wrist. They might have to chop off his hand to get it. And Weldon had said the men wanted to kill him. If they came for him here, they'd probably kill Alice too. She'd been so nice, so good to him, taking him in and caring for him like a mother. Tom couldn't let anything happen to her, not because of him.

  Still feeling sick and dizzy, Tom went back to washing the kitchen floor. When it looked better than it must have looked in years, Tom tackled the overflowing garbage can. He pulled out the old plastic sack, pushed the garbage down tight in it, and tied it off. He floofed out a new bag and put it in the can. Then hefted the full garbage bag over the shoulder and headed for the door.

  Alice looked up when the lock clicked open.

  "Be right back," Tom said as he stepped outside.

  "The bin's in the alley on the far side of the shoe store," Alice said. "Hurry back."

  "Right-o," Tom said. He closed the door behind him and hurried down the stairs. The men were coming to kill him and take the diamond dragon. Tom was sure of it, but even with that knowledge Tom could still not remember who he was or why he might have stolen the jewels in the first place.

  He reached the street and headed for the garbage bin in the alley. He knew he had to run, but had no idea where to go or any place he could hide. He had no recollection of the tall brownstone buildings or the streets that ran around their bases. When he strained really hard, all he could see was a silent silver world, the opposite of this place of crowded noise and grime. He liked things clean. He knew that much about himself. Clean and quiet.

  He heaved the garbage bag into the bin. A flash of black at the base of the can caught his eye. He looked down to see a black marble had rolled between the can and the brownstone wall. A few feet away, he could just make out a scuffed chalk circle where some kids must have been playing marbles.

  Tom lifted the lost black marble from the ground. He didn't need a marble. It couldn't save him from the men sent to kill him, but it seemed a shame to leave it lost and alone in the alley. He slid it into his pocket and started walking. He went to the right. One way was as good as any other. Either way would separate him from Alice and so assure her safety.

  He reached a corner where a broken stoplight blinked a continuous red.

  "Hey, where you going?" Weldon trotted up beside him.

  Tom froze. Terror wrapped around him and held him in place. "Aren't you supposed to be at school?" he forced from his stunned lips. He'd hoped to get away unnoticed, but Weldon must have been waiting for him. Weldon knew Tom had taken the jewels. What if he went to the police?

  "I was worried about you," Weldon said. "Alice won't believe me, but them men really be coming for you."

  "I believe you," Tom admitted. "I just don't want them to hurt her. I've got to get away, so they'll leave her alone."

  "We should go to the police," Weldon said. "They can keep you safe."

  Tom shuddered. "They can throw me in prison for the rest of my life."

  Weldon crossed his arms and looked hard at Tom. "Why would they do that?"

  "Don't you get it?" Tom forced himself to start walking again. He darted forward across the street through a break in the traffic with Weldon right beside him. "Alice is right. Why in the world would a boy like me ever be carrying around jewelry like this?" He peeled the bandage from the diamond dragon and held it up in Weldon's face. "I can't remember anything else, but I remember having those brooches, holding them right here in my hands." He cupped his hands and felt again the press of the jewels against his palms.

  "Wrap that back up," Weldon said. He grabbed Tom's arm and dragged him down a crowded street.

  Tom put the bandage back over the dragon and let Weldon lead him. "Where are we going?"

  "Somewheres safe," Weldon said. "A hideout I go to when I can get away from home, Saturdays and holidays and stuff when Mama's home to watch Phillis. So you think you stole the jewelry?"

  Tom felt wretched all over again. "I must have. I mean, you don't really think I'm some fairy from an underground realm that brought my pet jewel dragons up with me?"

  "I don't know what to think," Weldon said. He forced Tom through a crosswalk at another busy street and then into an alley between an ancient brick department store and the crumbling library. "But it don't really matter who you is and what you might of done, now do it? Keeping you safe be what matters."

  Graffiti covered the alley walls in gross contortions of color and words. It made Tom's head pound until they came to a section of the wall that had been painted to look like a calm silver lake with ripples of rainbow color in the water. In the center of this lake, standing like a rectangular island, was an old wooden door, chained shut and locked with a padlock.

  Tom touched the rough brick that had been painted so beautifully. "You painted this?" he asked Weldon.

  "Sure," Weldon said. "Everyone makes their mark here." He reached down to a piece of dog poop on the ground in front of the door. Tom nearly threw up again when Weldon grabbed it and lifted it from the ground.

  "Oh don't look so sick," Weldon said. "It just plastic." He turned it over, opened a compartment in the bottom and pulled out a key.

  Tom swallowed. "I think all of my pain medication has worn off."

  Weldon ignored him and unfastened the padlock and chain from the door. Then he pulled it open. The faint light from the alley revealed a shed-like room. Shelves lined the back and side walls, stacked with old library books and periodicals. A couple of beat-up street brooms leaned against the wall next to the door. A junky black swivel chair sat up against the back shelves. An old army cot lingered to the side with a ratty pillow and blanket.

  Weldon ushered Tom inside and closed the door, then chained and padlocked it from the inside. For a moment the only light was the splinter of sunlight from the cracks around the edge of the door, then Weldon turned on a battery-powered lantern and set it on the shelf between the swivel chair and the cot.

  Tom put his hand to his aching head. He'd thought Alice's place was bad. He must really have done something vile to deserve this punishment. For a
moment he considered that being killed by the muggers would be a better fate, but Weldon seemed pleased with himself. He plopped down on the cot and held up a book, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. "Tom," he said. "Welcome to your new hideout on Jackson's Island."

  Weldon left Tom in the secret hideout and headed for school. He'd be late. Very late. He hoped he could get there before Mrs. Harper did anything about his absence. He'd been this late before on occasion, but then he usually had a note to check in saying he'd been at the dentist or something. He didn't have that now, so he slouched into the front office with only a story.

  "Weldon?" The school secretary got out the attendance book to mark him there.

  "I felt sick this morning. Mama took my temperature and told me to go back to bed. When I waked up again a bit ago, I felt better. So I figured I'd come on to school. Better that than sitting around the house bored all day."

  The secretary gave him a disbelieving look and a slip to get into class.

  Weldon went to his classroom and took his seat along-side the other students. He tried to concentrate on his schoolwork, but all he could think about were those three men who'd been sent to kill Tom. As soon as the bell rang at the end of school he rushed from the classroom.

  Outside, he kicked a rock around the flagpole until Phillis wandered out along with the rest of the second graders. He grabbed her backpack and dragged her away, anxious to get home, wondering how he could ditch Phillis and take some food out to Tom. But of course he was supposed to stay with Mrs. Walker after school.

  Oh no, Weldon thought. Alice would be crazy worried about Tom by now. Had she called the police? What if she'd told them about the three men Weldon had seen? Maybe that would be a good thing, if the police found and arrested them.

  They turned onto Alice's street. An ambulance and two police cars sat in front of Alice's apartment, their red and blue lights flashing. Weldon's heart dropped to his toes, and he ran toward them. Before he reached the shoe shop, paramedics carried Alice out of the building on a stretcher and loaded it into the ambulance.

  Weldon stopped, and Phillis ran into him. "What wrong with Mrs. Walker?" Phillis cried.

  Weldon hadn't been able to tell from that distance. "She not dead," he said. Her face had been uncovered. In the movies they always covered the faces of those who had died.

  A crowd started to gather. The police talked to many of them, asking a lot of question. They had blocked off the stairs to Alice's apartment with yellow crime tape.

  Weldon swallowed a lump in his throat. Tom had been so sure that if he left, the muggers would leave Alice alone.

  "What we gonna do?" Phillis said in a shrill voice. "We can't go to Mrs. Walker's house now."

  "We better go home," Weldon said. He took Phillis's arm and led her down the street. The ambulance rolled away. Weldon searched the faces in the crowd for the three men he'd seen talking to the chauffeur that morning. He found no sign of them.

  After Weldon got Phillis inside their own apartment and locked the door, Phillis sat on the couch. Tears trickled down her cheeks. "I liked Alice," she said in a small voice.

  Weldon sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. "It all right, Phillis. Alice gonna be fine. The doctors will take good care of her."

  "Shut up!" Phillis shoved him in the chest and ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.

  "Just trying to be nice," Weldon muttered. He emptied his backpack of schoolwork onto the kitchen table and started stuffing the pack with food and bottled water from the cupboards. "Phillis," he called through her closed door. "I'm going down to the store to tell Papa that they took Alice to the hospital. You stay here and keep the door locked. I'll be right back."

  Phillis didn't answer. Weldon slung his backpack, heavy with food, over his shoulder and went out, locking the door behind him. The muggers had no reason to come to this house. Phillis should be all right for a little bit.

  He ran down the block to the grocery store and found his father at the front, helping one of the checkers. His father looked up and scowled when he saw Weldon.

  "You supposed to be watching Phillis?" His father used his key and fixed the register so it would take the advertised price on a roll of paper towels.

  "She safe. Home in her room. But there was an ambulance at Mrs. Walker's when we got home from school." Weldon wiped his sweaty hands on his jeans.

  "What happened?"

  "I don't know. I didn't get there in time to see. I just saw them load her into the ambulance. They has her apartment taped off."

  His father stepping away from the register and asked what had happened to Tom. Weldon followed is father away from the customers to a place where they could talk.

  "He . . . not there," Weldon said.

  "How do you know?" His father scratched the beard on his chin.

  Weldon stiffened. He couldn't tell his father everything. Or maybe he should. But Alice hadn't believed him. No chance his father would either. "I didn't see Tom. I wonder what happened. I hope he not in trouble."

  "I hope so too," Weldon's father said. "You best run straight home and stay with Phillis. You shouldn't of left her."

  "I know," Weldon said. "But Mrs. Walker be your friend, and she don't have no one else to look after her, do she? I thought you might need to go down to the hospital and—" Weldon shrugged.

  His father looked around the store as if wondering if it could carry on all right without him. "Of course I got to go," he said. "But you could of just called. Get home now and look after your sister."

  "Yes, sir." Weldon took off out the door, but he didn't go straight home. Tom had to be starving by now. Weldon couldn't leave him locked up in that little shed without food and water forever.

  Weldon sprinted across the road and over to the alley beside the library. He skidded to a stop in front of the brown door and knocked.

  No one answered.

  "Tom," he called, knocking harder. Still no answer.

  Weldon tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside was exactly the way Weldon had left it, but Tom was gone. The Tom Sawyer book lay open on the cot to the page where the boys on Jackson's Island get homesick and want to go home.

  Weldon slumped onto the cot and stared at the book, wondering what it meant that Tom had left it open to that page. Had he gone home to Alice's house and been killed by the muggers, or had he remembered his real home and gone there? Weldon felt betrayed. Tom should have waited to say goodbye. He might at least have taken the time to chain the door shut and hide the key.

  If Tom left the door open, maybe he intended to come back. Perhaps he'd just gone in search of a bathroom. Weldon always used the one in the library.

  "Okay, he gone," Weldon said to himself. He emptied his backpack, setting the food and water up on the shelves. "But I don't have time to go looking for him." If Weldon's father stopped at home before going over to the hospital and Weldon wasn't there, he would be in more trouble than he even wanted to think about.

  Weldon left the supplies, closed the door behind him, and ran full speed back home. He made it into the apartment just before his father started up the stairs.

  Phillis sat on the couch, watching TV. Weldon dropped his backpack by the front door and sat down beside her. "Papa's going to the hospital to help Mrs. Walker," he said.

  Phillis remained silent.

  Weldon's father came in a few minutes later. He changed from his work clothes and grabbed a folder from a file cabinet in the bedroom. He set the file on the table and flipped through the contents.

  "Shoe shop, mortgage, dental plan, will—please heaven don't let me be needing that—medical insurance." Weldon's father pulled out a couple of pages and returned the file to the cabinet. "You two stay in the apartment," he told Weldon and Phillis.

  Weldon waited for him to leave and then switched the channel from PBS to the news channel. Phillis shouted in outrage.

  "Shut up," Weldon yelled at her. "Ain't no one here to come to your side."

 
; "I'll tell Mama and she'll ground you. Tomorrow is Saturday, and she won't even let you go out and play." Phillis stamped her foot.

  "Fine. I don't care," Weldon said. "Tell Mama anything you like. I'm watching the news."

  Phillis yelled at him again and tried to take the remote control. He held it up too high for her to reach. Just to be spiteful she went over and stood in front of the TV, so Weldon couldn't see the picture.

  Weldon nearly lost his temper. He wanted to pummel her. He clenched his hands into fists, but instead of hitting her he unplugged the TV. "Well if I can't watch the news, than none of us is gonna watch nothing." He folded his arms and glared at Phillis.

  Phillis burst into tears and ran away to her bedroom.

  Weldon sighed in relief and plugged the TV back in. He got it working just in time to hear the local weather man tell him what he already knew. The day was muggy and hot.

  He sat down and waited through half an hour of unhelpful news. But then they came to a story about how some crazed robbers had used an ax to hack open a poor widow's door and break into her home. According to Mrs. Alice Walker, three men with an ax and handguns had broken into her apartment and threatened her. When she told them she had nothing of value, they pushed her down, breaking her hip, and left without taking anything.

  The news reporter finished up the story by telling how Mrs. Walker was a well-known painter and had, until the day before, kept some of her most valuable works stored in her apartment. The art pieces had just been moved to an exhibit hall and appeared to be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  Weldon shook his head in annoyance. They'd said nothing about Tom. No one mentioned the boy who had been staying with her, or that he had been beaten by the same three men only a couple of days before.

  After a few more useless news stories the announcer gave an interesting update on the Bourbon Jewels that had recently been put up for sale. It seemed a wealthy business man named Wallace Stevens claimed that the brooches were his and had been in his possessions for decades until they went missing, along with the diamond wristband that completed the set, a day before they were put up for auction.