Forty Leap

by Turner, Ivan

  “Do you have any food?” she asked suddenly.

  I sat frozen for a moment, wondering at this odd question, and then I remembered the candy bar. It was still in my pocket and, though it was somewhat melted and bent out of shape, it was still good. Gingerly, I stepped forward and held it out to her. She twitched and her right hand went to a knapsack that sat on the floor next to her. It was the first time I noticed it, a small silver thing, filthy, with strings for straps. It was like dealing with a timid animal. Would she bolt? But she had asked for the food and I soon realized that it wasn’t fear or mistrust that had stopped her up. It was the presence of a factory wrapped candy bar.

  “Where did you get it?” she asked, as she studied it, almost completely disregarding my presence except as the person who can answer the question.

  “I bought it,” I answered because it was the truth.

  She laughed. It was a funny little noise, tainted by her experiences. At one time, it must have been magical, a little tinkling sound that reverberated just inside one’s ears. Not now, though. Not anymore.

  “You’re shitting me,” she said, then began to examine me more closely. In fact, she got up from huddling in her safe spot by the door and approached me. Her expression evolved from one of disbelief to one of mistrust. “Who are you? You don’t smell and your clothes are clean and not ripped. You’ve been outside the city, right? How did you get in and out?”

  I didn’t know how to answer these questions. I didn’t even understand them. How could I explain to her the truth? Should I even try? I did try.

  “My name is Mathew,” I told her when I had finished spilling the sloppy contents of my story.

  She sat there, dumbfounded, searching for the will to believe me and the truth if she didn’t. Finally, she sat herself on the bed and tore open the candy bar. She looked at me once and then took a tentative bite. She smiled.

  Two bites later, she offered me some, but I declined. She was Livvie’s age. Correction. She was Livvie’s age as I remembered Livvie. She was fifteen years old and her name was Jennie with an ie. I can’t say that she accepted my story, but she sat with me for a while, waiting, I suppose, to see if the candy bar would make her sick. It didn’t. I asked her to tell me what had happened and she did the best she could. As a New York City teen, she hadn’t exactly been an avid follower of the political arena. Current events to her consisted of who had gotten pregnant and who had overdosed or been knifed in a gang fight.

  As 2008 had worn through Spring and Summer, the effects of the assassination of Arab leader Abdelaziz began to spread across the globe. Even Jennie had heard of him and she remembered discussing it in class (although I was under the impression that she had not attended class very much). Her life and her world remained much the same, but she began to catch snatches of the news and the conversations of adults. She remembered hearing things about the President over extending himself, fighting a war on three fronts, and the country having become a pariah in the world community (she actually did use the word pariah but she badly mispronounced it). The winter of 2008 was cold and dreary and led into a dark New Year. The United Arab Nation, under the leadership of a new and more aggressive man whose name Jennie could not remember, began to move troops overseas. They very quietly stole support from the United Nations and when they finally attacked the North East of the United States in February of 2009, the President was on his own in the world community with the majority of his troops overseas and his pants around his ankles.

  I really didn’t know what was going to happen after our meeting, but Jennie chose to stay with me for some time. Initially I asked her if there were any other people around. Of course, there were, but she travelled alone. She warned me never to trust anyone in a small group and to stay out of the subways. Every time we spoke about how to survive in New York City, it seemed as if she was preparing me for a grand mission. After each conversation, I expected her to slip off into the night, leaving her trainee to face the cruel city by himself. Yet she never did. For three weeks we travelled together, sleeping on the upper floors of those buildings that still held upper floors. Jennie usually liked to stick to the office buildings. They were cold and empty and there was little to be scavenged. That made them safe. The high floors were also safer because most people didn’t like to climb the stairs, which could be unstable.

  “If you’re careful, it’s okay, though,” she explained.

  The only time we went into apartment buildings was when we needed food or clothing. This, she explained, was what had brought her to me. Food was hard to find and often came in the form of mice and birds. You got to whack ‘em over the head and burn ‘em up to kill all the diseases. But we never cooked them where we found them. We always brought them deep into an office building where there were no windows or doors and suffered the smoke so we wouldn’t be seen. Rain came down in spatters every couple of days and we collected it in tins that Jennie kept in her backpack. She came to me every night and slept close for comfort and protection, as a daughter does with a father. Before long, though she knew how to survive much better than I, I felt as if I was protecting her. After all, she was just a child, and I an adult.

  She questioned me frequently, unable to truly comprehend what had brought me to that place and that time. I showed her my notebook and, much to my own surprise, I showed very little emotion over what I had lost. And yet, it touched her and I saw tears glistening on her cheeks for the first time. Frantically, I searched the conversation for some terrible thing I might have said, but nothing came.

  “I didn’t realize,” she said and her voice was much more tender than ever before. “I thought, you know, since you didn’t live through it, you didn’t lose anything.”

  Considering this, I nodded subtly. To be honest, the idea of losing my brothers and their families was a very abstract concept to me. For all I knew, they were alive and safe. They didn’t live in the city and may have gotten out of the state. Any pain I felt still stemmed from the loss of my mother and Morty. I tried not to think of them too much because I still felt a tremendous amount of guilt associated with those two deaths.

  “I was living with my grandma,” Jennie said.

  We were sitting very high up over the city, looking out over the destruction. The building we had found stood twenty two stories, with the top five completely blown off. A ragged pattern of concrete and girders jutted out toward the sky with the exposed seventeenth floor open to the sky. Most of it had collapsed and, really, the only safe place inside was down on fifteen. But, after finding a good place to sleep and cook our rats and pigeons, we had discovered a way to climb through the rubble. There was a stone platform high up that allowed us to see almost all the way downtown. We were approaching July and the air was still and hot down below, but up there was a sweet breeze which brought the scent of the sea with it from the east.

  “When the bombs hit, we were sleeping. Of course they hit us at night. There was this huge boom and everything shook. Grandma went for the TV and we got a signal for a couple minutes until the power went out. There was this burnt guy on screen yelling about the ‘first bomb attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor’. I don’t know. It don’t matter. The bombs got closer and we could hear breaking glass and falling buildings. My grandma grabbed me and we ran out of the house and down the stairs.”

  She paused, just looking out over the city. I suppose she was trying to put the facts together in her head because, as she began the story again, it seemed more real and more coherent.

  “Everyone, all my neighbors, were in the halls and running down the steps. It was hard to see because half them had flashlights and they was pointing them in my eyes and all over. Grandma held my wrist and dragged me to the steps. I knew she was a tough woman; she raised me from a baby. But in the steps there was so many people. The Lopez’s from upstairs was coming down. They had like ten little kids and Grandma waited to let them all get through. It was the right thing to do.”

  She was crying now
and I knew how it would end, but I let her continue. I didn’t want to hear it, but I wouldn’t interrupt her. That she had chosen to share this with me meant so much.

  “He pushed her. It was Bender, that stoner from 4C. He pushed her right into Mr. Lopez, who fell over three of his kids and they all fell down the stairs, over all the people in front of them, like a human avalanche. I didn’t fall because Grandma let go of me so I just stood there, looking at them. There must have been ten or fifteen people on the landing. They was all struggling to get up and Grandma was caught right in the middle.

  “Mr. Lopez came up first, digging through the bodies for his kids. He was crying and screaming and Bender shot right past him with all the others who didn’t fall. They was just running over the people that did fall. Mr. Lopez fought them off, yelling, screaming, throwing his fists. But some kid from upstairs came around and kicked him in the nose and he went down so fast and he didn’t get up. I mean he never got up.

  “I just stood there, looking at it ‘til the last of the people from upstairs ran past me and out the building. I could still hear the bombs and screams, but I couldn’t move. The people on the stairs, the ones who had fell, got themselves out now that they could and ran out. Mr. Lopez never moved. I saw one of his kids crawl out, look at her dad, and go on.”

  She stopped talking then and just began to sob as the story played itself out in her head. Next to her, so close, I couldn’t do anything. Never had I felt so completely useless in my whole life. My heart was breaking for this child, my friend Jennie. So I just sat there with her, silent, waiting for her to get it out of her system. We sat for almost an hour while she composed herself. I imagined, with relief, that she was finished, but I was wrong. When the tears had gone and the sniffles had ceased, she began to speak again and I felt a captive audience. As much as I could hardly bear the images she projected, I would not ask her to stop. Telling the story was her choice to make and listening was my obligation.

  “Grandma never called me nothing but Child. This is what I heard from the tangled people below. It was like a whisper and I knew it was Grandma calling for me. For a minute, I thought she was a ghost ‘cause I was sure she was dead. But, no, it was Grandma and she was the only one alive. There was still five or six people down there and they all broke their necks or their backs and none of them was moving. Mr. Lopez lay over one of his other kids, bleeding all over him from the nose.

  “I moved some people to get Grandma free, but she wasn’t going nowhere. Both her legs was broke and maybe her head. She was hurting so bad.

  “’Why you still here, Child?’ she said to me. What could I do?” Jennie looked at me, whispering, “Mathew, what could I do?”

  I took her hand. “What did you do?”

  “I kissed her face and waited for her to die. I couldn’t leave her. She was my Grandma. I brought her water and some food. She took the water, but she wouldn’t take no food. She wasn’t really Grandma no more. I knew she was dead when she stopped taking the water. I didn’t leave, though. The bombs had stopped a long time ago so I just stayed there with the dead people and the smell.”

  I waited a while for her to continue, but she didn’t start talking again until I asked, “When did you leave?”

  “Reesha came for me. She was with Devon and when they couldn’t find me with all the people, they came back. They was good friends. We helped each other for a while, kind of like you and me.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They’re gone,” she said. “When the soldiers came into the city, people started breaking up and hiding. We did the same. We didn’t see no one for a long time. Then we saw a group of guys and they was with these two girls and they looked used. You know what I mean? Devon took us away from them because he knew what would happen. They’d have killed him and used me and Reesha. So we left them.

  “It didn’t matter, though. We picked a bad place to sleep one night and another group caught us up. I’d gone to pee so I wasn’t there when they came on Reesha and Devon. I saw them when I was coming back and I couldn’t do nothing. There were five guys and one girl and they beat down on Devon like I never seen before. And Reesha… I just hid away until they was gone. They left Devon, but they took Reesha with them. Of course they left Devon! He was dead!”

  She began to cry again, this time worse than before, and she didn’t stop for a long time. I just sat there, feeling terrible, wishing I could do something to help her and knowing that I was powerless. It was a truly defining moment in my life. Never before had I been so needed by another person and so unable to do anything. Never before had I even noticed. Throughout my life, I had remained so detached, even from my own family. And now I understood why Martie disliked me so and my nephews shunned me. I had always felt so much for Livvie because she had cared for me when no one else did, but now I didn’t understand why. I was a freak! I recoiled at the thought of basic human emotional contact, a thing which is second nature to most people. Sniffling, scorn in her expression, Jennie finally looked up at me. It was as if she could read my mind because she stood up from where she was and began the slow climb back down the rubble hill.

  I wanted to stop her from going, or at least follow her. I felt with certainty that this was the last I would see of her. As she climbed down she looked determined, not as if she was going back to the place we’d chosen to sleep, but as if she was going away. But I didn’t follow her. In fact, I remained there, intentionally giving her every opportunity to leave me alone. I took a few minutes to add something to my journal, which I had been keeping less and less religiously. Then I sat by myself watching the city absorb the darkness until I dozed off and slept, very peacefully, with my head up against a piece of cinderblock.

  It rained while I was asleep. It couldn’t have been a heavy rain or a cold rain because I suppose it would have roused me. But when I awoke my clothing was wet and my beard, which had grown in over the past three weeks, smelled musty. I truly hated it. A wispy fog had settled over Manhattan and it took me a few moments to get my bearings. Even though I had been in the same position when I’d fallen asleep, I wasn’t sure in which direction I was looking.

  Though the silence was complete, I had a tingly feeling at the base of my spine. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but I knew that something was off. Feeling fear and terrible disorientation, I stared into the mist. I sat for a long time. The sky brightened, though only slightly. The sun was well and truly blocked by the low clouds that surrounded me. Then there was just the smallest noise. It was rock on rock, I knew that, and it could just as easily have been an animal as a person, but I knew that it was no animal. Though the sound had not been close, nor had it come from behind me, I could not pinpoint it and the fear came to me in a deluge. Squinting into the dimness, I saw a shape moving on the street below. I felt so exposed. Though I was eighteen stories up, I felt that this person, if he or she were to look up, would be able to see me and would be on me so quickly that there would be no chance of escape. It was ridiculous, of course, just the blind panic of a rabbit or squirrel. Regardless, I sat petrified, able only to stare at the shape as it made its way through the street.

  It didn’t take long for the shape to multiply. It was soon joined by many others, and they were moving quietly up and down in the morning’s gloom. As more of them appeared my fear of them diminished rather than increased. They were not soldiers. Sightings of the enemy were infrequent, but most nights we could hear the helicopters and the gunshots. When we saw them they always moved in formation and there were always vehicles. But that was not the case here. Even at such a height I could see that there were both men and women, moving with a defined purpose, but in no particular arrangement. They helped each other through the tough spots while larger ones stayed to the front and sides to keep everyone corralled together. Small forms huddled close to the large ones and I knew that there were children as well. Children! I watched them for a while, allowing my composure to sink back into my consciousness.
When finally I felt that my legs would not wobble under my weight, I stood up and began the slow climb down the hill.

  I hadn’t a clearly defined plan until I saw that Jennie had not left. She lay sleeping on the floor in the spot we had decided was safe. For the briefest of moments, I considered leaving her there, thinking that it was what she would want. I believed completely that she had stuck to that spot out of a stubborn desire to keep it from me. What right had I to it? Then I was beside her, gently shaking her, for I had found that her presence had filled out my thoughts and ideas. That she was there made me realize what losing her had meant.

  She opened her eyes, dazed, and looked up at me. What I saw in her eyes shocked me.

  “Mathew,” she said softly, sounding more like a woman and less like a child than I had ever heard. “You didn’t leave.”

  Me? Leave? Had she thought…?

  “There are people on the street,” I said.

  Her pupils widened ever so slightly, just enough to convey terror.

  “No,” I said, taking her hand. “A lot of them. Women and children, too.”

  “Children?” she asked.

  “Lots of them.” I smiled.

  Together, hand in hand, we hurried down the stairs, Jennie pulling me along at her quicker pace. We burst into the street like two children desperate to catch the ice cream truck. Stopping, I fought to get my bearings. Where had I seen them? Where would they be now?

  “Hello?” I called out. “Are you there?”

  Jennie looked at me and I wasn’t sure she approved. I called out again anyway.

  “Shhh!” came a hiss from the shadows.

  We stopped dead and looked around. It could have come from anywhere. On the street is where someone was truly vulnerable. Between all of the burnt out buildings and wreckage there were innumerable places to hide. For the patient, and ambush was as easy to set up as was a place setting at the dinner table.