Tom Finder

by Martine Leavitt

  Tom Finder

  Tom Finder

  Martine Leavitt

  Red Deer Press

  Copyright © 2003 Martine Leavitt

  Published in the United States in 2003

  Epub edition copyright © June 2011

  5 4 3 2 1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of Red Deer Press or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5, Fax (416) 868-1621.

  By purchasing this e-book you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any unauthorized information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Red Deer Press.

  Red Deer Press

  A Fitzhenry and Whiteside Company

  195 Allstate Parkway

  Markham, ON, Canada, L3R 4T8

  www.reddeerpress.com

  Credits

  Edited for the Press by Peter Carver

  Cover design by Duncan Campbell

  Text design by Dennis Johnson

  Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens for Red Deer Press

  Acknowledgements

  We acknowledge with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF).

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Leavitt, Martine, 1953–

  Tom Finder

  ISBN 0-88995-262-0

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8573.E323T65 2003 jC813’.6 C2002-910278-2

  PZ7.L3217To 2003

  Author’s Acknowledgements

  My sincere thanks goes to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, both of which provided financial assistance so I could write this novel. I would also like to thank these people for sharing their wisdom: Ross McInnes and the people at StreetTeams; Mickey at Avenue 15 Shelter for Homeless Youth; Marie and the kids on the Streetlight bus; Colin at Exit Community Outreach; and Jesse at WISH. Thanks also to Kerri Walters, Shawna Cordara, Sarah Bates, Valerie Battrum, and Dr. Keith Spackman for timely help.

  A special thank you to Peter Carver, my most excellent editor.

  All chapter headings are quoted from Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute), music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Emmanuel Schikaneder, as translated by Susan Webb in The Metropolitan Opera Book of Mozart Operas, executive edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

  “Words! Theywl move things you know

  theywl do things. Theywl fetch.”

  – from Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban,

  Summit Books, New York, 1980

  For my Greg

  THIS BOOK BELONGS TO TOM FINDER

  Contents

  Author’s Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Other books by Martine Leavitt

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Where am I? Is it my imagination that I am still alive?

  – Act 1, scene 1

  Tom had forgotten who he was.

  Something had happened to him, but that was the first thing he forgot. He remembered he had started walking because he couldn’t run anymore. His back and rear end hurt all the way through to his stomach.

  He forgot if he had a friend as he walked down the steep hill. As the streets became busier he forgot if he’d ever passed Tadpoles, and if he’d ever known what you say to a girl when you like her. By the time the shops began, he forgot what his mark was on his last spelling test, and if he knew what it felt like to get punched in the face, and what his mother looked like. By the time the shops were shadowed by the high downtown towers, he’d forgotten his last name.

  No one asked him his name anyway, or looked at him.

  He was a little shaky on his feet. Once he bumped into someone.

  “Loser,” the person said without looking at him. It was the first thing in the world anyone had ever said to him as far as he knew. He thought it was strange that the person who said it hadn’t looked at him.

  Tom began to think he was invisible.

  He didn’t mind. Invisible was good. Maybe if you were invisible, gravity had less effect on you. Tom did feel lighter, but that could have been because he hadn’t eaten in a while. He’d forgotten when he’d last eaten, and what it was.

  Tom hadn’t forgotten his fear of gravity. Or maybe it was new, the newest thing about him since he forgot everything. It was a sensible thing to be afraid of, he thought. Gravity held you down. Sometimes it was so heavy on you that even though you struggled you couldn’t get up. He remembered that. He remembered that no matter how hard you try, gravity wins.

  He said to himself, Tom, Tom, Tom as he walked, so he wouldn’t forget. He thought that if he forgot that his first name was Tom, he might be invisible even to himself.

  Chapter 2

  Help! Help! Or else I am lost.

  – Act 1, scene 1

  The people in the city core thinned out as dusk came on. The streets echoed. They smelled of tar and fries and spilled pop. The smells made his mouth fill up with spit. Tom walked until he came to a paved bike path lined with trees. He had forgotten what day it was—what month it was, for that matter. It was early summer, probably. The leaves on the trees were still a new green. There were people jogging and walking and in-line skating on the path. There were people pushing their babies in strollers. He wondered where they were all going and decided to follow the bike path. He checked his pockets. No money. Probably lost it, like he’d lost his house and his memory.

  Loser.

  He came to a good place, a river, a mall lit up, a Hard Rock café with people laughing and eating on the balcony. There were geese on the water with their yellow-green babies. He sat on a patch of grass and watched them a long time. He wondered what to do next. There didn’t seem to be any next when you didn’t have a past. He drew his knees to his chest and rested his elbows on them. He was hungry, and a bit lonely. After a while a woman came out of a nearby condominium with another woman. They glanced at Tom. Only then did Tom realize his patch of grass was a small lawn.

  “Why these people gravitate to the best parts of town, I’ll never understand,” one woman said.

  Gravitate.

  The massive skyscrapers must have brought him here. He still remembered that the force of gravitational attraction depends on mass: the greater the mass of the two objects, the greater the force pulling them together. Wow. Maybe he was good in science at school.

  Tom moved away from the tiny lawn.

  He couldn’t remember what was in his backpack—maybe a sandwich or a chocolate bar. He looked in. All there was, besides a paperclip and a YOU’RE NICE candy, was a coil notebook.

  Tom studied the candy for a long time before he ate it. He hoped it was true, that he was nice, but he couldn’t remember.

  The notebook could have been a school notebook, but only one page had been written on. The notes were about a guy named Mozart. He didn’t r
emember making the notes.

  Johannes Chrystostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart

  – Wolfgang Amadeus for short

  – genius musishan, cumposer

  – played for the Emperor at age 5, Emperor called him “little magishan”

  Tom studied the notes as if they were a map back to somewhere. Strange that in the forgetting he’d remembered how to spell. M–A–G–I–C–I–A–N.

  He closed the book and looked in the pack again.

  No pen. He thought he’d like to write his name—Tom, Tom, Tom—just in case. It might be good to write things down about himself in case he started forgetting again, but no pen. He must have been one of those disorganized students.

  “Tom, why aren’t you working on your assignment?”

  “I don’t have a pen, sir.”

  Yeah. Maybe he’d write that down, too, when he had a pen. Maybe that was a memory.

  He crossed the bridge, away from the mall and the condominiums. Across the bridge was a park. He made it to a bench by the river before his knees gave up. He supposed he should go to the police, tell them he had amnesia or whatever it was, but he felt safe as long as he was invisible. Going to the police would definitely make him visible. Maybe he’d go tomorrow.

  He watched the river running. He lay down and positioned his backpack under his head. He thought he would close his eyes for a minute. He didn’t mean to sleep.

  Tom woke from the cold in the night, but he didn’t move or open his eyes. He lay still and listened to the river. As long as he could feel the notebook under his head, he felt safe. It was a clue to remembering who he was. He went back to sleep.

  The next time he woke up, it was light out and he could hear moaning. The moaning stopped, but Tom’s blood was electric. He lay still. When the moaning started again, he sat up. The bench and the river and the park were inside a cloud of fog.

  More moaning.

  Tom stood. He took a few steps, following the sound until he saw someone standing on the bank by the river. He went closer. It was a big man with black and silver braids and a big, brown, pitted face. He wore a fringed leather jacket with beads on the fringes which clicked as he rocked from side to side. Now the moaning sounded like it might be a plea for help.

  “Hey. Are you okay?” Tom called from where he was. His legs were so shaky that he wasn’t sure he could run fast enough if the man chased him.

  The man slowly looked around.

  He fixed his eyes on Tom. He could see him. The man looked up at the sky, then back to Tom. “This is my answer?” he said aloud. “A pretty white boy?”

  “Do you need any help?” Tom asked. He hoped the man would say, no, get out of here kid, and then Tom would go and see if anyone was looking for him. He hoped his parents were rich. He’d ask them to take him to Mickey D’s on the way home. The man looked at Tom like the very sight of him was disappointing. He said nothing and seemed to look at something behind Tom. Tom needed to find a toilet. He turned away to see that there were people standing around him. Boys, some as young as him, each wearing a leather jacket. One turned around as if on lookout. On the back of his jacket was a red dragon.

  “Hi,” Tom said, because of what the candy had said.

  One of them took a step toward Tom and smiled as if he only wanted to show his teeth. Tom couldn’t run. “You got toys in that pack?” he asked Tom.

  The silver-braided man emerged from the fog like a ghost. “Leave him,” he said. His beads clicked in a breeze Tom could not feel.

  They ignored the older man. One, and then another, took his hands out of his pockets.

  “All I’ve got is a notebook,” Tom said.

  It wasn’t their fists he was afraid of, it was their eyes. They could see him. He wondered if in his forgotten life he could fight.

  “Leave him alone,” the man said again, though no more loudly.

  This time they looked at the older man. One of them ran his thumb along the sharp edge of his front teeth, then pointed his thumb at Tom, smiled, and walked away. The others followed. Tom’s knees unlocked, and he sat heavily on the bench. The older man sat beside him.

  “Thanks,” Tom said to the man after a minute.

  The man nodded slowly. “You can repay me. I prayed for a Finder, and you found me.”

  Nothing the man said made any sense to Tom. He hoped he wasn’t forgetting English. The man held out his huge hand. “Samuel Wolflegs. I am looking for my son, Daniel. Do you know him? Have you seen him?” His voice was deep and trembly, as if his lungs were shaking at their roots.

  “No,” Tom said.

  The man took a picture out of his pocket, a small school photograph. “This boy. This is the one I’m looking for. Daniel Wolflegs.”

  Tom shook his head, but the man held out the photograph as if he expected Tom to take it. Finally, Tom put the photograph in the pocket of his hood.

  “What’s your name, white boy?” the man asked.

  Tom pulled his hood over his head. “Tom,” he said.

  “Tom what?”

  Tom shrugged. “Tom nothing. Tom.”

  “What are you doing here?” the man asked. “School get out early for you? Most kids have a few days left.”

  Tom thought about that a moment. He hoped he wasn’t skipping school. He was pretty sure he wasn’t that kind of kid.

  “You are lost. Strange, for a Finder to be lost. Do you know where you are?”

  Tom looked around and shook his head.

  “Prince’s Island,” the man said. “The river gave you to me, for an answer to my praying.”

  Tom thought probably he should run away, but his feet had already died of starvation. If he was going to die, he was glad it would be from the feet up and not from the head down. His brain must have already lost weight, though, because he thought he could feel it slosh around in his skull.

  “Look, I’m just a kid, okay? Just a loser kid . . .” He stood up. His stomach was so empty and light that it was defying gravity.

  “Not a loser. A Finder,” Wolflegs said.

  Tom began to stump away on dead feet.

  “What’s that blood on your jeans?” Wolflegs asked. “On the back of your jeans?”

  Tom stopped. He craned his neck around to see. “I . . . I forget,” he said.

  “Let me take you to a doctor,” Samuel Wolflegs said.

  Tom shook his head once. The world vibrated. He couldn’t explain how he needed to be invisible right now.

  Wolflegs had the still look of a hunter after wary prey.

  “If you walk around like that, someone is going to notice. Why don’t you go for a swim in the river? If the blood washes off and there’s no more fresh blood, then okay.”

  Tom thought about it for a minute, then stripped off his hoodie and walked into the river. The water was cold, but he got used to it quickly. He relieved himself in it. He swam in it, hidden by the white fog, invisible, buoyed up against gravity.

  When he came out of the water, Wolflegs was sitting with his arms folded over his chest, scanning the river up and down as if he were on the lookout. The fog was white in the morning light; the geese were honking. Tom shivered, but the day was going to be warm.

  “Good swimmer,” Wolflegs said.

  Tom wondered if he had always been a good swimmer. His parents must have put him in swimming lessons as a kid.

  “Well, see ya,” Tom said. He felt better, enough to walk again.

  “You will look for my son, Daniel,” Samuel called, commanding Tom from the roots of his lungs. There was a deep sadness in his voice that kept Tom from running away.

  Tom turned to him and said, “Look, I’m not a Finder, whatever that is—”

  “You are. I say you have the power. I see it in you.”

  “I don’t believe in that stuff.” He couldn’t remember if he didn’t believe in that stuff.

  “That’s what Daniel said.” Wolflegs said. He began to weep silently. The tears pooled in the acne scars on his face. “
He came to the streets because we fought. He wouldn’t respect the old ways. I called him a McIntosh, an apple, red on the outside, white on the inside. I threw him out. I locked the door. He came here, found people who took him into the cult of the street. When I walk the streets looking for him, they hide him from me. They say they don’t know where he is, they haven’t seen him. Tell him I am here, I say, where the bridge crosses the river. Tell him I am sorry for the things I said. Tell him all is forgotten.” He was silent for a moment. “But I have been here a long time, and Daniel does not come.” The man turned away from Tom and gazed at the river. “If he came back to me, I would give him the river. With the river everything can be new again.”

  “Go to the police,” Tom said.

  “I have. I have gone so many times that they threaten to detain me if I come again. Public nuisance, they say. They imitate my talk. We don’t look for runaways, they say. He’s a big boy, they say.”

  “I will stay by the river, praying, until you find him.”

  He started praying again, a sound somewhere between singing and moaning. His eyes closed. Weird, Tom thought as he began walking away. How can you give someone a river?

  “Sleep here and you will be safe,” the man called. Before Tom was out of earshot, Wolflegs called to him again: “Don’t follow the streets. They never take you where you want to go. Especially at night. They keep you. Get up with the sun, Tom Finder . . .”

  Tom started out by looking for a police officer. He hit the jackpot and found city police headquarters. He walked toward the stone stairs that led to the entranceway, and then walked by. His mind must have been elsewhere, he thought, and he turned and walked back. Again he marched right on by. Tom looked down at his feet as if they’d grown a mind of their own. He shook his head, walked toward the stairs, and walked by again.