They hadn’t planned to run away. They had planned to be patient, knowing that Meda would pull strings for them once Tom Benin returned. Their personalities were suffering as a result of being separated from Meda; Linc had turned more excitable, always bracing for a fight. Bram was now more withdrawn, as if he’d grown layers over his true self. Bram had also begun to develop stomach distress, and fevers that would appear out of nowhere and baffle the doctor who came by once a week. But then he would rebound and be well, until the next time.
One night Robinson told Linc that he was not doing an adequate job with the latrines. Linc countered that he was doing the best he could, and, besides, each one should be responsible for cleaning up his own shit. Bram had tried to intercede, said that he would clean the latrines for Linc. Then Bram gave Linc a look, telling him with his eyes to tame down. Linc returned the look, told Bram to toughen up. Linc was taken to the shed that night for a severe flogging. Though the other boys had not heard Linc cry out, they had heard the whirring of the whip moving the air, then the slap of it against skin. And Bram’s hard breaths as he held himself back from screaming out in pain on his brother’s behalf.
Linc had, shortly after, been hired out as a bricklayer; Bram was kept back for duties around the house. Now they barely saw each other until the end of the week, Friday nights, when they’d sneak down to the cellar with another pair of brothers—these two biological—Matt and Chris, to play cards.
This night Matt had pilfered a carafe of Communion wine and they passed it around and told dirty jokes that Linc had heard from the bricklaying men. They delighted at the sound of new profanity spewing from their mouths. They mocked the walks and accents and eating habits of their other housemates. They told “Robinson stories” and imagined what they’d like to do to him—tie him up and pour cream on his toes and unleash a peck of hungry rats, said one; drench his undergarments in invisible lye, said another; fill his shoes with hot nails, said a third. They had to muffle their laughter when Bram stood and raised his hands and motioned for quiet. He heard footsteps overhead; he knew they were Robinson’s because they were so deliberate, so particular, the way everything about Robinson was.
“It’s the Worm,” Bram whispered, using their name for Robinson. All levity was immediately sucked out of the room; even the pleasurable sensation of the wine splashing around in their heads came to an abrupt stop. They ran to hide the carafe and the cards. Matt’s younger brother started to cry, and Linc punched him and told him to be a man. Bram got very still then. A resignation covered his face like a slow-moving shadow and Linc asked what was the matter. “Nothing.” Bram spit the word out as he listened to the door at the top of the cellar stairs creak open.
“Bram? Are you there?” Robinson called down.
“Sir,” Bram said, as he motioned the others to be still and started walking in the direction of the steps. “Uh, yes, I have come to put away my cleaning supplies.”
“Well, do not be in such haste to do so. Ready your supplies this instant and come make a repair of your haphazard sweep of my quarters.”
“Yes, sir,” Bram said, as the other boys remained motionless until they heard the cellar door close, the footsteps retreat.
“We owe you for that one, you bloke,” Linc said, as the two others came back to life as well and the wine resumed its whirl in their heads and they started to laugh again and imitate Robinson’s walk. When Bram had gathered his cleaning supplies, he told them to get ready to kiss their pennies goodbye because he would be back directly to win them away.
Linc and the two others returned to their cards, and after more than an hour had passed, and the carafe was empty, Linc wondered out loud what was taking Bram so long.
“Maybe he’s went straight to his cot and passed out from the wine,” Matt said. “I am about to do it, too.”
“Me, too,” said Chris. “Bram always takes such a long time doing a sweep of the Worm’s room.”
“Does he now?” Linc asked.
“He got him from his sleep the other night. His mat is next to mine and it woke me.” Matt pulled his brother up from the floor, told him to get up to his bed before he was the next one flogged. They planned to repeat the escapade the next night at the same time as they separated to their various sleeping quarters. Then Linc crept up to the third floor and peeked into the room where Bram now slept and saw that Bram’s cot was still unoccupied. He felt teeth in his stomach then, biting away. He went back to his own room and stepped over the sleeping boys to get to his cot. He sat and started to pull his shoes from his feet, but then he did not. He ran from the room instead, back up to the third floor, then right to the suite that Robinson had turned into his own kingdom.
He did not know what to do at first as he stood at Robinson’s door, gasping. Moonbeams pieced through the cobweb-covered skylight in the hallway and drizzled over him, and he was torn between knocking and just barreling in. And then he didn’t have to decide because the door opened and there was Bram, quickly pulling the door shut behind him. He looked stricken, his faced blanched as if no blood flowed there, his eyes red, his lips swollen, his neck welted as if he’d just had a bad case of hives. “What the dickens happened to you?” Linc asked in a whisper. “Why were you in there so long?”
Bram didn’t answer. He just stood there, breathing hard as scattered moonbeams gave his face the appearance of a jigsaw puzzle. He tried to speak, but his words were garbled coming out, and he felt as if he were choking, and then he started to vomit instead. He coughed and spit up as Linc looked on and felt his own stomach start to spin.
“Bram, what the devil?” Linc asked, desperation coating his words.
“Shit,” Bram said, when he could gather himself enough to talk. “Now I have to clean this up, too.” He tried to move farther down the hallway, but Linc blocked his path.
“Tell me, Bram, what’s happening?” Linc said, slowly, pointing the ends of his words.
“It’s Robinson,” Bram whispered, as he pushed his hands in the center of Linc’s chest and moved him still farther down the hallway. “He tried to turn me into a fucking missus.”
“What?” Linc asked.
“You heard me, as I was cleaning under his dratted bed—he—he—”
“What, Bram? What?” Linc’s voice rose, and Bram shook his fist to quiet him.
“He told me I was beautiful,” Bram said and then leaned against the wall, as if the saying of it had weakened him. He appeared to be sliding down the wall and Linc grabbed him, shook him. “What did he do to you, Bram? What?” And then he let go of Bram. He ran toward Robinson’s room as Bram tried to pull him back, whispering, “No, Linc, you can’t, no . . .”
But Linc had already opened the door, had already walked through the sitting room into Robinson’s bedroom. Robinson was there in the chair next to his bed, his satin slipper dangling from the foot of his crossed leg. He nestled a globed-shaped glass of brandy in his hand and shook it in slow circles, causing a silent typhoon in the glass. He looked up at Linc, his eyes glassy drunk. “I thought you might be Bram returning,” he said, then laughed a slurred laugh.
“I know what you have tried with my brother, and unless you want the world to know, too, this is how things will be from now on—”
“How will they be?” Robinson asked, as he took another sip of brandy and sat up taller in his chair.
“For one, stay away from my brother. For two, I am not cleaning another latrine. For three, we will be allowed to spend the weekends with Meda again—and short of that, the world will know of you and your revolting intentions.”
Bram had come into the room. He stood next to Linc, his shoulders squared every bit as defiantly as Linc’s were. “I have upchucked in your hallway, and I will not be cleaning that, either,” Bram said.
Robinson’s cheek quaked in and out; he touched his finger to his cheek as if to still it. His fingers were long, his knuckles encircled with tufts of silver hair. He looked from Linc to Bram, his head moving slow
ly, precisely. “I am trying to decide,” he said, “which one of you will be sent upstate to work in the mines? Which one on the chain gang?”
“You do not understand,” Linc said, squaring his shoulders. “You are the one who will be on a fucking chain gang!”
“And you do not understand,” Robinson said, as he uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “You are a pair of waifs, nothings, thrown-away-at-birth little shits, spawned from alley rats, from what I have heard. Who will give you an audience with your imaginary spews?”
“We will be eager to find out, then,” Bram said, though Linc now fell silent. Linc was watching Robinson’s face, which suddenly swelled with self-satisfaction, his chest, too, even the silver hair poking over the shirt that remained unbuttoned at the collar and two buttons beyond puffed up the way a cat’s hair does when the cat has caught a mouse. Robinson wasn’t bluffing, and though they weren’t, either, Robinson held the better hand. Buddy had warned Linc about such a thing, about making a wager that he couldn’t cover. Buddy would call this killing time. Nothing to do, he’d say, but back your way out of the door, bargaining if you can, fighting if you can’t, running if you must.
Bram picked up Linc’s thoughts, through osmosis, it seemed, as he began to bargain. “Well, sir, what say you if we just drop all mention of any of this and just return to the way things have been before today?”
“But the cat is already out of the bag now, is it not?” Robinson said, as he focused on Bram, and his eyes went suddenly dreamy. He took another sip from his glass and then, slowly, deliberately licked a drop of brandy that hung on his lips.
Linc didn’t know which move unleashed the rage coiled in the pit of his stomach, didn’t know if it was the way Robinson looked at Bram, or the slow swipe of his tongue across his lips, or maybe even him saying that they’d been spawned from alley rats. But the rage was there, immediate and uncontainable, forming his hands into mammoth fists that gained strength as they moved through the air and then crashed into the sides of Robinson’s face, one time, then another, then a third, just the way Buddy had taught him.
Bram squared off ready for Robinson to jump up and try to take them both on. But Robinson just sat there as the satin slipper on his crossed foot fell gently to the floor. His head was tilted and fixed askance on his shoulder; his eyes squinted as if he were trying to see something far away, or maybe figure out the meaning of life. A thin creek of blood flowed from one side of his nose and followed the slant of his head and found a place to pool on the open collar of his shirt.
Linc and Bram ran then to the separate rooms where they’d been relegated. They stepped over the huddled figures of their sleeping roommates, each to their own sections and searched their piles of belongings for what they thought they could not do without. For Bram it was his sheets of music, and a barely decipherable sketch torn from a magazine of a blond-haired woman. The sketch had been given to him by Meda, who said that the woman may have been his mother near as she could tell. For Linc it was a spare deck of cards—he tossed aside the sketch Meda gave to him of the black-haired, dark-eyed woman who was supposedly his mother; he’d stopped believing that story several years ago, like he’d stopped believing in Saint Nick, though he loved Meda all the more for the gesture, the attempt to give him worth. He did, though, snatch up the rendering of Abraham Lincoln that Meda had drawn for him. Lincoln at least had been real. And had been drawn by Meda’s own hand.
They ran into the dark outside. The night air was busy as it shook off the last of summer so it could make space for autumn cool. Fuck, you don’t think he’s dead, do you? Holy shit, we will be hung, put to a firing squad, sent to the fucking gallows, they called back and forth as they ran with the night. They had few provisions and no plan. But they didn’t cry, though Bram was close to tears when he said that they should have gone back to Robinson’s room and retrieved the silver rings Meda had given them. “He had no right to take them, they were ours and he had no fucking right,” he shouted as they fled through the streets of Philadelphia, not knowing where they were headed; and then Bram knew, as he followed Linc’s lead. Though he’d never been there before, the description of the block was seared in his memory the way Linc had described it: they ended up at Buddy’s.
A GAME WAS still going on in Buddy’s living room, Linc knew by the yellow lamplight pushing against the window, and the barely cracked door, and the sounds of a harmonica mixing with high and low laughter. Bram started up the three steps and Linc pulled him back. “We cannot go in now.”
“But I thought you said Buddy would welcome us.”
“It is not Buddy who concerns me. There is no telling who is in there.”
“None who would take Robinson’s side over ours.”
“Did he not always brag about his connections? Who knows his reach. And there are some men, such as the one who tried to slit my fucking throat, who would rather see me put on trial.” His voice shook, and Bram lowered his head. Then he said, “Come on,” and he motioned for Bram to follow him, and they went around the corner and through the alley, and Linc counted off the houses until they were in back of Buddy’s house. They crept into the yard and found a corner adjacent to the house where the moonlight did not follow. They huddled there and breathed hard and were comforted by the vibrations coming from inside, the laughter and the music that seemed to make the frame of the house bounce to the beat.
They fell asleep waiting for the house to empty and woke to the sun’s first glimmer and the siren song of the iceman making his way through the alley: “Ice here, so nice, my ice be. Fom da Knickerbocker House a Ice.”
Nola stuck her head out of the back door. “Yoo-hoo, I will have a block, please,” she called, as the iceman limped into the yard. One of his legs was half the length of the other and the horse he pulled seemed crippled, too, as it dragged crates of ice behind it.
The iceman seemed not to notice Linc and Bram as he unhooked a crate and lifted out a square of ice and met Buddy’s wife at the door. The horse, though, took a couple of slow clops until he was standing in front of Linc and Bram. They pressed further against the side of the house as the horse looked down at them while the iceman did his transaction. When he was finished, he turned and called to the horse. “Come a here. Let dem boys be for my wares meld down to wader.”
“Boys? What boys?” Nola said, as she called into the house for Buddy. “Iceman said boys back in the yard. You best come see.”
Bram nudged Linc so that he could take the lead in announcing them, but the horse was right over Linc now, leaning in until they were practically eye to eye. “What’s his problem?” Bram asked, trying to edge farther away, even as Linc—part frightened, part enthralled—returned the horse’s stare.
“He no danger,” the iceman said as he walked to where they were and yanked the horse’s reins. “Old mare just spoilt rodden, tis all. Tink she special cause she da one what led Ole Abe Link’s castit trew all da steets of Phileydelfi.”
Buddy had stomped out into the yard. “Humph,” he said on an extended breath as the iceman turned and said, “Mornin’, Mr. Buddy,” and tipped his hat, and the horse seemed to follow suit as it appeared to bow its head in deference to Buddy and then backed up, allowing Linc and Bram to come into Buddy’s view. The horse let go a loud and long neigh, and then a snort, as it turned and followed the iceman from the yard, shaking its head up and down as it walked away.
Buddy looked at Linc and Bram, his good eye squinted, the other practically closed. “A pair a runaways if I ever seen it. You know that mare laughing at you,” he said. “Horse ’bout the smartest creature on four legs, and it appear she smarter than the two of you put together ’cause she woulda had enough sense to come on into the house.”
Bram pushed his elbow into Linc’s side as if to say I told you so.
“And I suspect you Bram, the brother Linc and my sister go on and on about.”
“Yes, uh, sir,” Bram said, jumping up and extending his hand.
“My
name is Buddy, but you can call me Buddy,” he said, as he shook Bram’s hand. “And I see someone been throwing around a left hook.” All eyes went to Linc’s hands, which he’d not even realized were swollen, bleeding. He looked at his hands as if they were suddenly disassociated from the rest of him, even as he remembered the feel of his fists smashing against Robinson’s head. His hands looked ugly to him, misshapen in the new daylight. He thought now that Mrs. Benin had been correct when she’d told him that he had the ugliest hands she’d ever seen.
“Well, let’s see if Mrs. Nola can put a piece o that ice to good use and get your hands back to their right form,” Buddy said, waving Linc and Bram toward the back door. “Come on, git in there quick, ’fore Sister show up here and start getting sterical ’bout what happened to your pretty hands. Tain’t never heard of such a thing myself as a man wit pretty hands—you, Bram?” He shoved Bram’s shoulder, playfully.
“No, sir—I mean, uh, Buddy,” Bram said as he followed Linc into the house. Though Bram had just heard such a thing from Robinson, who’d told him that his hands were beautiful, as were his hair, his eyes, his legs, his back.
11
LINC OMITTED THE awful truth of what Robinson had tried to do with Bram when he told Buddy why they’d run away. “He was a tyrant, Buddy,” he said, as Nola put a pot of ice chips on the table and situated one, then the other of his hands in. “I finally stood up to him and a fight was the result. I believe he would have killed us if I had not defended myself.”
“Mnh,” Buddy said. “And how about you, Bram? You look none the worse. Least your hands not showing wear.”
“I was all prepared, Linc has taught me your moves, but then Linc went at him with such speed, I did not have the opportunity to put the instruction to use.”
“Is that so?” Buddy said, his good eye twinkling with amusement. “Show me what he did.”
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