The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor

by Peter Abrahams

  • • •

  The next day, a Saturday, we went to my Uncle Joe’s, something we did once a year, always around Christmas. Uncle Joe, my dad’s older brother—only by two years, but much older-looking, almost like he could have been my dad’s dad—was a surgeon and lived in Saddle Brook (which my dad called Saddle Poop), New Jersey. Like lots of New Yorkers, we didn’t own a car, which meant renting one.

  “Just a little econobox will do,” my mom told my dad as he left for the car rental agency.

  Half an hour later came a beep-beep from the street, sort of cheerful sounding, if honking could ever be cheerful. We looked out the window, and there was Dad at the wheel of an enormous SUV. I glanced at my mom. She had dark patches under her eyes, like she’d had a bad sleep; the eyes themselves looked very annoyed.

  • • •

  “Welcome to the ’burbs,” said my dad, as we drove down Uncle Joe’s street. He and Aunt Jenna lived on a cul-de-sac lined with big, beautiful houses spaced far apart. The ’burbs seemed to have more snow than we did in the city, and it was still white and puffy. We turned into Uncle Joe’s circular drive. He was out front, wrapping a bright red scarf around the neck of a small snowman.

  “It’s like living in a damn calendar,” my dad said.

  Uncle Joe came over as we rolled up. “Hi, everybody!” he said. “Welcome to America.”

  I laughed and so did my mom. My dad said ha-ha, kind of under his breath. We got out of the car. Uncle Joe gave Dad a hug, Mom a kiss, and me a big smile and a high five. “How are you doing, Robbie?” he said.

  “Great.”

  “No more headaches?”

  “Nope.”

  “Good news,” said Uncle Joe.

  Back when the charm had first come to me, I’d had some headaches and ended up at Uncle Joe’s hospital where tests had shown nothing wrong. Later I’d realized that those headaches had been all about me and the charm getting to know each other, but at the time, I’d been pretty scared. As for not mentioning the charm at the time, I really hadn’t yet believed in it, and also hadn’t wanted to sound crazy; soon after that, it had been too late. And now it was pointless, since there was no charm, almost as though I’d imagined the whole thing. But Dina DeNunzio, Sheldon Gunn dropping Jaggers and Tulkinghorn, Jaggers and Tulkinghorn dropping my mom: all real.

  My mom leaned into the car. “Pendleton? Let’s go.”

  But he was already out of the car, not like him at all to be up and doing so fast. We glanced around and spotted him over by the snowman, just as . . . was he about to . . . ? Yes, he was. Pendleton lifted his leg against the snowman and spread a surprisingly large amount of yellow over that round white body.

  We all laughed, especially my dad.

  • • •

  Inside, Aunt Jenna—who’d been a nurse but no longer worked—was busy in the kitchen. “What’s cookin’?” Uncle Joe said.

  “How does duck sound?” she said.

  “Quack quack,” said Uncle Joe.

  She threw a potato at him. He caught it, pretended it was too hot to handle, then stuck it in his pocket.

  “Don’t mind Joe,” Aunt Jenna said. “He’s regressing.”

  “Let’s drink to that,” said Uncle Joe. “Champagne, anybody?”

  Uncle Joe, Aunt Jenna, and my dad had champagne. I had cider. My mom just wanted water. Uncle Joe shot her a quick glance as he handed her the glass.

  “Is Eli home?” I said. Eli was my cousin, now in college.

  “He’s skiing this Christmas,” Aunt Jenna said. “Eight or ten of them are crowding into someone’s condo in Stowe.”

  Everything I heard about college was like that. Sometimes I could hardly wait.

  My dad and Uncle Joe went downstairs to shoot pool. My mom slipped into the dining room and checked her phone. Aunt Jenna took a big bag out of the fridge.

  “Like oysters, Robbie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Know how to shuck ’em?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  Aunt Jenna spread some newspaper on the granite-topped island, dumped oysters out of the bag, took a pair of shucking knives out of a drawer, and gave me one.

  She laid an oyster on the newspaper, the rounded side down. “See right here?” she said. “That’s the hinge. Move a tiny way like this and then wiggle in the point, give a firm push and—viola, as a friend of mine used to say.” The oyster opened right up. “Now you just slice through this thick knob and plop the oyster back in the rounded part for serving. Want to try?”

  “Sure.”

  I tried. It had looked so easy when Aunt Jenna did it, but I couldn’t even wiggle in the point. Aunt Jenna didn’t say anything, didn’t even watch me, just kept shucking steadily away. Then, just as I was about to give up—

  “Viola!”

  “There you go,” Aunt Jenna said. “House rule—you always eat your first oyster.” She cut a lemon in half and squeezed some juice on my oyster.

  I slurped it down. “These are great.”

  “Aren’t they?” said Aunt Jenna. “And they’re local. We’re finally cleaning up some of these waters. Up for doing some more?”

  “Yeah!”

  “I’ll leave you to it,” Aunt Jenna said. She washed her hands, then went into the dining room.

  I picked out another oyster—bigger than the first, with a nice shape and a pearly sort of sheen—and got to work. At the same time, I could hear my mom and Aunt Jenna talking in low voices, too low for me to catch the words. But my mom’s anxiety, and her determination to cover it up, were clear.

  I wiggled the curved end of the shucking knife into the oyster’s hinge, gave a firm push, adjusting the angle as I did. The knife slid in just right. At the same time, I heard Aunt Jenna saying something about helping out, and my mom raising her voice: “Oh, no, never.”

  I worked the flat of the knife along the shell, separating the two halves, concentrating my hardest on the small world of this single oyster. Next step: cutting that little knob attachment thing. I bent forward to do that and, at the same moment, saw something shiny lying right on top of the oyster’s glistening body. It was a tiny silver heart: the charm.

  7

  But how could this be? Maybe I was feverish, imagining the whole thing. I felt my forehead. Cool as a cucumber, as they said, although why I wasn’t sure: once you took the cucumber out of the fridge, didn’t it warm up to room temperature? I closed my eyes, counted silently to three, and opened them. The tiny silver heart was still there, lying on the oyster. Was it possibly some other silver heart, just a normal everyday charm that had fallen off some boater’s bracelet and sunk down into an oyster bed? I stuck out my finger, extended it closer and closer toward the silver heart.

  SNAP! The oyster closed so fast the motion was just a blur, the sharp edge of the shell slicing into my fingertip. From the oyster came a faint sizzling sound, and a tiny puff of steam rose and dissipated in the air; I caught a faint smell of the sea. The oyster now looked like all the other oysters on Aunt Jenna’s granite island, as though it had never been opened. Meanwhile, my finger was bleeding. I stuck it in my mouth, which happened to be the very moment that Aunt Jenna came back into the kitchen.

  “Don’t tell me,” Aunt Jenna said. “You cut your finger.”

  I took my finger out of my mouth, put my hand in my pocket. “It’s just a scratch,” I said.

  “Let’s see,” she said.

  I showed her. She made me wash it off, then took a Band-Aid from a drawer and wrapped it on my fingertip in one easy, nurse-like motion.

  “Thanks,” I said. “And I’m getting the hang of it, really.”

  “Of course you are,” said Aunt Jenna. She opened the fridge and took out a serving dish with about two dozen already shucked oysters on it, and added the three or four she’d done while teaching me
. “This should do,” she said, and with that started gathering all the closed oysters and returning them to the bag.

  “Hey,” I said, “I’ll do that.”

  “Not a problem,” said Aunt Jenna. “I’ve got ’em.” She dropped all the oysters into the bag and placed it in the fridge. “All set,” she called, and a minute or two later, we were all seated around the dining room table.

  Uncle Joe raised his glass. “To family,” he said.

  “To family,” said everyone, although if my dad joined in, it wasn’t very loudly. I knew that didn’t mean my dad didn’t care about family; was it something about toasting the whole subject not being cool? I couldn’t take it farther than that.

  • • •

  “I’ll clear,” I said, rising the moment everyone had finished their seconds of Aunt Jenna’s homemade pecan pie—the crust perfect, the filling so nutty and not too sweet. “You guys all sit tight.” And I carted off the dishes, closing the door to the kitchen behind me with my foot.

  “What a kid!” I heard Uncle Joe say.

  “We can never get Eli to lift a finger,” said Aunt Jenna.

  “This is uncharacteristic,” my dad said.

  I got busy at the dishwasher, made some clattering noise, then raced over to the fridge practically on tiptoe, like some cartoon character, and opened the door. Aunt Jenna’s fridge was enormous—two or three of ours would have fit inside—and packed with food, even though there were just the two of them now. I rooted around, searching for that oyster bag, which was one of those normal fish store bags, extra thick and decorated with pictures of lobsters and leaping marlins.

  There it was, behind a jug of what looked like fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. I tugged the bag to the front of the shelf and peered inside: a dozen or so oysters were jumbled together in the bag, none of them in any obvious way different from any of the others. How was that possible? Hadn’t my special oyster been quite a bit bigger and also marked with pearly tints? I gave the bag a shake, trying to get a better look. Which got me nowhere when it came to size differences, and as for pearly tints, I saw none. But surely if I examined them more closely, especially around the hinge part, I’d spot a few chips made by my shucking knife and—

  I heard footsteps coming from the dining room, quickly shut the fridge and zipped back to the dishwasher—almost tripping over Pendleton, dozing in a patch of sunlight—and started loading. The kitchen door opened. I glanced over my shoulder. My mom. She paused, head tilted a bit, like she was studying me.

  “You like it here, don’t you?” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “They’re so nice, Aunt Jenna and Uncle Joe.”

  “I meant this kind of town,” my mom said. “Out of the city.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I love Brooklyn.”

  She came over, gave me a pat on the back. “Me too,” she said. “I just hope . . .”

  “Hope what, Mom?”

  “Nothing. And that gravy boat is Wedgwood.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Meaning it doesn’t go in the dishwasher.”

  “Oh.”

  She picked up the coffeepot and headed back toward the dining room.

  “I think Pendleton needs to go outside,” I said, placing the gravy boat on a sideboard. “I’ll do it.”

  “You really are helpful today,” Mom said. She gave me a very nice look, and I realized she must have been thinking I was coming through for the family when we were under pressure. So I actually ended up feeling a bit bad. “But,” she went on, “what makes you think he wants to go out?”

  Good point. Pendleton lay with his chin flat on the floor, eyes shut, legs splayed out in total comfort.

  “I can just tell.”

  My mom shrugged, went into the dining room. I was in motion immediately, grabbing the bag of oysters from the fridge, kneeling beside Pendleton and whispering, “Pendleton, wake up, wake up, darn it,” and I knew he was awake in there, but he lay still, refusing to open his eyes or demonstrate awakeness in any way. I needed him to get up, to be my cover for going outside and finding some place to hide the bag of oysters in our rented SUV, and I needed him now.

  “Pendleton!” I grabbed his collar and got him to his feet, not easy. “Please, for once, do what I say. I’ll give you a treat.”

  No reaction, and he knew the word treat, beyond any doubt. Was it possible he also knew there were no treats in this house? No time to figure that out. I pulled on the collar. Pendleton sat back, resisting with all his strength, which could be surprisingly impressive. I gave an angry jerk on the collar, lost my grip and fell on the floor, banging into the sideboard and dropping the bag of oysters. They all came tumbling out, one of them cracking open.

  Yes: my oyster. The oyster inside, that I’d already cut free, came slopping out, the tiny silver heart caught in a glistening little fold. I reached over to pick it up. But Pendleton was faster. Before I knew what was happening, he’d lowered his head and—could it be true?—scarfed up the oyster and the charm. Now he was licking the spilled oyster juices off the tiles.

  “Pendleton!” I scrambled over to him, took him by the mouth, tried to open his jaws. And got nowhere. Pendleton didn’t try to back away or shake me off: he just sat there, jaws tightly shut, and there was nothing I could do.

  I heard voices in the dining room, and chair legs scraping on the floor. I jumped up, got the remaining oysters back in the bag, stuffed them in the fridge, and was just picking up the two shell halves of the special oyster, when everyone came in from the dining room. I jammed the shell halves in my pocket.

  Were they all eyeing me in a funny way?

  “He didn’t want to go out,” I said.

  “Looks like it was quite a struggle,” Uncle Joe said, which was when I realized we’d broken something, something made of china, white and blue, pieces scattered all over the place, lots of them minute, the whole thing way beyond repair. No, not the Wedgwood gravy boat? But yes.

  • • •

  Back home, I didn’t let Pendleton out of my sight. He lay on his fluffy mat in the kitchen, couldn’t have looked more comfortable, eyes open and completely vacant, showing no sign of wanting or needing to go outside. After a while, his eyes slowly closed, and around that time, I heard my phone ringing in my room. I hurried upstairs and checked the screen: Silas.

  “They just found an earth-sized planet no more than three hundred light years from us,” he said. “Practically in the neighborhood.”

  “That’s what you called to tell me?” I said.

  “No. But I thought you’d be interested.”

  “Why?”

  “Who wouldn’t be interested?” Silas said. “Do you see what this means? The galaxy is swarming with life.”

  “Thanks for letting me know. I’m kind of busy right now, Silas, and—”

  “One other thing,” Silas said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember that secondhand record store?”

  “Rewind?” How could I forget Rewind, run by this old hippie who hadn’t liked getting pushed around by Sheldon Gunn’s New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project?

  “What was the name of the arsonist dude?” Silas said. “Long nose, kind of looks like a weasel or maybe a giant rat?”

  “Harry Henkel.” Tut-Tut and I had caught him spreading gasoline in the basement at Rewind, tied him up, and left him for the police. “He’s in jail and refusing to talk,” I said. “But how do you know what he looks like? You never saw him.”

  “I saw his picture online,” Silas said. “He’s in the news—the real reason I called, actually, although big-picture-wise, it’s insignificant compared to the new planet.”

  “Silas? What are you telling me?”

  “He’s out on bail.”

  “What? That can’t be.”

  “I could send you the link.”

&
nbsp; “Do you realize what this means?” I said. “He’s the only one of all Gunn’s people who saw us. I’m talking about our faces—mine and Tut-Tut’s.”

  “It’s a big city,” Silas said, “although no longer the biggest city in the world or even close. What are the chances of him running into either of you?”

  “Better than if he stayed in jail,” I said.

  “I could work up some numbers on exactly how much better, if you like,” said Silas.

  • • •

  I went downstairs, my mind racing. Bail: it had never even occurred to me. Now Henkel was on the loose, plus Dina DeNunzio was out there, too, digging away. And there was way more than that going wrong—my mom’s job, Tut-Tut locked up, Ashanti’s father. What else? Pendleton, of course.

  “Hey,” I said, coming into the kitchen and noticing that Pendleton’s fluffy mat was unoccupied. “Where’s Pendleton?”

  My dad sat at the kitchen table, writing in his notebook. Did he even hear me?

  “Dad! Where’s Pendleton?”

  He looked up, annoyed. “What was that?” he said.

  “Where’s Pendleton?”

  “Pendleton?” He glanced around. “I think Jane took him for a walk.” He turned to his notebook.

  I went into the hall and checked the hook where we hung the pooper-scooper. No pooper-scooper. I grabbed my jacket and ran outside, scanning the street both ways. No sign of Mom and Pendleton.

  8

  The wind was picking up, icy and cold, coming from the direction of the river. Pendleton was afraid of the wind, meaning the walk would not be long. He would quickly do what he had to do in order to get back inside the house. Mom would scoop it up, drop it in a plastic bag, and then deposit the bag in the first trash bin she came to. Would I end up searching all the trash bins in the neighborhood? I glanced around, saw nothing but trash bins, like I was in some kind of nightmare. I had to beat Pendleton to the punch, if that was how to put it.