Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street

by Peter Abrahams

  “Tut-Tut!” I reached out to him. “What’s happening? Try to get back to how you were feeling when—”

  But before I could even finish with whatever dumb notion that was going to be, Tut-Tut had wheeled away and taken off. He ran right out of his flip-flops, and something fell from his pocket. Tut-Tut was very fast, the fastest kid I’d ever seen. I’m a pretty good runner, too, but catching him was out of the question. All I could do was pick up the flip-flops and the thing that had fallen from his pocket, which turned out to be a can of purple spray paint.

  I took a long detour on the way home. I’ve always liked walking, but that didn’t explain this particular walk, which led me past the subway stop a block and a half from school; it was more that my feet simply wanted to go in that direction.

  What I was hoping for was to see the old homeless woman back in her usual spot and return the bracelet, but she wasn’t there. I went into the newsstand and up to the counter. The man behind it was busy with a Sudoku puzzle. He glanced up.

  “Hi,” I said. “Um, the old woman? Who sits out front all the time? I was wondering whether…”

  “She died,” the man said, and went back to his puzzle.

  My knees got weak; it turned out not to be just an expression. I felt a train rumbling down below.

  After that came the illness part. I remember walking home with the flip-flops and the spray paint; I remember seeing that neither Mom nor Dad was back yet; I remember feeling way too hot, and also way too tall, which was very weird, plus, everything looked yellow at the edges, like old newspapers. Then I was in my bed, and hotter than ever, and Pendleton was beside me, licking my face from time to time. His tongue felt nice and cool.

  Time passed, maybe not a lot. When you’re sick, time loses its strict shape, starts ballooning and/or shrinking, like an image in a funhouse mirror. Mom and Dad appeared, standing over me. My temperature got taken—I didn’t like the feel of that glass stick under my tongue; worried looks got exchanged; headaches were mentioned. Did I have one? No, but I’d had a few lately. The worried looks grew more worried, as though the guy who painted that Scream picture was doing their portraits.

  Whispers went back and forth:

  “Headaches? Didn’t your father…”

  “Chas, must you always jump to the most…”

  Whispers buzzing around like insects, but not as loud, more like insects with mufflers. That phrase “insects with mufflers” went round and round my brain, round and round my brain, and wouldn’t stop. A strange idea hit me—that I now understood stuttering from the inside—and vanished almost right away. Insects with mufflers, insects with mufflers.

  Then there were phone calls. “One-oh-four-point-five.” And a taxi ride across the Brooklyn Bridge, with me lying back and the whole structure, all those beams and arches, lit up against the night sky, a scary image for some reason; and walking into the hospital, although Mom and Dad were kind of holding me up; and there was my uncle Joe, wearing a white coat and with a stethoscope around his neck. Uncle Joe—my dad’s older brother—was a surgeon at the hospital.

  “Hey, cutie,” he said to me, laying his hand, so nice and cool, on my forehead. He looked like my dad except shorter-haired, heavier, and a lot older, although the difference was less than two years. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Joe,” said my dad, “she’s got a fever of—”

  Uncle Joe held up his hand. My dad went silent.

  “How’re you feeling, cutie?”

  “Not perfect,” I said.

  Uncle Joe smiled. We didn’t see Uncle Joe very often, pretty much just Thanksgiving and maybe for dinner at his house in Saddle Brook (which Dad called Saddle Poop), New Jersey.

  “We’ll soon see about that,” he said.

  Crazily enough, I started feeling a bit better at that exact moment. Out in the hall, Dad was talking in a low voice to some other doctor: “…my wife’s father, so I was wondering about the possibility of a genetic—” The door closed.

  “Let’s talk about these headaches,” said Uncle Joe. “When was the last time you saw the eye doctor?”

  “Last summer,” I said. “Just before school. Right eye minus three, left minus two-point-five.”

  Uncle Joe flashed a quick smile, looked a lot younger for a second or so. “And was that a change from the time before?”

  “Yeah. I got new glasses.”

  “The ones you’re wearing now?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They look nice.”

  “Yeah? Thanks, Uncle Joe. The funny thing is when the headaches come, I don’t need them.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I can see just fine, but it doesn’t last.” And then there was the whole red-gold beam part. When was the time for bringing that up? Maybe it was all unreal, part of a fever dream. And what if something really bad was wrong with me? That five-letter word, starting with T, ending with R? I didn’t even let my mind form it, although of course my mind kept trying and trying. Insects with mufflers, insects with mufflers. The next thing I knew, I was hotter again, and a nurse was feeding me ice chips. I remembered my dad once saying, “Joe’s hopeless when it comes to that kind of thing.”

  “What are you hopeless at, Uncle Joe?”

  “Did you say something, Robbie?”

  Oops. Uncle Joe was gazing down at me; also we were on the move, me lying on a gurney, someone out of my field of vision pushing, and Uncle Joe walking alongside.

  “Nothing to feel hopeless about,” he said. “Have you bumped your head on anything lately? Taken a blow, playing sports, say?”

  “Yes,” I said. And then: “No.”

  Uncle Joe smiled. “Which is it?”

  “No,” I said. So weird. It was Ashanti who got hit in the head, but I really did feel like it was me.

  “Sure?” he said.

  “Um. Yeah.”

  We rounded a corner, came to a stop. Some tiles were missing from the ceiling, and the empty spaces up there looked endless and dark. I knew scary thoughts like that were just from the fever talking, but that didn’t mean they went away.

  “Know what an MRI is?” Uncle Joe said.

  “Like an X-ray?”

  “Yes,” said Uncle Joe. “And even better for things like this. Up for it? It’s noisy but completely painless.”

  Things like what? Did they have five letters, first one T, last one R? I kept that to myself. “Yeah, I’m up for it,” I said.

  “Got any metal on you?” he said, as we entered a room with a long white tube in the center.

  “No.”

  “What about those earrings?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  I took off the earrings—my arms felt so heavy—and handed them to a woman in a white uniform.

  “Anything else?” she said.

  “No.”

  “What’s that on your wrist? A friendship bracelet?”

  I glanced down at it. “Yeah.” Yes, a friendship bracelet, and of a very special kind.

  “But that heart is metal, right?”

  I handed over the bracelet and right away felt a bit strange without it, like I wasn’t fully dressed.

  They slid me into the tube. My job was to lie still. I lay still. Painless and noisy—like a giant was knocking hard at the outside of the tube—but somehow I fell asleep anyway. I was kind of an X-ray machine myself.

  I woke up much later in a small dark room with Mom and Dad standing beside me.

  Mom touched my hand. Her hand didn’t feel cool. “How are you?” she said.

  “Good.” It was true. I felt way better.

  “You were so brave in the MRI,” she said.

  Hey! You could be brave by falling asleep at the right moment. Maybe I could snooze my way to the Medal of Honor.

  Uncle Joe and another doctor came in. “This is Dr. Ng,” Uncle Joe said. “She’s head of radiology.”

  It got very silent in the room. I could feel Mom and Dad tense up, and it really bothered me. I made a decision
, years ahead of the game: when it was time for college, I was heading out of town.

  Dr. Ng looked at me. “I’m happy to report,” she said, “that the results were negative.”

  Negative? Oh, no, no, no. My heart started racing real fast, like it wanted to live, live, live.

  False alarm. “Negative meaning good, right?” said my mom.

  “Right,” said Dr. Ng. “We found no evidence of disease or defect whatsoever. Robbie’s brain is entirely normal.”

  So negative was good? My parents’ eyes moistened. They each patted me, like I’d come up big.

  “Can I go home now?” I said. “I feel fine.”

  Uncle Joe and Dr. Ng exchanged a glance. “Fever’s down,” said Uncle Joe. “Don’t see why not.”

  “Joe,” said my dad, “shouldn’t we have a diagnosis?”

  Uncle Joe gave him a quick look, kind of sharp. “Quite possibly a quick-acting virus. We can’t say for sure.”

  “How would that explain the headaches?” Dad said.

  “It wouldn’t,” said Uncle Joe. “No need for a connection. Lots of kids get headaches, often from stress.”

  “Stress?” said Dad, turning to me. “You haven’t said anything about stress.”

  “Is it because of changing schools?” my mom asked me. “Didn’t I tell you, Chas?”

  Dr. Ng checked her pager. “Nice meeting you all.” She left the room.

  I just wanted out. I raised my voice. “There’s no stress. I’m fine.”

  Uncle Joe checked his pager, too. “I’d suggest another appointment with the ophthalmologist,” he said. “And of course get in touch if anything… for any reason. Take care of yourself, Robbie.” He handed over the plastic bag. “Here’s your stuff.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Joe. Thanks for everything.”

  “Yes,” said my mom. “Thanks, Joe.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” said my dad.

  “Don’t mention it,” said Uncle Joe.

  In the taxi on the way home, I put on my earrings and slipped the bracelet back on my wrist. Ah. Dawn was breaking, a dark, drizzly, sunless dawn. It was beautiful.

  My parents let me stay home on Monday. I didn’t wake up till noon. Dad was down in the kitchen, working on his laptop.

  “Hey, sleepyhead, how are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “Maybe I’ll take Pendleton for his walk—he hasn’t been out yet.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sure you’ll be all right?”

  “Dad. I’m fine.”

  He gazed at me. “You look okay,” he said. “Kind of like…” His eyes shifted, drawn by some thought. It was possible I’d just been turned into a metaphor.

  Dad took Pendleton for his walk. I really did feel fine—and starving. I poured a big bowl of cereal, sliced a banana, threw in some blueberries, and was just sitting down when the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Robbie? It’s Claire from Bread.”

  “Hi.”

  “Is your mom there?”

  “She’s at work.”

  “Well, I can tell you, since you’re a volunteer, too. Please pass it on.”

  “Pass what on?”

  Claire laughed, a giddy kind of laugh, which made her sound much younger and less nunlike—an unfair thought, but I had it anyway. “Good news. We’re not closing down, at least not this month.”

  “Oh?”

  “A benefactor has appeared on the scene. An anonymous benefactor, out of the blue. Or should I say by the grace of God?”

  “Yeah?” I said. I preferred out of the blue; the implications of choice two were way too much.

  “He simply shoved a whole wad of cash through the letter slot,” Claire said.

  He? That was interesting. First, it meant no one saw—except for Tut-Tut, of course. Second, why would Claire assume the benefactor was a man? I didn’t know, but it worked out nicely.

  “Awesome,” I said. “See you Saturday.”

  I went back to my cereal, got a perfect spoonful arranged with just the right balance of cereal, bananas, and blueberries, when the phone rang again. It was my mom.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ve got a question for you.”

  “Yeah?” I put my spoon back in the bowl.

  “Remember Sheldon Gunn—the man at Bread on Saturday?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Did you see any suspicious characters around at the time?”

  “Suspicious characters? Like how do you mean?”

  “Andrew—the partner from the firm—told me Mr. Gunn seems to have had his pocket picked sometime on Saturday. He’s pretty annoyed about it. Not because of the money so much.”

  “Because of what?”

  “It’s more of a pride thing. Apparently he’s always had a reputation for being street-smart.”

  “Then he should keep this a secret,” I said.

  Mom laughed. “I’ll pass that on.”

  “You will?”

  “On second thought, no. But I take it you didn’t see any suspicious characters?”

  “Only Sheldon Gunn,” I said.

  Mom laughed again and said good-bye. I picked up my spoon, but found I was no longer hungry.

  Later that day I had the bracelet in my hands and was examining the silver heart, just a tiny shiny thing with no marks or other features, when the doorbell rang. Some dogs get excited when that happens—maybe having to do with ancient guarding genes wrapped in their DNA—but not Pendleton, who dozed on beneath the kitchen table. I pressed the button on the wall speaker and said, “Hello?”

  No reply. I remembered that for listening you had to let go of the button, so I did, and heard nothing, probably because whoever was there had already spoken, so I pressed the button and said hello all over again, and then let go.

  “Hey—it’s me, Ashanti.” Ashanti at the door? That was a first. She sounded impatient. “I’ve got your homework.”

  “Great, thanks,” I said. “I mean, not great, actually, like, homework, you know? But, ah… be right down.” I pushed the button somewhere in the middle of that bumbling around, so what Ashanti ended up hearing was anybody’s guess.

  I went downstairs, unlocked all the locks, and opened the door. There was Ashanti, looking very cool in a short black jacket, black jeans, and a baseball cap with Princeton on the front. And it was raining, the street all wet like it had been raining for some time: I hadn’t even noticed.

  “Hi,” I said, “thanks for, uh…”

  Ashanti stepped into the entryway, out of the rain, unslung her backpack, and started rummaging inside.

  “How was practice?” I said.

  Ashanti shrugged, at the same time spilling some papers on the floor. She stooped to pick them up, and just like in some stupid movie, I was stooping, too, and we bumped heads.

  “Ow,” Ashanti cried. As did I, and then we were both rubbing our heads. She gave me an angry look.

  “Sorry,” I said, although was it really my fault?

  “Sorry doesn’t—” she began, and then glanced down, and there among the scattered papers lay the bracelet, which I seemed to have carried downstairs and dropped during all that stooping and head bumping. I stooped once more, now for the bracelet, and so did Ashanti. No head bumping this time, but Ashanti and I both touched the silver heart at the same time. Right away a shock went through me, like an electric charge, all the way down to the tips of my toes and back up again.

  “Ow!” I said again.

  “What was that?” said Ashanti.

  “Did you feel it too?”

  “Of course I felt it,” Ashanti said. “Why wouldn’t I feel it?”

  “Well, um.”

  She crouched down, eyed the bracelet, still on the floor. “What is that thing?”

  “A friendship bracelet.”

  “Are batteries in it?”

  “No.” But I hadn’t thought of that, couldn’t be sure.

  Slowly she
reached out with her index finger and touched it. Nothing happened. “Must’ve been static electricity,” Ashanti said, “but to the max.” She gave me a close look. “Did that T-shirt just come out of the drier?”

  The T-shirt I was wearing—one of my favorites, with a picture of a dancing cartoon frog on the front—had in fact come from a pile on the floor of my bedroom, so I said no. Plus, I really wasn’t completely clear in my mind about static electricity, wondered if that could explain what had been going on with me, the headaches, the red-gold beam, all that, and was also wondering how to ask Ashanti for some sort of definition without sounding like a total dork, when I noticed she was looking kind of ashy, the normal glow of her skin suddenly gone.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said. And then, more quietly, “Wouldn’t mind a glass of water.”

  We got the papers sorted out, I put the bracelet back on, and we went upstairs and into the kitchen.

  “That’s one big dog,” Ashanti said, hanging back a little.

  “His name’s Pendleton.” Under the table, Pendleton opened an eye.

  For most of my life until recently, we’d had big five-gallon water bottles delivered every two or three weeks, but now the cooler stood empty in the corner, my parents having decided that bottled water was the wrong way to go from the environment’s point of view. I filled a glass from the tap at the sink, where there was now a filter down underneath, and set it in front of Ashanti. She drank half of it in one gulp, the glow returning to her skin almost right away.

  “A dog bit me when I was little,” she said.

  “That won’t happen with Pendleton.”

  His eye closed.

  Ashanti glanced around the kitchen. “What do they do?” she said. “Your parents.”

  “My mom’s a lawyer. My dad’s a writer.”

  “What does he write?”

  “Like, novels.”

  “Published?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool.”

  She drank more water, tilting her head back a little. Ashanti was beautiful, no doubt about that, every feature just perfect, as though extra effort had gone into designing her. No grandmother had ever told her she’d grow into a beautiful woman one day: it was too obvious for words.