Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street

by Peter Abrahams

  We spent the rest of the period on the robber barons. We learned that Morgan swatted photographers with his gold-tipped cane, that Gould tried to kidnap a Scottish lord named Gordon-Gordon, almost starting a war between the U.S. and Canada, and that Rockefeller once said, “God gave me the money.”

  “Any questions?” said Mr. Stinecki.

  There were none.

  “For homework, in that case—” he began.

  And then my hand went up, first time in Mr. Stinecki’s class, first time at Thatcher.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Stinecki. “Robbie?”

  “Um,” I said. “Are there, like, any robber barons around today?”

  “Interesting question. Opinions, people?”

  Nobody had opinions.

  “Got anybody in mind, Robbie?” Mr. Stinecki asked. “Russian oligarchs, perhaps?”

  Russian oligarchs? That zipped right by me. I plunged on. “How about Sheldon Gunn?”

  Mr. Stinecki’s eyebrows rose. “And what can you tell us about the good Mr. Gunn, Robbie?”

  The good Mr. Gunn? Did Mr. Stinecki mean that, or was he just being sarcastic? I didn’t know, felt a bit flustered. “Driving people out of their rentals can’t be good,” I said.

  “Can you elaborate?”

  Elaborate meant more info, right? “Like Bread.”

  “The soup kitchen?”

  “He raised their rent, so they had to leave.”

  “You’re talking about the New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The somewhat Orwellianly named New Brooklyn Redevelopment Project, might we say?”

  What was that? Missed it completely. I heard kids moving in the hall, sensed restlessness at the desks around me. The period was over. I shrugged.

  “Not so very far, on second thought,” Mr. Stinecki said, “from ‘God gave me the money.’ So, yes, Robbie, I believe that robber barons still walk among us.” He checked his watch. “À demain, everybody.” À demain was how Mr. Stinecki said good-bye. He’d led last year’s tenth-grade trip to Provence, supposedly where things started getting shaky for him.

  After a slight hesitation—hadn’t he been about to give the homework assignment?—we all began filing out. He’d forgotten the homework! There was homework in every subject every day at Thatcher. He was a goner for sure.

  “Do you volunteer at Bread?” Mr. Stinecki said as I went by.

  “Yeah.”

  “Excellent. I heard, by the way, that they’re staying open, at least for now. Some anonymous benefactor stepped up.”

  “Yeah?” I said. Was Mr. Stinecki looking at me extra closely? Or was I just paranoid? “That’s nice,” I said.

  Ashanti and the other eighth-graders had to stay after school for a meeting about their science projects. Eighth-grade science projects were a big deal at Thatcher. A few years before, one kid, now at MIT, had built something that was now in satellite orbit around the earth. Pretty cool, but cooler than Silas’s lock-picking project? Not to me.

  I walked home by myself, taking the long route by Joe Louis, my mind on Silas’s project. Tut-Tut was alone in the school yard again, but not drawing, just squatting there and watching the street. He got right up the moment I appeared and came through the gate. Was he waiting for me? I noticed he wore my old white sneakers with the navy trim.

  He stopped a few feet from me and waved, a little circular wave accompanied by a smile. Tut-Tut had beautiful teeth—white, even, not too big or small.

  “Hi,” I said. “Nice sneaks.”

  He stopped waving, stuck his hands in the hand-warmer pocket of his hoodie. “Th-,” he said. “Th-th-

  th—”

  “Didn’t mean for you to thank me,” I said. “Just noticing, that’s all.”

  “It-it-it—”

  “It’s okay?”

  “Y-y-y—” He nodded yes.

  We stood there for a moment. I could tell Tut-Tut felt uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel at all uncomfortable with him. Was that the reason his stuttering no longer had any effect on me? Meaning, his stuttering no longer roused the power, but also that it had no effect on the powerless me, either. I liked Tut-Tut.

  “Where do you live?” I said. “Maybe we could walk together.”

  He pointed down the street, same direction I was heading.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Halfway to my place, Tut-Tut and I came to the corner where the Quality Coffin Company stood: “Reliable and Dependable Since 1889.” Sometimes the delivery doors were open and you could see the coffins inside, but not today. A cold wind was rattling the Quality Coffin sign, and dark clouds were moving fast across the sky. For a moment, I smelled the sea.

  Tut-Tut stopped. Home for me lay straight ahead, but he was pointing down the cross street.

  “You live down there?”

  “Y-y-y—” He nodded. “C-c-c-c-c—” He made a beckoning gesture.

  “Okay,” I said, and went with him.

  We passed some auto repair shops and a vacant lot, and came to a public housing project, three identical dark brick high rises with a strip of lawn in front, the grass brown and sparse. Tut-Tut pointed to a window on the third floor of the nearest building; all the windows were small, and there were no balconies.

  “Your apartment?”

  “Y-y-y-y-,” he said. “W-w-wa-wa-wa-wa—?”

  Did he want me to come up? I’d never actually been inside one of the projects, felt nervous about it.

  “I-,” Tut-Tut said. “I-I-I—” He stopped trying to talk, shook his head. A smile crossed his face, as though in amusement that he kept bumping up against the same problem. Then he made a box shape with his hands and sort of shoved it in my direction.

  “You have something for me?”

  He nodded.

  We walked past an overflowing trash barrel to the door of Tut-Tut’s high rise. I heard muffled yelling from somewhere above. Tut-Tut unlocked the door with a key and held it open for me. I got hit by a wave of stuffy and way-too-warm air, air that carried smells of fried food, tobacco smoke, and pee. Tut-Tut made a little after-you gesture. We went inside.

  Tut-Tut’s building had a small lobby with rows of mailboxes along one wall, some with doors hanging open, some with no doors at all. An old man drinking something from a paper bag watched us cross the lobby to the elevator.

  “Pays your money, and you takes your chance,” he said.

  Tut-Tut frowned and pressed the button. The doors stayed closed. Above them was a panel of lights that were supposed to show the present location of the elevator, none of them lit. Tut-Tut pressed the button again. A creaking sound came from somewhere above, but nothing happened. The man took a drink and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. Tut-Tut waved to me and turned toward the stairway.

  The door stood halfway open, held in place by a rag stuffed underneath. The smell of pee got a lot stronger in the stairwell, and noise throbbed down from above—different kinds of music, voices, car crash and gunshot sounds from video games. Tut-Tut’s face seemed to close up, getting hard and stony. Was he embarrassed? I wasn’t sure. We went up the stairs side by side till we reached the second landing, blocked by two big guys sitting on the top step.

  “Hey,” said one. “The little Haitian dude.”

  “Got your green card, little Haitian dude?”

  “Just nod.”

  “Yeah—we haven’t got all day.”

  They laughed, then noticed me and went silent. I wanted so much to tell them it looked to me like they did have all day, but I didn’t have the courage. But Tut-Tut had courage, and plenty, as I already knew. He stepped into the tiny space between the men. They moved aside, not much and grudgingly, but enough so he could pass. I followed, and we kept going. As we reached the next landing, I heard one say, “Catch those sneakers?”

  “Yeah,” said the other, and then he called up, “Hey, little Haitian dude—you dealin’, my man?”

  “That how come you got a c
ute white girl?” said the first.

  “Any dealin’, you deal us in, little Haitian dude.”

  “Or we be dimin’ you out to the INS.”

  More laughter. I fought the urge to run. Tut-Tut kept going at a steady, unhurried pace. We reached the third floor, went down a long windowless hall lit from above by a single bulb, all the others in the row burned out. From behind a shadowy, closed door came the sound of a woman crying and a man saying “Cry your eyes out.” The next door was Tut-Tut’s. He unlocked it, and we went inside.

  Tut-Tut seemed to live in a single room, small and square, with a bare linoleum floor, two narrow beds, a tiny fridge, no stove—just a counter with a sink and a hot plate—and a big TV. Half the room was untidy—clothes and empty food containers all over the place; the other half was spotless, the bed made with the blanket tucked in tight and the pillow just so. Tut-Tut made a little gesture with his hand; I took it to mean “welcome.”

  “D-d-d-,” he said. “D-dr-dr—”

  “I’m good,” I said. Tut-Tut was poor. I actually felt thirsty—it was so hot in the building—but I didn’t want to add to his burden.

  But he looked disappointed, and said, “Dr-dr-dri-drink?” Hey! He’d completed the word! He smiled. I’d never seen anything quite like it—shy, relieved, surprised, proud.

  “Sure,” I said. “If you’re having something.”

  Tut-Tut opened the fridge. Inside I saw three six-packs of beer, a jar of peanut butter, two eggs, half a loaf of sliced white bread, and a large plastic bottle of Coke. Tut-Tut took out the bottle of Coke, filled two plastic glasses sporting beer company logos, and handed one to me. The occasion felt strangely formal. I clinked glasses, something I’d never initiated before. Tut-Tut clinked back. We drank. Then Tut-Tut put his glass, still mostly full, back in the fridge, and went to the neatly made bed. He crouched down, pulled out a scrolled-up sheet of paper from underneath the bed, and gave it to me.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “O-o-,” he said. “O-op-op-op—” And came so close to saying open.

  I unrolled the sheet of paper, lined paper torn from a spiral notebook. Whoa! He’d made a pencil drawing of me. It was so good! First, no question that it was me, even though this face was much better-looking than mine, more like the face I’d see in my best dreams, if you saw your own face in dreams, which I never had. Second, this was me without my glasses. And when had Tut-Tut seen me without my glasses? Only when the power was working inside me. Was this me with the power? If so, I liked me with the power. I couldn’t stop gazing at this portrait: as though it was the portrait of a stranger, and I was learning so much about her.

  “Tut-Tut,” I said, “I love this. You’re so talen—”

  At that moment, without warning, the door banged open and a man came barging in. Tut-Tut made a startled motion, almost jumped off the ground. I was pretty startled myself. The man was tall and thin, wore a studded leather jacket, and had high cheekbones a lot like Tut-Tut’s. In fact, his face resembled Tut-Tut’s in other ways, almost a grown-up version, although the effect was completely different. Tut-Tut had a sweet face; this guy’s was mean. One other thing: I smelled booze right away.

  “What the heck?” said the guy, only he didn’t say “heck,” and then more in the French-sounding Creole language I’d heard Tut-Tut speak that one time when the power was in him. The guy pointed once or twice at me.

  Tut-Tut shook his head. “N-n-n-n-,” he said.

  “N-n-n-n—”

  “N-n-n-n-,” the guy mimicked.

  I’d witnessed this mimicry of Tut-Tut before, from those skateboarders, but coming from an adult, it was even more horrible.

  “Hey!” I said, maybe not the smartest thing to do, but the word popped out on its own.

  The guy turned to me. His eyes were bloodshot, and one of his eyelids twitched a bit. “You got something to say?”

  I tried to meet his gaze but couldn’t. Also my mouth had gone dry. “Please don’t mimic,” I said. It didn’t come out with much oomph, and right away I regretted that please.

  He took a step toward me. The room got a lot smaller, and it was small to begin with. “I say what I want,” he said. His English was very good, with just a slight accent.

  “But—” I began.

  He held up his hand, a nicely shaped hand—kind of like Tut-Tut’s, but a lot bigger, and also the tip of his index finger, from the top knuckle on, was missing. “Who are you?”

  “I’m his friend.”

  The guy wagged his maimed finger at me. “He has no friends. He has his uncle Jean-Claude, ki an tout.” He tapped himself on the chest. “Without me, the little retard would be living on the street. Who feeds him? Who puts the clothes on his back?”

  But Tut-Tut was so skinny, and his clothes were practically rags. My voice rose; I just couldn’t help it. “He’s not a retard!”

  Jean-Claude closed in a little more, bringing the booze cloud with him. “Look at him.”

  I turned to Tut-Tut. He stood motionless, his mouth slightly open, his lips moving a little, as though he were saying something. But there was no sound; and he had a thin, shiny tear track on each cheek.

  “You think a retard can do this?” I said, and waved Tut-Tut’s drawing at him.

  Big mistake, which I knew almost in the nick of time. But not quite. Jean-Claude snatched the drawing out of my hand, barely gave it a glance, and tore it to shreds and tossed them away. Then a sound did come out of Tut-Tut’s mouth, low and harsh. He charged at Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude knocked him aside with one backhanded sweep of his arm, and Tut-Tut, so light, went flying. He crashed against the wall, slid to the floor, and sat there, slumped and stunned.

  I was stunned, too. And then I thought: the power. Wasn’t this the kind of moment that awoke the power? I waited to feel some sign of it in my head—tingling, pressure, electricity—but I felt nothing. Why not? Where was the power now when I really needed it? Wasn’t this injustice, injustice of a very cruel kind? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying my hardest to make it happen. Nothing, nada, zip, a complete waste of time, as I should have known. And there was no time to waste: when I opened my eyes I saw Jean-Claude advancing on Tut-Tut and unbuckling his belt. At the same time, Tut-Tut was reaching into his pocket.

  I remembered something I’d kind of buried: I have a knife, and I know how to use it.

  “No!” I darted past Jean-Claude, grabbed Tut-Tut’s hand and pulled him to his feet. Jean-Claude tried to grab me, or Tut-Tut, or both of us, but lost his balance—maybe drunker than I’d thought—and fell. I ran to the door, hauling Tut-Tut behind, threw it open, and kept going. Behind us, Jean-Claude yelled something in Creole, the tone of it very clear.

  The next thing I knew, we were outside. The air caught my attention, smelling so fresh and sweet for Brooklyn. Tut-Tut and I were still holding hands, but now I had the sense that he was leading me instead of me leading him. We rounded a corner, went left at the next cross street—the sign, crooked and rusty, reading Sherwood Street and came to a derelict block lined by a big fenced-in empty lot, trash-strewn and overgrown with weeds, and then a huge warehouse, dark and boarded up. An unlit alley ran alongside the warehouse. Tut-Tut led me around to the back.

  “What are we—” I began, but Tut-Tut laid a finger across my lips. We walked silently behind the warehouse, the feel of his touch lingering for a moment or two, which took me by surprise, and came to a loading dock that jutted out at about chest level. Tut-Tut made a little motion, and we climbed up.

  The loading dock had a big steel door, the kind that rolls down, padlocked at the bottom. Set into the big steel door was a much smaller door for people to use when they didn’t need to bother with the whole rolling-up, rolling-down thing. This knobless little door—a metal plate hid the hole where the knob had been—had a window in it, covered by a plywood square. Tut-Tut reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. Yes, he really did have a knife, something I hadn’t been sure about until that moment
. But this was no deadly weapon. It was short, with a small stubby blade, very dull. I recognized the type. We didn’t actually have one in our kitchen, but Nonna did, and I’d seen it on our last visit to Arizona. Nonna had taught me that you use it to transfer a sliver of butter from the butter dish onto your bread plate and then do the actual spreading onto the slice of bread or roll—from which you break off a small piece at a time—with the outermost right-hand side knife of your place setting, or maybe the innermost one. The point was that, yes, Tut-Tut did pack a weapon, but it turned out to be a butter knife.

  He stepped up to the window, stuck the butter knife into the crack between the plywood square and the window frame, and wiggled it back and forth. The plywood square came loose. Tut-Tut reached through the hole—there was no glass—and opened the door from the inside. Then he put the plywood back in place, wedging it in firmly. He held the door for me. Tut-Tut probably had less of a clue than I did about what cutlery to use when, and all of Nonna’s other etiquette rules, but he had old-fashioned manners just the same.

  We went inside the warehouse. I got the sense of a huge empty space but couldn’t see much because there was hardly any light at all, just late-afternoon murkiness leaking in here and there from windows not quite properly boarded up. Tut-Tut moved along the wall a few feet, seemed to crouch down, reaching for something. Then came the snick of a match being lit, and a moment later, Tut-Tut was beside me, a burning candle in his hand. The candlelight forced back the shadows, and I picked out details: a row of tall floor-to-ceiling pillars leading into distant shadows, pipes and ducts running up walls and crisscrossing above our heads, bare cement floor with dirt and dust everywhere, and spiderwebs, lots of them. I don’t like spiders—there’s something cunning about them—and stayed close to Tut-Tut as we walked along the row of pillars.

  On the far side of the warehouse, we came to some kind of lift: not what I’d call an elevator, because it had no doors or walls, was just a square steel slab raised a few inches above the floor. Tut-Tut stepped onto it, motioned for me to follow.