by Robb, J. D.
“You’re the only reason I’m in this line, Poo—”
For the record: His mother called him Paul, not Poophead—for which Natalie received a summons for disturbing the peace last year.
Still, noting the three people waiting on the benches between them, she raised her voice conspicuously. “Do your superiors know how you spend your work hours, Officer Morgan? Do they understand that you seem to have nothing better to do than drum up false charges against me? Has anyone in your psych department explored your irrational aggression toward the indigent?”
She had no intention of mentioning the matches; he was getting too much satisfaction as it was. Tucking a file folder into her hobo bag, she turned to walk his way. She was not immune to his bullying but she knew as well as he did that she was a wall of defense for the down-and-out in their town—albeit a thin one. Sadly, however, she had nothing to fight back with but tenacity and a sharp tongue.
“Frankly,” she said, staring into his mean green eyes. “That’s where I’d start if I were them, with your psych evaluation. There’s something seriously askew with a police officer who has no empathy for those less fortunate than himself—especially at Christmas. Please move aside. You’re holding up the line,” she added, hearing footsteps behind her.
She didn’t need to see Paul Morgan’s gaze dart away briefly, then come back bold and defiant and aimed above her shoulders, to know whose step it was. And it wasn’t as much a step as the rhythm of the distinctive creak-and-rub noise a policeman’s thick leather utility belt made when he walked. It belonged to a tall, lean man with a heart as warm as his eyes were cool blue. The early frost at his temples was a tribute to his wisdom, and it belied his boundless strength and verve. Miles Richardson was her friend—her protector, her ally, her hero. He was her beacon in the dark, her cavalry on its way and . . . Well, she was afraid that calling him anything more would be presumptuous.
“Hey, Morgan, how’s it goin’?” His deep, throaty voice soothed her like a warm blanket . . . but his affable tone was irksome. “Missed you at Remmy’s for the Army-Navy game last Saturday.” He chuckled. “Army’s bound to get it right eventually,” he said, and at the same time his fingers curled around her upper arm and squeezed gently. “I heard about your troubles; hell of a time for the heat in your cruiser to go.”
Morgan flicked the remains of his cigarette out the door and shrugged. “I got a loaner. Mine’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Good. Another perk to having a motor pool, huh?” Miles began steering her sideways around Morgan’s cumbersome form in the doorway, past him, out onto the slush-covered sidewalk beyond the heavy security doors, and into the dull morning light. She hunched her shoulders and shivered against the cold. “Crank ’er up and stay warm out there, man.”
Both Morgan and Natalie made telltale noises in their upper chest—passive acknowledgment and active contempt. Only the second sound concerned Miles so, still grasping her arm, he quickly guided her up the sidewalk while she sputtered for words.
The metal door closed and she spoke.
“Stay warm? In his car? With the heater on? While women and children and . . . and real men with real honor and true character freeze . . . and go hungry because he threw more than four gallons of stew in a Dumpster? Then he threatened to arrest anyone standing in the alley after he put me in the back of his car.” Her soft snort was derisive as she walked and angled backward to look into his face—the angry flush in her cheeks warding off any chance of frostbite. “A couple of the older guys actually stayed. They were willing to be arrested on whatever trumped-up charge that . . . that person could dream up just for a warm bed and a cold breakfast. And do you know what? He knew that and didn’t arrest them, and now they’re out there and . . . You know, I don’t know how you can keep a civil tongue in your head when he’s around.”
He looked down at her, noticed he was still holding her arm, and let go. “Because if I take him on and draw a line in the dirt, it’ll only get worse for you and your friends. This way, he’s not fighting with kids his own size; he’s bullying good, kind people who can’t really fight back. And everyone sees it. All his misdemeanor charges are legitimate infractions but so innocuous, and frequent, they’ve become a waste of everyone else’s time.” He laughed quietly. “Calling a public defender every time was a stroke of genius, by the way. They hate him.”
She shook her head. “I don’t get it. We’re not hurting anyone. Why does he hate us so much? Me, especially. It feels like everything I do is against the law, and it isn’t.” She hesitated. “Better me than the Posers, I guess. They’re too old . . . and poor Lynie would take it as an act of terrorism but . . . but why at all? Why does he go out of his way to be mean to us?”
This was not the first time she’d asked him. Nor was it the first time Miles had no answer—a sporadic suspicion perhaps, but nothing concrete, and nothing he wanted to dig into.
He sighed, and with a voice filled with caution, he said, “Just so you know, I’m pretty sure those old fellas weren’t hanging around to get arrested last night. One of them flagged me down to give me a heads-up. They’re keeping an eye on you, especially when the Posers aren’t around.” He cast a stern look. “And they’re putting themselves at risk to do it. I’m not the only one who worries. You’re not safe out there alone.”
“I’m careful now, I promise. I never unlock the doors or get out of the car until I see someone familiar. Everyone knows I don’t carry cash or credit cards or even a bottle of aspirin with me . . . Plus that magnetic sign you got me lets all the new folks know . . . Plus I’m done, packed up, and halfway home before dark.” She took a breath. “I’m careful.”
He was unconvinced. One of her two trips to the ER after being mugged was in the back of his squad car. That’s how they met three years earlier. That’s what flashed through his mind whenever he had cause to worry about her, which was often.
The first time he laid eyes on her, she came staggering from the shadows of a dark alley onto the street in front of his cruiser. He nearly killed her. At first, with only the glow of the streetlights for backup, it was hard to make out her age. Young, he’d decided; too young. Her short dark hair was scruffy and wet from the rain and motor oil on the alley floor where she’d fallen; her hands were scraped and bleeding. Her big brown eyes were wide with shock and fear as she denied a sexual assault. Mechanically, she lamented the tear in the knee of her jeans . . . She cried understandably and seemed quite normal under the circumstances until he assured her that an ambulance was on its way.
That’s when the world seemed to tip a bit and he was forced to admit that he simply didn’t have as much control of it as he thought. He watched while she used her split lips and swollen, deeply discolored jaw to announce that the prohibitive cost of an ambulance, where unneeded, was unnecessary and wasteful. Then she emphatically declared herself to be a clear-thinking adult woman who was capable of and adamant about refusing the assistance of one. Period. Although she wouldn’t mind a quick ride to the ER in the back of his car; she was concerned about her ribs. Also, she promised not to bleed on anything.
He never recovered. Since that night she’d been a constant source of wonder and awareness, understanding and appreciation, and a deep, searing pain . . . in his ass, who tugged at his heart like no one else before.
Natalie was the product of a foster system that actually worked more often than it failed, truth be told. Raised off and on the streets by her birth mother, by her mother’s friends, and by complete strangers from time to time, she was six years old when DCFS stepped in to protect her. She was taken in by a family who loved her and taught her to not only count her blessings, but that if she shared them, they would be returned to her tenfold.
Miles was not unfamiliar with the philosophy; he simply didn’t think it always worked the way it was advertised. And in Natalie’s case he was certain it was being carried out to an extreme and that tenfold was a gross overstatement.
Okay, to be
fair, most of her flock of displaced people considered her and her friends to be compassionate souls willing to help when they could, and they were grateful. But were there people who knowingly took advantage of her? You bet. People who unintentionally abused her kindness? Absolutely. Was she aware of it? She firmly denied it, but she wasn’t gullible. Could he stop her? No.
They’d come to a T in the walk. Turning right would take them to the police parking lot and the impound yard on the next block; turn left and they’d end up in public parking. She automatically turned right. Impounding their cars was another game Paul Morgan liked to play.
“I called in a favor,” he said, and she stopped. “It’s in the parking lot.”
Her smile was uneasy. “Truth: Did you call one in or do you owe one now?” A short wag of his head said he’d never tell, but she had long suspected he wasted most of his favors on her. She walked back to him. “Thank you, Miles. Someday—”
She stopped. It was always the same promise: Someday I’ll find a way to repay your kindness to me. But she’d said it so often it was hard to believe anymore. She’d been working on a new one.
“Someday, after we open our soup kitchen, I’ll be less of a bother. And you can come eat whenever you want. Also, you will have your own special chair at the head of any table you choose.”
He nodded, yeah, yeah, sure, and motioned her away with his head—she was getting cold. A moment later he called after her. “I want a special bowl with my name on it, too.” He heard her laugh—and tried not to enjoy it too much.
“Definitely. No problem. A mug, too,” she said, not turning around.
“And a soup named after me.”
“Clear or thick?”
“Doesn’t matter.” All her soups were good. “Surprise me.” Then, as he thought about it: “Do you work today?” His panic was irrational, he knew it; so was the thought of giving her a police escort to the hospital where she worked.
She stopped short, consulted her mental calendar, and visibly relaxed. “No. I work the weekend.” She looked back at him, smiled fondly, and delivered the two safest and most sincere words she knew: “Thank you.”
“Try to stay out of trouble.”
His admonition sounded more parental than friendlike . . . and light-years from beloved. They both cringed and kept moving—it had become an unsettling habit with them.
The security door opened to release another wrongdoer and Miles hurried back to go inside.
CHAPTER TWO
She could have let spending the night in jail ruin the rest of her day. Many people would have taken it as a dark omen and locked themselves in a padded closet.
Not Natalie. Either fate or her own DNA, possibly both, had determined that her life be busy and full. And significant—to her, at the very least. However, staring into the back of her Cavalier wagon with her hands on her hips, it was difficult to recall why.
Frustrated didn’t come close to covering the sweep of emotions she felt taking in the culinary carnage before her. Stew from the night before, that hadn’t made it into the Dumpster, had splattered throughout her car when Officer Morgan pitched the pots inside. All the way to the driver’s seat, she noted with an angry huff. To that, he’d added open bags of bread, unwrapped packages of paper bowls, her precious propane camp stove, and its stand to top it all off. And then he’d called for a tow truck.
She worked as a lab tech at the hospital—microbial contamination and sterility were a part her business; cleanliness was her nature. The wanton waste in the back of her wagon made her lip curl in disgust.
Sighing, she plucked out three unopened boxes of plastic spoons. The coffee urn Miles gave her two years ago for her birthday had been tipped and tossed but upon inspection didn’t appear to be damaged.
She was no Pollyanna, but she was glad of one thing: She was a quick learner. And so, because this wasn’t the first time her car had been Morganized, most of the mess was contained on the cheery plastic tablecloth she’d taken to draping her cargo area and tailgate with.
Parked near the basement entrance of her apartment building, she began the cleanup process that today would take twice as long as usual—denying her the warmth of her bed that much longer.
The stove and the urn and anything else that was salvageable were set aside while she gathered everything else up in the reusable table cover, tramped through several inches of old crusty snow, and shook it into the trash receptacle—most was frozen solid and came off in chunks. She wadded up the plastic—which was not as stiff as it once was, due to repeated washings—as if it were a bedsheet, grabbed the urn and whatever else she could carry for her first trip down the basement steps into the super’s service area.
Say what you will, but it was Natalie’s experience that most people were not like Officer Morgan. Henry Fish, her building’s manager/maintenance man, had graciously offered her the convenience of the deep multipurpose sink in his utility room to clean her equipment.
She put the cloth into warm soapy water to soak and went to fetch the rest of her stuff. Washing and drying it all, she scowled and added the dented scratch on her camp stove to Paul Morgan’s ever-growing list of offenses—then shuffled it back to a five-by-eight-foot cage that was her storage unit.
She paid Mr. Fish a tiny bit extra every month to keep a small chest freezer plugged into an extension cord inside. And where most of the other units were crammed with boxes, bikes, bassinets, and tennis rackets, hers was lined with metal, paint-covered shelves she’d salvaged a few years back. On them she placed her valued supplies and paraphernalia—from adhesive strips to cheap toothbrushes; free samples to thrillingly cheap bargains; shoe boxes to banana crates she was always watching for and gathering because to people who live on the streets it was generally the smallest, simplest things that mattered the most.
Her eyes felt dry and heavy when she finally snapped the lock closed and shook the wire door to make sure it was secure. With a slow step and muscles stinging with exhaustion, she climbed the stairs to her fourth-floor apartment—the elevator being too far and too unreliable to bother with.
She thought at first that the door to her place was jammed—the key fit, the knob turned, but it wouldn’t budge. Old buildings were like that, the walls shrinking and expanding with the weather as if they were breathing. Slamming against it with her shoulder caused it to bounce, first open and then closed, and that’s when she realized that something was blocking it—that something was wrong.
“Aldene?” She knocked. “Aldene? Are you there? Hello? It’s Natalie.” Apprehension stirred. Her voice rose. “Aldene. It’s Natalie. Open the door.” She tried Spanish. “Abra la puerta. Aldene? Estas ahi?”
Knocking again, harder this time, she was prepared to scream the door down when she heard movement and muffled voices on the other side of the door. A baby started crying and she muttered a soft, “Thank God,” and then waited patiently for the door to open.
“You are here.” Aldene’s expression was a vivid array of emotions: fear, relief, joy, concern. “I have been worried. All night, I worried. I did not know what happened to you. Come in. Come in now.” Natalie obeyed, taking note of three Hispanic men standing to one side—two teens and a man much older than everyone else in the room. She recognized them, but not by name, from the soup lines. Aldene hurried to explain their presence. “This is my uncle Luis and my cousins Pirro and Feo. I sent Arturo to get them when you did not come home. I waited too long and was very afraid. I asked them to go find you . . . to all the places you go.”
“Oh,” Natalie said. The situation was becoming clear to her. “I got arrested.”
“Yes, yes. I know this now. They saw. When they came to say, I made them stay. To be warm. To be here with me. Please do not be angry.”
She was shaking her head, denying any annoyance, when Arturo, Aldene’s ten-year-old son, appeared in the bedroom doorway—his sisters, Crista and Deina, five and three respectively, at his heels. She smiled at the sweetness of their
sleepy eyes and bedheads and said, “Good morning. Are we making too much noise?”
They shook their heads in unison and stood watching . . . and worrying.
There it was, the crack in Natalie’s armor—the one thing she had no defense against and no way of dispelling, not even temporarily. The always-silent disquiet in the eyes of the children who lived on the streets remained even after they were fed and made warm and sheltered in a safe place with the people they loved. Once the uncertainty and foreboding touched their souls it stayed. No matter how much their conditions improved, they knew tomorrow had no guarantees.
Natalie knew. She’d walked in those small shabby shoes once upon a time—until her mom and dad arrived and gave her the greatest gifts of all: hope and love.
“Good,” she said, clutching her big purse and striving to keep her smile cheerful and optimistic despite the fog of fatigue that was rolling in quickly and numbing everything in its path—mind and body. “Well then, we should probably think about breakfast. I know there’s oatmeal and milk and, oh”—she grinned at the children—“maybe raisins to put in it. Bread for toast and maybe a few eggs and—” She stopped suddenly and made a quick U-turn decision. “Actually, you know what? I’m beat. Aldene, you know your way around here. There isn’t much but you can help yourself to whatever food you can find. I’ll get more groceries later.” Making her way over the blankets and backpacks, the sparse furniture and large boxes of used clothing in the overcrowded two-room apartment she rented, all she could think of was quiet and sleep, and neither seemed likely where she was.
By the time she reached the bedroom door she was saying, “I am going to take a peek at little Franco to put some sunshine in this dreary day, grab a couple things, and find myself a place to sleep for a few hours.”
Looking down into the blanket-lined bottom drawer of her bureau at the beautiful little cherub warmed her to the marrow—and validated what she was doing with her life . . . and how she’d spent her night. She grazed the back of his chubby fist with her index finger, lingered for a moment in her heart’s yearning, and then quickly plucked her personal pillow and comforter from the closet and a flat bedsheet from a storage hamper.