by Sharon McKay
“You are taking up our air.” The leader spat out the words like bullets. The boys behind him laughed.
“We want to join you,” said Pax.
“Do you have any money?” asked the head boy. Pax shook his head.
“Then what good are you to us?” The boys jeered. They jumped around. Their movements were jittery.
Drugs, thought Pax. He was beginning to understand the street.
“We can read,” mumbled Kai.
“Read! Read what? Maybe you could read us a stooooooooory,” a boy with sores on his face piped up.
The leader looked at Kai. Pax could see him thinking. His eyes grew narrow. He picked his teeth with a small knife. “You can stay for a few days and then we will see. Call me Rambo.” He smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile.
Rambo was old, maybe sixteen. Rambo was the boss of their street family. He wore a scarf on his head. Rambo carried a small knife and a gun. “It’s American. In America every child gets a gun.” Rambo petted his gun like it was a small animal.
Pax let them think that he and Kai were brothers. It was easier that way.
“You work?” Rambo asked Pax.
Pax nodded.
“You give me half of what you earn,” said Rambo.
“Half?” Pax shook his head.
“Half or go on your way. Leave the boy with me.” He pointed to Kai.
Pax considered. So far he’d been able to take Kai with him to his jobs. He helped with cleaning and sometimes he made a few coins by begging. But the shoeshine boss did not want little kids hanging around. “Tourists come and complain if they see little kids working. Ha! They would prefer that the kids starve—but out of sight,” said the boss. It was a good job, although paying for the polish cost him half a day’s wage. Half was better than nothing, but now he would have to give half of that to Rambo.
“He is only seven,” said Pax.
All the boys laughed, and Rambo said, “I have been living on my own since I was four.”
One of the other boys shoved him. “Four, you can’t count that high.” They laughed all over again. Rambo didn’t laugh.
“I could teach you to count,” said Kai. The boys stopped laughing.
“I could teach you a thing or two, too.” Rambo took a drag on his rolled cigarette.
“He didn’t mean anything,” said Pax. He bent down and whispered into Kai’s ear, “Just be good and stay out of their way. Don’t wander anywhere. I will be back as fast as I can. Soon I will have the money for you to go back to school. I will make many tips. Just stay here, promise?”
Kai nodded. He looked over at the gang of boys. Most wore hats; all wore jackets with signs on them. They turned their backs on Pax and Kai.
The two fell asleep around a metal drum that spat sparks.
Pax would shine shoes for twelve hours. All day he’d be hunched over, his arms moving back and forth. The tips were good. But his boss would come along and inspect his work. He’d put out his hand, then rub his fingers together. After taking half of his money, the boss searched Pax’s pockets, and when he found nothing, he went through the shoeshine kit.
“Don’t think you can cheat me. I know all your tricks,” he said.
What tricks? Pax shook his head.
Once, when he had packed up and was ready to leave, the boss said, “Wait, I have another job for you.” He handed Pax a rag and pointed to his car. He did not pay Pax for his work.
Pax saw many things on the street. And he knew he had to find a regular job and get Kai away from all this. He thought of Mister and the boy Tirta. Once or twice he thought he’d spotted Tirta on the streets. If only he knew what it was Mister was up to.
As the sun set, Pax headed back to the street he now lived on. He would get Kai and together they would eat rice from a food truck. He took the shortcut.
“Where is Kai?” he asked the boy with the sores on his face.
“You are late. Your little brother wanted to make money, to work. Rambo took him for a walk,” said one with an eagle blazed on his shirt.
Pax leapt at the guy, grabbed him by the throat, and cried out, “Where are they?”
“Hey, watch it. The kid wants to work.” The boy batted Pax in the ear.
Pax stumbled. “What kind of work?” He was screaming. He shoved the boy, full force, two hands on his chest. “I said, where are they?” Pax swung his arm and landed a fist in the boy’s stomach.
The boy bent over, groaning. “On the street, maybe.”
Pax ran. The street was long. They could be anywhere.
Pax raced out to the main road. There were cars, trucks, mules pulling wagons, and bike-taxis, and pushcarts, and all manner of things with wheels. People yelled at each other, shook their fists, thumbed their noses, and barged across the busy road. He ran. He ran.
Think, think. Where would Rambo take him? To a main intersection.
He dodged traffic and ran again. He spotted them. Rambo and Kai were on the opposite side of the street. Pax yelled out. His voice was lost in the traffic noise. He called out again, and again. There was no place to cross.
Rambo had his head in a car window. He was talking to the driver. Kai was standing on the pavement. He was rubbing his eyes. The man shook his head. Rambo motioned with his hands. What was he doing? They were haggling! There was traffic, six lanes of it.
“KAI!”
Pax ran out onto the road. Cars honked. He dodged, weaved, but got pushed back by a truck. It was a bike that knocked him down. A car stopped. He scrambled up over its hood. There was more yelling.
“Kai, Kai!”
Kai was getting into the car. The car pulled away from the curb. Rambo was walking away. He had cash in his hand. He licked his fingers and flipped through bills.
Pax dodged one car, then another. He leapt in front of the car that Kai was in, arms wide. Kai was in the backseat. Pax closed his eyes and waited to be hit.
Horns honked, hundreds of them. The brakes squealed. Pax opened his eyes. The car had stopped. Pax stared at the driver, the one who would steal Kai. The driver was not young, not old. Mustache. Wide-set light eyes, yellow hair.
“Kai, get out! Get out!” Pax screamed.
The car door opened. After that, Pax could remember only snapshots of events, like blinking. Another car coming towards him, the wind knocked out of him. Rolling over the hood. Pain. Running. Holding Kai’s hand. Vomiting.
Pax’s chest was wrapped in bandages. “You are lucky that your ribs were not broken,” said the nurse. Lucky? A medical truck cruised the streets at night giving out bottled water and advice. Sometimes a nurse traveled in the truck. She had wrapped up Pax’s chest in a white bandage, and she gave Kai an orange.
“Since you are here, I will give you a shot,” she said. The nurse held up a needle, then pushed it into Pax’s upper arm. “It’s only tetanus. If you get a cut, it will prevent you from getting sick.”
Pax nodded. They had had shots before. Bell had insisted.
Pax and Kai left the first-aid truck and set out. It was dark, past midnight. Kai was tired.
“Pax, what are we looking for?” asked Kai.
“Don’t talk so loud. I am looking for a boy,” said Pax as he looked down at the children sleeping on the street.
“Who?” Kai whispered.
“His name is Tirta,” said Pax.
“Who is Tirta?”
“I met him at the bicycle shop.”
At night the streets were layered with children. They lay in all directions, some in sleeping bags donated by foreigners, others on sheets of cardboard, most curled up on the pavement using sandals and rubber shoes, or each other, as pillows.
Pax crept along the sidewalk, gazing into face after face. Kai trailed behind. “Tirta?” He shook the shoulder of a boy. The boy snapped to attention, eyes alert, hands up. “Sorry,” said Pax. Every child looked the same as the next—all dirty, all unnaturally thin.
Pax held his hand up in the air. Kai stopped. Pax peered down at a
sleeping boy. It was him, Tirta.
“Wait here,” Pax whispered. He tiptoed around a few others before kneeling down. “Tirta, wake up,” Pax murmured into the sleeping boy’s ear.
The boy jolted upright, hands clenched and ready to fight.
“It’s me, Pax, from the bicycle shop.”
Tirta took a breath. “What do you want?” He was more frightened than annoyed.
“To meet Mister,” said Pax.
The boy looked around, stood, then motioned Pax to follow him. They stood with their backs against a wall.
“How much?” Tirta held up the beeper.
Pax was confused. “I just want to meet him,” he said.
Tirta nodded. Snot ran out of his nose. Pax sat back on his haunches. The snot was red.
“You buy this and tell Mister that I am sick. That I cannot work for him now,” said Tirta. He smeared the blood from his nose across his cheek. His eyes were yellow and his skin tinged green.
Pax nodded as he reached into his pocket and handed Tirta a few coins. Tirta snatched them up. He was smaller than Pax remembered, as if he were growing backwards.
“When the buzzer goes off, go to the kebab-seller near the park, between the dress shop and the metal-seller. Remember what I said. I am sick. I will get well soon,” said Tirta.
Pax nodded. He reached into his other pocket and gave the boy all the coins he had.
Chapter 18
The buzzer went off after dawn. Pax and Kai now slept in a culvert very near where the Pink House had once stood. It was a round, cement tube—like a tunnel. At first they were shooed away by the people who lived in the huts and shacks, but Pax said, “I lived in the Pink House.” Some remembered Bell, one or two recognized Pax, others took pity. They gave them food, but they had their own children to feed.
“Hurry,” said Pax.
Kai, still mostly asleep, scrambled up. There were no mats to roll, no clothes to put on, no tongue-scrapers or bars of soap to use. They owned nothing. Kai tried to keep up with Pax, who walked with his head forward as if pushing against a wind.
“Look!” Pax came to an abrupt stop and pointed. A long, sleek, white car with black windows was pulled up to the edge of the pavement. A great wave of dusty children swarmed the car and pounded the windshield with rock-hard fists. They screamed for money, candy, an empty water bottle—anything that dripped from the hands of a rich man had value. The driver leapt out of the car and swished them away, his arms propelled like windmills.
“It’s him. It’s Mister,” said Pax. At last their luck had turned. Pax held up the buzzer.
The back window rolled down and a hand with long, curly fingernails beckoned. “Come, come,” said the hand.
Mister’s birdlike face appeared behind the curved hand. He gazed at Pax curiously. The long fingernails motioned them forward.
Pax grabbed Kai’s hand and whispered as the two ran towards the car, “Thank you, God.” And to Kai he said, “Don’t talk.”
The driver held back the other street children. A path was cleared to the car. The back door opened. “Enter,” said the man. And then he said to Pax and Kai, “Sit.”
They climbed in. The cool air inside the car took their breath away. Where did it come from? Did this man have the power to control weather? The car had long black seats facing each other. This was not like the other cars either had seen on the roads.
“Where is the other boy?” asked Mister.
“He is not well. I am here to take his place. I used to work for Andy at the bicycle shop, I can read and write, I know all the streets, I can make lots of deliveries, this is my brother, he can read and write too.” Pax spoke in one long, breathless sentence.
Mister smiled. He handed them candy wrapped in gold foil. The man called the candy “toffee” and said it was better to suck it slowly than to bite into it.
“You want to work for me?” asked Mister. The nub of toffee swished around in Mister’s mouth, popping in and out like a little golden fish in a murky pond.
Pax nodded. Kai looked at Pax and then he bobbed his head too.
Mister took a cloth out of his pocket and covered his nose. We smell, thought Pax. He gave them a box. It was small, light, and made of cardboard.
“Do you know the fruit-seller on Argle Road?” the man asked.
“Yes,” said Pax, through toffee-teeth.
“There is an alley between the fruit-seller and the taxi stand. Take this box and wait in the alley. Someone will come and say, ‘Good boys.’ He will give you money to buy two kebabs and then he will take the box.”
That was all? Just that? Pax was so excited he felt as if bubbles were coming up his throat.
Chapter 19
The buzzer went off. “It’s him! It’s Mister. Kai, wake up. It will be a good day.” Pax gave him a nudge. “Every bad day has an ending. Every good day has a beginning.” Bell’s words.
Pax had been working for Mister for weeks now, and he and Kai had done many errands for him. Mister paid well—enough for food and school and even a school uniform for Kai. Soon they would be able to pay for a place to live.
“Is Mister a good man?” Kai’s voice was fuzzy with sleep. He was curled up close to Pax.
“Yes, get up,” said Pax.
They had old sleeping mats, a pot to carry water, a tongue-scraper, an extra T-shirt each, and a backpack. A girl named Roya protected their things when they were away. At night Pax and Kai shared their rice with her. Today they would make money. Tonight they would all eat meat.
Pax and Kai raced to their meeting place. Where was he? There were many cars about, but most were ancient and coughed like old men. Mister’s car purred like a kitten.
“There he is,” Kai cried out in triumph, pointing to the long, sleek car.
Pax and Kai ran towards the car. The driver opened the back door. They both jumped inside and sat across from Mister.
Mister leaned back into his cool, leather seat that squeaked like mice when he moved. He smiled, revealing brown nubs of teeth and a pale, flat tongue. “I have something for you,” he said, as he took a soccer ball out of a brown paper bag.
Pax clapped his hands. Kai was excited. He squeezed his hands into fists and shook them in front of his eyes like rattles.
“Because you’ve done so well, I have another package for you to deliver,” said Mister. The heads of both boys bobbed. “This job is simple, like the others. You will take this to a place and wait.”
Mister patted a box that sat on the car seat beside him. It was different from the other boxes. This one was made of metal and sank deep into the leather seat.
“A man wearing a Western suit of clothes and a red tie—do you know what a tie is?” Mister flapped the long piece of material that hung around his own neck.
They nodded. Did he think they were stupid?
“Good. He will say to you, ‘Good boys’ and give you lots of coins—more than you have ever had before! Then he will take the box away.
“The driver will take you close to the spot, but after that, you will have to carry the package. This box is heavier than the last one. You must pretend that it is light. Do not hunch your shoulders.” Mister bunched his shoulders up around his ears to show them what he meant. “Do not leave the box on its own. You must guard it until the man comes. Just pretend to beg.”
Kai thought that rich people were stupid. Why would the man not deliver it himself? He did not know the answer and, really, he did not care.
“You take the ball. It is a gift.” Mister gave Kai the beautiful black-and-white soccer ball. Kai could hardly contain his excitement. He hugged it against his chest and grinned.
Mister faced Pax. He was not smiling any more. “You will carry the box because you are older and stronger. Now listen to my instructions carefully.”
Mister repeated the same instructions all over again. Why? Pax and Kai made their faces stop smiling, but inside they were laughing.
The car began to move. Kai reached for Pax�
�s hand. They giggled as they pressed their faces against the window. The car cruised through the chaos of the street with ease. There were many demonstrations. People carried signs and pounded the sky with their fists. Everyone seemed angry. It was hard to understand. Twice the car drove towards mobs of people yelling. Both times the car skirted the yelling crowds.
A half-hour later they came to a new and shiny part of the city that Pax recognized. They passed the Children’s Services building and the business buildings, too. The driver stopped the car.
Mister put his hand on the door handle. He was sitting on the edge of the seat. He peered at his watch. His face relaxed and he said, “We are early. Do you have any questions?”
“Yes. How much does it cost to get to England?” Pax spoke bravely.
Mister smiled, his teeth shiny with spit. “Why do you want to go to England?” he asked. Again, he looked at this watch.
“To see the Queen.” Kai hugged the soccer ball.
“No. To go to school,” said Pax. “Kai can read and write. He can do mathematics. He can do many things that are difficult.”
Mister looked amused. “Can he? If you want to go, I will help you,” he said.
Their eyes lit up. Kai cheered. Mister was looking out the window. He wasn’t listening to them any more.
“Thank you,” whispered Pax.
Mister looked at his watch again. “Do your job well, and after, I will see that you get to England.” He got out of the car and crossed a big street. He had never done that before.
“Did you hear that? England.” Kai squeezed Pax’s arm.
“Yes,” Pax whispered as he watched Mister disappear into the crowd. He scratched the back of his neck. He felt funny. Something felt wrong.
The driver pulled into an alley behind a great building and got out of the car. He did not speak as he opened their door, reached in, and gently pulled out the box. “Go around this building. There are steps up to the doors. Climb up to the middle of the steps and wait. It will not be long.”
“How will we get home?” asked Pax.
The driver hesitated, and then said, “I will wait for you and drive you back.”