Beck

by Mal Peet

  Beck had acquired the trick of leaving his ears awake while he slept, so he heard the men’s voices before the slither of the chain and the shed doors being dragged open.

  His instinct, as always, was to make a run for it, but he couldn’t remember the dimensions of the space or be sure that his legs would work. He lay still.

  “Jeez, Bone. It’s colder’n a nipple on a witch’s tit.”

  “Sure is. Good for the ice, though.”

  “Yeah. Man, you wouldn’t wanna break through it tonight.”

  Beck lifted his head. The faintest irregular line of light along the edge of the tarp.

  “You reckon our friends gonna cut up rough, seeing we’re a dozen cases short of the load?”

  “Nah.” The voice was deeper than the other one. “They know we do the business. This’ll be, what, fifteen, sixteen, runs we done this season? They’ll know we’ll make it up. I’m burned up with Freddie, though.” He paused. “Things tight back there?”

  “Hang on. My fingers’re too cold to work. God, there’s gotta be an easier way to make a living.”

  The man called Bone laughed and said, “You find out what that might be, you let me know.”

  Unseen hands tethered the tarp inches from Beck’s feet.

  “You checked the tire chains?”

  “Yeah, they’re fine.”

  “Okay. Crank her up.”

  The truck fired up, shuddered. A reek of exhaust. Door slam. The truck moved forward, turned, tilted, turned again. Beck got to his knees and felt for his knife, thinking to try to slice through the tarp. Then the truck slewed, throwing him sideways and clunking his head on the boards. By the time he’d steadied and readied himself, the vehicle had gained speed. Beck had jumped from moving trains and it hadn’t done him any good at all. So he braced his back against the rattling cases, held on to his knife, swallowed his fear down, and waited to be discovered.

  THE DRIVER WAS a heavyset man called Dexter Wishbone, who hunched over the wheel studying the ice ahead where it came and went between the wind-whipped wraiths of snow powder. His partner was Lonnie Smith, who tonight was not much more than a mauve beak poking out between his muffler and his fur-lined trapper’s cap. Lonnie felt the cold more than most. He was a fair-weather rumrunner, Bone liked to say.

  The truck jolted on a rut and lost traction for a second. Lonnie cursed and grabbed onto the dashboard. Bone turned the wheel into the skid, easing the truck back on course. It was some comfort to Lonnie that Bone was good at his job.

  “You okay, man?”

  “Yeah,” Lonnie said. “Just be glad to get this done.”

  Bone grinned. “Uh-huh. I’d say you got a little bit juiced last night.”

  “I guess so. Don’t remember a thing about it. Did I make a fool of myself ?”

  “No more’n usual.”

  The two men worked for Lew Weinstock, who was, Bone reckoned, the most easygoing bootlegger he’d ever met. And smart, too. Lew made plenty of money by keeping his operation modest, not attracting particular attention from the guys on the rough side of things. The way the operation worked was simple. Lew’s younger brother, Freddie, fronted a legit but phony company called Canada-Cuba Export. Freddie bought whiskey direct and wholesale from the Hiram Walker distillery. Good stuff, not moonshine. It was illegal to consume alcohol in Canada, but perfectly legal to produce it and export it, a half-arsed, crime-loving arrangement that amused Bone. Freddie would fill in forms affirming that the whiskey was being shipped to Havana but truck it to Lew’s warehouse in Windsor. Then one of Lew’s teams would take it across the Detroit River to the hooch-hungry USA, making double the price.

  For the parts of the year when the Detroit River was ice-free, they’d use Lew’s scruffy-looking but powerful fishing boat. In the winter, they drove the cargo across the ice. Lew preferred to cross farther up the river than most other bootleggers, past the eastern tip of Belle Isle, which meant the trip was longer and the guys had to be patient waiting for the ice to get thick enough. But that was smart, too. Because farther down, closer to the city of Detroit, the illegal traffic across the river was so heavy, they needed a cop on the invisible border controlling it. Bad things could happen down there, too. Sometimes the Yank cops backtracked on a deal or needed a favorable newspaper headline, busting a whole bunch of runners on a single night and locking them up stateside. Also, there were hijacks, gunfights, and vicious turf wars because the Mob operated down there. One night, a couple of years ago, Bone had halted a loaded-up sedan and watched four guys shoot the hell out of a car ahead of him, then torch it. He’d turned and gone back, trying not to imagine the poor dead son of a bitch driver in his burned-out husk of a machine dropping through the black cold hole he’d melted in the ice. That was exactly the kind of thing that was unlikely to happen, working for Lew.

  All the same, Bone and Lonnie both had a handgun inside their coats, and a shotgun lay along the top of the truck’s seat.

  The guys waiting on the other side were okay. Gus and Cole. Word was, they supplied Al Capone’s mob, but at arm’s length. No trouble at all. They off-loaded, paid up, went on their way. So far, no trouble with the cops on their side, either. Bone figured the guys had an arrangement, but knew better than to ask what it was.

  So Lew had done all right, on the quiet. He owned two boardinghouses in East Windsor, one of which Bone and his girlfriend, Irma, lived in, as did Lonnie. Irma managed the place. The other was a brothel, but nice. Lew also owned, under another name, the Majestic Hotel. Plus two speakeasies. He had the cops in his pocket but didn’t let it bulge. They’d eat and drink for free but knew not to make a show of it. When they were short, he’d make them loans but not hurry about calling them in. Lew was smooth and Bone liked working for him.

  Lew’s brother, Freddie, was a different thing altogether. Freddie liked to dress up in a white suit and go to clubs where women were men and the other way around and cocktails were served in teacups with saucers and girls who were boys danced on the tables. And he was skimming deals. Which was why they were twelve cases short tonight. The little shit. Bone knew, they all knew, that it was so. But Lew would shrug and smile and say, “Ah, well, Freddie. He was born ass first, you know? Didn’t breathe for a whole minute. It don’t cost us much to cut him some slack.”

  Lonnie said, pointing, “Them’s their lights, there, see ’em? I reckon we’re off a little.”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  Bone dropped a gear and eased the skittish truck into a curve that slowly took them between two frozen-up scows and onto a narrow dock. He came to a stop alongside a quay from which two flashlights beamed down.

  Lonnie climbed out and looked up at the dazzle. “Hey, Cole. That you?”

  “Well, hello, Santa Claus. What ya brought us on your sleigh tonight?”

  “Most of what you ordered.”

  The lights came halfway down the steps.

  “Whaddya mean, most?”

  Bone turned his own flashlight on and said, “We’re twelve units short.”

  “Aw, man. Ya start short-changin’ us, we’re gonna have to shoot ya.”

  “Yeah. You guys just natural-born killers. We’ll make it up next run. You got my personal word on that. Now get your sorry asses down here. It’s kinda cold for polite conversation.”

  Two heavily swaddled figures descended onto the ice and followed yellow ellipses of light over the blue ice to the truck. “Bone, my man. How ya doin’ ?”

  “Pretty good, Gus, considering. You?”

  “Yeah. You brung us kosher again?”

  “Yep. Personally bottled by Mr. Walker himself. Seals unbroken, guaranteed.”

  “Good man. Our clients —”

  A yell from behind them. “What the fuck! Bone, Gus! Get back here!”

  Cole was standing six feet from the back of the truck, aiming the beam of his flashlight into it. Lonnie had his gun out, pointing it in the same direction.

  The kid had frosted hair sticking out from a
n unraveling woolen cap and eyes like green china marbles. He held a knife out in front of him like it might tell him where to go.

  He said, “Don’t shoot me. I ain’t took nothing.”

  “What the hell you doing in the back of our truck?”

  The kid looked into the black pupil of Lonnie’s gun. “I was freezin’ and just needed someplace warm to kip. Please don’t shoot me.”

  “Maybe we will; maybe we won’t,” Cole said matter-of-factly. “Either way, that blade of yours ain’t gonna help nothing. So why don’t ya toss it real gentle near my feet?”

  The boy hesitated, then did so. Bone stooped and put the knife in his pocket. “Now get out here. Slow. Try and run, my friend here’ll put a bullet in you before you’ve gone a yard.”

  Beck did as he was told. He stood shaking and dazzled in the light and saw for the first time that the biggest of the men had skin the same color as his own. This might be a good thing. Or not.

  Gus said, “Ya know this boy, Bone?”

  “Why the hell should I?” To Beck, Bone said, “You got a funny way of talking, kid. Where you from?”

  It was a question Beck found difficult to answer at the best of times. Eventually he said, “Liverpool.”

  Bone cocked his head like a man trying to identify a birdcall. “Liverpool? Liverpool, England?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cole said, “Guys, we gonna stand here all night? I’m already froze up to my nuts. Let’s either shoot the little bastard or run him off and get the job done. Bone?”

  Bone shook his head and passed his gloved fingers over his mouth. Then he stepped up, grabbed the boy by the coat collar, and led him a few paces away from the truck. He said, quietly, “You’re in the USA, now. Is that where you wanna be?”

  Beck was so cold he couldn’t think over the ice in his blood and the chattering of his teeth. “I dunno. Don’t think so.”

  “Nor do I. So you just walk back the way we come.” He aimed his flashlight back out toward the river beyond the black hulks of the scows. “Keep going till you see a bunch of lights over to your right and head for those. Understand? It’s that or get shot. You got yourself mixed up in some business you’ll wish you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t do nothing.”

  “I know. Now get going. And keep going even if you think you can’t.”

  Bone watched the boy hunch into himself and head out into the blue-black night beneath the splendid indifference of the stars.

  Lonnie said, “Bone?”

  Bone turned and reached into the truck. “Let’s get on with it,” he said.

  The runners got their usual transfer system going. Lonnie shunted cases of whiskey to the back of the truck, Bone and Cole carried them up to the quay, Gus loaded them into the back of the Americans’ curtained hearse. Gus made his usual lame jokes about “the spirits of the departed.”

  When Bone was taking his third case from the truck, Lonnie said, “He’ll be dead afore he’s halfway across. You know that, Bone.”

  Bone said nothing.

  The business completed, the money paid, hands shaken, Bone performed the tricky maneuver of turning the truck in the confines of the dock, then headed out onto the river. The full moon and the pallor of the ice meant that headlights were unnecessary, which was a good thing. Bone wound down his ice-spangled window. Lonnie glanced across at him and then cranked his window down, too.

  A while later Lonnie said, “There he is.”

  The kid was an irregular shape that seemed to be afloat because its lower part was lost in frosted spindrift. He must have heard the approaching motor below the whine of the wind but neither stopped nor turned his head until Bone had halted the truck and stepped down from the cab.

  Bone walked across the ice and took the boy by the arm. Jesus, he thought. We might have left this too late. The kid’s face and lips were gray, and the snot below his nose had frozen into a brittle mustache. His eyes had a far-off unfocused look that Bone had seen once or twice before.

  “C’mon, son. C’mon. Make them legs move.”

  After a couple of paces the boy folded in the middle. Bone scooped him up and carried him over to the truck. For a kid his size, he wasn’t as heavy as he should have been. Lonnie lifted the tarp and was shaking out the blanket the kid had dragged in there with him. Together, the two men wrapped the boy up, lugged him over the boards, and propped him up against the back of the cab.

  Lonnie produced a hip flask out of a deep pocket. “Reckon he could use a shot, Bone?”

  Bone shook his head. “Just as likely to choke on it. Kid? Kid, listen up. You’re gonna be okay, right? You just stay there and stay awake. Keep wriggling your toes, you hear me? Else you might lose one or two.”

  The boy moved his lips silently.

  “Shit,” Bone said. “Okay, let’s get going.”

  THE HOUSE WAS locked when they got there. Lonnie, cursing softly, fumbled for his key while Bone stood on the step with the boy in his arms. Inside, Bone said, “Go on up. Me and Irma’ll take care of it.”

  “She might play hell.”

  “She might.”

  “Okay. Good luck.”

  Bone reached out under his burden’s knees and opened his door and closed it behind him with his foot. “Irma? Irma, you awake?”

  “Yeah, hon. You okay? How’d it go?”

  “Get in here, baby. I got a problem.”

  “Bone? What?”

  “Just get in here, Irma.”

  Something deep and still alive inside Beck made him open his eyes. He saw that he was hanging above a field of flowers. No, a small garden of roses set in the middle of scuffed floorboards. Heat from somewhere. A wall with a gap in it, which was suddenly and magically filled by an angel. An angel with dark skin wearing a white robe and a man’s heavy cardigan. This and all else he could see was bleared with colors coming through the heavy pearls that weighted his eyelids and a brain replaced by a block of ice.

  The angel said, “In the name of God, Bone, what you got there?”

  “Don’t ask questions, honey. Just go and run a bath. Warm, not hot.”

  The angel disappeared.

  Beck tugged words up into his throat. “No bath.”

  The face above him was all wet nostrils and mouth. The mouth said, “You’re half-froze to death, kid. Plus, you stink like a road-killed skunk. You’re gonna take a bath and sleep in a warm place. If you don’t like the sound a that, I can always put you back out on the street.”

  Beck tried to shake his head. It hurt and he stopped.

  “No? Okay. Let’s go, then.”

  Waking was like rising up through deep, deep water. He could almost see himself doing it. He didn’t want it to stop in case the light waiting above him was a trick — not white sky but ice. Someone was singing, either quietly or far away. He was weighed down by a heavy softness, engulfed in a cloud. It was warm. He opened his eyes, but what he saw had no meaning. The singing came closer, then stopped. He turned his head.

  “Well, hello there. I thought you were planning to sleep the week out.”

  It was the angel he’d dreamed. Skin like the gloss on a conker, red lips, sleek short hair that came to points near her cheekbones. Eyes black as the water he’d risen through.

  “Lie still. I’ll fetch you some tea.”

  Light came through a window covered in frost. No, a see-through cloth like frost. He was on a bed. Aches came awake in distant parts of his body; they flared when he moved.

  “Here. Reckon you can sit up? Attaboy. That’s good. Now, drink some of this. I’ll hold the cup.”

  Sweet heat in his mouth and gullet. The picture of a girl in his head, a bowl of soup, the smell of piss. He coughed and the angel moved the cup away from his mouth.

  “Easy up, kid. Okay? Some more?”

  He nodded. He drank half the cup.

  “Enough?”

  “Yeah.” He paused. “Thank you.”

  “Mmm-hmm. So you got manners, leastways.” She per
ched herself on the arm of the couch close to his feet. “Bone says you’re from England, that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But he don’t know your name.”

  “It’s Beck.”

  She smiled. The smile took up most of the lower half of her face. “It ought to be Lazarus.”

  “No, it’s Beck.”

  She laughed. “Okay, Beck. I’m Irma.”

  “Thank you. For letting me . . .” He wanted to finish the sentence with everything. Thank you for letting me stay, for letting me eat, for letting me sleep in a warm place. Thank you for keeping me alive when I no longer had the strength to keep alive myself.

  Irma was talking again. “I didn’t know they had colored people in England.”

  He had no idea what to say. It felt like she was calling him a liar, which was something he was used to. But unused to people smiling when they said it.

  “How old are you, Beck?”

  “Eighteen,” he lied.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well,” Beck said, shifting himself, hurting, “I suppose I better get going.”

  “You got someplace you need to be?”

  He was flummoxed again.

  She smiled her big smile. “Anyway, before you make a move, maybe you should take a peek under them blankets.”

  Beck did so. He was naked. Ashamed. “Where’s my clothes?”

  “Burned.”

  “What?”

  “Bone took them out into the yard this morning and burned them. He said they were barely good enough to use for fuel. Which was the truth.”

  He stared at her.

  “So you just gonna stay where you are, okay? People ’round here don’t take kindly to naked boys roaming the streets. Now, when’d you last eat? You reckon you could handle some breakfast?”

  They heard Bone come in the street door and huff his breath, heard him stomp the snow off his boots. She’d lit the lamps and fed the stove and touched up her lipstick in front of the oval mirror, and Beck had watched, spellbound.