Billy tabbs, p.5
Billy Tabbs, page 5
“If you wish to remain, you will swear your allegiance to us, and it is not a union of whim or convenience, for once you pledge to be with us, then you are with us. You will also commit to certain labors for the cause. They may not be in line with what some might consider a proper moral or ethical code, yet they are necessary for this unit’s survival. You will follow the direction you are given without question. But you will also remain safe from those who would wish you wrong. Your belly will not ache or cry out in the night. Your skin will not bristle from the howling cold. Let there be no doubt: My offer is exactly as described. We do not beg help from strangers. We look after one another. We are a family. If we don’t look after each other, who will?”
He paused briefly, seemingly to let the question settle in. “You have only come this far because a member has seen something in you. Should you opt for the safety and camaraderie I have described, then you may move to the next phase. Should you opt to leave now you will not be stopped. But you will also never again return here, nor will you speak of this group to any others. Our deeper purpose will only be revealed should you join our ranks.”
Billy could read between the lines: should he leave now and speak of their little hideaway, consequences would follow. That veiled threat alone, despite the flattery of recruitment, should have confirmed his suspicions and sent him scurrying away. Yet just as his curiosity had drawn him there, it now held him captive. His mind churned to the possibilities. The offer was overwhelmingly tempting, like the delicious baguette peeking over the vendor’s low table. Even so, his caution entered the ring and urged him to leave.
He resisted.
“If I do stay, what happens next?”
Darrow answered, his voice some decibels higher. “I do not deal in hypotheticals. Should you wish to join, the path will be revealed.” And then silence.
The others had fallen silent when the conversation began, and they remained so even now, the moment delivering great theater. There was some fidgeting off to the side, another cleared his throat, yet another scratched an imaginary itch.
The trifling sounds only underlined the uncomfortable silence hanging over the situation. Billy stood mute in the center of the oily service room, his brow furrowed and his body tense. His thoughts were unremitting, caution punching hard against temptation.
He looked at Ash and read the look on his face, hearing the unspoken words…You’re one of them play it safe types, ain’tcha?
Within that silence his thoughts ran the gamut—thoughts of hunger and loneliness and of the missing rounders, thoughts of his mother, and of the tepid existence he’d been living since she’d been gone. Thoughts of his fragile security that grew more fragile each passing day.
But he was tugged all the while by his instinct to leave. To get out of there.
To play it safe.
It was a dizzying battle, and what seemed like a small slice of eternity wasn’t likely even a full minute. To that point in his life, he’d always fended for himself. He had never gone hungry for very long, had never received a beating he couldn’t walk away from. But he also felt the allure of Darrow’s words, and the chance to belong to something, even something unknown—and the close call in the alley made Darrow’s proposal all the more appealing.
Billy scanned the room. All eyes were on him. All, that is, but Darrow’s, who had stoically turned away and shifted his focus to the rear wall.
Billy again locked eyes with Ash, who shot back a friendly grin. The grin leaked confidence, and Billy watched his head roll into a slow nod, as if anticipating Billy’s decision.
So tempting. Yet of all the thoughts swirling inside him, one stood out from the rest: Play it safe.
Safe.
Safe.
Safe.
And how’s that workin’ for ya, so far?
Not so well, thought Billy.
Not so well at all.
“I think I’d like to stay.” It was meekly said, but said all the same.
Darrow curled around, mollified yet without celebration. He bore no smile. There was no applause from the peanut gallery; just silence until Darrow’s deep voice pierced through.
“You have just opted to no longer be oppressed by a society that deems you inferior. You have opted for redemption. You have opted for a life filled with purpose and meaning. And that new life begins today.”
Billy had awoken that morning to the mold and mildew of his east-end squat, to the greasy chicken and the orange beanbag. Now this sudden change to the course of his life. It had all happened so fast, all clouded by an intense smog of emotion; but one of those emotions was curiosity, and it ran ever strong. So he pushed his caution aside, as he sometimes did in moments of great temptation, even though it often led to his most spectacular failings.
Billy had to know about this group, had to find out what they are all about and see if he could make himself a part of it. And though his gut still screamed for him to leave, the excitement of the moment boomed loudly enough to drown it into silence.
Billy dreamt.
Dreamt of this and that. This and that.
And of her.
For Billy, these unconscious trips through REM fostered an uncomfortable array of emotions, particularly painful when they set sail on the maternal. It happened when he was insecure and looking for comfort, as was often the case.
As was the case that night.
In part it was wondrous. He could see her clearly in dream, a vivid and spectacular resolution that was unattainable in his waking moments. He could hear her, touch her, embrace her. He could reenact the most precious scenes from his youth, of his mother’s fondness and attention. The visions were reminders that she loved him, of the way it was—real, unconditional, secure.
But then, as often happened, the dream ship drifted to choppy waters. To the tree and the screaming. He felt the scratchy bark and his throat grew tight with fear. He turned from the fireman in the yellowy suit that stank of bitter chemicals. The fireman’s hand reached and fell short. Then the falling. Always the falling.
It always ended the same way: Billy waking with a start and a tightness in the gut, jerking up from his sleeping position to the dreadful sound of silence. His mother was gone, and so too was the fireman. Before him was Jenny, and the oil-stained floor, and the lingering pieces of track. They were alone. The industrial light gave a flicker. Billy blinked back in defiance, but the exchange only stirred him further awake.
No windows, but it felt like morning. He was stiff, particularly his achy ribs. He cast his eyes to the back corner where Jenny lay huddled against the wall. She was awake, lying on her side, still but for her breathing and what seemed to be a slight bristle of discomfort. Her eyes were wide and staring.
“You OK?” asked Billy.
She averted her gaze and answered perfunctorily, “Time will tend to things.”
Billy let it go, then thought back to the previous night’s bizarre series of events—the apartment, the alley, the inquisition. He hardly remembered falling asleep—only the exhaustion he’d felt when everyone but Jenny had finally filed out of the room. Then it slowly came back to him. He’d had a conversation with Jacob, one of Darrow’s two “generals.” The words drifted back into his mind.
Jacob had told him that each candidate for membership must engage in an act of public mischief as part of the initiation process. Billy had asked what that act might entail, but—as was the case with all of Billy’s questions that night—no clear answer was given; Jacob said only that it would embody principles core to the clan’s values, and that four previous candidates hadn’t passed. When Billy pressed for more, Jacob told him that two of them simply got cold feet and ran away. One suffered some grisly mishap. The fourth had deftly executed his assigned task, only to gloat at the scene. He was nabbed and handed over to the authorities, and the group hadn’t heard from him since.
Billy lay about pensively for another hour. He was still in the utility room where Ash had deposited him the night before. He’d been told to sit tight, that they would come for him when the time was right.
He watched an ant crawl past him, loaded with some small scrap of carbohydrate. Billy flicked at it and watched the insect topple over underneath its payload. It recovered quickly, hefted the food up onto its back, and slowly crept away. Billy repeated the process twice more before finally allowing the ant to scuttle along its way.
The wait was excruciating, as was the pain in his swollen bladder.
He looked over to Jenny, who had nodded off to sleep, then slipped quietly from the room and onto the narrow subway ledge where he relieved himself against the wall. The subway shaft seemed clearer now, less daunting. The soft glow of the orange service light seemed somehow brighter, his eyes better adjusted, and his senses having acclimatized.
To his right was the faint glow of light from the main subway platform. To his left, only darkness. He looked down at the ledge, then back toward the main platform, then once again up the darkened tunnel. Before he’d given it any more thought, he was stepping deeper up the tracks, slinking carefully along the narrow ledge. After traveling a short distance, the track bent slightly to the right, and when Billy finally turned around, even the pinhole glow of the main platform was completely out of sight. The extinguished glow brought the first pangs of claustrophobia, yet still he trod onward, through a whole lot of nothing, just length after length of track. Trains flashed by him twice, once on the near track and once on the far, neither experience so paralyzing as yesterday.
He wasn’t sure what it was when he first saw it, aside from a welcome break in the nothingness—an opening across the tracks, under the soft orange glow of the next service light. It called to him.
A polite mental decline.
Only it didn’t give up. Called again to his curiosity, which further eroded his common sense. His better judgment quickly defeated, Billy snuck a peek down both directions of tunnel, then jumped to the ground and skirted across the tracks where he jumped up to the other side.
This gap was unlike the opening to the utility room. The entrance here was uneven and rough, as if it were rudimentarily dug out or drilled into the earth. The ground was dirt and gravel, not smooth concrete, and it led back in a slightly upward slope. There was a faint light emanating from the far side of the tunnel.
Billy stepped inside and made his way cautiously up the craggy incline. It was a fair-sized path, and before long he could make out the soft murmur of voices, growing more pronounced with each step.
The gravelly hollow tapered off at a gaping circle. He slunk down and hugged the wall, then peeked out, struck still in amazement. It took a few moments for him to fully process it. He was staring headlong at an old abandoned subway stop. There was even a string of three outdated train cars parked on a length of rusted track: two standard passenger cars and a caboose at the end. They looked like something from a museum, relics from an era long since passed.
The layout was surprisingly large in scope, with a high, vaulted ceiling. The smooth concrete platform floor ran alongside the interconnected string of streetcars, seemingly waiting for their passengers to embark. They’d been waiting a long time.
The rusted track ran off to the gloom in each direction. Down to his right Billy could see a stretch of wall with something scribbled on it, and beyond that scrawl was a small room with a large window. Up in the rafters, some hundred or more feet above the railcars, were numerous steel ventilation grates spilling weak daylight down onto the area. Billy could just barely make out the pitter-patter of feet clanking on the grates high above from some sort of pedestrian thoroughfare.
Tink.
Tink…tink…tink.
Up against the far wall was a hefty circular clock with large bronze hands frozen in time. Off in one corner was a wilted fedora turned up on its side, the fabric worn and dusty.
There were more than a dozen souls scattered about. Billy recognized a handful of them from the night before: Jacob and Tommy. Helena. Fat Henry. George with one eye. They were milling about like worker bees, tending to this and that. Some were organizing food while others tinkered with supplies. There were clusters of others huddled together in discussion. Everyone moved with purpose, aside from one slight individual who was huddled up and sleeping in the corner. Ash was nowhere in sight.
All of them were just like him.
No, not like him—they weren’t alone like him.
He watched intently for several minutes and soaked in every detail. Then a thought popped into his head: Are these the missing rounders? Maybe, though he didn’t recognize any of them. This quickly segued into a more significant and dangerous question: What exactly have I gotten myself into?
Before he could explore that thought any further, he was shaken by a voice from behind.
“Who are you?” The voice was sharp with panic. Billy spun around to find a medium-built individual with ears far too large for his small oval face. His nostrils flared when he spoke.
“I said ‘who are you’?”
“I’m Billy.”
“Well, what do you think you’re doing snooping around here?”
It was a fair question, and Billy wanted to answer, but he was dumbstruck by the situation. He was equally entranced by those ridiculously oversized ears. It was hard to take someone like that seriously. So it was all the more surprising when the interrogator drove him forward, hurtling Billy through the opening and into plain view of those he’d been spying on.
“Intruder!” he screamed as he shoved Billy through the opening. The tunnel let out to more of the same gravelly terrain. It sloped down some feet to the smooth concrete of the platform where the others had been working. Now they all paused, their eyes locked on the scene percolating above.
Billy called for him to stop, but he just kept pushing Billy forward, his feet slipping on the pebbled ground beneath them.
By then Billy had started a slow boil. His teeth were clenched and his gaze hard. His self-doubt bent back under the weight of the frustration of the past twenty-four hours. The hunger, the anxiety, the attack in the alley. He was raw. The stranger’s ears were no longer funny.
“Quit doggin’ me!” shouted Billy. He widened his stance and dug his feet into the ground, then spun around and offered a push back of his own. The stranger lunged at him, but Billy sidestepped him and kicked him in the side. Somewhere down the gravelly slope were distant shouts of “Stop!” and “Wait!” but the words felt hazy and without meaning.
His attacker rose quickly and struck a blow at Billy’s face, just skimming his chin, but exposing himself on the follow-through. In return, Billy struck him in the neck. The stranger fell back and slumped to the ground, gasping for air, ears flared out in defeat.
Before anyone could react, a hearty voice reclaimed the room.
It was Darrow.
“That’s enough.” His voice boomed loudly, but his demeanor was unmistakably laced with pleasure. For that, Billy was thankful. He hadn’t remotely considered the consequences of his actions.
“You chose well.”
The words were spoken to Ash, who by then was front and center, smirking proudly at Darrow’s compliment.
The felled member struggled to his feet, still gasping for air. He glared sharply at Billy, then at Darrow, then to Billy again before skulking away in anger.
Darrow strode to the solitary Billy. The excitement concluded, most of the onlookers had retreated to their original positions and resumed their work.
Darrow’s look sunk into him. “It takes confidence to stand your ground as you did, especially in foreign waters.”
Billy didn’t respond, just nodded, slowly regaining his composure.
“You’ve just met Ewen,” Darrow continued. “He is one of ours. His ego may be hurt, but he will move beyond ego in time, and you will find him to be an ally. You must forgive him. He is…excitable. He was merely protecting what is ours. He did not know that you had been recruited, and very rarely does anyone stumble upon our lair in advance of initiation. This compound is our home, and our privacy is paramount. It is here that we reside, and it is here where we breathe life into our ideology.”
Where we breathe life into our ideology? Billy chewed on that for a moment. “Your ideology? I don’t understand.”
“Soon will come understanding.”
“But this place? What is it that you do here, exactly? Who are all of these…”
Darrow cut him off. “Patience, Billy. All good things come in time.” He then called for Ash, who sprung forward at the ready. Darrow ordered him to fetch some food for Billy and return him to the “waiting room”—the enclave from which Billy had started, the oily service room with the flickering overhead light where they apparently lodged hopeful recruits. It meant another cross of the tracks, but Billy didn’t argue. He immediately stepped into the gravelly tunnel with Ash, who accompanied him back to the waiting room. Jenny was awake. She left with Ash, leaving Billy alone.
There he waited, bloated by thought and by a growing apprehension that had become all too familiar since he first encountered Ash two days ago. He questioned what he was doing. Anxiety pecked its way back in, growing more insistent as he tried to ignore it.
You will commit to certain labors for the cause.
Billy eyed the door, then the ground, then the door once again.
They may not be in line with what some might consider a proper moral or ethical code.
His left ear burned with Darrow’s hot breath.
Once you pledge to be with us…
Another look to the door.
…then you are with us.
And with that, Billy slipped back onto the ledge, scampered down the tracks, and skirted past the main turnstiles. Once above ground he started back toward his east end hovel in something of a run. It was drizzling miserably, and even as he ran, he heard the call of the tunnel behind him. He felt more a coward with every step, wondering what they’d think of him when they found the room empty. He pictured it and felt the shame of it, but not enough to turn back. And so he pressed on, through the cold and the wind and the rain.
