Billy tabbs, p.9
Billy Tabbs, page 9
“I see.”
“It’s sad. She wasn’t very old.”
“How old?” asked Billy.
“Not very,” said Jacob.
“And the boy?”
“Marlon said he was gone when he finally looked up.”
“What else?”
“There’s not much more to tell. He doesn’t talk about it much. Doesn’t talk much about anything. Even less these days since…” Jacob halted, tripping clumsily over the silence.
“Since what?”
“Nothing,” said Jacob.
Something, thought Billy.
Knew Billy.
“It’s nothing,” repeated Jacob.
“Did it involve Derek?” Billy was momentarily unable to resist mention of the taboo topic.
Jacob’s eyes softened. “We don’t speak of it.”
“He was your friend?” prodded Billy.
Jacob’s silent nod screamed “Yes.” It seemed pained. Billy released him.
“Awful,” said Billy, “about Marlon’s sister.”
“Certainly awful,” said Jacob.
“You think that’s why he is the way he is?”
“Maybe. Could be that he was that way already. None of us really knew him that well before he joined. All I know is he’s out for revenge as much as anything.”
“But the boy is gone?” said Billy.
“Society is the boy.”
“I see,” said Billy.
“Revenge won’t help his sister, and it won’t help us change people’s minds about us. It clouds your vision and makes you take unnecessary risks.”
Again Billy drew quiet, feeling Jacob’s eyes sizing him up.
“You agree with him, don’t you? You think violence is the answer?”
“I don’t know,” said Billy. “I haven’t really had too much time to think about it.”
A white lie.
He’d not only been thinking of it, but had been thinking, even dreaming of little else since he found himself sandwiched between Darrow’s two squabbling generals. He’d been ruminating over their competing ideologies and the realization that their deeds might not rest at mischief. Part of him had known when he joined the group that it was a possibility. They were, after all, insurgents. The surprise, if there was one, was that his first instinct was to accept Marlon’s position, particularly when he thought back on his own chaotic life: the separation from his mother, always being moved on from one place to another, the dearth of comfort or permanence, the despair so replete in both borough and belly. It was easy to be angry when he thought of the marked indifference he’d absorbed from all those who’d so callously disregarded him in his lifetime, an anger not mitigated by the fact that he, admittedly, hadn’t paid that much mind to them. After all, what could he really do for them that they couldn’t do for themselves? But what they could do for him could mean everything. Most people had so much to give.
Jacob had been waiting silently for Billy to continue. The tornado of thought had delayed Billy’s response, perhaps inappropriately so, and at the end of this pensive funnel he simply offered the following: “I know that I’ve been hurt, and I wouldn’t mind seeing some people get hurt, too.”
Billy heard himself speaking, his own voice supporting the calls for escalation. He wanted not only revolution, but he wanted it to sting.
“As I said, you’re not alone,” said Jacob. “But you have to ask yourself what you hope to gain. Do you want to see people change, or do you just want to see both sides suffering? I just don’t think you ever advance your cause with violence.”
“No matter what they do to us?”
“No matter what they do,” said Jacob.
“It wasn’t your sister killed.”
“It wasn’t,” conceded Jacob. He waited a moment before adding, “Don’t think it would be so easy to hurt a person. To kill them, even. Violence gets very ugly very quickly. I don’t mean just the physical act itself. I mean what comes after. What you’d have to live with. Have you thought about that?”
“No,” Billy confessed. And it was the truth. He hadn’t actually considered what it would be like to intentionally wound, maim, or kill a person, even one of those who’d been so indifferent to his existence. Any violence he’d committed to that point was in the name of survival. “What does Darrow think?”
“He’s…unsure. But as long as He asks my counsel, I will endorse a more measured approach. One that targets lifestyle over life.”
Then how do you account for crushing the beagle with a cinder block?
Billy thought it but didn’t say it. He knew it would be too snarky to do so, and in any event, he’d already heard that the dog’s death was Marlon’s brainchild, not Jacob’s. Still, he felt himself already siding with Marlon, and Chuck, and those among them who sought to tug the strings of mayhem. He couldn’t help but think of Jacob’s notions as hopelessly naïve. Noble—attractive even—but naïve all the same. It must be so easy, Billy thought, to preach nonviolence from the safety of an ideological pedestal.
He stepped like he was going to leave, then held up.
“Something else on your mind?” asked Jacob.
“Darrow…” said Billy, tentatively.
“Mm-hmm?”
“He’s like a hero to everyone…”
“He is the Glorious Darrow,” said Jacob, as if that answered everything. It nearly did. Billy was just as captivated as the rest whenever he heard Darrow speak. Still, his pause begged for more.
“You need proof,” said Jacob, “before you’ll believe?”
“I just don’t accept things that easily.”
“And you think we do?”
“I can’t say.”
Jacob smiled. “You are the suspicious sort, aren’t you?”
Tommy had emerged from the lead railcar and had come up beside them, red hair bouncing over green eyes. His presence silenced Billy, until Jacob assuaged him.
“It’s OK to question things,” he said.
“I just need to know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why the devotion?”
“You need things explained?” said Jacob.
Billy’s silence nodded for him.
“I’m not sure true faith lends well to explanation.”
“There’s got to be more to it,” said Billy.
“You want something more concrete?” said Jacob, and before Billy could answer, he had set into a story.
“There’s a church not far from here. Maybe you’ve even seen it, all mossy and hemmed in by rows of pine trees? Behind it, on the church property, was a shabby old building. Not much to look at, but it had turned into something of a flophouse for our kind. The people at the church were kind. They’d sometimes bring us food and blankets. I stayed there myself when I first arrived in the city.”
“Sounds nice,” said Billy.
“It was. And it went like that for some time. The two sides generally left each other alone. Went about our own business, neither side disturbing the other.”
“How many of you? In the house, I mean?”
“It changed all the time, but usually close to forty. Old and young. We even had a few newborns. It was a big house.”
“I see.”
“There weren’t any lights, so at night we only had a bit from the church or the moon, but we still made our way. Sometimes I’d visit the church people as they locked up the grounds, or walk around the neighborhood to stretch my legs. Things were much simpler then.
“Then one night I was out on one of those walks. I remember the chill in the air. There’d been a light snowfall and you could smell the chimneys and could see the glow of candles through people’s windows. I was making my way back and immediately knew something was wrong…”
Jacob described how he could smell it before he saw it. The angry clouds of smoke choking off the moonlit sky. How he’d set into a panicked sprint and come up on the sidewalk in front of the church, finding the church engulfed by fire.
“It must have started at the back. I saw the flames had spread and caught onto our own building. By then it had already crept up onto the front steps and was climbing toward the second floor. It was an old wood building, practically kindling. It spread so quickly, and the smoke made everything so black, so hard to see.”
Billy was fixated.
“Some made it out, but I could hear many more calling from inside. They were trapped and scared. I saw some frantic against the windows. A fire truck pulled up in the street, but they seemed focused on the church…
“I ran in the front door, somehow getting past the flames. It was already so hard to see through the thick clouds of black smoke, so hard to breathe. I pulled out two and laid them safely on the ground. The sounds were terrifying. Not just the screams—the cracking wood, the shattering glass. I can’t exactly describe it…but it was as if the house was buckling. But still I went back inside. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe I was. Either way, I moved to the higher floors. So many were paralyzed. Some of the younger ones had hidden in closets. Many had already been overcome by the smoke. I’d been holding my breath as best I could but then the smoke finally got me. I think I passed out somewhere on the third floor.”
Billy had been holding his own breath. “But how…”
“How am I alive?”
Billy nodded.
“The next thing I knew I was on the grass. I remember seeing a hazy figure disappear into the front door, through the smoke and the fire. The next part I don’t remember so well. I was dizzy. I tried to see through the blur. I remember the figure emerging and re-emerging from various holes in the building. Each time his hair more singed and his face more covered in soot.
“I didn’t recognize him and I don’t know where he came from. He was just there, carrying young and old alike. It was miraculous. I watched him go in and out at least a dozen times before the building finally crumbled to the ground. I thought for sure he’d been caught inside until he reappeared on the grass beside me, carrying my friend.”
“The rescuer was Darrow,” said Billy. He knew the end of the story even before Jacob confirmed it.
“He must have saved close to twenty of us. Some he coaxed into movement. Others he carried.”
“And the firemen?”
“They didn’t reach us until it was all over. They’d been stalled at the church. Maybe they didn’t know we were back there. Maybe we weren’t a priority.”
“I see,” said Billy, who then turned to Tommy. “The friend was you?” Tommy shook his head, and Jacob intervened before Billy could prod any further.
“I can’t tell you why Darrow is glorious, Billy. I can only tell you why He’s glorious to me.”
Billy finally left them to chat amongst themselves. He stepped over to the wall of tenets and slouched down to the ground, reflecting on Jacob’s story as he watched the morning sunlight seep in ever stronger through the overhead steel grating.
He watched Helena step from the lead railcar. She loitered in front of Darrow’s office where she picked briefly through a cluster of granola before slumping down despondently against the wall. Darrow noticed her too, having just stepped out from the hallway. Billy watched their interaction as Darrow moved slowly to her position and tried to console her. At first she appeared reluctant, but eventually he got her talking, with Billy close enough to overhear. Seeing him so soon after the story of the church, Billy could feel himself looking on Darrow with a heightened sense of awe.
“Things will get better,” said Darrow, his voice smooth and sure.
Helena didn’t answer him; she just let her head fall slightly to the ground.
“Better times lie ahead,” he continued. “One day our deliverance will come.”
“I just feel so alone sometimes.” She almost whispered the last part, as if she wasn’t sure she should be saying it. Darrow knelt down beside her.
“You will never be alone. Never. You have your sister. You have this place. And, of course, soon will come The Progeny.”
Darrow continued talking to her, only he did so at a whisper, as if alerted to Billy’s presence. Billy couldn’t hear the rest, but he could see. And he watched, after a time, as Helena noticeably rebounded, even lifting her face to Darrow’s and allowing a smile to its surface. It wasn’t the first time Billy had seen Darrow restore confidence in a member where it had faltered, his words working like a lathe to winnow away their insecurities. Nor was it the first time he’d heard Darrow mention The Progeny. Though he had no idea what it meant, he was reluctant to ask, not only for fear of sounding foolish, but also for fear of exposing his indiscretion, as he’d only ever heard the phrase through intercepted whispers or eavesdropping.
Over the next two hours, the entire membership emerged from the lead railcar. First after Helena was George. Then Ears. Then Jenny. Then Fat Henry, who waddled out sleepily and beelined straight for the food. A handful of others did the same. And then, seemingly last to awaken, was Ash.
It was late morning before he and Billy finally stepped above ground to scour for fresh food sources, and by mid-afternoon they had discovered a goldmine six blocks north. A large truck had backed into the alley of a busy restaurant. They watched as the driver wheeled dolly after dolly of fresh meat and produce down the steel ramp and into the open kitchen door. Some items were boxed, others rattled loose in milk carts. A lone deliveryman making eight, nine, ten trips. They counted how long he dwelled inside the building and took careful note before moving along. Both doors begged entry, but they held themselves at bay. As Billy had already learned, food reconnaissance was something apart from food acquisition. One did not turn into the other merely by opportunity or temptation. Darrow mandated their targets be watched, the sequences studied, and the patterns identified, preferably over a period of many days. Expectation minimized risk. Then, when it did come time to acquire, they were instructed to pick discreetly. They pulled only enough to make it worthwhile, but not so much to readily expose their treachery, lest that avenue lock down in the future. There was indeed a method to Darrow’s madness, and despite the temptation before them, they merely committed the scene to memory and left without interfering.
By late afternoon they’d identified several more promising spots, and had collected as many mental notes as they could manage. By then they were also famished. Finding themselves a fair distance from the compound, they decided to lift a bite of food from a local merchant. Billy did so at the first prime opportunity. He’d always considered himself pretty handy at shoplifts, the baguette incident notwithstanding; and such was the case then, as he returned with enough for the both of them.
“Lunch!” he said, coming up alongside his scouting partner, who’d been watching from a short distance.
“That was real quick like,” said Ash, his voice pinched with envy.
It occurred to Billy, as they ate their chicken, that he still knew very little about his new friend. “You have any family?”
Ash’s demeanor curdled. “Lived with some people. Wouldn’t go so far as to call ’em family, I think. They didn’t treat me all too good.” Ash paused, as if he were contemplating, then added, “But then maybe I wasn’t so good to them either.”
Billy sensed a sadness in Ash. A regret mixed with defiance.
“I’ve been thinking of my own mother a lot lately,” said Billy. “Been dreaming about her, even.”
“I never met mine,” said Ash. “Never gonna, I guess.”
“I knew my mother.”
“You know where she is now?”
Billy shook his head. “I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“Ya, well. All of us just orphans out here,” said Ash, puffing out his chest.
“I’ve been trying to remember her,” said Billy, not quite ready to let the subject go.
Ash curled up a smile. “You’re kinda sentimental like, ain’tcha?”
Billy clammed up.
“Oh, I ain’t judgin’. Just not sure that sorta stuff plays so well out here. Or with what we got goin’ on down below.”
Billy turned the page. Mentioned Jacob and Marlon.
“What about ’em?”
“They were arguing yesterday.”
“They do that.”
“I thought they might fight.”
“Jacob wouldn’t fight, I don’t think.”
“Still, it got bad.”
“Been that way as long as I’ve been here,” said Ash. “Some support Jacob. Probably more go the other way. But the Darrow, He and Jacob been friends a long time. Longer’n Him and Marlon. I think that makes Marlon more angry than anythin’.”
“Shame about Marlon’s sister,” said Billy.
“Them’s the breaks out here.”
“What do you think? About the two sides?”
“I ain’t really lookin’ to get killed either, but then I’ll go along with whatever the Darrow says.”
“It makes me nervous how they fight,” said Billy.
“Things gonna be fine. We got the Darrow leadin’ us.”
“I suppose.”
Ash laughed. “You ain’t the trustin’ type so much?”
“Life hasn’t been very good to me.”
Again Ash laughed. “Life ain’t meetin’ your expectations?”
Billy shrugged.
“Think it owes you somethin’ maybe?”
“I guess so.”
“Ya, well Marlon says ain’t nothin’ owed can’t be taken. Anyway, you just keep on expectin’. Me an’ the Darrow’re gonna change things for our kind right quick we are. Ain’t gonna have to worry no more when we’re all through.”
No sooner had Ash said this than he began streaming tales of his own past successes, some of which seemed, to Billy, of questionable veracity, or, at the very least, artificially inflated. He’d noticed this overwillingness to impress in many of their conversations. Ash admired Darrow, that much was obvious, but to Billy it seemed like more than that. Ash pained for his approval. Whether this was born from a simple insecurity, or something more nefarious, Billy couldn’t say.
Ash chattered on, and Billy’s attention steadily waned as he dwelled in possibilities. The possibility that he might indeed have a real purpose in this world beyond one of mere survival, a relevance that he never before could have appreciated. That he might be, as Darrow proclaimed, worthy of just as much respect as any person in society.
