Brothers to Dragons (12 page)

Chapter Eight

Basura Boy

Sammy would not let Job live inside the house. On that point she had remained adamant.

But the rear of the basement led through to a covered area that had once been a garage. Its concrete floor was sloping, and its wooden doors were broken-hinged and cracked and one of them was cemented permanently shut, but the scarred old wood kept out the worst of the cold. Job placed old mattresses upright against the doors and stuffed rags into the biggest holes. The sloping floor he ignored. He had slept in much worse places.

The mattresses had turned up in the attic when Job was making his first inventory of the house. Sammy had given him a go-ahead, but she had made it clear to Tracy that his food and lodging had to be paid for, and quickly. In two days Job identified a hundred items that should sell easily: fur hats of ancient style, mildewed but thick overcoats, solid old cooking pots, mismatched but solid boots and shoes, and fake stage jewels so big and bogus that Tracy laughed at the cheap glitter and swore that not even the street hookers would look at them.

Job ran everything out on a handcart to the nearest street corner. It was a poor location, but he had one huge advantage over all the other vendors: Sammy had set no rules on selling. Job could undercut the market by any factor he chose. And with his prices, the street hookers did more than look—they bought, and so did passersby. At the end of the first day Job took home enough money to pay Sammy for a week, along with a piece of salt pork and a five-pound bartered basket of parsnips and potatoes. Sammy grudgingly admitted that maybe he had been right, and the house junk was an unrealized asset.

"But what you gonna do
next
month, Jo-babe, when you sold everything?"

That problem had already occurred to Job. For the moment he ignored it. He had at least a year's supply of goods in the house, and three other things were more pressing. First, he had to make a full inventory and value what he had for sale. Second, he needed to nail down a good vendor locadon, shielded if possible from rain and the worst wind. And third—really first in his mind—he must work out a way of life that guaranteed he would never, never,
never
be caught and returned to Cloak House.

A J-D on the streets was at risk all the time. The number of policemen was never more than a handful, even in good weather, but Job set and rigorously applied his own rules. If he heard advance news of police presence, or saw any sign of it, he packed up and took his cart home at once. If there was no warning, but police appeared or were rumored to be on the way—the
basura
spread that word like the wind—Job abandoned his cart with whatever was on it, and ran. He came back when it was safe. The cart was usually picked clean, but he felt lucky when it had not been stolen.

He expected the inventory of the house to take weeks, because it seemed so cluttered and random. On the third evening he realized that the former occupants had followed their own plan. The house was organized for the production of
theatrical works,
and the boxes of clothes and furnishings were labeled.
Man and Superman, The Taming of the Shrew, Death of a Salesman, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mousetrap, Hedda Gabler, The School for Scandal, Lady Windermere's Fan, The Duchess of Malfi . . .

Job listed every box he could find, then took the fourth day off from vending. Instead of selling he went buying, hunting through the stock of other street sellers for old books of plays while he chatted with the vendor, usually in
chachara-calle
, sometimes in other languages.

In the basement that night he started to read what he had bought, learning how to interpret the contents of hard-to-reach boxes from the words written on their sides. It was the first use he had ever found for
written
information. He was finally admitting that Mister Bones had been right, years too late to tell him.

The search for knowledge had two by-products. First, Job met dozens of other vendors and learned to his surprise that his arrival on the streets had already been noted—and disapproved. By extreme price-cutting he had been ruining the market for everyone. No one made any threats, but Job was learning. He assured them that from now on his prices would be in line (or just a tiny fraction lower).

Second, Job began to make a short list of preferred vendor sites. He wanted a place that was sheltered and yet highly public. Most of all he wanted a corner location that permitted four-way escape.

Within two weeks he had made his choice. It was a quarter of a mile east of Sammy's house, near the corner of an avenue in the doorway of an abandoned store. It had been ignored by others because it was not sunny, and because there were vendors on either side and more across the street. But by summer the shade would be a blessing, and Job was willing to give up some business for protective numbers. Before any police reached him, they would have four or five others to deal with—and street vendors did not usually go quietly.

He moved into the doorway with his cart in the fourth week. By now he was beginning to feel like an old hand. He joined in the day-long chatter of the vendors, adding to his language pool: Hungarian and Hindi, Armenian and French, Portuguese and Russian, mouthing words and phrases in silent mimicry. It was not mere entertainment. He had noticed that although all the vendors used
chachara-caUe
among themselves, passersby stopped more and bought more at a vendor who spoke their own native language. Not only
written
knowledge had value.

In the seventh week, a vendor moved his stall from across the street to a location about thirty yards along from Job. The street-seller was a tall man with a big black beard, and every day at noon he strolled down past all the vendors, greeting each one. The way he looked at everything and everybody made Job very uneasy. He listened hard when the man spoke. The language was
chachara-calle
, but it lacked the easy and natural flow of someone who had been raised to the street argot. And sometimes the man brought books with him, and read when things were quiet.

Job studied the newcomer, while the man studied him and everyone else. He did not
look
like police. But . . .

Spring was arriving. A great storm of wind and warm rain arrived unexpectedly one mid-morning in Job's eighth week on the street. Vendors covered their wares and fled swearing for shelter. Job's doorway was too shallow to protect him from blowing rain, but it took him a while to admit it. After five drenching minutes he gave up and scuttled along to a stone overhang halfway down the block. A dozen vendors were already there. They included black-beard.

Soaking wet and squelching in sodden shoes, Job could not be inconspicuous. His arrival was greeted by shouts of laughter from the others.

"Nice and dry,
chico
!" "Hey,
pescado,
what kept you?" "Come in, rain man, join the fun."

The blackbearded man said nothing, but he grinned and handed Job a length of dry toweling. Job formally nodded his thanks and dried his face and hair.

"Thank you." He held out the cloth but kept his face averted.

The man nodded and took the towel back. He eyed Job with open interest. "How old are you, my friend?"

Answer, or not answer? Tell the truth, or make something up?

"I am ten years old. Why do you ask?"

"Because I see you watching me when I read. Maybe you want to learn to read books, too, as well as selling?"

"I can read."

"Can you now? I meant
real
reading, with hard words."

"Yes." Job was not surprised by the man's skeptical glance. At Cloak House, Skip Tolson and Rick Luciano and Torval Berhammar could not read, and they had not been considered dimwits. Even under Father Bonifant, readers had not been in the majority.

"All right, then." The man was holding out a book with a stiff blue cover. "Try that. Can you read the title?"

" 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.' "

"Good. But that last word is not pronounced 'Heeb-rides,' it's pronounced 'Heb-rid-eez.' "

Job raised his eyebrows, while the other vendors standing under the overhang nudged each other.

"What's the joke?" The man had noticed the grins.

"I didn't make a joke," said Job, when no one else spoke. "It's just that maybe they think it's funny, when you start correcting the way I say things."

"Why's that funny?"

"I expect because"—Job switched to mimic the man's accent and manner of speech, with its broad, twangy tone—"because when you speak
chachara-calle
, without knowing it you say things this way."

There was a roar of approval.

"Is that me?" The black beard wagged, and the man looked around at the other vendors. "Is that really the way I talk?"

"Dead-on!" "Justo!" "Precisamente!"
Everyone was grinning.

"Well, I'll be damned. So I
do
sound like that. And I thought I spoke
chachara
perfectly. Nobody ever said a word to me before. But how come you can speak like me?"

Job shrugged. The rain squall was over, and he wanted to get back to his stall. He had said and done too much already, showing off—that's what it had been—how well he could read, and then showing off again to mimic the man and make the other vendors laugh. He had made himself far too conspicuous. "I just listen," he mumbled. "Then I say what I hear."

He moved away. The man followed him. Job walked faster, deserting his cart and hurrying along the rain-drenched avenue until he could turn onto another street. He waited. When no one appeared after five minutes he peeked around the corner. The stalls were occupied again, with everything back to normal. The black-bearded man was sitting at his stall and reading his book.

But Job went back, grabbed the handles of his cart, and left.
Don't get caught again. Never, never, never.
That was the Golden Rule, the only important rule.

He headed for home and the safety of his garage. Although it was not yet noon, he felt he had been exposed to too much risk for one day.

* * *

Job spent an uncomfortable night. The next morning he decided that while running away had not been wrong, it had solved nothing. Today he again had to sell his goods, or he would soon be out on the streets; which meant that either he went back to sell at the usual place (which he now thought of as
his
), or else he had to find a new spot.

But if he did move, and the man was police, it would be little trouble to track Job down. It was not practical to push the cart more than a mile each way. All that black-beard would have to do was walk the streets systematically, and he would find Job again in a day or two.

In the end Job went to the usual spot with his handcart, but he piled on it only a quarter of its usual load. If he had to abandon it, the loss would be small.

The rain had blown through and away, but instead of carrying dirty air with it the changed weather had brought an inversion layer. The air sat thick and heavy over the whole city. Even with his mask in place, Job felt the yellow fumes crawling to the bottom of his lungs. He walked slower and slower. One thing was sure, if he wanted to escape from someone today he'd be in trouble. He could not run more than a few yards without choking. He paused on the final corner. The avenue was filled with the morning crush of pedestrians and crawling vehicles. All the vendors were in position, including black-beard.

Job trundled his cart the last fifty yards and set up shop in the usual doorway. The man had seen him arrive. Job was convinced of that, even though there had been no movement of the dark head in his direction.

After half an hour Job's suspicion was confirmed. The man stood up from his stall, stretched, and wandered casually in Job's direction. He nodded when he was a few paces away and turned to walk directly towards Job. The hair on the back of Job's neck seemed to crawl. The man's nose and mouth were hidden behind his smog mask, but his dark eyes were visible. He was pretending to be relaxed, but he really wasn't. He was as tense as Job.

It was already too late to run away. Job sat dead still and waited.

The man flopped down uninvited on the little stool that Job brought with him for customers who wanted to haggle before they bought. It was a breach of vendor protocol, to do anything that might interfere with another vendor's sale, but Job sat uncomplaining.

"What you did yesterday," said the man at last. "That was pretty impressive. Imitating the way I speak. I was thinking about it all last night."

Which makes two of us.
Job just nodded.

"I was thinking," the man continued, "if I sound different from all the people around here, I bet I lose a lot of sales. And I was wondering if you could help me do better—you know, catch me when I say something wrong, and tell me how to do it right."

Was that it? No more than a desire by the black-bearded man to fit in? It was tempting to believe that; but Job couldn't take the risk. The other man was just too intense. "I don't know. Some people can hear and say, others never do it right no matter how hard they try."

"Tin ear, you mean? Maybe that's my problem. But I'd like to solve it if I can." The man was smiling behind the mask, but it didn't reach to the eyes. "Look, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not asking something for nothing. I can pay, if that's what you want. Or maybe you can teach me, and maybe in return I can teach you."

"Teach me what?"

"I'm not sure. I'd have to give you a few tests first."

"I had plenty of tests when I was little. They were stupid. All they showed was what I knew, that I have bad lungs and bad teeth and a funny jaw."

"I don't mean medical tests." Now the eyes
were
smiling. "I mean
mental
tests. Did you ever have one?"

"I don't know. I don't think so." In spite of himself, Job was interested. The man talked differently from everyone he had ever met. "What are the tests for?"

"They tell you what you're good at—to be more accurate, they tell you what you
might
be good at. Take you, for instance. Everyone around here says you talk to them in their own languages, without being taught That sort of thing can be tested for."