Rook & Tooth and Claw (14 page)

The class looked up at him, still confused and upset. He left his desk and walked up and down the aisles between them, touching their shoulders, squeezing their hands. “Listen,” he said, “something very strange and dangerous has happened here. But so long as we don’t lose our nerve … so long as we all stick together, everything’s going to work out fine.”

Tee Jay stood up and took hold of his elbow. “Come on, Mr Rook. Let’s get that face seen to.”

They left the classroom and walked along the corridor. Mr Wallechinsky walked past, his cheek still covered in sticking-plaster, and Jim covered his own face with his hand. “How’s it going, Mr R?” said Mr Wallechinsky, and Jim said, “Great.”

They rounded the corner at the end of the corridor and Tee Jay stopped. “Mr Rook … I got something to say to you. I know you hate me. I know you think that I helped my Uncle Umber when Elvin got killed, but it wasn’t that way at all.”

Jim stood with his back against the wall. In the distance, he could hear the persistent squeaking of basketball boots on a polished wood floor. He wasn’t feeling particularly friendly or amenable. His collar was sticky with blood and he was still trembling with shock. But all the same, Tee Jay was looking deadly serious, and much more like he used to be, instead of the furious swearing hoodlum who had beaten up on Elvin in the washroom.

“All right,” he said. “What way was it?”

“It started six months ago, when my Uncle Umber turned up at the door without no warning at all. He said he was back from travelling all around Europe and Africa or wherever, and that he wanted to get to know us again. I didn’t remember him. Like I was about two when he first left LA. Mom didn’t seem to like him too much, but he was Dad’s brother after all and what could she do? I thought he was great. He was funny and he was full of these wild stories about voodoo ceremonies and altars made out of human bones, and priestesses who could speak in languages that nobody had ever heard of.

“He taught me all about it. He
showed
me. He made me see that voodoo is the one true religion, you know what I mean? And it has to be, because it’s the only religion that’s real. It’s the only religion with
evidence
for what you believe in.”

“Well, I’ll give you that,” said Jim, taking his hand away from his face and showing Tee Jay the blood on his fingers.

Tee Jay said, “I’m sorry about that, Mr Rook. I wouldn’t have had that happen for the world.”

“And Elvin? What about Elvin? I suppose you wouldn’t have had
that
happen for the world, either. But Elvin’s dead; or what passes for dead.”

“That’s why I’m talking to you now, Mr Rook. When Uncle Umber killed Elvin, that was when I first found out just how far he was prepared to go. He said he was going to make Elvin show some respect. I never knew that he was going to
kill
him. I swear it.”

“You were there when it happened. Why didn’t you try to stop him?”

Tee Jay shook his head. “You can’t do nothing to stop him, Mr Rook. He can call on all the strength of Vodun
and Baron Samedi and every spirit you never heard of. See – when he lived in Venice in the ‘seventies, he was scratching for a living washing white peoples’ cars and looking for handouts. He promised himself he wasn’t never going to demean himself like that again. He was going to find the real black power. Not the political black power, but the
magical
black power. And he promised himself that he was going to come back to LA one day and take over everything, and be respected and rich, so that there wasn’t one single white man who would ever be able to pop his fingers at him and call him boy. He wasn’t going to let nobody show disrespect to him or his.”

“And that’s why he killed Elvin?”

Tee Jay swallowed and nodded. “Elvin was always laughing about voodoo. I tried to tell him that it was the only religion that a black man could proudly have. But all he did was diss me, on and on. I could take it for myself, but when he started dissing Baron Samedi, that was something else. He said, you going to start biting the heads off of poultry and strutting up and down with your face all white and your high black hat on? That’s when I hit him. I’m sorry I hit him. But he shouldn’t of said that. Not about something I truly believe in.”

“Then what happened?” Jim asked him. “Your uncle came to college? How did he know you were feeling so upset?”

“I called him at home, because I was afraid that Dr Ehrlichman was going to can me. He asked me what had happened and I told him. He said he was going to fix it, and of course he did. Or his Smoke did, anyways.”

Tee Jay took a deep breath and Jim could tell by the thistle in his throat that he was close to tears. “Uncle Umber told me to call Elvin into the boiler-house. I
told Elvin I was packing some speed. He walked in and Uncle Umber blew the goofer dust on him and he was paralysed just like he was dead. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. But all the time his eyes were staring at me, like pleading, you know? Uncle Umber said that in Haiti they cut blasphemers one hundred and twelve times, one for each of the
loa,
to punish them for what they’ve done.”

Tee Jay paused for a long, emotional moment. Then he said, “That’s what he did to Elvin, right in front of me. I was scared, Mr Rook. I was so damned scared. I knew that if I tried to stop him, he would do the same to me. He’ll kill anybody, Mr Rook, if they stand in the way of what he wants to do.”

Jim said, “Why don’t you leave him, if you’re so damned scared? Why don’t you go back home?”

Tee Jay looked down at the floor. “He won’t let me.”

“That’s it? That’s the only reason? He simply won’t let you? Come on, Tee Jay, I know you better than that.”

“That’s part of the reason. But the other part is … I
believe
in voodoo, Mr Rook. I really believe in it. It gives you power, and I can feel that power for myself. In my hands. In my mind. I never felt so strong. I never felt so confident. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m somebody important, with a future, you know? I feel like I’ve got a handle on my own destiny.”

“I see. You’ve got a future, no matter who you hurt?”

“I didn’t want Elvin to die, Mr Rook. I swear it. It won’t ever happen again.”

“So what if Chill refuses to give Uncle Umber ninety per cent of his profits? You can swear that you won’t lay a finger on him?”

“Chill’s a drug-dealer, man. He knows what the risks are.”

“Oh, sure he does. But that doesn’t give you
carte blanche
to kill him. That’s a matter for the law.”

Without looking up, Tee Jay said, “Mr Rook … this isn’t easy. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. I respect you, right? You’re just about the only white person I ever met who understands what’s happening inside of my head.”

But then he raised his eyes and said, “But voodoo … this is such a rush. This is
empowerment.
This is black people tapping the wells of their own heritage, right? I mean you’re always telling us that we ought to be true to our heritage, aren’t you?”

“I’m not prejudiced against voodoo,” Jim told him. “I respect voodoo just as much as Roman Catholicism, or Shinto or anything else that anybody wants to believe in. But I don’t respect violence and I don’t respect extortion. Most of all I don’t respect murder. You should go round to see Elvin’s mom and dad and try to tell
them
how empowered you are, now that you’ve discovered voodoo.”

Tee Jay said, “We’d better get you to the nurse.”

“I think I can manage on my own, thank you,” Jim told him. He started to walk toward the medical room, leaving Tee Jay behind.

Tee Jay watched him for a while, and then called out, “Mr Rook! Please don’t chill me out, Mr Rook! I’m doing my best here, I swear it!”

Jim stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“I promise, Mr Rook, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that nobody else gets hurt.”

“What if your Uncle Umber decides to kill somebody else? Who are you going to support then? Him, or me?”

“He’s blood of my blood, Mr Rook. You got to understand that.”

“Exactly,” said Jim, and limped off toward the medical room.

The rest of the day was quiet and anti-climactic. While the boys went to the shop for welding and auto repairs, and the rest of the girls were given a talk on home management, Jim gave Jane Firman a one-to-one lesson in word recognition, and then worked with David Littwin on his stammer.

He liked David. In spite of his speech problems, he was always enthusiastic and co-operative, and he never took offence when he was teased by the rest of the class. Jim had never believed in pretending that his students didn’t have handicaps. Sooner or later they were going to have to face the world outside, and the world outside wasn’t forgiving when it came to bad stammers or thick accents or slowness of thought. Jim wanted to give his students confidence without pretending that their lives were going to be easy and that they were always going to be surrounded by understanding friends and politically-correct teachers. Some day, an impatient employer was going to ask David if there was any danger of getting an answer by Christmas, and David was going to have to deal with it.

David had improved immensely since he had started in Special Class II, but Jim had no intention of making him feel that people were going to wait for ever while he s-s-s. Struggled to s-s-s. Say what he meant.

At the end of the day, there was a knock on his classroom door. It was Susan. “Listen,” she said, “when I said we should keep a little distance between us, I didn’t mean three thousand miles, and I didn’t mean forever.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim said, thrusting a sheaf of essays
into his briefcase and snapping it shut. “I’ve been extra-specially busy today.”

“You’ve cut your face,” she said, concerned. She came forward and touched his cheek and then his nose. “How did that happen? You look like Mr Wallechinsky.”

“It’s nothing. A window broke.”

She frowned at him. “Is something
wrong
?” she asked him.

He kept thinking of the way that she had half-closed her eyes when she had told him that she loved him; and how furiously she had kissed him, as if she wanted to eat him alive.

“Everything’s fine,” he said. “I’ve had a crappy day, is all.”

He tried to leave his desk but she stayed where she was, blocking his way. “I don’t want you to think that I’m angry or anything,” she told him. “I’d still like to see your maps, whenever you have the time.”

“Susan,” he said. “I don’t have any maps. Ron Philips was stirring things up between us, that’s all.”

“No maps?” she blinked. “What do you mean, no maps? What about Martin Frobisher’s chart of the North-West Passage?”

He shook his head.

“You
invented
it?” she asked him, incredulously. “Why on earth did you invent it?”

Even as she said it, of course, she understood why; and she blushed as fiercely as a teenager. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t have asked you that. That was stupid of me. Listen – I’m making a complete fool of myself here. I’d better go.”

He took hold of her wrist. “Susan … I don’t know what’s happened between us. I don’t know why you said you loved me so much and then you changed your mind.
I guess women are entitled to be fickle. But I’d quite like to know what it was that put you off me so suddenly. I mean was it my breath? Did you meet Richard Gere in the supermarket the next morning? What?”

“I’m at a loss here,” Susan admitted. “You seem to think that we had something going when we didn’t. All that happened was, you drove me home. We talked about maps, and that was it. You bumped into a hedge and got your pants wet.”

“We didn’t kiss?”

“We pecked.”

“We pecked but we didn’t kiss? No tongues or anything?”

“
Tongues
?” she said, startled. “Jim… we were talking about Mercator’s projection, that’s all. You don’t go straight from Mercator’s projection to
tongues
.”

Jim pressed his hand to his head. “I’m missing something here. I thought we kissed. I thought you said you loved me and we kissed.”

Susan took hold of his hand. “Jim … I
like
you. I
admire
you. All this work you do with Special Class II. But I’m sorry … I never said that I loved you. And believe me, please – and don’t take this wrong – we never kissed.”

It suddenly came to him. The memory powder. He had tested the memory powder by imagining that Susan was head-over-heels in love with him. He remembered that now. But in spite of the fact that he could remember it, he was still totally convinced that he and Susan
had
kissed. It was the strangest feeling that he had ever had. He could still feel her lips. He could still feel the softness of her hair and her breath against his cheek. “
I fell in love with you the moment I first saw you
.” She had said it so clearly that he could
imagine each word in shining fruity colour, like a roll of Life Savers.

“Jesus,” he said. He was so dumbstruck.

“Listen …” she said. “Give it some time, then maybe we could go out for dinner together. Or maybe a picnic.”

“Sure,” he told her. He squeezed her hand. “I think I’d better be getting along home now. The feline formerly known as Tibbles will be wanting her supper.”

“Jim,” she said, as he left the classroom. He stopped, and turned.

“Nothing,” she said, and let him go.

On the way back to Venice the atmosphere tightened and Jim could see snakes’-tongues of lightning flickering over the Santa Monica Mountains. By the time he was half-way home there was a deafening barrel-roll of thunder and the sidewalks were instantly spotted with rain. Soon water was cascading off the roof of his car and his windscreen wipers were flapping wildly from side to side. When he reached his apartment block he parked as close to the concrete staircase as he could and climbed out of the driver’s seat with a copy of
National Geographic
on top of his head. Too bad about the fertility rituals of the Motu-speaking peoples of Papua New Guinea: they were just going to have to get wet.

He climbed the steps to his apartment. Myrlin was watching him out of his kitchen window but when Jim suddenly turned around and gave him the evil eye he promptly closed his venetian blinds.