Tom Finder (2 page)

“Hey. Are you okay?” Tom called from where he was. His legs were so shaky that he wasn't sure he could run fast enough if the man chased him.

The man slowly looked around.

He fixed his eyes on Tom. He could see him. The man looked up at the sky, then back to Tom. “This is my answer?” he said aloud. “A pretty white boy?”

“Do you need any help?” Tom asked. He hoped the man would say, no, get out of here kid, and then Tom would go and see if anyone was looking for him. He hoped his parents were rich. He'd ask them to take him to Mickey D's on the way home. The man looked at Tom like the very sight of him was disappointing. He said nothing and seemed to look at something behind Tom. Tom needed to find a toilet. He turned away to see that there were people standing around him. Boys, some as young as him, each wearing a leather jacket. One turned around as if on lookout. On the back of his jacket was a red dragon.

“Hi,” Tom said, because of what the candy had said.

One of them took a step toward Tom and smiled as if he only wanted to show his teeth. Tom couldn't run. “You got toys in that pack?” he asked Tom.

The silver-braided man emerged from the fog like a ghost. “Leave him,” he said. His beads clicked in a breeze Tom could not feel.

They ignored the older man. One, and then another, took his hands out of his pockets.

“All I've got is a notebook,” Tom said.

It wasn't their fists he was afraid of, it was their eyes. They could see him. He wondered if in his forgotten life he could fight.

“Leave him alone,” the man said again, though no more loudly.

This time they looked at the older man. One of them ran his thumb along the sharp edge of his front teeth, then pointed his thumb at Tom, smiled, and walked away. The others followed. Tom's knees unlocked, and he sat heavily on the bench. The older man sat beside him.

“Thanks,” Tom said to the man after a minute.

The man nodded slowly. “You can repay me. I prayed for a Finder, and you found me.”

Nothing the man said made any sense to Tom. He hoped he wasn't forgetting English. The man held out his huge hand. “Samuel Wolflegs. I am looking for my son, Daniel. Do you know him? Have you seen him?” His voice was deep and trembly, as if his lungs were shaking at their roots.

“No,” Tom said.

The man took a picture out of his pocket, a small school photograph. “This boy. This is the one I'm looking for. Daniel Wolflegs.”

Tom shook his head, but the man held out the photograph as if he expected Tom to take it. Finally, Tom put the photograph in the pocket of his hood.

“What's your name, white boy?” the man asked.

Tom pulled his hood over his head. “Tom,” he said.

“Tom what?”

Tom shrugged. “Tom nothing. Tom.”

“What are you doing here?” the man asked. “School get out early for you? Most kids have a few days left.”

Tom thought about that a moment. He hoped he wasn't skipping school. He was pretty sure he wasn't that kind of kid.

“You are lost. Strange, for a Finder to be lost. Do you know where you are?”

Tom looked around and shook his head.

“Prince's Island,” the man said. “The river gave you to me, for an answer to my praying.”

Tom thought probably he should run away, but his feet had already died of starvation. If he was going to die, he was glad it would be from the feet up and not from the head down. His brain must have already lost weight, though, because he thought he could feel it slosh around in his skull.

“Look, I'm just a kid, okay? Just a loser kid . . .” He stood up. His stomach was so empty and light that it was defying gravity.

“Not a loser. A Finder,” Wolflegs said.

Tom began to stump away on dead feet.

“What's that blood on your jeans?” Wolflegs asked. “On the back of your jeans?”

Tom stopped. He craned his neck around to see. “I . . . I forget,” he said.

“Let me take you to a doctor,” Samuel Wolflegs said.

Tom shook his head once. The world vibrated. He couldn't explain how he needed to be invisible right now.

Wolflegs had the still look of a hunter after wary prey.

“If you walk around like that, someone is going to notice. Why don't you go for a swim in the river? If the blood washes off and there's no more fresh blood, then okay.”

Tom thought about it for a minute, then stripped off his hoodie and walked into the river. The water was cold, but he got used to it quickly. He relieved himself in it. He swam in it, hidden by the white fog, invisible, buoyed up against gravity.

When he came out of the water, Wolflegs was sitting with his arms folded over his chest, scanning the river up and down as if he were on the lookout. The fog was white in the morning light; the geese were honking. Tom shivered, but the day was going to be warm.

“Good swimmer,” Wolflegs said.

Tom wondered if he had always been a good swimmer. His parents must have put him in swimming lessons as a kid.

“Well, see ya,” Tom said. He felt better, enough to walk again.

“You will look for my son, Daniel,” Samuel called, commanding Tom from the roots of his lungs. There was a deep sadness in his voice that kept Tom from running away.

Tom turned to him and said, “Look, I'm not a Finder, whatever that is—”

“You are. I say you have the power. I see it in you.”

“I don't believe in that stuff.” He couldn't remember if he didn't believe in that stuff.

“That's what Daniel said.” Wolflegs said. He began to weep silently. The tears pooled in the acne scars on his face. “He came to the streets because we fought. He wouldn't respect the old ways. I called him a McIntosh, an apple, red on the outside, white on the inside. I threw him out. I locked the door. He came here, found people who took him into the cult of the street. When I walk the streets looking for him, they hide him from me. They say they don't know where he is, they haven't seen him. Tell him I am here, I say, where the bridge crosses the river. Tell him I am sorry for the things I said. Tell him all is forgotten.” He was silent for a moment. “But I have been here a long time, and Daniel does not come.” The man turned away from Tom and gazed at the river. “If he came back to me, I would give him the river. With the river everything can be new again.”

“Go to the police,” Tom said.

“I have. I have gone so many times that they threaten to detain me if I come again. Public nuisance, they say. They imitate my talk. We don't look for runaways, they say. He's a big boy, they say.”

“I will stay by the river, praying, until you find him.”

He started praying again, a sound somewhere between singing and moaning. His eyes closed.
Weird,
Tom thought as he began walking away.
How can you give someone a river?

“Sleep here and you will be safe,” the man called. Before Tom was out of earshot, Wolflegs called to him again: “Don't follow the streets. They never take you where you want to go. Especially at night. They keep you. Get up with the sun, Tom Finder . . .”

Tom started out by looking for a police officer. He hit the jackpot and found city police headquarters. He walked toward the stone stairs that led to the entranceway, and then walked by. His mind must have been elsewhere, he thought, and he turned and walked back. Again he marched right on by. Tom looked down at his feet as if they'd grown a mind of their own. He shook his head, walked toward the stairs, and walked by again.

This was ridiculous. Perhaps whatever had made him lose his memory had caused some sort of brain damage as well. This time he forced his feet to stop at the stone stairs. He felt it. Gravity was pushing him away. Not just any old gravity, but high-density, collapsed-star-type gravity, the kind that squeezed all the food out of your stomach if there was any in it. He quickly walked away. He'd come back later.

Tom got on an LRT train. He rode for a long time. He got off where he had started, in the downtown core. He rode another route for a couple of hours. He looked out the window at the houses, wondering who lived there, how they had picked that house in that spot. Each one was a hiding place, a place to be invisible, to do all your private acts. He rode standing up. He stared at the houses. Sometimes, if the curtains were open, he could see in, see children watching TV or people sitting at the table. They were just glimpses, like postcards.

He felt a huge sadness inside, this big, empty, locked-out feeling, like everything good had to happen in a house, like all of life happened in houses and no one would let him in and he didn't even know how to ask. He liked the little houses as well as the big ones. He would have been happy to call any one of them home, but none looked familiar.

Just as the train headed into the core, a uniformed man approached Tom. Just feeling his eyes on him made Tom have to struggle for air.

A black kid in the seat across the aisle said, “Uh-oh. Here come the Tallyman.”

Tom looked blankly at the boy.

“TC. Train cop,” the black kid said in a loud whisper without looking at him.

TC was barrel-chested and big-bellied. He had a huge head and thick arms, but his legs were long and skinny. He looked like he should topple over, top-heavy. He stopped in front of Tom.

“Ticket?”

Tom had forgotten about tickets.

He held out his hands and shrugged. The black kid sighed across the aisle as the train cop took a pen and book out of the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Name?”

“Tom.”

“Tom what?”

Tom shrugged.

“Tom Shrug?” The man laughed at his own joke and looked around good-naturedly at the other passengers. “How old are you, Tom Shrug?”

Tom shrugged again. TC stared. He glanced again at the other passengers and bit his pen with big yellow teeth.

“You look about fourteen, fifteen? What's your address?” He settled his face into a frown.

Tom didn't answer. Everyone on the train was looking at him. Being seen was making him nauseous. He was glad there was nothing inside his stomach.

“Look kid, you cooperate, all you get is a fine. Give me trouble, and I can have you arrested. Now, where do you live?”

“I forget,” Tom said. The black kid snickered.

The train cop put his pen in its clip. “Forget to buy a ticket, too?”

Tom nodded, relieved that the man understood.

The train cop grabbed Tom's collar and jerked him from his seat. “Come on, you little snot—”

The black kid said, “Hey, Mr. Tallyman. Be cool.” He was smiling; his voice was cajoling.

“Just let me do my job,” Train Cop said.

“Look. Here, I pay the ticket,” the kid said.

“Too late,” TC said. He pulled Tom by his shirt down the aisle. “At this point you'd have to pay his fine.”

The black kid stood up. “Okay, Mr. Tallyman. Jus' be easy on the cloth.” Standing, he came up to TC's shoulder. TC ignored him and began dragging Tom off the train. Tom felt his shirt tear. TC seemed to defy gravity. His huge torso shouldn't be able to balance on those long, wobbly legs, let alone pull Tom around like he weighed nothing.

The black kid grabbed TC's arm. “Man, what your badge number?”

TC's grip eased on Tom just for a moment, just long enough to push the kid, long enough for Tom to get away.

He ran.

He didn't run—he raced!

He must have been a track star in school—fast, fast, fast. Train Cop couldn't catch him. What's-your-name couldn't catch him. How-old-are-you-where-do-you-live couldn't catch him . . . maybe not even gravity itself . . .

The black kid was running beside him, laughing and flapping his arms. Tom sped up and lost him. Lost him, and then Tom himself was safely lost and invisible again.

Tom ran until his legs remembered they had died of malnutrition, and then he walked.

He walked a long time among the downtown workers, his head just beneath the level of their gaze. Tom observed the way the downtown workers walked, straight-backed and purposeful. Most wore black and carried briefcases, both the men and the women. He liked to look at them. They looked fresh, as if they'd been wrapped in plastic wrap all night as they slept. He wondered what was in their briefcases. Maybe a ham sandwich or a chocolate bar. Most likely just papers, like in his backpack.

Only one person looked at him. A girl, pale and rumpled and overweight, was standing near the Jigglety Bumps Daycare. From a distance she watched the mothers bringing their children to the daycare. She stared at each baby. Her face was intent, her eyes as hungry as his stomach. Then she turned her gaze to Tom. She saw him. Tom quickly walked away.

If he were a Finder, like Samuel Wolflegs said, if there were any such thing, he would find himself food.