Ballad & Dagger, page 24
At first, I’m not sure what to do with myself. The other times, it was obvious where to start—shattered bodies writhing in the street don’t leave time for awkward standing around and asking questions. “What happened?”
He shakes his big shiny head and pulls a hand down his face, eyes squeezed shut. “I just…I was going over numbers with Safiya and the crew, ’bout to, you know…make a plan.” He flinches, like the very word sent another dangerous pulse of death through him.
“Shhh,” Safiya says gently. Then to me: “He just got quiet suddenly, held a hand to his chest, and started sweating. I put the word out over the Pirate Radio Hour. We were hoping you’d hear, but we didn’t want to reach out directly, because they’re probably monitoring the phones.”
“Turns out they’re watching the streets, too,” Rabbi Hidalgo says.
Tolo looks up, that familiar flicker of violence in his eyes. “Oh?”
Rabbi Hidalgo waves him off. “We’re fine, sobrino. You worry about you, please. The underground tunnel system came in very handy, as you’ve seen, so thank you for that.”
System? There’s so much more to Little Madrigal than I ever realized, and I always thought I knew more than the average schmo.
I kneel down in front of Tolo. “I’m going to put my hand on your chest, okay?”
“Mmm.” He nods his assent, breathing, I can now see, way too fast.
“Oh, and if I hum,” I tell them, placing open palms over his heart as I close my eyes, “that’s normal.”
“This kid,” Tolo scoffs, not unkindly. His chest rises and falls quickly a few times with laughter. “No wonder Chela likes him. Weirdos, both of ’em.”
She told him she likes me? I manage to keep my hands from shaking, but that whole focus thing I just mentioned? Gone. Out the window.
Did she tell him before or after she thought I betrayed her? I have so many questions, none appropriate at the moment, I know. But still I wonder: Is she the forgiving type? Can she be reasoned with? Doesn’t seem like it, but then again, she’s unpredictable. Deliciously unpredictable.
Stop! Concentrate!
I pull in a big breath of air and exhale it with a whispered melody. The notes pull my mind back into my body, and then, thankfully, into the inner workings of Tolo’s chest.
That heart is no joke. It’s not that I can see it, exactly; it’s the presence of it. Each galumphing beat thunders through him, through me, through everything, like his pulse registers tiny terremotos through the fault lines of Madrigal, reaches all the lonely, uncertain souls cooped up in their apartments with their weary eyes on the empty streets. The beat is solid, unflinching, the sure stride of a warrior who stands solid while the whirlwind of battle rages around him.
No, there is nothing wrong with Tolo Baracasa’s heart.
But I think I do know what is struggling.
Gently, I let my hands slide upward to the man’s huge shoulders. Eyes still closed, I stand, ignore the sounds of concern and wonder coming from Rabbi Hidalgo and Safiya, ignore my stray thoughts about Chela, and focus on the melody, let it guide me.
This song is somber and stern, full of dangling whole notes, a chant that glides across the booming mountain range of Tolo’s heartbeat. But as I get closer to his head, the melody falters, drops off, shambles back in a crumbling shadow of itself, cuts out completely.
“What is it?” Tolo’s voice booms through my reverie. “What’s wrong?”
“Quiet, man,” Safiya insists. “Let the kid work.”
The melody returns, resolving into a jangly, dangerous thing. It wants to shatter all constraints, a caged beast—now furious, now withdrawn. There is no rhythm to it, no logic.
I open my eyes. “You’re not having a heart attack.” I’m surprised by the certainty in my voice, even more surprised that no one else seems to question it. They just listen and nod. Well, Safiya and Rabbi Hidalgo nod. Tolo leans back and lets out a huge, dramatic sigh of relief.
“Oh man! Thank freaking God!” he bellows. “What the hell is it, then?”
“It’s panic,” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t.
Tolo leans forward, both hands on his knees now, and glares at me. “Excuse me?”
“I…” I step back, grasping for a better explanation. So much for certainty.
He stands, and look, it’s rare that someone can make me feel small, not at my big height. But Tolo is a sheer wall. Even in a weakened state, it’s obvious he could just walk forward and crush my very existence into dust.
Then again, I’m right. “Panic,” I say again, shoring myself up. “It’s okay. I mean, you’re okay. I mean…” Rabbi Hidalgo’s words from earlier return to me. “It’s not us—it’s the world.”
Tolo stares and stares. Then he grunts. Sits. Slouches. “The kid’s right,” he finally says, head in hands. “This whole thing has me all jacked up inside, can’t lie. We’ve been through war, but this is something else. It’s worse. Because it’s our own folks. And those things.” He lets out a long, sad sigh. Looks up at me. “Panic is actually better than a heart attack, huh?”
I manage to smile. “Definitely. Except I’m not sure there’s anything I can do for it.”
“Oh, you already did,” Tolo says. “I mean, I’m still panicking, don’t get me wrong. I just…At least now I can panic about what’s actually wrong instead of that plus a heart attack to boot.” He looks at Safiya, who’s already heading toward the door at the far end of the room. “Am I allowed to have coffee now that I’m not dying?”
“I’ll have Big Moses put some on.” She shoots him a skeptical glare as she heads into the shadows. “Gonna get another patrol out on the streets and let folks know you’re okay. And for the record, I never thought you were dying. Not really.”
“Yeah, great,” Tolo says. “I’ll put that in the official books.”
“And thanks, Mateo,” Safiya calls. Then a door slams and she’s gone.
“Why don’t you just turn these guys loose on ’em?” I ask, now taking the time to look at the stone figures standing throughout the basement.
“What, the golem army I inherited from a mom I barely remember?”
“They originally belonged to the San Madrigal Beit Hashem congregation,” Rabbi Hidalgo points out. For a moment, I think these two are about to shatter their still-fresh peace.
Instead, they both burst out laughing, some long-lost family joke that’s way over my head.
I can see the resemblance between these giants—that full-bodied chuckle, those tree-trunk arms. Tolo strolls nonchalantly among the ominous sculpture garden around us. “Lotta good these damn things do me.”
“Why?” I ask.
He throws up his hands. “We can’t figure out how to turn ’em on! Mom forgot to send the instruction manual.”
“I was hoping, now that we’re reunited,” Rabbi Hidalgo says, “we could put our heads together and figure it out. But so far…nothing.”
“Fortunately,” Tolo adds with a grimace, “Gerval and them don’t know that. But it’s only a matter of time before they figure out we would’ve used ’em if we knew how.”
“Those books we stole from the recording studio don’t help?”
“Well, Chela—” Tolo starts to say, but a look from Rabbi Hidalgo cuts him short. “We only have access to the ledger and the music book,” he amends. “And so far, all we’ve gotten from them are what came out on vote night—a small breakaway sect of pirates has maintained power since at least the 1810 accords. They were trading and cutting nasty deals with agents of various empires and slavers all along. Empire pirates. Seems I didn’t turn out the way they hoped—they could tell I wouldn’t be friendly to the cause, which is a compliment, I guess—so Bisconte had to pivot to someone more amenable to their machinations.”
“Gerval,” I spit.
“The other end of things,” Rabbi Hidalgo says, “the spiritual stuff, is out of our hands right now, unfortunately.”
I stand. “I should get back. I gotta help my tía set up for her ocha birthday party.”
Tolo raises his eyebrows. “She’s still celebrating, even with everything going on? Respect. We’ll come through, right, Tío?”
Rabbi Hidalgo looks all teary-eyed for a moment, probably still getting used to his long-lost nephew acknowledging their bond. “Of course, of course. We must celebrate even in darkness. I’ll escort young Mateo home, hmm? I think this time we’ll take the tunnels most of the way.”
“I HAVE TO APOLOGIZE,” RABBI Hidalgo says as we emerge from the underground darkness onto the wintery backstreets near my place.
“Huh?”
It’s only been, what, a few hours I’ve spent with this man, and we’ve laughed and cried together, run for our lives twice, and he’s told me family secrets that have probably never been revealed to an outsider before. I didn’t wake up this grim morning thinking I’d make a new friend, especially not a middle-aged, red-bearded rabbi. He certainly has nothing to apologize for.
“When I saw you at the cemetery the other day and asked you a question, I was being cryptic, you know. Mysterious. It’s a thing they teach us in rabbi school.” He looks at me, and I realize, a moment too late, that he’s made a joke and is checking to see if I’d laugh. “Bah, that’s all right. They don’t really, but they might as well. Rabbis love to ask deep questions that people have to answer for themselves. Usually, it’s a very effective way to get someone to learn. If I tell you something, you will nod and smile and keep moving, hmm? But if I ask you something and you come up with the answer yourself, well, it’s true in a different way, isn’t it?”
“I guess so, yeah. But who knows what answer I’ll come up with.”
“Heh, indeed, indeed.”
We’ve reached the corner of Fulton; it stretches on and on in either direction, empty. Shuttered shops. A thin layer of freshly fallen snow on the street. This can’t go on. These businesses must be hemorrhaging money. Maybe that’s the empire pirates’ plan: strangle the tiny economies along with our lifeblood and culture until we’re all just gasping for breath, and then fill the void with their power grab. I hate it. All of it. I don’t even know how everyone decided to shut down. It was like a silent understanding passed through the neighborhood over the past few days: if our electoral voice can be snatched away so easily, then fine, we won’t speak in any other way, either. No songs, no stories. No gossip on the corner, no old folks in the park. We’re only hurting ourselves, really, but when you’re left with no move to make except to withhold your voice, maybe that’s the only thing that makes sense.
I shake away all these chaotic daydreams, glance around again, then look up at Rabbi Hidalgo. “Sorry—you were apologizing for something and being all woo-woo again, and then I got distracted.”
He laughs. “Maybe you should think about becoming a rabbi.”
“Ha.” We fall into a cautious stride down the middle of Fulton Street—that way we could easily break to one direction or another if needed, I guess. Our footsteps crunch a whispered song in time with our strut. In this moment, the world feels like ours, even though it’s anything but.
“Anyway, as I was saying…At the betahayim, I asked if you knew why it was called that.”
“Technically, you made fun of me for thinking it was the name of the cemetery,” I point out.
“Technically, my daughter did that. I just had a good laugh at your expense.”
“This is the worst apology ever, just FYI.”
“That’s fair. Here.” He pulls one hand out of his overcoat pocket and extends a fist toward me. A thin golden chain dangles through his clenched fingers.
I place my open hand under his closed one, and he drops a little pendant necklace into it. “What’s this?”
“It’s for you. The answer.”
Two Hebrew letters, chet and yod, glimmer up at me from my palm. They spell the word chai—life. I look at the rabbi. “Thank you.” Then I squint. “You’re still being cryptic, though. You know that, right?”
He waves his hands defensively. “No, no! This is just a visual aid—I was about to explain!”
“Uh-huh.” I let the chain dangle and then clasp it around my neck.
“Hey!” someone yells from behind us. We both freeze, my heart already racing, then slowly turn. “Who said you could be out and about?”
An old Mercedes idles at the top of the block. Arco “El Gorro” Kordal stands by the open driver’s side door, leering at us while he slaps his palm with an aluminum baseball bat. I have no idea why they call him “the Hat”—he never wears one. But pirates love their nicknames, and Arco loves being a pirate. I can just make out someone in the passenger seat, but it’s impossible to see a face.
A few feet behind the car, Vedo Bisconte stands stock-still in the snow, his expression blank. I’ve never trusted him, but seeing him here, my own classmate on the side of the people who brought our whole world to a standstill, makes the iciness rise back up inside me. There’s something different about him (though, of course, the past week has changed all of us). That sniveling teenager with the crush on Chela is gone. Someone colder and crueler has emerged in his place.
Rabbi Hidalgo shakes his head with a scoff. “I said we could be out and about. The head rabbi of Little Madrigal and a member of the Cabildo, as you know. But no one needs anyone’s permission to walk these streets, my friends. Now, Arco, put that bat away—you look ridiculous.” He starts to turn his back to them, still chuckling to himself. “And, Vedo, get home to your mommy. Tell her she’s gone too far this time.”
The engine roars before Arco has even slammed the door. I feel more than see that Rabbi Hidalgo is frozen in his tracks, like he can’t quite believe what’s happening. I can, though. I shove him as hard as I can as the car barrels toward us. Rabbi Hidalgo stumbles onto the far sidewalk and I leap the opposite way as a whoosh of steel and glass hurdles past. I slam into a mailbox and glance up when I hear brakes screech. The Mercedes skids on the snow and then cuts hard in the opposite direction and plows straight into a parked SUV, crumpling both vehicles’ sides.
After the horrific sounds of smashing metal and shattering glass, there’s a second of stillness. I clamber to my feet—shaken and bruised, probably, but fine. Arco lurches out of the totaled Benz, bat in hand. Rabbi Hidalgo is already making his way toward them, probably to help, and Arco takes one long step and swings. It’s haphazard and off-balance, but the rabbi catches it right on the side of his head and drops with just a whispered gasp.
I launch forward, propelled by fear and rage and I don’t know what else, skid over the back of the Benz, and crash into Arco with all my might. He clatters to the ground, and his head cracks against the curb with a sickening wet crunch. And then there’s bright red blood on the snow and Arco’s not moving at all; he’s just an object, perfectly still.
I’m not moving, either, but breath leaves my mouth in tiny clouds. It seems like that’s the only movement in the whole world, the tiny shush of my breath leaving my body in a gentle mist, rising, rising.
A soft crunching sounds, and I look up, past the sudden violence of those drastic tire tracks in the freshly fallen snow, to where Vedo has turned and is slowly walking away.
THE RABBI.
With a glance, I know he’s alive. His chest rises, and his skin is still the same rich dark brown.
I don’t have to check anything to know that Arco is dead. That I killed him.
I didn’t mean to.
I drop to my knees beside Arco’s body. He’s so still. And I made him that way. With a single shove, I set off a series of tiny disasters inside him that wiped out everything he was and would be and snatched him from all those who cherished him.
And probably enshrined him in my own nightmares for all time.
No.
I refuse to go down that path. I might be the only person who can actually reverse things. So I will.
If I can, that is.
I roll him over. Bright blood still spills from the pink gash across his forehead. His eyes see nothing. His light brown skin is clammy under my fingertips.
Then I block out the world and let the melody slide in.
The curb split his skull, reached all the way to his brain, and hammered that enough to shut everything down. There are shards of bone in there, too. All that will need repair, yes, and that’s where I’ll begin. But there will be more beyond that. His life is another matter. That will be something new.
A lonely waltz unravels inside me; the damaged brain matter strengthens, hums, and reinvigorates as my fingers stretch along Arco’s temples, through his blood-drenched hair. I feel the tissue push outward, expel each splinter of bone. Then cartilage forms across the slim chasm on his skull.
The song swells, and my open palms land on his chest.
“You will live,” I say out loud to the empty street, the dead man, the falling snow. “You will live.”
One-two-three, two-two-three, the waltz sizzles on within me, within him, and harmonies break down, re-form, twist, and tumble toward some ever-dissonant climax, and then all of it grinds to a halt.
Silence.
My own breath.
Silence.
The churn of the city.
Silence.
No.
Something’s wrong.
It’s a silence deeper than everything else. It blots out the ambient hum of the world, covers everything. Pure void.
Death. It’s death I’ve touched upon, and it will eclipse me if I let it; that silence forms a canyon so vast, it is beyond any song, bigger than the world.
I pull back with a gasp. I’m standing before I realize it, backing away.
Arco’s stopped bleeding, but he’s still dead. I’ve still killed him.
The rabbi’s chest rises and falls, steady. He’s okay for the moment. But the passenger in the car…I glance at the wreck. He might be alive, too.
