John Hart - Iron House

“And once in New York?”

Michael rolled his shoulders. “The city is not a good place for a boy alone.”

“What do you mean?”

Michael slipped into the left lane, passed a slow-moving car. His voice did not change when he said, “I killed a man nine days after I got off the bus.”

“Why?”

“Because I was small and he was strong. Because the world is cruel. Because he was drunk and insane and wanted to set me on fire for the fun of it.”

“Oh, my God.”

“He found me asleep near the docks, and doused me with gasoline before I could get to my feet. He had one foot on my chest, trying to get the match lit. I remember his shoes, black, tied with white string; pants so crusted with grime they crunched under my fingers. The first match didn’t light. It was damp, I guess. Or he stripped the sulfur. I don’t know. God, maybe. The second match was in his hand when I put the knife in his leg. Right in the side, just above his knee. It hit bone and I twisted it until he fell. Then, I put it in his stomach and I ran.”

Elena shook her head, no words.

Ten years old…

Michael cleared his throat. “There was a lot of that on the street,” he said. “Insanity. Random violence. That’s the unpredictable stuff. Beyond that, it’s easy to spot. People try to own you. They try to control you, put you to work, use you, screw you. Whatever. If a kid on the streets can’t go to the authorities, he doesn’t have much. I was lucky, I guess.”

“How?”

“I was strong, fast, knew how to fight. Iron House gave me that. It made me alert and unforgiving. What I didn’t know until I landed on the streets was that I was smart, too. That people would see that, and that I could use it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“One kid on the streets is vulnerable. Two together are better, but still not safe. A dozen, though, or twenty, that’s an army. Ten months after stepping off the bus, I had six kids working for me. Six months later, I had another ten, some younger than me, some as old as seventeen, even eighteen. We slept together, ate together. And we did jobs. Smash and grab. Burglary. Tourists were always an easy mark. Eventually, people started to notice.”

“Police?”

Michael shook his head. “Gangs, mostly. Some small-time hoods. We weren’t getting rich, but there was value there. Electronics, jewelry, cash. Some people figured it’d be easy to come in and take what I’d built. Kids, they figured, would be easy to scare, easy to co-opt. It was an untapped market, a low-risk opportunity. It got violent.”

He touched the white line on the side of his neck, and Elena asked, “Not a glass door?”

“Another lie. I’m sorry.”

She knew the scars he carried: two on his stomach, three on his ribs, the long one on his neck. They were pale, slightly raised, and she knew the feel of them, cool under her lips.

“We were living under a bridge in Spanish Harlem, maybe seven of us at the time. We’d been there for a few weeks. We moved around, you see? A week in one place, a month in another. I guess we stayed there a day longer than we should have, ’cause some local gangbangers showed up one afternoon. They didn’t want a thing other than to beat the crap out of us. There were only four of them, but everybody else ran.”

“The other children?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“I stayed.”

“And?”

Michael shrugged. “They cut me, I cut them back; but it was only a matter of time. Eventually, they got me down. One of them stepped so hard on my wrist it broke bones. They pinned me down. I should have died.”

“What happened?”

“Someone came.”

Something in the way he said it made Elena think this was the crux of it. A half mile of industrial buildings slid by on greased skids: metal slabs on dark tarmac, chain-link fencing and sodium lights on tall poles. Elena said, “Michael?”

“I’d heard of him but never seen him. He was just a name to me, then, someone to know about, a man to avoid. He was ruthless, people said. A criminal. A killer.”

“Mafia?”

“No. Not Italian. Nobody really knew what he was, although some said Polish; others, Romanian. Actually, he was American, born in Queens to a Serbian prostitute. An orphan, I later learned. He was there when the fight started, a long car on the other side of the street. His window was down. He was watching.”

“While you fought?”

“They got me down, put a knife here.” He touched the line on his neck. It was seven inches long with a jagged twist in the middle. “I was pretty sure they were going to kill me. I was bleeding. They were working themselves up. I saw it in their faces. They were going to do it. Then he was just there.”

Michael blinked and relived it: Crooked legs in a navy suit. Dark hair salted white.

“He looked lost,” Michael said. “That was my first thought. This man is lost and dumb enough to smile about it. Then I saw how fear came over the men who were beating me. They stepped back, hands up. One of them dropped his knife…”

Do you know who I am?

Michael could still feel the steel in the old man’s voice, but there was no way to explain it. No one else could fully grasp what the voice meant that day, what it meant now.

You should leave.

“They didn’t stay to talk.” Michael cleared his throat. “They just ran.”

“Michael, you’re sweating.”

Michael palmed sweat from his forehead. He still saw the old man’s face: a narrow jaw and thin eyebrows, eyes as dark and dull as stone. Two men were with him. They stood while the old man squatted at Michael’s side. He was in his forties, lean with city-pale skin and narrow, maimed hands. His teeth, on the bottom, were crooked and white.

The others ran. Why didn’t you?

I don’t know. I just couldn’t.

How old are you?

Twelve.

Your name is Michael?

Yes.

I’ve heard about you.

But Michael was fading. The blue suit rustled as the old man stood. What do you think, Jimmy?

I think he’s a tough little shit.

Shoes scraped concrete. Light dimmed as Michael bled, and words came down like fog off the river.

That my son was such a boy as this…

Michael was sweating heavily, suddenly warm in the car. He felt the old man’s face, papery and hot under his hand. He felt brittle ribs and a failing chest, the old man’s final, sucking try at breath. “He taught me everything I know,” Michael said. “He made me what I am.”

“You’re pale. Jesus, Michael. You’re white as a sheet.”

“He gave me a home.” Michael’s voice faded as the car drifted left. “He gave me a home and I killed him.”

Little else was said for the next three hours. Elena asked, but Michael shook his head, spoke in fragments. “He was dying. I loved him.”

“And they want to kill you for this?”

“And because I’m with you. They think I’ll sell them out. Go to the cops.”

“For me?”

“For a normal life.”

“Would you do that?”

“No.”

Michael pictured the old man nine days ago. Jaundiced and stripped of flesh, he was propped up with a view of the river. Michael took his hand and told him for the first time about Elena: how he felt, why he wanted to quit the life. He apologized for keeping her a secret.

She’s special. I don’t want this to touch her.

This life?

Yes.

The old man understood. She loves you?

I believe that she does.

The old man nodded yellow tears. She is a gift, Michael, and rare for men like us.