The Long Fall

I swiveled my hips, throwing him to the ground as I lunged toward the overdressed figure sporting the form and grace of my son.

“Twill, stop!”

When he swiveled his head to look at me the hood fell away. He had on a fabric skullcap, which threw me for an instant. Also, I had never seen that look on Twill’s face—but I recognized it. He was a man but seconds away from a desperate and final act. I looked a little farther to the left and saw, behind a large flat folding table, the man I had heretofore only seen buggering little Mardi Bitterman on a computer monitor. Behind him was a canvas screen hung with colorful photographs of panda bears, zebras, and other creatures reminiscent of childish wonder.

Adrenaline is a miracle compound. It ramped through my system like Popeye’s spinach or Captain Marvel’s “Shazam!” This internal elixir reached my ankle, temporarily curing me and setting my feet in motion. I reached Twill in an impossibly short span, grabbing him by both arms because, among other gifts, my son is ambidextrous. He tried to pull away but one thing I had on him was strength.

“It’s over, boy,” I said.

A familiar smile twitched across Twilliam’s lips.

“Hey, Pops,” he said.

“Are you Twill McGill?” a man asked. Not just a man, but Leslie Bitterman. “Where’s my daughter? I know that she’s with you.”

I don’t know what he planned to do next but it didn’t matter because I let go of my son and slapped Leslie hard enough to knock him on his ass. He was sitting on the curb, shaking his head to clear out the stars and cobwebs.

“Hey!” the white man who had pushed me down said.

He was coming right at me.

With my slap-hand I brought together his dark-blue shirt collar and pulled his face close to mine.

“I got a gun in my pocket and nothing to keep me from shooting you dead right here, right now.”

I don’t know if it was the words or the tone of my voice that convinced the guy but he fell back and melted away into the mass of unsuspecting humanity.

Ê€„

52

I took Twill by his right wrist and dragged him away from the street fair like an angry nanny might do with a naughty five-year-old. We didn’t stop moving for six blocks.

“Dad. Dad!”

I realized that my mind had been racing ahead without me.

“What?”

“What’s wrong with your foot?”

“My what?”

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“You’re limping.”

His words, it seemed, brought the pain back into my ankle.

We were standing on the western sidewalk of the Natural History Museum. Twill led me to a bench there.

Willie Sanderson was on my mind. Where was he?

Who would the monster kill next?

“Dad?”

“You don’t have to worry about Mardi’s father anymore,” I said. “I know what he did to her and I’ll take care of him. But you should have come to me, son. You should always come to me when you have a problem.”

“Mardi didn’t want anybody to know.”

“There’s no secrets between us, Twill. I would no more betray that girl than you would. Don’t you know that?”

“I guess.”

“And what kind of fool are you, planning to walk up to somebody and shoot him in broad daylight in front of a thousand people?”

“How’d you know I planned to shoot him?”

“Don’t you think I know your hiding places, boy? And I’d have to be blind not to see what was goin’ on with that girl. What I couldn’t see was how making yourself a martyr in front of a street full of people was going to help.”

“No, man,” he said to me as if I were one of his school friends. “I had this.” He pulled the fabric hat from his head. In his hand the woolen skullcap opened into a ski mask. “That way nobody could see my face and . . .”

Twill stood up and pulled the sweatshirt-hoodie up over his head. Underneath he was wearing an ugly but bright orange-red Hawaiian shirt festooned with images of pelicans and pineapples.

My irrepressible son grinned.

“I woulda walked away with the gun at my side and then pulled off the hoodie in an alley two blocks away. Then I’da made it into Central Park, where there’s a rock I’d put the gun under.”

It wasn’t a half-bad plan. You’d have to be focused to pull it off, but Twill never had an attention deficit.

“Listen, son,” I said in spite of how impressed I was. “You’re smart and fearless. But you don’t know everything. That man deserves anything he gets but not by you taking the law in your own hands. Killing is wrong and I don’t want you involved with anything like that.” Sometimes I marvel at the simplicity of communication between people who share closeness. I was raised on the Hegelian dialectic, but there is no love in that language.

“That’s why you ran out there after me?” Twill asked, but I felt that there was another question on his mind.

“I’d die to protect you,” I replied to the unspoken interrogative.

Twill sat there on the public bench, staring into my eyes. I have rarely felt closer to another human being.

After a moment he nodded.

“I’m sorry, Pops,” he said.

I held out a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Grab a cab home and put the pistol in my office, in the desk.”

“All right. But put that away. I got my own money.”