"Over a Muslin Tree"

Baltimore 1984 –

He was up early the next day, though he didn't feel like doing much at first. He lounged on stone steps beside the ruined shack, backpack slung over a nearby gravestone. Galabeg's lifeless eyes leered from the backpack's folds, gazing emptily behind the boy.

Smoke curled from a cigarette wedged between Penance's lips. He pulled a very long drag from it, expelling a mess of fumes from his nose. He sighed, leaning back down against the stone slab, and closed his eyes.

Loud squeaks and a jarring clang of metal brought him back to the here and now. A disheveled shopping cart passed by the street beyond the cemetery. From where Penance lounged it was visible for barely an instant, peeking though a narrow gateway in the high stone wall. The bedraggled man pushing it passed just as quickly, his wary eyes locking with the boy's for a millisecond.

But it was just enough.

The cart squeaked to a halt. The cemetery gate inched open and the man shuffled in. He walked with a stoop, back hunched. His eyes were sunken deep inside his head. He wore a knit cap and ratty overcoat— surplus military, from the looks of it. The vagabond looked deeply at Penance, and then the cigarette in his hand. He shook his head emphatically as he walked toward the boy.

Penance casually reached into his back pocket with his other hand; he gripped the busted handle of his little knife tight.

"Mornin'," Penance mumbled.

"No, no, no..." the man wagged a finger; it was covered by a dirty, threadbare glove. He pointed at the cigarette. "That just don't do, does it?"

Penance put the thing between his lips again, and again he blew a mess of smoke out his nose:

"What 'don't do'?"

"Come on, kid: how old are you?"

Penance cocked his head, brow arched.

"Well?" The man crossed his arms.

"Gimme a minute," He muttered, again expelling smoke. "I'm not so good at math."

"You a little smartass, are ya?"

"Not usually."

The man motioned to Penance's backpack and Galabeg's dead eyes:

"Well, you're still young enough to cart around little stuffed animal friends, aren't you?"

Penance shook his head:

"The fox isn't a friend of mine."

"Oh. What is it, then?"

"He's a smartass." Penance smirked.

The man glared at him, a huff of wet air whistling through his nose. He then noticed a tree behind the ruined cemetery shack; it was completely festooned with toilet paper, to the point that it was unclear where the paper ended and the tree began.

"You vandalizing shit in here, you li'l punk?"

"No," Penance answered. "But I do think it looks kida neat, though. A little like a tree in a clootie well."

"What the hell're you talkin' about?"

"Clootie trees," Penance expelled smoke from his nostrils. "Wishing trees. They grow in sacred spots. Wishers tie their wishes to them— little scraps of paper— and hope they come true. In really popular wells those trees can get so covered in wishes that they look like they're fakes. You know, like they're part of a cardboard set, or something."

The hobo furrowed his brow. He considered Penance with a crooked scowl.

"It's, uh, more of a UK kind of thing," the boy mumbled.

"So, you made your own little cootie tree, didja?"

"No."

"You tell the truth, now!"

"Would I be hanging out here, just smoking a cigarette, if I was the one who papered this tree?"

The man opened his mouth, rotted teeth at the ready, but then he stopped all at once, considering the boy's words. He shrugged, grunting.

"It almost makes me a little happy to see a tree like this, though," Penance craned his head up. "It's almost like there's a million prayers dangling up there, right in the air." He looked back over at the hobo. "'Course, this isn't a wishing tree. It's vandalism, like you say. It's not something sacred. Vandalism like that is kinda unholy, actually. Isn't it? It's not the kind of thing that should be on holy ground. Unholy things..."

Penance stared down at his ratty Reeboks. He absently ground one heel against the mossy stone.

"Unholy things... don't belong on holy ground," he whispered.

"Well, I salute you, sir. Li'l Cap'n Obvious, aren't ya? Seriously, though: you can't be smokin' that cigarette, kid."

"Since when?"

"Since, like, forever, you little shit!"

Penance shook his head. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stared at the burning tip.

"Nope. That's not true. Kids used to smoke all the time."

"Yeah, well most of 'em are smarter, today. Now, you wanna go sneak a puff in the school bathroom, like you're the Fonz, or something, that's one thing. Long tradition of stupid kids doin' that—"

"Mmm-mmm," Penance shook his head. "They smoked out in the open. Nobody cared. It was a reward. For a good day's work."

"'Work'?"

"Yeah. You put in your hours, you get a nice smoke break in the middle of the afternoon."

The man leaned against a gravestone. He chuckled, shaking his head:

"Excuse me? What exactly do we have rolled up in that cigarette, kid?"

"They're Camels. Unfiltered." Penance put the cigarette back between his lips, but a disapproving glare from the hobo made him remove it again. "And this was back in the 1850s; coal mines were popping up all over the east coast and in the UK. Got really big in places like Scotland, too..."

"Hate to break it to you, kid, but my granddaddy did his time in the Pennsylvania coal mines, and it's the kind of work that wears a grown man down to his bones. Kids aren't used for that. Never have been. Average coal miner could bench press about five of you."

"Sure could." Penance nodded. "Kids didn't mine the stuff. Men would rip up all the coal chunks out of the veins, and then they were brought up to the surface in these huge, messy piles, all mixed up with other stuff that the company didn't want, and couldn't use. That's where the kids came in; they took all those messy piles and beat them apart with rock hammers, getting those giant chunks down to a small enough size where they could be burned right, and tossing out all the other junk that got mixed in. They called them 'breaker boys'."

"Just where did you learn about all that, huh?"

Penance wedged the cigarette back between his lips and glared at the man with icy eyes:

"History."

"Well, it sounds like tough work. Dangerous. Must've been hard on 'em."

"It was. But then, on breaks, you get to crawl out of the mine and go off a ways to some shady trees, lie down on the grass." He pulled the cigarette from his mouth; his eyes became empty and distant. "You feel a cool breeze, and it's really nice to feel after all that time in the earth. You could always tell where the breaker boys took their breaks, 'cause the grass underneath was always dry and ashy-looking. Place smelled like sweat and dust, and cigarette smoke, too. Breakers were usually kids, but the company also let some elder miners do that workm if they couldn't cut it with a pickaxe anymore. Y'know: if a guy really had been 'worn down to his bones'. Anyway, those old guys were generous with their cigarettes, but usually only if the boys let them yap on and on and on about how much better things were back in 'their time'..."

The hobo squinted at Penance. The corner of one lip was bunched up tight, as if he were sizing him up.

"Everybody thinks things were better back in the 'their time' I guess," Penance mumbled.

The hobo shook his head:

"You're a weird kid, you know that?"

"Thanks," Penance gave the man a wry smile and threw him a mock salute.

The man moved closer to him and he reached the stone steps below the ruined shack. Penance held the knife in his back pocket even tighter, pulling it all the way out, but keeping it hidden behind his back.

The hobo held out his hand:

"Weird or not, kid, I can't let you go on your way with those smokes..."

Penance flicked his cigarette down on the ground; his rusty eyes drilled into the man:

"Are you a thief?" He whispered.

"You gonna make me be one?"

"I could kick and shout," Penance smirked. "You'd go to jail."

The hobo reciprocated the smirk:

"Hot meals and clean sheets, huh? I could bust your little jaw up, too, get me free room and board for a while longer. That might make it harder for you to wrap your lips around a cigarette for a while."

The pair stared each other down for a few seconds, both of their eyes intense.

"Of course," the man drawled, "that's just 'cause I'm a civic-minded fellow..."

Finally Penance gave in; that little smirk devolved into a laugh. He tossed the Camels to the man. He stuffed them into his dirty coat, chuckling a bit himself:

"You think you're just like Tatum O'Neal, don't you?"

"What? Like in Paper Moon?" Penance cocked his head.

"Figured you'd know that movie."

"Yeah. I do. You think I'm like the character she played?"

The man nodded.

"A wise-beyond-their-years con artist?" Penance asked.

The man shook his head:

"Oh, no, kid. Nothing like that. I just think you look a whole lot like a little girl, that's all."

The boy's lips puckered. Penance scoffed, again letting loose a small chuckle as he watched the man toddle off.

"Hey," he called after the hobo. "You wanna earn those cigarettes?"

The man looked back at the boy, who held a small wad of bills in one hand.

"And maybe some icing on the top?"

"What are you talking about, kid?"

"I need a little help with something..."

X

X

X

He banked the car hard, bouncing his jet black mustang against the curb. In once genteel motion he was out of the vehicle and gliding across the street, black umbrella clacking on the oil-stained asphalt as he moved like a spirit over the oily ground. He met a man coming out of an apartment complex; that man wore a gold-embossed FBI vest.

"Agent Noirbarret," the other man said. "Now how's that for punctual!"

"Always," Noirbarret smiled with his pearl-white teeth. "What are our preliminaries?"

"Swept the apartment, top to bottom. Guy's got a real hard-on for Indian stuff. Uh, not the India Indian. Tomahawk and tail-feathers kind of Indian. No cowboy stuff, oddly enough. You'd think they'd be just like mac 'n cheese, right?"

Noirbarret rolled his black eyes. Just then another agent emerged from the building:

"They're ceremonial Native American relics, Agent Noirbarret. Looks like he fancied himself quite the collector. Bunch of pieces up there, and most of them authentic from what I can tell. Most if them seem to be genuine Lakota Sioux."

Noirbarret gave the man an odd frown:

"You carrying an encyclopedia set with you, agent?"

"Ah, no. Kind of a hobby, sir..."

"Ah," Noirbarret nodded.

"There were pictures, too. For some reason a bunch of them seem to be of the same Sioux warrior."

The agent handed Noirbarret a pack of faded photos. He looked them over briefly and then nodded, absently clacking his umbrella against the curb.

"Lone Horn..."

"What's that, sir?"

"Hmm? Oh, nothing."

"Obvious family resemblance, there. Remarkable, really. Probably looking at a great-great granddaddy, give or take a 'great'..."

"Well," the first agent said, "guess it's a fair bet that our Indian enthusiast here was the owner of that silver hatchet over in Memorial Stadium. The plot thickens, doesn't it?"

"I assume you two have done more than just look over our poor victim's curios and relics?"

"Please," the first agent scoffed. "Whaddya think Uncle Sam's paying us for?" He handed Noirbarret a folder, and Noirbarret rifled through its contents in short order.

"This looks like an itinerary," he said. "We've got a coffee shop, an arcade, a pizza restaurant, a public library, a basketball court. And then here we've got..." His voice slowed even as his eyes widened. "We've got mathematics... language arts... social studies... geography… physical education—"

"Like a planner for a kid's schedule," the other agent said. "Now we got a couple rather creepy details to add to this. For one thing, Mister Indian Culture up there doesn't have any kids. At least not that we know of—"

"No. He does not." Noirbarret spoke with certainty.

"And for another thing," the other agent said, "we found that folder in a hidden compartment in his desk. That drawer was hidden but good, too. Real 'cloak and dagger' stuff—"

"Or an ancient Indian secret," the other agent chuckled.

"That folder was the only thing in there. Our guy wanted to keep this stuff very hush-hush. So, I mean, I dunno. Are we thinkin' some kind of pedo thing, or what?"

"And does it, just perchance, somehow tie into our vic's untimely fate in Memorial Stadium?"

Noirbarret practically threw the folder back into the agent's hands. He turned on his heels and walked back toward his car.

"Yes, it does," he muttered.

"Uh, Agent Noirbarret," one of the agents followed him. "If the itinerary is linked to the murders, maybe the next step should be to work over all these places, triangulate them with the nearest public school, then see if we can nail down whatever kid was being stalked."

Noirbarret got into his mustang and revved the engine. He shook his head, grunting dismissively:

"Never mind that," he grumbled. "If I'm right, then that child no longer exists..."

Noirbarret gunned it, spinning his wheels, and he left that agent in a fog of questions and burned rubber.

He barreled through the streets of Baltimore, wheeling about in reckless abandon, until he finally bumped the curb at Memorial Stadium. He stood on the sidewalk for a time, and then he went to pacing. He went to the park's main exit and stood on the street corner, closing his eyes and drawing a breath.

"Fire in my eyes, and blood on my britches..." his hands opened and closed rapidly and he drew a sharp breath. "Sirens closing in, police cars wheeling all around me." He opened his eyes. "Heart races, legs jitter..." he looked across the street at a bus stop; several people sat on the bench, waiting.

"Can't wait..." he muttered.

Suddenly a tubby arm bounced into his well-pressed suit. He reeled, growling, as a fat man waddled past him with oblivious haste. He bore a greasy cheesesteak in two hands, as if holding a sacred relic aloft.

Noirbarret's sour disposition changed when he saw the man lumber into the driver's seat of a taxi cab. He approached the passenger window and leaned his head inside:

"Afternoon," he cooed.

"Ah, ain't that just the way," the cabbie snorted. "Guy spends two hours running a totally dead morning and just gets his hands on his lunch, and then it's all work, work, work—" his voice slowed to a crawl when he looked at the passenger window, only to be confronted by Noirbarret's FBI badge.

"Uh, er, hey," the cabbie straightened up and put his cheesesteak down. "Now, uh, sorry about taking up the curb, here, officer—"

"Agent."

"Agent, right! I mean, I know it's 'no parking', and all, but I only idled the thing for a minute, you know, just to run in an' grab me a cheesesteak from that place around the corner."

"Engine idling is also illegal," Noirbarret said.

"Uh... oh, is it? Heh. I mean, who can keep up with every single little reg, huh?"

"People who pay attention to details." The agent's icy voice grew considerably colder. He narrowed his brow at the cabbie. "Now, I would very much appreciate it if you could give me some details..."

X

X

X

Penance stood in front of the window display, hands in his pockets. It was a colorful thing, trumpeting all things Sony-related, and at the center it brightly advertised the new Walkman D6C Pro.

The hobo came up behind him. He leaned forward to read the display.

"Got a thing for musical gadgets, do you?"

Penance shook his head:

"No. Not really. I, uh, knew a boy who had one."

"Well, anyhow, here's your ticket." The man handed Penance a yellow card.

Penance nodded absently. He pulled a small wad of cash out of his shorts, all his remaining money, and held it out for the man. The man shook his head, closing Penance's fist around the cash:

"Forget about that," he growled. "Man's gotta have standards, doesn't he? For mine: I don't take money from kids."

"But cigarettes?"

The hobo smiled:

"Man's gotta have standards, I said. He doesn't exactly have to be a monk."

"Thanks," Penance said.

"Well, good luck to you, kid. Hope you can meet up with that family of yours in Philly."

Penance moved to cross the street, eyeing the station and its idling silver buses. Before he could take a step, however, the hobo fired off one last line:

"Or whatever it is you're doin'. Whatever you think you need to lie out your ass to hell and creation about, that is..."

Penance looked back at the man; he opened his mouth, indignant, but the hobo held up a finger:

"Don't bother, kid. It's your eyes. The rest of your body does alright, spinning those yarns. But your eyes, well..." He shrugged. "I know a thing or two about lyin', in my time, and for my advice to most people, I'd tell 'em they're too green; they're not practiced enough. Their eyes go quivery, darting all about, madcap, or just being strange in how they move, and how they react, when they get to fibbin'. Yours? Nah, that's not your problem. Your problem is that you have very old eyes."

"'Old'?"

He nodded:

"Practiced eyes. They're like sheets of ice. Can't get a read on anything. And therein lies the giveaway, kid."

"What 'giveaway'?" Penance took a step toward the man, teeth bared. That was an insult to the boy's personal honor; he took significant pride in his time-honored ability to lie out his ass.

He was kinda strange that way.

"Your 'tell', kid. When you lie."

"Just what the heck do I do when I lie?" He barked.

The hobo smiled:

"You look a person straight in the eyes, all honest and unflinching."

Penance's head reared back like a startled ostrich.

"I think, in my humble opinion, the only time you ever tell the truth is when you start lookin' around, ashamed. Embarrassed. And that's a pity, kid. Can't imagine what would bring you to act like that."

"What do you know, anyway?"

"Easy, kid. Don't take offense. All I mean is that I wish you luck, with whatever you're doin', and wherever you go. And forget about the cigarettes, hmm? It's a filthy thing..."

Penance stared at the asphalt of the road; he shrugged:

"I don't do anything that's bad for me," he grumbled.

"Ah: there it is! There it is!"

Penance looked up at him.

"What'd I tell you?" The hobo laughed. "There it was again: the truth. At least as you see it, kid." He walked off chuckling to himself. "That's the thing about youths: they all believe that they're immortal, or something..."

Penance watched the man toddle off. After a moment he wagged his head and crossed the street. People were boarding a whole row of buses at the station, and it took him several minutes to find the one with 'Philadelphia' done up in ugly narrow letters on its dirty placard. He lingered around the line, watching as people got on board, mostly in groups of one or two. Finally he spied what looked like a young mother leading her two kids onboard. Penance slipped in behind the younger children, getting as close as he could to the family, and sure enough the driver took for granted that Penance was in that group when he tore his ticket.

The boy quickly raced to the back of the bus, wedging himself into a window seat in the shadows. He put his tartan bag on the seat next to him and curled up against the window. Before he forgot he quickly unzipped the front pocket of the bag; Galabeg's plastic eyes gaped from the pack, leering across the seats opposite.

The driver had the bus radio set to an oldies station. It was soft, and the noise mostly garbled through speakers that must've been older than he was, but suddenly Penance was surprised to hear Nat King Cole crooning through the cabin:

"Said it's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea,
But it wouldn't be make believe
If you believed in me."

The boy smiled, shaking his head. Tatum did that movie in— what was it?— 1973? Yeah. Give or take two hundred years, right? She'd be about 20, now.

And she could smoke, if she wanted to.

He'd seen that movie in theaters. He remembered the plot quite well: a con artist goes running off with a girl who may or may not be his daughter, and she's at least as oily as he is. They play their cons, scrape nickels together to survive, run elaborate schemes, all that depression-era junk that people nowadays thought you had to do during the depression to actually survive. Through it all there's plenty of hijinks (it's Hollywood: where would they be without hijinks?) and plenty of moments where the two almost part ways. Of course, being the kind of movie it was, they didn't, and in the end the pair ride off into the sunset, tacitly agreeing to keep on surviving together. One for all, and all for one...

Penance stared down at Galabeg's dead eyes as the bus lurched forward. He shook his head again. Yeah: he remembered that movie pretty well.

And he hated it.

While he watched the city roll by from his window Penance thought back to all the times he actually had anyone like that in his life. Someone who knew where he was coming from, and someone he knew enough to trust— at least in the most basic sense of the word—with the most basic facts about himself.

Kinda like a 'Paper Moon parent'. Maybe. Only not really.

He remembered the one that left the biggest mark on him: his first. The man who found him bleeding, bones broken, crushed under a horse's hooves in that miserable little camp on the Scottish coast. It was right after the Battle of Dunbar, when Oliver Cromwell was scorching earth all across the lowlands, handing those rebellious Scots their rear ends. Often their heads, too.

"1650," he whispered.

And he was not off by a few hundred years on that one.

This was not his first 'death', and it wasn't even the most memorable, truth be told. But it was the one that introduced him to his teacher: a man from whom he'd learn the rules of the Game he was fated to play, like it or not, and from whom he'd learn the skills that could keep him alive.

Penance also learned the 'first lesson' from him, and looking back, it was the only lesson that mattered. That was the only lesson that actually kept him alive for all these years:

He learned to trust no one.