As nice as the sex was, what really stuck in her head was the conversation. After fucking, they sat up in bed all night talking. She felt on her guard, so she didn't tell him anything of the scenes she had been into since ten, but he poured his heart out. He talked about his family, his brother, his uncle, the doctor that got him the gig in the hospital, what it felt like working with kids, how his own brother reminded him of the black kids he cared for every day, the new thoughts and connections he was making in his head about kids and parents. All these new ideas of his were things she could have told him when she was twelve. As she listened, she had the feeling he was telling her all this to get a specific reaction from her. He wanted to hear something. Finally, she said that he might as well slash his wrists if he quit the hospital and worked with his father and uncle. He was crazy even to consider becoming an electrician, and that the further he removed himself from that family the more of a human being he would become. That if he went into construction and became a full-blooded De Coco, whatever heart and feeling he had would shrivel up inside him faster than a hard-on in a room full of nuns. Stony freaked out and started running around the apartment, shouting at her that she was a dumb cunt and didn't know shit from Shinola about anything and basically saying that she just didn't understand. Annette just shrugged and felt O.K., I'm wrong, no sweat. But later that night, when she sat up because Stony was tossing and turning, moaning in his sleep, she knew she had hit it dead on the nose.
S
TONY HELD COURT
in the day room facing a semicircle of six wheelchairs. Besides Derek and Tyrone his fan club had expanded in the course of the day to a red-headed nine-year-old anemic named Felix; a horribly scarred ten-year-old, Freddy, who had fallen on a third rail while hitching a ride on the back of a subway and had been in Cresthaven for a year undergoing skin grafts; a long-haired, thin, eight-year-old girl, Esperanza, who had an undiagnosed blood disease; and an eleven-year-old girl named April, who had a wired jaw.
"Anyway, folks, this next story is true. It's about something that happened right outside this hospital."
"Man, you lyin' awready." Derek laughed.
"Hey look, I'm an Indian, you forget?" Stony leaned forward in his folding chair. "Indians don't lie."
"You really an Indian?" Felix asked.
"Ask Derek and Tyrone. My grandfather's name was Cochise. You ever hear of him?"
Six negatives. "Well, how 'bout my father, Creamchise?"
Freddy laughed, the others still indicated no. Stony winked at Freddy.
"Well, see, my tribe, the De Cocos, useta live on a reservation hundreds a years ago right outside on Fordham Road, which was pretty good because we could get out of our tepees in the mornin' an' go shoppin' in Alexander's, right?"
Finally everybody laughed, except April, who couldn't move her jaw.
"Well, actually, there was nothin' to Fordham Road in those days, just a couple of hamburger places, a beauty parlor and the Loew's Paradise. Matter of fact, Fordham Road used to be such a drag that the Indians called it Boredom Road. There was really nothin' there but Indians, millions a Indians an' they were all De Cocos, just one big fat tribe."
"Was there buffaloes?" Esperanza giggled, covering her mouth after the question.
"Buffaloes! Man, there was buffaloes, antelopes, lions, elephants, turkeys, there's
still
a lotta them, there was tigers, gorillas. Hey, look, down by this water hole there was so many different animals, that they just threw a fence up and called it the Bronx Zoo."
April smirked as best she could. Stony gave her Groucho eyes, tapping an imaginary cigar.
"Was there snakes?" Tyrone asked with a look of disgust on his face.
"No, no snakes."
"Good!"
"The snakes in the zoo came up on the subway from Manhattan." Freddy flinched. Stony cursed himself.
"Anyway, gettin' back to my story, hundreds a years ago Fordham Road was nothin' but Indians. An' these were tough Indians, man, they were so tough they useta eat steak with a spoon."
"I hate steak," said Tyrone.
"Shut up, stupid!" Derek sneered.
"The De Cocos had a ritual you had to go through to be a full-blooded Indian. See, when you got old enough they gave you a test to see how tough you were. There useta be this big cave right outside this hospital. This was way before Cresthaven was built, and what they would do was they would line up all the young men and blindfold 'em, give 'em an ax each, an' one by one they would take them way, way back into the cave, where there was spiders an' bats"—Stony curled his face in disgust—"but no snakes. Now this cat was blindfolded, remember? And they would leave him there, just one scared, blindfolded young brave, and the test was he had to get out of the cave without takin' off the blindfold an' the way he had to do that was by takin' the ax and tappin' the walls like this." Stony rapped his knuckles slowly and at paced intervals, like heartbeats, on the seat of his chair. "Y'see? An' as he moved along the cave an' got closer to the opening, the sound of the tapping would get lighter because the walls would be gettin' hollower, you got that? An' in this way, he would find the opening where all the braves would be waitin' for him. When all the braves passed this test, they would have this big party to welcome them into manhood."
"Would they do war dances?"
"
War
dances! This was a
party
, man! They would throw on some heavy jams, some Curtis, some James Brown, Tower of Power, you name it! These cats would put 'Soul Train' right outta business. They had this dynamite dance called the Funky Buffalo, lemme see if I remember it." Stony got up, thinking fast. "Now gimme a sec, it's an old ancestral dance. I gotta remember how to do it." Stony finally decided to get down on all fours, made grunting noises and kicked his legs back while moving in a circle.
"Tha's weak!"
"I woun't dance wit'
choo,
man!"
All the kids laughed, slapping their knees and imitating Stony's buffalo grunts.
Stony got up, his face flushed, laughing along with them. "Well, y'see they
had
to dance like that, you know, on all fours, 'cause the women in the tribe were only nine inches tall, man, an' if you do one a these numbers"—Stony did a high-stepping rain dance—"you dance like that, you likely to wipe out the whole ladies' club if you ain't careful. But I'm gettin' away from the story here. One day for the initiation they send this young brave way back in the cave, and they're all on the outside waitin' an' they hear"—Stony tapped on the chair seat—"from inside 'cause he's tappin' the ax, right? Then all of a sudden they hear this 'rrrrrr.' " Stony made a rumbling noise in the back of his throat. "An' all of a sudden everything went
Boom!
It was a cave-in! Rocks started flyin', the earth shook, clouds a dust came bloomin' outta the cave, oh, it was terrible!" Stony held his head.
"What happened to the Indian?"
Stony started tapping on the seat. "Well, they heard him tappin' inside, so they tried to dig him out soon as the earth settled, an' the rocks stopped flyin' an' the dust cleared. But the cave was blocked to the sky with gigantic boulders and they couldn't get in more than two inches an' they tried, boy, they tried, they pulled, an' yanked and tugged, but they couldn't move one boulder. I mean they tried for
hours
while they could still hear that tappin' and all the women were weepin' an' wailin' and the men were gruntin' an sweatin' but
nothin'
from
nothin\
man."
Stony kept tapping as he told the story. "There wasn't one Indian who wasn't knocked out to the bone. They just couldn't go on anymore. Even the women and children were exhausted. Then all of a sudden the tapping stopped."
Stony stopped tapping the chair.
"He was dead?" In a whisper.
"Instead of havin' a celebration they wound up havin' a funeral." Stony sadly shook his head. "They never tried another cave initiation again. They just put flowers in fronna the blocked cave for the dead young brave's spirit and called it a day. That woulda been that, except that the next year on the first anniversary of the cave-in, in the middle of the night"—Stony started tapping his chair and said in a hoarse whisper—"the tapping started again!"
Derek looked worried, everybody was frowning. "An' every year after that, on the same midnight that tapping was heard, and all the De Cocos shook in fear and prayed to their gods and made sacrifices; they sacrificed crops, they sacrificed white birds, they sacrificed lambs. One year they even sacrificed a great buffalo whose burned bones spelled 'murder,' but the tapping wouldn't stop and slowly, year by year, the De Cocos started leaving, wandering all over the world until there was nobody left to hear that midnight concert but the wind." Stony continued to tap, the sound filling the room. "Then, many years later, white men came to build a town and they saw that cave, and it was in the way, so they blew it up with dynamite and started building houses and banks and train stations and a big town was in full swing, but every year on this one particular midnight they heard strange tappings from the spot where the old cave useta be—it echoed through the town like the ticking of a giant clock and nobody knew what it was or where it was coming from. This old, crazy lady said she saw a blindfolded Indian wandering the dark streets one night with an ax in his hand, but when she went to touch him to take off the blindfold, he vanished right in front of her face. Nobody would believe her because she was out of her tree, but she knew she really saw him and every year when that tapping sound was heard she would go out into the street, see him stumbling around and she would try to help him, but he always vanished before she touched him. Then one year on that special midnight, she heard the tapping, got dressed and went out looking for him. Before she could find him, two robbers tried to hold her up. When she wouldn't give them her money, they stabbed her. When the mornin' came, they found the old lady dead in the street, clutchin' an old piece of cloth, what looked like it coulda been used as a blindfold. And about a hundred yards up the road they found two more bodies—the robbers." Stony started tapping again. "Their heads was split open with an ax."
"It was the Indian?"
"Right after that, the tapping stopped, for
years
nobody heard nothin' ever again. Except last year when I was walkin' around the hospital outside I heard somethin' like tappin'."
"Was it him?"
"I didn't hang around to find out, I'll tell you that much ... but I wouldn't worry about it; it was probably a woodpecker or somethin'."
"Ah bet it was him!"
"He only go after bad guys, right?"
"Hey listen, you know somethin' I just realized? Tonight's the night! This is the day a the year he got killed in the cave-in!"
"Is he comin' here?"
"Ah'll kung-
fu
that motha!"
"Look, I got a confession to make. That Indian was my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, so if he comes around I know I'm safe because I'm his blood, but what can I do to protect you guys?" Stony screwed up his face in concentration. "I know! I'll make you all spit brothers!"
"What's that?"
"It's like bloodbrothers, but it don't hurt. O.K., everybody take your thumb and spit on it like this." Stony pressed his thumb to his lips and made a blow-dart sound. All six of them followed suit. "O.K. Now hold up your thumbs." Stony pressed his wet thumb against theirs.
"Naka-Maga-Walla." He solemnly passed from one recipient to the next. "Naka-Maga-Walla." When they had all received communion, Stony stepped back. "We are now all spit brothers, safe from any danger. The Indian ghost is on our side. Whenever you're in trouble just hold up your thumb an' say, 'Naka-Maga-Walla!' and the ghost Indian will help you out. An' in case he's busy an' can't make it, since you're all spit brothers, you gotta help each other out, so any time you hear anybody say, 'Naka-Maga-Walla,' you come runnin', O.K.?"
They nodded seriously.
"And the next time you see any a your friends or any a the nurses or the doctors you make 'em spit brothers a yours 'cause the more spit brothers you got, the better off you are. So just spit on your thumb, hold it up to theirs an' say—"
"Naka-Maga-Walla!" they finished, more or less in unison.
Stony looked at his watch. "Jeez, it's four-thirty, I gotta go, kiddos, see you tomorrow." As Stony left the day room, two nurses coming in to take the kids back to their rooms for dinner were assaulted by thumbs and Indian chants. Stony watched as the two confused and amused nurses were initiated in a solemn ceremony, expanding the Naka-Maga-Walla spit brotherhood to nine.
Stony whistled as he soft-shoed into the locker room. Weekend coming up. He and Annette were going to Bear Mountain tomorrow and could have a nice time if she'd just shut her yap about his family. He got a half ounce of Ciba-Ciba from Chili Mac, and they was going to do some communing with nature. "Ah said le's hear it for da com-mu-nin' wit' nature!" Stony clapped his hands and did a James Brown slide over to his locker in the deserted room. Three aisles over, out of Stony's sight, sat a totally stoned orderly grooving on his combination lock which he couldn't remember the combination to. "Naka-Maga-
Walla
!" Stony cackled. "De Coco da
Indian!
" He slipped out of his whites. "Cove-dwellin' Indian!" The orderly gave up on his lock and decided to blow some more hash. He took out a corncob pipe from his shirt pocket and sluggishly tried to scrape out the ash with his finger. "Ah said watch out for da cave-dwellin' Indian!" The orderly rapped the pipe on the long bench to clear out some crud. The slow, hollow tapping echoed through the locker room. Stony was in the middle of lacing his boots when the sound froze him in mid-crouch.
"Motha
fuck
!" The orderly weaved on the bench like a cobra coming out of a basket as he caught the blur of Stony running half-dressed and wild-eyed through the exit. He squinted at his chunk of hash and nodded. " 'S' good shit."