The Outlaws of Sherwood Street: Giving to the Poor Read Online Free Page A

shut.
    â€œShh,” I said, touching her shoulder. We exchanged a look, hard to describe except to say that maybe it was the kind of look that only people who’d been through big danger together could share. We said no more until we were out on the street.
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    It was clear and cold outside, the sky an icy blue, the snow on Thatcher’s block all removed except for a blackened snowbank or two. We crossed the street, passed an old woman wearing multiple layers with a New York Giants football jersey on top. She paused to fish cans out of a trash barrel. We kept going, and I told Ashanti about Mr. Nok, Dina DeNunzio, Silas, HQ, and—way more important—Tut-Tut.
    â€œWhoa,” Ashanti said. “Just because those jerks told you he got busted doesn’t mean it’s true. They have to say stuff like that to keep up their jerkdom memberships.”
    â€œYou saying we should pay a visit to Tut-Tut’s place?”
    â€œI was just about to,” Ashanti said. We hurried to the next subway stop, took the stairs down two at a time, because there was a rush of cold air in our faces,: a train was on its way. We swiped our cards and hopped on just as the doors were closing.
    We got off two stops away, ran up to street level. Across the street stood the Quality Coffin Company—“Reliable and Dependable Since 1889.” The delivery door was open, and inside I could see a worker loading a coffin onto the back of a truck. He had no trouble handling the coffin by himself: it was a very small coffin.
    â€œChrist,” Ashanti said, as though our thoughts were running parallel. Then she added, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions.”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œSomething we learned in English today. It always happens when you least expect it.”
    â€œSorrow coming?”
    She shook her head no. “Something from school suddenly making sense.”
    â€œI’m still waiting,” I said.
    Ashanti laughed.
    We went by some auto repair shops, the sidewalks all greasy in front of them. “In that sorrows thing,” I said, “were you including whatever you were going to tell me back at school?”
    Ashanti gazed into the distance. “Later,” she said, and a silence fell between us.
    On the next block, we came to Tut-Tut’s place, if that was how to put it. Tut-Tut lived in the projects—in this case, on the third floor of a dark brick high-rise wedged in between two high-rises just like it. Someone had spilled a plastic garbage bag full of clothes in the treeless, bushless yard out front, clothes that must have been wet and now were frozen in strange positions that no human could adopt.
    We walked to the big front door, a glass door smeared with many handprints that glared in the sunshine. It was locked.
    â€œNow what?” said Ashanti, who’d never been here before.
    â€œWe just wait,” I told her.
    And in a minute or two, a bony-faced woman in a hoodie came hurrying out. I caught the door before it closed. An old man drinking from a paper-bag-wrapped bottle watched us cross the little lobby to the elevator.
    â€œDream on,” he said.
    I pressed the button.
    â€œBut it ain’t gonna come true,” said the old man. “Crappy thing’s out of order.”
    â€œThen there should be a sign,” Ashanti snapped at him.
    Ashanti could startle people, even adults sometimes, but not this guy. He laughed, took another swig, and again said, “Dream on.”
    We took the stairs. The air turned very warm right away, stiflingly hot, actually, and full of smells, none of them good. On the third floor, we walked down a dim hall, where things cooled down again, all the way to cold. Some of the doors had Christmas decorations on them, but not Tut-Tut’s. I knocked.
    On the other side of the door, a man yelled, “He’s got the drop on you,” and a woman