“You’re going to be here. You watch him,” Piper says in a small voice.
“Well, what if I wasn’t?” Theresa’s hands are planted firmly on her hips. Her voice is full of authority. “This is training.
“Theresa,” Annie scolds. “Let Piper alone, okay?”
Piper stares hard at Theresa and then suddenly her face caves in. “Fine,” she whispers, peering in at the baby. The baby’s eyes are still closed. Piper glances anxiously at Annie. “The blanket too?” she whispers.
“Yep, you carry him in it,” Annie explains.
Piper takes a deep breath, then wiggles her hands underneath the blanket, scooping the baby out of the basket. “I did it,” she whispers, smiling a little. She carries him out the door, holding him away from her chest like a football.
“See, see what I did.” Theresa pats herself proudly as I head for the door.
“Nat, really, you can stay.”
“Nat home. I want to go home,” Natalie says, stubbing her toe against the floor.
“Natalie, c’mon. Just stay here,” I tell her.
“Nat home,” she repeats.
“Okay,” I concede. Natalie has been pretty cooperative today. I don’t want to push it. “I’ll send Jimmy up, then I’ll take Nat home,” I call back to Annie and Theresa.
“Why doesn’t he just come in himself? Jimmy, c’mon,”“ Theresa belts from Piper’s room.
“Hey Jimmy!” I open the door into the now near blackness of the darkest September afternoon I’ve ever seen. Piper is right behind me, carrying her teeny-tiny brother, followed by Natalie.
“Light on, light on,” Nat mutters. She snaps the switch at the front door back and forth, back and forth, but no light illuminates the gloomy outside.
“It’s broken, Nat,” I tell her.
The fog is blowing through like smoke. I can’t even see the cell house, which is ten feet across the narrow Alcatraz road. The wind blows a tin can down the steep switchback. “Jimmy!” I shout. “They need my dad up here to fix these lights. Jim meeeeee!”
Natalie walks behind me. She isn’t touching me but her presence is close, too close. That’s Natalie for you. She’s always too close or too far away.
“He’s not here. You go back. I’m going to take Nat home,” I tell Piper, changing course under Piper’s window, when suddenly something clammy and cold closes around my neck, crushing my throat.
“Shut it,” a voice whispers in my ear, “or you die.”
32. THE GOOD PRISONER
Same day-Friday, September 13, 1935
“Don’t say a word, not one word,” Buddy Boy drawls.
It’s only Buddy.
Buddy won’t let anything bad happen. Buddy likes us.
“Ease up.” Willy One Arm’s whiny voice.
The cold hand lessens its grip around my windpipe. I take a big breath and twist hard. The fingers burn into me like a taut rope. I can feel the tall hovering frame behind me, the whispery voice, the stale smell, and the three-fingered hand. It’s Seven Fingers in a guard uniform complete down to his shiny black shoes.
Buddy Boy has one of Piper’s hands twisted behind her back. Her other arm clutches the baby. Buddy Boy has a gun forced up into her back. Buddy? Our buddy.
He’s dressed as a guard too. In front Willy One Arm, in a guard shirt and pants but no jacket, clutches Natalie in the crook of his one wiry arm. His gun is in his hand, covered by an undershirt. Nat’s faced the other way as if she can’t bear to look at Willy. Her head jerks in small agitated twitches, which startle Molly, who sits on Willy’s shoulder.
“Quit it!” Willy whines. “Buddy! Make her stop.”
“The warden’s kid brought the baby.” Seven Fingers’s voice makes my skin crawl.
Natalie is shaking all over, trying to spin herself free of the arm around her throat, the gun jammed in her back. “Natalie doesn’t like that. I don’t I don’t like that,” Nat says.
Buddy smiles and smiles like he can’t turn off his lips, but his eyes are like points on barbed wire. “What you bring the baby out for?” he growls at Piper.
“Just snap his neck.” Seven Fingers’s whispery Bull Durham breath in my ear.
“Buddy! Buddy! Tell him not to say that,” I plead.
Willy One Arm tries to cross himself without loosening his grip on the still-twitching Natalie. “Can’t do nothin’ to that baby,” he mutters.
I see a flash of the baby’s eyes. He starts to cry.
Piper squirms like crazy, but Buddy has her tight. “Buddy, listen to me, Buddy.” Piper’s voice sounds sure and strong. “Don’t do this. You’re going to be in vaudeville, remember? You’re good, Buddy. You are.”
Buddy Boy slaps her head. “Shut it,” Buddy says, his voice low and angry.
“I can cover for you.” Piper’s voice breaks. “If you let us go now.”
Buddy whacks her again. “I said shut it!”
I lunge toward him, but Seven Fingers squeezes my neck with his arm and grinds the gun in my back.
The baby’s cries are piercing now, as if he senses Piper’s fear. “C’mon, Buddy,” Piper wheedles. “We’re friends, right?”
“Let me have that baby. I’ll shut him up,” Seven Fingers hisses.
“Can’t kill a baby, Buddy!” Willy One Arm whines. “Not on the thirteenth.”
Then I see something out of the corner of my eye. It’s Jimmy, the real Jimmy, coming up the back way. I need to get his attention. But how? I think about throwing a rock, but I can’t get near one with Seven Fingers’s arm around my neck. Besides, then Seven Fingers will see him. I have to do something quickly before he-but it’s too late. Jimmy’s already inside.
Will Annie and Theresa suspect something when we don’t come back? No, I just said I was taking Natalie home. They’ll figure Piper went down to 64 building with me.
“Take the baby, do something with him,” Buddy Boy tells Willy One Arm. Buddy’s arm snakes around Natalie, and Willy lets go. Natalie squirms like a wild thing. Buddy Boy cranks his arm tighter around her neck.
“Only got forty minutes till the next count,” Seven Fingers hisses. “Not gonna blow my chances for a baby.”
“Buddy! Buddy!” Willy One Arm whines, “I ain’t no baby killer.
“Yeah, so,” Buddy Boy hisses. “Get out of here!”
Willy One Arm takes off, the baby in his arm, his running steps almost silent, his body low to the ground.
My brain is slow, skittering all over the place, adrenaline pumps through my body, making it hard to think. This is not a game. Buddy doesn’t like us. He never did. That was his game.
He could kill Natalie. I have to think of something. And then slowly it occurs to me. Buddy did his Jimmy imitation. That lured us out here but now the real Jimmy is inside. If Buddy were to do a Jimmy imitation now, with Jimmy in the warden’s house, wouldn’t they suspect something odd is happening?
“I ain’t stayin’ here,” Seven Fingers says.
“Willy’s got the boat key. You learn to swim all of a sudden?” Buddy Boy barks.
“What makes you think he’s coming back?” Seven Fingers mutters.
“Where’s he taking the baby?” Piper whispers.
No one answers her.
“Where… is… he… taking… the-” Piper repeats.
“Shut it.” Seven Fingers tightens his grip on my neck.
“How’d you do that, Buddy?” I ask, my voice hoarse because of how tightly Seven Fingers is grasping my throat. “Make your voice sound like Jimmy?”
Buddy Boy flinches. “Shut up,” he says in his Jimmy Mattaman voice.
But this wasn’t loud enough for them to hear. “Yeah, but what did you say exactly?” I ask.
Buddy grunts like he’s not going to do it. But I know Buddy. He can’t resist showing off. “Moose! Piper!” Buddy imitates Jimmy a little more forcefully this time as Willy One Arm’s dark, silent form comes slipping back to us. I want to look at the window in Piper’s room to see if maybe I can spot Annie, Jimmy, or Theresa, but I don’t dare.
“Let’s go.” Willy’s out-of-breath whisper as he takes Natalie from Buddy and shoves her forward.
“Jimmy,” Nat mutters. “Jimmy Mattaman.”
“Get a move on.” Seven Fingers’s hot tobacco breath fills my ear. He kicks my calf.
“Three men, five arms. Five, five arms,” Natalie mutters as the wind begins to howl.
“That’s right, Nat.” I make my voice as reassuring as possible. She pitches a fit, they’ll shoot her.
“Three men, five arms, no guns. No,” Nat says.
Seven Fingers yanks my neck. “Shut… her… up!”
“Shhh, shhh, like in the library at home, Nat,” I say in a panicky whisper.
