'This answer pleased the young men.
'Curtis gave his answer 'I would go out alone in the night. I would sneak up to the government man's house. If possible, even on the threshold or even inside. At first light I would show myself. I would ask to speak with the govern ment man in front of the man who writes newspapers. I would tell him that I had come to prevent violence and to stop an injustice. I would tell him that I would take no food until the matter was resolved so that the Tiloks could survive.'
'Wiley scoffed, or so the story goes. He says: 'But they would ignore you and laugh or even put you in chains and then the people would be without a leader.'
'Curtis argued: 'That is where you are wrong. If they put me in chains or even killed me, the people would have a greater leader. Because a leader is a man who shows the way. You cannot kill the white men and go unpunished and it is foolish to try.'
'Wiley figured he had him. Turning to the crowd, he said: 'So you would give up without a fight.'
'And this was Curtis's answer: 'But that is only me,' he said. 'If they killed me, or put me in chains or merely ig nored me and ignored my plea, the village could make a new plan. Perhaps another man could come and another. I would trade my life for a chance to buy peace for the people and I would teach others to do the same.'
'Wiley's view of the world was essentially that the chief must survive because he viewed the tribe as an extension of himself and saw himself as at the center of value. Curtis, on the other hand, saw himself as only one man and saw that there might be good in giving himself for something greater than himself. He saw value in other places. 'Every person has a Wiley and a Curtis inside them,' Grandfather said. 'They are always with us.' Regarding that girlfriend of mine, Grandfather said that my Wiley and my Curtis were in a struggle for my soul.
'I think that's what is happening now. There is something epic about a child-a small person with his whole life in front of him. A mind that a man could nurture and teach. But with the child would come diapers, whining, parent-teacher conferences.' He decided he'd said enough and kissed her on the lips.
'What did you do?'
'Told the girl to go to college. She met a man and fell in love. I know I never would have married her.'
'There are all those future potential girlfriends of Sam,' Anna began, 'or Robert, or whoever. Beautiful women. Beaches full of them, malls full of them, on the sidewalk, in the restaurants, tending their gardens, going about life, every one of them an extraordinary adventure and you would be forfeiting all of that. I know, Sam. I know how it is.'
'But there is that child. A child that is ours together. And there is you.'
He kissed her again, and this time she kissed back. People were watching, so they cooled it and went back to playing under the blanket.
He looked in her eyes and saw a calm certainty. Oddly, he was both pleased and distressed that she looked so wise. Still, he thought he should make things plain and give his lit tle talk.
'I've decided.'
'Yes?'
'I want to marry you.' He paused. 'So, I'm asking if you will be my wife.'
'I love you.' She began kissing him anew despite the onlookers. 'You will marry me in public?'
'In Times Square, if you want.'
'I accept. Not the Times Square part. The rest.'
'I think we should become a family. I'll drop the anonymous routine.'
'Can we do the honeymoon before the marriage?'
'It's a little backward, but sure. Did I surprise you?'
'I'm thrilled. And happy. Happier than I have ever been,' Anna confessed.
'When did you know?'
'When you told me, of course.'
'Come on. I could see it in your eyes.'
'Well…'
'Come on…'
'I was pretty sure when I saw the pink spot on the little tester strip that says 'Sam has one in the oven.'”
Sam nodded.
'You remember when we met?' she asked.
'How could I forget?'
'When I saw that sailboat and a guy in the raffia hat, I knew even then that you were coming for me to haul my ass out of the Devil's Gate. And when I jumped overboard, I knew you would follow. And when I told you that I had to have your help with my brother, I was pretty sure that you would do it. And the first time we made love…'
'You're an incurable romantic.'
'Okay, so when do you think I knew?'
'Some things dawn on us a little bit at a time.'
When she cried, he told himself that it was going to be like this with all the pregnancy hormones and the lactation and the ligaments turning rubbery and all the other transfor mations that went along with this business of making a baby. Since there were pills for erections and pills for anxiety and pills for depression and pills for sleeping, Sam wondered if there might be a pregnancy pill. Better yet, a relationship pill for nervous Indians.
He waited for Anna's tears to turn to a mere glistening and resumed the conversation about her new movie deal. That worked for a minute. Then she got hungry for a pickle and a peanut butter sandwich.
They pulled up in front of the bed-and-breakfast in a yellow cab with a driver who spoke with his hands, fingers, and a clipboard with preprinted messages. Sam was a bit uneasy, he supposed about leaving Bowden. It seemed these days that he could smell Gaudet, and he now wondered if it was really Gaudet or simply the conclusion that Gaudet would soon figure out Michael Bowden's whereabouts.
There were gates of wrought iron everywhere along the sidewalk and it looked like a haphazard arrangement of barricades, as though made by kids for war games. Nobody seemed to agree on exactly how much of the sidewalk was public. On the street side of the cab Sam got out to go around to open the door for the new queen of his life, but she was already exiting, so he contented himself with taking her arm. His knowledge of her pregnancy had made her seem fragile.
She laughed, obviously understanding her newfound status in the hierarchy of his brain.
There were people on the street and in this part of town, as usual, relatively prosperous people; if there were holes in their blue jeans, they were the designer sorts of holes, raggedy white from machine washing. Some people needed to prove they could have holes and be cool.
A man stood reading his newspaper, no doubt waiting for his wife's nails to dry. He seemed to be having trouble turning the pages with his black leather-no doubt fur-lined- gloves, and his heavy black glasses seemed to match purposely the black shoes and the black poodle dog.
The buildings were many-storied and Sam glanced up and around as he reached out a hand for a gate. On their side of the street, in a window bay on the next building over and several floors up, his eye caught a glint of something, or maybe it was just that he suddenly supposed someone was behind the glass. It was a feeling like bricks falling to the pavement and he felt in himself a sort of startled response. Then the man with the newspaper jerked his head up, seemingly at the very second there was the sound of shooting- multiple shots in fairly quick succession. And then Sam felt himself lifted with a hit to the chest and crumpled to the sidewalk along with Anna. He was aware of the pain and thankful for the body armor, all in the same instant.
He rolled over the top of Anna and covered her, trying to get every inch of his body over hers at exactly the same instant, and once that was done, he stuffed his hand inside his partially unzipped coat, reaching for his 10mm Smith amp; Wesson.
People were rushing toward them, in what he suspected was the line of fire. Soon there were at least five people huddled round and he realized that whoever had fired the shot that had hit him was not likely to get another. And it was odd because it wasn't automatic fire. That struck him even as he lay on the pavement. It should have been automatic fire, but he had heard only a series of single shots and he was hit with only a single bullet. There was a reason for this, and he would work it out, and he hated himself for thinking it be cause he knew he should be thinking about Anna beneath him. And with that, he raised himself and looked down and saw blood oozing from the
