Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood Street by Peter Abrahams Read Free Book Online Page A

that he bumped into me and I caught him. And as I held his skinny chest, I felt those force lines, not moving toward my eyes this timebut down my arms like Tasers or something, so powerful, sparking hot off my fingertips and jolting Tut-Tut’s chest.
    “Ow,” he cried out in pain; at the same time, my own pain was gone, utterly.
    “What’s with you, you little wimp?” said the biggest guy. “I barely touched you.”
    Tut-Tut straightened. He faced these mean kids. So brave! But he was going to get the crap beat out of him, and probably me, too. Then Tut-Tut opened his mouth, and I got the biggest shock of my life. Tut-Tut spoke, and he spoke in a strong, clear, commanding voice.
    “Give back her glasses,” he said, no stuttering, no pausing, no struggle; he had a slight accent, kind of French. “And then,” he went on, “get out of here.”
    Dead silence. The three rough kids all gazed at Tut-Tut, astonishment on their faces. The kid with my glasses handed them back to me, his movements slow, like he was hypnotized. Then he and the third kid backed away; only the big one stayed where he was. “You could talk all this time? You’re playing a big joke on everybody?”
    Tut-Tut took a step toward him. He was much smaller than the big kid, but it didn’t seem that way. “I have a knife,” Tut-Tut said, in this new voice of his, “and I know how to use it.”
    Zoom. All three of them bolted, not even takingtheir boards. We watched them till they rounded a corner and vanished from sight.
    Tut-Tut turned to me.
    “I’m scared,” he said. He started shaking.
    “Why?” I said. But I was scared too. Maybe Tut-Tut knew the reason. I sure didn’t.
    “Because I can talk,” he said. He shook more and more. “What’s going on? I’ve never talked in my whole life. Except inside my head, only now it’s getting outside, too.”
    “Well,” I said, “that’s good.” Maybe my lamest remark ever.
    “And when you caught me just now?”
    “Yeah?”
    “When your hands were on my chest?”
    “Yeah?”
    “I felt a jolt. It went right through my body.” Tears ran down his face.
    “And then you could talk?”
    “Yeah,” Tut-Tut said. More tears, and suddenly his face was shining. The shaking stopped and Tut-Tut raised his hands to the sky. “I can talk,” he cried. “I’d stopped thinking this could ever happen. I can talk! I’m talking!” He looked at me, his eyes so bright. “You know what’s funny?” he said.
    “What?”
    “I don’t know what to say.”
    He started laughing. I laughed, too. Then we were hugging. I could feel the bones of Tut-Tut’s spine and all the ribs under the skin of his back.
    “I can talk,” he said. We let go of each other, stepped back a bit. “Listen to me,” Tut-Tut said. “I’m speaking English! Also I can speak Creole.” And he spoke something in a foreign language that sounded a little like French. He laughed again, then clasped his chest and spun in a circle. “I can ask questions,” he said.
    That had to be amazing. “What’s the first one?” I said.
    “What’s your name?” he said.
    “Robbie. What’s yours?”
    “Tut-Tut.”
    “I mean your real name.”
    “Toussaint.”
    “Cool. I’ll call you Toussaint.”
    He shook his head. “Tut-Tut’s better. It’s my nickname, my American nickname.” He glanced through the door, down onto the floor of Bread where the money lay. “So did I see what I thought I saw?” he said.
    “I can explain,” I said. But could I? Where to begin? The basketball game, or cut right to Sheldon Gunn’s $3,100? And while I was trying to line things up in some sort of order, my vision, still in that hawklike phase thatalways accompanied these—fits? Was that the word? I shied away from it. But the point was my vision was deteriorating back to normal again, all the fine details of Tut-Tut’s face growing less fine. “Bread has to close up because they can’t make rent. Some money… fell into my hands,