23.
SEVEN FINGERS’S CANDY BARS
Same day—Saturday, September 7, 1935
“We need to talk,” I tell my dad when Seven Fingers has gone.
“Can it wait until tomorrow?”
“No.”
A darkness falls across my father’s face. He slips his toothpick box into his pocket and motions with his head toward the door. “How about we go for a walk? Could use a little fresh air,” he says.
We tromp down the stairs to the dock and around the agave trail, which runs low along the water. The wind blows hard, as it often does late in the day. It feels like a giant hand pushing us back. But my father is determined. He’s headed for a spot on the hillside looking out across at San Francisco. We sit down on rocks jutting out of the hill.
I look into his kind golden brown eyes. “Dad, what if the Esther P. Marinoff School isn’t as safe as we thought?”
“What do you mean safe?”
“What if . . .” I work at a stone with my heel, try to loosen it from the dirt. “What if Natalie isn’t safe there?”
His eyes squint with the effort to understand. “Safe you mean how?”
“What if she was getting visitors?”
“Visitors? For crying out loud, Moose. What are you driving at?”
The rock comes free. I hold it in my hand. “I’m worried about the convict 105.”
“105?” my father says as a gust of wind blows his officer’s cap off.
“The gardener. He worked over here. Piper said he got released from Terminal Island a few weeks ago.”
“Oh yes, Onion. Why in the Sam Hill are you worried about him?”
“Because . . .” My voice trails off. I’m about to tell him how Seven Fingers said he knew where she slept. On the island? At the Esther P. Marinoff? Which is worse? I don’t even know.
“Because?” my father prompts.
“I dunno, I just—what if 105 visited Natalie at school?”
My father stares at me. “What on earth makes you think he’d do that?”
“I had a . . . a dream. A nightmare.”
He breathes out a huge gush of air. “For Pete’s sake, Moose. You had me goin’ there for a minute.”
“Could he find her?” I ask.
“Why would he want to, son? She doesn’t have money. We don’t have money. They could kidnap her, I suppose, but it wouldn’t be worth their while. She’s safer there than she is almost anywhere.”
“What about here then?”
“Moose, look at me.” He waits until my eyes connect with his. “I’d never bring my family on this island if I thought there was any real danger. That cell house is sealed up tight as a drum. Try to stop worrying so much. Ollie thinks your nerves could be triggering the hives.”
I find a smooth rock and sail it into the bay. “I don’t trust Seven Fingers.”
“Good! I wouldn’t want you to trust him.”
I find another rock and throw it as hard as I can. “I don’t want him in our apartment.”
My father nods. “Don’t much like him there myself. I wish those city plumbers didn’t cost an arm and a leg . . . But you know what? Our plumbing problems never seem to get that much better. It’s occurred to me that old Seven Fingers likes his chocolate bars a little too much.” He fishes in his pocket for a new toothpick.
Sometimes it feels like our life is made out of toothpicks and if I pull one out, the whole thing will collapse.
“I like the way you’re thinking all of this through. Sometimes life throws you a curveball. You can’t always accept what other people tell you; you have to reason it out for yourself.
“Once when Natalie was little, a doctor told us what she had was contagious. If we kept her at home with us, you could catch it from her. He said we should send her away to a ranch in Arizona where she would be quarantined so as not to infect others.
“You were so healthy. Everything I ever wanted in a son.” He sighs and presses his lips tight together. “I couldn’t risk you getting this terrible thing she has, this blackness that eats her up from the inside. But I couldn’t ship my daughter off like she was no more than livestock. I went around and around trying to reason it out, but in my gut I knew the answer. I wasn’t going to send Natalie off like that. If she were infectious, wouldn’t we have caught it already? The next week we went to another doctor who said there was no evidence her condition was contagious. None at all.
“You got a good noggin.” He knocks on my head with his fist. “I’m not worried about you.”
“And Natalie?” I whisper. “You worried about her?”
He looks out across the bay to San Francisco. The streets are so straight and orderly over there. Everything makes sense in the city.
“Her life isn’t gonna go the expected way. But just because she doesn’t see the world like you and me doesn’t mean she isn’t getting just as much out of her days as we do. Who are we to say what life’s supposed to be about, Moose? Who are we to say that?”