“Apollo?” Kinder Garten called. “Could that be you? Don’t tell me the bitches left you behind!”
No talking now. Cal shoved Apollo toward the creek boat. The craft was olive green, making it nearly invisible on the dark water. Cal gestured toward the boat and lifted a black aluminum paddle. He reached for it, but she swatted his hand away. She bent low and balanced the paddle half on the rocky ledge and half on the creek boat. She patted his ass, then gestured for him to sit on the paddle. When he did, she waved her hand for him to scoot himself into the little boat.
“Poor Apollo!” Kinder Garten howled. “Someone’s always abandoning you.”
From the sound of his voice, Kinder Garten had stalked off in the opposite direction to try and find him, the sound of Apollo’s stumbling hard to trace under the echoing sky.
Apollo flopped into the creek boat. The small craft lifted four inches out of the water, enough to make Apollo fear it would capsize.
Cal brought her hand down on the edge of the boat and righted it. She leaned close. “I have to confess,” she whispered. “I have to say this before you go.”
“Come with me,” Apollo said, grasping the sides of the creek boat as he tried to calm himself. “This thing is small, but we could try to fit.”
Kinder Garten appeared at the top of the slope. He scanned the water from the rocks. He pointed. “There!” he shouted. “There!”
He sounded like a master siccing his hound on the prey. Both Cal and Apollo looked up at the man on the rocks. Farther behind him came that thunderous sound, a colossal tearing noise.
“No,” Cal whispered.
The sky filled with something, it looked as large as a low flying airplane. Too big to be a man-made missile. It was a tree, going end over end through the air, out across the water.
A fucking tree.
“No,” Cal begged.
The darkness hid the impact, but there was a tremendous splash. Had the boat been hit? Faintly they heard the chug of the boat’s engine.
Kinder Garten clapped softly, pointed. “Again! There!”
Cal turned and reached into her sweater pocket. When her hand appeared, it held a gun, a Ruger LCR-22. She aimed it at Kinder Garten. She shot him. Even though they were outside, despite the small caliber of the gun, Apollo’s eyes went out of focus from the terrific blast, the gun’s report. He watched Cal but she seemed to work in slow time. The creek boat bobbled in the water, and Apollo felt his stomach seize as if he would throw up. She fired four times, and on the third pull she grazed him. Kinder Garten didn’t scream. He gurgled and fell back and disappeared from view. Apollo’s ear rattled and throbbed for another moment. He’d been expecting to see another tree fly out overhead, but that didn’t happen. Cal’s gunfire had changed the plan. She’d protected her people again.
“You know the myth of Callisto?” she asked. “She was a nymph. She had a child by Zeus, and for this she was punished by his wife Hera. Callisto was turned into a bear. Zeus suffered no consequences, of course. The baby grew up to be a great hunter, Arcas. One day Callisto saw Arcas in the woods, and recognizing her child, she wanted to hug him, to speak with him. But all Arcas saw was a great bear attacking. He was about to shoot her with an arrow when Zeus saved them both and turned them into constellations, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. I always saw this as a happy end, as happy as those Greek stories ever get. Callisto got to spend eternity there in the heavens with her child. She could always see him. She would always know he was safe.”
Cal looked out at the water then caught Apollo’s eyes.
“I’m tired, and I want to see my little boy again.”
She handed Apollo the paddle, sat on her butt, and with two feet she pushed him away from the rocks.
“You have to go to your son’s grave,” Cal said. “You have to see it for yourself so you have no doubts. You won’t be any use to Emma otherwise. Then you have to find your wife.” She trailed off, reached into the other pocket of her sweater, bullet shells gleaming in the moonlight.
“How am I going to track her down?” Apollo asked.
“Emma swore Brian was alive. She knew it, felt it. The last time I saw her, she said she’d finally narrowed it down.”
“To what?” Apollo whispered.
Cal reloaded her pistol. “She said Brian is in the forest. I’ve thought about that. There’s only one forest in all of New York City.”
Apollo used the paddle to push off. When he’d drifted backward a few yards, he turned the boat in the water with the paddle. He looked back to see Cal climbing back up the rocks.
“What are you going to do, Cal?” he called.
She looked out at him. She appeared calm. “I’m going to show them my claws,” she said. Soon she disappeared over the ridge.
“Gun!” Kinder Garten shouted. “Get her gun!”
Quickly there was some distance between Apollo and the island. The splash of the East River against his creek boat became louder.
Apollo was beginning to understand just how far he’d have to paddle—at night, in the cold—before he reached the far shore of the Bronx. He didn’t look back at the island. When he paddled, he tried, as best he could, to stay quiet. Why? Cal’s words came back to him.
The big one can swim.
“I am the god, Apollo,” he whispered, trying to focus in this tornado of madness.
He kept on, and once North Brother Island disappeared behind him, there was only the distant shore to focus on. He picked a cluster of apartment buildings as his guiding light. He used the projects to lead him back to land.
“I am the god, Apollo.”
After fifteen minutes he felt so tired that few thoughts remained, only the mechanical practice of the paddle rising and falling. He doubted he’d be able to last at this without some help, but what help could he hope for out here on the water?
Another twenty minutes, and he despaired. The Bronx seemed no closer. Still he kept on. “I am…”
He couldn’t finish the sentence.
The shore finally became visible; it was the edge of Barretto Point Park. You have to go to your son’s grave. You have to see it for yourself so you have no doubts. Apollo finally felt ready to know who was buried at Nassau Knolls Cemetery in Port Washington, New York.