A Handful of Nails [continued]I unfold the fainted man; the children won't back away, fascinated. I put my ear to his mouth, a finger to his neck, a hand on his chest. Nothing. I do this again. Nothing. I tilt his head back, with two fingers clear his mouth--toss away a half-chewed toffee--depress his tongue, then give him a good breath, mouth-to-mouth, for a few seconds, watch his chest rise: no obstructions, he can breathe just fine but he's not breathing. Then I check his pulse. Nothing. The man is dead! I straddle him, my hands on his chest, I pump the heart, one-two-three, one-two-three. Wake up! I scramble back around, his head in my lap, clear his throat, blow life into him again. Then back to his chest, pump and pound. Wake up!Drastic measures, I'm thinking, this is a time of drastic measures, what will they do to us, set an example? Shrug it off as an accident? Did he have a prior medical condition? I'm at his mouth again when he abruptly comes to life, bucking as if from a prod of electricity. One of the children screams. The others back away. Officer Hermes has rolled to his side in a fit of coughing and gasping. I'm weeping again, this time with relief. I stand up, tell the children to give the man some room, then I help Officer Hermes to his feet. He's panting, one hand to his chest, his watery eyes wandering from side to side, his helmet askew. "What time is it?" he croaks. "Morning," I tell him. He looks at me in a dreamy-groggy way, then half smiles. "Is lunch ready?" "Not yet," I tell him, "Come back later." Humor the man. He shakes his head in wonderment. "I have an appetite for something Italian. Manicotti maybe?" "Here's some water." Lori offers him a glass. He takes it, holds the glass to his nose, sniffs once, then hands it back. "Thanks." "Here's your bag." Simon tries to hand it to him. "Goodness," he says, "it's heavy, isn't it?" "Full of nails," says Simon. "A silly thing to carry around all day, don't you think?" the Officer says cheerfully. The children nod in agreement. They look frightened. One hand on his hot back, I escort Officer Hermes to the door. "When did you say lunch was ready?" "Later, Officer." Brain damage, I'm thinking. A serious rupture of synapses. "We should do this again some time," he says at the open door. "Next week," I tell him. "You visit us every week, don't you remember?" I'm wondering who saw him enter; who will see him leave; can his injury be traced back to us? "Every week," he echoes. He's staring at the car-sized crater in the center of our street. "Shouldn't we do something about that hole?" "I'm going to plant flowers in it," I say. "Nice." He's nodding at the thought. "Let me know if I can help. I like dahlias." As soon as he's on the stoop, I slam the door shut. I'm trembling, a headache crashing through my skull like storm waves. The children are crowded at the window, watching the Officer. "Get away from there," I bark. "Redding, what are you chewing--what's in your mouth?" He swallows before I can investigate but, of course, I know toffee when I smell it. A few others are chewing too. Pickpockets! "You should be ashamed of yourselves," I scold them. "The man almost died." "He wanted to take our oven," says Redding. "Our oven grills," Tomin corrects. "He was going to turn us in," says Lori. "He wouldn't give us any candy." "Selfish old man." "Is he coming back?" "If he comes back we won't let him." "He'll report us." "If he comes back we'll kill him." "Shut up!" I snap. "Don't any of you talk about killing anybody or anything." "You kill mice." "And pigeons." "And crickets." Things we've been eating lately when lucky enough to trap them. "Did you hear me?" I say in the manner that silences them. "I didn't raise a household of homicides." "Nasty man," one of them mutters. "Get your tools, we're going out," I tell them. Their tools are sticks, plastic prods, arm-long scraps of lumber for leverage, anything that helps them dig through debris. It's dangerous work and I don't like how common it has become for us, but I have to keep them busy--in their boredom they've nearly torn apart our flat. I am more than dismayed when, a few minutes later, I discover Officer Hermes sitting on our stoop. He looks up at me, blinks his boyish eyes, half-smiles his goofy smile. He says, "Where're you going?" "Step around him," I instruct the children, who march out double-file. It's an overcast blustery day. I hear intermittent mortar fire on the wind, the RM blasting the PM, probably. On the north side. We're on the east side where only errant fire finds us. Nothing of importance here. I say, "We have errands, Officer." He is most definitely a different man. "Can I go?" he asks. "Can we stop you?" He smiles again. "I don't think so, I'm an official." "Don't you want your bag?" He's left it on the stoop. He waves away my concern. "Too heavy." The children regard the canvas bag longingly, all those nails we could sell to a scrapper. By the time we return, someone will have stolen it, you can be sure. We walk to the business district a few blocks east, the children chanting the multiplication table in time to their marching. It looks like everyone's out today with their tools and tote bags, their hand-wagons and shopping carts. I've seen some people collect any- and everything they can find, no matter how worthless--fractured bricks, grapefruit-sized chunks of asphalt, handfuls of shattered glass. Something's better than nothing, they must think. The scavenging has gotten so bad, none of our buildings has doorknobs or door handles or stoop banisters any more. Metal is so valuable; it's made for suspicious neighbors: who would steal the knob off your front door? "Look at this," Officer Hermes says. He's yanking at the door of a gutted Minotaur automobile. "It's a gold mine!" The children laugh at him. Everyone knows--or almost everyone--that the metal of the Minotaur is so poor in quality it's not worth recycling. You'd do better to strip the plastic, which somebody has done already. "Help me out here," the Officer exclaims. I don't want to see the man have another heart attack, so I order the children to unhinge the car door, which they do easily, their many little hands adept at close work. "The door's enough," I tell the Officer. He's hefted the thing onto his back. "It's heavier than it looks," he says. Or he's weaker than he knows. Though it's a cool day, he's sweating, too flushed from exertion. "Stay away from his pockets," I tell the children. I see their mouths working on toffee. Who knows what else they have lifted. The man's belt is missing. "Who's got his belt?" I demand, but the children ignore me and march on, chanting, Eleven times eleven makes one hundred twenty-one, twelve times twelve makes . . . "You could leave the door here," I tell the Officer, "and we'll pick it up on the way back." "Do you think I'm that simple?" Hunched over like an old man, he peers up at me from under his burden. He is trudging behind us with an uncertain step. "To tell the truth, Officer, that door is worthless." "It feels like more than that," he says. "The manufacturer weights them with composite sludge--that's what makes them so heavy." "It feels very heavy." "But it's worthless." "Nothing that weighs this much could be worthless." The man's going to kill himself, I'm thinking. "Let's dig here," I announce. It's not an especially promising site, a few low-rises that have been reduced to heaps of wallboard and mortar, but I want to give the Officer a rest. The children look at me in question. "Here," I repeat. "Group Alpha take the northeast quadrant. Betas take the southeast and so on." We always work clockwise and alphabetically. My attempt at giving them some structure. "I'll guard the door," Officer Hermes says. "That's not necessary," I say. He sets the door down gingerly, then lies across it as if it were a cot, resting on his side, his hands as a pillow. "Are you all right?" I ask. "Just a little nap," he says. "Maybe you should go home." "I can't move another inch." I lean forward, close to his flushed face. He won't open his eyes. "Do you have a condition?" I grab at what I think is a medical alert bracelet on his left wrist, but it turns out to be only an I.D. bracelet, solid silver: it says, "Hermes." Again I ask him, this time more loudly: "Do you have a condition?" "Very tired," he mutters. "A few minutes." "Don't die!" He opens his eyes. "Am I dying?" "It looks that way," I say quietly. "I don't feel like I'm dying." "I think it's a heart attack, Officer." "That won't do," he says. He tries to sit up but can't find the strength. He gasps. "That won't do at all. I can't die." Panicked, he gazes up at me like a spooked child. Instinctively I lay an open hand on his forehead. "Just relax. We'll get you help." The children have crowded around again. "If he's dying," says Lori, "we should leave him here." "But take his boots," says Tomin, "they look like new." How have my children grown so callous under my care? "Enough, children!" I instruct them to lift the car door, which we'll use as a stretcher. They whine about the burden. "He's too fat," one of them says. "I've tried to diet," Hermes replies feebly. "And I'm walking all day." "Sometimes it's simply a matter of heredity," I tell him. "Simon, keep your end up." Simon sighs. By the time we get Officer Hermes to a Security kiosk, many blocks from our flat, it's dark. Although he's still conscious, Hermes looks like a corpse, lying on his back, hands folded on his chest, his eyes open to the sky. The several times we've stopped to rest I have checked his pulse and found it wildly erratic. "Don't speak," I've instructed. "Think of snow. White, quiet, blankets of snow." "I'm thinking of popcorn," he said, "acres and acres of popcorn." At last, the children groaning with fatigue, we have set him and the car door in an arc of yellow light just outside the kiosk. This is our ultimate scavenge, I think ruefully. "Where are his pants?" the Security Officer wants to know. He's a florid old man with a handle-bar mustache. He wears a dirty baker's uniform and, on his narrow head, a cracked, white bicycle helmet. He's so distracted he doesn't seem to mind my children crowding around him, their hands reaching for his whistle, the stripes sewn onto his filthy tunic, the sommelier's cup dangling from his neck. Besides his blue jeans, Officer Hermes is missing several other personal items: his boots, his shiny pot-helmet, his belt, his socks. "This man's half naked!" the Security Officer says. "I don't know what to tell you," I say. "You can't put anything down these days without somebody picking over it." "You put him down?" "Many times," I say with regret. "He's heavier than he looks." "I will have to write a report," he says. I sigh. "Of course you will." The Security Officer regards his fallen comrade sadly. "He was one of our best collectors, you know." "Oh, yes, he's good at his job," I say. "Children, leave the Security Officer alone." They have pulled his stripes off of one arm. "He died in the line of duty, I'll put that in my report." "He's not dead!" I say. God forbid that he die in our care. "What's that?" "No, I'm not dead," says Officer Hermes. The Security Officer flinches: "Good God! What are you doing, man?" Officer Hermes smiles up at him politely. "I had a heart attack, I think." The Security Officer smooths down his mustache, takes a deep breath, reassumes his calm: "How did that happen?" "Years of bad diet, I'm afraid, not enough exercise--" "Or it could be a matter of heredity." "No, I mean what brought it on." "He over-exerted himself," I say. "In the line of duty, I should add. He was trying to carry a car door." "Car doors aren't worth anything." "Apparently Officer Hermes doesn't know that." "Ridiculous," the old man huffs. He glares down at Hermes. "Don't you know enough not to take a car door?" "Apparently not," Hermes sighs. "Will this go on my record?" "I should say so." The Security Officer sounds disappointed. "I'll have to write a report." He starts opening drawers, searching for paper, I suppose. His computer terminal looks dead. Not enough AC apparently. The children are entreating him: "You got candy in here?" "Can I see that cup?" "Where'd you get that whistle?" Officer Hermes says to me, "I feel so stupid." "You were just trying to do your job." I surprise myself that I can be so kind to this man who was so recently unkind to me. Sermonizers on the radio encourage the belief that the war brings out the best in each of us, but this is only wishful thinking. Most of what I've seen has been less than ideal. Neighbors avoid one another--we have never been more distant--because everyone's panicked by the shortages. No one wants to be put in the position of having to surrender what little he or she has hidden, hoarded, salvaged or stolen. "May we go now?" I say at last. The old man looks up, half-startled, as if I've just awakened him from a nap. "I'll need your signature." "On what?" I can't remember the last time I wrote my signature. Paper is impossible to come by, except for the few books of Marcel's I've been saving. And worthless money. "Here, write it on my sleeve." He produces a ballpoint pen, one of those cheap plastic kind that always leak when they're half empty. I sign a pseudonym--Madame Bovary--hardly legible on his tunic sleeve, he nods in satisfaction, trying to read my scrawl, then I leave abruptly, my children flooding around me. I'm so weary, so confused by the events of the day. "Children, tell Officer Hermes good-bye." "Can you make that farewell?" asks Hermes. I instruct the children to do so. Reluctantly they oblige. Minutes later, as we're walking away, Lori says, "He's going to die, I bet anything." "Yeah, he's meat," says Tomin. "I won't miss him." "Have some compassion," I scold them. "He's a sick man." "If he wasn't sick, would you have compassion, Mama?" "That's too hard a question to answer right now," I admit. My honesty quiets them for a while, like a drop cloth over a cage of finches. Ahead of us is the canyon of the darkened avenue, the dull orange flicker of candle flame in a few windows of the apartment buildings that loom on either side; I smell woodsmoke. Surprising that I hear no distant gunfire. From somewhere nearby, but not on this street, someone's playing a recording of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine," a dreamy romantic tune. "We didn't get any scrap today," Simon complains. "I guess we'll have to work extra hard tomorrow," I say. The children groan in chorus. It's a pleasure hearing their collective voice: it buoys me a bit. "Watch your step," I remind them. "Who's in the lead?" Suddenly, from the gloom ahead, I hear a shrill note, loud and piercing like an alarm. One of my children has stolen the Security Officer's whistle.
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