Hero (Gone 9)
“Please, someone must know this man!”
A police officer yelled, “Hey, you two, get back!”
But someone in the crowd said, “No, Officer, that’s Berserker Bear and the trans chick from Vegas!”
“That true?” the cop asked.
“I’m not crazy about ‘Berserker Bear,’” Armo grumbled. “But yeah.”
“Please, it’s an old man,” Cruz said. “Someone must know him.”
The cop shook his head, but behind him a woman in the crowd waved to get Cruz’s attention. “Yes, ma’am, what can you tell me?”
“His name is Alfred Gordon,” the woman said. “He lives with his daughter and granddaughter.”
“Thank you,” Cruz said. “Do you know them, the family?”
The woman did not, but in response to Cruz’s question she described the granddaughter: about twenty-five, a big woman. “Looked kind of like that girl, what’s her name, the actress who was in that movie. What was it called? Precious! That was it. Such a sad movie.”
“Gabourey,” Cruz suggested. She used her phone to Google pictures of Gabourey as Armo stood by, bemused, keeping an eye on the panting, frightened man-beast. Face. Head. Body. Cruz could not find sh
ots of Gabourey taken from behind, but as long as she faced the old man . . .
Cruz focused her thoughts, and as the crowd oohed and aahed, she became the actress, wearing a brown silk dress with a scoop neckline and a jeweled waist, the outfit Gabourey had worn to an Essence magazine function where the photo had been taken.
“You want me to go all Berserker Bear?” Armo asked.
“No, you just . . .” Cruz caught herself. “You do what you think is right, Armo. But I feel like maybe I can talk to this man.”
Armo made a mock salute and took a step back. Cruz advanced across the street, picking her way through the debris from the destroyed drugstore.
“Grandpa! Papa!” Cruz wasn’t sure what he might be called, and she hoped his eyesight was bad.
The stretched yellow eyes, each the size of a saucer, turned toward her.
“It’s me, your granddaughter,” Cruz said, wishing she knew the young woman’s name.
“That you, Tiana?”
“Yes, it’s me. Tiana. Are you okay?”
All the while Cruz walked steadily forward, like she had every right to, like she was unafraid.
“I came for my pills,” the rhino-man said in a strangled voice.
“Of course. Of course. Which pills, do you remember?”
“My pills?”
“Yes, do you recall what pills you were looking for?”
“I don’t know the name,” the beast-man said irascibly. “Donny’s. Donazzas. Something.”
Cruz looked pleadingly back at the crowd.
“I’m a nurse,” a man said. “He may be talking about donepezil.” Then in a lower voice he added, “It’s for Alzheimer’s.”
Cruz sighed. For weeks she’d been suppressing a growing anger at whoever or whatever was doing this to people. So much death. So much pain. Now a confused old man had been turned into a beast—a beast centered in half a dozen police-sniper gun sights. “Grandpa . . . Listen to me, you need to focus really hard on something.”