Face-Slapping14 min read
I Grabbed His Wallet, Then We Jumped Off a Bridge
ButterPicks11 views
"I fell into the puddle and tasted mud."
I spit, stand up, and kick a brick into the rain. The brick skids, hits the gutter, and sinks. My jacket is dark with mud. My hair sticks to my neck. I am nothing but a white coat turned brown and a stomach that keeps hollering.
"Hey! You—get out of here!" someone shouts from behind a glass window.
He is the shop owner. He is small and mean. His name is Javier Larson. He locks the door with one hand and waves a plastic bag in the other.
"Please," I say. "I didn't mean—"
"Get lost, tramp," Javier says, and he flicks me like a bug. He throws the bag into the trash instead of giving it to me.
I watch the plastic hit the metal. I go to the trash. I search. I find two cold buns and one wrapped loaf. My fingers smell like old oil. I am so hungry my hands shake.
"Don't you have any shame?" Javier opens the door and stomps over. He slaps my hand away. "Who taught you to pick like that?"
"Please," I whisper, and the word is thin. I have no papers, no place, and one white coat left that used to be clean.
He pokes me in the ribs with the tip of his umbrella. "You think you can act all delicate? Get off my street, beggar."
I fall. Again. The world is wet and round and mean. I want to flip his sign, break his glass. I want to make noise loud enough so no one forgets I exist.
So I take a brick. I lift it. Rain cold on my scalp. Two, three hits. The store window splinters. The metal door dents. I don't need to think. I just hit until I feel breath in my lungs.
"You broke my window!" Javier yells. He is smaller in the face of glass.
"I did," I say, and I spit onto the wet concrete. "You are a mean man."
I walk away without looking back. The sound of glass is like applause.
Later I sleep under a bus shelter. The mist puts cold beads along the plastic. I wake because the bench is hard and my ankle is numb. I eat the stale buns before anyone sees me.
A woman at the ticket booth looks at me and blinks. "You're going to Fallow County?" she asks.
"I am," I say. I tuck the last of my change into my palm like a secret. "Seventeen."
"Pay quick," she says, and she throws me a red slip.
On the bus, I curl into the last seat and press my face to the window. The road rocks and my head falls. When we stop, I step off thin-legged. The station is loud. People pull trunks, shout, herd children.
Then a laugh cuts the air. A boy in white runs past and knocks into me like a live thing.
"Watch it!" I cry, but he is gone—running, white shirt hanging, fast as a small wind. Two men in orange vests chase and then lose him. Someone snatches his shirt.
I rub my ribs and later notice my pocket lighter is gone. I think nothing of it because I do not yet know that my wallet is missing.
At the ticket gate, a rough voice: "They come here a lot. Kids like that—fast hands." A security guard named Javier's friend—no, his name is Aaron Marshall—talks to me like I might be useful.
"They come from over the river," Aaron says. "A gang, kid runners. Small hands. Men bring them here sometimes."
"Where?" I ask. My voice is small but certain. I want my wallet back. The five dollars were not much, but they were mine.
"Over the north road," the guard says. "Cross the bridge, follow the low road, an hour. Or take a motorcycle."
I go. I follow instructions. I get lost and find a village at dusk. I walk in on a scene that smells of smoke and oil.
A white van sits by the side of a crooked house. A woman and a man count a roll of notes like it is the last treasure. The man is broad-faced, a dangerous mouth. Hamza Koch—his name fits him—lights a cigarette and sneers.
A skinny boy steps from the shadow. He is hair dark like wet night. He will become my company. He will be Elliot Schneider.
"Where did you get this?" Hamza asks the boy and hits him once on the shoulder.
He does not answer. He never answers.
"Don't make me ask twice," says Fernanda Ikeda, Hamza's woman, and she laughs like a broken bell. The boy keeps his head down.
I step forward because the money was mine. I step forward because I cannot let a child be held like a thing.
"Give me back my money," I say.
Fernanda looks up, smiles a slow, ugly grin. "What, the white coat? The pretty one?"
I do not like the way she says pretty. I do not like the way Hamza looks at me. I try to be clever and say, "The boy took it. I want my wallet."
"You want anything, you run along," Hamza says. He takes my hand and shakes it like a toy. "You here to keep him safe? Good luck."
The boy—Elliot—does not look at me. He says in a voice like a river stone, "I took it."
It spills out. A small truth.
"You—" Hamza lunges. He is heavy and I am light. He wants to punish. He reaches and the house smells of oil. A lamp on the table flickers when his elbow knocks a jar.
I push. I shove. In the fight everyone moves like they are underwater. A cloth catches a spark.
"Fire!" a woman screams. The oil lamp flares. The paint on the wall blackens. The roof catches.
I grab Elliot. We run. The yard is a maze of old doors and dry thatch. Flames lick faster than legs.
"Jump!" someone shouts. The dog runs. Red light paints faces.
Elliot and I run to the back, to a low wall near the river. I throw him over. I jump. The cold hits. The water is thick and black and breath takes time. We kick and grab and come up sputtering.
We crawl to the river bank. We are both shaking, both wet, both alive. The house behind us is a furnace.
Hamza stands at his gate and screams at the smoke. People from the village area gather and shout. Some scream at us.
I hold Elliot close. "Are you okay?" I ask.
He nods. He is sixteen maybe. He is small and raw and just held like a thing until tonight.
We float down the river until dawn eats the dark. We wash our faces in water that smells of smoke. We sleep on a rock. I wake with the river in my hair and a painting folded in my hands—the blue painting the old man had given me at the train station. Everest Cervantes, the painter, had smiled and said, "You can have that." He had no cash and gave me a picture of the sea.
"You like painting?" I ask Elliot.
He only looks at the blue and says, "It looks deep."
"I want to go there," I tell him. "I want to find the sea."
He looks at the painting again and then at me. "Can I come?"
"You are not a throwaway anymore," I say. "If you stay with me, you are my brother."
He smiles small, like a coin sliding into a pocket. "Okay."
We walk along the river, hiding under bushes, stealing fish Elliot catches with a patience I did not know he had. Once we are clean enough, we find a small farm and an old woman named Aylin Lombardi.
Aylin is a fist of a woman in an old apron. She scolds and counts and scowls. She looks like the sort of woman who would trap two kids with a net and scold them for hours.
She does trap us first. She pulls us from a melon pit and hauls us to her house. "You thieves!" she grunts. "You ruin my crop!"
"I didn't steal your melons," I say. "We crashed there. We were wet."
"Who were you with?" she asks, and her eyes narrow like a door closing.
"Elliot," he says. He gives his small name and makes no more sound.
Aylin says nothing for a long while. She looks at us like we are someone else's trouble. Then she takes a breath and says, "You two can stay until the rain stops. But you work."
So we work. We sweep and carry and eat hot soup she scolds into bowls. The house is hard in the edges but warm in the belly. She complains while we eat and sometimes sits with me and tells me she lost a son long ago. Her voice softens like bread.
"Don't go alone," she says. "You will be taken again."
I think of Hamza with his roll of notes and a van full of men. Someone like that will never stop unless they are made to.
Weeks pass. We scrub, we rest, we sleep in a summer storm. Aylin gives me a flowered dress once. She says, "You look like a wild thing now, not a beggar." She laughs when I twirl.
The village fair comes. A pile of people gather. There is a stage. There is a light tower and a small screen for the mayor's speech. I take Aylin's bowl of soup and watch men shift and trade and kids run.
I have the ledger in my bag. It's the dirty book Hamza used to count the kids—names, dates, payments. I got it from the burned house before the men could haul it away. I hid it under rocks, then smuggled it like a stolen chicken back to Aylin. The pages smell of oil and blood.
"Elliot," I whisper, "do you want to help me?"
He looks at the book. "Yes," he says. "I don't want others to be taken."
We write down names. We take photos on an old phone because we need proof. I can not let them be free.
"What's the plan?" Elliot asks.
"We go public," I say. "We show everything where everyone can see."
"Elliot," Aylin says, with a hand like a palm tree, "that is dangerous."
"It is dangerous if we do nothing," I reply.
That night before the fair, Everest Cervantes finds me by the train tracks. He is thin and sun-splashed like one of his paintings. "You there," he says. "You broke the station glass."
"You remember?" I ask.
"You hit real hard," he says, and his laugh is warm. I tell him about Hamza and the ledger. He places his hand on my shoulder. "Bring me the proof," he says. "There is a gathering at the fair. I can get on the stage."
We do it. We cram the ledger pages into a bag and walk with a lantern under our coats. The fair stage hums with people eating and talking. The mayor is on the stage giving a small speech about road paving. The screen behind him plays a slide of smiling officials.
Everest smiles at me like a conspirator. "When they are laughing, I will call out," he says. "You run."
"You will show the pictures?" I ask.
"I can make them visible," he says. He has a small projector. Old men nod, kids eat candied fruit. We approach with the ledger folded like a weapon.
I climb the low stage quietly. My heart bangs like a kettle.
"May I say something?" I shout so that the mayor's speech cuts off. The crowd quiets. "You will want to listen."
A man in a suit—red face—says what I am not to do. He is part of the festival. But Everest clicks his machine and the screen changes.
"Is that a list?" someone in the crowd asks.
We flash names. The camera on the phone sends the ledger pages big and ugly onto the screen. Handwritten notes. Dates. Prices. Names of children. Places near the river. A cheap handwriting of men who trade in people.
"That is Hamza Koch's handwriting!" a woman screams. "I recognize his number."
From the back of the crowd someone yells, "He has a van."
Hamza and Fernanda are there—of course they are. They think their feet are safe. They were among the festival helpers last year. They stand near a stall selling meat and laugh when they see us.
I keep talking. I read names. I hold the phone high. "These names are children who were taken and sold to men with money," I say. "They used this ledger to mark them down. Hamza Koch—Fernanda Ikeda—you are listed."
Hamza's jaw goes hard. He tries to laugh. "You have no proof," he shouts. "This is libel."
"Is it?" I call. "Look at the receipts." Everest plays the photos. The crowd sees the handwriting, the cash notes, the small scrawled route that matches the road to the river. A vendor—a big man with a beard—points to a date and to a number and says, "My cousin sold them a calf that day. He paid cash."
The laughter dies into murmurs. People who had seen the house burning recall the smoke. People who have lost a child look at the screen with round eyes.
Hamza swears and moves forward. He reaches for the phone, for the ledger. People step back. A tall man with a kid who had once been taken in the night grabs Hamza by the coat.
"No," the man says. "Not here."
"Take it somewhere private," Fernanda pleads, voice high. "You can't just—"
"Close the screen!" Hamza roars.
Someone in the crowd lifts a phone and starts filming. "Get the camera on him!" a woman shouts. The light of a hundred small screens shines like a swarm of insects.
"You're lying!" Hamza screams. His face is red like a bruised apple. The mayor steps off the stage with a tie flapping. "This is a disruption!" he says, but people are no longer listening to the mayor. They are listening to the ledger.
"Show a face!" someone calls. "Where are the boys he sold?"
"Elliot!" I call, and the stolen boy—my stolen boy—comes out of the crowd. He is small. He stands two steps from Hamza. People hush because he looks like something fragile and real.
"You took him," a woman says quietly, and then the crowd repeats, "You took him."
Fernanda grabs Hamza's arm and says, "He is lying. She is lying."
Hamza's face is a mask of panic now. He looks around for allies. He looks to the van—it's not there. Someone has already called the police. Phone screens keep capturing everything. Voices shout and point and someone pulls at Hamza's collar. A merchant who recognizes one of the children's names places his thumb over Hamza's ledger copy.
"I saw them with the van," the merchant says. "They came through last month. Paid for boys." His voice is thick and full. "I saw their faces."
Hamza's eyes dart. He is no longer a large man; he is a small animal cornered.
"You're a liar," he says. "You want money. You want—"
He is cut off by a wave of people screaming his name like a curse.
"Shut up!" Fernanda screams. She pushes through a group of women and lunges for me. "You brat!"
I hold my ground. "You will not touch me."
"Throw them out!" Hamza orders, but the crowd is too heavy. People who remember a burned house step forward. A vendor punches Hamza in the shoulder. A man who had children stolen by a van says, "Kneel."
Hamza looks at the command as if it is foreign. Then he drops to his knees, because the weight of so many eyes is a force everyone knows. He drops and the crowd gasps.
"What are you doing?" Fernanda screeches. Her voice breaks. Her nails dig into the air.
"Please!" Hamza begs. "I didn't mean—"
"Oh!" someone throws their cup and it hits the stage. Children laugh because grown men on knees look ridiculous and mean at once.
"Keep him there!" a woman points. "Get your ledger. Show us your money."
A man in work boots pushes Hamza's face to the ground. People pull out their phones and ask for names. The mayor hesitates—this is bigger than a speech. He eliminates small talk and calls the sheriff.
Hamza goes through the five stages like a bad play: anger, denial, bargaining, collapse, pleading.
"You're lying!" he says at first. He throws his hands and tries to shove someone. He stands and colors his face with bluster.
"That's not our handwriting," Fernanda says, and she starts to cry which looks like a theater trick.
"That's our van in the picture," a boy in the crowd shouts.
Hamza's lips tremble. He finds no rope to hold. He kneels. He presses his forehead to the stage planks and begins to cry.
"No!" he says. "No, please. I will give you money. Take what you want. I will pay."
"Where were you when those boys disappeared?" an old woman asks.
"They were runaway kids," Hamza says, words like smoke. "They came to us. We feed them. They leave."
"Elliot," I say, "was taken. He was never allowed to leave on his own."
"I will not—" Hamza starts and then cannot finish.
The crowd begins to spit words. The merchants shout "Shame!" and the small screen on the stage runs the images again. Someone prints a sheet of paper and pins it to the vendor board: "Proven traffickers—Hamza Koch. Watch your children."
Fernanda covers her face and then pulls it down, because she knows the cameras will find her anyway. She pulls Hamza to his feet and he kneels again, this time longer. He begs in gasps and then slumps on his knees, a man undone.
"Don't follow us!" he cries to the camera-wielding crowd. "I'm sorry!"
"Say sorry to them," someone says, but he coughs and cannot put names into his mouth.
A child—the son of one of the lost—walks to the stage and slaps at Hamza's face with a small hand. "You took my friend," he says.
Hamza falls backward and crawls. He is no longer in a position of power. People watch and some throw things. Someone records his hands shaking. His cigarettes fall from his mouth.
They post, and the posts spread. Tablets show the video and it hums. In the market and in living rooms, people replay the moment: Hamza on his knees, Fernanda screaming, the ledger full of names.
That is the punishment. They do not go to prison that night—law moves slow—but they go up and down in the shame that is recorded, shared, and repeated. They are attacked by a thousand small judgments. Vendors refuse to serve them. Someone douses their van with paint. Their faces go on the town board with big black letters: "Traffickers. Watch your children."
Hamza crawls into the van and leaves. Fernanda wakes up in the morning and finds a crowd outside her shop with banners and wails. People spit on their porch. They come to the fair for three days straight to shout and to point and to record.
The public punishing is not the law, but it is something worse for them: it is the town watching, the faces that once sold their melon now seeing their ledger and knowing the truth. The ledger has gone viral. They kneel, they beg, and they are shouted at until their voices bleed into the crowd. People slap them, insult them, call them names. Phones record the whole sequence—the moment of denial, the rage, the collapse, the begging. The clip plays in every tea shop and on every small screen. They fall from the pedestal of power into the mud of public scorn.
When the sheriff finally arrives the next day, he does not carry mercy on his back. He carries a bag with handcuffs and a warrant. He listens to complaints. He reads the ledger. He notes names. He looks at the video.
We go to the station to tell the story. We give names. We provide witnesses. I stand and say, "They sold children. They burned a house when I tried to take my wallet back. They make money from fear."
Elliot watches Hamza and Fernanda be led away. He does not cheer. He just stands. He looks small and then older.
This scene—Hamza on his knees, Fernanda screaming, the crowd pressing mobile phones like torches—is what justice smelled like for us. It is the smell of smoke, but not the kind that takes breath. It is the smoke of the ledger burned in public shame.
After the shame there is clean work. We help the sheriff find other names, and other houses. The police dig and make slow nets that catch more names. We put up ledgers and cards in the market.
"Where will you go?" Aylin asks me after the crowd splinters, and the wind runs through the new quiet.
"I still want the sea," I say.
Elliot sets his jaw and nods. "I want to see it."
We take the last of the bus money and board a train that smells like oil and stopping. Everest stands on the platform and presses another painting into my hand, a small square of blues that looks like a door.
"Remember," he says, "there are many kinds of water. The sea is the loudest."
I laugh and keep the painting like a map. We ride the rails to a coast where salt makes metal taste like bright coins. The air is wide. The sun is a hot coin again, but different—clean.
"I can see it," Elliot says, and his face cracks into a grin that throws off everything heavy.
We walk to the edge. The sea breathes in and out in a big slow body. I spread Velvet, the painting, on the sand. The light crosses it and hands it a new color.
"How will we live?" Elliot asks quietly.
"I will find a clinic job," I say. I had once been a trainee. The white coat on my back is battered but honest. "I can work. You can learn. We will find small things."
We stand shoulder to shoulder and let the wind comb our hair. The gulls make rough music. A woman offers Elliot a cone of ice cream and he eats it with both hands.
At dusk, I take the painting from the sand and hold it up. The sea behind it is all the same blue. People walk by, but for a moment I feel that the river that carried us down is a thin scar compared to the sea's wide promise.
I turn to Elliot. "We will make a life," I say.
He nods, and for once the word family feels like a tool we both can use.
I keep the ledger pictures stored in two places. I help the sheriff with what we can. The market still points fingers at the van when it passes.
Months later, I wear a cleaner coat. I have a small job at a clinic by the port. Elliot goes to a school program for kids who ran from traffickers. He learns letters and numbers and how to tie knots. Sometimes he ties his hair at the nape like a man. Sometimes I scold him for leaving wet towels in the hall. We laugh.
At night, I stand on the boardwalk with a cup of tea and look at the painted canvas Everest had given me that first day. I think of Aylin's gruff hands, of the old man painting trains at the station, of Hamza on his knees, of Fernanda screaming and then small in the doorway. I think of the ledger that bit like acid and then turned into a rope that pulled them down. I think of the river, the bridge, the jump.
We did not do it all. The law did some. The town did some. We did what we could. Elliot is learning to trust light. I am learning to trust my legs.
"Do you still want to go farther?" Elliot asks one morning, his toes in a puddle near a pier.
"Maybe," I say. I fold my hands and look at the blue. "But for now, the sea is enough."
Elliot digs a small hole and finds a shell. He presents it to me like a treasure.
"Keep it," he says. "For luck."
I take the shell and hold it to my ear. The sound is small and full, like a promise.
We keep walking. The city behind us is smaller now. The future is not easy, but it is ours. We have names. We have people who saw us and stood with us. We have a painting of the sea.
"Elliot," I say, and the air tastes like salt. "We survived the river. We are going to survive the rest."
He smiles with the shell between his fingers and answers, "Yes."
The End
— Thank you for reading —