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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of It’s like this, cat by Emily Neville
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
+restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under
+the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
+online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: It’s like this, cat
+
+Author: Emily Neville
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2008 [Ebook #24921]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT’S LIKE THIS, CAT***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           It’s like this, cat
+
+                            by Emily Neville
+                        ILLUSTRATED BY EMIL WEISS
+
+
+
+        [Cover: Dave standing on top step looking across street;
+       Cat curled up below. Tall apartment building in background.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           IT’S LIKE THIS, CAT
+
+                            BY EMILY NEVILLE
+                          PICTURES BY EMIL WEISS
+
+
+
+        [Title Page: City scene of park entrance and busy street:
+            tall apartment building on left; car driving by;
+               bike-riding boy behind running boy and dog;
+               mailman handing mail to woman on sidewalk.]
+
+
+
+
+
+IT’S LIKE THIS, CAT
+Copyright © 1963 by Emily Neville
+
+
+
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of
+this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
+written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
+critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row,
+Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+MIDNIGHT,
+“MAYOR” OF GRAMERCY PARK
+1954-1962
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ 1. Cat and Kate
+ 2. Cat and the Underworld
+ 3. Cat and Coney
+ 4. Fight
+ 5. Around Manhattan
+ 6. And Brooklyn
+ 7. Survival
+ 8. West Side Story
+ 9. Fathers
+10. Cat and the Parkway
+11. Rosh Hashanah at the Fulton Fish Market
+12. The Red Eft
+13. The Left Bank of Coney Island
+14. Expedition by Ferry
+15. Dollars and Cats
+16. Fortune
+17. Telephone Numbers
+18. “Here’s to Cat!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          *IT’S LIKE THIS, CAT*
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         1
+
+
+           [Illustration: Dave holding Cat while Dad looks up
+                       from reading his newspaper.]
+
+
+
+                                                              CAT AND KATE
+
+
+
+My father is always talking about how a dog can be very educational for a
+boy. This is one reason I got a cat.
+
+My father talks a lot anyway. Maybe being a lawyer he gets in the habit.
+Also, he’s a small guy with very little gray curly hair, so maybe he
+thinks he’s got to roar a lot to make up for not being a big hairy tough
+guy. Mom is thin and quiet, and when anything upsets her, she gets asthma.
+In the apartment—we live right in the middle of New York City—we don’t
+have any heavy drapes or rugs, and Mom never fries any food because the
+doctors figure dust and smoke make her asthma worse. I don’t think it’s
+dust; I think it’s Pop’s roaring.
+
+The big hassle that led to me getting Cat came when I earned some extra
+money baby-sitting for a little boy around the corner on Gramercy Park. I
+spent the money on a Belafonte record. This record has one piece about a
+father telling his son about the birds and the bees. I think it’s funny.
+Pop blows his stack.
+
+“You’re not going to play that stuff in this house!” he roars. “Why aren’t
+you outdoors, anyway? Baby-sitting! Baby-talk records! When I was your
+age, I made money on a newspaper-delivery route, and my dog Jeff and I
+used to go ten miles chasing rabbits on a good Saturday.”
+
+“Pop,” I say patiently, “there are no rabbits out on Third Avenue. Honest,
+there aren’t.”
+
+“Don’t get fresh!” Pop jerks the plug out of the record player so hard the
+needle skips, which probably wrecks my record. So I get mad and start
+yelling too. Between rounds we both hear Mom in the kitchen starting to
+wheeze.
+
+Pop hisses, “Now, see—you’ve gone and upset your mother!”
+
+I slam the record player shut, grab a stick and ball, and run down the
+three flights of stairs to the street.
+
+This isn’t the first time Pop and I have played this scene, and there gets
+to be a pattern: When I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to my
+Aunt Kate’s. She’s not really my aunt. The kids around here call her Crazy
+Kate the Cat Woman because she walks along the street in funny old clothes
+and sneakers talking to herself, and she sometimes has half a dozen or
+more stray cats living with her. I guess she does sound a little looney,
+but it’s just because she does things her own way, and she doesn’t give a
+hoot what people think. She’s sane, all right. In fact she makes a lot
+better sense than my pop.
+
+It was three or four years ago, when I was a little kid, and I came
+tearing down our stairs crying mad after some fight with Pop, that I first
+met Kate. I plunged out of our door and into the street without looking.
+At the same moment I heard brakes scream and felt someone yank me back by
+the scruff of my neck. I got dropped in a heap on the sidewalk.
+
+I looked up, and there was a shiny black car with M.D. plates and Kate
+waving her umbrella at the driver and shouting: “Listen, Dr. Big Shot,
+whose life are you saving? Can’t you even watch out for a sniveling little
+kid crossing the street?”
+
+The doctor looked pretty sheepish, and so did I. A few people on the
+sidewalk stopped to watch and snicker at us. Our janitor Butch was there,
+shaking his finger at me. Kate nodded to him and told him she was taking
+me home to mop me up.
+
+“Yas’m,” said Butch. He says “Yas’m” to all ladies.
+
+Kate dragged me along by the hand to her apartment. She didn’t say
+anything when we got there, just dumped me in a chair with a couple of
+kittens. Then she got me a cup of tea and a bowl of cottage cheese.
+
+That stopped me snuffling to ask, “What do I put the cottage cheese on?”
+
+“Don’t put it on anything. Just eat it. Eat a bowl of it every day. Here,
+have an orange, too. But no cookies or candy, none of that sweet, starchy
+stuff. And no string beans. They’re not good for you.”
+
+My eyes must have popped, but I guess I knew right that first day that you
+don’t argue with Kate. I ate the cottage cheese—it doesn’t really have any
+taste anyway—and I sure have always agreed with her about the string
+beans.
+
+Off and on since then I’ve seen quite a lot of Kate. I’d pass her on the
+street, chirruping to some mangy old stray cat hiding under a car, and
+he’d always come out to be stroked. Sometimes there’d be a bunch of little
+kids dancing around jeering at her and calling her a witch. It made me
+feel real good and important to run them off.
+
+Quite often I went with her to the A & P and helped her carry home the cat
+food and cottage cheese and fruit. She talks to herself all the time in
+the store, and if she thinks the peaches or melons don’t look good that
+day, she shouts clear across the store to the manager. He comes across and
+picks her out an extra good one, just to keep the peace.
+
+I introduced Kate to Mom, and they got along real well. Kate’s leery of
+most people, afraid they’ll make fun of her, I guess; my mom’s not leery
+of people, but she’s shy, and what with asthma and worrying about keeping
+me and Pop calmed down, she doesn’t go out much or make dates with people.
+She and Kate would chat together in the stores or sitting on the stoop on
+a sunny day. Kate shook her head over Mom’s asthma and said she’d get over
+it if she ate cottage cheese every day. Mom ate it for a while, but she
+put mayonnaise on it, which Kate says is just like poison.
+
+The day of the fight with Pop about the Belafonte record it’s cold and
+windy out and there are no kids in sight. I slam my ball back and forth
+against the wall where it says “No Ball Playing,” just to limber up and
+let off a little spite, and then I go over to see Kate.
+
+Kate has a permanent cat named Susan and however many kittens Susan
+happens to have just had. It varies. Usually there are a few other
+temporary stray kittens in the apartment, but I never saw any father cat
+there before. Today Susan and her kittens are under the stove, and Susan
+keeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat crouching under the sofa. He
+turns his head away from her and looks like he never intended to get mixed
+up with family life. For a stray cat he’s sleek and healthy-looking. Every
+time he moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly. She believes in no
+visiting rights for fathers.
+
+Kate pours me some tea and asks what’s doing.
+
+“My pop is full of hot air, as usual,” I say.
+
+“Takes one to know one,” Kate says, catching me off base. I change the
+subject.
+
+“How come the kittens’ pop is around the house? I never saw a full-grown
+tom here before.”
+
+“He saw me buying some cans of cat food, so he followed me home. Susan
+isn’t admitting she ever knew him or ever wants to. I’ll give him another
+feed and send him on his way, I guess. He’s a handsome young fellow.” Kate
+strokes him between the ears, and he rotates his head. Susan hisses.
+
+He starts to pull back farther under the sofa. Without stopping to think
+myself, or giving him time to, I pick him up. Susan arches up and spits. I
+can feel the muscles in his body tense up as he gets ready to spring out
+of my lap. Then he changes his mind and decides to take advantage of the
+lap. He narrows his eyes and gives Susan a bored look and turns his head
+to take me in. After he’s sized me up, he pretends he only turned around
+to lick his back.
+
+“Cat,” I say to him, “how about coming home with me?”
+
+“Hah!” Kate laughs. “Your pop will throw him out faster than you can say
+‘good old Jeff.’”
+
+“Yeah-h?” I say it slowly and do some thinking. Taking Cat home had been
+just a passing thought, but right now I decide I’ll really go to the mat
+with Pop about this. He can have his memories of good old Jeff and rabbit
+hunts, but I’m going to have me a tiger.
+
+Aunt Kate gives me a can of cat food and a box of litter, so Cat can stay
+in my room, because I remember Mom probably gets asthma from animals, too.
+Cat and I go home.
+
+Pop does a lot of shouting and sputtering when we get home, but I just put
+Cat down in my room, and I try not to argue with him, so I won’t lose my
+temper. I promise I’ll keep him in my room and sweep up the cat hairs so
+Mom won’t have to.
+
+As a final blast Pop says, “I suppose you’ll get your exercise mouse
+hunting now. What are you going to name the noble animal?”
+
+“Look, Pop,” I explain, “I know he’s a cat, he knows he’s a cat, and his
+name is Cat. And even if you call him Honorable John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
+he won’t come when you call, and he won’t lick your hand, see?”
+
+“He’d better not! And it’s not my hand that’s going to get licked around
+here in a minute,” Pop snaps.
+
+“All right, all right.”
+
+Actually, my pop sometimes jaws so long it’d be a relief if he did haul
+off and hit me, but he never does.
+
+We call it a draw for that day, and I have Cat.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         2
+
+
+           [Illustration: Dave looking at Cat locked in cage.]
+
+
+
+                                                    CAT AND THE UNDERWORLD
+
+
+
+Cat makes himself at home in my room pretty easily. Mostly he likes to be
+up on top of something, so I put an old sweater on the bureau beside my
+bed, and he sleeps up there. When he wants me to wake up in the morning,
+he jumps and lands in the middle of my stomach. Believe me, cats don’t
+always land lightly—only when they want to. Anything a cat does, he does
+only when he wants to. I like that.
+
+When I’m combing my hair in the morning, sometimes he sits up there and
+looks down his nose at my reflection in the mirror. He appears to be
+taking inventory: “Hmm, buckteeth; sandy hair, smooth in front, cowlick in
+back; brown eyes, can’t see in the dark worth a nickel; hickeys on the
+chin. Too bad.”
+
+I look back at him in the mirror and say, “O.K., black face, yellow eyes,
+and one white whisker. Where’d you get that one white whisker?”
+
+He catches sight of himself in the mirror, and his tail twitches
+momentarily. He seems to know it’s not really another cat, but his claws
+come out and he taps the mirror softly, just to make sure.
+
+When I’m lying on the bed reading, sometimes he will curl up between my
+knees and the book. But after a few days I can see he’s getting more and
+more restless. It gets so I can’t listen to a record, for the noise of him
+scratching on the rug. I can’t let him loose in the apartment, at least
+until we make sure Mom doesn’t get asthma, so I figure I better
+reintroduce him to the great outdoors in the city. One nice Sunday morning
+in April we go down and sit on the stoop.
+
+Cat sits down, very tall and neat and pear-shaped, and closes his eyes
+about halfway. He glances at the street like it isn’t good enough for him.
+After a while, condescending, he eases down the steps and lies on a sunny,
+dusty spot in the middle of the sidewalk. People walking have to step
+around him, and he squints at them.
+
+Then he gets up, quick, looks over his shoulder at nothing, and shoots
+down the stairs to the cellar. I take a look to see where he’s going, and
+he is pacing slowly toward the backyard, head down, a tiger on the prowl.
+I figure I’ll sit in the sun and finish my science-fiction magazine before
+I go after him.
+
+When I do, he’s not in sight, and the janitor tells me he jumped up on the
+wall and probably down into one of the other yards. I look around a while
+and call, but he’s not in sight, and I go up to lunch. Along toward
+evening Cat scratches at the door and comes in, as if he’d done it all his
+life.
+
+This gets to be a routine. Sometimes he doesn’t even come home at night,
+and he’s sitting on the doormat when I get the milk in the morning,
+looking offended.
+
+“Is it my fault you stayed out all night?” I ask him.
+
+He sticks his tail straight up and marches down the hall to the kitchen,
+where he waits for me to open the milk and dish out the cat food. Then he
+goes to bed.
+
+One morning he’s not there when I open the door, and he still hasn’t
+showed up when I get back from school. I get worried and go down to talk
+to Butch.
+
+“Wa-a-l,” says Butch, “sometimes that cat sit and talk to me a little, but
+most times he go on over to Twenty-first Street, where he sit and talk to
+his lady friend. Turned cold last night, lot of buildings put on heat and
+closed up their basements. Maybe he got locked in somewheres.”
+
+“Which building’s his friend live in?” I ask.
+
+“Forty-six, the big one. His friend’s a little black-and-white cat, sort
+of belongs to the night man over there. He feeds her.”
+
+I go around to Twenty-first Street and case Forty-six, which is a pretty
+fair-looking building with a striped awning and a doorman who saunters out
+front and looks around every few minutes.
+
+While I’m watching, a grocery boy comes along pushing his cart and goes
+down some stairs into the basement with his carton of groceries. This
+gives me an idea. I’ll give the boy time to get started up in the
+elevator, and then I’ll go down in the basement and hunt for Cat. If
+someone comes along and gets sore, I can always play dumb.
+
+I go down, and the coast is clear. The elevator’s gone up, and I walk
+softly past and through a big room where the tenants leave their baby
+carriages and bicycles. After this the cellar stretches off into several
+corridors, lit by twenty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling. You can
+hardly see anything. The corridors go between wire storage cages, where
+the tenants keep stuff like trunks and old cribs and parakeet cages.
+They’re all locked.
+
+“Me-ow, meow, me-ow!” Unmistakably Cat, and angry.
+
+The sound comes from the end of one corridor, and I fumble along, peering
+into each cage to try to see a tiger cat in a shadowy hole. Fortunately
+his eyes glow and he opens his mouth for another meow, and I see him
+locked inside one of the cages before I come to the end of the corridor. I
+don’t know how he got in or how I’m going to get him out.
+
+While I’m thinking, Cat’s eyes flick away from me to the right, then back
+to me. Cat’s not making any noise, and neither am I, but something is.
+It’s just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have a creepy feeling someone
+is standing near us. Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow moves a
+little, and I can see it has a white splotch—a face. It’s a man, and he
+comes toward me.
+
+I don’t know why any of the building men would be way back there, but
+that’s who I figure it is, so I start explaining.
+
+“I was just hunting for my cat ... I mean, he’s got locked in one of these
+cages. I just want to get him out.”
+
+The guy lets his breath out, slow, as if he’s been holding it quite a
+while. I realize he doesn’t belong in that cellar either, and he’s been
+scared of me.
+
+He moves forward, saying “Sh-h-h” very quietly. He’s taller than I am, and
+I can’t see what he really looks like, but I’m sure he’s sort of a kid,
+maybe eighteen or so.
+
+He looks at the padlock on the cage and says, “Huh, cheap!” He takes a
+paper clip out of his pocket and opens it out, and I think maybe he has a
+penknife, too, and next thing I know the padlock is open.
+
+“Gee, how’d you do that?”
+
+“Sh-h-h. A guy showed me how. You better get your cat and scram.”
+
+Golly, I wonder, maybe the guy is a burglar, and that gives me another
+creepy feeling. But would a burglar be taking time out to get a kid’s cat
+free?
+
+“Well, thanks for the cat. See you around,” I say.
+
+“Sh-h-h. I don’t live around here. Hurry up, before we both get caught.”
+
+Maybe he’s a real burglar with a gun, even, I think, and by the time I
+dodge past the elevators and get out in the cold April wind, the sweat
+down my back is freezing. I give Cat a long lecture on staying out of
+basements. After all, I can’t count on having a burglar handy to get him
+out every time.
+
+Back home we put some nice jailhouse blues on the record player, and we
+both stretch out on the bed to think. The guy didn’t really _look_ like a
+burglar. And he didn’t talk “dese and dose.” Maybe real burglars don’t all
+talk that way—only the ones on TV. Still, he sure picked that lock fast,
+and he was sure down in that cellar for some reason of his own.
+
+Maybe I ought to let someone know. I figure I’ll test Pop out, just casual
+like. “Some queer-looking types hanging around this neighborhood,” I say
+at dinner. “I saw a tough-looking guy hanging around Number Forty-six this
+afternoon. Might have been a burglar, even.”
+
+I figure Pop’ll at least ask me what he was doing, and maybe I’ll tell him
+the whole thing—about Cat and the cage. But Pop says, “In case you didn’t
+know it, burglars do not all look like Humphrey Bogart, and they don’t
+wear signs.”
+
+“Thanks for the news,” I say and go on eating my dinner. Even if Pop does
+make me sore, I’m not going to pass up steak and onions, which we don’t
+have very often.
+
+However, the next day I’m walking along Twenty-first Street and I see the
+super of Forty-six standing by the back entrance, so I figure I’ll try
+again. I say to him, “Us kids were playing ball here yesterday, and we saw
+a strange-looking guy sneak into your cellar. It wasn’t a delivery boy.”
+
+“Yeah? You sure it wasn’t you or one of your juvenile pals trying to swipe
+a bike? How come you have to play ball right here?”
+
+“I don’t swipe bikes. I got one of my own. New. A Raleigh. Better than any
+junk you got in there.”
+
+“What d’you know about what I got in there, wise guy?”
+
+“Aw, forget it.” I realize he’s just getting suspicious of me. That’s what
+comes of trying to be a big public-spirited citizen. I decide my burglar,
+whoever he is, is a lot nicer than the super, and I hope he got a fat
+haul.
+
+Next day it looks like maybe he did just that. The local paper, _Town and
+Village_, has a headline: “Gramercy Park Cellar Robbed.” I read down the
+article:
+
+“The superintendent, Fred Snood, checked the cellar storage cages, after a
+passing youth hinted to him that there had been a robbery. He found one
+cage open and a suitcase missing. Police theorize that the youth may have
+been the burglar, or an accomplice with a guilty conscience or a grudge,
+and they are hunting him for questioning. Mr. Snood described him as about
+sixteen years of age, medium height, with a long ‘ducktail’ haircut, and
+wearing a heavy black sweater. They are also checking second-hand stores
+for the stolen suitcase.”
+
+The burglar stole a suitcase with valuable papers and some silver and
+jewelry in it. But the guy they were hunting for—I read the paragraph over
+and feel green. That’s me. I get up and look in the mirror. In other
+circumstances I’d like being taken for sixteen instead of fourteen, which
+I am. I smooth my hair and squint at the back of it. The ducktail is fine.
+
+Slowly I peel off my black sweater, which I wear practically all the time,
+and stuff it in my bottom drawer, under my bathing suit. But if I want to
+walk around the street without worrying about every cop, I’ll have to do
+more than that. I put on a shirt and necktie and suit jacket and stick a
+cap on my head. I head uptown on the subway. At Sixty-eighth Street I get
+off and find a barbershop.
+
+“Butch cut,” I tell the guy.
+
+“That’s right. I’ll trim you nice and neat. Get rid of all this stuff.”
+
+And while he chatters on like an idiot, I have to watch three months’ work
+go snip, snip on the floor. Then I have to pay for it. At home I get the
+same routine. Pop looks at my Ivy-League disguise and says, “Why, you may
+look positively human some day!”
+
+Two days later I find out I could’ve kept my hair. _Town and Village_ has
+a new story: “Nab Cellar Thief Returning Loot. ‘Just A Bet,’ He Says.”
+
+The story is pretty interesting. The guy I met in the cellar is named Tom
+Ransom, and he is nineteen and just sort of floating around in the city.
+He doesn’t seem to have any family. The police kept a detective watching
+Number Forty-six, and pretty soon they see Tom walking along with the
+stolen suitcase. He drops it inside the delivery entrance and walks on,
+but the cop collars him. I suppose if it hadn’t been for me shooting my
+big mouth off to the super, the police wouldn’t have been watching the
+neighborhood. I feel sort of responsible.
+
+The story in the paper goes on to say this guy was broke and hunting for a
+job, and some other guy dares him to snatch something out of a cellar and
+finally bets him ten dollars, so he does it. He gets out and finds the
+suitcase has a lot of stocks and legal papers and table silver in it, and
+he’s scared stiff. So he figures to drop it back where it came from. The
+paper says he’s held over to appear before some magistrate in Adolescent
+Court.
+
+I wonder, would they send a guy to jail for that? Or if they turn him
+loose, what does he do? It must be lousy to be in this city without any
+family or friends.
+
+At that point I get the idea I’ll write him a letter. After all, Cat and I
+sort of got him into the soup. So I look up the name of the magistrate and
+spend about half an hour poring through the phone book, under “New York,
+City of,” to get an address. I wonder whether to address him as “Tom” or
+“Mr. Ransom.” Finally I write:
+
+
+_Dear Tom Ransom:_
+
+_I am the kid you met in the cellar at Number Forty-six Gramercy, and I
+certainly thank you for unlocking that cage and getting my cat out. Cat is
+fine. I am sorry you got in trouble with the police. It sounds to me like
+you were only trying to return the stuff and do right. My father is a
+lawyer, if you would like one. I guess he’s pretty good. Or if you would
+like to write me anyway, here is my address: 150 East 22 St. I read in the
+paper that your family don’t live in New York, which is why I thought you
+might like someone to write to._
+
+                                                       _Yours sincerely,_
+                                                          _Dave Mitchell_
+
+
+Now that I’m a free citizen again, I dig out my black sweater, look
+disgustedly at the butch haircut, and go out to mail my letter.
+
+Later on I get into a stickball game again on Twenty-first Street. Cat
+comes along and sits up high on a stoop across the street, where he can
+watch the ball game and the tame dogs being led by on their leashes. That
+big brain, the super of Forty-six, is standing by the delivery entrance,
+looking sour as usual.
+
+“Got any burglars in your basement these days?” I yell to him while I’m
+jogging around the bases on a long hit.
+
+He looks at me and my short haircut and scratches his own bald egg.
+“Where’d I see you?” he asks suspiciously.
+
+“Oh—Cat and I, we get around,” I say.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         3
+
+
+        [Illustration: Dave, Cat, and Nick running on the beach.]
+
+
+
+                                                             CAT AND CONEY
+
+
+
+Nick and I have been friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers
+used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the
+corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs.
+If anyone asked me _how come_ we’re friends, I couldn’t exactly say. We’re
+just together most of the time.
+
+Neither of us is a real whiz at sports, but we used to roller-skate and
+play a little king and stickball and ride our bikes around exploring. One
+time when we were about ten, we rode way over to Twelfth Avenue at the
+Hudson River, where the _Queen Mary_ docks. This is about the only time I
+remember my mom getting really angry. She said Pop ought to take my bike
+away from me, and he did, but only for about a week. Nick and I still ride
+bikes a lot. Otherwise we sit and do our homework or play chess and listen
+to records.
+
+Another reason we’re friends is because of this creepy little kid who
+lived down toward the corner, between me and Nick. He always tagged along,
+wanting to play with us, and of course in the end he always fouled up the
+game or fell down and started to cry. Then his big brother came rushing
+out, usually with another big guy along, and they figured they were
+entitled to beat us up for hurting little Joey.
+
+After a while it looked to me as if Joey just worked as a lookout, and the
+minute me or Nick showed up on the block, one of the big guys came to run
+us off. They did little things like throwing sticks into our bike spokes
+and pretending it was just a joke. Nick and I used to plot all kinds of
+ways to get even with them, but in the end we mostly decided it was easier
+to walk around the block the long way to get to each other’s houses. I’m
+not much on fighting, and neither is Nick—’specially not with guys bigger
+than us.
+
+Summers, up in the country, the kids seem to be all the time wrestling and
+punching, half for fun and half not. If I walk past some strange kid my
+age up there, he almost always tries to get me into a fight. I don’t get
+it. Maybe it’s because sidewalks are uncomfortable for fighting, but we
+just don’t do much scrapping for fun. The only couple of fights I ever
+had, I was real mad.
+
+Come spring, Nick and I got restless hanging around the street, with
+nothing to do but stickball and baiting the super at Forty-six. It was so
+easy to get him sore, it wasn’t even fun. Cat stayed out of that basement,
+but I wanted to get him really out in the open, where he could chase
+squirrels or something.
+
+One day we rode our bikes up to Central Park. I put Cat in a wicker hamper
+and tied it on the back of my bike. He meowed a lot, and people on the
+street would look at me and then do a double take when they heard him.
+
+We got up to Central Park and into a place they call The Horseshoe,
+because the parking area is that shape. I opened the lid a crack to look
+at Cat. He hissed at me, the first time he ever did. I looked around and
+thought, Gee, if I let him loose, he could go anywhere, even over into the
+woods, and I might never catch him. There were a lot of hoody looking kids
+around, and I could see if I ever left my bike a second to chase Cat,
+they’d snatch the bike. So I didn’t let Cat out, and I wolfed my sandwich
+and we went home. Nick was pretty disgusted.
+
+Then we hit a hot Saturday, the first one in May, and I get an idea. I
+find Nick and say, “Let’s put Cat and some sandwiches in the basket and
+hop the subway out to Coney.”
+
+Nick says, “Why bring Cat? He wrecked the last expedition.”
+
+“I like to take him places, and this won’t be like Central Park. No one’s
+at Coney this time of year. He can chase around on the beach and hunt sand
+crabs.”
+
+“Why do I have to have a nut for a friend?” Nick moans. “Well, anyway, I’m
+keeping my sandwich in my pocket, not in any old cat basket.”
+
+“Who cares where you keep your crumby sandwich?”
+
+So we went. Lots of people might think Coney Island is ugly, with all the
+junky-looking booths and billboards. But when you turn your back on them
+and look out at the ocean, it’s the same ocean as on a deserted beach. I
+kick off my shoes and stand with my feet in the ice water and the sun hot
+on my chest. Looking out at the horizon with its few ships and some sea
+gulls and planes overhead, I think: It’s mine, all mine. I could go
+anywhere in the world, I could. Maybe I will.
+
+Nick throws water down my neck. He only understands infinity on math
+papers. I let Cat out of the basket and strip off my splashed shirt and
+chase Nick along the edge of the water. No need to worry about Cat. He
+chases right along with us, and every time a wave catches his feet he
+hisses and hightails it up the beach. Then he rolls himself in the hot,
+dry sand and gets up and shakes. There are a few other groups of people
+dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog comes and sniffs Cat and gets a
+right and a left scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home. Cat
+discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around in the sand and wrestle, and
+after a while we get hungry, so we go back where we left the basket. Cat
+is content to let me carry him.
+
+Three girls are having a picnic right near our basket. One yells to the
+others, “Hey, look! The guy went swimming with his cat!”
+
+Cat jumps down, turns his back on them, and humps himself around on my
+sweater until he is settled for a nap. I turn my back on the girls, too,
+and look out at the ocean.
+
+Still, it’s not the same as it would have been a year ago. Then Nick and I
+would either have moved away from the girls or thrown sand at them.
+
+We just sit and eat our sandwiches. Nick looks over at them pretty often
+and whispers to me how old do I think they are. I can’t tell about girls.
+Some of the ones in our class at school look about twenty-five, but then
+you see mothers pushing baby carriages on the street who look about
+fifteen.
+
+One of the girls catches Nick’s eye and giggles. “Hi, there, whatcha
+watching?”
+
+“I’m a bird watcher,” says Nick. “Seen any birds?”
+
+The girls drift over our way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The
+one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and
+hair piled up high in a bird’s nest. Maybe that’s what started Nick
+bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with brown hair, I
+guess.
+
+“You want a couple of cupcakes? You can have mine. I’m going on a diet,”
+says the blonde.
+
+“Thanks,” says Nick. “I was thinking of going after some cokes.”
+
+“Why waste time thinking? You might hurt your head,” says the redhead.
+
+The third girl bends down and strokes Cat between the ears very gently.
+She says, “What’s his name?”
+
+I explain to her about why Cat is Cat. She sits down and picks up a piece
+of seaweed to dangle over his nose. Cat makes a couple of sleepy swipes at
+it and then stretches luxuriously while she strokes him. The other kids
+get to talking, and we tell each other our names and where we go to school
+and all that stuff.
+
+Then Nick gets back on the subject of going for cokes. I don’t really want
+to stay there alone with the girls, so I say I’ll go. I tell Nick to watch
+Cat, and the girl who is petting him says, “Don’t worry, I won’t let him
+run away.”
+
+It’s a good thing she’s there, because by the time I get back with the
+cokes, which no one offers to pay me back for, Nick and the other two
+girls are halfway down the beach. Mary—that’s her name—says, “I never saw
+a cat at the beach before, but he seems to like it. Where’d you get him?”
+
+“He’s a stray. I got him from an old lady who’s sort of a nut about cats.
+Come on, I’ll see if I can get him to chase waves for you. He was doing it
+earlier.”
+
+We are running along in the waves when the other kids come back. The big
+blonde kicks up water at me and yells, “Race you!”
+
+So I chase, and just as I’m going to catch up, she stops short so I crash
+into her and we both fall down. This seems to be what she had in mind, but
+I bet the other kids are watching and I feel silly. I roll away and get up
+and go back to Cat.
+
+While we drink cokes the blonde and the redhead say they want to go to the
+movies.
+
+“What’s on?” Nick asks.
+
+“There’s a Sinatra thing at the neighborhood,” the blonde tells him, and
+he looks interested.
+
+“I can’t,” I say. “I’ve got Cat. Besides, it’s too late. Mom’d think I’d
+fallen into the subway.”
+
+“I told you that cat was a mistake,” says Nick.
+
+“Put him in the basket and call your mother and tell her your watch
+stopped,” says the redhead. She comes over and trickles sand down my neck.
+“Come on, it’d be fun. We don’t have to sit in the kids’ section. We all
+look sixteen.”
+
+“Nah, I can’t.” I get up and shake the sand out.
+
+Nick looks disgusted, but he doesn’t want to stay alone. He says to the
+blonde, “Write me down your phone number, and we’ll do it another day when
+this nut hasn’t got his cat along.”
+
+She writes down the phone number, and the redhead pouts because I’m not
+asking for hers. The girls get ready to leave, and Mary pats Cat good-bye
+and waves to me. She says, “Bring him again. He’s nice.”
+
+We get on the subway and Cat meows crossly at being shut in his basket.
+Nick pokes the basket with his toes.
+
+“Shut up, nuisance,” he says.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         4
+
+
+          [Illustration: Dave and Nick fighting on the ground.]
+
+
+
+                                                                     FIGHT
+
+
+
+I actually get a letter back from Tom Ransom. It says: “Thanks for your
+letter. The Youth Board got me a room in the Y on Twenty-third Street.
+Maybe I’ll come say Hello some day. They’re going to help me get a job
+this summer, so I don’t need a lawyer. Thanks anyway. Meow to Cat. Best,
+Tom.”
+
+I go over to Nick’s house to show him the letter. I’d told him about Tom
+getting Cat out of the cellar and getting arrested, but Nick always acted
+like he didn’t really believe it. So when he sees the letter, he has to
+admit Cat and I really got into something. Not everyone gets letters from
+guys who have been arrested.
+
+One thing about Nick sort of gripes me. He has to think up all the plans.
+Anything I’ve done that he doesn’t know about, he downgrades. Also, I
+always have to go to _his_ house. He never comes to mine, except once in a
+coon’s age when I have a new record I won’t bring to his house because his
+machine stinks and he never buys a new needle.
+
+It’s not that I don’t like his house. His mom is pretty nice, and boy, can
+she cook! Just an ordinary Saturday for lunch she makes pizza or real good
+spaghetti, and she has homemade cookies and nut cake sitting around after
+school. She also talks and waves her arms and shouts orders at us kids,
+but all good-natured-like, so we just kid her along and go on with what
+we’re doing.
+
+She’s about the opposite of my mom. Pop does the shouting in our house,
+and except for the one hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue, Mom
+doesn’t even tell me what to do much. She’s quiet, and pretty often she
+doesn’t feel good, so maybe I think more than most kids that I ought to do
+things her way without being told.
+
+Also, my mom is always home and always ready to listen if you got
+something griping you, like when a teacher blames you for something you
+didn’t do. Some kids I know, they have to phone a string of places to find
+their mother, and then she scolds them for interrupting her.
+
+Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good meals for holidays, but she
+doesn’t go at it all the time, the way Nick’s mother does. So maybe Nick
+doesn’t come to my house because we haven’t got all that good stuff
+sitting around. I don’t think that’s it, really, though. He just likes to
+be boss.
+
+One day, a couple of weeks after we went to Coney, he does come along with
+me. We pick up a couple of cokes and pears at his pop’s store.
+
+Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps down and rubs between my
+legs and goes up the stairs ahead of us.
+
+“See? He knows when school gets out then it’s time to eat. That’s why I
+like to come home,” I tell Nick.
+
+We say “Hi” to Mom, and I get out the cat food while Nick opens his coke.
+“You know those girls we ran into over on Coney Island?” he says.
+
+“Yeah.”
+
+“Well, I got the blonde’s phone number, so Sunday when I was hacking
+around with nothing to do, I called her up.”
+
+“Yeah? What for?”
+
+“You stupid or something? To talk. So she yacked away a good while, and
+finally I asked her why didn’t she come over next Saturday, we could go to
+a movie or something.”
+
+“Yeah.” I was working on my pear, a very juicy one.
+
+“That all you can say? So she says, well, she might, if she can get her
+girl friend to come too, but she doesn’t want to come alone, and her
+mother wouldn’t let her anyway.”
+
+“Which one?”
+
+“Which one what?”
+
+“Which girl friend?”
+
+“Oh. You remember, the other one we were kidding around with at the beach,
+the redhead. So I said, O.K., I’d see if I could get you to come too. I
+said I’d call her back.”
+
+“Hmp. I don’t know.”
+
+“What d’you mean, you don’t know?”
+
+“How do I know if I like that girl? I hardly even _talked_ to her. Anyway,
+it sounds like a date. I don’t want a date. If they just happen to come
+over, I guess it’s all right.”
+
+“So shall I tell them it’s O.K. for Saturday?”
+
+“Hmm.”
+
+“It’s nice you learned a new word.”
+
+“Do I have to pay for the girl at the movies?”
+
+“Cheapskate. Maybe if you just stand around saying ‘Hmm,’ she’ll buy her
+own. O.K.?”
+
+“O.K. But this whole thing is your idea, and if it stinks it’s going to be
+your fault.”
+
+“Boy, what an enthusiast! Come on, let’s play a record and do the math.”
+
+Nick is better at math than I am, so I agree.
+
+Saturday morning at ten o’clock Nick turns up at my house in a white shirt
+and slicked-down hair. Pop whistles. “On Saturday, yet! You got a girl or
+something?”
+
+“Yessir!” says Nick, and he gives my T-shirt a dirty look. I go put a
+sweater over it and run a comb through my hair, but I’m hanged if I’ll go
+out looking like this is a big deal.
+
+“We’re going to a movie down at the Academy,” I tell my family.
+
+“What’s there?” Pop asks.
+
+“A new horror show,” says Nick. “And an old Disney.”
+
+“Is it really a new horror show?” I ask Nick, because I think I’ve seen
+every one that’s been in town.
+
+“Yup. Just opened. _The Gold Bug._ Some guy wrote it—I mean in a book
+once—but it’s supposed to be great. Make the girls squeal anyway. I love
+that.”
+
+“Hmm.” I just like horror shows anyway, whether girls squeal or not.
+
+“You’ll be the life of the party with that ‘Hmm’ routine.”
+
+“It’s _your_ party.” I shrug.
+
+“Well, you could at least _try_.”
+
+We hang around the subway kiosk on Fourteenth Street, where Nick said he’d
+meet them. After half an hour they finally show up.
+
+It’s nice and sunny, and we see a crowd bunched up over in Union Square,
+so we wander over. A shaggy-haired, bearded character is making a speech
+all about “They,” the bad guys. A lot of sleepy bums are sitting around
+letting the speech roll off their ears.
+
+“What is he, a nut or something?” the blonde asks.
+
+“A Commie, maybe,” I say. “They’re always giving speeches down here.
+Willie Sutton, the bank robber, used to sit down here and listen, too.
+That’s where somebody put the finger on him.”
+
+The girls look at each other and laugh like crazy, as if I’d said
+something real funny. I catch Nick’s eye and glare. O.K., I _tried_. After
+this I’ll stick to “Hmm.”
+
+A beard who is listening to the speech turns and glares at us and says,
+“Shush!”
+
+“Aw, go shave yourself!” says Nick, and the girls go off in more hoots.
+Nick starts herding them toward Fourteenth Street, and I follow along.
+
+At the Academy Nick goes up to the ticket window, and the girls
+immediately fade out to go read the posters and snicker together. I can
+see they’re not figuring to pay for any tickets, so I cough up for two.
+
+Nick and I try to saunter up to the balcony the way we always do, but the
+girls are giggling and dropping their popcorn, so the matron spots us and
+motions. “Down here!” She flashes her light in our eyes, and I feel like a
+convict while we get packed in with all the kids in the under-sixteen
+section.
+
+Nick goes in first, then the blonde, then the redhead and me. The minute
+things start getting scary, she tries to grab me, but I stick my hands in
+my pockets and say, “Aw, it’s just a picture.” She looks disgusted.
+
+The next scary bit, she tries to hang onto her girl friend, but the blonde
+is already glued onto Nick. Redhead lets out a loud sigh, and I wish I
+hadn’t ever got into this deal. I can’t even enjoy the picture.
+
+We suffer through the two pictures. The little kids make such a racket you
+can hardly hear, and the matron keeps shining the light in your eyes so
+you can’t see. She shines it on the blonde, who is practically sitting in
+Nick’s lap, and hisses at her to get back. I’m not going to do this again,
+ever.
+
+We go out and Nick says, “Let’s have a coke.” He’s walking along with the
+blonde, and instead of walking beside me the redhead tries to catch hold
+of his other arm. This sort of burns me up. I mean, I don’t really _like_
+her, but I paid for her and everything.
+
+Nick shakes her off and calls over his shoulder to me, “Come on, chicken,
+pull your own weight!”
+
+The girls laugh, on cue as usual, and I begin getting really sore. Nick
+got me into this. The least he can do is shut up.
+
+We walk into a soda bar, and I slap down thirty cents and say, “Two cokes,
+please.”
+
+“Hey, hey! The last of the big spenders!” says Nick. More laughter. I’d
+just as soon sock him right now, but I pick up my money and say, “O.K.,
+wise guy, treat’s on you.” Nick shrugs and tosses down a buck as if he had
+hundreds of them.
+
+The two girls drink their cokes and talk across Nick. I finish mine in two
+or three gulps, and finally we can walk them to the subway. Nick is
+gabbing away about how he’ll come out to Coney one weekend, and I’m
+standing there with my hands in my pockets.
+
+“Goo’bye, Bashful!” coos the redhead to me, and the two of them disappear,
+cackling, down the steps. I start across Fourteenth Street as soon as the
+light changes, without bothering to look if Nick is coming. He can go rot.
+
+Along Union Square he’s beside me, acting as if everything is peachy fine
+dandy. “That was a great show. Pretty good fun, huh?”
+
+I just keep walking.
+
+“You sore or something?” he asks, as if he didn’t know.
+
+I keep on walking.
+
+“O.K., be sore!” he snaps. Then he breaks into a falsetto: “Goo’bye,
+Bashful!”
+
+I let him have it before he’s hardly got his mouth closed. He hits me back
+in the stomach and hooks one of his ankles around mine so we both fall
+down. It goes from bad to worse. He gets me by the hair and bangs my head
+on the sidewalk, so I twist and bite his hand. We’re gouging and
+scratching and biting and kicking, because we’re both so mad we can hardly
+see, and anyway no one ever taught us those Queensberry rules. There’s no
+point in going into all the gory details. Finally two guys haul us apart.
+I have hold of Nick’s shirt and it rips. Good. He’s half crying, and he
+twists away from the guy that grabbed him and screams some things at me
+before darting across the avenue.
+
+I’m standing panting and sobbing, and the guy holding me says, “You oughta
+be ashamed. Now go on home.”
+
+“Aw, you and your big mouth,” I say, still mad enough to feel reckless. He
+throws a fake punch, but he’s not really interested. He goes his way, and
+I go mine.
+
+I must look pretty bad because a lot of people on the street shake their
+heads at me. I walk in the door at home, expecting the worst, but
+fortunately Mom is out. Pop just whistles through his teeth.
+
+“That must have been quite a horror picture!” he says.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         5
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave and Tom lunching in meadow above river.]
+
+
+
+                                                          AROUND MANHATTAN
+
+
+
+By the next weekend I no longer look like a fugitive from a riot. All week
+in school Nick and I get asked whether we got hit by a swinging door; then
+the fellows notice the two of us aren’t speaking to each other, and they
+sort of sheer off the subject. Come Saturday, I sit on the stoop and
+wonder, what now? There are plenty of other kids in school I like, but
+they mostly live over in the project—Stuyvesant Town, that is. I’ve never
+bothered to hunt them up weekends because Nick’s so much nearer.
+
+Summer is coming on, though, and I’ve got to have someone to hang around
+with. This is the last Saturday before Memorial Day. Getting time for
+beaches and stuff. I suppose Nick and I might get together again, but not
+if he’s going to be nuts about girls all the time.
+
+A guy stops in front of the stoop, and Cat half opens his eyes in the sun
+and squints at him. The guy says, “You Dave Mitchell?”
+
+“Huh? Yeah.” I look up, surprised. I don’t exactly recognize the guy,
+never having seen him in a clear light before. But from the voice I know
+it’s Tom.
+
+“Oh, hi!” I say. “Here’s Cat. He’s pretty handsome in daylight.”
+
+“Yeah, he looks all right, but what happened to you?”
+
+“Me and a friend of mine got in a fight.”
+
+“With some other guys or what?”
+
+“Nah. We had a fight with each other.”
+
+“Um, that’s bad.” Tom sits down and has sense enough to see there isn’t
+anymore to say on that subject. “I start work Memorial Day, when the
+beaches open. Working in a filling station on the Belt Parkway in
+Brooklyn.”
+
+“Gee, that’s a long way off. You going to live over there?”
+
+“Yeah, they’re going to get me a room in a Y in Brooklyn.” Tom stretches
+restlessly and goes on: “I suppose you get sick of school and all, but
+it’s rotten having nothing to do. I’d be ready to go nuts if I didn’t get
+a job. I can’t wait to start.”
+
+I think of asking him doesn’t he have a home or something to go back to,
+but somehow I don’t like to.
+
+“Like today,” Tom says. “I’d like to go somewhere. Do something. Got any
+ideas?”
+
+“Um. I was sort of trying to think up something myself. Movies?”
+
+Tom shakes himself. “No. I want to walk, or run, or throw something.”
+
+“There’s a big park—sort of a woods—up near the Bronx. A kid told me about
+it. He said he found an Indian arrowhead there, but I bet he didn’t.
+Inwood Park, it’s called.”
+
+“How do you get there?”
+
+“Subway, I guess.”
+
+“Let’s go!” Tom stands up and wriggles his shoulders like he’s Superman
+ready to take off.
+
+“O.K. Wait a minute. I’ll go tell Mom. Should I get some sandwiches?”
+
+Tom looks surprised. “Sure, fine, if she doesn’t mind.”
+
+I’m not worried about getting Mom to make sandwiches because she always
+likes to fix a little food for me. The thing is, ever since my fight with
+Nick, she’s been clucking around me like the mother hen. Maybe she figures
+I got in some gang fight, so she keeps asking me where I’m going and who
+with. Also, I guess she noticed I don’t go to Nick’s after school anymore.
+I come right home. So she asks me do I feel all right. You can’t win.
+Right now, I can see she’s going to begin asking who is Tom and where did
+I meet him. It occurs to me there’s an easy way to take care of this.
+
+I turn around to Tom again. “Say, how about you come up and I’ll introduce
+you to Mom? Then she won’t start asking me a lot of questions.”
+
+“You mean I _look_ respectable, at least?”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+We go up to the apartment, and Mom asks if we’d like some cold drinks or
+something. I tell her I ran into Tom when he helped me hunt for Cat around
+Gramercy Park, which is almost true, and that he sometimes plays stickball
+with us, which isn’t really true but it could be. Mom gets us some
+orangeade. She usually keeps something like that in the icebox in summer,
+because she thinks cokes are bad for you.
+
+“Do you live around here?” she asks Tom.
+
+“No, ma’am,” says Tom firmly. “I live at the Y. I’ve got a summer job in a
+filling station over in Brooklyn, starting right after Memorial Day.”
+
+“That’s fine,” Mom says. “I wish Davey could get a job. He gets so
+restless with nothing to do in the summer.”
+
+“Aw, Mom, forget it! You got to fill in about six-hundred working papers
+if you’re under sixteen.
+
+“Listen, Mom, what I came up for—we thought we’d make some sandwiches and
+go up to Inwood Park.”
+
+“Inwood? Where’s that?” So I explain to her about the Indian arrowheads,
+and we get out the classified phone book and look at the subway map, which
+shows there’s an IND train that goes right to it.
+
+“I get sort of restless myself, with nothing to do,” says Tom. “We just
+figured we’d do a little exploring around in the woods and get some
+exercise.”
+
+“Why, yes, that seems like a good idea.” Mom looks at him and nods. She
+seems to have decided he’s reliable, as well as respectable.
+
+I see there’s some leftover cold spaghetti in the icebox, and I ask Mom to
+put it in sandwiches. She thinks I’m cracked, but I did this once before,
+and it’s good, ’specially if there’s plenty of meat and sauce on the
+spaghetti. We take along a bag of cherries, too.
+
+“Thanks, Mom. Bye. I’ll be back before supper.”
+
+“Take care,” she says. “No fights.”
+
+“Don’t worry. We’ll stay out of fights,” says Tom quite seriously.
+
+We go down the stairs, and Tom says, “Your mother is really nice.”
+
+I’m sort of surprised—kids don’t usually say much about each other’s
+parents. “Yeah, Mom’s O.K. I guess she worries about me and Pop a lot.”
+
+“It must be pretty nice to have your mother at home,” he says.
+
+That kind of jolts me, too. I wonder where his mother and father are,
+whether they’re dead or something; but again, I don’t quite want to ask.
+Tom isn’t an easy guy to ask questions. He’s sort of like an island, by
+himself in the ocean.
+
+We walk down to Fourteenth Street and over to Eighth Avenue, about twelve
+blocks; after all, exercise is what we want. The IND trains are fast, and
+it only takes about half an hour to get up to Inwood, at 206th Street. The
+park is right close, and it is real woods, although there are paved walks
+around through it. We push uphill and get in a grassy meadow, where you
+can see out over the Hudson River to the Palisades in Jersey. It’s good
+and hot, and we flop in the sun. There aren’t many other people around,
+which is rare in New York.
+
+“Let’s eat lunch,” says Tom. “Then we can go hunting arrowheads and not
+have to carry it.”
+
+He agrees the spaghetti sandwich is a great invention.
+
+I wish the weather would stay like this more of the year—good and sweaty
+hot in the middle of the day, so you feel like going swimming, but cool
+enough to sleep at night. We lie in the sun awhile after lunch and agree
+that it’s too bad there isn’t an ocean within jumping-in distance. But
+there isn’t, and flies are biting the backs of our necks, so we get up and
+start exploring.
+
+We find a few places that you might conceivably call caves, but they’ve
+been well picked over for arrowheads, if there ever were any. That’s the
+trouble in the city: anytime you have an idea, you find out a million
+other people had the same idea first. Along in mid-afternoon, we drift
+down toward the subway and get cokes and ice cream before we start back.
+
+I don’t really feel like going home yet, so I think a minute and study the
+subway map inside the car. “Hey, as long as we’re on the subway anyway, we
+could go on down to Cortlandt Street to the Army-Navy surplus store. I got
+to get a knapsack before summer.”
+
+“O.K.” Tom shrugs. He’s staring out the window and doesn’t seem to care
+where he goes.
+
+“I got a great first-aid survival kit there. Disinfectant and burn
+ointment and bug dope and bandages, in a khaki metal box that’s
+waterproof, and it was only sixty-five cents.”
+
+“Hmm. Just what I need for survival on the sidewalks of New York,” says
+Tom. I guess he’s kidding, in a sour sort of way. If you haven’t got a
+family around, though, survival must take more than a sixty-five-cent kit.
+
+The store is a little way from the nearest subway stop, and we walk along
+not saying much. Tom looks alive when he gets into the store, though,
+because it really is a great place. They’ve got arctic explorers’ suits
+and old hand grenades and shells and all kinds of rifles, as well as some
+really cheap, useful clothing. They don’t mind how long you mosey around.
+In the end I buy a belt pack and canteen, and Tom picks up some skivvy
+shirts and socks that are only ten cents each. They’re secondhand, I
+guess, but they look all right.
+
+We walk over to the East Side subway, which is only a few blocks away down
+here because the island gets so narrow. Tom says he’s never seen Wall
+Street, where all the tycoons grind their money machines. The place is
+practically deserted now, being late Saturday afternoon, and it’s like
+walking through an empty cathedral. You can make echoes.
+
+We take the subway, and Tom walks along home with me. It seems too bad the
+day’s over. It was a pretty good day, after all.
+
+“So long, kid,” Tom says. “I’ll send you a card from Beautiful Brooklyn!”
+
+“So long.” I wave, and he starts off. I wish he didn’t have to go live in
+Brooklyn.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         6
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave wheeling his bike across Belt Parkway.]
+
+
+
+                                                              AND BROOKLYN
+
+
+
+You can’t really stay sore at a guy you’ve known all your life, especially
+if he lives right around the corner and goes to the same school. Anyhow,
+one hot Saturday morning Nick turns up at my house as if nothing had ever
+happened and says do I want to go swimming, because the Twenty-third
+Street pool’s open weekends now.
+
+After that we go back to playing ball on the street in the evenings and
+swimming sometimes on weekends. One Saturday his mother tells me he went
+to Coney Island. He didn’t ask me to go along, which is just as well,
+because I wouldn’t have. I don’t hang around his house after school much
+anymore, either. School lets out, and there’s the Fourth of July weekend,
+when we go up to Connecticut, and pretty soon after that Nick goes off to
+a camp his church runs. Pop asks me if I want to go to a camp a few weeks,
+but I don’t. Life is pretty slow at home, but I don’t feel like all that
+organization.
+
+I think Tom must have forgotten about me and found a gang his own age when
+I get a postcard from him: “Dear Dave, The guy I work for is a creep, and
+all the guys who buy gas from him are creeps, so it’s great to be alive in
+Beautiful Brooklyn! Wish you were here, but you’re lucky you’re not. Best,
+Tom.”
+
+It’s hard to figure what he means when he says a thing. However, I got
+nothing to do, so I might as well go see. He said he was going to work in
+a filling station on the Belt Parkway, and there can’t be a million of
+them.
+
+I don’t say anything too exact to Mom about where I’m going, because she
+gets worried about me going too far, and besides I don’t really know where
+I’m going.
+
+Brooklyn, what a layout. It’s not like Manhattan, which runs pretty
+regularly north and south, with decent square blocks. You could lose a
+million friends in Brooklyn, with the streets all running in circles and
+angles, and the people all giving you cockeyed directions. What with no
+bikes allowed on parkways, and skirting around crumby looking
+neighborhoods, it takes me at least a week of expeditions to find the
+right part of the Belt Parkway to start checking the filling stations.
+
+I wheel my bike across the parkway, but even so some cop yells at me.
+You’d think a cop could find a crime to get busy with.
+
+On a real sticky day in July I wheel across to a station at Thirty-fourth
+Street, and nobody yells at me, and I go over to the air pump and fiddle
+with my tires. A car pulls out after it gets gas, and there’s Tom.
+
+“Hi!” I say.
+
+Tom half frowns and quick looks over his shoulder to see if his boss is
+around, I guess, and then comes over to the air pump.
+
+“How’d you get way out here?” he says.
+
+“On the bike. I got your postcard, and I figured I could find the filling
+station.”
+
+He relaxes and grins. I feel better. He says, “You’re a crazy kid. How’s
+Cat?”
+
+But just then the boss has to come steaming up. “What d’ya want, kid? No
+bikes allowed on the parkway.”
+
+I start to say I’m just getting air, but Tom speaks up. “It’s all right. I
+know him.”
+
+“Yeah? I told you, keep kids out of here!” The guy manages to suggest that
+kids Tom knows are probably worse than any other kind. He motions me off
+like a stray dog. I don’t want to get Tom in any trouble, so I get going.
+At the edge of the parkway I wave. “So long. Write me another postcard.”
+
+Tom raises a hand briefly, but his face looks closed, like nothing was
+going to get in or out.
+
+I pedal slowly and hotly back through the tangle of Brooklyn and figure,
+well, that’s a week’s research wasted. I still don’t know where Tom lives,
+so I don’t know how I can get a hold of him again. Anyway, how do I know
+he wants to be bothered with me? He looked pretty fed up with everything.
+
+So long as I got nothing else to do, the next week I figure I’ll get
+public-spirited at home: I paint the kitchen for Mom, which isn’t so bad,
+but moving all those silly dishes and pots and scrumy little spice cans
+can drive you wild. I only break one good vase and a bottle of salad oil.
+Salad oil and broken glass are great. In the afternoons I go to the
+swimming pool and learn to do a jackknife and a backflip, so Pop will
+think I am growing up to be a Real American Boy. Also, you practically
+have to learn to dive so you can use the diving pool, because the swimming
+pool is so jam-packed with screaming sardines you can’t move in it.
+
+Evenings Cat and I play records, or we go to see Aunt Kate and drink iced
+tea. One weekend my real aunt comes to visit and sleeps in my room, so I
+go to stay with Aunt Kate, and I pretty near turn into cottage cheese.
+
+I’ve about settled into this dull routine when Mom surprises me by handing
+me a postcard one morning. It’s from Tom: “Day off next Tuesday. If you
+feel like it, meet me near the aquarium at Coney Island about nine in the
+morning, before it’s crowded.”
+
+So that week drags by till Tuesday, and there I am at Coney Island bright
+and early. Tom is easy enough to find, pacing up and down the boardwalk
+like a tiger. We say “Hi” and so forth, and I’m all ready to take a run
+for the water, but he keeps snapping his fingers and looking up and down
+the boardwalk.
+
+Finally he says, “There’s a girl I used to know pretty well. I didn’t see
+her for a while till last week, and we got in an argument, and I guess
+she’s mad. I wrote and asked her to come swimming today, but maybe she’s
+not coming.”
+
+I figure it out that I’m there as insurance against the girl not showing
+up, but I don’t mind. Anyhow, she does show up. It can’t have been too
+much of an argument they had, because she acts pretty friendly.
+
+Tom introduces us. Her name is Hilda and a last name that’d be hard to
+spell—Swedish maybe—and she’s got a wide, laughing kind of mouth and a big
+coil of yellow hair in a bun on top of her head, and a mighty good figure.
+She asks me where I ran into Tom, and we tell her all about Cat and the
+cellar at Number Forty-six, and I tell them both about my Ivy-League
+haircut, which I had never explained to anyone before. They get a laugh
+out of that, and then she asks him about the filling-station job, and he
+says it stinks.
+
+I figure they could get along without me for a while, so I go for a swim
+and wander down the beach a ways and eat a hot dog and swim some more.
+When I come back, I see Tom and Hilda just coming out of the water, so I
+join them. Hilda says, “Come have a coke. Tom says he’s got to try
+swimming to France just once more.”
+
+I don’t know just what she means, but we go get cokes and come back and
+stretch out in the sun. She asks me do I want a smoke, and I say No. It’s
+nice to be asked, though. We watch Tom, who is swimming out past all the
+other people. I wish I’d gone with him. I say, “Lifeguard’s going to
+whistle him in pretty soon. He’s out past all the others.”
+
+Hilda lets out a breath and snorts, “He’ll always go till they blow the
+whistle. Always got to go farther than anyone else.”
+
+I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.
+
+Hilda goes on: “I used to wait tables in a restaurant down near Washington
+Square. Tom and a lot of the boys from NYU came in there. Sometimes the
+day before an exam he’d be sitting around for hours, buying people cokes
+and acting as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Some other times, for no
+reason anyone could tell, he’d sit in a corner and stir his coffee like he
+was going to make a hole in the cup.”
+
+“Tom was at NYU?” I ask. I don’t know where I thought he’d been before he
+turned up in the cellar. I guess I never thought.
+
+“Sure,” Hilda says. “He was in the Washington Square College for about a
+year and a half. He lived in a dormitory uptown, but I used to see him in
+the restaurant, and then fairly often we had dates after I got off work.
+He has people out in the Midwest somewhere—a father and a stepmother. He
+was always sour and close-mouthed about them, even before he got thrown
+out of NYU. Now he won’t even write them.”
+
+This is a lot of information to take in all at once and leaves a lot of
+questions unanswered. The first one that comes into my head is this: “How
+come he got thrown out of NYU?”
+
+“Well, it makes Tom so sore, he’s never really told me a plain, straight
+story. It’s all mixed up with his father. I think his father wrote him not
+to come home at Christmas vacation, for some reason. Tom and a couple of
+other boys who were left in the dormitory over the holidays got horsing
+around and had a water fight. The college got huffy and wrote the parents,
+telling them to pay up for damages. The other parents were pretty angry,
+but they stuck behind their kids and paid up. Tom just never heard from
+his father. Not a line.
+
+“That was when Tom began coming into the restaurant looking like thunder.
+The college began needling him for the water-fight damages, as well as
+second-semester tuition. He took his first exam, physics, and got an A on
+it. He’s pretty smart.
+
+“He still didn’t hear anything from home. He took the second exam, French,
+and thought he flunked it. That same afternoon he went into the office and
+told the dean he was quitting, and he packed his stuff and left. I didn’t
+see him again till a week ago. I didn’t know if he’d got sick of me, or
+left town, or what.
+
+“He says he wrote his father that he had a good job, and they could forget
+about him. Then he broke into that cellar on a dare or for kicks.
+
+“So here we are. What do we do next?”
+
+Hilda looks at me—me, age fourteen—as if I might actually know, and it’s
+kind of unnerving. Everyone I know, their life goes along in set periods:
+grade school, junior high, high school, college, and maybe getting
+married. They don’t really have to think what comes next.
+
+I say cautiously, “My pop says a kid’s got to go to college now to get
+anywhere. Maybe he ought to go back to school.”
+
+“You’re so right, Grandpa,” she says, and I would have felt silly, but she
+has a nice friendly laugh. “I wish I could persuade him to go back. But
+it’s not so easy. I guess he’s got to get a job and go to night school, if
+they’ll accept him. He won’t ask his father for money.”
+
+“You two got my life figured out?” Tom has come up behind us while we were
+lying in the sand on our stomachs. “I just hope that sour grape at the
+filling station gives me a good recommendation so I can get another job.
+The way he watches his cash register, you’d think I was Al Capone.”
+
+We talk a bit, and then Hilda gets up and says she’s going to the ladies’
+room. She doesn’t act coy about it, the way most girls do when they’re
+sitting with guys. She just leaves.
+
+“How do you like Hilda?” Tom asks, and again I’m sort of surprised,
+because he acts like he really wants my opinion.
+
+“She’s nice,” I say.
+
+“Yeah.” Tom suddenly glowers, as if I’d said I _didn’t_ like her. “I don’t
+know why she wastes her time on me. I’ll never be any use to her. When her
+family hears about me, I’ll get the boot.”
+
+“I could ask my pop. You know, I told you he’s a lawyer. Maybe he’d know
+how you go about getting back into college or getting a job or something.”
+
+Tom laughs, an unamused bark. “Maybe he’ll tell you to quit hanging around
+with jerks that get in trouble with the cops.”
+
+This is a point, all right. Come to think, I don’t know why I said I’d ask
+Pop anyway. I usually make a point of not letting his nose into my
+personal affairs, because I figure he’ll just start bossing me around.
+However, I certainly can’t do anything for Tom on my own.
+
+I say, “I’ll chance it. The worst he ever does is talk. One time he made a
+federal case out of me buying a Belafonte record he didn’t like. Another
+time playing ball I cracked a window in a guy’s Cadillac, and Pop acted
+like he was going to sue the guy for owning a Cadillac. You just never
+know.”
+
+Tom says, “With my dad, you _know_: I’m wrong.”
+
+Hilda comes back just then. She snaps, “If he’s such a drug on the market,
+why don’t you shut up and forget about him?”
+
+“O.K., O.K.,” says Tom.
+
+The beach is getting filled up by now, so we pull on our clothes and head
+for the subway. Tom and Hilda get off in Brooklyn, and I go on to Union
+Square.
+
+After dinner that night Mom is washing the dishes and Pop is reading the
+paper, and I figure I might as well dive in.
+
+“Pop,” I say, “there’s this guy I met at the beach. Well, really I mean I
+met him this spring when I was hunting for Cat, and this guy was in the
+cellar at Forty-six Gramercy, and he got caught and....”
+
+“Wha-a-a-t?” Pop puts down his paper and takes off his glasses. “Begin
+again.”
+
+So I give it to him again, slow, and with explanations. I go through the
+whole business about the filling station and Hilda and NYU, and I’ll say
+one thing for Pop, when he finally settles down to listen, he listens. I
+get through, and he puts on his reading glasses and goes to look out the
+window.
+
+“Do you have this young man’s name and address, or is he just Tom from The
+Cellar?”
+
+I’d just got it from Tom when we were at the beach. He’s at a Y in
+Brooklyn, so I tell Pop this.
+
+Pop says, “Tell him to call my office and come in to see me on his next
+day off. Meanwhile, I’ll bone up on City educational policies in regard to
+juvenile delinquents.”
+
+He says this perfectly straight, as if there’d be a book on the subject.
+Then he goes back to his newspaper, so I guess that closes the subject for
+now.
+
+“Thanks, Pop,” I say and start to go out.
+
+“Entirely welcome,” says Pop. As I get to the door, he adds, “If that cat
+of yours makes a practice of introducing you to the underworld in other
+people’s cellars, we can do without him. We probably can anyway.”
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         7
+
+
+    [Illustration: Dave talking with veterinarian while holding Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                                  SURVIVAL
+
+
+
+Cat hadn’t got me into anymore cellars, but I can’t honestly say he’d been
+sitting home tending his knitting—not him.
+
+One hot morning I went to pick up the milk outside our door, and Cat was
+sleeping there on the mat. He didn’t even look up at me. After I scratched
+his ears and talked to him some, he got up and hobbled into the house.
+
+I put him up on my bed, under the light, for inspection. One front claw
+was torn off, which is why he was limping, his left ear was ripped, and
+there was quite a bit of fur missing here and there. He curled up on my
+bed and didn’t move all day.
+
+I came and looked at him every few hours and wondered if I ought to take
+him to a vet. But he seemed to be breathing all right, so I went away and
+thought about it some more. Come night, I pushed him gently to one side,
+wondering what I better do in the morning.
+
+Well, in the morning Cat wakes up, stretches, yawns, and drops easily down
+off the bed and walks away. He still limps a little, but otherwise he acts
+like nothing had happened. He just wants to know what’s for breakfast.
+
+“You better watch out. One day you’ll run into a cat that’s bigger and
+meaner than you,” I tell him.
+
+Cat continues to wait for breakfast. He is not impressed.
+
+But I’m worried. Suppose some big old cat chews him up and he’s hurt too
+bad to get home? After breakfast I take him out in the backyard for a bit,
+and then I shut him in my room and go over to consult Aunt Kate.
+
+She sets me up with the usual iced tea and dish of cottage cheese.
+
+“I had breakfast already. What do I need with cottage cheese?”
+
+“Eat it. It’s good for you.”
+
+So I eat it, and then I start telling her about Cat. “He came home all
+chewed up night before last. I’m afraid some night he’s not going to make
+it.”
+
+“Right,” says Kate. She’s not very talky, but I’m sort of surprised. I
+expected she’d tell me to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself. She
+starts pulling Susan’s latest kittens out from under the sofa and sorting
+them out as if they were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow, one
+calico.
+
+“So what you going to do?” she shoots at me, shoveling the kittens back to
+Susan.
+
+“I—uh—I dunno. I thought maybe I ought to try to keep him in nights.”
+
+“Huh. Don’t know much, do you?” she says. “Well, so I’ll tell you. Your
+Cat has probably fathered a few dozen kittens by now, and once a cat’s
+been out and mated, you can’t keep him in. You got to get him altered.
+Then he won’t want to go out so much.”
+
+“Altered?”
+
+“Fixed. Castrated is the technical word. It’s a two-minute operation. Cost
+you three dollars. Take him to Speyer Hospital—big new building up on
+First Avenue.”
+
+“You mean get him fixed so he’s not a real tomcat any more? The heck with
+that! I don’t want him turned into a fat old cushion cat!”
+
+“He won’t be,” she says. “But if it makes you happier, let him get killed
+in a cat fight. He’s tough. He’ll last a year or two. Suit yourself.”
+
+“Ah, you’re screwy! You and your cottage cheese!” Even as I say it I feel
+a little guilty. But I feel mad and mixed up, and I fling out the door.
+It’s the first time I ever left Kate’s mad. Usually I leave _our_  house
+mad and go to Kate.
+
+Now I got nowhere to go. I walk along, cussing and fuming and kicking
+pebbles. I come to an air-conditioned movie and go up to the window.
+
+The phony blonde in the booth looks at me and sneers, “You’re not sixteen.
+We don’t have a children’s section in this theater.” She doesn’t even ask.
+She just says it. It’s a great world. I go home. There’s no one there but
+Cat, so I turn the record player up full blast.
+
+Pop comes home in one of his unexpected fits of generosity that night and
+takes us to the movies. Cat behaves himself and stays around home and our
+cellar for a while, so I stop worrying. But it doesn’t last long.
+
+As soon as his claw heals, he starts sashaying off again. One night I hear
+cats yowling out back and I go out with a bucket of water and douse them
+and bring Cat in. There’s a pretty little tiger cat, hardly more than a
+kitten, sitting on the fence licking herself, dry and unconcerned. Cat
+doesn’t speak to me for a couple of days.
+
+One morning Butch, the janitor, comes up and knocks on our door. “You
+better come down and look at your cat. He got himself mighty chewed up.
+Most near dead.”
+
+I hurry down, and there is Cat sprawled in a corner on the cool cement
+floor. His mouth is half open, and his breath comes in wheezes, like he
+has asthma. I don’t know whether to pick him up or not.
+
+Butch says, “Best let him lie.”
+
+I sit down beside him. After a bit his breath comes easier and he puts his
+head down. Then I see he’s got a long, deep claw gouge going from his
+shoulder down one leg. It’s half an inch open, and anyone can see it won’t
+heal by itself.
+
+Butch shakes his head. “You gotta take him to the veteran, sure. That’s
+the cat doctor.”
+
+“Yeah,” I say, not correcting him. It’s not just the gash that’s worrying
+me. I remember what Aunt Kate said, and it gives me a cold feeling in the
+stomach: In the back-alley jungle he’d last a year, maybe two.
+
+Looking at Cat, right now, I know she’s right. But Cat’s such a—well, such
+a _cat_. How can I take him to be whittled down?
+
+I tell Butch I’ll be back down in a few minutes, and I go upstairs. Mom’s
+humming and cleaning in the kitchen. I wander around and stare out the
+window awhile. Finally I go in the kitchen and stare into the icebox, and
+then I tell Mom about the gash in Cat’s leg.
+
+She asks if I know a vet to take him to.
+
+“Yeah, there’s Speyer. It’s a big, new hospital—good enough for people,
+even—with a view of the East River. The thing is, Mom, Cat keeps going off
+and fighting and getting hurt, and people tell me I ought to get him
+altered.”
+
+Mom wets the sponge and squeezes it out and polishes at the sink, and I
+wonder if she knows what I’m talking about because I don’t really know how
+to explain it any better.
+
+She wrings the sponge out, finally, and sits down at the kitchen table.
+
+She says, “Cat’s not a free wild animal now, and he wouldn’t be even if
+you turned him loose. He belongs to _you_, so you have to do whatever is
+best for _him_, whether it’s what you’d like or not. Ask the doctor and do
+what he says.”
+
+Mom puts it on the line, all right. It doesn’t make me feel any better
+about Cat. She takes five dollars out of her pocketbook and gives it to
+me.
+
+I get out the wicker hamper and go down to the cellar and load Cat in. He
+meows, a low resentful rumble, but he doesn’t try to get away.
+
+Cat in the hamper is no powder puff, and I get pretty hot walking to the
+bus, and then from the bus stop to the animal hospital. I get there and
+wait, and dogs sniff at me, and I fill in forms. The lady asks me if I can
+afford to pay, and with Mom’s five bucks and four of my own, I say Yes.
+
+The doctor is a youngish guy, but bald, in a white shirt like a dentist’s.
+I put Cat on the table in front of him. He says, “So why don’t you stay
+out of fights, like your mommy told you?”
+
+I relax a bit and smile, and he says, “That’s better. Don’t worry. We’ll
+take care of tomcat. I suppose he got this gash in a fight?”
+
+“Yeah.”
+
+“He been altered?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“How old is he?”
+
+“I don’t know. He was a stray. I’ve had him almost a year.”
+
+All the time he’s talking, the doctor is soothing Cat and looking him
+over. He goes on stroking him and looks up at me. “Well, son, one of these
+days he’s going to get in one fight too many. Shall we alter him the same
+time we sew up his leg?”
+
+So there it is. I can’t seem to answer right away. If the doctor had
+argued with me, I might have said No. But he just goes on humming and
+stroking. Finally he says, “It’s tough, I know. Maybe he’s got a right to
+be a tiger. But you can’t keep a tiger for a pet.”
+
+I say, “O.K.”
+
+An attendant takes Cat away, and I go sit in the waiting room, feeling
+sweaty and cold all over. They tell me it’ll be a couple of hours, so I go
+out and wander around a lot of blocks I never saw before and drink some
+cokes and sit and look up at the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Queens.
+
+When I go back for him, Cat looks the same as ever, except for a bandage
+all up his right front leg. The doctor tells me to come back Friday and
+he’ll take out the stitches.
+
+Mom sees me come in the door, and I guess I look pretty grim, because she
+says, “Cat will be all right, won’t he, dear?”
+
+“Yes.” I go past her and down into my room and let Cat out of the basket
+and then bury my head under the pillow. I’m not exactly ashamed of crying,
+but I don’t want Mom to hear.
+
+After a while I pull my head out. Cat is lying there beside me, his eyes
+half open, the tip end of his tail twitching very slowly. I rub my eyes on
+the back of his neck and whisper to him, “I’m sorry. Be tough, Cat,
+anyway, will you?”
+
+Cat stretches and hops off the bed on his three good legs.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         8
+
+
+     [Illustration: Dave and Mary buying tickets to West Side Story.]
+
+
+
+                                                           WEST SIDE STORY
+
+
+
+The regular park man got sunstroke or something, so I earned fourteen
+dollars raking and mowing in Gramercy Park in the middle of August.
+Gramercy Park is a private park. You have to own a key to get in, so the
+city doesn’t take care of it.
+
+Real paper money, at this time of year especially, is very cheering. I
+head up to Sam Goody’s to see what records he’s got on sale and what
+characters are buying them. Maybe I’ll buy something, maybe not, but as
+long as I’ve got money in my pocket, I don’t feel like the guy is glaring
+at me for taking up floor space.
+
+Along the way I walk through the library, the big one at Forty-second
+Street. You go in by the lions on Fifth Avenue, and there’s all kinds of
+pictures and books on exhibit in the halls, and you walk through to the
+back, where you can take out books. It’s nice and cool, and nobody glares
+at you unless you either make a lot of noise or go to sleep. I can take
+books out of here and return them at the Twenty-third Street branch, which
+is handy.
+
+Sam Goody’s is air-conditioned, so it’s cool too. There are always several
+things playing on different machines you can listen to. Almost the most
+fun is watching the people: little, fat, bald guys buying long-haired
+classical music, and thin, shaggy beatniks listening to the jazz.
+
+I go to check if there are any bargains in the Kingston or Belafonte
+division. There’s a girl standing there reading the backs of records, but
+I don’t really catch a look at more than her shoes—little red flats they
+are. After a bit she reaches for a record over my head and says, “Excuse
+me.”
+
+“Sure.” Then we catch each other’s eye and both say, “Oh. Gee, hello.”
+
+Well, we’re both pretty surprised, because this is the girl I met out at
+Coney Island that day with Nick when I had Cat with me, and now we’re both
+a long way from Coney Island. This girl isn’t one of the two giggly ones.
+It’s the third, the one that liked Cat.
+
+We’ve both forgotten each other’s names, so we begin over with that. I ask
+her what she’s been doing, and she’s been at Girl Scout camp a few weeks,
+and then she earned some money baby-sitting. So she came to think about
+records, like me. I tell her I’ve been at Coney once this summer, and I
+looked around for her, which is true, because I did.
+
+“It’s a big place,” she says, smiling.
+
+“Say, you live out there, don’t you? How come you get all the way in here
+by yourself? Doesn’t your mom get in a flap? Mine would, if she knew I was
+going to Coney alone.”
+
+Mary says, “I came in with Mom. Some friend of hers has a small art
+exhibition opening. She said I could go home alone. After all, she knows
+I’m not going to get lost.”
+
+I say, “Gee, it’d be great to have a mother that didn’t worry about you
+all the time.”
+
+“Oh, Mom worries.” Mary giggles. “You should have heard her when I said I
+liked _Gone With the Wind_  and I didn’t like _Anna Karenina_. I pretty
+nearly got disowned.”
+
+“What does she think about science fiction?” I ask, and Mary makes a face,
+and we both laugh.
+
+I go on. “Well, my mom doesn’t care what I read. She worries about what I
+eat and whether my feet are wet, and she always seems to think I’m about
+to kill myself. It’s a nuisance, really.”
+
+Mary looks solemn all of a sudden. She says slowly, “I think maybe it’d be
+nice. I mean to have someone worrying about whether you’re comfortable and
+all. Instead of just picking your brains all the time.”
+
+This seems to exhaust the subject of our respective mothers, and Mary
+picks up the record of _West Side Story_ and says, “Gee, I’d like to see
+that. Did you?”
+
+I say No, and to tell the truth I hadn’t hardly heard of it.
+
+“I read a book about him. It was wonderful,” she says.
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Bernstein. The man who wrote it.”
+
+“What’s _West Side Story_ about, him?” I ask cautiously.
+
+“No, no—he wrote the music. It’s about some kids in two gangs, and there’s
+a lot of dancing, and then there’s a fight and this kid gets—well, it
+isn’t a thing you can tell the story of very well. You have to see it.”
+
+This gives me a very simple idea.
+
+“Why don’t we?” I say.
+
+“Huh?”
+
+“Go see it. Why not? We got money.”
+
+“So we do,” she says slowly. “You think they’ll let us in, I mean being
+under sixteen?”
+
+You know, this is the first girl I really ever talked to that talks like a
+person, not trying to be cute or something.
+
+We walk around to the theater, and being it’s Wednesday, there’s a matinee
+about to start. The man doesn’t seem to be one bit worried about taking
+our money. No wonder. It’s two dollars and ninety cents each. So we’re
+inside with our tickets before we’ve hardly stopped to think.
+
+Suddenly Mary says, “Oops! I better call Mom! Let’s find out what time the
+show is over.”
+
+We do, and Mary phones. She says to me, “I just told her I was walking
+past _West Side Story_ and found I could get a ticket. I didn’t say
+anything about you.”
+
+“Why, would she mind?”
+
+Mary squints and looks puzzled. “I don’t know. I just really don’t know.
+It never happened before.”
+
+We go in to the show, and she is right, it’s terrific. I hardly ever went
+to a live show before, except a couple of children’s things and something
+by Shakespeare Pop took me to that was very confusing. But this _West Side
+Story_ is clear as a bell.
+
+We have an orangeade during intermission, and I make the big gesture and
+pay for both of them. Mary says, “Isn’t it wonderful! I just happened to
+meet you at the beach, and then I meet you at Goody’s, and we get to see
+this show that I’ve wanted to go to for ages. None of my friends at school
+want to spend this much money on a show.”
+
+“It’s wonderful,” I say. “After it’s over, I’m going back to buy the
+record.”
+
+So after the show we buy it, and then we walk along together to the
+subway. I’ll have to get off at the first stop, Fourteenth Street, and
+she’ll go on to Coney, the end of the line.
+
+It’s hard to talk on the subway. There’s so much noise you have to shout,
+which is hard if you don’t know what to say. Anyway, you can’t ask a girl
+for her phone number shouting on the subway. At least I can’t.
+
+I’m not so sure about the phone-number business either. I sort of can’t
+imagine calling up and saying, “Oh, uh, Mary, this is Dave. You want to go
+to a movie or something, huh?” It sounds stupid, and I’d be embarrassed.
+What she said, it’s true—it’s sort of wonderful the way we just ran into
+each other twice and had so much fun.
+
+So I’m wondering how I can happen to run into her again. Maybe the beach,
+in the fall. Let’s see, a school holiday—Columbus Day.
+
+The train is pulling into Fourteenth Street. I shout, “Hey, how about we
+go to the beach again this fall? Maybe Columbus Day?”
+
+“O.K.!” she shouts. “Columbus Day in the morning.”
+
+“Columbus Day in the morning” sounds loud and clear because by then the
+subway has stopped. People snicker, and Mary blushes.
+
+“So long,” I say, and we both wave, and the train goes.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         9
+
+
+      [Illustration: Dave and Tom sitting on front steps with Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                                   FATHERS
+
+
+
+That operation didn’t make as much difference to Cat as you might think. I
+took him back to the clinic to get the stitches out of his leg and the
+bandages off. A few nights later I heard yowls coming up from the
+backyard. I went down and pulled him out of a fight. He wasn’t hurt yet,
+but he sure was right back in there pitching. He seems to have a standing
+feud with the cat next door.
+
+However, he’s been coming home nights regularly, and sometimes in the cool
+part of the morning he’ll sit out on the front stoop with me. He sits on a
+pillar about six feet above the sidewalk, and I sit on the steps and play
+my transistor and read.
+
+Every time a dog gets walked down the street under Cat’s perch, he gathers
+himself up in a ball, as if he were going to spring. Of course, the poor
+dog never knows it was about to be pounced on and wags on down the street.
+Cat lets his tail go to sleep then and sneers.
+
+Between weathercasts I hear him purring, loud rumbly purrs, and I look up
+and see Tom there, stroking Cat’s fur up backward toward his ears. Tom is
+looking out into the street and sort of whistling without making any
+sound.
+
+“Gee, hi!” I say.
+
+“Hi, too,” he says. He strokes Cat back down the right way, gives him a
+pat, and sits down. “I just been down to see your dad. He’s quite a guy.”
+
+“Huh-h-h? You got sunstroke or something? Didn’t he read you about ten
+lectures on Healthy Living, Honest Effort, Baseball, and Long Walks with a
+Dog?”
+
+“No-o-o.” Tom grins, but then he sits and stares out at the street again,
+so I wait.
+
+“You know,” he says, “you give me an idea. _You_ talk like _your_ dad is a
+real pain, and that’s the way _I_ always have felt about _mine_. But your
+dad looks like a great guy to me, so—well, maybe mine could be too, if I
+gave him a chance. Your dad was saying I should.”
+
+“Should what? You should go home?”
+
+“No. Your dad said I ought to write him a long letter and face up to all
+the things I’ve goofed on. Quitting NYU, the cellar trouble, all that.
+Then tell him I’m going to get a job and go to night school. Your dad
+figures probably he’d help me. He said he’d write him, too. No reason he
+should. I’m nothing in his life. It’s pretty nice of him.”
+
+I try to digest all this, and it sure is puzzling. The time I ran down
+that crumb of a doorman on my bike, accidental on purpose, I didn’t get
+any long understanding talks. I just got kept in for a month.
+
+Tom slaps me in the middle of the back and stands up. “Hilda’s gone back
+to work at the coffee shop. I guess I’ll go down and see her before the
+lunch rush, and then go home and write my letter.”
+
+“Say ‘Hi’ for me.”
+
+“O.K. So long.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The weather cools off some, and Pop starts to talk about vacation. He’s
+taking two weeks, last of August and first of September, so I start
+shopping around for various bits of fishing tackle and picnic gear we
+might need. We’re going to this lake up in Connecticut, where we get a
+sort of motel cottage. It has a little hot plate for making coffee in the
+morning, but most of the rest of the time we eat out, which is neat.
+
+We’re sitting around the living room one evening, sorting stuff out, when
+the doorbell rings. I go answer it, and Tom walks in. He nods at me like
+he hardly sees me and comes into the living room. He shakes hands like a
+wooden Indian. His face looks shut up again, the way it did that day I
+left him in the filling station.
+
+He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a letter. I can see a post-office
+stamp in red ink with a pointing hand by the address. He throws it down on
+Dad’s table.
+
+“I got my answer all right.”
+
+Pop looks at the letter and I see his foot start to twitch the way it does
+when he’s about to blow. But he looks at Tom, and instead of blowing he
+just says, “Your father left town? No forwarding address?”
+
+“I guess so. He just left. Him and that woman he married.” Tom’s voice
+trails off and he walks over to the window. We all sit quiet a minute.
+
+Finally Pop says gently, “Well, don’t waste too much breath on her. She’s
+nothing to do with you.”
+
+Tom turns around angrily. “She’s no good. She loafs around and drinks all
+the time. She talked him into going.”
+
+“And he went.” There’s another short silence, and Pop goes on. “Where was
+this you lived?”
+
+“House. It was a pretty nice little house, too. Dark red with white trim,
+and enough of a yard to play a little ball, and I grew a few lettuces
+every spring. I even got one ear of corn once. We moved there when I was
+in second grade because my mom said it was near a good local school. I
+lived there till I went to college. I suppose he sold it, or got a loan,
+and they lit off to drink it up. Soon’s they’d got _me_ off their hands.”
+
+Tom bites off the last word. Suddenly I can see the picture pretty clear:
+the nice house, the father Tom always talked down and hoped would measure
+up. Now it’s like somebody has taken his whole childhood and crumpled it
+up like a wad of tissue paper and thrown it away.
+
+Mom gets up and goes into the kitchen. Pop’s foot keeps on twitching.
+Finally he says, “Well, I steered you wrong. I’m sorry. But maybe it’s
+just as well to have it settled.”
+
+“It’s settled, all right,” Tom says.
+
+Mom brings out a tray of ginger-ale glasses. It seems sort of inadequate
+at a moment like this, but when Tom takes a glass from her he looks like
+he’s going to bust out crying.
+
+He drinks some and blows his nose, and Dad says, “When are you supposed to
+check in with the Youth Board again?”
+
+“Tuesday. My day off. And I wind up the filling-station job the next week,
+right after Labor Day.”
+
+“Labor Day. Hm-m. We’ve got to get moving. If you like, I’ll come down to
+the Youth Board with you, and we’ll see what we can all cook up. Don’t
+worry too much. I have a feeling you’re just beginning to fight—really
+fight, not just throw a few stones.”
+
+“I don’t know why you bother.” Tom starts to stand up. But while we’ve
+been talking, Cat has been creeping up under the side table, playing the
+ambush game, and he launches himself at Tom just as he starts to stand. It
+throws him off balance and he sits back in the chair, holding Cat.
+
+“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Pop says. “Cat’s on your side.”
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        10
+
+
+            [Illustration: Cat jumping out of car on parkway.]
+
+
+
+                                                       CAT AND THE PARKWAY
+
+
+
+Cat may be on Tom’s side, but whether Pop is on Cat’s side is something
+else again. I worry about this all the time we’re planning the vacation.
+Suppose the motel won’t take cats? Or suppose he runs away in the country?
+If he messes up the vacation in any way, I know Pop’ll say to get rid of
+him.
+
+I practice putting Cat back in the wicker hamper to see if I can keep him
+in that sometimes, but he meows like crazy. That’d drive Pop nuts in the
+car, and it certainly wouldn’t hide him from any motel-keeper. So I just
+sit back and hope for the best, but I got a nasty feeling in the bottom of
+my stomach that something’s going to go haywire.
+
+Pop’s pretty snappish anyway. He’s working late nearly every night,
+getting stuff cleared up before vacation. He doesn’t want any extra
+problems, especially not Cat problems. Mom’s been having asthma a good
+deal lately, and we’re all pretty jumpy. It’s always like this at the end
+of the summer.
+
+Tuesday night when he gets home, I ask Pop what’s happened about Tom.
+
+“We’ll work something out,” he says, which isn’t what you’d call a big
+explanation.
+
+“You think he can get back into college?”
+
+“I don’t know. The Youth Board is going to work on it. They’re arranging
+for him to make up the midyear exams he missed, so he can get credit for
+that semester. Then he can probably start making up the second semester at
+night school if he has a job.
+
+“Apparently the Youth Board knew his father had skipped—they’ve been
+trying to trace him. I don’t think it’ll do any good if they find him. Tom
+had better just cross him off and figure his own life for himself.”
+
+You know, I see “bad guys” in television and stuff, but with the people I
+really know I always lump the parents on one team and the kids on the
+other. Now here’s my pop calmly figuring a kid better chalk off his father
+as a bad lot and go it alone. If your father died, I suppose you could
+face up to it eventually, but having him just fade out on you, not care
+what you did—that’d be worse.
+
+While I’m doing all this hard thinking, Pop has gone back to reading the
+paper. I notice the column of want ads on the back, and all of a sudden my
+mind clicks on Tom and jobs.
+
+“Hey, Pop! You know the florist on the corner, Palumbo, where you always
+get Mom the plant on Mother’s Day? I went in there a couple of weeks ago,
+because he had a sign up, ‘Helper Wanted.’ I thought maybe it was
+deliveries and stuff that I could do after school. But he said he needed a
+full-time man. I’m pretty sure the sign’s still up.”
+
+“Palumbo, huhn?” Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with
+them. He looks at his watch and sighs. “They still open?”
+
+They are, and Pop goes right down to see the guy. He knows him fairly well
+anyway—there’s Mother’s Day, and Easter, and also the shop is the polling
+place for our district, so Pop’s in there every Election Day. He always
+buys some little bunch of flowers Election Day because he figures the guy
+ought to get some business having his shop all messed up for the day.
+
+Dad comes back and goes over to the desk and scratches off a fast note. He
+says, “Here. Address it to Tom and go mail it right away. Palumbo says
+he’ll try him out at least. Tom can come over Thursday night and I’ll take
+him in.”
+
+Tom comes home with Pop Thursday about nine o’clock. They both look pretty
+good. Mom has cold supper waiting, finishing off the icebox before we go
+away, so we all sit down to eat.
+
+“Tom’s all set, at least for a start,” Dad says. “He’s going to start
+Tuesday, right after Labor Day. Palumbo can use him on odd jobs and
+deliveries, especially over the Jewish holidays, and then if he can learn
+the business, he’ll keep him on.”
+
+“Never thought I’d go in for flower-arranging.” Tom grins. “But it might
+be fun. I’m pretty fair at any kind of handiwork.”
+
+Remembering how quick he unlocked the padlock to get Cat out in the
+cellar, I agree.
+
+He starts for his room after supper, and we all say “good luck,” “have a
+good time,” and stuff. Things are really looking up.
+
+I get up early the next morning and help Mom button up around the house
+and get the car loaded before Pop gets home in the afternoon. He hoped to
+get off early, and I’ve been pacing around snapping my fingers for a
+couple of hours when he finally arrives about six o’clock. It’s a hot day
+again.
+
+I don’t say anything about Cat. I just dive in the back seat and put him
+behind a suitcase and hope he’ll behave. Pop doesn’t seem to notice him.
+Anyway he doesn’t say anything.
+
+It’s mighty hot, and traffic is thick, with everyone pouring out of the
+city. But at least we’re moving along, until we get out on the Hutchinson
+River Parkway, where some dope has to run out of gas.
+
+All three lanes of traffic are stopped. We sit in the sun. Pop looks
+around, hunting for something to get sore about, and sees the back windows
+are closed. He roars, “Crying out loud, can’t we get some air, at least?
+Open those windows!”
+
+I open them and try to keep my hand over Cat, but if you try to hold him
+really, it makes him restless. For the moment he’s sitting quiet, looking
+disgusted.
+
+We sit for about ten minutes, and Pop turns off the motor. You can
+practically hear us sweating in the silence. Engines turn on ahead of us,
+and there seems to be some sign of hope. I stick my head out the window to
+see if things are moving. Something furry tickles my ear, and it takes me
+a second to register.
+
+Then I grab, but too late. There is Cat, out on the parkway between the
+lanes of cars, trying to figure which way to run.
+
+“Pop!” I yell. “Hold it! Cat’s got out!”
+
+You know what my pop does? He laughs.
+
+“Hold it, my eyeball!” he says. “I’ve been holding it for half an hour.
+I’d get murdered if I tried to stop now. Besides, I don’t want to chase
+that cat every day of my vacation.”
+
+I don’t even stop to think. I just open the car door and jump. The car’s
+only barely moving. I can see Cat on the grass at the edge of the parkway.
+The cars in the next lane blast their horns, but I slip through and grab
+Cat.
+
+I hear Mom scream, “Davey!”
+
+Our car is twenty feet ahead, now, in the center lane, and there’s no way
+Pop can turn off. The cars are picking up speed. I holler to Mom as loud
+as I can, “I’ll go back and stay with Kate! Don’t worry!”
+
+I hear Pop shout about something, but I can’t hear what. Pretty soon the
+car is out of sight. I look down at Cat and say, “There goes our
+vacation.” I wonder if I’ll be able to catch a bus out to Connecticut
+later. Meanwhile, there’s the little problem of getting back into the
+city. I’m standing alongside the parkway, with railroad tracks and the
+Pelham golf course on the other side of me, and a good long walk to the
+subway.
+
+A cat isn’t handy to walk with. He keeps trying to get down. If you
+squeeze him to hang on, he just tries harder. You have to keep juggling
+him, like, gently. I sweat along back, with the sun in my eyes, and people
+in cars on the parkway pointing me out to their children as a local
+curiosity.
+
+One place the bulrushes and marsh grass beside the road grow up higher
+than your head. What a place for a kids’ hideout, I think. Almost the next
+step, I hear kids’ voices, whispering and shushing each other.
+
+Their voices follow along beside me, but inside the curtain of rushes,
+where I can’t see them. I hear one say, “Lookit the sissy with the pussy!”
+Another answers, “Let’s dump ’em in the river!”
+
+I try to walk faster, but I figure if I run they’ll chase me for sure. I
+walk along, juggling Cat, trying to pretend I don’t notice them. I see a
+drawbridge up ahead, and I sure hope there’s a cop or watchman on it.
+
+The kids break out of the rushes behind me, and there’s no use pretending
+anymore. I flash a look over my shoulder. They all yell, “Ya-n-h-h-h!”
+like a bunch of wild Indians, but they’re about fifty feet back.
+
+I grab Cat hard about the only place you can grab a cat, around one upper
+forearm, and I really run. The kids let out another war whoop. It’s uphill
+to the bridge. Cat gets his free forepaw into action, raking my chest and
+arm, with his claws out. Then he hisses and bites, and I nearly drop him.
+I’m panting so hard I can’t hardly breathe anyway.
+
+A cop saunters out on my approach to the bridge, his billy dangling from
+his wrist. Whew—am I glad! I flop on the grass and ease up on Cat and
+start soothing him down. The kids fade off into the tall grass as soon as
+they see the cop. A stone arches up toward me, but it falls short. That’s
+the last I see of them.
+
+As I cross the bridge, the cop squints at me. “What you doing, kid? Not
+supposed to be walking here.”
+
+“I’ll be right off. I’m going home,” I tell him, and he saunters away,
+twirling his stick.
+
+It’s dark by the time I get to the subway, and most of another hour before
+I’m back in Manhattan and reach Kate’s. I can hear the television going,
+which is unusual, and I walk in. No one is watching television. Mom and
+Pop are sitting at the table with Kate.
+
+Mom lets loose the tears she has apparently been holding onto for two
+hours, and Pop starts bellowing: “You fool! You might have got killed
+jumping out on that parkway!”
+
+Cat drops to the floor with a thud. I kiss Mom and go to the sink for a
+long glass of water and drink it all and wipe my mouth. Over my shoulder,
+I answer Pop: “Yeah, but if Cat gets killed on the parkway, that’s just a
+big joke, isn’t it? You laugh your head off!”
+
+Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with them, like he always
+does when he’s thinking. He looks me in the eye and says, “I’m sorry. I
+shouldn’t have laughed.”
+
+Then, of all things, he picks up Cat himself. “Come on. You’re one of the
+family. Let’s get on this vacation.”
+
+At last we’re off.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        11
+
+
+[Illustration: Dave picking out fish while Ben and garbage-sweeper watch.]
+
+
+
+                                   ROSH HASHANAH AT THE FULTON FISH MARKET
+
+
+
+We came back to the city Labor Day Monday—us and a couple million
+others—traffic crawling, a hot day, the windows practically closed up
+tight to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs stuck to me and got up
+my nose. Considering everything, Pop acted quite mild.
+
+I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut who had skin-diving equipment.
+He let me use it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing. Boy, this
+has fishing beat hollow! I found out there’s a skin-diving course at the
+Y, and I’m going to begin saving up for the fins and mask and stuff. Pop
+won’t mind forking out for the Y membership, because he’ll figure it’s
+character-building.
+
+Meanwhile, I’m wondering if I can get back up to Connecticut again one
+weekend while the weather’s still warm, and I see that Rosh Hashanah falls
+on a Monday and Tuesday this year, the week after school opens. Great. So
+I ask this kid—Kenny Wright—if I can maybe come visit him that weekend so
+I can do some more skin diving.
+
+“Rosh Hashanah? What’s that?” he says.
+
+So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. About half the
+kids in my school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and I always do
+too. Last year the school board gave up and made it an official school
+holiday for everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom Kippur, the week after.
+
+Kenny whistles. “You sure are lucky. I don’t think we got any holidays
+coming till Thanksgiving.”
+
+I always thought the kids in the country were lucky having outdoor yards
+for sports and recess, but I guess we have it over them on
+holidays—’specially in the fall: three Jewish holidays in September,
+Columbus Day in October, Election Day and Veterans’ Day in November, and
+then Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.
+
+I don’t figure it’d be worth train fare to Connecticut for just two days,
+so I say good-bye to Kenny and see you next year and stuff.
+
+Back home I’m pretty busy right away, on account of starting in a new
+school, Charles Evans Hughes High. It’s different from the junior high,
+where I knew half the kids, and also my whole homeroom there went from one
+classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone has to get his own
+schedule and find the right classroom in this immense building, which is
+about the size of Penn Station. There are about a million kids in
+it—actually about two thousand—most of whom I never saw before. Hardly any
+of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village kids come here because it
+isn’t their district. However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one day, I
+see one kid I know from Peter Cooper. His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him
+how come he is at Hughes.
+
+“My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant High School—you know, the
+genius factory, city-wide competitive exam to get in. Of course I didn’t
+make it. Biggest Failure of the Year, that’s me.”
+
+“Heck, I never even tried for that. But how come you’re here?”
+
+“There’s a special science course you can qualify for by taking a math
+test. Then you don’t have to live in the district. My dad figures as long
+as I’m in something special, there’s hope. I’m not really very interested
+in science, but that doesn’t bother him.”
+
+So after that Ben and I walk back and forth to school together, and it
+turns out we have three classes together, too—biology and algebra and
+English. We’re both relieved to have at least one familiar face to look
+for in the crowd. My old friend Nick, aside from not really being my best
+friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic high school somewhere uptown.
+
+On the way home from school one Friday in September, I ask Ben what he’s
+doing Monday and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.
+
+“Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah suit and go to synagogue and
+over to Brooklyn to my grandmother’s. Monday I don’t have to do anything
+special. Come on over with your roller skates and we’ll get in the hockey
+game.”
+
+“I skate on my tail,” I say, because it’s true, and it would be doubly
+true in a hockey game. I try quick to think up something else. We’re
+walking down the block to my house, and there’s Cat sitting out front, so
+I say, “Let’s cruise around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and pick up
+some fish heads for my cat.”
+
+“You’re a real nut, aren’t you?” Ben says. He doesn’t say it as if he
+minds—just mentioning the fact. He’s an easygoing kind of guy, and I think
+most of the time he likes to let someone else make the plans. So he shrugs
+and says, “O.K.”
+
+I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the eye, and Cat looks away and
+licks his back. Ben says, “So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh
+Hashanah, huh?”
+
+Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front against Ben’s right leg and
+from front to back against his left leg and goes to lie down in the middle
+of the sidewalk.
+
+“See? He likes you,” I say. “He won’t have anything to do with most guys,
+except Tom.”
+
+“Who’s Tom?”
+
+So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar and his father disappearing on
+him.
+
+“Gee,” says Ben, “I thought I had trouble, with my father practically
+telling me how to breathe better every minute, but at least he doesn’t
+disappear. What does Tom do now?”
+
+“Works at the flower shop, right down there at the corner.”
+
+Ben feels around in his pockets a minute. “Hey, I got two bucks I was
+supposed to spend on a textbook. Come on and I’ll buy Mom a plant for the
+holidays, and you can introduce me to Tom.”
+
+We go down to the flower shop, and at first Tom frowns because he thinks
+we’ve just come to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant, so then he
+makes a big thing out of showing him all the plants, from the ten-dollar
+ones on down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he’s doing a good job. Ben finally
+settles on a funny-looking cactus that Tom says is going to bloom pretty
+soon.
+
+Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick him up on Monday. I wait around
+outside until I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how he likes the
+job. He says he doesn’t really know yet, but at least the guy is decent to
+work for, not like the filling-station man.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter Cooper about eleven. A lot of
+kids are out in the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing
+footballs with them and shouting “Happy New Year” to each other. It sounds
+odd to hear people saying that on a warm day in September.
+
+Ben and I wander out of the project and he says, “How do we get to this
+Fulton Street?”
+
+I see a bus that says “Avenue C” on it stopping on Twenty-third Street.
+Avenue C is way east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it’ll probably
+work out. We get on. The bus rockets along under the East Side Drive for a
+few blocks and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow and crowded. It’s
+a Spanish and Puerto Rican neighborhood to begin with, then farther
+downtown it’s mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out on the street shaking
+hands and clapping each other on the back, and the stores are all closed.
+
+Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to some of the people on the
+sidewalk, and he seems to know a good many of the passengers who get on.
+He asks them about their jobs, or their babies, or their aunt who’s sick
+in Bellevue. This is pretty unusual in New York, where bus drivers usually
+act like they hate people in general and their passengers in particular.
+Suddenly the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.
+
+Ben looks out the window and says, “Hey, this is Houston Street. I been
+down here to a big delicatessen. But we’re not heading downtown anymore.”
+
+“Probably it’ll turn again,” I say.
+
+It doesn’t, though, not till clear over at Sixth Avenue. By then everyone
+else has got off and the bus driver turns around and says, “Where you two
+headed for?”
+
+It’s funny, a bus driver asking you that, so I ask him, “Where does this
+bus go?”
+
+“It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson Street, down by the Holland
+Tunnel.”
+
+“Holy crow!” says Ben. “We’re liable to wind up in New Jersey.”
+
+“Relax. I don’t go that far. I just go back up to Bellevue,” says the
+driver.
+
+“You think we’d be far from Fulton Fish Market?” I say.
+
+The driver gestures vaguely. “Just across the island.”
+
+So Ben and I decide we’ll get off at the end of the line and walk from
+there. The bus driver says, “Have a nice hike.”
+
+“I think there’s something fishy about this,” says Ben.
+
+“That’s what we’re going to get, fish,” I say, and we walk. We walk quite
+a ways.
+
+Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a couple of steps, and we stop
+to look at the menu in the window. The special for the day is lasagna, and
+Ben says, “Boy, that’s for me!”
+
+We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my pocket and do some fast
+mental arithmetic. Lasagna is a dollar, so that’s out, but I see spaghetti
+and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so that will still leave me bus fare
+home.
+
+A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin over his arm like a banner, and
+takes our order. He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white linen
+tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian bread and rolls. On a third trip
+he brings enough chilled butter for a family and asks if we want coffee
+with lunch or later. Later, we say.
+
+“Man, this is living!” says Ben as he moves in on the bread.
+
+“He treats us just like people.”
+
+Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna and spaghetti, and he
+swirls around the table as if he were dancing. “Anything else now? Mind
+the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now. I bring the coffee
+later.”
+
+He swirls away, the napkin over his arm making a little breeze, and
+circles another table. It’s a small room, and there are only four tables
+eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was serving royalty at the
+Waldorf. When we’re just finished eating, he comes back with a pot of
+steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.
+
+I’m dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when a thought hits me: We got
+to leave a tip for this waiter.
+
+I whisper to Ben, “Hey, how much money you got?”
+
+He reaches in his pocket and fishes out a buck, a dime, and a quarter. We
+study them. Figure coffees for a dime each, and the total check ought to
+be $1.95. We’ve got $2.35 between us. We can still squeak through with bus
+fare if we only leave the waiter a dime, which is pretty cheap.
+
+At that moment he comes back and refills our coffee cups and asks what we
+will have for dessert.
+
+“Uh, nothing, nothing at all,” I say.
+
+“Couldn’t eat another thing,” says Ben.
+
+So the waiter brings the check and along with it a plate of homemade
+cookies. He says, “My wife make. On the house.”
+
+We both thank him, and I look at Ben and he looks at me. I put down my
+dollar and he puts down a dollar and a quarter.
+
+“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Come again,” says the waiter.
+
+We walk into the street, and Ben spins the lone remaining dime in the sun.
+I say, “Heads or tails?”
+
+“Huh? Heads.”
+
+It comes up heads, so Ben keeps his own dime. He says, “We could have hung
+onto enough for _one_ bus fare, but that’s no use.”
+
+“No use at all. ’Specially if it was yours.”
+
+“Are we still heading for Fulton Street?”
+
+“Sure. We got to get fish for Cat.”
+
+“It better be for free.”
+
+We walk, threading across Manhattan and downtown. I guess it’s thirty or
+forty blocks, but after a good lunch it doesn’t seem too far.
+
+You can smell the fish market when you’re still quite a ways off. It runs
+for a half a dozen blocks alongside the East River, with long rows of
+sheds divided into stores for the different wholesalers. Around on the
+side streets there are bars and fish restaurants. It’s too bad we don’t
+have Cat with us because he’d love sniffing at all the fish heads and guts
+and stuff on the street. Fish market business is done mostly in the
+morning, I guess, and now men are hosing down the streets and sweeping
+fish garbage up into piles. I get a guy to give me a bag and select a
+couple of the choicer—and cleaner—looking bits. I get a nice red snapper
+head and a small whole fish, looks like a mackerel. Ben acts as if fish
+guts make him sick, and as soon as I’ve got a couple he starts saying
+“Come on, come on, let’s go.”
+
+I realize when we’re leaving that I don’t even notice the fish smell
+anymore. You just get used to it. We walk uptown, quite a hike, along East
+Broadway and across Grand and Delancey. There’s all kinds of intriguing
+smells wafting around here: hot breads and pickles and fish cooking. This
+is a real Jewish neighborhood, and you can sure tell it’s a holiday from
+the smell of all the dinners cooking. And lots of people are out in their
+best clothes gabbing together. Some of the men wear black skullcaps, and
+some of them have big black felt hats and long white beards. We go past a
+crowd gathering outside a movie house.
+
+“They’re not going to the movies,” Ben says. “On holidays sometimes they
+rent a movie theater for services. It must be getting near time. Come on,
+I got to hurry.”
+
+We trot along the next twenty blocks or so, up First Avenue and to Peter
+Cooper.
+
+“So long,” Ben says. “I’ll come by Wednesday on the way to school.”
+
+He goes off spinning his dime, and too late I think to myself that we
+could have had a candy bar.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        12
+
+
+     [Illustration: Dave holding up lizard for Ben by pond in woods.]
+
+
+
+                                                               THE RED EFT
+
+
+
+Ben and I both take biology, and the first weekend assignment we get,
+right after Rosh Hashanah, is to find and identify an animal native to New
+York City and look up its family and species and life cycle.
+
+“What’s a species?” says Ben.
+
+“I don’t know. What’s a life cycle?”
+
+We both scratch our heads, and he says, “What animals do we know?”
+
+I say, “Cat. And dogs and pigeons and squirrels.”
+
+“That’s dull. I want to get some animal no one else knows about.”
+
+“Hey, how about a praying mantis? I saw one once in Gramercy Park.”
+
+Ben doesn’t even know what it is, so I tell him about this one I saw. For
+an insect, it looks almost like a dragon, about four or five inches long
+and pale green. When it flies, it looks like a baby helicopter in the sky.
+We go into Gramercy Park to see if we can find another, but we can’t.
+
+Ben says, “Let’s go up to the Bronx Zoo Saturday and see what we can
+find.”
+
+“Stupid, they don’t mean you to do lions and tigers. They’re not native.”
+
+“Stupid, yourself. They got other animals that are. Besides, there’s lots
+of woods and ponds. I might find something.”
+
+Well, it’s as good an idea for Saturday as any, so I say O.K. On account
+of both being pretty broke, we take lunch along in my old school lunchbox.
+Also six subway tokens—two extras for emergencies. Even I would be against
+walking home from the Bronx.
+
+Of course there are plenty of native New York City animals in the
+zoo—raccoons and woodchucks and moles and lots of birds—and I figure we
+better start home not too late to get out the encyclopedias for species
+and life cycles. Ben still wants to catch something wild and wonderful.
+Like lots of city kids who haven’t been in the country much, he’s crazy
+about nature.
+
+We head back to the subway, walking through the woods so he can hunt. We
+go down alongside the pond and kick up rocks and dead trees to see if
+anything is under them.
+
+It pays off. All of a sudden we see a tiny red tail disappearing under a
+rotten log. I push the log again and Ben grabs. It’s a tiny lizard, not
+more than two or three inches long and brick red all over. Ben cups it in
+both hands, and its throat pulses in and out, but it doesn’t really try to
+get away.
+
+“Hey, I love this one!” Ben cries. “I’m going to take him home and keep
+him for a pet, as well as do a report on him. You can’t keep cats and dogs
+in Peter Cooper, but there’s nothing in the rules about lizards.”
+
+“How are you going to get him home?”
+
+“Dump the lunch. I mean—we’ll eat it, but I can stab a hole in the top of
+the box and keep Redskin in it. Come on, hurry! He’s getting tired in my
+hand I think!”
+
+Ben is one of those guys who is very placid most of the time, but he gets
+excitable all of a sudden when he runs into something brand-new to him,
+and I guess he never caught an animal to keep before. Some people’s
+parents are very stuffy about it.
+
+I dump the lunch out, and he puts the lizard in and selects some
+particular leaves and bits of dead log to put in with him to make him feel
+at home. Without even asking me, he takes out his knife and makes holes in
+the top of my lunchbox. I sit down and open up a sandwich, but Ben is
+still dancing around.
+
+“What do you suppose he is? He might be something very rare! How’m I going
+to find out? You think we ought to go back and ask one of the zoo men?”
+
+“Umm, nah,” I say, chewing. “Probably find him in the encyclopedia.”
+
+Ben squats on a log, and the log rolls. As he falls over backward I see
+two more lizards scuttle away. I grab one. “Hey, look! I got another. This
+one’s bigger and browner.”
+
+Ben is up and dancing again. “Oh, boy, oh, boy! Now I got two! Now they’ll
+be happy! Maybe they’ll have babies, huh?”
+
+He overlooks the fact that _I_ caught this one. Oh, well, I don’t want a
+lizard, anyway. Cat’d probably eat it.
+
+Ben takes it from me and slips it in the lunchbox. “I’m going to call this
+one Big Brownie.”
+
+Finally he calms down enough to eat lunch, taking peeks at his catch
+between mouthfuls. As soon as he’s finished eating, he starts hustling to
+get home so he can make a house for them. He really acts like a kid.
+
+We get on the subway. It’s aboveground—elevated—up here in the Bronx.
+After a while I see Yankee Stadium off to one side, which is funny because
+I don’t remember seeing it when we were coming up. Pretty soon the train
+goes underground. I remember then. Coming up, we changed trains once. Ben
+has his eye glued to the edge of the lunchbox and he’s talking to Redskin,
+so I figure there’s no use consulting him. I’ll just wait and see where
+this train seems to come out. It’s got to go downtown. We go past
+something called Lenox Avenue, which I think is in Harlem, then
+Ninety-sixth Street, and then we’re at Columbus Circle.
+
+“Hey, Ben, we’re on the West Side subway,” I say.
+
+“Yeah?” He takes a bored look out the window.
+
+“We can just walk across town from Fourteenth Street.”
+
+“With you I always end up walking. Hey, what about those extra tokens?”
+
+“Aw, it’s only a few blocks. Let’s walk.”
+
+Ben grunts, and he goes along with me. As we get near Union Square, there
+seem to be an awful lot of people around. In fact they’re jamming the
+sidewalk and we can hardly move. Ben frowns at them and says, “Hey, what
+goes?”
+
+I ask a man, and he says, “Where you been, sonny? Don’tcha know there’s a
+parade for General Sparks?”
+
+I remember reading about it now, so I poke Ben. “Hey, push along! We can
+see Sparks go by!”
+
+“Quit pushing and don’t try to be funny.”
+
+“Stupid, he’s a general. Test pilot, war hero, and stuff. Come on, push.”
+
+“QUIT PUSHING! I got to watch out for these lizards!”
+
+So I go first and edge us through the crowd to the middle of the block,
+where there aren’t so many people and we can get up next to the police
+barrier. Cops on horseback are going back and forth, keeping the street
+clear. No sign of any parade coming yet, but people are throwing rolls of
+paper tape and handfuls of confetti out of upper-story windows. The wind
+catches the paper tape and carries it up and around in all kinds of
+fantastic snakes. Little kids keep scuttling under the barrier to grab
+handfuls of ticker tape that blow to the ground. Ben keeps one eye on the
+street and one on Redskin and Brownie.
+
+“How soon you think they’re coming?” he asks fretfully.
+
+People have packed in behind us, and we couldn’t leave now if we wanted
+to. Pretty soon we can see a helicopter flying low just a little ways
+downtown, and people all start yelling, “That’s where they are! They’re
+coming!”
+
+Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom past, and then a cop backing up a
+police car at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very
+surprising-looking thing. Before I’ve hardly got my eyes off that, the
+open cars come by. This guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car,
+waving with both hands. By the time I see him, he’s almost past.
+Nice-looking, though. Everyone yells like crazy and throws any kind of
+paper they’ve got. Two little nuts beside us have a box of Wheaties, so
+they’re busy throwing Breakfast of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is
+past, people push through the barriers and run in the street.
+
+Ben hunches over to protect his precious animals and yells, “Come on!
+Let’s get out of this!”
+
+We go into my house first because I’m pretty sure we’ve got a wooden box.
+We find it and take it down to my room, and Ben gets extra leaves and
+grass and turns the lizards into it. He’s sure they need lots of fresh air
+and exercise. Redskin scoots out of sight into a corner right away. Big
+Brownie sits by a leaf and looks around.
+
+“Let’s go look up what they are,” I say.
+
+The smallest lizard they show in the encyclopedia is about six inches
+long, and it says lizards are reptiles and have scales and claws and
+should not be confused with salamanders, which are amphibians and have
+thin moist skin and no claws. So we look up salamanders.
+
+This is it, all right. The first picture on the page looks just like
+Redskin, and it says he’s a Red Eft. The Latin name for his species is
+_Triturus viridescens_, or in English just a common newt.
+
+“Hey, talk about life cycles, listen to this,” says Ben, reading. “‘It
+hatches from an egg in the water and stays there during its first summer
+as a dull-green larva. Then its skin becomes a bright orange, it absorbs
+its gills, develops lungs and legs, and crawls out to live for about three
+years in the woods. When fully mature, its back turns dull again, and it
+returns to the water to breed.’”
+
+Ben drops the book. “Brownie must be getting ready to breed! What’d I tell
+you? We got to put him near water!” He rushes down to my room.
+
+We come to the door and stop short. There’s Cat, poised on the edge of the
+box.
+
+I grab, but no kid is as fast as a cat. Hearing me coming, he makes his
+grab for the salamander. Then he’s out of the box and away, with Big
+Brownie’s tail hanging out of his mouth. He goes under the bed.
+
+Ben screams, “Get him! Kill him! He’s got my Brownie!” He’s in a frenzy,
+and I don’t blame him. It does make you mad to see your pet get hurt. I
+run for a broom to try to poke Cat out, but it isn’t any use. Meanwhile,
+Ben finds Redskin safe in the box, and he scoops him back into the
+lunchbox.
+
+Finally, we move the bed, and there is Cat poking daintily with his paw at
+Brownie. The salamander is dead. Ben grabs the broom and bashes Cat. Cat
+hisses and skids down the hall. “That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him!
+What’d you ever have him for?”
+
+I tell Ben I’m sorry, and I get him a little box so he can bury Brownie.
+You can’t really blame Cat too much—that’s just the way a cat is made, to
+chase anything that wiggles and runs. Ben calms down after a while, and we
+go back to the encyclopedia to finish looking up about the Red Eft.
+
+“I don’t think Brownie was really ready to lay eggs, or he would have been
+in the pond already,” I say. “Tell you what. We could go back some day
+with a jar and try to catch one in the water.”
+
+That cheers Ben up some. He finishes taking notes for his report and
+tracing a picture, and then he goes home with Redskin in the lunchbox. I
+pull out the volume for C.
+
+Cat. Family, _Felidae_, including lions and tigers. Species, _Felis
+domesticus_. I start taking notes: “‘The first civilized people to keep
+cats were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before Christ.... Fifty
+million years earlier the ancestor of the cat family roamed the earth, and
+he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores. The Oligocene cats,
+thirty million years ago, were already highly specialized, and the habits
+and physical characteristics of cats have been fixed since then. This may
+explain why house cats remain the most independent of pets, with many of
+the instincts of their wild ancestors.’”
+
+I call Ben up to read him this, and he says, “You and your lousy
+carnivore! _My_ salamander is an amphibian, and amphibians are the
+ancestors of _all_  the animals on earth, even you and your Cat, you sons
+of toads!”
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        13
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave and Mary in wind on boardwalk at beach.]
+
+
+
+                                             THE LEFT BANK OF CONEY ISLAND
+
+
+
+Columbus Day comes up as cold as Christmas. I listen to the weather
+forecast the night before, to see how it’ll be for the beach. “High winds,
+unseasonably low temperatures,” the guy says. He would.
+
+I get up at eight-thirty the next morning, though, figuring he’d be wrong
+and it would be a nice sunny day. I slip on my pants and shirt and go
+downstairs with Cat to have a look out. Cat slides out and is halfway down
+the stoop when a blast of cold wind hits him. His tail goes up and he
+spooks back in between my legs. I push the door shut against the icy wind.
+
+Mom is sitting in the kitchen drinking her tea and she says, “My goodness,
+why are you up so early on a holiday? Do you feel sick?”
+
+“Nah, I’m all right.” I pour out a cup of coffee to warm my hands on and
+dump in three or four spoons of sugar.
+
+“Davey, have you got a chill? You don’t look to me as if you felt quite
+right.”
+
+“Mom, for Pete’s sake, it’s COLD out! I feel fine.”
+
+“Well, you don’t have to go out. Why don’t you just go back to bed and
+snooze and read a bit, and I’ll bring you some breakfast.”
+
+I see it’s got to be faced, so while I’m getting down the cereal and a
+bowl, I say, “Well, as a matter of fact, I’m going over to Coney Island
+today.”
+
+“Coney ISLAND!” Mom sounds like it was Siberia. “What in the world are you
+going to do there in the middle of winter?”
+
+“Mom, it’s only Columbus Day. We figured we’d go to the aquarium and
+then—uh—well, fool around. Some of the pitches are still open, and we’ll
+get hot dogs and stuff.”
+
+“Who’s going? Nick?”
+
+“Nick wasn’t sure—I’ll stop by his house and see.” I’d just as soon steer
+clear of this “who’s going” business, so I start into a long spiel about
+how we’re studying marine life in biology, and we have to take some notes
+at the aquarium. Mom is swallowing this pretty well, but Pop comes into
+the kitchen just then and gives me the fishy eye.
+
+“First time I ever heard of you spending a holiday on homework. I bet they
+got a new twist palace going out there.”
+
+I slam down my coffee cup. “Holy cats! Can’t I walk out of here on a
+holiday without going through the third degree? What am I, some kind of a
+nut or a convict?”
+
+“Just a growing boy,” says Pop. “And don’t talk so sassy to your mother.”
+
+“I’m talking to you!”
+
+Pop draws in a breath to start bellowing, but Mom beats him to it by
+starting to wheeze, which she can do without drawing breath.
+
+Pop pats her on the shoulder and gives me a dirty look. “Now, Agnes,
+that’s all right. I’m not sore. I was just trying to kid him a little bit,
+and he flies off the handle.”
+
+_I_ fly off the handle! How do you like that?
+
+I give Mom a kiss. “Cheer up, Mom. I won’t ride on the roller coaster.
+It’s not even running.”
+
+I grab a sweater and gloves and money and get out before they can start
+anymore questions. On the subway I start wondering if Mary will show up.
+It’s almost two months since we made this sort of crazy date, and the
+weather sure isn’t helping any.
+
+Coney Island is made to be crowded and noisy. All the billboards scream at
+you, as if they had to get your attention. So when the place is empty, it
+looks like the whole thing was a freak or an accident.
+
+It’s sure empty today. There’s practically no one on the street in the
+five or six blocks from the subway station to the aquarium. But it’s not
+quiet. There are a few places open—merry-go-rounds and hot-dog shops—and
+tinny little trickles of music come out of them, but the big noise is the
+wind. All the signs are swinging and screeching. Rubbish cans blow over
+and their tops clang and bang rolling down the street. The wind makes a
+whistling noise all by itself.
+
+I lean into the wind and walk up the empty street. My sweater is about as
+warm as a sieve. I wonder if I’m crazy to have come. No girl would get out
+on a boardwalk on a day like this. It must be practically a hurricane.
+
+She’s there, though. As soon as I turn the corner to the beach, I can see
+one figure, with its back to the ocean, scarf and hair blowing inland
+toward me. I can’t see her face, but it’s Mary, all right. There isn’t
+another soul in sight. I wave and she hunches her shoulders up and down to
+semaphore, not wishing to take her hands out of her pockets.
+
+I come up beside her on the boardwalk and turn my back to the ocean, too.
+I’d like to go on looking at it—it’s all black and white and thundery—but
+the wind blows your breath right back down into your stomach. I freeze.
+
+“I was afraid you wouldn’t come on a day like this,” I say.
+
+“Me too. I mean I was afraid _you_ wouldn’t.”
+
+“Mom and Pop thought I was crazy. I spent about an hour arguing with them.
+What’d your mother say?”
+
+“Nothing. She thinks I’m walking alone with the wind in my hair, thinking
+poetic thoughts.”
+
+“Huh? What for?”
+
+Mary shrugs. “Mom’s like that. You’ll see. Come on, let’s go home and make
+cocoa or something to warm up, and then we’ll think up something to do. We
+can’t just stand here.”
+
+She’s right about that, so I don’t argue. Her house is a few blocks away,
+a two-family type with a sloped driveway going down into a cellar garage.
+Neat. My pop is always going nuts hunting for a place to park.
+
+Mary goes in and shouts, “Hi, Nina! I brought a friend home. We’re going
+to make some cocoa. We’re freezing.”
+
+I wonder who Nina is. I don’t hear her mother come into the kitchen. Then
+I turn around and there she is. Holy crow! We got some pretty beat-looking
+types at school, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a beatnik
+mother.
+
+She’s got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and old sneakers, and her hair
+is in a long braid, with uneven bangs in front.
+
+Mary waves a saucepan vaguely at us both and says, “Nina—Davey—this is my
+mother.”
+
+So Nina is her mother. I stick out my hand. “Uh—how do you do?”
+
+“Hel-looo.” Her voice is low and musical. “I think there is coffee on the
+stove.”
+
+“I thought I’d make cocoa for a change,” says Mary.
+
+“All right.” Nina puts a cigarette in her mouth and offers one to me.
+
+I say, “No, thank you.”
+
+“Tell me....” She talks in this low, intense kind of voice. “Are you in
+school with Mary?”
+
+So I tell her I live in Manhattan, and how I ran into Mary when I had Cat
+on the beach, because that makes it sound sort of respectable, not like a
+pickup. But she doesn’t seem to be interested in Cat and the beach.
+
+“What do you _read_? In your school?” she asks, launching each question
+like a torpedo.
+
+I remember Mary saying something about her mother and poetry, so I say,
+“Well, uh—last week we read ‘The Highwayman’ and ‘The Wreck of the
+Hesperus.’ They’re about—I mean, we were studying metaphors and similes.
+Looking at the ocean today, I sure can see what Longfellow meant about the
+icy....”
+
+I thought I was doing pretty well, but she cut me off again.
+
+“Don’t you read any _real_ poetry? Donne? Auden? Baudelaire?”
+
+Three more torpedoes. “We didn’t get to them yet.”
+
+Nina blows out a great angry cloud of smoke and explodes, “Schools!” Then
+she sails out of the kitchen.
+
+I guess I look a little shook up. Mary laughs and shoves a mug of cocoa
+and a plate of cinnamon toast in front of me. “Don’t mind Mother. She just
+can’t get used to New York schools. Or Coney Island. Or hardly anything
+around here.
+
+“She grew up on the Left Bank in Paris. Her father was an artist and her
+mother was a writer, and they taught her to read at home, starting with
+Chaucer, probably. She never read a kids’ book in her life.
+
+“Anything I ever tell her about school pretty much sounds either childish
+or stupid to her. What I really love is science—experiments and stuff—and
+she can’t see that for beans.”
+
+“Our science teacher is a dope,” I say, because she is, “so I really never
+got very interested in science. But I told Mom and Dad I was coming to the
+aquarium to take notes today, so they wouldn’t kick up such a fuss.”
+
+Mary shakes her head. “We ought to get our mothers together. Mine thinks
+I’m wasting time if I even _go_ to the aquarium. I do, though, all the
+time. I love the walrus.”
+
+“What does your pop do?”
+
+“Father? He teaches philosophy at Brooklyn College. So I get it from both
+sides. Just think, think, think. Father and Nina aren’t hardly even
+interested in _food_. Once in a while Nina spends all day cooking some
+great fish soup or a chicken in wine, but the rest of the time I’m the
+only one who takes time off from thinking to cook a hamburger. They live
+on rolls and coffee and sardines.”
+
+Mary puts our cups in the sink and then opens a low cupboard. Instead of
+pots and pans it has stacks of records in it. She pulls out _West Side
+Story_ and then I see there’s a record player on a side table. What d’you
+know? A record player in the kitchen! This Left Bank style of living has
+its advantages.
+
+“I sit down here and eat and play records while I do my homework,” says
+Mary, which sounds pretty nice.
+
+I ask her if she has any Belafonte, and she says, “Yes, a couple,” but she
+puts on something else. It’s slow, but sort of powerful, and it makes you
+feel kind of powerful yourself, as if you could do anything.
+
+“What’s that?” I ask.
+
+“It’s called ‘The Moldau’—that’s a river in Europe. It’s by a Czech named
+Smetana.”
+
+I wander around the kitchen and look out the window. The wind’s still
+howling, but not so hard. I remember the ocean, all gray and powerful,
+spotted with whitecaps. I’d like to be out on it.
+
+“You know what’d be fun?” I say out loud. “To be out in a boat on the
+harbor today. If you didn’t sink.”
+
+“We could take the Staten Island ferry,” Mary says.
+
+“Huh?” I hadn’t even thought there was really any boat we could get on.
+“Really? Where do you get it?”
+
+“Down at Sixty-ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. It’s quite a ways. I’ve
+always gone there in a car. But maybe we could do it on bikes, if we don’t
+freeze.”
+
+“We won’t freeze. But what about bikes?”
+
+“You can use my brother’s. He’s away at college. Maybe I can find a
+windbreaker of his, too.”
+
+She finds the things and we get ready and go into the living room, where
+Nina is sitting reading and sipping a glass of wine.
+
+“We’re going on our bikes to the ferry and over to Staten Island,” Mary
+says. She doesn’t even ask.
+
+“Oh-h-h.” It’s a long, low note, faintly questioning.
+
+“We thought with the wind blowing and all, it’d be exciting,” Mary
+explains, and I think, Uh-o, that’s going to cook it. _My_ mother would
+have kittens if I said I was going out on a ferry in a storm.
+
+But Nina just says, “I see,” and goes back to reading her book. I say
+good-bye and she looks up again and smiles, and that’s all.
+
+It’s another funny thing—Nina doesn’t seem to pay any attention to who
+Mary brings home, like most mothers are always snooping if their daughter
+brings home a guy. Without stopping to think, I say, “Do you bring home a
+lot of guys?”
+
+Mary laughs. “Not a lot. Sometimes one of the boys at school comes home
+when we’re studying for a science test.”
+
+I laugh, too, but what I’m thinking of is how Pop would look if I brought
+a girl home and said we were studying for a test!
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        14
+
+
+        [Illustration: Dave and Mary on ferry with other people.]
+
+
+
+                                                       EXPEDITION BY FERRY
+
+
+
+As we ride through Brooklyn the wind belts us around from both sides and
+right in the teeth. But the sun’s beginning to break through, and it’s
+easy riding, no hills.
+
+This part of Brooklyn is mostly rows of houses joined together, or low
+apartment buildings, with little patches of lawn in front of them. There’s
+lots of trees along the streets. It doesn’t look anything like Manhattan,
+but not anything like the country, either. It’s just Brooklyn.
+
+All of a sudden we’re circling a golf course. What d’you know? Right in
+New York City!
+
+“Ever play golf?” The wind snatches the words out of my mouth and carries
+them back to Mary. I see her mouth shaping like a “No,” but no sound comes
+my way. I drop back beside her and say, “I’ll show you sometime. My pop’s
+got a set of clubs I used a couple of times.”
+
+“Probably I better carry the clubs and you play. I can play tennis,
+though.”
+
+We pass the golf course and head down into a sort of main street. Anyway
+there’s lots of banks and dime stores and traffic. Mary leads the way. We
+make a couple of turns and zigzags and then go under the parkway, and
+there’s the ferry. It’s taken us most of an hour to get from Mary’s house.
+
+I’m hoping the ferry isn’t too expensive, so I’ll have plenty of money
+left for a good lunch. But while I’m mooning, Mary has wheeled her bike
+right up and paid her own fare. Well, I guess that’s one of the things I
+like about her. She’s independent. Still, I’m going to buy lunch.
+
+The ferry is terrific. I’m going to come ride ferries every day it’s
+windy. The boat doesn’t roll any, but we stand right up in front and the
+wind blows clouds of spray in our faces. You can pretend you’re on a
+full-rigged schooner running before a hurricane. But you look down at that
+choppy gray water, and you know you’d be done if you got blown overboard,
+even if it is just an old ferryboat in New York harbor.
+
+The ferry ride is fast, only about fifteen minutes. We ride off in Staten
+Island and start thinking where to go. I know what’s first with me.
+
+I ask Mary, “What do you like, hamburgers or sandwiches?”
+
+“Both. I mean either,” she says.
+
+The first place we see is a delicatessen, which is about my favorite kind
+of place to eat anyway. I order a hot pastrami, and Mary says she never
+had one, but she’ll try the same.
+
+“Where could we go on Staten Island?” I say. “I never was here before.”
+
+“About the only place I’ve been is the zoo. I’ve been there lots of times.
+The vet let me watch her operate on a snake once.”
+
+This is a pretty surprising thing for a girl to tell you in the middle of
+a mouthful of hot pastrami. The pastrami is great, and they put it on a
+roll with a lot of olives and onions and relish. Mary likes it too.
+
+“Is the vet a woman? Aren’t you scared of snakes?”
+
+“Uh-un, I never was really. But when you’re watching an operation, you get
+so interested you don’t think about it being icky or scary. The vet is a
+woman. She’s been there quite a while.”
+
+I digest this along with the rest of my sandwich. Then we both have a
+piece of apple pie. You can tell from the way the crust looks—browned and
+a little uneven—that they make it right here.
+
+“So shall we go to the zoo?” Mary asks.
+
+“O.K.” I get up to get her coat and mine. When I turn around, there she is
+up by the cashier, getting ready to pay her check.
+
+“Hey, I’m buying lunch,” I say, steaming up with the other check.
+
+“Oh, that’s all right.” She smiles. “I’ve got it.”
+
+I don’t care if she’s _got_ it. I want to _pay_ it. I suppose it’s a silly
+thing to get sore about, but it sort of annoys me. Anyway, how do you
+maneuver around to do something for a girl when she doesn’t even know you
+want to?
+
+The man in the deli gives us directions to get to the zoo, which isn’t
+far. It’s a low brick building in a nice park. In the lobby there are some
+fish tanks, then there’s a wing for birds on one side, animals on the
+other, and snakes straight ahead.
+
+We go for snakes. Mary really seems to like them.
+
+She says, “The vet here likes them, and I guess she got me interested. You
+know, they don’t really understand how a snake moves? Mechanically, I
+mean. She’s trying to find out.”
+
+We look at them all, little ones and big ones, and then we go watch the
+birds. The keeper is just feeding them. The parrot shouts at him, and the
+pelican and the eagles gobble up their fish and raw meat, but the vulture
+just sits on his perch looking bored. Probably needs a desert and a dying
+Legionnaire to whet his appetite.
+
+In the animal wing a strange-looking dame is down at the end, talking to a
+sleepy tiger.
+
+“Come on, darling, just a little roar. Couldn’t you give me just a soft
+one today?” she’s cooing at him. The tiger blinks and looks away.
+
+The lady notices us standing there and says, “He’s my baby. I’ve been
+coming to see him for fourteen years. Some days he roars for me
+beautifully.”
+
+She has a short conversation with the lion, then moves along with us
+toward the small cats, a puma and a jaguar. She looks in the next cage,
+which is empty, and shakes her head mournfully.
+
+“I had the sweetest little leopard. He died last week. Would you believe
+it? The zoo never let me know he was sick. I could have come and helped
+take care of him. I might have saved his life.”
+
+She goes on talking, sometimes to herself, sometimes to the puma, and we
+cross over to look at two otters chasing each other up an underwater
+tunnel.
+
+“What is she, some kind of nut?” Mary says. “Does she think this is her
+private zoo?”
+
+I shrug. “I suppose she’s a little off. But so’s my Aunt Kate, the one who
+gave me Cat. They just happen to like cats better than people. Kate thinks
+all the stray cats in the world are her children, and I guess this one
+feels the same way about the big cats here.”
+
+We mosey around a little bit more and then head back to the ferry. I make
+good and sure I’m ahead, and I get to the ticket office and buy two
+tickets.
+
+“Would you care for a ride across the harbor in my yacht?” I say.
+
+“Why, of course. I’d be delighted,” says Mary.
+
+A small thing, but it makes me feel good.
+
+Over in Brooklyn I see a clock on a bank, and it says five o’clock. I do
+some fast calculating and say, “Uh-oh, I better phone. I’ll never make it
+home by dinnertime.”
+
+I phone and get Pop. He’s home early from work. Just my luck.
+
+“I got to get this bike back to this kid in Coney,” I tell him. “Then I’ll
+be right home. About seven.”
+
+“What do you mean _this_ bike and _this_ kid? Who? Anyway, I thought you
+were already at Coney Island.”
+
+I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking questions. I start
+explaining. “Well, it was awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we’d
+go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to the zoo. So now we just
+got back to Brooklyn, and I’m downtown and I got to take the bike back.”
+
+“So who’s ‘we’? You got a rat in your pocket?”
+
+I can distract Mom but not Pop. “Well, actually, it’s a girl named Mary.
+It’s her brother’s bike. He’s away in college.”
+
+All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of the line, laughing his head
+off.
+
+“So what’s so funny about that?”
+
+“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing. Only now I can see what all the shouting was
+about at breakfast.”
+
+“Oh.”
+
+“O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as _well_ as the bicycle of the brother
+who goes to college, home safe. Hear? I’ll tell your mother you narrowly
+escaped drowning, and she’ll probably save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?”
+
+“O.K. Bye.”
+
+Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though, him worrying about me
+getting Mary home safe, when her own mother doesn’t worry any.
+
+We start along toward her house slowly, as there’s a good deal of traffic
+now. I’m wondering how to see Mary again without having to ask for her
+number and phoning and making a date. Something about telephoning I don’t
+like. Besides, I’d probably go out to a pay phone so the family wouldn’t
+listen, and that’d make me feel stupid to begin with.
+
+Just then we start rounding the golf course, and I whack the handle bar of
+my bike and say, “Hey, that’s it!”
+
+“What’s it?”
+
+“Golf. Let’s play golf. Not now, I don’t mean. Next holiday. We’ve got
+Election Day coming up. I’ll borrow Pop’s clubs and take the subway and
+meet you here. How about ten o’clock?”
+
+“Hunh?” Mary looks startled. “Well, I suppose I could try, or anyway I
+could walk around.”
+
+“It’s easy. I’ll show you.” The two times I played, I only hit the ball
+decently about four or five times. But the times I _did_ hit it, it seemed
+easy.
+
+We get to Mary’s house and I put the bikes away and give her back her
+brother’s jacket. “I guess I’ll go right along. It’s getting late. See you
+Election Day.”
+
+“O.K., bye. Say—thanks for the ferry ride!”
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        15
+
+
+        [Illustration: Cat eating turkey neck from bowl on floor.]
+
+
+
+                                                          DOLLARS AND CATS
+
+
+
+Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I go down to the delicatessen to buy
+some coke, so I can really enjoy myself watching TV. Tom is just finishing
+work at the flower shop, and I ask him if he wants to come along home.
+
+“Nah. Thanks. I got to be at work early tomorrow.” He doesn’t sound too
+cheery.
+
+“How’s the job going?”
+
+“O.K., I guess.” We walk along a little ways. “The job’s not bad, but I
+don’t want to be a florist all my life, and I can’t see this job will
+train me for anything else.”
+
+That seems pretty true. It must be tough not getting regular holidays off,
+too. “You have to work all day tomorrow?” I ask.
+
+“I open the store up at seven and start working on orders we’ve already
+got. I’ll get through around three or four.”
+
+“Hey, you want to come for dinner? We’re not eating till evening.”
+
+Tom grins. “You cooking the dinner? Maybe you better ask your mother.”
+
+“It’ll be all right with Mom. Look, I’ll ask her and come let you know in
+the store tomorrow, O.K.?”
+
+“Hmm. Well, sure. Thanks. I’ve got a date with Hilda later in the evening,
+but she’s got to eat with her folks first.”
+
+“O.K. See you tomorrow.”
+
+“Right.”
+
+Mom says it’s all right about Tom coming, so I go down and tell him in the
+morning. Turns out Mom has asked Kate to have dinner with us, too, which
+is quite a step. For Kate, I mean. I think she would have turned the
+invitation down, except no one can bear to hurt Mom’s feelings. Kate’s
+been in our house before, of course, but then she just came in to chat or
+have tea or something. It wasn’t like an invitation.
+
+She comes, and she looks like someone from another world. I’ve never seen
+her in anything but her old skirts and sneakers, so the “good clothes”
+she’s wearing now must have been hanging in a closet twenty years. The
+dress and shoes are way out of style, and she’s carrying a real old black
+patent-leather pocketbook. Usually she just lugs her old cloth shopping
+bag, mostly full of cat goodies. Come to think of it, that’s it: Kate
+lives in a world that is just her own and the cats’. I never saw her
+trying to fit into the ordinary world before.
+
+Cat knows her right away, though. Clothes don’t fool him. He rubs her leg
+and curls up on the sofa beside her, still keeping a half-open eye on the
+oven door in the kitchen, where the turkey is roasting.
+
+Tom comes in, also in city clothes—a white shirt and tie and jacket—the
+first time I ever saw him in them. He sits down on the other side of Cat,
+who stretches one paw out toward him negligently.
+
+Looking at Kate and Tom sitting there on the sofa, both looking a little
+ill at ease, I get a funny idea. My family is starting to collect people
+the way Kate collects homeless cats. Of course, Kate and Tom aren’t
+homeless. They’re people-less—not part of any family. I think Mom always
+wanted more people to take care of, so she’s glad to have them.
+
+Kidding, I ask Kate, “How many cats at your home for Thanksgiving dinner?”
+
+She stops stroking Cat a minute and thinks. “Hmm, Susan’s got four new
+kittens, just got their eyes open. A beautiful little orange one and three
+tigers. Then there’s two big kittens, strays, and one old stray tom. Makes
+eight, that’s all. Sometimes I’ve had lots more than that.”
+
+“Doesn’t the landlord ever object?” Pop asks.
+
+Kate snorts. “Him! Huh! I pay my rent. And I have my own padlock on the
+door, so he can’t come snooping around.”
+
+We all sit down to dinner. Pop gives Cat the turkey neck to crunch up in
+the kitchen. He finishes that and crouches and stares at us eating. Kate
+gives him tidbits, which I’m not supposed to do. I don’t think she really
+wants to eat the turkey herself. She’s pretty strictly a fruit and yogurt
+type.
+
+After dinner Tom leaves to meet Hilda, and I walk home with Kate, carrying
+a bag of scraps and giblets for her cats. While she’s fiddling with the
+two sets of keys to open her door, the man next door sticks his head out.
+“Messenger was here a little while ago with a telegram for you. Wouldn’t
+give it to me.”
+
+“A telegram?” Kate gapes.
+
+“Yeah. He’ll be back.” The man looks pleased, like he’s been able to
+deliver some bad news, and pulls his head in and shuts his door.
+
+We go into Kate’s apartment, and cats come meowing and rubbing against her
+legs, and they jump up on the sink and rub and nudge the bag of scraps
+when she puts it down. Kate is muttering rapidly to herself and fidgeting
+with her coat and bag and not really paying much attention to the cats,
+which is odd.
+
+“Lots of people send telegrams on holidays. It’s probably just greetings,”
+I say.
+
+“Not to me, they don’t!” Kate snaps, also sounding as if they better
+hadn’t.
+
+I go over to play with the little kittens. The marmalade-colored one is
+the strongest of the litter, and he’s learned to climb out of the box. He
+chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the big cats, and she strides
+over and scoops him back into the box. “You stay in there. You’ll get
+stepped on.” She drops Susan back in with her babies to take care of them.
+
+The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the door, practically bowling over
+an ancient little messenger leaning sleepily against the side of the door.
+
+“Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign here,” he says.
+
+She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams the door. The orange kitten has
+got out again, and Kate does come close to stepping on him as she walks
+across the room tearing open the telegram. He doesn’t know enough to dodge
+feet yet. I scoop him back in this time.
+
+Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She looks quite calm now. She says,
+“Well, he died.”
+
+“Huh? Who?”
+
+“My brother. He’s the only person in the world I know who would send me a
+telegram. So he’s dead now.”
+
+She repeats it, and I can’t figure whether to say I’m sorry or what. I
+always thought when someone heard of a death in the family, there’d be a
+lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks perfectly calm, but strange
+somehow.
+
+“Has he been sick?”
+
+Kate shakes her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in twenty years.”
+
+There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes on, talking half to herself
+and half to me. “Mean old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about
+his money. That’s all he cared about. Once he tried to get me to give him
+money to invest. That’s the last time I saw him. He has an old house way
+up in the Bronx. But we never did get along, even when we were kids.”
+
+“Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent the telegram?”
+
+“He’s had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him. She’d buy him day-old bread
+and dented cans of soup because they were cheaper. She suited him
+fine—saved him money and never talked to him. Well, she’ll get his money
+now, if he left any. That’s what she’s been waiting for. She sent me the
+wire.”
+
+Twenty years, I think. That’s a long time not to be speaking to your own
+brother, and him living just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder. She
+couldn’t just not give a hoot about him. They must have been real mad at
+each other. And mad at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what kind of
+parents _they_  had, with one of them growing up loving only cats and the
+other only money.
+
+Kate is staring out the window and stroking the old stray tomcat between
+the ears, and it hits me: there isn’t a person in the world she loves or
+even hates. I like cats fine, too, but if I didn’t have people that
+mattered, it wouldn’t be so good. I say “So long” quietly and go out.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        16
+
+
+     [Illustration: Reporters and photographers crowding in on Kate.]
+
+
+
+                                                                   FORTUNE
+
+
+
+“I always wondered if the poor soul had any relatives.” That’s what Mom
+says when I tell her about Kate’s telegram. “And now she’s lost her only
+brother. That’s sad.”
+
+“I think it’s sad she never talked to him for twenty years. All these
+years I’ve wished I had a brother,” I say.
+
+“If it’s her only brother, she’s going to have to do something about his
+estate,” says Pop. That legal mind, it never rests. I guess he’s got a
+point about this, though. How is Kate going to deal with lawyers, or
+undertakers, or anyone? She can’t hardly stand to _talk_  to people like
+that.
+
+“What’ll she have to do?”
+
+“Maybe I better go see her tomorrow,” says Pop. “There can be lots of
+things—see if he left a will, if he owes any taxes, if he has property
+that has to be taken care of or sold. You can’t tell.”
+
+“Kate said he was a miser. Maybe he left her a million. Say, that’d be
+great!”
+
+“Don’t be a dope!” Pop snaps, and he really sounds angry, so I pipe down.
+
+The next morning Pop tells me to go over and see how Kate is. “The way she
+feels about people, I don’t like to just barge in. I’ll come by in ten
+minutes, like I was picking you up to go to a movie or something.”
+
+I saunter round the corner onto Third Avenue and stop short. There are two
+newspaper cars pulled up in front of Kate’s building, one red and one
+black, and a sizable knot of people gathered on the sidewalk. I move in
+among them.
+
+“That crazy cat lady ... he musta been a nut too ... left her about a
+million ... a lotta rich cats, how d’ya like that....”
+
+So I guess he did leave her money, and all of a sudden I see it isn’t
+“great.” It’s going to be trouble. I push through the people and go
+upstairs without anyone stopping me. When I open Kate’s door, old stray
+tomcat shoots out. He’s leaving, and I can see why.
+
+Kate’s room is tiny, and it looks like it’s filled with a mob. Maybe it’s
+only half a dozen guys, but the photographers are pushing around trying to
+get shots and the reporters are jabbering.
+
+Orange kitten sticks his head out of the box. Then out he comes, into the
+sea of feet. I drop him back in and try to get across to Kate. She’s
+pretty well backed into a corner and looking ready to jump out the window.
+She has her arms folded in front of her, each hand clenching the other
+elbow, as if to hold herself together. A reporter with a bunch of scratch
+paper in his hand is crowding her.
+
+“Miss Carmichael”—funny, I never even knew her last name before—“I just
+want to ask one or two questions. Could you tell us when you last saw your
+brother?”
+
+“No, I couldn’t,” she snaps, drawing her head down between her shoulders
+and trying to melt into the wall.
+
+“Watcha going to do with the money?” a photographer asks. He picks up a
+cat, one of the big stray kittens, and dumps it on Kate. The cat clings to
+her and the photographer says, “Hold it now. Just let me snap a picture.”
+
+He takes two steps back.
+
+At the first step the room is silent. At the second step a shattering
+caterwaul goes up. He has stepped on the adventurous orange kitten.
+
+The scream freezes us all, except Kate. She shoots out of her corner,
+knowing instantly what has happened. The kitten is jerking slightly now,
+and bright, bright blood is coming out of its mouth. With one violent,
+merciful stroke Kate finishes it. She picks the limp body up and wraps it
+neatly in a paper towel and places it in the wastebasket.
+
+The room is still silent for one congealed instant. Kate seems almost to
+have forgotten the crowd of men. Then two of them make hastily for the
+door. The photographer shuffles his feet and says, “Gee, m’am, I didn’t
+mean ... I wouldn’t for the world....”
+
+Kate whirls and screams at him: “Get out! Get out, all of you! Leave me
+and my cats alone! I never asked you in here!”
+
+At that moment my pop comes in the door. Of course he doesn’t know
+anything about the kitten, but he takes in the general situation and herds
+the two remaining newspapermen to the door. He gives them his card and
+home address and tells them to look him up a little later.
+
+My knees suddenly feel weak and I slump onto the sofa, and my eyes swivel
+round to the little package in the wastebasket. It would be the strongest
+one. I really never saw anything get killed right in front of me before.
+It hits you.
+
+Pop is trying to calm Kate down. She’s facing him, grabbing each sleeve of
+his coat. “What am I going to do? What can I do? I don’t want his money. I
+don’t want anything from anyone. I just want to be let alone!”
+
+“Take it easy, Kate, take it easy. You don’t have to let anyone into your
+apartment. About the inheritance, well, I’ll have to look into that.” Over
+his shoulder Pop signals to me to go home and get Mom.
+
+I go home and explain the situation to Mom, and she comes back with me.
+One photographer and a couple of reporters are still hanging around, and
+the guy snaps a picture of me and Mom at the door. Mom scoots on up. Bad
+as I feel, I still get a charge out of getting my picture taken for a
+paper.
+
+“Hey, kid,” one of the reporters shoves in front of me, “about this Miss
+Carmichael. Does she act pretty strange, like talking to herself on the
+street and stuff?”
+
+I see the story he’s trying to build up. While it’s true in a way, if you
+really know Kate it’s not. Anyway, I’m against it. I say, “Nah. She’s all
+right. She’s just sort of scared of people, and she likes cats.”
+
+“How many cats she got?”
+
+There have been up to a dozen on a busy day, but again I play it down.
+“She’s got a mother cat with kittens. Sometimes a stray or two. Don’t get
+sucked in by all that jazz these dumb kids around here’ll give you.”
+
+“She gets all that money, you think she’ll buy a big house, set up a home
+for stray cats?”
+
+I shrug. “I don’t know. She doesn’t want the money anyway. She just wants
+to be let alone.”
+
+“Doesn’t want the money!” the photographer chips in. “Boy, she must be
+_really_ nuts! I’m going back to the office.”
+
+The reporter says he’s going to wait and talk to my pop, and I go on
+upstairs to see what’s doing.
+
+Kate is sitting on the sofa, sniffing and wiping her eyes and muttering,
+but looking calmer. Mom is making tea. Pop is looking out the window,
+scratching his head.
+
+Kate gulps and draws a big breath. “Tell them I don’t want his old money.
+Tell them to give it to someone else. Tell them to leave me alone. I just
+want my own place and my cats. They can’t make me move, can they? I’ve
+lived here thirty years. I couldn’t go anyplace else.”
+
+She gulps and sniffs some more, and Mom brings her a cup of tea. The stray
+kittens jump up to see if it’s anything good and nuzzle into her lap. Kate
+takes a sip of tea and asks Pop again, “They can’t make me move, can
+they?” This seems to be what worries her most.
+
+“No-o,” says Pop, “it’s only....”
+
+He’s interrupted by a knock on the door, and I go open it a crack. A guy
+says he’s the landlord. As soon as Kate hears his voice, she yelps at him,
+“I paid my rent, first of the month like always. Don’t you come bothering
+me!”
+
+“It’s about the cats,” he says. “People outside saying you got a dozen
+cats in here. There’s a law, you know.”
+
+He’s a seedy-looking, whining kind of a man, and he looks real pleased
+with himself when he says there’s a law about cats.
+
+Kate jumps right at him. “I’m not breaking any laws. I know you. You just
+want to get me out of here and rent the place for more money. You leave me
+alone!”
+
+The man whines, “There’s a law, that’s all. I don’t want no violation
+slapped on my building.”
+
+Pop comes over and tells the man there’s just a mother cat with kittens.
+“There’s a couple of strays here, too, right now, but I’ll take them home
+with me.”
+
+“There’s a law, that’s all. Also, I got a right to inspect the premises.”
+Pop shows no signs of letting him in, and he shuffles and grumbles and
+goes away.
+
+“Lock the door,” Kate snaps. “I keep it locked all the time.”
+
+Pop says he’s going home to make some phone calls and try to figure out
+what’s going on. He takes down the name and address of Kate’s brother and
+asks her if she’s sure there are no other relatives. She says she never
+heard of any. Pop goes, and Kate insists that I lock the door after him.
+
+She gets up and starts stirring around getting food out for the cats. She
+buys fish and chicken livers for them, even though she hardly eats any
+meat herself. She listens at the back door a moment to make sure no one’s
+out there, then opens the door and puts out the garbage and wastebasket.
+There goes the adventurous kitten. You got to hand it to Kate. She has no
+sniffling sentimentality about her cats. Kitten’s dead, it’s dead, that’s
+all. She doesn’t mope over the limp mite of fur. In fact, anything to do
+with cats she’s got sense and guts. They’re her family. I don’t know that
+I could have put that kitten out of its misery.
+
+Just as long as the world doesn’t throw any stray fortunes at her, Kate
+does fine. But when people get in her way, she needs someone like Pop.
+
+Mom says she’ll stick around a while and tells me to take the two stray
+kittens home, just in case the landlord comes back trying to make trouble.
+
+“O.K., great—Cat’ll have some company!”
+
+Kate sniffs. “He’ll hate it. Cats don’t like other cats pushing into their
+house.”
+
+She’s right, of course. I put the kittens down at home, and Cat hisses at
+them and then runs them under the radiator in the kitchen. Then he sits
+down in the doorway and glowers at them, on guard.
+
+Things simmer down gradually. Mom and I and sometimes Tom, who’s right at
+the flower shop on the corner, take turns checking on Kate and doing
+shopping for her, or going with her so she doesn’t get badgered by people.
+But pretty soon everyone in the neighborhood forgets all about her and her
+inheritance. They see her buying just the same old cat food and cottage
+cheese and fruit, and they probably figure the whole thing was a phony.
+
+It wasn’t though. Pop finds out her brother did leave a will. He lined up
+his funeral, left something to his housekeeper, something to a little
+restaurant owner way downtown—apparently that was his one big luxury, a
+decent meal twice a year when he went down to buy more stocks—and the rest
+to Kate.
+
+Pop says it may take months or years to clear up the estate, but he says
+Kate can get her share all put in trust for her with some bank, and
+they’ll take care of all the legalities and taxes and just pay her as much
+or little as she wants out of the income. And she can leave the whole kit
+and caboodle to a cat home in her will if she wants to, which will
+probably make her tightwad brother spin in his grave. I asked her once,
+and she said maybe she’d leave some to the Children’s Aid, because there
+are a lot of stray children in New York City that need looking after, as
+well as cats. She’s getting to think about people some.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        17
+
+
+         [Illustration: Mary calling from phone booth at Macy’s.]
+
+
+
+                                                         TELEPHONE NUMBERS
+
+
+
+There are some disadvantages to not getting a girl’s phone number. This
+sort of date I had with Mary for golf on Election Day fell through. In the
+first place, I was sick in bed with the flu, and Mom wouldn’t have let me
+out for anything, and secondly, it was pouring rain. Without the phone
+number, there wasn’t any way I could let her know, and I didn’t even know
+a street address to write to later.
+
+By the time I got finished with the flu, we were into Thanksgiving and
+then all the trouble with Kate. Time passed and I felt rottener about
+standing her up without a word, and I couldn’t get up my nerve to go out
+to Coney and just appear on her doorstep. I could have found the house all
+right, once I was out there.
+
+The first week of Christmas vacation the phone rings late one afternoon
+and Pop answers it. He says, “Just one minute, please,” and I know right
+away from his voice it isn’t someone he knows.
+
+“Young lady on the phone for you, Dave,” he says, and he enjoys watching
+me gulp.
+
+“Hullo?” a rather tight, flat little voice asks. “Is this Dave—uh,
+Mitchell—uh, I mean, with Cat?”
+
+I recognize it’s Mary, all right, even if she does sound strange and
+scared.
+
+“Oh, hi!” I say. “Sure, it’s me! I’m awfully sorry about that day we were
+going to play golf. I was in bed with the flu, and then I didn’t know your
+phone number or....”
+
+“Oh, that’s all right,” she says. “I wondered what happened.”
+
+There’s a slight pause, and I see Pop grinning and pretending to read his
+paper. I turn around so I won’t see him.
+
+“Where are you now, out in Coney?” I ask Mary.
+
+“No, as a matter of fact, I’m in Macy’s.” Her voice trails off a little,
+but then she starts in again. “As a matter of fact, that’s why I called.
+You see, I was supposed to meet Mom here at five, and she hasn’t come, and
+I bought all these Christmas presents, and I forgot about the tax or
+something, and this is my last dime.”
+
+She stops. I see now why she sounds scared, and I get a curdled feeling in
+my stomach, too, because what if the dime runs out in the phone and she’s
+cut off? I’ll never find her in Macy’s. It’s too big.
+
+“Pop!” I yelp. “There’s this girl I know is in a phone booth in Macy’s and
+her dime is going to run out and she hasn’t anymore money. What’ll I do?”
+
+“Get the phone number of the booth and call her back. Here—” He gives me a
+pencil.
+
+What a relief. Funny I never thought of that. You just somehow don’t think
+of a phone booth having a number.
+
+Mary sounds pretty relieved, too. I get the number and call her back, and
+with Pop making suggestions here and there we settle that I’ll go over to
+Macy’s and meet her on the ground floor near Thirty-fourth Street and
+Broadway at the counter where they’re selling umbrellas for $2.89, which
+Mary says she can see from the phone booth.
+
+“O.K.” I say, and then I sort of don’t want to hang up. It’s fun talking.
+So I go on. “Look, just in case we miss each other at Macy’s, what’s your
+phone number at home, so I could call you sometime?”
+
+“COney 7-1218.”
+
+“O.K. Well, good-bye. I’ll be right over. To Macy’s, I mean.”
+
+I grab my coat and check to see if I’ve got money. Pop asks if I’m going
+to bring her home for dinner.
+
+“Gee, I don’t know.” I hadn’t given a thought to what we’d do. “I guess
+so, maybe, if her mother hasn’t come by then. I’ll call you if we do
+anything else.”
+
+“O.K.,” Pop says.
+
+I go out and hustle through the evening rush-hour crowds to the subway.
+The stores are all open evenings now, for Christmas, so the crowds are
+going both ways.
+
+I get to the right corner of Macy’s, and I see Mary right away. Everyone
+else is rushing about and muttering to themselves, and she’s standing
+there looking lost. In fact she looks so much like a waif that the first
+thing I say is, “Hi! Shall we go get something to eat?”
+
+“Yes, I’m starved. I was just going to get a doughnut when I found I’d run
+out of money.”
+
+“Let’s go home and you can have dinner with us then. But what about your
+mother? Won’t she be looking for you?”
+
+Mary shifts her feet and looks tired. “I don’t know. Probably if she came
+and I wasn’t here, she’d figure I’d gone home.”
+
+I try to think a minute, which is hard to do with all these people shoving
+around you. Mary starts to pick up her two enormous shopping bags, and I
+take them from her, still trying to think. At the subway entrance I see
+the phone booth.
+
+“That’s the thing,” I say. “Why don’t you call your house and see if your
+mother left a message or something?”
+
+“Well....” Mary stands by the phone looking confused and in fact about
+ready to cry. I suddenly decide the best thing we can do is get home and
+sit down where it’s quiet. Waiting fifteen minutes or so to phone can’t
+make much difference.
+
+We get home pretty fast and I introduce Mary to Mom and Pop. She sinks
+into the nearest chair and takes off her shoes.
+
+“Excuse me,” she says. “I just bought these heels, and it’s awful wearing
+them!”
+
+She wiggles her toes and begins to look better. Mom offers her a pair of
+slippers and Pop passes some potato chips.
+
+Mom says, “Poor child, did you try to do all your Christmas shopping at
+once?”
+
+“Well, actually, I was having fun just looking for a long while. I have
+two little cousins that I don’t really have to get much for, but I love
+looking at all the toys. I spent quite a while there. Then I did the rest
+of my shopping in a rush, and everything is so crowded, and I got mixed up
+on my money or the sales tax and only had a dime left, and I missed my
+mother or she forgot.”
+
+She stretches out her toes to touch Cat, who is sitting in front of her.
+“I couldn’t think what to do. It’s so hard to think when your feet hurt.”
+
+“It certainly is,” agrees Mom. She goes out to the kitchen to finish
+fixing dinner, and Pop suggests Mary better phone her home. She gets her
+father, and her mother has left a message that she was delayed and figured
+Mary would go home alone. Mary gives her father our address and tells him
+she’ll be home by nine.
+
+We must have hit a lucky day because we have a real good dinner: slices of
+good whole meat, not mushed up stuff, and potatoes cooked with cheese in
+them, and salad, and a lemon meringue pie from the bakery, even.
+
+After dinner we sit around a little while, and Pop says I better take Mary
+home, and he gives me money for a cab at the end of the subway. When Mary
+gives the driver her home address, I say it over to myself a few times so
+I’ll remember.
+
+Suddenly I wonder about something. “Say, how’d you know _my_ phone
+number?”
+
+“I looked it up,” she says simply. “There’s about twenty-eleven Mitchells
+in the Manhattan phone book, but only one in the East Twenties, so I
+figured that must be you.”
+
+“Gee, that’s true. You must have had an awful time, though, standing in
+the phone booth with your feet hurting, going through all those
+Mitchells.”
+
+Says Mary, “Oh, no. I did it one rainy afternoon at home, weeks ago.”
+
+Well, what do you know.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        18
+
+
+          [Illustration: Raised champagne glasses toasting Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                          “HERE’S TO CAT!”
+
+
+
+The two stray kittens gradually make themselves at home. Somehow or other
+Cat has taught them that he’s in charge here, and he just chases them for
+fun now and again, when he’s not busy sleeping.
+
+As for keeping cats in my room, that’s pretty well forgotten. For one
+thing, Mom really likes them. She sneaks the kittens saucers of cream and
+bits of real hamburger when no one’s looking, and she likes talking to
+them in the kitchen. She doesn’t pick them up, but just having them in the
+room sure doesn’t give her asthma.
+
+The only time we have any trouble from the cats is one evening when Pop
+comes home and the two kittens skid down the hall between his legs, with
+Cat after them. He scales his hat at the lot of them and roars down the
+hall to me, “Hey, Davey! When are you getting rid of these cats? I’m not
+fixing to start an annex to Kate’s cat home!”
+
+“I’m sure Davey will find homes for them,” Mom says soothingly, but
+getting a little short of breath, the way she does any time she’s afraid
+one of us is losing his temper.
+
+In fact, one thing this cat business seems to have established is that me
+and Pop fighting is the main cause of Mom’s asthma. So we both try to do a
+little better, and a lot of things we used to argue and fight about, like
+my jazz records, we just kid each other about now. But now and then we
+still work up to a real hassle.
+
+I’ve been taking a history course the first semester at school. It’s a
+real lemon—just a lot of preaching about government and citizenship. The
+second semester I switch to a music course. This is O.K. with the
+school—but not with Pop. Right away when I bring home my new program, he
+says, “How come you’re taking one less course this half?”
+
+I explain that I’m taking music, and also biology, algebra, English, and
+French.
+
+“Music!” he snorts. “That’s recreation, not a course. Do it on your own
+time!”
+
+“Pop, it’s a course. You think the school signs me up for an hour of home
+record playing?”
+
+“They might,” he grunts. “You’re not going to loaf your way through school
+if I have anything to say about it.”
+
+“Loaf!” I yelp. “Four major academic subjects is more than lots of the
+guys take.”
+
+Mom comes and suggests that Pop better go over to school with me and talk
+it over at the school office. He does, and for once I win a round—I keep
+music for this semester. But he makes sure that next year I’m signed up
+all year for five majors: English, French, math, chemistry, and European
+history. I’ll be lucky if I have time to breathe.
+
+I go down to the flower shop to grouse to Tom. It’s after Valentine’s Day,
+and business is slack and the boss is out.
+
+“Why does Pop have to come butting into my business at school? Doesn’t he
+even think the school knows what it’s doing?”
+
+“Aw, heck,” says Tom, “your father’s the one has to see you get into
+college or get a job. Sometimes schools do let kids take a lot of soft
+courses, and then they’re out on a limb later.”
+
+“Huh. He just likes to boss everything I do.”
+
+“So—he cares.”
+
+“Huh.” I’m not very ready to buy this, but then I remember Tom’s father,
+who _doesn’t_ care. It makes me think.
+
+“Besides,” says Tom, “half the reason you and your father are always
+bickering is that you’re so much alike.”
+
+“Me? Like _him_?”
+
+“Sure. You’re both impatient and curious, got to poke into everything. As
+long as there’s a bone on the floor, the two of you worry it.”
+
+Mr. Palumbo comes back to the shop then, and Tom gets busy with the
+plants. I go home, wondering if I really am at all like Pop. I never
+thought of it before.
+
+It’s funny about fights. Pop and I can go along real smooth and easy for a
+while, and I think: Well, he really isn’t a bad guy, and I’m growing up,
+we can see eye to eye—all that stuff. Then, whoosh! I hardly know what
+starts it, but a fight boils up, and we’re both breathing fire like
+dragons on the loose.
+
+We get a holiday Washington’s Birthday, which is good because there’s a TV
+program on Tuesday, the night before the holiday, that I hardly ever get
+to watch. It’s called _Out Beyond_, and the people in it are very real,
+not just good guys and bad guys. There’s always one character moving
+around, keeping you on the edge of your chair, and by the time it all
+winds up in a surprise ending, you find this character is not a real
+person, he’s supernatural. The program goes on till eleven o’clock, and
+Mom won’t let me watch it on school nights.
+
+I get the pillows comfortably arranged on the floor, with a big bottle of
+soda and a bag of popcorn within easy reach. The story starts off with
+some nature shots of a farm and mountains in the background and this
+little kid playing with his grandfather. There’s a lot of people in it,
+but gradually you get more and more suspicious of dear old grandpa. He’s
+taking the kid for a walk when a thunderstorm blows up.
+
+Right then, of course, we have to have the alternate sponsor. He signs
+off, finally, and up comes Pop.
+
+“Here, Davey old boy, we can do better than that tonight. The Governor and
+the Mayor are on a TV debate about New York City school reorganization.”
+
+At first I figure he’s kidding, so I just growl, “Who cares?”
+
+He switches the channel.
+
+I jump up, tipping over the bottle of soda on the way. “Pop, that’s not
+fair! I’m right in the middle of a program, and I been waiting weeks to
+watch it because Mom won’t let me on school nights!”
+
+Pop goes right on tuning his channel. “Do you good to listen to a real
+program for a change. There’ll be another western on tomorrow night.”
+
+That’s the last straw. I shout, “See? You don’t even know what you’re
+talking about! It’s not a western.”
+
+Pop looks at me prissily. “You’re getting altogether too upset about these
+programs. Stop it and behave yourself. Go get a sponge to mop up the
+soda.”
+
+“It’s your fault! Mop it up yourself!” I’m too mad now to care what I say.
+I charge down the hall to my room and slam the door.
+
+I hear the TV going for a few minutes, then Pop turns it off and goes in
+the kitchen to talk to Mom. In a little while he comes down and knocks on
+my door. Knocks—that’s something. Usually he just barges in.
+
+“Look here now, Dave, we’ve got to straighten a few things out quietly.
+Your mother says she told you you could watch that program, whatever it
+was. So O.K., go ahead, you can finish it.”
+
+“Yeah, it’s about over by now.” I’m still sore, and besides Pop’s still
+standing in my door, so I figure there’s a hitch in this somewhere.
+
+“But anyway, you shouldn’t get so sore about an old television program
+that you shout ‘Mop it up yourself’ at me.”
+
+“Hmm.”
+
+“Hmm, nothing.”
+
+“Well, I don’t think you should turn a guy’s TV program off in the middle
+without even finding out about it.”
+
+Pop says “Hmm” this time, and we both stand and simmer down.
+
+I look at my watch. It’s a quarter to eleven. I say, “Well, O.K. I might
+as well see the end. Sorry I got sore.”
+
+Pop moves out of the doorway. He says, “Hereafter I will only turn off
+your TV programs before they start, not in the middle.”
+
+Just as I get the TV on and settle down, the doorbell rings.
+
+“Goodness, who could that be so late?” says Mom.
+
+Pop goes to the door. It’s Tom, and Hilda is with him. I turn off the
+television set—I’ve lost track of what’s happening, and it doesn’t seem to
+be the grandfather who’s the spook after all. It’s the first time Hilda
+has been to our house, and Tom introduces her around. Then there’s one of
+those moments of complete silence, with everyone looking embarrassed,
+before we all start to speak at once.
+
+“Hilda came to the beach with us,” I say.
+
+“I told Tom we shouldn’t come so late,” says Hilda.
+
+Pop says, “Not late at all. Come in and sit down.”
+
+Hilda sits on the sofa, where Cat is curled up. He looks at her, puts his
+head back and goes on sleeping.
+
+Mom brings coffee and cookies in from the kitchen, and I pour the rest of
+the popcorn into a bowl and pass it around. Tom stirs his coffee
+vigorously and takes one sip and puts the cup down.
+
+“Reason we came so late,” he says, “Hilda and I have been talking all
+evening. We want to get married.”
+
+Pop doesn’t look as surprised as I do. “Congratulations!” he says.
+
+Tom says, “Thanks” and looks at Hilda, and she blushes. Really. Tom drinks
+a little more coffee and then he goes on: “The trouble is, I can’t get
+married on this flower-shop job.”
+
+“Doesn’t pay enough?” Pop asks.
+
+“Well, it’s not just the pay. The job isn’t getting me anywhere I want to
+go. So that’s what we’ve been talking about all evening. Finally we went
+up to Times Square and talked to the guys in the Army and Navy and Air
+Force recruiting office. You know, I’d get drafted in a year or two,
+anyway. I’ve decided to enlist in the Army.”
+
+“Goodness, you may get sent way out West for years and years!” says Mom.
+
+“No, not if I enlist in the Army. That’s for three years. But I can choose
+what specialist school I want to go into, and there’s this Air Defense
+Command—it’s something to do with missiles. In that I can also choose what
+metropolitan area I want to be stationed in. I can choose New York, and we
+could get married, and I might even be able to go on taking college course
+at night school, with the Army paying for most of it.”
+
+Pop says, “You sound like the recruiting officer himself. You sure of all
+this?”
+
+“I’ll have to check some more,” says Tom. “The recruiting officer, as a
+matter of fact, tried to persuade me to shoot for officers’ training and
+go into the Army as a career. But then I would be sent all over, and
+anyway, I don’t think Army life would be any good for Hilda.”
+
+“I can see you have put in a busy evening,” says Pop. “Well, shove back
+the coffee cups, and I’ll break out that bottle of champagne that’s been
+sitting in the icebox since Christmas.”
+
+I go and retrieve my spilled bottle of soda. There’s still enough left for
+one big glass. Pop brings out the champagne, and the cork blows and hits
+the ceiling. Cat jumps off the sofa and stands, half crouched and tail
+twitching, ready to take cover.
+
+Pop fills little glasses for them and raises his to Tom and Hilda. “Here’s
+to you—a long, happy life!”
+
+We drink, and then I raise my glass of soda. “Here’s to Cat! Tom wouldn’t
+even be standing here if it wasn’t for Cat.”
+
+That’s true, and we all drink to Cat. He sits down and licks his right
+front paw.
+
+
+
+
+
+_Format by Jean Krulis_
+_Set in Linotype Baskerville_
+_Composed and bound by American Book-Stratford Press_
+_Printed by The Murray Printing Co._
+*HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, INCORPORATED*
+
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT’S LIKE THIS, CAT***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of It's like this, cat by Emily Neville
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
+restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under
+the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
+online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: It's like this, cat
+
+Author: Emily Neville
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2008 [Ebook #24921]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           It's like this, cat
+
+                            by Emily Neville
+                        ILLUSTRATED BY EMIL WEISS
+
+
+
+        [Cover: Dave standing on top step looking across street;
+       Cat curled up below. Tall apartment building in background.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT
+
+                            BY EMILY NEVILLE
+                          PICTURES BY EMIL WEISS
+
+
+
+        [Title Page: City scene of park entrance and busy street:
+            tall apartment building on left; car driving by;
+               bike-riding boy behind running boy and dog;
+               mailman handing mail to woman on sidewalk.]
+
+
+
+
+
+IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT
+Copyright � 1963 by Emily Neville
+
+
+
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of
+this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
+written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
+critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row,
+Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+MIDNIGHT,
+"MAYOR" OF GRAMERCY PARK
+1954-1962
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ 1. Cat and Kate
+ 2. Cat and the Underworld
+ 3. Cat and Coney
+ 4. Fight
+ 5. Around Manhattan
+ 6. And Brooklyn
+ 7. Survival
+ 8. West Side Story
+ 9. Fathers
+10. Cat and the Parkway
+11. Rosh Hashanah at the Fulton Fish Market
+12. The Red Eft
+13. The Left Bank of Coney Island
+14. Expedition by Ferry
+15. Dollars and Cats
+16. Fortune
+17. Telephone Numbers
+18. "Here's to Cat!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          *IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT*
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         1
+
+
+           [Illustration: Dave holding Cat while Dad looks up
+                       from reading his newspaper.]
+
+
+
+                                                              CAT AND KATE
+
+
+
+My father is always talking about how a dog can be very educational for a
+boy. This is one reason I got a cat.
+
+My father talks a lot anyway. Maybe being a lawyer he gets in the habit.
+Also, he's a small guy with very little gray curly hair, so maybe he
+thinks he's got to roar a lot to make up for not being a big hairy tough
+guy. Mom is thin and quiet, and when anything upsets her, she gets asthma.
+In the apartment--we live right in the middle of New York City--we don't
+have any heavy drapes or rugs, and Mom never fries any food because the
+doctors figure dust and smoke make her asthma worse. I don't think it's
+dust; I think it's Pop's roaring.
+
+The big hassle that led to me getting Cat came when I earned some extra
+money baby-sitting for a little boy around the corner on Gramercy Park. I
+spent the money on a Belafonte record. This record has one piece about a
+father telling his son about the birds and the bees. I think it's funny.
+Pop blows his stack.
+
+"You're not going to play that stuff in this house!" he roars. "Why aren't
+you outdoors, anyway? Baby-sitting! Baby-talk records! When I was your
+age, I made money on a newspaper-delivery route, and my dog Jeff and I
+used to go ten miles chasing rabbits on a good Saturday."
+
+"Pop," I say patiently, "there are no rabbits out on Third Avenue. Honest,
+there aren't."
+
+"Don't get fresh!" Pop jerks the plug out of the record player so hard the
+needle skips, which probably wrecks my record. So I get mad and start
+yelling too. Between rounds we both hear Mom in the kitchen starting to
+wheeze.
+
+Pop hisses, "Now, see--you've gone and upset your mother!"
+
+I slam the record player shut, grab a stick and ball, and run down the
+three flights of stairs to the street.
+
+This isn't the first time Pop and I have played this scene, and there gets
+to be a pattern: When I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to my
+Aunt Kate's. She's not really my aunt. The kids around here call her Crazy
+Kate the Cat Woman because she walks along the street in funny old clothes
+and sneakers talking to herself, and she sometimes has half a dozen or
+more stray cats living with her. I guess she does sound a little looney,
+but it's just because she does things her own way, and she doesn't give a
+hoot what people think. She's sane, all right. In fact she makes a lot
+better sense than my pop.
+
+It was three or four years ago, when I was a little kid, and I came
+tearing down our stairs crying mad after some fight with Pop, that I first
+met Kate. I plunged out of our door and into the street without looking.
+At the same moment I heard brakes scream and felt someone yank me back by
+the scruff of my neck. I got dropped in a heap on the sidewalk.
+
+I looked up, and there was a shiny black car with M.D. plates and Kate
+waving her umbrella at the driver and shouting: "Listen, Dr. Big Shot,
+whose life are you saving? Can't you even watch out for a sniveling little
+kid crossing the street?"
+
+The doctor looked pretty sheepish, and so did I. A few people on the
+sidewalk stopped to watch and snicker at us. Our janitor Butch was there,
+shaking his finger at me. Kate nodded to him and told him she was taking
+me home to mop me up.
+
+"Yas'm," said Butch. He says "Yas'm" to all ladies.
+
+Kate dragged me along by the hand to her apartment. She didn't say
+anything when we got there, just dumped me in a chair with a couple of
+kittens. Then she got me a cup of tea and a bowl of cottage cheese.
+
+That stopped me snuffling to ask, "What do I put the cottage cheese on?"
+
+"Don't put it on anything. Just eat it. Eat a bowl of it every day. Here,
+have an orange, too. But no cookies or candy, none of that sweet, starchy
+stuff. And no string beans. They're not good for you."
+
+My eyes must have popped, but I guess I knew right that first day that you
+don't argue with Kate. I ate the cottage cheese--it doesn't really have any
+taste anyway--and I sure have always agreed with her about the string
+beans.
+
+Off and on since then I've seen quite a lot of Kate. I'd pass her on the
+street, chirruping to some mangy old stray cat hiding under a car, and
+he'd always come out to be stroked. Sometimes there'd be a bunch of little
+kids dancing around jeering at her and calling her a witch. It made me
+feel real good and important to run them off.
+
+Quite often I went with her to the A & P and helped her carry home the cat
+food and cottage cheese and fruit. She talks to herself all the time in
+the store, and if she thinks the peaches or melons don't look good that
+day, she shouts clear across the store to the manager. He comes across and
+picks her out an extra good one, just to keep the peace.
+
+I introduced Kate to Mom, and they got along real well. Kate's leery of
+most people, afraid they'll make fun of her, I guess; my mom's not leery
+of people, but she's shy, and what with asthma and worrying about keeping
+me and Pop calmed down, she doesn't go out much or make dates with people.
+She and Kate would chat together in the stores or sitting on the stoop on
+a sunny day. Kate shook her head over Mom's asthma and said she'd get over
+it if she ate cottage cheese every day. Mom ate it for a while, but she
+put mayonnaise on it, which Kate says is just like poison.
+
+The day of the fight with Pop about the Belafonte record it's cold and
+windy out and there are no kids in sight. I slam my ball back and forth
+against the wall where it says "No Ball Playing," just to limber up and
+let off a little spite, and then I go over to see Kate.
+
+Kate has a permanent cat named Susan and however many kittens Susan
+happens to have just had. It varies. Usually there are a few other
+temporary stray kittens in the apartment, but I never saw any father cat
+there before. Today Susan and her kittens are under the stove, and Susan
+keeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat crouching under the sofa. He
+turns his head away from her and looks like he never intended to get mixed
+up with family life. For a stray cat he's sleek and healthy-looking. Every
+time he moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly. She believes in no
+visiting rights for fathers.
+
+Kate pours me some tea and asks what's doing.
+
+"My pop is full of hot air, as usual," I say.
+
+"Takes one to know one," Kate says, catching me off base. I change the
+subject.
+
+"How come the kittens' pop is around the house? I never saw a full-grown
+tom here before."
+
+"He saw me buying some cans of cat food, so he followed me home. Susan
+isn't admitting she ever knew him or ever wants to. I'll give him another
+feed and send him on his way, I guess. He's a handsome young fellow." Kate
+strokes him between the ears, and he rotates his head. Susan hisses.
+
+He starts to pull back farther under the sofa. Without stopping to think
+myself, or giving him time to, I pick him up. Susan arches up and spits. I
+can feel the muscles in his body tense up as he gets ready to spring out
+of my lap. Then he changes his mind and decides to take advantage of the
+lap. He narrows his eyes and gives Susan a bored look and turns his head
+to take me in. After he's sized me up, he pretends he only turned around
+to lick his back.
+
+"Cat," I say to him, "how about coming home with me?"
+
+"Hah!" Kate laughs. "Your pop will throw him out faster than you can say
+'good old Jeff.'"
+
+"Yeah-h?" I say it slowly and do some thinking. Taking Cat home had been
+just a passing thought, but right now I decide I'll really go to the mat
+with Pop about this. He can have his memories of good old Jeff and rabbit
+hunts, but I'm going to have me a tiger.
+
+Aunt Kate gives me a can of cat food and a box of litter, so Cat can stay
+in my room, because I remember Mom probably gets asthma from animals, too.
+Cat and I go home.
+
+Pop does a lot of shouting and sputtering when we get home, but I just put
+Cat down in my room, and I try not to argue with him, so I won't lose my
+temper. I promise I'll keep him in my room and sweep up the cat hairs so
+Mom won't have to.
+
+As a final blast Pop says, "I suppose you'll get your exercise mouse
+hunting now. What are you going to name the noble animal?"
+
+"Look, Pop," I explain, "I know he's a cat, he knows he's a cat, and his
+name is Cat. And even if you call him Honorable John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
+he won't come when you call, and he won't lick your hand, see?"
+
+"He'd better not! And it's not my hand that's going to get licked around
+here in a minute," Pop snaps.
+
+"All right, all right."
+
+Actually, my pop sometimes jaws so long it'd be a relief if he did haul
+off and hit me, but he never does.
+
+We call it a draw for that day, and I have Cat.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         2
+
+
+           [Illustration: Dave looking at Cat locked in cage.]
+
+
+
+                                                    CAT AND THE UNDERWORLD
+
+
+
+Cat makes himself at home in my room pretty easily. Mostly he likes to be
+up on top of something, so I put an old sweater on the bureau beside my
+bed, and he sleeps up there. When he wants me to wake up in the morning,
+he jumps and lands in the middle of my stomach. Believe me, cats don't
+always land lightly--only when they want to. Anything a cat does, he does
+only when he wants to. I like that.
+
+When I'm combing my hair in the morning, sometimes he sits up there and
+looks down his nose at my reflection in the mirror. He appears to be
+taking inventory: "Hmm, buckteeth; sandy hair, smooth in front, cowlick in
+back; brown eyes, can't see in the dark worth a nickel; hickeys on the
+chin. Too bad."
+
+I look back at him in the mirror and say, "O.K., black face, yellow eyes,
+and one white whisker. Where'd you get that one white whisker?"
+
+He catches sight of himself in the mirror, and his tail twitches
+momentarily. He seems to know it's not really another cat, but his claws
+come out and he taps the mirror softly, just to make sure.
+
+When I'm lying on the bed reading, sometimes he will curl up between my
+knees and the book. But after a few days I can see he's getting more and
+more restless. It gets so I can't listen to a record, for the noise of him
+scratching on the rug. I can't let him loose in the apartment, at least
+until we make sure Mom doesn't get asthma, so I figure I better
+reintroduce him to the great outdoors in the city. One nice Sunday morning
+in April we go down and sit on the stoop.
+
+Cat sits down, very tall and neat and pear-shaped, and closes his eyes
+about halfway. He glances at the street like it isn't good enough for him.
+After a while, condescending, he eases down the steps and lies on a sunny,
+dusty spot in the middle of the sidewalk. People walking have to step
+around him, and he squints at them.
+
+Then he gets up, quick, looks over his shoulder at nothing, and shoots
+down the stairs to the cellar. I take a look to see where he's going, and
+he is pacing slowly toward the backyard, head down, a tiger on the prowl.
+I figure I'll sit in the sun and finish my science-fiction magazine before
+I go after him.
+
+When I do, he's not in sight, and the janitor tells me he jumped up on the
+wall and probably down into one of the other yards. I look around a while
+and call, but he's not in sight, and I go up to lunch. Along toward
+evening Cat scratches at the door and comes in, as if he'd done it all his
+life.
+
+This gets to be a routine. Sometimes he doesn't even come home at night,
+and he's sitting on the doormat when I get the milk in the morning,
+looking offended.
+
+"Is it my fault you stayed out all night?" I ask him.
+
+He sticks his tail straight up and marches down the hall to the kitchen,
+where he waits for me to open the milk and dish out the cat food. Then he
+goes to bed.
+
+One morning he's not there when I open the door, and he still hasn't
+showed up when I get back from school. I get worried and go down to talk
+to Butch.
+
+"Wa-a-l," says Butch, "sometimes that cat sit and talk to me a little, but
+most times he go on over to Twenty-first Street, where he sit and talk to
+his lady friend. Turned cold last night, lot of buildings put on heat and
+closed up their basements. Maybe he got locked in somewheres."
+
+"Which building's his friend live in?" I ask.
+
+"Forty-six, the big one. His friend's a little black-and-white cat, sort
+of belongs to the night man over there. He feeds her."
+
+I go around to Twenty-first Street and case Forty-six, which is a pretty
+fair-looking building with a striped awning and a doorman who saunters out
+front and looks around every few minutes.
+
+While I'm watching, a grocery boy comes along pushing his cart and goes
+down some stairs into the basement with his carton of groceries. This
+gives me an idea. I'll give the boy time to get started up in the
+elevator, and then I'll go down in the basement and hunt for Cat. If
+someone comes along and gets sore, I can always play dumb.
+
+I go down, and the coast is clear. The elevator's gone up, and I walk
+softly past and through a big room where the tenants leave their baby
+carriages and bicycles. After this the cellar stretches off into several
+corridors, lit by twenty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling. You can
+hardly see anything. The corridors go between wire storage cages, where
+the tenants keep stuff like trunks and old cribs and parakeet cages.
+They're all locked.
+
+"Me-ow, meow, me-ow!" Unmistakably Cat, and angry.
+
+The sound comes from the end of one corridor, and I fumble along, peering
+into each cage to try to see a tiger cat in a shadowy hole. Fortunately
+his eyes glow and he opens his mouth for another meow, and I see him
+locked inside one of the cages before I come to the end of the corridor. I
+don't know how he got in or how I'm going to get him out.
+
+While I'm thinking, Cat's eyes flick away from me to the right, then back
+to me. Cat's not making any noise, and neither am I, but something is.
+It's just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have a creepy feeling someone
+is standing near us. Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow moves a
+little, and I can see it has a white splotch--a face. It's a man, and he
+comes toward me.
+
+I don't know why any of the building men would be way back there, but
+that's who I figure it is, so I start explaining.
+
+"I was just hunting for my cat ... I mean, he's got locked in one of these
+cages. I just want to get him out."
+
+The guy lets his breath out, slow, as if he's been holding it quite a
+while. I realize he doesn't belong in that cellar either, and he's been
+scared of me.
+
+He moves forward, saying "Sh-h-h" very quietly. He's taller than I am, and
+I can't see what he really looks like, but I'm sure he's sort of a kid,
+maybe eighteen or so.
+
+He looks at the padlock on the cage and says, "Huh, cheap!" He takes a
+paper clip out of his pocket and opens it out, and I think maybe he has a
+penknife, too, and next thing I know the padlock is open.
+
+"Gee, how'd you do that?"
+
+"Sh-h-h. A guy showed me how. You better get your cat and scram."
+
+Golly, I wonder, maybe the guy is a burglar, and that gives me another
+creepy feeling. But would a burglar be taking time out to get a kid's cat
+free?
+
+"Well, thanks for the cat. See you around," I say.
+
+"Sh-h-h. I don't live around here. Hurry up, before we both get caught."
+
+Maybe he's a real burglar with a gun, even, I think, and by the time I
+dodge past the elevators and get out in the cold April wind, the sweat
+down my back is freezing. I give Cat a long lecture on staying out of
+basements. After all, I can't count on having a burglar handy to get him
+out every time.
+
+Back home we put some nice jailhouse blues on the record player, and we
+both stretch out on the bed to think. The guy didn't really _look_ like a
+burglar. And he didn't talk "dese and dose." Maybe real burglars don't all
+talk that way--only the ones on TV. Still, he sure picked that lock fast,
+and he was sure down in that cellar for some reason of his own.
+
+Maybe I ought to let someone know. I figure I'll test Pop out, just casual
+like. "Some queer-looking types hanging around this neighborhood," I say
+at dinner. "I saw a tough-looking guy hanging around Number Forty-six this
+afternoon. Might have been a burglar, even."
+
+I figure Pop'll at least ask me what he was doing, and maybe I'll tell him
+the whole thing--about Cat and the cage. But Pop says, "In case you didn't
+know it, burglars do not all look like Humphrey Bogart, and they don't
+wear signs."
+
+"Thanks for the news," I say and go on eating my dinner. Even if Pop does
+make me sore, I'm not going to pass up steak and onions, which we don't
+have very often.
+
+However, the next day I'm walking along Twenty-first Street and I see the
+super of Forty-six standing by the back entrance, so I figure I'll try
+again. I say to him, "Us kids were playing ball here yesterday, and we saw
+a strange-looking guy sneak into your cellar. It wasn't a delivery boy."
+
+"Yeah? You sure it wasn't you or one of your juvenile pals trying to swipe
+a bike? How come you have to play ball right here?"
+
+"I don't swipe bikes. I got one of my own. New. A Raleigh. Better than any
+junk you got in there."
+
+"What d'you know about what I got in there, wise guy?"
+
+"Aw, forget it." I realize he's just getting suspicious of me. That's what
+comes of trying to be a big public-spirited citizen. I decide my burglar,
+whoever he is, is a lot nicer than the super, and I hope he got a fat
+haul.
+
+Next day it looks like maybe he did just that. The local paper, _Town and
+Village_, has a headline: "Gramercy Park Cellar Robbed." I read down the
+article:
+
+"The superintendent, Fred Snood, checked the cellar storage cages, after a
+passing youth hinted to him that there had been a robbery. He found one
+cage open and a suitcase missing. Police theorize that the youth may have
+been the burglar, or an accomplice with a guilty conscience or a grudge,
+and they are hunting him for questioning. Mr. Snood described him as about
+sixteen years of age, medium height, with a long 'ducktail' haircut, and
+wearing a heavy black sweater. They are also checking second-hand stores
+for the stolen suitcase."
+
+The burglar stole a suitcase with valuable papers and some silver and
+jewelry in it. But the guy they were hunting for--I read the paragraph over
+and feel green. That's me. I get up and look in the mirror. In other
+circumstances I'd like being taken for sixteen instead of fourteen, which
+I am. I smooth my hair and squint at the back of it. The ducktail is fine.
+
+Slowly I peel off my black sweater, which I wear practically all the time,
+and stuff it in my bottom drawer, under my bathing suit. But if I want to
+walk around the street without worrying about every cop, I'll have to do
+more than that. I put on a shirt and necktie and suit jacket and stick a
+cap on my head. I head uptown on the subway. At Sixty-eighth Street I get
+off and find a barbershop.
+
+"Butch cut," I tell the guy.
+
+"That's right. I'll trim you nice and neat. Get rid of all this stuff."
+
+And while he chatters on like an idiot, I have to watch three months' work
+go snip, snip on the floor. Then I have to pay for it. At home I get the
+same routine. Pop looks at my Ivy-League disguise and says, "Why, you may
+look positively human some day!"
+
+Two days later I find out I could've kept my hair. _Town and Village_ has
+a new story: "Nab Cellar Thief Returning Loot. 'Just A Bet,' He Says."
+
+The story is pretty interesting. The guy I met in the cellar is named Tom
+Ransom, and he is nineteen and just sort of floating around in the city.
+He doesn't seem to have any family. The police kept a detective watching
+Number Forty-six, and pretty soon they see Tom walking along with the
+stolen suitcase. He drops it inside the delivery entrance and walks on,
+but the cop collars him. I suppose if it hadn't been for me shooting my
+big mouth off to the super, the police wouldn't have been watching the
+neighborhood. I feel sort of responsible.
+
+The story in the paper goes on to say this guy was broke and hunting for a
+job, and some other guy dares him to snatch something out of a cellar and
+finally bets him ten dollars, so he does it. He gets out and finds the
+suitcase has a lot of stocks and legal papers and table silver in it, and
+he's scared stiff. So he figures to drop it back where it came from. The
+paper says he's held over to appear before some magistrate in Adolescent
+Court.
+
+I wonder, would they send a guy to jail for that? Or if they turn him
+loose, what does he do? It must be lousy to be in this city without any
+family or friends.
+
+At that point I get the idea I'll write him a letter. After all, Cat and I
+sort of got him into the soup. So I look up the name of the magistrate and
+spend about half an hour poring through the phone book, under "New York,
+City of," to get an address. I wonder whether to address him as "Tom" or
+"Mr. Ransom." Finally I write:
+
+
+_Dear Tom Ransom:_
+
+_I am the kid you met in the cellar at Number Forty-six Gramercy, and I
+certainly thank you for unlocking that cage and getting my cat out. Cat is
+fine. I am sorry you got in trouble with the police. It sounds to me like
+you were only trying to return the stuff and do right. My father is a
+lawyer, if you would like one. I guess he's pretty good. Or if you would
+like to write me anyway, here is my address: 150 East 22 St. I read in the
+paper that your family don't live in New York, which is why I thought you
+might like someone to write to._
+
+                                                       _Yours sincerely,_
+                                                          _Dave Mitchell_
+
+
+Now that I'm a free citizen again, I dig out my black sweater, look
+disgustedly at the butch haircut, and go out to mail my letter.
+
+Later on I get into a stickball game again on Twenty-first Street. Cat
+comes along and sits up high on a stoop across the street, where he can
+watch the ball game and the tame dogs being led by on their leashes. That
+big brain, the super of Forty-six, is standing by the delivery entrance,
+looking sour as usual.
+
+"Got any burglars in your basement these days?" I yell to him while I'm
+jogging around the bases on a long hit.
+
+He looks at me and my short haircut and scratches his own bald egg.
+"Where'd I see you?" he asks suspiciously.
+
+"Oh--Cat and I, we get around," I say.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         3
+
+
+        [Illustration: Dave, Cat, and Nick running on the beach.]
+
+
+
+                                                             CAT AND CONEY
+
+
+
+Nick and I have been friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers
+used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the
+corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs.
+If anyone asked me _how come_ we're friends, I couldn't exactly say. We're
+just together most of the time.
+
+Neither of us is a real whiz at sports, but we used to roller-skate and
+play a little king and stickball and ride our bikes around exploring. One
+time when we were about ten, we rode way over to Twelfth Avenue at the
+Hudson River, where the _Queen Mary_ docks. This is about the only time I
+remember my mom getting really angry. She said Pop ought to take my bike
+away from me, and he did, but only for about a week. Nick and I still ride
+bikes a lot. Otherwise we sit and do our homework or play chess and listen
+to records.
+
+Another reason we're friends is because of this creepy little kid who
+lived down toward the corner, between me and Nick. He always tagged along,
+wanting to play with us, and of course in the end he always fouled up the
+game or fell down and started to cry. Then his big brother came rushing
+out, usually with another big guy along, and they figured they were
+entitled to beat us up for hurting little Joey.
+
+After a while it looked to me as if Joey just worked as a lookout, and the
+minute me or Nick showed up on the block, one of the big guys came to run
+us off. They did little things like throwing sticks into our bike spokes
+and pretending it was just a joke. Nick and I used to plot all kinds of
+ways to get even with them, but in the end we mostly decided it was easier
+to walk around the block the long way to get to each other's houses. I'm
+not much on fighting, and neither is Nick--'specially not with guys bigger
+than us.
+
+Summers, up in the country, the kids seem to be all the time wrestling and
+punching, half for fun and half not. If I walk past some strange kid my
+age up there, he almost always tries to get me into a fight. I don't get
+it. Maybe it's because sidewalks are uncomfortable for fighting, but we
+just don't do much scrapping for fun. The only couple of fights I ever
+had, I was real mad.
+
+Come spring, Nick and I got restless hanging around the street, with
+nothing to do but stickball and baiting the super at Forty-six. It was so
+easy to get him sore, it wasn't even fun. Cat stayed out of that basement,
+but I wanted to get him really out in the open, where he could chase
+squirrels or something.
+
+One day we rode our bikes up to Central Park. I put Cat in a wicker hamper
+and tied it on the back of my bike. He meowed a lot, and people on the
+street would look at me and then do a double take when they heard him.
+
+We got up to Central Park and into a place they call The Horseshoe,
+because the parking area is that shape. I opened the lid a crack to look
+at Cat. He hissed at me, the first time he ever did. I looked around and
+thought, Gee, if I let him loose, he could go anywhere, even over into the
+woods, and I might never catch him. There were a lot of hoody looking kids
+around, and I could see if I ever left my bike a second to chase Cat,
+they'd snatch the bike. So I didn't let Cat out, and I wolfed my sandwich
+and we went home. Nick was pretty disgusted.
+
+Then we hit a hot Saturday, the first one in May, and I get an idea. I
+find Nick and say, "Let's put Cat and some sandwiches in the basket and
+hop the subway out to Coney."
+
+Nick says, "Why bring Cat? He wrecked the last expedition."
+
+"I like to take him places, and this won't be like Central Park. No one's
+at Coney this time of year. He can chase around on the beach and hunt sand
+crabs."
+
+"Why do I have to have a nut for a friend?" Nick moans. "Well, anyway, I'm
+keeping my sandwich in my pocket, not in any old cat basket."
+
+"Who cares where you keep your crumby sandwich?"
+
+So we went. Lots of people might think Coney Island is ugly, with all the
+junky-looking booths and billboards. But when you turn your back on them
+and look out at the ocean, it's the same ocean as on a deserted beach. I
+kick off my shoes and stand with my feet in the ice water and the sun hot
+on my chest. Looking out at the horizon with its few ships and some sea
+gulls and planes overhead, I think: It's mine, all mine. I could go
+anywhere in the world, I could. Maybe I will.
+
+Nick throws water down my neck. He only understands infinity on math
+papers. I let Cat out of the basket and strip off my splashed shirt and
+chase Nick along the edge of the water. No need to worry about Cat. He
+chases right along with us, and every time a wave catches his feet he
+hisses and hightails it up the beach. Then he rolls himself in the hot,
+dry sand and gets up and shakes. There are a few other groups of people
+dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog comes and sniffs Cat and gets a
+right and a left scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home. Cat
+discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around in the sand and wrestle, and
+after a while we get hungry, so we go back where we left the basket. Cat
+is content to let me carry him.
+
+Three girls are having a picnic right near our basket. One yells to the
+others, "Hey, look! The guy went swimming with his cat!"
+
+Cat jumps down, turns his back on them, and humps himself around on my
+sweater until he is settled for a nap. I turn my back on the girls, too,
+and look out at the ocean.
+
+Still, it's not the same as it would have been a year ago. Then Nick and I
+would either have moved away from the girls or thrown sand at them.
+
+We just sit and eat our sandwiches. Nick looks over at them pretty often
+and whispers to me how old do I think they are. I can't tell about girls.
+Some of the ones in our class at school look about twenty-five, but then
+you see mothers pushing baby carriages on the street who look about
+fifteen.
+
+One of the girls catches Nick's eye and giggles. "Hi, there, whatcha
+watching?"
+
+"I'm a bird watcher," says Nick. "Seen any birds?"
+
+The girls drift over our way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The
+one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and
+hair piled up high in a bird's nest. Maybe that's what started Nick
+bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with brown hair, I
+guess.
+
+"You want a couple of cupcakes? You can have mine. I'm going on a diet,"
+says the blonde.
+
+"Thanks," says Nick. "I was thinking of going after some cokes."
+
+"Why waste time thinking? You might hurt your head," says the redhead.
+
+The third girl bends down and strokes Cat between the ears very gently.
+She says, "What's his name?"
+
+I explain to her about why Cat is Cat. She sits down and picks up a piece
+of seaweed to dangle over his nose. Cat makes a couple of sleepy swipes at
+it and then stretches luxuriously while she strokes him. The other kids
+get to talking, and we tell each other our names and where we go to school
+and all that stuff.
+
+Then Nick gets back on the subject of going for cokes. I don't really want
+to stay there alone with the girls, so I say I'll go. I tell Nick to watch
+Cat, and the girl who is petting him says, "Don't worry, I won't let him
+run away."
+
+It's a good thing she's there, because by the time I get back with the
+cokes, which no one offers to pay me back for, Nick and the other two
+girls are halfway down the beach. Mary--that's her name--says, "I never saw
+a cat at the beach before, but he seems to like it. Where'd you get him?"
+
+"He's a stray. I got him from an old lady who's sort of a nut about cats.
+Come on, I'll see if I can get him to chase waves for you. He was doing it
+earlier."
+
+We are running along in the waves when the other kids come back. The big
+blonde kicks up water at me and yells, "Race you!"
+
+So I chase, and just as I'm going to catch up, she stops short so I crash
+into her and we both fall down. This seems to be what she had in mind, but
+I bet the other kids are watching and I feel silly. I roll away and get up
+and go back to Cat.
+
+While we drink cokes the blonde and the redhead say they want to go to the
+movies.
+
+"What's on?" Nick asks.
+
+"There's a Sinatra thing at the neighborhood," the blonde tells him, and
+he looks interested.
+
+"I can't," I say. "I've got Cat. Besides, it's too late. Mom'd think I'd
+fallen into the subway."
+
+"I told you that cat was a mistake," says Nick.
+
+"Put him in the basket and call your mother and tell her your watch
+stopped," says the redhead. She comes over and trickles sand down my neck.
+"Come on, it'd be fun. We don't have to sit in the kids' section. We all
+look sixteen."
+
+"Nah, I can't." I get up and shake the sand out.
+
+Nick looks disgusted, but he doesn't want to stay alone. He says to the
+blonde, "Write me down your phone number, and we'll do it another day when
+this nut hasn't got his cat along."
+
+She writes down the phone number, and the redhead pouts because I'm not
+asking for hers. The girls get ready to leave, and Mary pats Cat good-bye
+and waves to me. She says, "Bring him again. He's nice."
+
+We get on the subway and Cat meows crossly at being shut in his basket.
+Nick pokes the basket with his toes.
+
+"Shut up, nuisance," he says.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         4
+
+
+          [Illustration: Dave and Nick fighting on the ground.]
+
+
+
+                                                                     FIGHT
+
+
+
+I actually get a letter back from Tom Ransom. It says: "Thanks for your
+letter. The Youth Board got me a room in the Y on Twenty-third Street.
+Maybe I'll come say Hello some day. They're going to help me get a job
+this summer, so I don't need a lawyer. Thanks anyway. Meow to Cat. Best,
+Tom."
+
+I go over to Nick's house to show him the letter. I'd told him about Tom
+getting Cat out of the cellar and getting arrested, but Nick always acted
+like he didn't really believe it. So when he sees the letter, he has to
+admit Cat and I really got into something. Not everyone gets letters from
+guys who have been arrested.
+
+One thing about Nick sort of gripes me. He has to think up all the plans.
+Anything I've done that he doesn't know about, he downgrades. Also, I
+always have to go to _his_ house. He never comes to mine, except once in a
+coon's age when I have a new record I won't bring to his house because his
+machine stinks and he never buys a new needle.
+
+It's not that I don't like his house. His mom is pretty nice, and boy, can
+she cook! Just an ordinary Saturday for lunch she makes pizza or real good
+spaghetti, and she has homemade cookies and nut cake sitting around after
+school. She also talks and waves her arms and shouts orders at us kids,
+but all good-natured-like, so we just kid her along and go on with what
+we're doing.
+
+She's about the opposite of my mom. Pop does the shouting in our house,
+and except for the one hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue, Mom
+doesn't even tell me what to do much. She's quiet, and pretty often she
+doesn't feel good, so maybe I think more than most kids that I ought to do
+things her way without being told.
+
+Also, my mom is always home and always ready to listen if you got
+something griping you, like when a teacher blames you for something you
+didn't do. Some kids I know, they have to phone a string of places to find
+their mother, and then she scolds them for interrupting her.
+
+Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good meals for holidays, but she
+doesn't go at it all the time, the way Nick's mother does. So maybe Nick
+doesn't come to my house because we haven't got all that good stuff
+sitting around. I don't think that's it, really, though. He just likes to
+be boss.
+
+One day, a couple of weeks after we went to Coney, he does come along with
+me. We pick up a couple of cokes and pears at his pop's store.
+
+Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps down and rubs between my
+legs and goes up the stairs ahead of us.
+
+"See? He knows when school gets out then it's time to eat. That's why I
+like to come home," I tell Nick.
+
+We say "Hi" to Mom, and I get out the cat food while Nick opens his coke.
+"You know those girls we ran into over on Coney Island?" he says.
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Well, I got the blonde's phone number, so Sunday when I was hacking
+around with nothing to do, I called her up."
+
+"Yeah? What for?"
+
+"You stupid or something? To talk. So she yacked away a good while, and
+finally I asked her why didn't she come over next Saturday, we could go to
+a movie or something."
+
+"Yeah." I was working on my pear, a very juicy one.
+
+"That all you can say? So she says, well, she might, if she can get her
+girl friend to come too, but she doesn't want to come alone, and her
+mother wouldn't let her anyway."
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Which one what?"
+
+"Which girl friend?"
+
+"Oh. You remember, the other one we were kidding around with at the beach,
+the redhead. So I said, O.K., I'd see if I could get you to come too. I
+said I'd call her back."
+
+"Hmp. I don't know."
+
+"What d'you mean, you don't know?"
+
+"How do I know if I like that girl? I hardly even _talked_ to her. Anyway,
+it sounds like a date. I don't want a date. If they just happen to come
+over, I guess it's all right."
+
+"So shall I tell them it's O.K. for Saturday?"
+
+"Hmm."
+
+"It's nice you learned a new word."
+
+"Do I have to pay for the girl at the movies?"
+
+"Cheapskate. Maybe if you just stand around saying 'Hmm,' she'll buy her
+own. O.K.?"
+
+"O.K. But this whole thing is your idea, and if it stinks it's going to be
+your fault."
+
+"Boy, what an enthusiast! Come on, let's play a record and do the math."
+
+Nick is better at math than I am, so I agree.
+
+Saturday morning at ten o'clock Nick turns up at my house in a white shirt
+and slicked-down hair. Pop whistles. "On Saturday, yet! You got a girl or
+something?"
+
+"Yessir!" says Nick, and he gives my T-shirt a dirty look. I go put a
+sweater over it and run a comb through my hair, but I'm hanged if I'll go
+out looking like this is a big deal.
+
+"We're going to a movie down at the Academy," I tell my family.
+
+"What's there?" Pop asks.
+
+"A new horror show," says Nick. "And an old Disney."
+
+"Is it really a new horror show?" I ask Nick, because I think I've seen
+every one that's been in town.
+
+"Yup. Just opened. _The Gold Bug._ Some guy wrote it--I mean in a book
+once--but it's supposed to be great. Make the girls squeal anyway. I love
+that."
+
+"Hmm." I just like horror shows anyway, whether girls squeal or not.
+
+"You'll be the life of the party with that 'Hmm' routine."
+
+"It's _your_ party." I shrug.
+
+"Well, you could at least _try_."
+
+We hang around the subway kiosk on Fourteenth Street, where Nick said he'd
+meet them. After half an hour they finally show up.
+
+It's nice and sunny, and we see a crowd bunched up over in Union Square,
+so we wander over. A shaggy-haired, bearded character is making a speech
+all about "They," the bad guys. A lot of sleepy bums are sitting around
+letting the speech roll off their ears.
+
+"What is he, a nut or something?" the blonde asks.
+
+"A Commie, maybe," I say. "They're always giving speeches down here.
+Willie Sutton, the bank robber, used to sit down here and listen, too.
+That's where somebody put the finger on him."
+
+The girls look at each other and laugh like crazy, as if I'd said
+something real funny. I catch Nick's eye and glare. O.K., I _tried_. After
+this I'll stick to "Hmm."
+
+A beard who is listening to the speech turns and glares at us and says,
+"Shush!"
+
+"Aw, go shave yourself!" says Nick, and the girls go off in more hoots.
+Nick starts herding them toward Fourteenth Street, and I follow along.
+
+At the Academy Nick goes up to the ticket window, and the girls
+immediately fade out to go read the posters and snicker together. I can
+see they're not figuring to pay for any tickets, so I cough up for two.
+
+Nick and I try to saunter up to the balcony the way we always do, but the
+girls are giggling and dropping their popcorn, so the matron spots us and
+motions. "Down here!" She flashes her light in our eyes, and I feel like a
+convict while we get packed in with all the kids in the under-sixteen
+section.
+
+Nick goes in first, then the blonde, then the redhead and me. The minute
+things start getting scary, she tries to grab me, but I stick my hands in
+my pockets and say, "Aw, it's just a picture." She looks disgusted.
+
+The next scary bit, she tries to hang onto her girl friend, but the blonde
+is already glued onto Nick. Redhead lets out a loud sigh, and I wish I
+hadn't ever got into this deal. I can't even enjoy the picture.
+
+We suffer through the two pictures. The little kids make such a racket you
+can hardly hear, and the matron keeps shining the light in your eyes so
+you can't see. She shines it on the blonde, who is practically sitting in
+Nick's lap, and hisses at her to get back. I'm not going to do this again,
+ever.
+
+We go out and Nick says, "Let's have a coke." He's walking along with the
+blonde, and instead of walking beside me the redhead tries to catch hold
+of his other arm. This sort of burns me up. I mean, I don't really _like_
+her, but I paid for her and everything.
+
+Nick shakes her off and calls over his shoulder to me, "Come on, chicken,
+pull your own weight!"
+
+The girls laugh, on cue as usual, and I begin getting really sore. Nick
+got me into this. The least he can do is shut up.
+
+We walk into a soda bar, and I slap down thirty cents and say, "Two cokes,
+please."
+
+"Hey, hey! The last of the big spenders!" says Nick. More laughter. I'd
+just as soon sock him right now, but I pick up my money and say, "O.K.,
+wise guy, treat's on you." Nick shrugs and tosses down a buck as if he had
+hundreds of them.
+
+The two girls drink their cokes and talk across Nick. I finish mine in two
+or three gulps, and finally we can walk them to the subway. Nick is
+gabbing away about how he'll come out to Coney one weekend, and I'm
+standing there with my hands in my pockets.
+
+"Goo'bye, Bashful!" coos the redhead to me, and the two of them disappear,
+cackling, down the steps. I start across Fourteenth Street as soon as the
+light changes, without bothering to look if Nick is coming. He can go rot.
+
+Along Union Square he's beside me, acting as if everything is peachy fine
+dandy. "That was a great show. Pretty good fun, huh?"
+
+I just keep walking.
+
+"You sore or something?" he asks, as if he didn't know.
+
+I keep on walking.
+
+"O.K., be sore!" he snaps. Then he breaks into a falsetto: "Goo'bye,
+Bashful!"
+
+I let him have it before he's hardly got his mouth closed. He hits me back
+in the stomach and hooks one of his ankles around mine so we both fall
+down. It goes from bad to worse. He gets me by the hair and bangs my head
+on the sidewalk, so I twist and bite his hand. We're gouging and
+scratching and biting and kicking, because we're both so mad we can hardly
+see, and anyway no one ever taught us those Queensberry rules. There's no
+point in going into all the gory details. Finally two guys haul us apart.
+I have hold of Nick's shirt and it rips. Good. He's half crying, and he
+twists away from the guy that grabbed him and screams some things at me
+before darting across the avenue.
+
+I'm standing panting and sobbing, and the guy holding me says, "You oughta
+be ashamed. Now go on home."
+
+"Aw, you and your big mouth," I say, still mad enough to feel reckless. He
+throws a fake punch, but he's not really interested. He goes his way, and
+I go mine.
+
+I must look pretty bad because a lot of people on the street shake their
+heads at me. I walk in the door at home, expecting the worst, but
+fortunately Mom is out. Pop just whistles through his teeth.
+
+"That must have been quite a horror picture!" he says.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         5
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave and Tom lunching in meadow above river.]
+
+
+
+                                                          AROUND MANHATTAN
+
+
+
+By the next weekend I no longer look like a fugitive from a riot. All week
+in school Nick and I get asked whether we got hit by a swinging door; then
+the fellows notice the two of us aren't speaking to each other, and they
+sort of sheer off the subject. Come Saturday, I sit on the stoop and
+wonder, what now? There are plenty of other kids in school I like, but
+they mostly live over in the project--Stuyvesant Town, that is. I've never
+bothered to hunt them up weekends because Nick's so much nearer.
+
+Summer is coming on, though, and I've got to have someone to hang around
+with. This is the last Saturday before Memorial Day. Getting time for
+beaches and stuff. I suppose Nick and I might get together again, but not
+if he's going to be nuts about girls all the time.
+
+A guy stops in front of the stoop, and Cat half opens his eyes in the sun
+and squints at him. The guy says, "You Dave Mitchell?"
+
+"Huh? Yeah." I look up, surprised. I don't exactly recognize the guy,
+never having seen him in a clear light before. But from the voice I know
+it's Tom.
+
+"Oh, hi!" I say. "Here's Cat. He's pretty handsome in daylight."
+
+"Yeah, he looks all right, but what happened to you?"
+
+"Me and a friend of mine got in a fight."
+
+"With some other guys or what?"
+
+"Nah. We had a fight with each other."
+
+"Um, that's bad." Tom sits down and has sense enough to see there isn't
+anymore to say on that subject. "I start work Memorial Day, when the
+beaches open. Working in a filling station on the Belt Parkway in
+Brooklyn."
+
+"Gee, that's a long way off. You going to live over there?"
+
+"Yeah, they're going to get me a room in a Y in Brooklyn." Tom stretches
+restlessly and goes on: "I suppose you get sick of school and all, but
+it's rotten having nothing to do. I'd be ready to go nuts if I didn't get
+a job. I can't wait to start."
+
+I think of asking him doesn't he have a home or something to go back to,
+but somehow I don't like to.
+
+"Like today," Tom says. "I'd like to go somewhere. Do something. Got any
+ideas?"
+
+"Um. I was sort of trying to think up something myself. Movies?"
+
+Tom shakes himself. "No. I want to walk, or run, or throw something."
+
+"There's a big park--sort of a woods--up near the Bronx. A kid told me about
+it. He said he found an Indian arrowhead there, but I bet he didn't.
+Inwood Park, it's called."
+
+"How do you get there?"
+
+"Subway, I guess."
+
+"Let's go!" Tom stands up and wriggles his shoulders like he's Superman
+ready to take off.
+
+"O.K. Wait a minute. I'll go tell Mom. Should I get some sandwiches?"
+
+Tom looks surprised. "Sure, fine, if she doesn't mind."
+
+I'm not worried about getting Mom to make sandwiches because she always
+likes to fix a little food for me. The thing is, ever since my fight with
+Nick, she's been clucking around me like the mother hen. Maybe she figures
+I got in some gang fight, so she keeps asking me where I'm going and who
+with. Also, I guess she noticed I don't go to Nick's after school anymore.
+I come right home. So she asks me do I feel all right. You can't win.
+Right now, I can see she's going to begin asking who is Tom and where did
+I meet him. It occurs to me there's an easy way to take care of this.
+
+I turn around to Tom again. "Say, how about you come up and I'll introduce
+you to Mom? Then she won't start asking me a lot of questions."
+
+"You mean I _look_ respectable, at least?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+We go up to the apartment, and Mom asks if we'd like some cold drinks or
+something. I tell her I ran into Tom when he helped me hunt for Cat around
+Gramercy Park, which is almost true, and that he sometimes plays stickball
+with us, which isn't really true but it could be. Mom gets us some
+orangeade. She usually keeps something like that in the icebox in summer,
+because she thinks cokes are bad for you.
+
+"Do you live around here?" she asks Tom.
+
+"No, ma'am," says Tom firmly. "I live at the Y. I've got a summer job in a
+filling station over in Brooklyn, starting right after Memorial Day."
+
+"That's fine," Mom says. "I wish Davey could get a job. He gets so
+restless with nothing to do in the summer."
+
+"Aw, Mom, forget it! You got to fill in about six-hundred working papers
+if you're under sixteen.
+
+"Listen, Mom, what I came up for--we thought we'd make some sandwiches and
+go up to Inwood Park."
+
+"Inwood? Where's that?" So I explain to her about the Indian arrowheads,
+and we get out the classified phone book and look at the subway map, which
+shows there's an IND train that goes right to it.
+
+"I get sort of restless myself, with nothing to do," says Tom. "We just
+figured we'd do a little exploring around in the woods and get some
+exercise."
+
+"Why, yes, that seems like a good idea." Mom looks at him and nods. She
+seems to have decided he's reliable, as well as respectable.
+
+I see there's some leftover cold spaghetti in the icebox, and I ask Mom to
+put it in sandwiches. She thinks I'm cracked, but I did this once before,
+and it's good, 'specially if there's plenty of meat and sauce on the
+spaghetti. We take along a bag of cherries, too.
+
+"Thanks, Mom. Bye. I'll be back before supper."
+
+"Take care," she says. "No fights."
+
+"Don't worry. We'll stay out of fights," says Tom quite seriously.
+
+We go down the stairs, and Tom says, "Your mother is really nice."
+
+I'm sort of surprised--kids don't usually say much about each other's
+parents. "Yeah, Mom's O.K. I guess she worries about me and Pop a lot."
+
+"It must be pretty nice to have your mother at home," he says.
+
+That kind of jolts me, too. I wonder where his mother and father are,
+whether they're dead or something; but again, I don't quite want to ask.
+Tom isn't an easy guy to ask questions. He's sort of like an island, by
+himself in the ocean.
+
+We walk down to Fourteenth Street and over to Eighth Avenue, about twelve
+blocks; after all, exercise is what we want. The IND trains are fast, and
+it only takes about half an hour to get up to Inwood, at 206th Street. The
+park is right close, and it is real woods, although there are paved walks
+around through it. We push uphill and get in a grassy meadow, where you
+can see out over the Hudson River to the Palisades in Jersey. It's good
+and hot, and we flop in the sun. There aren't many other people around,
+which is rare in New York.
+
+"Let's eat lunch," says Tom. "Then we can go hunting arrowheads and not
+have to carry it."
+
+He agrees the spaghetti sandwich is a great invention.
+
+I wish the weather would stay like this more of the year--good and sweaty
+hot in the middle of the day, so you feel like going swimming, but cool
+enough to sleep at night. We lie in the sun awhile after lunch and agree
+that it's too bad there isn't an ocean within jumping-in distance. But
+there isn't, and flies are biting the backs of our necks, so we get up and
+start exploring.
+
+We find a few places that you might conceivably call caves, but they've
+been well picked over for arrowheads, if there ever were any. That's the
+trouble in the city: anytime you have an idea, you find out a million
+other people had the same idea first. Along in mid-afternoon, we drift
+down toward the subway and get cokes and ice cream before we start back.
+
+I don't really feel like going home yet, so I think a minute and study the
+subway map inside the car. "Hey, as long as we're on the subway anyway, we
+could go on down to Cortlandt Street to the Army-Navy surplus store. I got
+to get a knapsack before summer."
+
+"O.K." Tom shrugs. He's staring out the window and doesn't seem to care
+where he goes.
+
+"I got a great first-aid survival kit there. Disinfectant and burn
+ointment and bug dope and bandages, in a khaki metal box that's
+waterproof, and it was only sixty-five cents."
+
+"Hmm. Just what I need for survival on the sidewalks of New York," says
+Tom. I guess he's kidding, in a sour sort of way. If you haven't got a
+family around, though, survival must take more than a sixty-five-cent kit.
+
+The store is a little way from the nearest subway stop, and we walk along
+not saying much. Tom looks alive when he gets into the store, though,
+because it really is a great place. They've got arctic explorers' suits
+and old hand grenades and shells and all kinds of rifles, as well as some
+really cheap, useful clothing. They don't mind how long you mosey around.
+In the end I buy a belt pack and canteen, and Tom picks up some skivvy
+shirts and socks that are only ten cents each. They're secondhand, I
+guess, but they look all right.
+
+We walk over to the East Side subway, which is only a few blocks away down
+here because the island gets so narrow. Tom says he's never seen Wall
+Street, where all the tycoons grind their money machines. The place is
+practically deserted now, being late Saturday afternoon, and it's like
+walking through an empty cathedral. You can make echoes.
+
+We take the subway, and Tom walks along home with me. It seems too bad the
+day's over. It was a pretty good day, after all.
+
+"So long, kid," Tom says. "I'll send you a card from Beautiful Brooklyn!"
+
+"So long." I wave, and he starts off. I wish he didn't have to go live in
+Brooklyn.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         6
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave wheeling his bike across Belt Parkway.]
+
+
+
+                                                              AND BROOKLYN
+
+
+
+You can't really stay sore at a guy you've known all your life, especially
+if he lives right around the corner and goes to the same school. Anyhow,
+one hot Saturday morning Nick turns up at my house as if nothing had ever
+happened and says do I want to go swimming, because the Twenty-third
+Street pool's open weekends now.
+
+After that we go back to playing ball on the street in the evenings and
+swimming sometimes on weekends. One Saturday his mother tells me he went
+to Coney Island. He didn't ask me to go along, which is just as well,
+because I wouldn't have. I don't hang around his house after school much
+anymore, either. School lets out, and there's the Fourth of July weekend,
+when we go up to Connecticut, and pretty soon after that Nick goes off to
+a camp his church runs. Pop asks me if I want to go to a camp a few weeks,
+but I don't. Life is pretty slow at home, but I don't feel like all that
+organization.
+
+I think Tom must have forgotten about me and found a gang his own age when
+I get a postcard from him: "Dear Dave, The guy I work for is a creep, and
+all the guys who buy gas from him are creeps, so it's great to be alive in
+Beautiful Brooklyn! Wish you were here, but you're lucky you're not. Best,
+Tom."
+
+It's hard to figure what he means when he says a thing. However, I got
+nothing to do, so I might as well go see. He said he was going to work in
+a filling station on the Belt Parkway, and there can't be a million of
+them.
+
+I don't say anything too exact to Mom about where I'm going, because she
+gets worried about me going too far, and besides I don't really know where
+I'm going.
+
+Brooklyn, what a layout. It's not like Manhattan, which runs pretty
+regularly north and south, with decent square blocks. You could lose a
+million friends in Brooklyn, with the streets all running in circles and
+angles, and the people all giving you cockeyed directions. What with no
+bikes allowed on parkways, and skirting around crumby looking
+neighborhoods, it takes me at least a week of expeditions to find the
+right part of the Belt Parkway to start checking the filling stations.
+
+I wheel my bike across the parkway, but even so some cop yells at me.
+You'd think a cop could find a crime to get busy with.
+
+On a real sticky day in July I wheel across to a station at Thirty-fourth
+Street, and nobody yells at me, and I go over to the air pump and fiddle
+with my tires. A car pulls out after it gets gas, and there's Tom.
+
+"Hi!" I say.
+
+Tom half frowns and quick looks over his shoulder to see if his boss is
+around, I guess, and then comes over to the air pump.
+
+"How'd you get way out here?" he says.
+
+"On the bike. I got your postcard, and I figured I could find the filling
+station."
+
+He relaxes and grins. I feel better. He says, "You're a crazy kid. How's
+Cat?"
+
+But just then the boss has to come steaming up. "What d'ya want, kid? No
+bikes allowed on the parkway."
+
+I start to say I'm just getting air, but Tom speaks up. "It's all right. I
+know him."
+
+"Yeah? I told you, keep kids out of here!" The guy manages to suggest that
+kids Tom knows are probably worse than any other kind. He motions me off
+like a stray dog. I don't want to get Tom in any trouble, so I get going.
+At the edge of the parkway I wave. "So long. Write me another postcard."
+
+Tom raises a hand briefly, but his face looks closed, like nothing was
+going to get in or out.
+
+I pedal slowly and hotly back through the tangle of Brooklyn and figure,
+well, that's a week's research wasted. I still don't know where Tom lives,
+so I don't know how I can get a hold of him again. Anyway, how do I know
+he wants to be bothered with me? He looked pretty fed up with everything.
+
+So long as I got nothing else to do, the next week I figure I'll get
+public-spirited at home: I paint the kitchen for Mom, which isn't so bad,
+but moving all those silly dishes and pots and scrumy little spice cans
+can drive you wild. I only break one good vase and a bottle of salad oil.
+Salad oil and broken glass are great. In the afternoons I go to the
+swimming pool and learn to do a jackknife and a backflip, so Pop will
+think I am growing up to be a Real American Boy. Also, you practically
+have to learn to dive so you can use the diving pool, because the swimming
+pool is so jam-packed with screaming sardines you can't move in it.
+
+Evenings Cat and I play records, or we go to see Aunt Kate and drink iced
+tea. One weekend my real aunt comes to visit and sleeps in my room, so I
+go to stay with Aunt Kate, and I pretty near turn into cottage cheese.
+
+I've about settled into this dull routine when Mom surprises me by handing
+me a postcard one morning. It's from Tom: "Day off next Tuesday. If you
+feel like it, meet me near the aquarium at Coney Island about nine in the
+morning, before it's crowded."
+
+So that week drags by till Tuesday, and there I am at Coney Island bright
+and early. Tom is easy enough to find, pacing up and down the boardwalk
+like a tiger. We say "Hi" and so forth, and I'm all ready to take a run
+for the water, but he keeps snapping his fingers and looking up and down
+the boardwalk.
+
+Finally he says, "There's a girl I used to know pretty well. I didn't see
+her for a while till last week, and we got in an argument, and I guess
+she's mad. I wrote and asked her to come swimming today, but maybe she's
+not coming."
+
+I figure it out that I'm there as insurance against the girl not showing
+up, but I don't mind. Anyhow, she does show up. It can't have been too
+much of an argument they had, because she acts pretty friendly.
+
+Tom introduces us. Her name is Hilda and a last name that'd be hard to
+spell--Swedish maybe--and she's got a wide, laughing kind of mouth and a big
+coil of yellow hair in a bun on top of her head, and a mighty good figure.
+She asks me where I ran into Tom, and we tell her all about Cat and the
+cellar at Number Forty-six, and I tell them both about my Ivy-League
+haircut, which I had never explained to anyone before. They get a laugh
+out of that, and then she asks him about the filling-station job, and he
+says it stinks.
+
+I figure they could get along without me for a while, so I go for a swim
+and wander down the beach a ways and eat a hot dog and swim some more.
+When I come back, I see Tom and Hilda just coming out of the water, so I
+join them. Hilda says, "Come have a coke. Tom says he's got to try
+swimming to France just once more."
+
+I don't know just what she means, but we go get cokes and come back and
+stretch out in the sun. She asks me do I want a smoke, and I say No. It's
+nice to be asked, though. We watch Tom, who is swimming out past all the
+other people. I wish I'd gone with him. I say, "Lifeguard's going to
+whistle him in pretty soon. He's out past all the others."
+
+Hilda lets out a breath and snorts, "He'll always go till they blow the
+whistle. Always got to go farther than anyone else."
+
+I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything.
+
+Hilda goes on: "I used to wait tables in a restaurant down near Washington
+Square. Tom and a lot of the boys from NYU came in there. Sometimes the
+day before an exam he'd be sitting around for hours, buying people cokes
+and acting as if he hadn't a care in the world. Some other times, for no
+reason anyone could tell, he'd sit in a corner and stir his coffee like he
+was going to make a hole in the cup."
+
+"Tom was at NYU?" I ask. I don't know where I thought he'd been before he
+turned up in the cellar. I guess I never thought.
+
+"Sure," Hilda says. "He was in the Washington Square College for about a
+year and a half. He lived in a dormitory uptown, but I used to see him in
+the restaurant, and then fairly often we had dates after I got off work.
+He has people out in the Midwest somewhere--a father and a stepmother. He
+was always sour and close-mouthed about them, even before he got thrown
+out of NYU. Now he won't even write them."
+
+This is a lot of information to take in all at once and leaves a lot of
+questions unanswered. The first one that comes into my head is this: "How
+come he got thrown out of NYU?"
+
+"Well, it makes Tom so sore, he's never really told me a plain, straight
+story. It's all mixed up with his father. I think his father wrote him not
+to come home at Christmas vacation, for some reason. Tom and a couple of
+other boys who were left in the dormitory over the holidays got horsing
+around and had a water fight. The college got huffy and wrote the parents,
+telling them to pay up for damages. The other parents were pretty angry,
+but they stuck behind their kids and paid up. Tom just never heard from
+his father. Not a line.
+
+"That was when Tom began coming into the restaurant looking like thunder.
+The college began needling him for the water-fight damages, as well as
+second-semester tuition. He took his first exam, physics, and got an A on
+it. He's pretty smart.
+
+"He still didn't hear anything from home. He took the second exam, French,
+and thought he flunked it. That same afternoon he went into the office and
+told the dean he was quitting, and he packed his stuff and left. I didn't
+see him again till a week ago. I didn't know if he'd got sick of me, or
+left town, or what.
+
+"He says he wrote his father that he had a good job, and they could forget
+about him. Then he broke into that cellar on a dare or for kicks.
+
+"So here we are. What do we do next?"
+
+Hilda looks at me--me, age fourteen--as if I might actually know, and it's
+kind of unnerving. Everyone I know, their life goes along in set periods:
+grade school, junior high, high school, college, and maybe getting
+married. They don't really have to think what comes next.
+
+I say cautiously, "My pop says a kid's got to go to college now to get
+anywhere. Maybe he ought to go back to school."
+
+"You're so right, Grandpa," she says, and I would have felt silly, but she
+has a nice friendly laugh. "I wish I could persuade him to go back. But
+it's not so easy. I guess he's got to get a job and go to night school, if
+they'll accept him. He won't ask his father for money."
+
+"You two got my life figured out?" Tom has come up behind us while we were
+lying in the sand on our stomachs. "I just hope that sour grape at the
+filling station gives me a good recommendation so I can get another job.
+The way he watches his cash register, you'd think I was Al Capone."
+
+We talk a bit, and then Hilda gets up and says she's going to the ladies'
+room. She doesn't act coy about it, the way most girls do when they're
+sitting with guys. She just leaves.
+
+"How do you like Hilda?" Tom asks, and again I'm sort of surprised,
+because he acts like he really wants my opinion.
+
+"She's nice," I say.
+
+"Yeah." Tom suddenly glowers, as if I'd said I _didn't_ like her. "I don't
+know why she wastes her time on me. I'll never be any use to her. When her
+family hears about me, I'll get the boot."
+
+"I could ask my pop. You know, I told you he's a lawyer. Maybe he'd know
+how you go about getting back into college or getting a job or something."
+
+Tom laughs, an unamused bark. "Maybe he'll tell you to quit hanging around
+with jerks that get in trouble with the cops."
+
+This is a point, all right. Come to think, I don't know why I said I'd ask
+Pop anyway. I usually make a point of not letting his nose into my
+personal affairs, because I figure he'll just start bossing me around.
+However, I certainly can't do anything for Tom on my own.
+
+I say, "I'll chance it. The worst he ever does is talk. One time he made a
+federal case out of me buying a Belafonte record he didn't like. Another
+time playing ball I cracked a window in a guy's Cadillac, and Pop acted
+like he was going to sue the guy for owning a Cadillac. You just never
+know."
+
+Tom says, "With my dad, you _know_: I'm wrong."
+
+Hilda comes back just then. She snaps, "If he's such a drug on the market,
+why don't you shut up and forget about him?"
+
+"O.K., O.K.," says Tom.
+
+The beach is getting filled up by now, so we pull on our clothes and head
+for the subway. Tom and Hilda get off in Brooklyn, and I go on to Union
+Square.
+
+After dinner that night Mom is washing the dishes and Pop is reading the
+paper, and I figure I might as well dive in.
+
+"Pop," I say, "there's this guy I met at the beach. Well, really I mean I
+met him this spring when I was hunting for Cat, and this guy was in the
+cellar at Forty-six Gramercy, and he got caught and...."
+
+"Wha-a-a-t?" Pop puts down his paper and takes off his glasses. "Begin
+again."
+
+So I give it to him again, slow, and with explanations. I go through the
+whole business about the filling station and Hilda and NYU, and I'll say
+one thing for Pop, when he finally settles down to listen, he listens. I
+get through, and he puts on his reading glasses and goes to look out the
+window.
+
+"Do you have this young man's name and address, or is he just Tom from The
+Cellar?"
+
+I'd just got it from Tom when we were at the beach. He's at a Y in
+Brooklyn, so I tell Pop this.
+
+Pop says, "Tell him to call my office and come in to see me on his next
+day off. Meanwhile, I'll bone up on City educational policies in regard to
+juvenile delinquents."
+
+He says this perfectly straight, as if there'd be a book on the subject.
+Then he goes back to his newspaper, so I guess that closes the subject for
+now.
+
+"Thanks, Pop," I say and start to go out.
+
+"Entirely welcome," says Pop. As I get to the door, he adds, "If that cat
+of yours makes a practice of introducing you to the underworld in other
+people's cellars, we can do without him. We probably can anyway."
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         7
+
+
+    [Illustration: Dave talking with veterinarian while holding Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                                  SURVIVAL
+
+
+
+Cat hadn't got me into anymore cellars, but I can't honestly say he'd been
+sitting home tending his knitting--not him.
+
+One hot morning I went to pick up the milk outside our door, and Cat was
+sleeping there on the mat. He didn't even look up at me. After I scratched
+his ears and talked to him some, he got up and hobbled into the house.
+
+I put him up on my bed, under the light, for inspection. One front claw
+was torn off, which is why he was limping, his left ear was ripped, and
+there was quite a bit of fur missing here and there. He curled up on my
+bed and didn't move all day.
+
+I came and looked at him every few hours and wondered if I ought to take
+him to a vet. But he seemed to be breathing all right, so I went away and
+thought about it some more. Come night, I pushed him gently to one side,
+wondering what I better do in the morning.
+
+Well, in the morning Cat wakes up, stretches, yawns, and drops easily down
+off the bed and walks away. He still limps a little, but otherwise he acts
+like nothing had happened. He just wants to know what's for breakfast.
+
+"You better watch out. One day you'll run into a cat that's bigger and
+meaner than you," I tell him.
+
+Cat continues to wait for breakfast. He is not impressed.
+
+But I'm worried. Suppose some big old cat chews him up and he's hurt too
+bad to get home? After breakfast I take him out in the backyard for a bit,
+and then I shut him in my room and go over to consult Aunt Kate.
+
+She sets me up with the usual iced tea and dish of cottage cheese.
+
+"I had breakfast already. What do I need with cottage cheese?"
+
+"Eat it. It's good for you."
+
+So I eat it, and then I start telling her about Cat. "He came home all
+chewed up night before last. I'm afraid some night he's not going to make
+it."
+
+"Right," says Kate. She's not very talky, but I'm sort of surprised. I
+expected she'd tell me to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself. She
+starts pulling Susan's latest kittens out from under the sofa and sorting
+them out as if they were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow, one
+calico.
+
+"So what you going to do?" she shoots at me, shoveling the kittens back to
+Susan.
+
+"I--uh--I dunno. I thought maybe I ought to try to keep him in nights."
+
+"Huh. Don't know much, do you?" she says. "Well, so I'll tell you. Your
+Cat has probably fathered a few dozen kittens by now, and once a cat's
+been out and mated, you can't keep him in. You got to get him altered.
+Then he won't want to go out so much."
+
+"Altered?"
+
+"Fixed. Castrated is the technical word. It's a two-minute operation. Cost
+you three dollars. Take him to Speyer Hospital--big new building up on
+First Avenue."
+
+"You mean get him fixed so he's not a real tomcat any more? The heck with
+that! I don't want him turned into a fat old cushion cat!"
+
+"He won't be," she says. "But if it makes you happier, let him get killed
+in a cat fight. He's tough. He'll last a year or two. Suit yourself."
+
+"Ah, you're screwy! You and your cottage cheese!" Even as I say it I feel
+a little guilty. But I feel mad and mixed up, and I fling out the door.
+It's the first time I ever left Kate's mad. Usually I leave _our_  house
+mad and go to Kate.
+
+Now I got nowhere to go. I walk along, cussing and fuming and kicking
+pebbles. I come to an air-conditioned movie and go up to the window.
+
+The phony blonde in the booth looks at me and sneers, "You're not sixteen.
+We don't have a children's section in this theater." She doesn't even ask.
+She just says it. It's a great world. I go home. There's no one there but
+Cat, so I turn the record player up full blast.
+
+Pop comes home in one of his unexpected fits of generosity that night and
+takes us to the movies. Cat behaves himself and stays around home and our
+cellar for a while, so I stop worrying. But it doesn't last long.
+
+As soon as his claw heals, he starts sashaying off again. One night I hear
+cats yowling out back and I go out with a bucket of water and douse them
+and bring Cat in. There's a pretty little tiger cat, hardly more than a
+kitten, sitting on the fence licking herself, dry and unconcerned. Cat
+doesn't speak to me for a couple of days.
+
+One morning Butch, the janitor, comes up and knocks on our door. "You
+better come down and look at your cat. He got himself mighty chewed up.
+Most near dead."
+
+I hurry down, and there is Cat sprawled in a corner on the cool cement
+floor. His mouth is half open, and his breath comes in wheezes, like he
+has asthma. I don't know whether to pick him up or not.
+
+Butch says, "Best let him lie."
+
+I sit down beside him. After a bit his breath comes easier and he puts his
+head down. Then I see he's got a long, deep claw gouge going from his
+shoulder down one leg. It's half an inch open, and anyone can see it won't
+heal by itself.
+
+Butch shakes his head. "You gotta take him to the veteran, sure. That's
+the cat doctor."
+
+"Yeah," I say, not correcting him. It's not just the gash that's worrying
+me. I remember what Aunt Kate said, and it gives me a cold feeling in the
+stomach: In the back-alley jungle he'd last a year, maybe two.
+
+Looking at Cat, right now, I know she's right. But Cat's such a--well, such
+a _cat_. How can I take him to be whittled down?
+
+I tell Butch I'll be back down in a few minutes, and I go upstairs. Mom's
+humming and cleaning in the kitchen. I wander around and stare out the
+window awhile. Finally I go in the kitchen and stare into the icebox, and
+then I tell Mom about the gash in Cat's leg.
+
+She asks if I know a vet to take him to.
+
+"Yeah, there's Speyer. It's a big, new hospital--good enough for people,
+even--with a view of the East River. The thing is, Mom, Cat keeps going off
+and fighting and getting hurt, and people tell me I ought to get him
+altered."
+
+Mom wets the sponge and squeezes it out and polishes at the sink, and I
+wonder if she knows what I'm talking about because I don't really know how
+to explain it any better.
+
+She wrings the sponge out, finally, and sits down at the kitchen table.
+
+She says, "Cat's not a free wild animal now, and he wouldn't be even if
+you turned him loose. He belongs to _you_, so you have to do whatever is
+best for _him_, whether it's what you'd like or not. Ask the doctor and do
+what he says."
+
+Mom puts it on the line, all right. It doesn't make me feel any better
+about Cat. She takes five dollars out of her pocketbook and gives it to
+me.
+
+I get out the wicker hamper and go down to the cellar and load Cat in. He
+meows, a low resentful rumble, but he doesn't try to get away.
+
+Cat in the hamper is no powder puff, and I get pretty hot walking to the
+bus, and then from the bus stop to the animal hospital. I get there and
+wait, and dogs sniff at me, and I fill in forms. The lady asks me if I can
+afford to pay, and with Mom's five bucks and four of my own, I say Yes.
+
+The doctor is a youngish guy, but bald, in a white shirt like a dentist's.
+I put Cat on the table in front of him. He says, "So why don't you stay
+out of fights, like your mommy told you?"
+
+I relax a bit and smile, and he says, "That's better. Don't worry. We'll
+take care of tomcat. I suppose he got this gash in a fight?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"He been altered?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"I don't know. He was a stray. I've had him almost a year."
+
+All the time he's talking, the doctor is soothing Cat and looking him
+over. He goes on stroking him and looks up at me. "Well, son, one of these
+days he's going to get in one fight too many. Shall we alter him the same
+time we sew up his leg?"
+
+So there it is. I can't seem to answer right away. If the doctor had
+argued with me, I might have said No. But he just goes on humming and
+stroking. Finally he says, "It's tough, I know. Maybe he's got a right to
+be a tiger. But you can't keep a tiger for a pet."
+
+I say, "O.K."
+
+An attendant takes Cat away, and I go sit in the waiting room, feeling
+sweaty and cold all over. They tell me it'll be a couple of hours, so I go
+out and wander around a lot of blocks I never saw before and drink some
+cokes and sit and look up at the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Queens.
+
+When I go back for him, Cat looks the same as ever, except for a bandage
+all up his right front leg. The doctor tells me to come back Friday and
+he'll take out the stitches.
+
+Mom sees me come in the door, and I guess I look pretty grim, because she
+says, "Cat will be all right, won't he, dear?"
+
+"Yes." I go past her and down into my room and let Cat out of the basket
+and then bury my head under the pillow. I'm not exactly ashamed of crying,
+but I don't want Mom to hear.
+
+After a while I pull my head out. Cat is lying there beside me, his eyes
+half open, the tip end of his tail twitching very slowly. I rub my eyes on
+the back of his neck and whisper to him, "I'm sorry. Be tough, Cat,
+anyway, will you?"
+
+Cat stretches and hops off the bed on his three good legs.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         8
+
+
+     [Illustration: Dave and Mary buying tickets to West Side Story.]
+
+
+
+                                                           WEST SIDE STORY
+
+
+
+The regular park man got sunstroke or something, so I earned fourteen
+dollars raking and mowing in Gramercy Park in the middle of August.
+Gramercy Park is a private park. You have to own a key to get in, so the
+city doesn't take care of it.
+
+Real paper money, at this time of year especially, is very cheering. I
+head up to Sam Goody's to see what records he's got on sale and what
+characters are buying them. Maybe I'll buy something, maybe not, but as
+long as I've got money in my pocket, I don't feel like the guy is glaring
+at me for taking up floor space.
+
+Along the way I walk through the library, the big one at Forty-second
+Street. You go in by the lions on Fifth Avenue, and there's all kinds of
+pictures and books on exhibit in the halls, and you walk through to the
+back, where you can take out books. It's nice and cool, and nobody glares
+at you unless you either make a lot of noise or go to sleep. I can take
+books out of here and return them at the Twenty-third Street branch, which
+is handy.
+
+Sam Goody's is air-conditioned, so it's cool too. There are always several
+things playing on different machines you can listen to. Almost the most
+fun is watching the people: little, fat, bald guys buying long-haired
+classical music, and thin, shaggy beatniks listening to the jazz.
+
+I go to check if there are any bargains in the Kingston or Belafonte
+division. There's a girl standing there reading the backs of records, but
+I don't really catch a look at more than her shoes--little red flats they
+are. After a bit she reaches for a record over my head and says, "Excuse
+me."
+
+"Sure." Then we catch each other's eye and both say, "Oh. Gee, hello."
+
+Well, we're both pretty surprised, because this is the girl I met out at
+Coney Island that day with Nick when I had Cat with me, and now we're both
+a long way from Coney Island. This girl isn't one of the two giggly ones.
+It's the third, the one that liked Cat.
+
+We've both forgotten each other's names, so we begin over with that. I ask
+her what she's been doing, and she's been at Girl Scout camp a few weeks,
+and then she earned some money baby-sitting. So she came to think about
+records, like me. I tell her I've been at Coney once this summer, and I
+looked around for her, which is true, because I did.
+
+"It's a big place," she says, smiling.
+
+"Say, you live out there, don't you? How come you get all the way in here
+by yourself? Doesn't your mom get in a flap? Mine would, if she knew I was
+going to Coney alone."
+
+Mary says, "I came in with Mom. Some friend of hers has a small art
+exhibition opening. She said I could go home alone. After all, she knows
+I'm not going to get lost."
+
+I say, "Gee, it'd be great to have a mother that didn't worry about you
+all the time."
+
+"Oh, Mom worries." Mary giggles. "You should have heard her when I said I
+liked _Gone With the Wind_  and I didn't like _Anna Karenina_. I pretty
+nearly got disowned."
+
+"What does she think about science fiction?" I ask, and Mary makes a face,
+and we both laugh.
+
+I go on. "Well, my mom doesn't care what I read. She worries about what I
+eat and whether my feet are wet, and she always seems to think I'm about
+to kill myself. It's a nuisance, really."
+
+Mary looks solemn all of a sudden. She says slowly, "I think maybe it'd be
+nice. I mean to have someone worrying about whether you're comfortable and
+all. Instead of just picking your brains all the time."
+
+This seems to exhaust the subject of our respective mothers, and Mary
+picks up the record of _West Side Story_ and says, "Gee, I'd like to see
+that. Did you?"
+
+I say No, and to tell the truth I hadn't hardly heard of it.
+
+"I read a book about him. It was wonderful," she says.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Bernstein. The man who wrote it."
+
+"What's _West Side Story_ about, him?" I ask cautiously.
+
+"No, no--he wrote the music. It's about some kids in two gangs, and there's
+a lot of dancing, and then there's a fight and this kid gets--well, it
+isn't a thing you can tell the story of very well. You have to see it."
+
+This gives me a very simple idea.
+
+"Why don't we?" I say.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Go see it. Why not? We got money."
+
+"So we do," she says slowly. "You think they'll let us in, I mean being
+under sixteen?"
+
+You know, this is the first girl I really ever talked to that talks like a
+person, not trying to be cute or something.
+
+We walk around to the theater, and being it's Wednesday, there's a matinee
+about to start. The man doesn't seem to be one bit worried about taking
+our money. No wonder. It's two dollars and ninety cents each. So we're
+inside with our tickets before we've hardly stopped to think.
+
+Suddenly Mary says, "Oops! I better call Mom! Let's find out what time the
+show is over."
+
+We do, and Mary phones. She says to me, "I just told her I was walking
+past _West Side Story_ and found I could get a ticket. I didn't say
+anything about you."
+
+"Why, would she mind?"
+
+Mary squints and looks puzzled. "I don't know. I just really don't know.
+It never happened before."
+
+We go in to the show, and she is right, it's terrific. I hardly ever went
+to a live show before, except a couple of children's things and something
+by Shakespeare Pop took me to that was very confusing. But this _West Side
+Story_ is clear as a bell.
+
+We have an orangeade during intermission, and I make the big gesture and
+pay for both of them. Mary says, "Isn't it wonderful! I just happened to
+meet you at the beach, and then I meet you at Goody's, and we get to see
+this show that I've wanted to go to for ages. None of my friends at school
+want to spend this much money on a show."
+
+"It's wonderful," I say. "After it's over, I'm going back to buy the
+record."
+
+So after the show we buy it, and then we walk along together to the
+subway. I'll have to get off at the first stop, Fourteenth Street, and
+she'll go on to Coney, the end of the line.
+
+It's hard to talk on the subway. There's so much noise you have to shout,
+which is hard if you don't know what to say. Anyway, you can't ask a girl
+for her phone number shouting on the subway. At least I can't.
+
+I'm not so sure about the phone-number business either. I sort of can't
+imagine calling up and saying, "Oh, uh, Mary, this is Dave. You want to go
+to a movie or something, huh?" It sounds stupid, and I'd be embarrassed.
+What she said, it's true--it's sort of wonderful the way we just ran into
+each other twice and had so much fun.
+
+So I'm wondering how I can happen to run into her again. Maybe the beach,
+in the fall. Let's see, a school holiday--Columbus Day.
+
+The train is pulling into Fourteenth Street. I shout, "Hey, how about we
+go to the beach again this fall? Maybe Columbus Day?"
+
+"O.K.!" she shouts. "Columbus Day in the morning."
+
+"Columbus Day in the morning" sounds loud and clear because by then the
+subway has stopped. People snicker, and Mary blushes.
+
+"So long," I say, and we both wave, and the train goes.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         9
+
+
+      [Illustration: Dave and Tom sitting on front steps with Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                                   FATHERS
+
+
+
+That operation didn't make as much difference to Cat as you might think. I
+took him back to the clinic to get the stitches out of his leg and the
+bandages off. A few nights later I heard yowls coming up from the
+backyard. I went down and pulled him out of a fight. He wasn't hurt yet,
+but he sure was right back in there pitching. He seems to have a standing
+feud with the cat next door.
+
+However, he's been coming home nights regularly, and sometimes in the cool
+part of the morning he'll sit out on the front stoop with me. He sits on a
+pillar about six feet above the sidewalk, and I sit on the steps and play
+my transistor and read.
+
+Every time a dog gets walked down the street under Cat's perch, he gathers
+himself up in a ball, as if he were going to spring. Of course, the poor
+dog never knows it was about to be pounced on and wags on down the street.
+Cat lets his tail go to sleep then and sneers.
+
+Between weathercasts I hear him purring, loud rumbly purrs, and I look up
+and see Tom there, stroking Cat's fur up backward toward his ears. Tom is
+looking out into the street and sort of whistling without making any
+sound.
+
+"Gee, hi!" I say.
+
+"Hi, too," he says. He strokes Cat back down the right way, gives him a
+pat, and sits down. "I just been down to see your dad. He's quite a guy."
+
+"Huh-h-h? You got sunstroke or something? Didn't he read you about ten
+lectures on Healthy Living, Honest Effort, Baseball, and Long Walks with a
+Dog?"
+
+"No-o-o." Tom grins, but then he sits and stares out at the street again,
+so I wait.
+
+"You know," he says, "you give me an idea. _You_ talk like _your_ dad is a
+real pain, and that's the way _I_ always have felt about _mine_. But your
+dad looks like a great guy to me, so--well, maybe mine could be too, if I
+gave him a chance. Your dad was saying I should."
+
+"Should what? You should go home?"
+
+"No. Your dad said I ought to write him a long letter and face up to all
+the things I've goofed on. Quitting NYU, the cellar trouble, all that.
+Then tell him I'm going to get a job and go to night school. Your dad
+figures probably he'd help me. He said he'd write him, too. No reason he
+should. I'm nothing in his life. It's pretty nice of him."
+
+I try to digest all this, and it sure is puzzling. The time I ran down
+that crumb of a doorman on my bike, accidental on purpose, I didn't get
+any long understanding talks. I just got kept in for a month.
+
+Tom slaps me in the middle of the back and stands up. "Hilda's gone back
+to work at the coffee shop. I guess I'll go down and see her before the
+lunch rush, and then go home and write my letter."
+
+"Say 'Hi' for me."
+
+"O.K. So long."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The weather cools off some, and Pop starts to talk about vacation. He's
+taking two weeks, last of August and first of September, so I start
+shopping around for various bits of fishing tackle and picnic gear we
+might need. We're going to this lake up in Connecticut, where we get a
+sort of motel cottage. It has a little hot plate for making coffee in the
+morning, but most of the rest of the time we eat out, which is neat.
+
+We're sitting around the living room one evening, sorting stuff out, when
+the doorbell rings. I go answer it, and Tom walks in. He nods at me like
+he hardly sees me and comes into the living room. He shakes hands like a
+wooden Indian. His face looks shut up again, the way it did that day I
+left him in the filling station.
+
+He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a letter. I can see a post-office
+stamp in red ink with a pointing hand by the address. He throws it down on
+Dad's table.
+
+"I got my answer all right."
+
+Pop looks at the letter and I see his foot start to twitch the way it does
+when he's about to blow. But he looks at Tom, and instead of blowing he
+just says, "Your father left town? No forwarding address?"
+
+"I guess so. He just left. Him and that woman he married." Tom's voice
+trails off and he walks over to the window. We all sit quiet a minute.
+
+Finally Pop says gently, "Well, don't waste too much breath on her. She's
+nothing to do with you."
+
+Tom turns around angrily. "She's no good. She loafs around and drinks all
+the time. She talked him into going."
+
+"And he went." There's another short silence, and Pop goes on. "Where was
+this you lived?"
+
+"House. It was a pretty nice little house, too. Dark red with white trim,
+and enough of a yard to play a little ball, and I grew a few lettuces
+every spring. I even got one ear of corn once. We moved there when I was
+in second grade because my mom said it was near a good local school. I
+lived there till I went to college. I suppose he sold it, or got a loan,
+and they lit off to drink it up. Soon's they'd got _me_ off their hands."
+
+Tom bites off the last word. Suddenly I can see the picture pretty clear:
+the nice house, the father Tom always talked down and hoped would measure
+up. Now it's like somebody has taken his whole childhood and crumpled it
+up like a wad of tissue paper and thrown it away.
+
+Mom gets up and goes into the kitchen. Pop's foot keeps on twitching.
+Finally he says, "Well, I steered you wrong. I'm sorry. But maybe it's
+just as well to have it settled."
+
+"It's settled, all right," Tom says.
+
+Mom brings out a tray of ginger-ale glasses. It seems sort of inadequate
+at a moment like this, but when Tom takes a glass from her he looks like
+he's going to bust out crying.
+
+He drinks some and blows his nose, and Dad says, "When are you supposed to
+check in with the Youth Board again?"
+
+"Tuesday. My day off. And I wind up the filling-station job the next week,
+right after Labor Day."
+
+"Labor Day. Hm-m. We've got to get moving. If you like, I'll come down to
+the Youth Board with you, and we'll see what we can all cook up. Don't
+worry too much. I have a feeling you're just beginning to fight--really
+fight, not just throw a few stones."
+
+"I don't know why you bother." Tom starts to stand up. But while we've
+been talking, Cat has been creeping up under the side table, playing the
+ambush game, and he launches himself at Tom just as he starts to stand. It
+throws him off balance and he sits back in the chair, holding Cat.
+
+"You've got nothing to worry about," Pop says. "Cat's on your side."
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        10
+
+
+            [Illustration: Cat jumping out of car on parkway.]
+
+
+
+                                                       CAT AND THE PARKWAY
+
+
+
+Cat may be on Tom's side, but whether Pop is on Cat's side is something
+else again. I worry about this all the time we're planning the vacation.
+Suppose the motel won't take cats? Or suppose he runs away in the country?
+If he messes up the vacation in any way, I know Pop'll say to get rid of
+him.
+
+I practice putting Cat back in the wicker hamper to see if I can keep him
+in that sometimes, but he meows like crazy. That'd drive Pop nuts in the
+car, and it certainly wouldn't hide him from any motel-keeper. So I just
+sit back and hope for the best, but I got a nasty feeling in the bottom of
+my stomach that something's going to go haywire.
+
+Pop's pretty snappish anyway. He's working late nearly every night,
+getting stuff cleared up before vacation. He doesn't want any extra
+problems, especially not Cat problems. Mom's been having asthma a good
+deal lately, and we're all pretty jumpy. It's always like this at the end
+of the summer.
+
+Tuesday night when he gets home, I ask Pop what's happened about Tom.
+
+"We'll work something out," he says, which isn't what you'd call a big
+explanation.
+
+"You think he can get back into college?"
+
+"I don't know. The Youth Board is going to work on it. They're arranging
+for him to make up the midyear exams he missed, so he can get credit for
+that semester. Then he can probably start making up the second semester at
+night school if he has a job.
+
+"Apparently the Youth Board knew his father had skipped--they've been
+trying to trace him. I don't think it'll do any good if they find him. Tom
+had better just cross him off and figure his own life for himself."
+
+You know, I see "bad guys" in television and stuff, but with the people I
+really know I always lump the parents on one team and the kids on the
+other. Now here's my pop calmly figuring a kid better chalk off his father
+as a bad lot and go it alone. If your father died, I suppose you could
+face up to it eventually, but having him just fade out on you, not care
+what you did--that'd be worse.
+
+While I'm doing all this hard thinking, Pop has gone back to reading the
+paper. I notice the column of want ads on the back, and all of a sudden my
+mind clicks on Tom and jobs.
+
+"Hey, Pop! You know the florist on the corner, Palumbo, where you always
+get Mom the plant on Mother's Day? I went in there a couple of weeks ago,
+because he had a sign up, 'Helper Wanted.' I thought maybe it was
+deliveries and stuff that I could do after school. But he said he needed a
+full-time man. I'm pretty sure the sign's still up."
+
+"Palumbo, huhn?" Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with
+them. He looks at his watch and sighs. "They still open?"
+
+They are, and Pop goes right down to see the guy. He knows him fairly well
+anyway--there's Mother's Day, and Easter, and also the shop is the polling
+place for our district, so Pop's in there every Election Day. He always
+buys some little bunch of flowers Election Day because he figures the guy
+ought to get some business having his shop all messed up for the day.
+
+Dad comes back and goes over to the desk and scratches off a fast note. He
+says, "Here. Address it to Tom and go mail it right away. Palumbo says
+he'll try him out at least. Tom can come over Thursday night and I'll take
+him in."
+
+Tom comes home with Pop Thursday about nine o'clock. They both look pretty
+good. Mom has cold supper waiting, finishing off the icebox before we go
+away, so we all sit down to eat.
+
+"Tom's all set, at least for a start," Dad says. "He's going to start
+Tuesday, right after Labor Day. Palumbo can use him on odd jobs and
+deliveries, especially over the Jewish holidays, and then if he can learn
+the business, he'll keep him on."
+
+"Never thought I'd go in for flower-arranging." Tom grins. "But it might
+be fun. I'm pretty fair at any kind of handiwork."
+
+Remembering how quick he unlocked the padlock to get Cat out in the
+cellar, I agree.
+
+He starts for his room after supper, and we all say "good luck," "have a
+good time," and stuff. Things are really looking up.
+
+I get up early the next morning and help Mom button up around the house
+and get the car loaded before Pop gets home in the afternoon. He hoped to
+get off early, and I've been pacing around snapping my fingers for a
+couple of hours when he finally arrives about six o'clock. It's a hot day
+again.
+
+I don't say anything about Cat. I just dive in the back seat and put him
+behind a suitcase and hope he'll behave. Pop doesn't seem to notice him.
+Anyway he doesn't say anything.
+
+It's mighty hot, and traffic is thick, with everyone pouring out of the
+city. But at least we're moving along, until we get out on the Hutchinson
+River Parkway, where some dope has to run out of gas.
+
+All three lanes of traffic are stopped. We sit in the sun. Pop looks
+around, hunting for something to get sore about, and sees the back windows
+are closed. He roars, "Crying out loud, can't we get some air, at least?
+Open those windows!"
+
+I open them and try to keep my hand over Cat, but if you try to hold him
+really, it makes him restless. For the moment he's sitting quiet, looking
+disgusted.
+
+We sit for about ten minutes, and Pop turns off the motor. You can
+practically hear us sweating in the silence. Engines turn on ahead of us,
+and there seems to be some sign of hope. I stick my head out the window to
+see if things are moving. Something furry tickles my ear, and it takes me
+a second to register.
+
+Then I grab, but too late. There is Cat, out on the parkway between the
+lanes of cars, trying to figure which way to run.
+
+"Pop!" I yell. "Hold it! Cat's got out!"
+
+You know what my pop does? He laughs.
+
+"Hold it, my eyeball!" he says. "I've been holding it for half an hour.
+I'd get murdered if I tried to stop now. Besides, I don't want to chase
+that cat every day of my vacation."
+
+I don't even stop to think. I just open the car door and jump. The car's
+only barely moving. I can see Cat on the grass at the edge of the parkway.
+The cars in the next lane blast their horns, but I slip through and grab
+Cat.
+
+I hear Mom scream, "Davey!"
+
+Our car is twenty feet ahead, now, in the center lane, and there's no way
+Pop can turn off. The cars are picking up speed. I holler to Mom as loud
+as I can, "I'll go back and stay with Kate! Don't worry!"
+
+I hear Pop shout about something, but I can't hear what. Pretty soon the
+car is out of sight. I look down at Cat and say, "There goes our
+vacation." I wonder if I'll be able to catch a bus out to Connecticut
+later. Meanwhile, there's the little problem of getting back into the
+city. I'm standing alongside the parkway, with railroad tracks and the
+Pelham golf course on the other side of me, and a good long walk to the
+subway.
+
+A cat isn't handy to walk with. He keeps trying to get down. If you
+squeeze him to hang on, he just tries harder. You have to keep juggling
+him, like, gently. I sweat along back, with the sun in my eyes, and people
+in cars on the parkway pointing me out to their children as a local
+curiosity.
+
+One place the bulrushes and marsh grass beside the road grow up higher
+than your head. What a place for a kids' hideout, I think. Almost the next
+step, I hear kids' voices, whispering and shushing each other.
+
+Their voices follow along beside me, but inside the curtain of rushes,
+where I can't see them. I hear one say, "Lookit the sissy with the pussy!"
+Another answers, "Let's dump 'em in the river!"
+
+I try to walk faster, but I figure if I run they'll chase me for sure. I
+walk along, juggling Cat, trying to pretend I don't notice them. I see a
+drawbridge up ahead, and I sure hope there's a cop or watchman on it.
+
+The kids break out of the rushes behind me, and there's no use pretending
+anymore. I flash a look over my shoulder. They all yell, "Ya-n-h-h-h!"
+like a bunch of wild Indians, but they're about fifty feet back.
+
+I grab Cat hard about the only place you can grab a cat, around one upper
+forearm, and I really run. The kids let out another war whoop. It's uphill
+to the bridge. Cat gets his free forepaw into action, raking my chest and
+arm, with his claws out. Then he hisses and bites, and I nearly drop him.
+I'm panting so hard I can't hardly breathe anyway.
+
+A cop saunters out on my approach to the bridge, his billy dangling from
+his wrist. Whew--am I glad! I flop on the grass and ease up on Cat and
+start soothing him down. The kids fade off into the tall grass as soon as
+they see the cop. A stone arches up toward me, but it falls short. That's
+the last I see of them.
+
+As I cross the bridge, the cop squints at me. "What you doing, kid? Not
+supposed to be walking here."
+
+"I'll be right off. I'm going home," I tell him, and he saunters away,
+twirling his stick.
+
+It's dark by the time I get to the subway, and most of another hour before
+I'm back in Manhattan and reach Kate's. I can hear the television going,
+which is unusual, and I walk in. No one is watching television. Mom and
+Pop are sitting at the table with Kate.
+
+Mom lets loose the tears she has apparently been holding onto for two
+hours, and Pop starts bellowing: "You fool! You might have got killed
+jumping out on that parkway!"
+
+Cat drops to the floor with a thud. I kiss Mom and go to the sink for a
+long glass of water and drink it all and wipe my mouth. Over my shoulder,
+I answer Pop: "Yeah, but if Cat gets killed on the parkway, that's just a
+big joke, isn't it? You laugh your head off!"
+
+Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with them, like he always
+does when he's thinking. He looks me in the eye and says, "I'm sorry. I
+shouldn't have laughed."
+
+Then, of all things, he picks up Cat himself. "Come on. You're one of the
+family. Let's get on this vacation."
+
+At last we're off.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        11
+
+
+[Illustration: Dave picking out fish while Ben and garbage-sweeper watch.]
+
+
+
+                                   ROSH HASHANAH AT THE FULTON FISH MARKET
+
+
+
+We came back to the city Labor Day Monday--us and a couple million
+others--traffic crawling, a hot day, the windows practically closed up
+tight to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs stuck to me and got up
+my nose. Considering everything, Pop acted quite mild.
+
+I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut who had skin-diving equipment.
+He let me use it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing. Boy, this
+has fishing beat hollow! I found out there's a skin-diving course at the
+Y, and I'm going to begin saving up for the fins and mask and stuff. Pop
+won't mind forking out for the Y membership, because he'll figure it's
+character-building.
+
+Meanwhile, I'm wondering if I can get back up to Connecticut again one
+weekend while the weather's still warm, and I see that Rosh Hashanah falls
+on a Monday and Tuesday this year, the week after school opens. Great. So
+I ask this kid--Kenny Wright--if I can maybe come visit him that weekend so
+I can do some more skin diving.
+
+"Rosh Hashanah? What's that?" he says.
+
+So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. About half the
+kids in my school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and I always do
+too. Last year the school board gave up and made it an official school
+holiday for everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom Kippur, the week after.
+
+Kenny whistles. "You sure are lucky. I don't think we got any holidays
+coming till Thanksgiving."
+
+I always thought the kids in the country were lucky having outdoor yards
+for sports and recess, but I guess we have it over them on
+holidays--'specially in the fall: three Jewish holidays in September,
+Columbus Day in October, Election Day and Veterans' Day in November, and
+then Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.
+
+I don't figure it'd be worth train fare to Connecticut for just two days,
+so I say good-bye to Kenny and see you next year and stuff.
+
+Back home I'm pretty busy right away, on account of starting in a new
+school, Charles Evans Hughes High. It's different from the junior high,
+where I knew half the kids, and also my whole homeroom there went from one
+classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone has to get his own
+schedule and find the right classroom in this immense building, which is
+about the size of Penn Station. There are about a million kids in
+it--actually about two thousand--most of whom I never saw before. Hardly any
+of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village kids come here because it
+isn't their district. However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one day, I
+see one kid I know from Peter Cooper. His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him
+how come he is at Hughes.
+
+"My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant High School--you know, the
+genius factory, city-wide competitive exam to get in. Of course I didn't
+make it. Biggest Failure of the Year, that's me."
+
+"Heck, I never even tried for that. But how come you're here?"
+
+"There's a special science course you can qualify for by taking a math
+test. Then you don't have to live in the district. My dad figures as long
+as I'm in something special, there's hope. I'm not really very interested
+in science, but that doesn't bother him."
+
+So after that Ben and I walk back and forth to school together, and it
+turns out we have three classes together, too--biology and algebra and
+English. We're both relieved to have at least one familiar face to look
+for in the crowd. My old friend Nick, aside from not really being my best
+friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic high school somewhere uptown.
+
+On the way home from school one Friday in September, I ask Ben what he's
+doing Monday and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.
+
+"Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah suit and go to synagogue and
+over to Brooklyn to my grandmother's. Monday I don't have to do anything
+special. Come on over with your roller skates and we'll get in the hockey
+game."
+
+"I skate on my tail," I say, because it's true, and it would be doubly
+true in a hockey game. I try quick to think up something else. We're
+walking down the block to my house, and there's Cat sitting out front, so
+I say, "Let's cruise around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and pick up
+some fish heads for my cat."
+
+"You're a real nut, aren't you?" Ben says. He doesn't say it as if he
+minds--just mentioning the fact. He's an easygoing kind of guy, and I think
+most of the time he likes to let someone else make the plans. So he shrugs
+and says, "O.K."
+
+I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the eye, and Cat looks away and
+licks his back. Ben says, "So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh
+Hashanah, huh?"
+
+Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front against Ben's right leg and
+from front to back against his left leg and goes to lie down in the middle
+of the sidewalk.
+
+"See? He likes you," I say. "He won't have anything to do with most guys,
+except Tom."
+
+"Who's Tom?"
+
+So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar and his father disappearing on
+him.
+
+"Gee," says Ben, "I thought I had trouble, with my father practically
+telling me how to breathe better every minute, but at least he doesn't
+disappear. What does Tom do now?"
+
+"Works at the flower shop, right down there at the corner."
+
+Ben feels around in his pockets a minute. "Hey, I got two bucks I was
+supposed to spend on a textbook. Come on and I'll buy Mom a plant for the
+holidays, and you can introduce me to Tom."
+
+We go down to the flower shop, and at first Tom frowns because he thinks
+we've just come to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant, so then he
+makes a big thing out of showing him all the plants, from the ten-dollar
+ones on down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he's doing a good job. Ben finally
+settles on a funny-looking cactus that Tom says is going to bloom pretty
+soon.
+
+Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick him up on Monday. I wait around
+outside until I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how he likes the
+job. He says he doesn't really know yet, but at least the guy is decent to
+work for, not like the filling-station man.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter Cooper about eleven. A lot of
+kids are out in the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing
+footballs with them and shouting "Happy New Year" to each other. It sounds
+odd to hear people saying that on a warm day in September.
+
+Ben and I wander out of the project and he says, "How do we get to this
+Fulton Street?"
+
+I see a bus that says "Avenue C" on it stopping on Twenty-third Street.
+Avenue C is way east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it'll probably
+work out. We get on. The bus rockets along under the East Side Drive for a
+few blocks and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow and crowded. It's
+a Spanish and Puerto Rican neighborhood to begin with, then farther
+downtown it's mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out on the street shaking
+hands and clapping each other on the back, and the stores are all closed.
+
+Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to some of the people on the
+sidewalk, and he seems to know a good many of the passengers who get on.
+He asks them about their jobs, or their babies, or their aunt who's sick
+in Bellevue. This is pretty unusual in New York, where bus drivers usually
+act like they hate people in general and their passengers in particular.
+Suddenly the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.
+
+Ben looks out the window and says, "Hey, this is Houston Street. I been
+down here to a big delicatessen. But we're not heading downtown anymore."
+
+"Probably it'll turn again," I say.
+
+It doesn't, though, not till clear over at Sixth Avenue. By then everyone
+else has got off and the bus driver turns around and says, "Where you two
+headed for?"
+
+It's funny, a bus driver asking you that, so I ask him, "Where does this
+bus go?"
+
+"It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson Street, down by the Holland
+Tunnel."
+
+"Holy crow!" says Ben. "We're liable to wind up in New Jersey."
+
+"Relax. I don't go that far. I just go back up to Bellevue," says the
+driver.
+
+"You think we'd be far from Fulton Fish Market?" I say.
+
+The driver gestures vaguely. "Just across the island."
+
+So Ben and I decide we'll get off at the end of the line and walk from
+there. The bus driver says, "Have a nice hike."
+
+"I think there's something fishy about this," says Ben.
+
+"That's what we're going to get, fish," I say, and we walk. We walk quite
+a ways.
+
+Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a couple of steps, and we stop
+to look at the menu in the window. The special for the day is lasagna, and
+Ben says, "Boy, that's for me!"
+
+We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my pocket and do some fast
+mental arithmetic. Lasagna is a dollar, so that's out, but I see spaghetti
+and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so that will still leave me bus fare
+home.
+
+A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin over his arm like a banner, and
+takes our order. He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white linen
+tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian bread and rolls. On a third trip
+he brings enough chilled butter for a family and asks if we want coffee
+with lunch or later. Later, we say.
+
+"Man, this is living!" says Ben as he moves in on the bread.
+
+"He treats us just like people."
+
+Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna and spaghetti, and he
+swirls around the table as if he were dancing. "Anything else now? Mind
+the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now. I bring the coffee
+later."
+
+He swirls away, the napkin over his arm making a little breeze, and
+circles another table. It's a small room, and there are only four tables
+eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was serving royalty at the
+Waldorf. When we're just finished eating, he comes back with a pot of
+steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.
+
+I'm dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when a thought hits me: We got
+to leave a tip for this waiter.
+
+I whisper to Ben, "Hey, how much money you got?"
+
+He reaches in his pocket and fishes out a buck, a dime, and a quarter. We
+study them. Figure coffees for a dime each, and the total check ought to
+be $1.95. We've got $2.35 between us. We can still squeak through with bus
+fare if we only leave the waiter a dime, which is pretty cheap.
+
+At that moment he comes back and refills our coffee cups and asks what we
+will have for dessert.
+
+"Uh, nothing, nothing at all," I say.
+
+"Couldn't eat another thing," says Ben.
+
+So the waiter brings the check and along with it a plate of homemade
+cookies. He says, "My wife make. On the house."
+
+We both thank him, and I look at Ben and he looks at me. I put down my
+dollar and he puts down a dollar and a quarter.
+
+"Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Come again," says the waiter.
+
+We walk into the street, and Ben spins the lone remaining dime in the sun.
+I say, "Heads or tails?"
+
+"Huh? Heads."
+
+It comes up heads, so Ben keeps his own dime. He says, "We could have hung
+onto enough for _one_ bus fare, but that's no use."
+
+"No use at all. 'Specially if it was yours."
+
+"Are we still heading for Fulton Street?"
+
+"Sure. We got to get fish for Cat."
+
+"It better be for free."
+
+We walk, threading across Manhattan and downtown. I guess it's thirty or
+forty blocks, but after a good lunch it doesn't seem too far.
+
+You can smell the fish market when you're still quite a ways off. It runs
+for a half a dozen blocks alongside the East River, with long rows of
+sheds divided into stores for the different wholesalers. Around on the
+side streets there are bars and fish restaurants. It's too bad we don't
+have Cat with us because he'd love sniffing at all the fish heads and guts
+and stuff on the street. Fish market business is done mostly in the
+morning, I guess, and now men are hosing down the streets and sweeping
+fish garbage up into piles. I get a guy to give me a bag and select a
+couple of the choicer--and cleaner--looking bits. I get a nice red snapper
+head and a small whole fish, looks like a mackerel. Ben acts as if fish
+guts make him sick, and as soon as I've got a couple he starts saying
+"Come on, come on, let's go."
+
+I realize when we're leaving that I don't even notice the fish smell
+anymore. You just get used to it. We walk uptown, quite a hike, along East
+Broadway and across Grand and Delancey. There's all kinds of intriguing
+smells wafting around here: hot breads and pickles and fish cooking. This
+is a real Jewish neighborhood, and you can sure tell it's a holiday from
+the smell of all the dinners cooking. And lots of people are out in their
+best clothes gabbing together. Some of the men wear black skullcaps, and
+some of them have big black felt hats and long white beards. We go past a
+crowd gathering outside a movie house.
+
+"They're not going to the movies," Ben says. "On holidays sometimes they
+rent a movie theater for services. It must be getting near time. Come on,
+I got to hurry."
+
+We trot along the next twenty blocks or so, up First Avenue and to Peter
+Cooper.
+
+"So long," Ben says. "I'll come by Wednesday on the way to school."
+
+He goes off spinning his dime, and too late I think to myself that we
+could have had a candy bar.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        12
+
+
+     [Illustration: Dave holding up lizard for Ben by pond in woods.]
+
+
+
+                                                               THE RED EFT
+
+
+
+Ben and I both take biology, and the first weekend assignment we get,
+right after Rosh Hashanah, is to find and identify an animal native to New
+York City and look up its family and species and life cycle.
+
+"What's a species?" says Ben.
+
+"I don't know. What's a life cycle?"
+
+We both scratch our heads, and he says, "What animals do we know?"
+
+I say, "Cat. And dogs and pigeons and squirrels."
+
+"That's dull. I want to get some animal no one else knows about."
+
+"Hey, how about a praying mantis? I saw one once in Gramercy Park."
+
+Ben doesn't even know what it is, so I tell him about this one I saw. For
+an insect, it looks almost like a dragon, about four or five inches long
+and pale green. When it flies, it looks like a baby helicopter in the sky.
+We go into Gramercy Park to see if we can find another, but we can't.
+
+Ben says, "Let's go up to the Bronx Zoo Saturday and see what we can
+find."
+
+"Stupid, they don't mean you to do lions and tigers. They're not native."
+
+"Stupid, yourself. They got other animals that are. Besides, there's lots
+of woods and ponds. I might find something."
+
+Well, it's as good an idea for Saturday as any, so I say O.K. On account
+of both being pretty broke, we take lunch along in my old school lunchbox.
+Also six subway tokens--two extras for emergencies. Even I would be against
+walking home from the Bronx.
+
+Of course there are plenty of native New York City animals in the
+zoo--raccoons and woodchucks and moles and lots of birds--and I figure we
+better start home not too late to get out the encyclopedias for species
+and life cycles. Ben still wants to catch something wild and wonderful.
+Like lots of city kids who haven't been in the country much, he's crazy
+about nature.
+
+We head back to the subway, walking through the woods so he can hunt. We
+go down alongside the pond and kick up rocks and dead trees to see if
+anything is under them.
+
+It pays off. All of a sudden we see a tiny red tail disappearing under a
+rotten log. I push the log again and Ben grabs. It's a tiny lizard, not
+more than two or three inches long and brick red all over. Ben cups it in
+both hands, and its throat pulses in and out, but it doesn't really try to
+get away.
+
+"Hey, I love this one!" Ben cries. "I'm going to take him home and keep
+him for a pet, as well as do a report on him. You can't keep cats and dogs
+in Peter Cooper, but there's nothing in the rules about lizards."
+
+"How are you going to get him home?"
+
+"Dump the lunch. I mean--we'll eat it, but I can stab a hole in the top of
+the box and keep Redskin in it. Come on, hurry! He's getting tired in my
+hand I think!"
+
+Ben is one of those guys who is very placid most of the time, but he gets
+excitable all of a sudden when he runs into something brand-new to him,
+and I guess he never caught an animal to keep before. Some people's
+parents are very stuffy about it.
+
+I dump the lunch out, and he puts the lizard in and selects some
+particular leaves and bits of dead log to put in with him to make him feel
+at home. Without even asking me, he takes out his knife and makes holes in
+the top of my lunchbox. I sit down and open up a sandwich, but Ben is
+still dancing around.
+
+"What do you suppose he is? He might be something very rare! How'm I going
+to find out? You think we ought to go back and ask one of the zoo men?"
+
+"Umm, nah," I say, chewing. "Probably find him in the encyclopedia."
+
+Ben squats on a log, and the log rolls. As he falls over backward I see
+two more lizards scuttle away. I grab one. "Hey, look! I got another. This
+one's bigger and browner."
+
+Ben is up and dancing again. "Oh, boy, oh, boy! Now I got two! Now they'll
+be happy! Maybe they'll have babies, huh?"
+
+He overlooks the fact that _I_ caught this one. Oh, well, I don't want a
+lizard, anyway. Cat'd probably eat it.
+
+Ben takes it from me and slips it in the lunchbox. "I'm going to call this
+one Big Brownie."
+
+Finally he calms down enough to eat lunch, taking peeks at his catch
+between mouthfuls. As soon as he's finished eating, he starts hustling to
+get home so he can make a house for them. He really acts like a kid.
+
+We get on the subway. It's aboveground--elevated--up here in the Bronx.
+After a while I see Yankee Stadium off to one side, which is funny because
+I don't remember seeing it when we were coming up. Pretty soon the train
+goes underground. I remember then. Coming up, we changed trains once. Ben
+has his eye glued to the edge of the lunchbox and he's talking to Redskin,
+so I figure there's no use consulting him. I'll just wait and see where
+this train seems to come out. It's got to go downtown. We go past
+something called Lenox Avenue, which I think is in Harlem, then
+Ninety-sixth Street, and then we're at Columbus Circle.
+
+"Hey, Ben, we're on the West Side subway," I say.
+
+"Yeah?" He takes a bored look out the window.
+
+"We can just walk across town from Fourteenth Street."
+
+"With you I always end up walking. Hey, what about those extra tokens?"
+
+"Aw, it's only a few blocks. Let's walk."
+
+Ben grunts, and he goes along with me. As we get near Union Square, there
+seem to be an awful lot of people around. In fact they're jamming the
+sidewalk and we can hardly move. Ben frowns at them and says, "Hey, what
+goes?"
+
+I ask a man, and he says, "Where you been, sonny? Don'tcha know there's a
+parade for General Sparks?"
+
+I remember reading about it now, so I poke Ben. "Hey, push along! We can
+see Sparks go by!"
+
+"Quit pushing and don't try to be funny."
+
+"Stupid, he's a general. Test pilot, war hero, and stuff. Come on, push."
+
+"QUIT PUSHING! I got to watch out for these lizards!"
+
+So I go first and edge us through the crowd to the middle of the block,
+where there aren't so many people and we can get up next to the police
+barrier. Cops on horseback are going back and forth, keeping the street
+clear. No sign of any parade coming yet, but people are throwing rolls of
+paper tape and handfuls of confetti out of upper-story windows. The wind
+catches the paper tape and carries it up and around in all kinds of
+fantastic snakes. Little kids keep scuttling under the barrier to grab
+handfuls of ticker tape that blow to the ground. Ben keeps one eye on the
+street and one on Redskin and Brownie.
+
+"How soon you think they're coming?" he asks fretfully.
+
+People have packed in behind us, and we couldn't leave now if we wanted
+to. Pretty soon we can see a helicopter flying low just a little ways
+downtown, and people all start yelling, "That's where they are! They're
+coming!"
+
+Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom past, and then a cop backing up a
+police car at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very
+surprising-looking thing. Before I've hardly got my eyes off that, the
+open cars come by. This guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car,
+waving with both hands. By the time I see him, he's almost past.
+Nice-looking, though. Everyone yells like crazy and throws any kind of
+paper they've got. Two little nuts beside us have a box of Wheaties, so
+they're busy throwing Breakfast of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is
+past, people push through the barriers and run in the street.
+
+Ben hunches over to protect his precious animals and yells, "Come on!
+Let's get out of this!"
+
+We go into my house first because I'm pretty sure we've got a wooden box.
+We find it and take it down to my room, and Ben gets extra leaves and
+grass and turns the lizards into it. He's sure they need lots of fresh air
+and exercise. Redskin scoots out of sight into a corner right away. Big
+Brownie sits by a leaf and looks around.
+
+"Let's go look up what they are," I say.
+
+The smallest lizard they show in the encyclopedia is about six inches
+long, and it says lizards are reptiles and have scales and claws and
+should not be confused with salamanders, which are amphibians and have
+thin moist skin and no claws. So we look up salamanders.
+
+This is it, all right. The first picture on the page looks just like
+Redskin, and it says he's a Red Eft. The Latin name for his species is
+_Triturus viridescens_, or in English just a common newt.
+
+"Hey, talk about life cycles, listen to this," says Ben, reading. "'It
+hatches from an egg in the water and stays there during its first summer
+as a dull-green larva. Then its skin becomes a bright orange, it absorbs
+its gills, develops lungs and legs, and crawls out to live for about three
+years in the woods. When fully mature, its back turns dull again, and it
+returns to the water to breed.'"
+
+Ben drops the book. "Brownie must be getting ready to breed! What'd I tell
+you? We got to put him near water!" He rushes down to my room.
+
+We come to the door and stop short. There's Cat, poised on the edge of the
+box.
+
+I grab, but no kid is as fast as a cat. Hearing me coming, he makes his
+grab for the salamander. Then he's out of the box and away, with Big
+Brownie's tail hanging out of his mouth. He goes under the bed.
+
+Ben screams, "Get him! Kill him! He's got my Brownie!" He's in a frenzy,
+and I don't blame him. It does make you mad to see your pet get hurt. I
+run for a broom to try to poke Cat out, but it isn't any use. Meanwhile,
+Ben finds Redskin safe in the box, and he scoops him back into the
+lunchbox.
+
+Finally, we move the bed, and there is Cat poking daintily with his paw at
+Brownie. The salamander is dead. Ben grabs the broom and bashes Cat. Cat
+hisses and skids down the hall. "That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him!
+What'd you ever have him for?"
+
+I tell Ben I'm sorry, and I get him a little box so he can bury Brownie.
+You can't really blame Cat too much--that's just the way a cat is made, to
+chase anything that wiggles and runs. Ben calms down after a while, and we
+go back to the encyclopedia to finish looking up about the Red Eft.
+
+"I don't think Brownie was really ready to lay eggs, or he would have been
+in the pond already," I say. "Tell you what. We could go back some day
+with a jar and try to catch one in the water."
+
+That cheers Ben up some. He finishes taking notes for his report and
+tracing a picture, and then he goes home with Redskin in the lunchbox. I
+pull out the volume for C.
+
+Cat. Family, _Felidae_, including lions and tigers. Species, _Felis
+domesticus_. I start taking notes: "'The first civilized people to keep
+cats were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before Christ.... Fifty
+million years earlier the ancestor of the cat family roamed the earth, and
+he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores. The Oligocene cats,
+thirty million years ago, were already highly specialized, and the habits
+and physical characteristics of cats have been fixed since then. This may
+explain why house cats remain the most independent of pets, with many of
+the instincts of their wild ancestors.'"
+
+I call Ben up to read him this, and he says, "You and your lousy
+carnivore! _My_ salamander is an amphibian, and amphibians are the
+ancestors of _all_  the animals on earth, even you and your Cat, you sons
+of toads!"
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        13
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave and Mary in wind on boardwalk at beach.]
+
+
+
+                                             THE LEFT BANK OF CONEY ISLAND
+
+
+
+Columbus Day comes up as cold as Christmas. I listen to the weather
+forecast the night before, to see how it'll be for the beach. "High winds,
+unseasonably low temperatures," the guy says. He would.
+
+I get up at eight-thirty the next morning, though, figuring he'd be wrong
+and it would be a nice sunny day. I slip on my pants and shirt and go
+downstairs with Cat to have a look out. Cat slides out and is halfway down
+the stoop when a blast of cold wind hits him. His tail goes up and he
+spooks back in between my legs. I push the door shut against the icy wind.
+
+Mom is sitting in the kitchen drinking her tea and she says, "My goodness,
+why are you up so early on a holiday? Do you feel sick?"
+
+"Nah, I'm all right." I pour out a cup of coffee to warm my hands on and
+dump in three or four spoons of sugar.
+
+"Davey, have you got a chill? You don't look to me as if you felt quite
+right."
+
+"Mom, for Pete's sake, it's COLD out! I feel fine."
+
+"Well, you don't have to go out. Why don't you just go back to bed and
+snooze and read a bit, and I'll bring you some breakfast."
+
+I see it's got to be faced, so while I'm getting down the cereal and a
+bowl, I say, "Well, as a matter of fact, I'm going over to Coney Island
+today."
+
+"Coney ISLAND!" Mom sounds like it was Siberia. "What in the world are you
+going to do there in the middle of winter?"
+
+"Mom, it's only Columbus Day. We figured we'd go to the aquarium and
+then--uh--well, fool around. Some of the pitches are still open, and we'll
+get hot dogs and stuff."
+
+"Who's going? Nick?"
+
+"Nick wasn't sure--I'll stop by his house and see." I'd just as soon steer
+clear of this "who's going" business, so I start into a long spiel about
+how we're studying marine life in biology, and we have to take some notes
+at the aquarium. Mom is swallowing this pretty well, but Pop comes into
+the kitchen just then and gives me the fishy eye.
+
+"First time I ever heard of you spending a holiday on homework. I bet they
+got a new twist palace going out there."
+
+I slam down my coffee cup. "Holy cats! Can't I walk out of here on a
+holiday without going through the third degree? What am I, some kind of a
+nut or a convict?"
+
+"Just a growing boy," says Pop. "And don't talk so sassy to your mother."
+
+"I'm talking to you!"
+
+Pop draws in a breath to start bellowing, but Mom beats him to it by
+starting to wheeze, which she can do without drawing breath.
+
+Pop pats her on the shoulder and gives me a dirty look. "Now, Agnes,
+that's all right. I'm not sore. I was just trying to kid him a little bit,
+and he flies off the handle."
+
+_I_ fly off the handle! How do you like that?
+
+I give Mom a kiss. "Cheer up, Mom. I won't ride on the roller coaster.
+It's not even running."
+
+I grab a sweater and gloves and money and get out before they can start
+anymore questions. On the subway I start wondering if Mary will show up.
+It's almost two months since we made this sort of crazy date, and the
+weather sure isn't helping any.
+
+Coney Island is made to be crowded and noisy. All the billboards scream at
+you, as if they had to get your attention. So when the place is empty, it
+looks like the whole thing was a freak or an accident.
+
+It's sure empty today. There's practically no one on the street in the
+five or six blocks from the subway station to the aquarium. But it's not
+quiet. There are a few places open--merry-go-rounds and hot-dog shops--and
+tinny little trickles of music come out of them, but the big noise is the
+wind. All the signs are swinging and screeching. Rubbish cans blow over
+and their tops clang and bang rolling down the street. The wind makes a
+whistling noise all by itself.
+
+I lean into the wind and walk up the empty street. My sweater is about as
+warm as a sieve. I wonder if I'm crazy to have come. No girl would get out
+on a boardwalk on a day like this. It must be practically a hurricane.
+
+She's there, though. As soon as I turn the corner to the beach, I can see
+one figure, with its back to the ocean, scarf and hair blowing inland
+toward me. I can't see her face, but it's Mary, all right. There isn't
+another soul in sight. I wave and she hunches her shoulders up and down to
+semaphore, not wishing to take her hands out of her pockets.
+
+I come up beside her on the boardwalk and turn my back to the ocean, too.
+I'd like to go on looking at it--it's all black and white and thundery--but
+the wind blows your breath right back down into your stomach. I freeze.
+
+"I was afraid you wouldn't come on a day like this," I say.
+
+"Me too. I mean I was afraid _you_ wouldn't."
+
+"Mom and Pop thought I was crazy. I spent about an hour arguing with them.
+What'd your mother say?"
+
+"Nothing. She thinks I'm walking alone with the wind in my hair, thinking
+poetic thoughts."
+
+"Huh? What for?"
+
+Mary shrugs. "Mom's like that. You'll see. Come on, let's go home and make
+cocoa or something to warm up, and then we'll think up something to do. We
+can't just stand here."
+
+She's right about that, so I don't argue. Her house is a few blocks away,
+a two-family type with a sloped driveway going down into a cellar garage.
+Neat. My pop is always going nuts hunting for a place to park.
+
+Mary goes in and shouts, "Hi, Nina! I brought a friend home. We're going
+to make some cocoa. We're freezing."
+
+I wonder who Nina is. I don't hear her mother come into the kitchen. Then
+I turn around and there she is. Holy crow! We got some pretty beat-looking
+types at school, but this is the first time I've ever seen a beatnik
+mother.
+
+She's got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and old sneakers, and her hair
+is in a long braid, with uneven bangs in front.
+
+Mary waves a saucepan vaguely at us both and says, "Nina--Davey--this is my
+mother."
+
+So Nina is her mother. I stick out my hand. "Uh--how do you do?"
+
+"Hel-looo." Her voice is low and musical. "I think there is coffee on the
+stove."
+
+"I thought I'd make cocoa for a change," says Mary.
+
+"All right." Nina puts a cigarette in her mouth and offers one to me.
+
+I say, "No, thank you."
+
+"Tell me...." She talks in this low, intense kind of voice. "Are you in
+school with Mary?"
+
+So I tell her I live in Manhattan, and how I ran into Mary when I had Cat
+on the beach, because that makes it sound sort of respectable, not like a
+pickup. But she doesn't seem to be interested in Cat and the beach.
+
+"What do you _read_? In your school?" she asks, launching each question
+like a torpedo.
+
+I remember Mary saying something about her mother and poetry, so I say,
+"Well, uh--last week we read 'The Highwayman' and 'The Wreck of the
+Hesperus.' They're about--I mean, we were studying metaphors and similes.
+Looking at the ocean today, I sure can see what Longfellow meant about the
+icy...."
+
+I thought I was doing pretty well, but she cut me off again.
+
+"Don't you read any _real_ poetry? Donne? Auden? Baudelaire?"
+
+Three more torpedoes. "We didn't get to them yet."
+
+Nina blows out a great angry cloud of smoke and explodes, "Schools!" Then
+she sails out of the kitchen.
+
+I guess I look a little shook up. Mary laughs and shoves a mug of cocoa
+and a plate of cinnamon toast in front of me. "Don't mind Mother. She just
+can't get used to New York schools. Or Coney Island. Or hardly anything
+around here.
+
+"She grew up on the Left Bank in Paris. Her father was an artist and her
+mother was a writer, and they taught her to read at home, starting with
+Chaucer, probably. She never read a kids' book in her life.
+
+"Anything I ever tell her about school pretty much sounds either childish
+or stupid to her. What I really love is science--experiments and stuff--and
+she can't see that for beans."
+
+"Our science teacher is a dope," I say, because she is, "so I really never
+got very interested in science. But I told Mom and Dad I was coming to the
+aquarium to take notes today, so they wouldn't kick up such a fuss."
+
+Mary shakes her head. "We ought to get our mothers together. Mine thinks
+I'm wasting time if I even _go_ to the aquarium. I do, though, all the
+time. I love the walrus."
+
+"What does your pop do?"
+
+"Father? He teaches philosophy at Brooklyn College. So I get it from both
+sides. Just think, think, think. Father and Nina aren't hardly even
+interested in _food_. Once in a while Nina spends all day cooking some
+great fish soup or a chicken in wine, but the rest of the time I'm the
+only one who takes time off from thinking to cook a hamburger. They live
+on rolls and coffee and sardines."
+
+Mary puts our cups in the sink and then opens a low cupboard. Instead of
+pots and pans it has stacks of records in it. She pulls out _West Side
+Story_ and then I see there's a record player on a side table. What d'you
+know? A record player in the kitchen! This Left Bank style of living has
+its advantages.
+
+"I sit down here and eat and play records while I do my homework," says
+Mary, which sounds pretty nice.
+
+I ask her if she has any Belafonte, and she says, "Yes, a couple," but she
+puts on something else. It's slow, but sort of powerful, and it makes you
+feel kind of powerful yourself, as if you could do anything.
+
+"What's that?" I ask.
+
+"It's called 'The Moldau'--that's a river in Europe. It's by a Czech named
+Smetana."
+
+I wander around the kitchen and look out the window. The wind's still
+howling, but not so hard. I remember the ocean, all gray and powerful,
+spotted with whitecaps. I'd like to be out on it.
+
+"You know what'd be fun?" I say out loud. "To be out in a boat on the
+harbor today. If you didn't sink."
+
+"We could take the Staten Island ferry," Mary says.
+
+"Huh?" I hadn't even thought there was really any boat we could get on.
+"Really? Where do you get it?"
+
+"Down at Sixty-ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. It's quite a ways. I've
+always gone there in a car. But maybe we could do it on bikes, if we don't
+freeze."
+
+"We won't freeze. But what about bikes?"
+
+"You can use my brother's. He's away at college. Maybe I can find a
+windbreaker of his, too."
+
+She finds the things and we get ready and go into the living room, where
+Nina is sitting reading and sipping a glass of wine.
+
+"We're going on our bikes to the ferry and over to Staten Island," Mary
+says. She doesn't even ask.
+
+"Oh-h-h." It's a long, low note, faintly questioning.
+
+"We thought with the wind blowing and all, it'd be exciting," Mary
+explains, and I think, Uh-o, that's going to cook it. _My_ mother would
+have kittens if I said I was going out on a ferry in a storm.
+
+But Nina just says, "I see," and goes back to reading her book. I say
+good-bye and she looks up again and smiles, and that's all.
+
+It's another funny thing--Nina doesn't seem to pay any attention to who
+Mary brings home, like most mothers are always snooping if their daughter
+brings home a guy. Without stopping to think, I say, "Do you bring home a
+lot of guys?"
+
+Mary laughs. "Not a lot. Sometimes one of the boys at school comes home
+when we're studying for a science test."
+
+I laugh, too, but what I'm thinking of is how Pop would look if I brought
+a girl home and said we were studying for a test!
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        14
+
+
+        [Illustration: Dave and Mary on ferry with other people.]
+
+
+
+                                                       EXPEDITION BY FERRY
+
+
+
+As we ride through Brooklyn the wind belts us around from both sides and
+right in the teeth. But the sun's beginning to break through, and it's
+easy riding, no hills.
+
+This part of Brooklyn is mostly rows of houses joined together, or low
+apartment buildings, with little patches of lawn in front of them. There's
+lots of trees along the streets. It doesn't look anything like Manhattan,
+but not anything like the country, either. It's just Brooklyn.
+
+All of a sudden we're circling a golf course. What d'you know? Right in
+New York City!
+
+"Ever play golf?" The wind snatches the words out of my mouth and carries
+them back to Mary. I see her mouth shaping like a "No," but no sound comes
+my way. I drop back beside her and say, "I'll show you sometime. My pop's
+got a set of clubs I used a couple of times."
+
+"Probably I better carry the clubs and you play. I can play tennis,
+though."
+
+We pass the golf course and head down into a sort of main street. Anyway
+there's lots of banks and dime stores and traffic. Mary leads the way. We
+make a couple of turns and zigzags and then go under the parkway, and
+there's the ferry. It's taken us most of an hour to get from Mary's house.
+
+I'm hoping the ferry isn't too expensive, so I'll have plenty of money
+left for a good lunch. But while I'm mooning, Mary has wheeled her bike
+right up and paid her own fare. Well, I guess that's one of the things I
+like about her. She's independent. Still, I'm going to buy lunch.
+
+The ferry is terrific. I'm going to come ride ferries every day it's
+windy. The boat doesn't roll any, but we stand right up in front and the
+wind blows clouds of spray in our faces. You can pretend you're on a
+full-rigged schooner running before a hurricane. But you look down at that
+choppy gray water, and you know you'd be done if you got blown overboard,
+even if it is just an old ferryboat in New York harbor.
+
+The ferry ride is fast, only about fifteen minutes. We ride off in Staten
+Island and start thinking where to go. I know what's first with me.
+
+I ask Mary, "What do you like, hamburgers or sandwiches?"
+
+"Both. I mean either," she says.
+
+The first place we see is a delicatessen, which is about my favorite kind
+of place to eat anyway. I order a hot pastrami, and Mary says she never
+had one, but she'll try the same.
+
+"Where could we go on Staten Island?" I say. "I never was here before."
+
+"About the only place I've been is the zoo. I've been there lots of times.
+The vet let me watch her operate on a snake once."
+
+This is a pretty surprising thing for a girl to tell you in the middle of
+a mouthful of hot pastrami. The pastrami is great, and they put it on a
+roll with a lot of olives and onions and relish. Mary likes it too.
+
+"Is the vet a woman? Aren't you scared of snakes?"
+
+"Uh-un, I never was really. But when you're watching an operation, you get
+so interested you don't think about it being icky or scary. The vet is a
+woman. She's been there quite a while."
+
+I digest this along with the rest of my sandwich. Then we both have a
+piece of apple pie. You can tell from the way the crust looks--browned and
+a little uneven--that they make it right here.
+
+"So shall we go to the zoo?" Mary asks.
+
+"O.K." I get up to get her coat and mine. When I turn around, there she is
+up by the cashier, getting ready to pay her check.
+
+"Hey, I'm buying lunch," I say, steaming up with the other check.
+
+"Oh, that's all right." She smiles. "I've got it."
+
+I don't care if she's _got_ it. I want to _pay_ it. I suppose it's a silly
+thing to get sore about, but it sort of annoys me. Anyway, how do you
+maneuver around to do something for a girl when she doesn't even know you
+want to?
+
+The man in the deli gives us directions to get to the zoo, which isn't
+far. It's a low brick building in a nice park. In the lobby there are some
+fish tanks, then there's a wing for birds on one side, animals on the
+other, and snakes straight ahead.
+
+We go for snakes. Mary really seems to like them.
+
+She says, "The vet here likes them, and I guess she got me interested. You
+know, they don't really understand how a snake moves? Mechanically, I
+mean. She's trying to find out."
+
+We look at them all, little ones and big ones, and then we go watch the
+birds. The keeper is just feeding them. The parrot shouts at him, and the
+pelican and the eagles gobble up their fish and raw meat, but the vulture
+just sits on his perch looking bored. Probably needs a desert and a dying
+Legionnaire to whet his appetite.
+
+In the animal wing a strange-looking dame is down at the end, talking to a
+sleepy tiger.
+
+"Come on, darling, just a little roar. Couldn't you give me just a soft
+one today?" she's cooing at him. The tiger blinks and looks away.
+
+The lady notices us standing there and says, "He's my baby. I've been
+coming to see him for fourteen years. Some days he roars for me
+beautifully."
+
+She has a short conversation with the lion, then moves along with us
+toward the small cats, a puma and a jaguar. She looks in the next cage,
+which is empty, and shakes her head mournfully.
+
+"I had the sweetest little leopard. He died last week. Would you believe
+it? The zoo never let me know he was sick. I could have come and helped
+take care of him. I might have saved his life."
+
+She goes on talking, sometimes to herself, sometimes to the puma, and we
+cross over to look at two otters chasing each other up an underwater
+tunnel.
+
+"What is she, some kind of nut?" Mary says. "Does she think this is her
+private zoo?"
+
+I shrug. "I suppose she's a little off. But so's my Aunt Kate, the one who
+gave me Cat. They just happen to like cats better than people. Kate thinks
+all the stray cats in the world are her children, and I guess this one
+feels the same way about the big cats here."
+
+We mosey around a little bit more and then head back to the ferry. I make
+good and sure I'm ahead, and I get to the ticket office and buy two
+tickets.
+
+"Would you care for a ride across the harbor in my yacht?" I say.
+
+"Why, of course. I'd be delighted," says Mary.
+
+A small thing, but it makes me feel good.
+
+Over in Brooklyn I see a clock on a bank, and it says five o'clock. I do
+some fast calculating and say, "Uh-oh, I better phone. I'll never make it
+home by dinnertime."
+
+I phone and get Pop. He's home early from work. Just my luck.
+
+"I got to get this bike back to this kid in Coney," I tell him. "Then I'll
+be right home. About seven."
+
+"What do you mean _this_ bike and _this_ kid? Who? Anyway, I thought you
+were already at Coney Island."
+
+I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking questions. I start
+explaining. "Well, it was awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we'd
+go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to the zoo. So now we just
+got back to Brooklyn, and I'm downtown and I got to take the bike back."
+
+"So who's 'we'? You got a rat in your pocket?"
+
+I can distract Mom but not Pop. "Well, actually, it's a girl named Mary.
+It's her brother's bike. He's away in college."
+
+All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of the line, laughing his head
+off.
+
+"So what's so funny about that?"
+
+"Nothing," he says. "Nothing. Only now I can see what all the shouting was
+about at breakfast."
+
+"Oh."
+
+"O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as _well_ as the bicycle of the brother
+who goes to college, home safe. Hear? I'll tell your mother you narrowly
+escaped drowning, and she'll probably save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?"
+
+"O.K. Bye."
+
+Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though, him worrying about me
+getting Mary home safe, when her own mother doesn't worry any.
+
+We start along toward her house slowly, as there's a good deal of traffic
+now. I'm wondering how to see Mary again without having to ask for her
+number and phoning and making a date. Something about telephoning I don't
+like. Besides, I'd probably go out to a pay phone so the family wouldn't
+listen, and that'd make me feel stupid to begin with.
+
+Just then we start rounding the golf course, and I whack the handle bar of
+my bike and say, "Hey, that's it!"
+
+"What's it?"
+
+"Golf. Let's play golf. Not now, I don't mean. Next holiday. We've got
+Election Day coming up. I'll borrow Pop's clubs and take the subway and
+meet you here. How about ten o'clock?"
+
+"Hunh?" Mary looks startled. "Well, I suppose I could try, or anyway I
+could walk around."
+
+"It's easy. I'll show you." The two times I played, I only hit the ball
+decently about four or five times. But the times I _did_ hit it, it seemed
+easy.
+
+We get to Mary's house and I put the bikes away and give her back her
+brother's jacket. "I guess I'll go right along. It's getting late. See you
+Election Day."
+
+"O.K., bye. Say--thanks for the ferry ride!"
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        15
+
+
+        [Illustration: Cat eating turkey neck from bowl on floor.]
+
+
+
+                                                          DOLLARS AND CATS
+
+
+
+Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I go down to the delicatessen to buy
+some coke, so I can really enjoy myself watching TV. Tom is just finishing
+work at the flower shop, and I ask him if he wants to come along home.
+
+"Nah. Thanks. I got to be at work early tomorrow." He doesn't sound too
+cheery.
+
+"How's the job going?"
+
+"O.K., I guess." We walk along a little ways. "The job's not bad, but I
+don't want to be a florist all my life, and I can't see this job will
+train me for anything else."
+
+That seems pretty true. It must be tough not getting regular holidays off,
+too. "You have to work all day tomorrow?" I ask.
+
+"I open the store up at seven and start working on orders we've already
+got. I'll get through around three or four."
+
+"Hey, you want to come for dinner? We're not eating till evening."
+
+Tom grins. "You cooking the dinner? Maybe you better ask your mother."
+
+"It'll be all right with Mom. Look, I'll ask her and come let you know in
+the store tomorrow, O.K.?"
+
+"Hmm. Well, sure. Thanks. I've got a date with Hilda later in the evening,
+but she's got to eat with her folks first."
+
+"O.K. See you tomorrow."
+
+"Right."
+
+Mom says it's all right about Tom coming, so I go down and tell him in the
+morning. Turns out Mom has asked Kate to have dinner with us, too, which
+is quite a step. For Kate, I mean. I think she would have turned the
+invitation down, except no one can bear to hurt Mom's feelings. Kate's
+been in our house before, of course, but then she just came in to chat or
+have tea or something. It wasn't like an invitation.
+
+She comes, and she looks like someone from another world. I've never seen
+her in anything but her old skirts and sneakers, so the "good clothes"
+she's wearing now must have been hanging in a closet twenty years. The
+dress and shoes are way out of style, and she's carrying a real old black
+patent-leather pocketbook. Usually she just lugs her old cloth shopping
+bag, mostly full of cat goodies. Come to think of it, that's it: Kate
+lives in a world that is just her own and the cats'. I never saw her
+trying to fit into the ordinary world before.
+
+Cat knows her right away, though. Clothes don't fool him. He rubs her leg
+and curls up on the sofa beside her, still keeping a half-open eye on the
+oven door in the kitchen, where the turkey is roasting.
+
+Tom comes in, also in city clothes--a white shirt and tie and jacket--the
+first time I ever saw him in them. He sits down on the other side of Cat,
+who stretches one paw out toward him negligently.
+
+Looking at Kate and Tom sitting there on the sofa, both looking a little
+ill at ease, I get a funny idea. My family is starting to collect people
+the way Kate collects homeless cats. Of course, Kate and Tom aren't
+homeless. They're people-less--not part of any family. I think Mom always
+wanted more people to take care of, so she's glad to have them.
+
+Kidding, I ask Kate, "How many cats at your home for Thanksgiving dinner?"
+
+She stops stroking Cat a minute and thinks. "Hmm, Susan's got four new
+kittens, just got their eyes open. A beautiful little orange one and three
+tigers. Then there's two big kittens, strays, and one old stray tom. Makes
+eight, that's all. Sometimes I've had lots more than that."
+
+"Doesn't the landlord ever object?" Pop asks.
+
+Kate snorts. "Him! Huh! I pay my rent. And I have my own padlock on the
+door, so he can't come snooping around."
+
+We all sit down to dinner. Pop gives Cat the turkey neck to crunch up in
+the kitchen. He finishes that and crouches and stares at us eating. Kate
+gives him tidbits, which I'm not supposed to do. I don't think she really
+wants to eat the turkey herself. She's pretty strictly a fruit and yogurt
+type.
+
+After dinner Tom leaves to meet Hilda, and I walk home with Kate, carrying
+a bag of scraps and giblets for her cats. While she's fiddling with the
+two sets of keys to open her door, the man next door sticks his head out.
+"Messenger was here a little while ago with a telegram for you. Wouldn't
+give it to me."
+
+"A telegram?" Kate gapes.
+
+"Yeah. He'll be back." The man looks pleased, like he's been able to
+deliver some bad news, and pulls his head in and shuts his door.
+
+We go into Kate's apartment, and cats come meowing and rubbing against her
+legs, and they jump up on the sink and rub and nudge the bag of scraps
+when she puts it down. Kate is muttering rapidly to herself and fidgeting
+with her coat and bag and not really paying much attention to the cats,
+which is odd.
+
+"Lots of people send telegrams on holidays. It's probably just greetings,"
+I say.
+
+"Not to me, they don't!" Kate snaps, also sounding as if they better
+hadn't.
+
+I go over to play with the little kittens. The marmalade-colored one is
+the strongest of the litter, and he's learned to climb out of the box. He
+chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the big cats, and she strides
+over and scoops him back into the box. "You stay in there. You'll get
+stepped on." She drops Susan back in with her babies to take care of them.
+
+The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the door, practically bowling over
+an ancient little messenger leaning sleepily against the side of the door.
+
+"Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign here," he says.
+
+She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams the door. The orange kitten has
+got out again, and Kate does come close to stepping on him as she walks
+across the room tearing open the telegram. He doesn't know enough to dodge
+feet yet. I scoop him back in this time.
+
+Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She looks quite calm now. She says,
+"Well, he died."
+
+"Huh? Who?"
+
+"My brother. He's the only person in the world I know who would send me a
+telegram. So he's dead now."
+
+She repeats it, and I can't figure whether to say I'm sorry or what. I
+always thought when someone heard of a death in the family, there'd be a
+lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks perfectly calm, but strange
+somehow.
+
+"Has he been sick?"
+
+Kate shakes her head. "I don't know. I haven't seen him in twenty years."
+
+There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes on, talking half to herself
+and half to me. "Mean old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about
+his money. That's all he cared about. Once he tried to get me to give him
+money to invest. That's the last time I saw him. He has an old house way
+up in the Bronx. But we never did get along, even when we were kids."
+
+"Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent the telegram?"
+
+"He's had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him. She'd buy him day-old bread
+and dented cans of soup because they were cheaper. She suited him
+fine--saved him money and never talked to him. Well, she'll get his money
+now, if he left any. That's what she's been waiting for. She sent me the
+wire."
+
+Twenty years, I think. That's a long time not to be speaking to your own
+brother, and him living just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder. She
+couldn't just not give a hoot about him. They must have been real mad at
+each other. And mad at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what kind of
+parents _they_  had, with one of them growing up loving only cats and the
+other only money.
+
+Kate is staring out the window and stroking the old stray tomcat between
+the ears, and it hits me: there isn't a person in the world she loves or
+even hates. I like cats fine, too, but if I didn't have people that
+mattered, it wouldn't be so good. I say "So long" quietly and go out.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        16
+
+
+     [Illustration: Reporters and photographers crowding in on Kate.]
+
+
+
+                                                                   FORTUNE
+
+
+
+"I always wondered if the poor soul had any relatives." That's what Mom
+says when I tell her about Kate's telegram. "And now she's lost her only
+brother. That's sad."
+
+"I think it's sad she never talked to him for twenty years. All these
+years I've wished I had a brother," I say.
+
+"If it's her only brother, she's going to have to do something about his
+estate," says Pop. That legal mind, it never rests. I guess he's got a
+point about this, though. How is Kate going to deal with lawyers, or
+undertakers, or anyone? She can't hardly stand to _talk_  to people like
+that.
+
+"What'll she have to do?"
+
+"Maybe I better go see her tomorrow," says Pop. "There can be lots of
+things--see if he left a will, if he owes any taxes, if he has property
+that has to be taken care of or sold. You can't tell."
+
+"Kate said he was a miser. Maybe he left her a million. Say, that'd be
+great!"
+
+"Don't be a dope!" Pop snaps, and he really sounds angry, so I pipe down.
+
+The next morning Pop tells me to go over and see how Kate is. "The way she
+feels about people, I don't like to just barge in. I'll come by in ten
+minutes, like I was picking you up to go to a movie or something."
+
+I saunter round the corner onto Third Avenue and stop short. There are two
+newspaper cars pulled up in front of Kate's building, one red and one
+black, and a sizable knot of people gathered on the sidewalk. I move in
+among them.
+
+"That crazy cat lady ... he musta been a nut too ... left her about a
+million ... a lotta rich cats, how d'ya like that...."
+
+So I guess he did leave her money, and all of a sudden I see it isn't
+"great." It's going to be trouble. I push through the people and go
+upstairs without anyone stopping me. When I open Kate's door, old stray
+tomcat shoots out. He's leaving, and I can see why.
+
+Kate's room is tiny, and it looks like it's filled with a mob. Maybe it's
+only half a dozen guys, but the photographers are pushing around trying to
+get shots and the reporters are jabbering.
+
+Orange kitten sticks his head out of the box. Then out he comes, into the
+sea of feet. I drop him back in and try to get across to Kate. She's
+pretty well backed into a corner and looking ready to jump out the window.
+She has her arms folded in front of her, each hand clenching the other
+elbow, as if to hold herself together. A reporter with a bunch of scratch
+paper in his hand is crowding her.
+
+"Miss Carmichael"--funny, I never even knew her last name before--"I just
+want to ask one or two questions. Could you tell us when you last saw your
+brother?"
+
+"No, I couldn't," she snaps, drawing her head down between her shoulders
+and trying to melt into the wall.
+
+"Watcha going to do with the money?" a photographer asks. He picks up a
+cat, one of the big stray kittens, and dumps it on Kate. The cat clings to
+her and the photographer says, "Hold it now. Just let me snap a picture."
+
+He takes two steps back.
+
+At the first step the room is silent. At the second step a shattering
+caterwaul goes up. He has stepped on the adventurous orange kitten.
+
+The scream freezes us all, except Kate. She shoots out of her corner,
+knowing instantly what has happened. The kitten is jerking slightly now,
+and bright, bright blood is coming out of its mouth. With one violent,
+merciful stroke Kate finishes it. She picks the limp body up and wraps it
+neatly in a paper towel and places it in the wastebasket.
+
+The room is still silent for one congealed instant. Kate seems almost to
+have forgotten the crowd of men. Then two of them make hastily for the
+door. The photographer shuffles his feet and says, "Gee, m'am, I didn't
+mean ... I wouldn't for the world...."
+
+Kate whirls and screams at him: "Get out! Get out, all of you! Leave me
+and my cats alone! I never asked you in here!"
+
+At that moment my pop comes in the door. Of course he doesn't know
+anything about the kitten, but he takes in the general situation and herds
+the two remaining newspapermen to the door. He gives them his card and
+home address and tells them to look him up a little later.
+
+My knees suddenly feel weak and I slump onto the sofa, and my eyes swivel
+round to the little package in the wastebasket. It would be the strongest
+one. I really never saw anything get killed right in front of me before.
+It hits you.
+
+Pop is trying to calm Kate down. She's facing him, grabbing each sleeve of
+his coat. "What am I going to do? What can I do? I don't want his money. I
+don't want anything from anyone. I just want to be let alone!"
+
+"Take it easy, Kate, take it easy. You don't have to let anyone into your
+apartment. About the inheritance, well, I'll have to look into that." Over
+his shoulder Pop signals to me to go home and get Mom.
+
+I go home and explain the situation to Mom, and she comes back with me.
+One photographer and a couple of reporters are still hanging around, and
+the guy snaps a picture of me and Mom at the door. Mom scoots on up. Bad
+as I feel, I still get a charge out of getting my picture taken for a
+paper.
+
+"Hey, kid," one of the reporters shoves in front of me, "about this Miss
+Carmichael. Does she act pretty strange, like talking to herself on the
+street and stuff?"
+
+I see the story he's trying to build up. While it's true in a way, if you
+really know Kate it's not. Anyway, I'm against it. I say, "Nah. She's all
+right. She's just sort of scared of people, and she likes cats."
+
+"How many cats she got?"
+
+There have been up to a dozen on a busy day, but again I play it down.
+"She's got a mother cat with kittens. Sometimes a stray or two. Don't get
+sucked in by all that jazz these dumb kids around here'll give you."
+
+"She gets all that money, you think she'll buy a big house, set up a home
+for stray cats?"
+
+I shrug. "I don't know. She doesn't want the money anyway. She just wants
+to be let alone."
+
+"Doesn't want the money!" the photographer chips in. "Boy, she must be
+_really_ nuts! I'm going back to the office."
+
+The reporter says he's going to wait and talk to my pop, and I go on
+upstairs to see what's doing.
+
+Kate is sitting on the sofa, sniffing and wiping her eyes and muttering,
+but looking calmer. Mom is making tea. Pop is looking out the window,
+scratching his head.
+
+Kate gulps and draws a big breath. "Tell them I don't want his old money.
+Tell them to give it to someone else. Tell them to leave me alone. I just
+want my own place and my cats. They can't make me move, can they? I've
+lived here thirty years. I couldn't go anyplace else."
+
+She gulps and sniffs some more, and Mom brings her a cup of tea. The stray
+kittens jump up to see if it's anything good and nuzzle into her lap. Kate
+takes a sip of tea and asks Pop again, "They can't make me move, can
+they?" This seems to be what worries her most.
+
+"No-o," says Pop, "it's only...."
+
+He's interrupted by a knock on the door, and I go open it a crack. A guy
+says he's the landlord. As soon as Kate hears his voice, she yelps at him,
+"I paid my rent, first of the month like always. Don't you come bothering
+me!"
+
+"It's about the cats," he says. "People outside saying you got a dozen
+cats in here. There's a law, you know."
+
+He's a seedy-looking, whining kind of a man, and he looks real pleased
+with himself when he says there's a law about cats.
+
+Kate jumps right at him. "I'm not breaking any laws. I know you. You just
+want to get me out of here and rent the place for more money. You leave me
+alone!"
+
+The man whines, "There's a law, that's all. I don't want no violation
+slapped on my building."
+
+Pop comes over and tells the man there's just a mother cat with kittens.
+"There's a couple of strays here, too, right now, but I'll take them home
+with me."
+
+"There's a law, that's all. Also, I got a right to inspect the premises."
+Pop shows no signs of letting him in, and he shuffles and grumbles and
+goes away.
+
+"Lock the door," Kate snaps. "I keep it locked all the time."
+
+Pop says he's going home to make some phone calls and try to figure out
+what's going on. He takes down the name and address of Kate's brother and
+asks her if she's sure there are no other relatives. She says she never
+heard of any. Pop goes, and Kate insists that I lock the door after him.
+
+She gets up and starts stirring around getting food out for the cats. She
+buys fish and chicken livers for them, even though she hardly eats any
+meat herself. She listens at the back door a moment to make sure no one's
+out there, then opens the door and puts out the garbage and wastebasket.
+There goes the adventurous kitten. You got to hand it to Kate. She has no
+sniffling sentimentality about her cats. Kitten's dead, it's dead, that's
+all. She doesn't mope over the limp mite of fur. In fact, anything to do
+with cats she's got sense and guts. They're her family. I don't know that
+I could have put that kitten out of its misery.
+
+Just as long as the world doesn't throw any stray fortunes at her, Kate
+does fine. But when people get in her way, she needs someone like Pop.
+
+Mom says she'll stick around a while and tells me to take the two stray
+kittens home, just in case the landlord comes back trying to make trouble.
+
+"O.K., great--Cat'll have some company!"
+
+Kate sniffs. "He'll hate it. Cats don't like other cats pushing into their
+house."
+
+She's right, of course. I put the kittens down at home, and Cat hisses at
+them and then runs them under the radiator in the kitchen. Then he sits
+down in the doorway and glowers at them, on guard.
+
+Things simmer down gradually. Mom and I and sometimes Tom, who's right at
+the flower shop on the corner, take turns checking on Kate and doing
+shopping for her, or going with her so she doesn't get badgered by people.
+But pretty soon everyone in the neighborhood forgets all about her and her
+inheritance. They see her buying just the same old cat food and cottage
+cheese and fruit, and they probably figure the whole thing was a phony.
+
+It wasn't though. Pop finds out her brother did leave a will. He lined up
+his funeral, left something to his housekeeper, something to a little
+restaurant owner way downtown--apparently that was his one big luxury, a
+decent meal twice a year when he went down to buy more stocks--and the rest
+to Kate.
+
+Pop says it may take months or years to clear up the estate, but he says
+Kate can get her share all put in trust for her with some bank, and
+they'll take care of all the legalities and taxes and just pay her as much
+or little as she wants out of the income. And she can leave the whole kit
+and caboodle to a cat home in her will if she wants to, which will
+probably make her tightwad brother spin in his grave. I asked her once,
+and she said maybe she'd leave some to the Children's Aid, because there
+are a lot of stray children in New York City that need looking after, as
+well as cats. She's getting to think about people some.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        17
+
+
+         [Illustration: Mary calling from phone booth at Macy's.]
+
+
+
+                                                         TELEPHONE NUMBERS
+
+
+
+There are some disadvantages to not getting a girl's phone number. This
+sort of date I had with Mary for golf on Election Day fell through. In the
+first place, I was sick in bed with the flu, and Mom wouldn't have let me
+out for anything, and secondly, it was pouring rain. Without the phone
+number, there wasn't any way I could let her know, and I didn't even know
+a street address to write to later.
+
+By the time I got finished with the flu, we were into Thanksgiving and
+then all the trouble with Kate. Time passed and I felt rottener about
+standing her up without a word, and I couldn't get up my nerve to go out
+to Coney and just appear on her doorstep. I could have found the house all
+right, once I was out there.
+
+The first week of Christmas vacation the phone rings late one afternoon
+and Pop answers it. He says, "Just one minute, please," and I know right
+away from his voice it isn't someone he knows.
+
+"Young lady on the phone for you, Dave," he says, and he enjoys watching
+me gulp.
+
+"Hullo?" a rather tight, flat little voice asks. "Is this Dave--uh,
+Mitchell--uh, I mean, with Cat?"
+
+I recognize it's Mary, all right, even if she does sound strange and
+scared.
+
+"Oh, hi!" I say. "Sure, it's me! I'm awfully sorry about that day we were
+going to play golf. I was in bed with the flu, and then I didn't know your
+phone number or...."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," she says. "I wondered what happened."
+
+There's a slight pause, and I see Pop grinning and pretending to read his
+paper. I turn around so I won't see him.
+
+"Where are you now, out in Coney?" I ask Mary.
+
+"No, as a matter of fact, I'm in Macy's." Her voice trails off a little,
+but then she starts in again. "As a matter of fact, that's why I called.
+You see, I was supposed to meet Mom here at five, and she hasn't come, and
+I bought all these Christmas presents, and I forgot about the tax or
+something, and this is my last dime."
+
+She stops. I see now why she sounds scared, and I get a curdled feeling in
+my stomach, too, because what if the dime runs out in the phone and she's
+cut off? I'll never find her in Macy's. It's too big.
+
+"Pop!" I yelp. "There's this girl I know is in a phone booth in Macy's and
+her dime is going to run out and she hasn't anymore money. What'll I do?"
+
+"Get the phone number of the booth and call her back. Here--" He gives me a
+pencil.
+
+What a relief. Funny I never thought of that. You just somehow don't think
+of a phone booth having a number.
+
+Mary sounds pretty relieved, too. I get the number and call her back, and
+with Pop making suggestions here and there we settle that I'll go over to
+Macy's and meet her on the ground floor near Thirty-fourth Street and
+Broadway at the counter where they're selling umbrellas for $2.89, which
+Mary says she can see from the phone booth.
+
+"O.K." I say, and then I sort of don't want to hang up. It's fun talking.
+So I go on. "Look, just in case we miss each other at Macy's, what's your
+phone number at home, so I could call you sometime?"
+
+"COney 7-1218."
+
+"O.K. Well, good-bye. I'll be right over. To Macy's, I mean."
+
+I grab my coat and check to see if I've got money. Pop asks if I'm going
+to bring her home for dinner.
+
+"Gee, I don't know." I hadn't given a thought to what we'd do. "I guess
+so, maybe, if her mother hasn't come by then. I'll call you if we do
+anything else."
+
+"O.K.," Pop says.
+
+I go out and hustle through the evening rush-hour crowds to the subway.
+The stores are all open evenings now, for Christmas, so the crowds are
+going both ways.
+
+I get to the right corner of Macy's, and I see Mary right away. Everyone
+else is rushing about and muttering to themselves, and she's standing
+there looking lost. In fact she looks so much like a waif that the first
+thing I say is, "Hi! Shall we go get something to eat?"
+
+"Yes, I'm starved. I was just going to get a doughnut when I found I'd run
+out of money."
+
+"Let's go home and you can have dinner with us then. But what about your
+mother? Won't she be looking for you?"
+
+Mary shifts her feet and looks tired. "I don't know. Probably if she came
+and I wasn't here, she'd figure I'd gone home."
+
+I try to think a minute, which is hard to do with all these people shoving
+around you. Mary starts to pick up her two enormous shopping bags, and I
+take them from her, still trying to think. At the subway entrance I see
+the phone booth.
+
+"That's the thing," I say. "Why don't you call your house and see if your
+mother left a message or something?"
+
+"Well...." Mary stands by the phone looking confused and in fact about
+ready to cry. I suddenly decide the best thing we can do is get home and
+sit down where it's quiet. Waiting fifteen minutes or so to phone can't
+make much difference.
+
+We get home pretty fast and I introduce Mary to Mom and Pop. She sinks
+into the nearest chair and takes off her shoes.
+
+"Excuse me," she says. "I just bought these heels, and it's awful wearing
+them!"
+
+She wiggles her toes and begins to look better. Mom offers her a pair of
+slippers and Pop passes some potato chips.
+
+Mom says, "Poor child, did you try to do all your Christmas shopping at
+once?"
+
+"Well, actually, I was having fun just looking for a long while. I have
+two little cousins that I don't really have to get much for, but I love
+looking at all the toys. I spent quite a while there. Then I did the rest
+of my shopping in a rush, and everything is so crowded, and I got mixed up
+on my money or the sales tax and only had a dime left, and I missed my
+mother or she forgot."
+
+She stretches out her toes to touch Cat, who is sitting in front of her.
+"I couldn't think what to do. It's so hard to think when your feet hurt."
+
+"It certainly is," agrees Mom. She goes out to the kitchen to finish
+fixing dinner, and Pop suggests Mary better phone her home. She gets her
+father, and her mother has left a message that she was delayed and figured
+Mary would go home alone. Mary gives her father our address and tells him
+she'll be home by nine.
+
+We must have hit a lucky day because we have a real good dinner: slices of
+good whole meat, not mushed up stuff, and potatoes cooked with cheese in
+them, and salad, and a lemon meringue pie from the bakery, even.
+
+After dinner we sit around a little while, and Pop says I better take Mary
+home, and he gives me money for a cab at the end of the subway. When Mary
+gives the driver her home address, I say it over to myself a few times so
+I'll remember.
+
+Suddenly I wonder about something. "Say, how'd you know _my_ phone
+number?"
+
+"I looked it up," she says simply. "There's about twenty-eleven Mitchells
+in the Manhattan phone book, but only one in the East Twenties, so I
+figured that must be you."
+
+"Gee, that's true. You must have had an awful time, though, standing in
+the phone booth with your feet hurting, going through all those
+Mitchells."
+
+Says Mary, "Oh, no. I did it one rainy afternoon at home, weeks ago."
+
+Well, what do you know.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        18
+
+
+          [Illustration: Raised champagne glasses toasting Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                          "HERE'S TO CAT!"
+
+
+
+The two stray kittens gradually make themselves at home. Somehow or other
+Cat has taught them that he's in charge here, and he just chases them for
+fun now and again, when he's not busy sleeping.
+
+As for keeping cats in my room, that's pretty well forgotten. For one
+thing, Mom really likes them. She sneaks the kittens saucers of cream and
+bits of real hamburger when no one's looking, and she likes talking to
+them in the kitchen. She doesn't pick them up, but just having them in the
+room sure doesn't give her asthma.
+
+The only time we have any trouble from the cats is one evening when Pop
+comes home and the two kittens skid down the hall between his legs, with
+Cat after them. He scales his hat at the lot of them and roars down the
+hall to me, "Hey, Davey! When are you getting rid of these cats? I'm not
+fixing to start an annex to Kate's cat home!"
+
+"I'm sure Davey will find homes for them," Mom says soothingly, but
+getting a little short of breath, the way she does any time she's afraid
+one of us is losing his temper.
+
+In fact, one thing this cat business seems to have established is that me
+and Pop fighting is the main cause of Mom's asthma. So we both try to do a
+little better, and a lot of things we used to argue and fight about, like
+my jazz records, we just kid each other about now. But now and then we
+still work up to a real hassle.
+
+I've been taking a history course the first semester at school. It's a
+real lemon--just a lot of preaching about government and citizenship. The
+second semester I switch to a music course. This is O.K. with the
+school--but not with Pop. Right away when I bring home my new program, he
+says, "How come you're taking one less course this half?"
+
+I explain that I'm taking music, and also biology, algebra, English, and
+French.
+
+"Music!" he snorts. "That's recreation, not a course. Do it on your own
+time!"
+
+"Pop, it's a course. You think the school signs me up for an hour of home
+record playing?"
+
+"They might," he grunts. "You're not going to loaf your way through school
+if I have anything to say about it."
+
+"Loaf!" I yelp. "Four major academic subjects is more than lots of the
+guys take."
+
+Mom comes and suggests that Pop better go over to school with me and talk
+it over at the school office. He does, and for once I win a round--I keep
+music for this semester. But he makes sure that next year I'm signed up
+all year for five majors: English, French, math, chemistry, and European
+history. I'll be lucky if I have time to breathe.
+
+I go down to the flower shop to grouse to Tom. It's after Valentine's Day,
+and business is slack and the boss is out.
+
+"Why does Pop have to come butting into my business at school? Doesn't he
+even think the school knows what it's doing?"
+
+"Aw, heck," says Tom, "your father's the one has to see you get into
+college or get a job. Sometimes schools do let kids take a lot of soft
+courses, and then they're out on a limb later."
+
+"Huh. He just likes to boss everything I do."
+
+"So--he cares."
+
+"Huh." I'm not very ready to buy this, but then I remember Tom's father,
+who _doesn't_ care. It makes me think.
+
+"Besides," says Tom, "half the reason you and your father are always
+bickering is that you're so much alike."
+
+"Me? Like _him_?"
+
+"Sure. You're both impatient and curious, got to poke into everything. As
+long as there's a bone on the floor, the two of you worry it."
+
+Mr. Palumbo comes back to the shop then, and Tom gets busy with the
+plants. I go home, wondering if I really am at all like Pop. I never
+thought of it before.
+
+It's funny about fights. Pop and I can go along real smooth and easy for a
+while, and I think: Well, he really isn't a bad guy, and I'm growing up,
+we can see eye to eye--all that stuff. Then, whoosh! I hardly know what
+starts it, but a fight boils up, and we're both breathing fire like
+dragons on the loose.
+
+We get a holiday Washington's Birthday, which is good because there's a TV
+program on Tuesday, the night before the holiday, that I hardly ever get
+to watch. It's called _Out Beyond_, and the people in it are very real,
+not just good guys and bad guys. There's always one character moving
+around, keeping you on the edge of your chair, and by the time it all
+winds up in a surprise ending, you find this character is not a real
+person, he's supernatural. The program goes on till eleven o'clock, and
+Mom won't let me watch it on school nights.
+
+I get the pillows comfortably arranged on the floor, with a big bottle of
+soda and a bag of popcorn within easy reach. The story starts off with
+some nature shots of a farm and mountains in the background and this
+little kid playing with his grandfather. There's a lot of people in it,
+but gradually you get more and more suspicious of dear old grandpa. He's
+taking the kid for a walk when a thunderstorm blows up.
+
+Right then, of course, we have to have the alternate sponsor. He signs
+off, finally, and up comes Pop.
+
+"Here, Davey old boy, we can do better than that tonight. The Governor and
+the Mayor are on a TV debate about New York City school reorganization."
+
+At first I figure he's kidding, so I just growl, "Who cares?"
+
+He switches the channel.
+
+I jump up, tipping over the bottle of soda on the way. "Pop, that's not
+fair! I'm right in the middle of a program, and I been waiting weeks to
+watch it because Mom won't let me on school nights!"
+
+Pop goes right on tuning his channel. "Do you good to listen to a real
+program for a change. There'll be another western on tomorrow night."
+
+That's the last straw. I shout, "See? You don't even know what you're
+talking about! It's not a western."
+
+Pop looks at me prissily. "You're getting altogether too upset about these
+programs. Stop it and behave yourself. Go get a sponge to mop up the
+soda."
+
+"It's your fault! Mop it up yourself!" I'm too mad now to care what I say.
+I charge down the hall to my room and slam the door.
+
+I hear the TV going for a few minutes, then Pop turns it off and goes in
+the kitchen to talk to Mom. In a little while he comes down and knocks on
+my door. Knocks--that's something. Usually he just barges in.
+
+"Look here now, Dave, we've got to straighten a few things out quietly.
+Your mother says she told you you could watch that program, whatever it
+was. So O.K., go ahead, you can finish it."
+
+"Yeah, it's about over by now." I'm still sore, and besides Pop's still
+standing in my door, so I figure there's a hitch in this somewhere.
+
+"But anyway, you shouldn't get so sore about an old television program
+that you shout 'Mop it up yourself' at me."
+
+"Hmm."
+
+"Hmm, nothing."
+
+"Well, I don't think you should turn a guy's TV program off in the middle
+without even finding out about it."
+
+Pop says "Hmm" this time, and we both stand and simmer down.
+
+I look at my watch. It's a quarter to eleven. I say, "Well, O.K. I might
+as well see the end. Sorry I got sore."
+
+Pop moves out of the doorway. He says, "Hereafter I will only turn off
+your TV programs before they start, not in the middle."
+
+Just as I get the TV on and settle down, the doorbell rings.
+
+"Goodness, who could that be so late?" says Mom.
+
+Pop goes to the door. It's Tom, and Hilda is with him. I turn off the
+television set--I've lost track of what's happening, and it doesn't seem to
+be the grandfather who's the spook after all. It's the first time Hilda
+has been to our house, and Tom introduces her around. Then there's one of
+those moments of complete silence, with everyone looking embarrassed,
+before we all start to speak at once.
+
+"Hilda came to the beach with us," I say.
+
+"I told Tom we shouldn't come so late," says Hilda.
+
+Pop says, "Not late at all. Come in and sit down."
+
+Hilda sits on the sofa, where Cat is curled up. He looks at her, puts his
+head back and goes on sleeping.
+
+Mom brings coffee and cookies in from the kitchen, and I pour the rest of
+the popcorn into a bowl and pass it around. Tom stirs his coffee
+vigorously and takes one sip and puts the cup down.
+
+"Reason we came so late," he says, "Hilda and I have been talking all
+evening. We want to get married."
+
+Pop doesn't look as surprised as I do. "Congratulations!" he says.
+
+Tom says, "Thanks" and looks at Hilda, and she blushes. Really. Tom drinks
+a little more coffee and then he goes on: "The trouble is, I can't get
+married on this flower-shop job."
+
+"Doesn't pay enough?" Pop asks.
+
+"Well, it's not just the pay. The job isn't getting me anywhere I want to
+go. So that's what we've been talking about all evening. Finally we went
+up to Times Square and talked to the guys in the Army and Navy and Air
+Force recruiting office. You know, I'd get drafted in a year or two,
+anyway. I've decided to enlist in the Army."
+
+"Goodness, you may get sent way out West for years and years!" says Mom.
+
+"No, not if I enlist in the Army. That's for three years. But I can choose
+what specialist school I want to go into, and there's this Air Defense
+Command--it's something to do with missiles. In that I can also choose what
+metropolitan area I want to be stationed in. I can choose New York, and we
+could get married, and I might even be able to go on taking college course
+at night school, with the Army paying for most of it."
+
+Pop says, "You sound like the recruiting officer himself. You sure of all
+this?"
+
+"I'll have to check some more," says Tom. "The recruiting officer, as a
+matter of fact, tried to persuade me to shoot for officers' training and
+go into the Army as a career. But then I would be sent all over, and
+anyway, I don't think Army life would be any good for Hilda."
+
+"I can see you have put in a busy evening," says Pop. "Well, shove back
+the coffee cups, and I'll break out that bottle of champagne that's been
+sitting in the icebox since Christmas."
+
+I go and retrieve my spilled bottle of soda. There's still enough left for
+one big glass. Pop brings out the champagne, and the cork blows and hits
+the ceiling. Cat jumps off the sofa and stands, half crouched and tail
+twitching, ready to take cover.
+
+Pop fills little glasses for them and raises his to Tom and Hilda. "Here's
+to you--a long, happy life!"
+
+We drink, and then I raise my glass of soda. "Here's to Cat! Tom wouldn't
+even be standing here if it wasn't for Cat."
+
+That's true, and we all drink to Cat. He sits down and licks his right
+front paw.
+
+
+
+
+
+_Format by Jean Krulis_
+_Set in Linotype Baskerville_
+_Composed and bound by American Book-Stratford Press_
+_Printed by The Murray Printing Co._
+*HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, INCORPORATED*
+
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT***
+
+
+
+CREDITS
+
+
+March 27, 2008
+
+            Project Gutenberg TEI edition 1
+            Produced by Adam Buchbinder, Ren� Anderson Benitz, and the
+            Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+            <http://www.pgdp.net/c>. Page-images available at
+            <http://www.pgdp.net/projects/projectID467059110c292/>
+
+
+
+A WORD FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG
+
+
+This file should be named 24921-8.txt or 24921-8.zip.
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+
+
+    http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/9/2/24921/
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one -- the old editions will be
+renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one
+owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and
+you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission
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+          and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it,
+          give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project
+          Gutenberg License <a href="#pglicense" class="tei tei-ref">included with this
+          eBook</a> or online at <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/license" class="tei tei-xref">http://www.gutenberg.org/license</a></p></div><pre class="pre tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 3.00em; margin-top: 3.00em">Title: It's like this, cat
+
+Author: Emily Neville
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2008 [Ebook #24921]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT***
+</pre></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+      
+    </div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">
+</p><div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/cover.jpg" width="348" height="502" alt="Cover: Dave standing on top step looking across street; Cat curled up below. Tall apartment building in background." /></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">
+</p><div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/title.png" width="654" height="500" alt="Title Page: City scene of park entrance and busy street: tall apartment building on left; car driving by; bike-riding boy behind running boy and dog; mailman handing mail to woman on sidewalk." /></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 4.50em; margin-top: 4.50em">
+<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%; font-variant: small-caps">it’s like this, cat</span></div>
+<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 90%">Copyright © 1963 by Emily Neville</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 4.50em; margin-top: 4.50em">
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 0.90em"><span style="font-size: 90%">Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of
+this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
+written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
+critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper &amp; Row,
+Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 120%">TO</span></div>
+<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 120%">MIDNIGHT,</span></div>
+<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 120%">“MAYOR” OF GRAMERCY PARK</span></div>
+<div class="tei tei-l" style="text-align: left"><span style="font-size: 120%">1954-1962</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: left; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">CONTENTS</span></h1>
+<ul class="tei tei-index tei-index-toc"><li><a href="#toc1"> 1. Cat and Kate</a></li><li><a href="#toc3"> 2. Cat and the Underworld</a></li><li><a href="#toc5"> 3. Cat and Coney</a></li><li><a href="#toc7"> 4. Fight</a></li><li><a href="#toc9"> 5. Around Manhattan</a></li><li><a href="#toc11"> 6. And Brooklyn</a></li><li><a href="#toc13"> 7. Survival</a></li><li><a href="#toc15"> 8. West Side Story</a></li><li><a href="#toc17"> 9. Fathers</a></li><li><a href="#toc19">10. Cat and the Parkway</a></li><li><a href="#toc21">11. Rosh Hashanah at the Fulton Fish Market</a></li><li><a href="#toc23">12. The Red Eft</a></li><li><a href="#toc25">13. The Left Bank of Coney Island</a></li><li><a href="#toc27">14. Expedition by Ferry</a></li><li><a href="#toc29">15. Dollars and Cats</a></li><li><a href="#toc31">16. Fortune</a></li><li><a href="#toc33">17. Telephone Numbers</a></li><li><a href="#toc35">18. “Here’s to Cat!”</a></li></ul>
+
+
+
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="tei tei-body" style="margin-bottom: 6.00em; margin-top: 6.00em">
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 2.00em"><span style="font-size: 200%; font-weight: 700">IT’S LIKE THIS, CAT</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg001" id="Pg001" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc1" id="toc1"></a>
+  <a name="pdf2" id="pdf2"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">1</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image01.png" width="474" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave holding Cat while Dad looks up from reading his newspaper." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">My father is always talking about how a dog can
+be very educational for a boy. This is one reason
+I got a cat.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">My father talks a lot anyway. Maybe being a
+lawyer he gets in the habit. Also, he’s a small
+guy with very little gray curly hair, so maybe he
+thinks he’s got to roar a lot to make up for not
+being a big hairy tough guy. Mom is thin and
+quiet, and when anything upsets her, she gets
+<a name="Pg002" id="Pg002" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+asthma. In the apartment—we live right in the
+middle of New York City—we don’t have any
+heavy drapes or rugs, and Mom never fries any
+food because the doctors figure dust and smoke
+make her asthma worse. I don’t think it’s dust;
+I think it’s Pop’s roaring.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The big hassle that led to me getting Cat came
+when I earned some extra money baby-sitting for
+a little boy around the corner on Gramercy Park.
+I spent the money on a Belafonte record. This
+record has one piece about a father telling his
+son about the birds and the bees. I think it’s
+funny. Pop blows his stack.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You’re not going to play that stuff in this
+house!” he roars. “Why aren’t you outdoors, anyway?
+Baby-sitting! Baby-talk records! When I
+was your age, I made money on a newspaper-delivery
+route, and my dog Jeff and I used to go
+ten miles chasing rabbits on a good Saturday.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Pop,” I say patiently, “there are no rabbits
+out on Third Avenue. Honest, there aren’t.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Don’t get fresh!” Pop jerks the plug out of
+the record player so hard the needle skips, which
+probably wrecks my record. So I get mad and
+start yelling too. Between rounds we both hear
+Mom in the kitchen starting to wheeze.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg003" id="Pg003" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop hisses, “Now, see—you’ve gone and upset
+your mother!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I slam the record player shut, grab a stick and
+ball, and run down the three flights of stairs to
+the street.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This isn’t the first time Pop and I have played
+this scene, and there gets to be a pattern: When
+I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to
+my Aunt Kate’s. She’s not really my aunt. The
+kids around here call her Crazy Kate the Cat
+Woman because she walks along the street in
+funny old clothes and sneakers talking to herself,
+and she sometimes has half a dozen or more stray
+cats living with her. I guess she does sound a
+little looney, but it’s just because she does things
+her own way, and she doesn’t give a hoot what
+people think. She’s sane, all right. In fact she
+makes a lot better sense than my pop.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It was three or four years ago, when I was a
+little kid, and I came tearing down our stairs
+crying mad after some fight with Pop, that I first
+met Kate. I plunged out of our door and into
+the street without looking. At the same moment
+I heard brakes scream and felt someone yank me
+back by the scruff of my neck. I got dropped in
+a heap on the sidewalk.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg004" id="Pg004" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I looked up, and there was a shiny black car
+with M.D. plates and Kate waving her umbrella
+at the driver and shouting: “Listen, Dr. Big
+Shot, whose life are you saving? Can’t you even
+watch out for a sniveling little kid crossing the
+street?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The doctor looked pretty sheepish, and so did
+I. A few people on the sidewalk stopped to watch
+and snicker at us. Our janitor Butch was there,
+shaking his finger at me. Kate nodded to him and
+told him she was taking me home to mop me up.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yas’m,” said Butch. He says “Yas’m” to all
+ladies.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate dragged me along by the hand to her
+apartment. She didn’t say anything when we got
+there, just dumped me in a chair with a couple
+of kittens. Then she got me a cup of tea and a
+bowl of cottage cheese.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">That stopped me snuffling to ask, “What do
+I put the cottage cheese on?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Don’t put it on anything. Just eat it. Eat a
+bowl of it every day. Here, have an orange, too.
+But no cookies or candy, none of that sweet,
+starchy stuff. And no string beans. They’re not
+good for you.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">My eyes must have popped, but I guess I knew
+<a name="Pg005" id="Pg005" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+right that first day that you don’t argue with
+Kate. I ate the cottage cheese—it doesn’t really
+have any taste anyway—and I sure have always
+agreed with her about the string beans.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Off and on since then I’ve seen quite a lot of
+Kate. I’d pass her on the street, chirruping to
+some mangy old stray cat hiding under a car, and
+he’d always come out to be stroked. Sometimes
+there’d be a bunch of little kids dancing around
+jeering at her and calling her a witch. It made
+me feel real good and important to run them off.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Quite often I went with her to the A &amp; P and
+helped her carry home the cat food and cottage
+cheese and fruit. She talks to herself all the time
+in the store, and if she thinks the peaches or
+melons don’t look good that day, she shouts clear
+across the store to the manager. He comes across
+and picks her out an extra good one, just to keep
+the peace.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I introduced Kate to Mom, and they got along
+real well. Kate’s leery of most people, afraid
+they’ll make fun of her, I guess; my mom’s not
+leery of people, but she’s shy, and what with
+asthma and worrying about keeping me and Pop
+calmed down, she doesn’t go out much or make
+dates with people. She and Kate would chat together
+<a name="Pg006" id="Pg006" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+in the stores or sitting on the stoop on a
+sunny day. Kate shook her head over Mom’s
+asthma and said she’d get over it if she ate cottage
+cheese every day. Mom ate it for a while, but she
+put mayonnaise on it, which Kate says is just like
+poison.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The day of the fight with Pop about the Belafonte
+record it’s cold and windy out and there
+are no kids in sight. I slam my ball back and forth
+against the wall where it says “No Ball Playing,”
+just to limber up and let off a little spite, and
+then I go over to see Kate.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate has a permanent cat named Susan and
+however many kittens Susan happens to have
+just had. It varies. Usually there are a few other
+temporary stray kittens in the apartment, but I
+never saw any father cat there before. Today
+Susan and her kittens are under the stove, and
+Susan keeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat
+crouching under the sofa. He turns his head
+away from her and looks like he never intended
+to get mixed up with family life. For a stray cat
+he’s sleek and healthy-looking. Every time he
+moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly.
+She believes in no visiting rights for fathers.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate pours me some tea and asks what’s doing.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg007" id="Pg007" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“My pop is full of hot air, as usual,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Takes one to know one,” Kate says, catching
+me off base. I change the subject.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How come the kittens’ pop is around the
+house? I never saw a full-grown tom here
+before.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He saw me buying some cans of cat food, so
+he followed me home. Susan isn’t admitting she
+ever knew him or ever wants to. I’ll give him
+another feed and send him on his way, I guess.
+He’s a handsome young fellow.” Kate strokes
+him between the ears, and he rotates his head.
+Susan hisses.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He starts to pull back farther under the sofa.
+Without stopping to think myself, or giving him
+time to, I pick him up. Susan arches up and
+spits. I can feel the muscles in his body tense up
+as he gets ready to spring out of my lap. Then
+he changes his mind and decides to take advantage
+of the lap. He narrows his eyes and gives
+Susan a bored look and turns his head to take
+me in. After he’s sized me up, he pretends he
+only turned around to lick his back.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Cat,” I say to him, “how about coming home
+with me?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hah!” Kate laughs. “Your pop will throw
+<a name="Pg008" id="Pg008" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+him out faster than you can say ‘good old Jeff.’”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah-h?” I say it slowly and do some thinking.
+Taking Cat home had been just a passing
+thought, but right now I decide I’ll really go to
+the mat with Pop about this. He can have his
+memories of good old Jeff and rabbit hunts, but
+I’m going to have me a tiger.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Aunt Kate gives me a can of cat food and a
+box of litter, so Cat can stay in my room, because
+I remember Mom probably gets asthma from
+animals, too. Cat and I go home.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop does a lot of shouting and sputtering
+when we get home, but I just put Cat down in
+my room, and I try not to argue with him, so I
+won’t lose my temper. I promise I’ll keep him
+in my room and sweep up the cat hairs so Mom
+won’t have to.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As a final blast Pop says, “I suppose you’ll
+get your exercise mouse hunting now. What are
+you going to name the noble animal?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Look, Pop,” I explain, “I know he’s a cat,
+he knows he’s a cat, and his name is Cat. And
+even if you call him Honorable John Fitzgerald
+Kennedy, he won’t come when you call, and he
+won’t lick your hand, see?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He’d better not! And it’s not my hand that’s
+<a name="Pg009" id="Pg009" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+going to get licked around here in a minute,”
+Pop snaps.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“All right, all right.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Actually, my pop sometimes jaws so long it’d
+be a relief if he did haul off and hit me, but he
+never does.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We call it a draw for that day, and I have Cat.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg010" id="Pg010" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc3" id="toc3"></a>
+  <a name="pdf4" id="pdf4"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">2</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image02.png" width="573" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave looking at Cat locked in cage." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat makes himself at home in my room pretty
+easily. Mostly he likes to be up on top of something,
+so I put an old sweater on the bureau
+beside my bed, and he sleeps up there. When
+he wants me to wake up in the morning, he
+jumps and lands in the middle of my stomach.
+Believe me, cats don’t always land lightly—only
+when they want to. Anything a cat does,
+he does only when he wants to. I like that.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg011" id="Pg011" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">When I’m combing my hair in the morning,
+sometimes he sits up there and looks down
+his nose at my reflection in the mirror. He
+appears to be taking inventory: “Hmm, buckteeth;
+sandy hair, smooth in front, cowlick in
+back; brown eyes, can’t see in the dark worth a
+nickel; hickeys on the chin. Too bad.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I look back at him in the mirror and say,
+“O.K., black face, yellow eyes, and one white
+whisker. Where’d you get that one white
+whisker?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He catches sight of himself in the mirror, and
+his tail twitches momentarily. He seems to know
+it’s not really another cat, but his claws come out
+and he taps the mirror softly, just to make sure.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">When I’m lying on the bed reading, sometimes
+he will curl up between my knees and the
+book. But after a few days I can see he’s getting
+more and more restless. It gets so I can’t listen
+to a record, for the noise of him scratching on
+the rug. I can’t let him loose in the apartment,
+at least until we make sure Mom doesn’t get
+asthma, so I figure I better reintroduce him to
+the great outdoors in the city. One nice Sunday
+morning in April we go down and sit on the
+stoop.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg012" id="Pg012" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat sits down, very tall and neat and pear-shaped,
+and closes his eyes about halfway. He
+glances at the street like it isn’t good enough for
+him. After a while, condescending, he eases
+down the steps and lies on a sunny, dusty spot in
+the middle of the sidewalk. People walking have
+to step around him, and he squints at them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Then he gets up, quick, looks over his
+shoulder at nothing, and shoots down the stairs
+to the cellar. I take a look to see where he’s going,
+and he is pacing slowly toward the backyard,
+head down, a tiger on the prowl. I figure I’ll sit
+in the sun and finish my science-fiction magazine
+before I go after him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">When I do, he’s not in sight, and the janitor
+tells me he jumped up on the wall and probably
+down into one of the other yards. I look around
+a while and call, but he’s not in sight, and I go
+up to lunch. Along toward evening Cat scratches
+at the door and comes in, as if he’d done it all
+his life.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This gets to be a routine. Sometimes he
+doesn’t even come home at night, and he’s sitting
+on the doormat when I get the milk in the morning,
+looking offended.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Is it my fault you stayed out all night?” I
+ask him.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg013" id="Pg013" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He sticks his tail straight up and marches down
+the hall to the kitchen, where he waits for me
+to open the milk and dish out the cat food. Then
+he goes to bed.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One morning he’s not there when I open the
+door, and he still hasn’t showed up when I get
+back from school. I get worried and go down
+to talk to Butch.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Wa-a-l,” says Butch, “sometimes that cat sit
+and talk to me a little, but most times he go on
+over to Twenty-first Street, where he sit and talk
+to his lady friend. Turned cold last night, lot of
+buildings put on heat and closed up their basements.
+Maybe he got locked in somewheres.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Which building’s his friend live in?” I ask.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Forty-six, the big one. His friend’s a little
+black-and-white cat, sort of belongs to the night
+man over there. He feeds her.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go around to Twenty-first Street and case
+Forty-six, which is a pretty fair-looking building
+with a striped awning and a doorman who
+saunters out front and looks around every few
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">While I’m watching, a grocery boy comes
+along pushing his cart and goes down some
+stairs into the basement with his carton of
+groceries. This gives me an idea. I’ll give the
+<a name="Pg014" id="Pg014" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+boy time to get started up in the elevator, and
+then I’ll go down in the basement and hunt for
+Cat. If someone comes along and gets sore, I
+can always play dumb.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go down, and the coast is clear. The elevator’s
+gone up, and I walk softly past and
+through a big room where the tenants leave
+their baby carriages and bicycles. After this the
+cellar stretches off into several corridors, lit by
+twenty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling.
+You can hardly see anything. The corridors go
+between wire storage cages, where the tenants
+keep stuff like trunks and old cribs and parakeet
+cages. They’re all locked.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Me-ow, meow, me-ow!” Unmistakably Cat,
+and angry.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The sound comes from the end of one corridor,
+and I fumble along, peering into each
+cage to try to see a tiger cat in a shadowy hole.
+Fortunately his eyes glow and he opens his
+mouth for another meow, and I see him locked
+inside one of the cages before I come to the end
+of the corridor. I don’t know how he got in or
+how I’m going to get him out.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">While I’m thinking, Cat’s eyes flick away from
+me to the right, then back to me. Cat’s not making
+<a name="Pg015" id="Pg015" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+any noise, and neither am I, but something
+is. It’s just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have
+a creepy feeling someone is standing near us.
+Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow
+moves a little, and I can see it has a white splotch—a
+face. It’s a man, and he comes toward me.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t know why any of the building men
+would be way back there, but that’s who I figure
+it is, so I start explaining.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I was just hunting for my cat ... I mean,
+he’s got locked in one of these cages. I just want
+to get him out.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The guy lets his breath out, slow, as if he’s
+been holding it quite a while. I realize he doesn’t
+belong in that cellar either, and he’s been scared
+of me.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He moves forward, saying “Sh-h-h” very
+quietly. He’s taller than I am, and I can’t see
+what he really looks like, but I’m sure he’s sort
+of a kid, maybe eighteen or so.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He looks at the padlock on the cage and says,
+“Huh, cheap!” He takes a paper clip out of his
+pocket and opens it out, and I think maybe he
+has a penknife, too, and next thing I know the
+padlock is open.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Gee, how’d you do that?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg016" id="Pg016" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Sh-h-h. A guy showed me how. You better
+get your cat and scram.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Golly, I wonder, maybe the guy is a burglar,
+and that gives me another creepy feeling. But
+would a burglar be taking time out to get a
+kid’s cat free?</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, thanks for the cat. See you around,”
+I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Sh-h-h. I don’t live around here. Hurry up,
+before we both get caught.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Maybe he’s a real burglar with a gun, even, I
+think, and by the time I dodge past the elevators
+and get out in the cold April wind, the sweat
+down my back is freezing. I give Cat a long
+lecture on staying out of basements. After all, I
+can’t count on having a burglar handy to get
+him out every time.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Back home we put some nice jailhouse blues
+on the record player, and we both stretch out on
+the bed to think. The guy didn’t really <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">look</span></span> like
+a burglar. And he didn’t talk “dese and dose.”
+Maybe real burglars don’t all talk that way—only
+the ones on TV. Still, he sure picked that lock
+fast, and he was sure down in that cellar for
+some reason of his own.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Maybe I ought to let someone know. I figure
+<a name="Pg017" id="Pg017" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+I’ll test Pop out, just casual like. “Some queer-looking
+types hanging around this neighborhood,”
+I say at dinner. “I saw a tough-looking
+guy hanging around Number Forty-six this
+afternoon. Might have been a burglar, even.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I figure Pop’ll at least ask me what he was
+doing, and maybe I’ll tell him the whole thing—about
+Cat and the cage. But Pop says, “In case
+you didn’t know it, burglars do not all look like
+Humphrey Bogart, and they don’t wear signs.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Thanks for the news,” I say and go on eating
+my dinner. Even if Pop does make me sore,
+I’m not going to pass up steak and onions, which
+we don’t have very often.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">However, the next day I’m walking along
+Twenty-first Street and I see the super of Forty-six
+standing by the back entrance, so I figure I’ll
+try again. I say to him, “Us kids were playing ball
+here yesterday, and we saw a strange-looking guy
+sneak into your cellar. It wasn’t a delivery boy.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah? You sure it wasn’t you or one of your
+juvenile pals trying to swipe a bike? How come
+you have to play ball right here?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I don’t swipe bikes. I got one of my own.
+New. A Raleigh. Better than any junk you got
+in there.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg018" id="Pg018" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What d’you know about what I got in there,
+wise guy?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Aw, forget it.” I realize he’s just getting
+suspicious of me. That’s what comes of trying
+to be a big public-spirited citizen. I decide my
+burglar, whoever he is, is a lot nicer than the
+super, and I hope he got a fat haul.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Next day it looks like maybe he did just that.
+The local paper, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Town and Village</span></span>, has a headline:
+“Gramercy Park Cellar Robbed.” I read
+down the article:</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“The superintendent, Fred Snood, checked
+the cellar storage cages, after a passing youth
+hinted to him that there had been a robbery.
+He found one cage open and a suitcase missing.
+Police theorize that the youth may have been
+the burglar, or an accomplice with a guilty
+conscience or a grudge, and they are hunting
+him for questioning. Mr. Snood described him
+as about sixteen years of age, medium height,
+with a long ‘ducktail’ haircut, and wearing a
+heavy black sweater. They are also checking
+second-hand stores for the stolen suitcase.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The burglar stole a suitcase with valuable
+papers and some silver and jewelry in it. But
+the guy they were hunting for—I read the paragraph
+over and feel green. That’s me. I get up
+<a name="Pg019" id="Pg019" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+and look in the mirror. In other circumstances
+I’d like being taken for sixteen instead of fourteen,
+which I am. I smooth my hair and squint
+at the back of it. The ducktail is fine.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Slowly I peel off my black sweater, which I
+wear practically all the time, and stuff it in my
+bottom drawer, under my bathing suit. But if I
+want to walk around the street without worrying
+about every cop, I’ll have to do more than
+that. I put on a shirt and necktie and suit jacket
+and stick a cap on my head. I head uptown on
+the subway. At Sixty-eighth Street I get off and
+find a barbershop.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Butch cut,” I tell the guy.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That’s right. I’ll trim you nice and neat. Get
+rid of all this stuff.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">And while he chatters on like an idiot, I have
+to watch three months’ work go snip, snip on
+the floor. Then I have to pay for it. At home I
+get the same routine. Pop looks at my Ivy-League
+disguise and says, “Why, you may look
+positively human some day!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Two days later I find out I could’ve kept my
+hair. <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Town and Village</span></span> has a new story: “Nab
+Cellar Thief Returning Loot. ‘Just A Bet,’
+He Says.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The story is pretty interesting. The guy I met
+<a name="Pg020" id="Pg020" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+in the cellar is named Tom Ransom, and he is
+nineteen and just sort of floating around in the
+city. He doesn’t seem to have any family. The
+police kept a detective watching Number Forty-six,
+and pretty soon they see Tom walking along
+with the stolen suitcase. He drops it inside the
+delivery entrance and walks on, but the cop
+collars him. I suppose if it hadn’t been for me
+shooting my big mouth off to the super, the
+police wouldn’t have been watching the neighborhood.
+I feel sort of responsible.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The story in the paper goes on to say this guy
+was broke and hunting for a job, and some other
+guy dares him to snatch something out of a cellar
+and finally bets him ten dollars, so he does it.
+He gets out and finds the suitcase has a lot of
+stocks and legal papers and table silver in it,
+and he’s scared stiff. So he figures to drop it back
+where it came from. The paper says he’s held
+over to appear before some magistrate in
+Adolescent Court.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I wonder, would they send a guy to jail for
+that? Or if they turn him loose, what does he do?
+It must be lousy to be in this city without any
+family or friends.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At that point I get the idea I’ll write him a
+letter. After all, Cat and I sort of got him into
+<a name="Pg021" id="Pg021" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+the soup. So I look up the name of the magistrate
+and spend about half an hour poring through
+the phone book, under “New York, City of,” to
+get an address. I wonder whether to address him
+as “Tom” or “Mr. Ransom.” Finally I write:</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><br /><span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Dear Tom Ransom:</span></span></p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I am the kid you met in the cellar at Number
+Forty-six Gramercy, and I certainly thank you
+for unlocking that cage and getting my cat out.
+Cat is fine. I am sorry you got in trouble with
+the police. It sounds to me like you were only trying
+to return the stuff and do right. My father is
+a lawyer, if you would like one. I guess he’s
+pretty good. Or if you would like to write me
+anyway, here is my address: 150 East 22 St. I read
+in the paper that your family don’t live in New
+York, which is why I thought you might like
+someone to write to.</span></span></p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-hi" style="text-align: right"><span style="font-style: italic">Yours sincerely,</span></span><br />
+<span class="tei tei-hi" style="text-align: right"><span style="font-style: italic">Dave Mitchell</span></span><br />
+<br /></p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Now that I’m a free citizen again, I dig out my
+black sweater, look disgustedly at the butch haircut,
+and go out to mail my letter.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Later on I get into a stickball game again on
+<a name="Pg022" id="Pg022" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+Twenty-first Street. Cat comes along and sits up
+high on a stoop across the street, where he can
+watch the ball game and the tame dogs being led
+by on their leashes. That big brain, the super of
+Forty-six, is standing by the delivery entrance,
+looking sour as usual.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Got any burglars in your basement these
+days?” I yell to him while I’m jogging around the
+bases on a long hit.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He looks at me and my short haircut and
+scratches his own bald egg. “Where’d I see you?”
+he asks suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh—Cat and I, we get around,” I say.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg023" id="Pg023" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc5" id="toc5"></a>
+  <a name="pdf6" id="pdf6"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">3</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image03.png" width="556" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave, Cat, and Nick running on the beach." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick and I have been friends pretty much since I
+can remember. Our mothers used to trade turns
+fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives
+around the corner on Third Avenue, upstairs
+over the grocery store his old man runs. If anyone
+asked me <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">how come</span></span> we’re friends, I couldn’t
+exactly say. We’re just together most of the time.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Neither of us is a real whiz at sports, but we
+used to roller-skate and play a little king and
+<a name="Pg024" id="Pg024" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+stickball and ride our bikes around exploring.
+One time when we were about ten, we rode way
+over to Twelfth Avenue at the Hudson River,
+where the <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Queen Mary</span></span> docks. This is about the
+only time I remember my mom getting really
+angry. She said Pop ought to take my bike away
+from me, and he did, but only for about a week.
+Nick and I still ride bikes a lot. Otherwise we
+sit and do our homework or play chess and listen
+to records.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Another reason we’re friends is because of this
+creepy little kid who lived down toward the
+corner, between me and Nick. He always tagged
+along, wanting to play with us, and of course in
+the end he always fouled up the game or fell
+down and started to cry. Then his big brother
+came rushing out, usually with another big guy
+along, and they figured they were entitled to
+beat us up for hurting little Joey.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">After a while it looked to me as if Joey just
+worked as a lookout, and the minute me or Nick
+showed up on the block, one of the big guys came
+to run us off. They did little things like throwing
+sticks into our bike spokes and pretending it was
+just a joke. Nick and I used to plot all kinds of
+ways to get even with them, but in the end we
+<a name="Pg025" id="Pg025" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+mostly decided it was easier to walk around the
+block the long way to get to each other’s houses.
+I’m not much on fighting, and neither is Nick—’specially
+not with guys bigger than us.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Summers, up in the country, the kids seem to
+be all the time wrestling and punching, half for
+fun and half not. If I walk past some strange kid
+my age up there, he almost always tries to get me
+into a fight. I don’t get it. Maybe it’s because
+sidewalks are uncomfortable for fighting, but we
+just don’t do much scrapping for fun. The only
+couple of fights I ever had, I was real mad.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Come spring, Nick and I got restless hanging
+around the street, with nothing to do but stickball
+and baiting the super at Forty-six. It was
+so easy to get him sore, it wasn’t even fun. Cat
+stayed out of that basement, but I wanted to get
+him really out in the open, where he could chase
+squirrels or something.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One day we rode our bikes up to Central Park.
+I put Cat in a wicker hamper and tied it on the
+back of my bike. He meowed a lot, and people
+on the street would look at me and then do a
+double take when they heard him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We got up to Central Park and into a place
+they call The Horseshoe, because the parking
+<a name="Pg026" id="Pg026" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+area is that shape. I opened the lid a crack to look
+at Cat. He hissed at me, the first time he ever
+did. I looked around and thought, Gee, if I let
+him loose, he could go anywhere, even over into
+the woods, and I might never catch him. There
+were a lot of hoody looking kids around, and I
+could see if I ever left my bike a second to chase
+Cat, they’d snatch the bike. So I didn’t let Cat
+out, and I wolfed my sandwich and we went
+home. Nick was pretty disgusted.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Then we hit a hot Saturday, the first one in
+May, and I get an idea. I find Nick and say,
+“Let’s put Cat and some sandwiches in the basket
+and hop the subway out to Coney.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick says, “Why bring Cat? He wrecked the
+last expedition.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I like to take him places, and this won’t be
+like Central Park. No one’s at Coney this time of
+year. He can chase around on the beach and hunt
+sand crabs.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Why do I have to have a nut for a friend?”
+Nick moans. “Well, anyway, I’m keeping my
+sandwich in my pocket, not in any old cat
+basket.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Who cares where you keep your crumby
+sandwich?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg027" id="Pg027" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So we went. Lots of people might think Coney
+Island is ugly, with all the junky-looking booths
+and billboards. But when you turn your back on
+them and look out at the ocean, it’s the same
+ocean as on a deserted beach. I kick off my shoes
+and stand with my feet in the ice water and the
+sun hot on my chest. Looking out at the horizon
+with its few ships and some sea gulls and planes
+overhead, I think: It’s mine, all mine. I could go
+anywhere in the world, I could. Maybe I will.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick throws water down my neck. He only
+understands infinity on math papers. I let Cat
+out of the basket and strip off my splashed shirt
+and chase Nick along the edge of the water. No
+need to worry about Cat. He chases right along
+with us, and every time a wave catches his feet
+he hisses and hightails it up the beach. Then he
+rolls himself in the hot, dry sand and gets up
+and shakes. There are a few other groups of
+people dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog
+comes and sniffs Cat and gets a right and a left
+scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home.
+Cat discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around
+in the sand and wrestle, and after a while we get
+hungry, so we go back where we left the basket.
+Cat is content to let me carry him.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg028" id="Pg028" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Three girls are having a picnic right near our
+basket. One yells to the others, “Hey, look! The
+guy went swimming with his cat!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat jumps down, turns his back on them, and
+humps himself around on my sweater until he is
+settled for a nap. I turn my back on the girls,
+too, and look out at the ocean.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Still, it’s not the same as it would have been
+a year ago. Then Nick and I would either have
+moved away from the girls or thrown sand at
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We just sit and eat our sandwiches. Nick looks
+over at them pretty often and whispers to me
+how old do I think they are. I can’t tell about
+girls. Some of the ones in our class at school
+look about twenty-five, but then you see mothers
+pushing baby carriages on the street who look
+about fifteen.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One of the girls catches Nick’s eye and giggles.
+“Hi, there, whatcha watching?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I’m a bird watcher,” says Nick. “Seen any
+birds?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The girls drift over our way. The one that
+spoke first is a redhead. The one who seems to be
+the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt
+and hair piled up high in a bird’s nest. Maybe
+<a name="Pg029" id="Pg029" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+that’s what started Nick bird-watching. The
+third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with brown
+hair, I guess.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You want a couple of cupcakes? You can have
+mine. I’m going on a diet,” says the blonde.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Thanks,” says Nick. “I was thinking of going
+after some cokes.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Why waste time thinking? You might hurt
+your head,” says the redhead.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The third girl bends down and strokes Cat
+between the ears very gently. She says, “What’s
+his name?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I explain to her about why Cat is Cat. She sits
+down and picks up a piece of seaweed to dangle
+over his nose. Cat makes a couple of sleepy
+swipes at it and then stretches luxuriously while
+she strokes him. The other kids get to talking,
+and we tell each other our names and where we
+go to school and all that stuff.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Then Nick gets back on the subject of going
+for cokes. I don’t really want to stay there alone
+with the girls, so I say I’ll go. I tell Nick to watch
+Cat, and the girl who is petting him says, “Don’t
+worry, I won’t let him run away.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s a good thing she’s there, because by the
+time I get back with the cokes, which no one
+<a name="Pg030" id="Pg030" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+offers to pay me back for, Nick and the other
+two girls are halfway down the beach. Mary—that’s
+her name—says, “I never saw a cat at the
+beach before, but he seems to like it. Where’d
+you get him?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He’s a stray. I got him from an old lady who’s
+sort of a nut about cats. Come on, I’ll see if I can
+get him to chase waves for you. He was doing it
+earlier.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We are running along in the waves when the
+other kids come back. The big blonde kicks up
+water at me and yells, “Race you!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I chase, and just as I’m going to catch up,
+she stops short so I crash into her and we both
+fall down. This seems to be what she had in
+mind, but I bet the other kids are watching and
+I feel silly. I roll away and get up and go back to
+Cat.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">While we drink cokes the blonde and the
+redhead say they want to go to the movies.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What’s on?” Nick asks.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“There’s a Sinatra thing at the neighborhood,”
+the blonde tells him, and he looks interested.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I can’t,” I say. “I’ve got Cat. Besides, it’s too
+late. Mom’d think I’d fallen into the subway.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg031" id="Pg031" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I told you that cat was a mistake,” says Nick.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Put him in the basket and call your mother
+and tell her your watch stopped,” says the redhead.
+She comes over and trickles sand down my
+neck. “Come on, it’d be fun. We don’t have to
+sit in the kids’ section. We all look sixteen.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Nah, I can’t.” I get up and shake the sand
+out.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick looks disgusted, but he doesn’t want to
+stay alone. He says to the blonde, “Write me
+down your phone number, and we’ll do it another
+day when this nut hasn’t got his cat along.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She writes down the phone number, and the
+redhead pouts because I’m not asking for hers.
+The girls get ready to leave, and Mary pats Cat
+good-bye and waves to me. She says, “Bring him
+again. He’s nice.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We get on the subway and Cat meows crossly
+at being shut in his basket. Nick pokes the basket
+with his toes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Shut up, nuisance,” he says.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg032" id="Pg032" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc7" id="toc7"></a>
+  <a name="pdf8" id="pdf8"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">4</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image04.png" width="402" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave and Nick fighting on the ground." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I actually get a letter back from Tom Ransom.
+It says: “Thanks for your letter. The Youth
+Board got me a room in the Y on Twenty-third
+Street. Maybe I’ll come say Hello some day.
+They’re going to help me get a job this summer,
+so I don’t need a lawyer. Thanks anyway. Meow
+to Cat. Best, Tom.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go over to Nick’s house to show him the
+letter. I’d told him about Tom getting Cat out
+<a name="Pg033" id="Pg033" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+of the cellar and getting arrested, but Nick always
+acted like he didn’t really believe it. So
+when he sees the letter, he has to admit Cat and
+I really got into something. Not everyone gets
+letters from guys who have been arrested.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One thing about Nick sort of gripes me. He
+has to think up all the plans. Anything I’ve done
+that he doesn’t know about, he downgrades.
+Also, I always have to go to <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">his</span></span> house. He never
+comes to mine, except once in a coon’s age when
+I have a new record I won’t bring to his house
+because his machine stinks and he never buys a
+new needle.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s not that I don’t like his house. His mom is
+pretty nice, and boy, can she cook! Just an
+ordinary Saturday for lunch she makes pizza or
+real good spaghetti, and she has homemade
+cookies and nut cake sitting around after school.
+She also talks and waves her arms and shouts
+orders at us kids, but all good-natured-like, so we
+just kid her along and go on with what we’re
+doing.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She’s about the opposite of my mom. Pop does
+the shouting in our house, and except for the one
+hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue,
+Mom doesn’t even tell me what to do much.
+<a name="Pg034" id="Pg034" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+She’s quiet, and pretty often she doesn’t feel
+good, so maybe I think more than most kids that
+I ought to do things her way without being told.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Also, my mom is always home and always
+ready to listen if you got something griping you,
+like when a teacher blames you for something
+you didn’t do. Some kids I know, they have to
+phone a string of places to find their mother, and
+then she scolds them for interrupting her.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good
+meals for holidays, but she doesn’t go at it all
+the time, the way Nick’s mother does. So maybe
+Nick doesn’t come to my house because we
+haven’t got all that good stuff sitting around. I
+don’t think that’s it, really, though. He just likes
+to be boss.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One day, a couple of weeks after we went to
+Coney, he does come along with me. We pick up
+a couple of cokes and pears at his pop’s store.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps
+down and rubs between my legs and goes up the
+stairs ahead of us.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“See? He knows when school gets out then it’s
+time to eat. That’s why I like to come home,” I
+tell Nick.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We say “Hi” to Mom, and I get out the cat
+<a name="Pg035" id="Pg035" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+food while Nick opens his coke. “You know
+those girls we ran into over on Coney Island?”
+he says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, I got the blonde’s phone number, so
+Sunday when I was hacking around with nothing
+to do, I called her up.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah? What for?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You stupid or something? To talk. So she
+yacked away a good while, and finally I asked
+her why didn’t she come over next Saturday, we
+could go to a movie or something.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah.” I was working on my pear, a very
+juicy one.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That all you can say? So she says, well, she
+might, if she can get her girl friend to come too,
+but she doesn’t want to come alone, and her
+mother wouldn’t let her anyway.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Which one?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Which one what?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Which girl friend?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh. You remember, the other one we were
+kidding around with at the beach, the redhead.
+So I said, O.K., I’d see if I could get you to come
+too. I said I’d call her back.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hmp. I don’t know.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg036" id="Pg036" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What d’you mean, you don’t know?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How do I know if I like that girl? I hardly
+even <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">talked</span></span> to her. Anyway, it sounds like a date.
+I don’t want a date. If they just happen to come
+over, I guess it’s all right.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So shall I tell them it’s O.K. for Saturday?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hmm.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s nice you learned a new word.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Do I have to pay for the girl at the movies?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Cheapskate. Maybe if you just stand around
+saying ‘Hmm,’ she’ll buy her own. O.K.?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K. But this whole thing is your idea, and
+if it stinks it’s going to be your fault.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Boy, what an enthusiast! Come on, let’s play
+a record and do the math.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick is better at math than I am, so I agree.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Saturday morning at ten o’clock Nick turns
+up at my house in a white shirt and slicked-down
+hair. Pop whistles. “On Saturday, yet! You got
+a girl or something?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yessir!” says Nick, and he gives my T-shirt a
+dirty look. I go put a sweater over it and run
+a comb through my hair, but I’m hanged if I’ll
+go out looking like this is a big deal.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“We’re going to a movie down at the Academy,”
+I tell my family.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What’s there?” Pop asks.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg037" id="Pg037" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“A new horror show,” says Nick. “And an old
+Disney.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Is it really a new horror show?” I ask Nick,
+because I think I’ve seen every one that’s been
+in town.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yup. Just opened. <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">The Gold Bug.</span></span> Some guy
+wrote it—I mean in a book once—but it’s supposed
+to be great. Make the girls squeal anyway.
+I love that.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hmm.” I just like horror shows anyway,
+whether girls squeal or not.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You’ll be the life of the party with that
+‘Hmm’ routine.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">your</span></span> party.” I shrug.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, you could at least <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">try</span></span>.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We hang around the subway kiosk on Fourteenth
+Street, where Nick said he’d meet them.
+After half an hour they finally show up.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s nice and sunny, and we see a crowd
+bunched up over in Union Square, so we wander
+over. A shaggy-haired, bearded character is making
+a speech all about “They,” the bad guys. A
+lot of sleepy bums are sitting around letting the
+speech roll off their ears.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What is he, a nut or something?” the blonde
+asks.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“A Commie, maybe,” I say. “They’re always
+<a name="Pg038" id="Pg038" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+giving speeches down here. Willie Sutton, the
+bank robber, used to sit down here and listen,
+too. That’s where somebody put the finger on
+him.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The girls look at each other and laugh like
+crazy, as if I’d said something real funny. I catch
+Nick’s eye and glare. O.K., I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">tried</span></span>. After this I’ll
+stick to “Hmm.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A beard who is listening to the speech turns
+and glares at us and says, “Shush!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Aw, go shave yourself!” says Nick, and the
+girls go off in more hoots. Nick starts herding
+them toward Fourteenth Street, and I follow
+along.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At the Academy Nick goes up to the ticket
+window, and the girls immediately fade out to
+go read the posters and snicker together. I can
+see they’re not figuring to pay for any tickets, so
+I cough up for two.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick and I try to saunter up to the balcony the
+way we always do, but the girls are giggling and
+dropping their popcorn, so the matron spots us
+and motions. “Down here!” She flashes her light
+in our eyes, and I feel like a convict while we get
+packed in with all the kids in the under-sixteen
+section.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg039" id="Pg039" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick goes in first, then the blonde, then the
+redhead and me. The minute things start getting
+scary, she tries to grab me, but I stick my hands
+in my pockets and say, “Aw, it’s just a picture.”
+She looks disgusted.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The next scary bit, she tries to hang onto her
+girl friend, but the blonde is already glued onto
+Nick. Redhead lets out a loud sigh, and I wish I
+hadn’t ever got into this deal. I can’t even enjoy
+the picture.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We suffer through the two pictures. The little
+kids make such a racket you can hardly hear,
+and the matron keeps shining the light in your
+eyes so you can’t see. She shines it on the blonde,
+who is practically sitting in Nick’s lap, and hisses
+at her to get back. I’m not going to do this again,
+ever.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go out and Nick says, “Let’s have a coke.”
+He’s walking along with the blonde, and instead
+of walking beside me the redhead tries to catch
+hold of his other arm. This sort of burns me up.
+I mean, I don’t really <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">like</span></span> her, but I paid for her
+and everything.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nick shakes her off and calls over his shoulder
+to me, “Come on, chicken, pull your own
+weight!”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg040" id="Pg040" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The girls laugh, on cue as usual, and I begin
+getting really sore. Nick got me into this. The
+least he can do is shut up.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We walk into a soda bar, and I slap down
+thirty cents and say, “Two cokes, please.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, hey! The last of the big spenders!” says
+Nick. More laughter. I’d just as soon sock him
+right now, but I pick up my money and say,
+“O.K., wise guy, treat’s on you.” Nick shrugs and
+tosses down a buck as if he had hundreds of
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The two girls drink their cokes and talk across
+Nick. I finish mine in two or three gulps, and
+finally we can walk them to the subway. Nick is
+gabbing away about how he’ll come out to
+Coney one weekend, and I’m standing there
+with my hands in my pockets.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Goo’bye, Bashful!” coos the redhead to me,
+and the two of them disappear, cackling, down
+the steps. I start across Fourteenth Street as soon
+as the light changes, without bothering to look
+if Nick is coming. He can go rot.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Along Union Square he’s beside me, acting
+as if everything is peachy fine dandy. “That was
+a great show. Pretty good fun, huh?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg041" id="Pg041" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I just keep walking.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You sore or something?” he asks, as if he
+didn’t know.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I keep on walking.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K., be sore!” he snaps. Then he breaks
+into a falsetto: “Goo’bye, Bashful!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I let him have it before he’s hardly got his
+mouth closed. He hits me back in the stomach
+and hooks one of his ankles around mine so we
+both fall down. It goes from bad to worse. He
+gets me by the hair and bangs my head on the
+sidewalk, so I twist and bite his hand. We’re
+gouging and scratching and biting and kicking,
+because we’re both so mad we can hardly see,
+and anyway no one ever taught us those Queensberry
+rules. There’s no point in going into all
+the gory details. Finally two guys haul us apart.
+I have hold of Nick’s shirt and it rips. Good.
+He’s half crying, and he twists away from the
+guy that grabbed him and screams some things
+at me before darting across the avenue.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’m standing panting and sobbing, and the
+guy holding me says, “You oughta be ashamed.
+Now go on home.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Aw, you and your big mouth,” I say, still mad
+<a name="Pg042" id="Pg042" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+enough to feel reckless. He throws a fake punch,
+but he’s not really interested. He goes his way,
+and I go mine.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I must look pretty bad because a lot of people
+on the street shake their heads at me. I walk in
+the door at home, expecting the worst, but fortunately
+Mom is out. Pop just whistles through
+his teeth.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That must have been quite a horror picture!”
+he says.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg043" id="Pg043" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc9" id="toc9"></a>
+  <a name="pdf10" id="pdf10"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">5</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image05.png" width="506" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave and Tom lunching in meadow above river." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">By the next weekend I no longer look like a
+fugitive from a riot. All week in school Nick and
+I get asked whether we got hit by a swinging
+door; then the fellows notice the two of us aren’t
+speaking to each other, and they sort of sheer
+off the subject. Come Saturday, I sit on the stoop
+and wonder, what now? There are plenty of
+other kids in school I like, but they mostly live
+over in the project—Stuyvesant Town, that is.
+<a name="Pg044" id="Pg044" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+I’ve never bothered to hunt them up weekends
+because Nick’s so much nearer.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Summer is coming on, though, and I’ve got to
+have someone to hang around with. This is the
+last Saturday before Memorial Day. Getting
+time for beaches and stuff. I suppose Nick and
+I might get together again, but not if he’s going
+to be nuts about girls all the time.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A guy stops in front of the stoop, and Cat half
+opens his eyes in the sun and squints at him.
+The guy says, “You Dave Mitchell?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh? Yeah.” I look up, surprised. I don’t
+exactly recognize the guy, never having seen him
+in a clear light before. But from the voice I know
+it’s Tom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh, hi!” I say. “Here’s Cat. He’s pretty handsome
+in daylight.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah, he looks all right, but what happened
+to you?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Me and a friend of mine got in a fight.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“With some other guys or what?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Nah. We had a fight with each other.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Um, that’s bad.” Tom sits down and has
+sense enough to see there isn’t anymore to say
+on that subject. “I start work Memorial Day,
+when the beaches open. Working in a filling
+<a name="Pg045" id="Pg045" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+station on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Gee, that’s a long way off. You going to live
+over there?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah, they’re going to get me a room in a Y
+in Brooklyn.” Tom stretches restlessly and goes
+on: “I suppose you get sick of school and all,
+but it’s rotten having nothing to do. I’d be ready
+to go nuts if I didn’t get a job. I can’t wait to
+start.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I think of asking him doesn’t he have a home
+or something to go back to, but somehow I don’t
+like to.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Like today,” Tom says. “I’d like to go somewhere.
+Do something. Got any ideas?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Um. I was sort of trying to think up something
+myself. Movies?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom shakes himself. “No. I want to walk, or
+run, or throw something.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“There’s a big park—sort of a woods—up near
+the Bronx. A kid told me about it. He said he
+found an Indian arrowhead there, but I bet he
+didn’t. Inwood Park, it’s called.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How do you get there?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Subway, I guess.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Let’s go!” Tom stands up and wriggles his
+shoulders like he’s Superman ready to take off.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg046" id="Pg046" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K. Wait a minute. I’ll go tell Mom. Should
+I get some sandwiches?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom looks surprised. “Sure, fine, if she doesn’t
+mind.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’m not worried about getting Mom to make
+sandwiches because she always likes to fix a little
+food for me. The thing is, ever since my fight
+with Nick, she’s been clucking around me like
+the mother hen. Maybe she figures I got in some
+gang fight, so she keeps asking me where I’m
+going and who with. Also, I guess she noticed I
+don’t go to Nick’s after school anymore. I come
+right home. So she asks me do I feel all right.
+You can’t win. Right now, I can see she’s going
+to begin asking who is Tom and where did I
+meet him. It occurs to me there’s an easy way
+to take care of this.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I turn around to Tom again. “Say, how
+about you come up and I’ll introduce you to
+Mom? Then she won’t start asking me a lot of
+questions.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You mean I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">look</span></span> respectable, at least?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Sure.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go up to the apartment, and Mom asks if
+we’d like some cold drinks or something. I tell
+her I ran into Tom when he helped me hunt for
+<a name="Pg047" id="Pg047" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+Cat around Gramercy Park, which is almost true,
+and that he sometimes plays stickball with us,
+which isn’t really true but it could be. Mom gets
+us some orangeade. She usually keeps something
+like that in the icebox in summer, because she
+thinks cokes are bad for you.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Do you live around here?” she asks Tom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No, ma’am,” says Tom firmly. “I live at
+the Y. I’ve got a summer job in a filling station
+over in Brooklyn, starting right after Memorial
+Day.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That’s fine,” Mom says. “I wish Davey could
+get a job. He gets so restless with nothing to do
+in the summer.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Aw, Mom, forget it! You got to fill in about
+six-hundred working papers if you’re under
+sixteen.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Listen, Mom, what I came up for—we
+thought we’d make some sandwiches and go up
+to Inwood Park.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Inwood? Where’s that?” So I explain to her
+about the Indian arrowheads, and we get out
+the classified phone book and look at the subway
+map, which shows there’s an IND train that goes
+right to it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I get sort of restless myself, with nothing to
+<a name="Pg048" id="Pg048" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+do,” says Tom. “We just figured we’d do a little
+exploring around in the woods and get some
+exercise.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Why, yes, that seems like a good idea.” Mom
+looks at him and nods. She seems to have decided
+he’s reliable, as well as respectable.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I see there’s some leftover cold spaghetti in
+the icebox, and I ask Mom to put it in sandwiches.
+She thinks I’m cracked, but I did this
+once before, and it’s good, ’specially if there’s
+plenty of meat and sauce on the spaghetti. We
+take along a bag of cherries, too.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Thanks, Mom. Bye. I’ll be back before
+supper.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Take care,” she says. “No fights.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Don’t worry. We’ll stay out of fights,” says
+Tom quite seriously.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go down the stairs, and Tom says, “Your
+mother is really nice.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’m sort of surprised—kids don’t usually say
+much about each other’s parents. “Yeah, Mom’s
+O.K. I guess she worries about me and Pop a
+lot.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It must be pretty nice to have your mother
+at home,” he says.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg049" id="Pg049" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">That kind of jolts me, too. I wonder where
+his mother and father are, whether they’re dead
+or something; but again, I don’t quite want to
+ask. Tom isn’t an easy guy to ask questions. He’s
+sort of like an island, by himself in the ocean.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We walk down to Fourteenth Street and over
+to Eighth Avenue, about twelve blocks; after all,
+exercise is what we want. The IND trains are
+fast, and it only takes about half an hour to get
+up to Inwood, at 206th Street. The park is right
+close, and it is real woods, although there are
+paved walks around through it. We push uphill
+and get in a grassy meadow, where you can see
+out over the Hudson River to the Palisades in
+Jersey. It’s good and hot, and we flop in the sun.
+There aren’t many other people around, which
+is rare in New York.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Let’s eat lunch,” says Tom. “Then we can
+go hunting arrowheads and not have to carry it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He agrees the spaghetti sandwich is a great
+invention.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I wish the weather would stay like this more
+of the year—good and sweaty hot in the middle
+of the day, so you feel like going swimming, but
+cool enough to sleep at night. We lie in the sun
+<a name="Pg050" id="Pg050" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+awhile after lunch and agree that it’s too bad
+there isn’t an ocean within jumping-in distance.
+But there isn’t, and flies are biting the backs of
+our necks, so we get up and start exploring.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We find a few places that you might conceivably
+call caves, but they’ve been well picked
+over for arrowheads, if there ever were any.
+That’s the trouble in the city: anytime you have
+an idea, you find out a million other people had
+the same idea first. Along in mid-afternoon, we
+drift down toward the subway and get cokes
+and ice cream before we start back.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t really feel like going home yet, so I
+think a minute and study the subway map inside
+the car. “Hey, as long as we’re on the subway
+anyway, we could go on down to Cortlandt
+Street to the Army-Navy surplus store. I got to
+get a knapsack before summer.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K.” Tom shrugs. He’s staring out the
+window and doesn’t seem to care where he goes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I got a great first-aid survival kit there. Disinfectant
+and burn ointment and bug dope and
+bandages, in a khaki metal box that’s waterproof,
+and it was only sixty-five cents.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hmm. Just what I need for survival on the
+<a name="Pg051" id="Pg051" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+sidewalks of New York,” says Tom. I guess he’s
+kidding, in a sour sort of way. If you haven’t
+got a family around, though, survival must take
+more than a sixty-five-cent kit.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The store is a little way from the nearest subway
+stop, and we walk along not saying much.
+Tom looks alive when he gets into the store,
+though, because it really is a great place. They’ve
+got arctic explorers’ suits and old hand grenades
+and shells and all kinds of rifles, as well as some
+really cheap, useful clothing. They don’t mind
+how long you mosey around. In the end I buy
+a belt pack and canteen, and Tom picks up some
+skivvy shirts and socks that are only ten cents
+each. They’re secondhand, I guess, but they look
+all right.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We walk over to the East Side subway, which
+is only a few blocks away down here because the
+island gets so narrow. Tom says he’s never seen
+Wall Street, where all the tycoons grind their
+money machines. The place is practically deserted
+now, being late Saturday afternoon, and
+it’s like walking through an empty cathedral.
+You can make echoes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We take the subway, and Tom walks along
+<a name="Pg052" id="Pg052" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+home with me. It seems too bad the day’s over.
+It was a pretty good day, after all.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So long, kid,” Tom says. “I’ll send you a card
+from Beautiful Brooklyn!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So long.” I wave, and he starts off. I wish he
+didn’t have to go live in Brooklyn.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg053" id="Pg053" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc11" id="toc11"></a>
+  <a name="pdf12" id="pdf12"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">6</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image06.png" width="459" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave wheeling his bike across Belt Parkway." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">You can’t really stay sore at a guy you’ve known
+all your life, especially if he lives right around
+the corner and goes to the same school. Anyhow,
+one hot Saturday morning Nick turns up
+at my house as if nothing had ever happened
+and says do I want to go swimming, because the
+Twenty-third Street pool’s open weekends now.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">After that we go back to playing ball on the
+street in the evenings and swimming sometimes
+<a name="Pg054" id="Pg054" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+on weekends. One Saturday his mother tells me
+he went to Coney Island. He didn’t ask me to go
+along, which is just as well, because I wouldn’t
+have. I don’t hang around his house after school
+much anymore, either. School lets out, and
+there’s the Fourth of July weekend, when we
+go up to Connecticut, and pretty soon after that
+Nick goes off to a camp his church runs. Pop
+asks me if I want to go to a camp a few weeks,
+but I don’t. Life is pretty slow at home, but I
+don’t feel like all that organization.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I think Tom must have forgotten about me
+and found a gang his own age when I get a
+postcard from him: “Dear Dave, The guy I work
+for is a creep, and all the guys who buy gas
+from him are creeps, so it’s great to be alive in
+Beautiful Brooklyn! Wish you were here, but
+you’re lucky you’re not. Best, Tom.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s hard to figure what he means when he
+says a thing. However, I got nothing to do, so
+I might as well go see. He said he was going to
+work in a filling station on the Belt Parkway,
+and there can’t be a million of them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t say anything too exact to Mom about
+where I’m going, because she gets worried about
+me going too far, and besides I don’t really know
+where I’m going.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg055" id="Pg055" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Brooklyn, what a layout. It’s not like Manhattan,
+which runs pretty regularly north and
+south, with decent square blocks. You could lose
+a million friends in Brooklyn, with the streets
+all running in circles and angles, and the people
+all giving you cockeyed directions. What with
+no bikes allowed on parkways, and skirting
+around crumby looking neighborhoods, it takes
+me at least a week of expeditions to find the
+right part of the Belt Parkway to start checking
+the filling stations.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I wheel my bike across the parkway, but even
+so some cop yells at me. You’d think a cop could
+find a crime to get busy with.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">On a real sticky day in July I wheel across
+to a station at Thirty-fourth Street, and nobody
+yells at me, and I go over to the air pump and
+fiddle with my tires. A car pulls out after it gets
+gas, and there’s Tom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hi!” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom half frowns and quick looks over his
+shoulder to see if his boss is around, I guess,
+and then comes over to the air pump.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How’d you get way out here?” he says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“On the bike. I got your postcard, and I
+figured I could find the filling station.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He relaxes and grins. I feel better. He says,
+<a name="Pg056" id="Pg056" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+“You’re a crazy kid. How’s Cat?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But just then the boss has to come steaming
+up. “What d’ya want, kid? No bikes allowed on
+the parkway.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I start to say I’m just getting air, but Tom
+speaks up. “It’s all right. I know him.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah? I told you, keep kids out of here!” The
+guy manages to suggest that kids Tom knows
+are probably worse than any other kind. He
+motions me off like a stray dog. I don’t want to
+get Tom in any trouble, so I get going. At the
+edge of the parkway I wave. “So long. Write me
+another postcard.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom raises a hand briefly, but his face looks
+closed, like nothing was going to get in or out.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I pedal slowly and hotly back through the
+tangle of Brooklyn and figure, well, that’s a
+week’s research wasted. I still don’t know where
+Tom lives, so I don’t know how I can get a hold
+of him again. Anyway, how do I know he wants
+to be bothered with me? He looked pretty fed
+up with everything.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So long as I got nothing else to do, the next
+week I figure I’ll get public-spirited at home: I
+paint the kitchen for Mom, which isn’t so bad,
+but moving all those silly dishes and pots and
+<a name="Pg057" id="Pg057" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+scrumy little spice cans can drive you wild. I
+only break one good vase and a bottle of salad
+oil. Salad oil and broken glass are great. In the
+afternoons I go to the swimming pool and learn
+to do a jackknife and a backflip, so Pop will think
+I am growing up to be a Real American Boy.
+Also, you practically have to learn to dive so you
+can use the diving pool, because the swimming
+pool is so jam-packed with screaming sardines
+you can’t move in it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Evenings Cat and I play records, or we go to
+see Aunt Kate and drink iced tea. One weekend
+my real aunt comes to visit and sleeps in my
+room, so I go to stay with Aunt Kate, and I pretty
+near turn into cottage cheese.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’ve about settled into this dull routine when
+Mom surprises me by handing me a postcard
+one morning. It’s from Tom: “Day off next
+Tuesday. If you feel like it, meet me near the
+aquarium at Coney Island about nine in the
+morning, before it’s crowded.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So that week drags by till Tuesday, and there
+I am at Coney Island bright and early. Tom is
+easy enough to find, pacing up and down the
+boardwalk like a tiger. We say “Hi” and so forth,
+and I’m all ready to take a run for the water,
+<a name="Pg058" id="Pg058" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+but he keeps snapping his fingers and looking
+up and down the boardwalk.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Finally he says, “There’s a girl I used to know
+pretty well. I didn’t see her for a while till last
+week, and we got in an argument, and I guess
+she’s mad. I wrote and asked her to come swimming
+today, but maybe she’s not coming.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I figure it out that I’m there as insurance
+against the girl not showing up, but I don’t
+mind. Anyhow, she does show up. It can’t have
+been too much of an argument they had, because
+she acts pretty friendly.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom introduces us. Her name is Hilda and a
+last name that’d be hard to spell—Swedish maybe—and
+she’s got a wide, laughing kind of mouth
+and a big coil of yellow hair in a bun on top of
+her head, and a mighty good figure. She asks me
+where I ran into Tom, and we tell her all about
+Cat and the cellar at Number Forty-six, and I
+tell them both about my Ivy-League haircut,
+which I had never explained to anyone before.
+They get a laugh out of that, and then she asks
+him about the filling-station job, and he says it
+stinks.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I figure they could get along without me for
+a while, so I go for a swim and wander down
+<a name="Pg059" id="Pg059" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+the beach a ways and eat a hot dog and swim
+some more. When I come back, I see Tom and
+Hilda just coming out of the water, so I join
+them. Hilda says, “Come have a coke. Tom says
+he’s got to try swimming to France just once
+more.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t know just what she means, but we go
+get cokes and come back and stretch out in the
+sun. She asks me do I want a smoke, and I say
+No. It’s nice to be asked, though. We watch
+Tom, who is swimming out past all the other
+people. I wish I’d gone with him. I say, “Lifeguard’s
+going to whistle him in pretty soon. He’s
+out past all the others.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Hilda lets out a breath and snorts, “He’ll always
+go till they blow the whistle. Always got
+to go farther than anyone else.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say
+anything.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Hilda goes on: “I used to wait tables in a
+restaurant down near Washington Square. Tom
+and a lot of the boys from NYU came in there.
+Sometimes the day before an exam he’d be
+sitting around for hours, buying people cokes
+and acting as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
+Some other times, for no reason anyone could
+<a name="Pg060" id="Pg060" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+tell, he’d sit in a corner and stir his coffee like
+he was going to make a hole in the cup.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Tom was at NYU?” I ask. I don’t know
+where I thought he’d been before he turned up
+in the cellar. I guess I never thought.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Sure,” Hilda says. “He was in the Washington
+Square College for about a year and a half.
+He lived in a dormitory uptown, but I used to
+see him in the restaurant, and then fairly often
+we had dates after I got off work. He has people
+out in the Midwest somewhere—a father and
+a stepmother. He was always sour and close-mouthed
+about them, even before he got thrown
+out of NYU. Now he won’t even write them.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This is a lot of information to take in all at
+once and leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
+The first one that comes into my head is this:
+“How come he got thrown out of NYU?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, it makes Tom so sore, he’s never
+really told me a plain, straight story. It’s all
+mixed up with his father. I think his father wrote
+him not to come home at Christmas vacation,
+for some reason. Tom and a couple of other boys
+who were left in the dormitory over the holidays
+got horsing around and had a water fight. The
+college got huffy and wrote the parents, telling
+<a name="Pg061" id="Pg061" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+them to pay up for damages. The other parents
+were pretty angry, but they stuck behind their
+kids and paid up. Tom just never heard from
+his father. Not a line.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That was when Tom began coming into the
+restaurant looking like thunder. The college began
+needling him for the water-fight damages, as
+well as second-semester tuition. He took his first
+exam, physics, and got an A on it. He’s pretty
+smart.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He still didn’t hear anything from home.
+He took the second exam, French, and thought
+he flunked it. That same afternoon he went into
+the office and told the dean he was quitting,
+and he packed his stuff and left. I didn’t see him
+again till a week ago. I didn’t know if he’d got
+sick of me, or left town, or what.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He says he wrote his father that he had a
+good job, and they could forget about him.
+Then he broke into that cellar on a dare or for
+kicks.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So here we are. What do we do next?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Hilda looks at me—me, age fourteen—as if I
+might actually know, and it’s kind of unnerving.
+Everyone I know, their life goes along in set
+periods: grade school, junior high, high school,
+<a name="Pg062" id="Pg062" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+college, and maybe getting married. They don’t
+really have to think what comes next.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I say cautiously, “My pop says a kid’s got to go
+to college now to get anywhere. Maybe he ought
+to go back to school.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You’re so right, Grandpa,” she says, and I
+would have felt silly, but she has a nice friendly
+laugh. “I wish I could persuade him to go back.
+But it’s not so easy. I guess he’s got to get a job
+and go to night school, if they’ll accept him. He
+won’t ask his father for money.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You two got my life figured out?” Tom has
+come up behind us while we were lying in the
+sand on our stomachs. “I just hope that sour
+grape at the filling station gives me a good recommendation
+so I can get another job. The way he
+watches his cash register, you’d think I was Al
+Capone.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We talk a bit, and then Hilda gets up and says
+she’s going to the ladies’ room. She doesn’t act
+coy about it, the way most girls do when they’re
+sitting with guys. She just leaves.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How do you like Hilda?” Tom asks, and
+again I’m sort of surprised, because he acts like
+he really wants my opinion.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“She’s nice,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah.” Tom suddenly glowers, as if I’d said
+<a name="Pg063" id="Pg063" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">didn’t</span></span> like her. “I don’t know why she wastes
+her time on me. I’ll never be any use to her.
+When her family hears about me, I’ll get the
+boot.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I could ask my pop. You know, I told you
+he’s a lawyer. Maybe he’d know how you go
+about getting back into college or getting a job
+or something.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom laughs, an unamused bark. “Maybe he’ll
+tell you to quit hanging around with jerks that
+get in trouble with the cops.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This is a point, all right. Come to think, I
+don’t know why I said I’d ask Pop anyway. I
+usually make a point of not letting his nose into
+my personal affairs, because I figure he’ll just
+start bossing me around. However, I certainly
+can’t do anything for Tom on my own.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I say, “I’ll chance it. The worst he ever does
+is talk. One time he made a federal case out of
+me buying a Belafonte record he didn’t like.
+Another time playing ball I cracked a window in
+a guy’s Cadillac, and Pop acted like he was going
+to sue the guy for owning a Cadillac. You just
+never know.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom says, “With my dad, you <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">know</span></span>: I’m
+wrong.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Hilda comes back just then. She snaps, “If he’s
+<a name="Pg064" id="Pg064" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+such a drug on the market, why don’t you shut
+up and forget about him?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K., O.K.,” says Tom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The beach is getting filled up by now, so we
+pull on our clothes and head for the subway.
+Tom and Hilda get off in Brooklyn, and I go
+on to Union Square.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">After dinner that night Mom is washing the
+dishes and Pop is reading the paper, and I figure
+I might as well dive in.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Pop,” I say, “there’s this guy I met at the
+beach. Well, really I mean I met him this spring
+when I was hunting for Cat, and this guy was
+in the cellar at Forty-six Gramercy, and he got
+caught and....”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Wha-a-a-t?” Pop puts down his paper and
+takes off his glasses. “Begin again.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I give it to him again, slow, and with
+explanations. I go through the whole business
+about the filling station and Hilda and NYU,
+and I’ll say one thing for Pop, when he finally
+settles down to listen, he listens. I get through,
+and he puts on his reading glasses and goes to
+look out the window.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Do you have this young man’s name and
+address, or is he just Tom from The Cellar?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg065" id="Pg065" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’d just got it from Tom when we were at the
+beach. He’s at a Y in Brooklyn, so I tell Pop this.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop says, “Tell him to call my office and come
+in to see me on his next day off. Meanwhile,
+I’ll bone up on City educational policies in regard
+to juvenile delinquents.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He says this perfectly straight, as if there’d be
+a book on the subject. Then he goes back to
+his newspaper, so I guess that closes the subject
+for now.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Thanks, Pop,” I say and start to go out.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Entirely welcome,” says Pop. As I get to the
+door, he adds, “If that cat of yours makes a
+practice of introducing you to the underworld
+in other people’s cellars, we can do without him.
+We probably can anyway.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg066" id="Pg066" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc13" id="toc13"></a>
+  <a name="pdf14" id="pdf14"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">7</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image07.png" width="496" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave talking with veterinarian while holding Cat." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat hadn’t got me into anymore cellars, but I
+can’t honestly say he’d been sitting home tending
+his knitting—not him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One hot morning I went to pick up the milk
+outside our door, and Cat was sleeping there on
+the mat. He didn’t even look up at me. After I
+scratched his ears and talked to him some, he
+got up and hobbled into the house.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I put him up on my bed, under the light, for
+<a name="Pg067" id="Pg067" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+inspection. One front claw was torn off, which
+is why he was limping, his left ear was ripped,
+and there was quite a bit of fur missing here and
+there. He curled up on my bed and didn’t move
+all day.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I came and looked at him every few hours and
+wondered if I ought to take him to a vet. But
+he seemed to be breathing all right, so I went
+away and thought about it some more. Come
+night, I pushed him gently to one side, wondering
+what I better do in the morning.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Well, in the morning Cat wakes up, stretches,
+yawns, and drops easily down off the bed and
+walks away. He still limps a little, but otherwise
+he acts like nothing had happened. He just
+wants to know what’s for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You better watch out. One day you’ll run
+into a cat that’s bigger and meaner than you,”
+I tell him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat continues to wait for breakfast. He is not
+impressed.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But I’m worried. Suppose some big old cat
+chews him up and he’s hurt too bad to get home?
+After breakfast I take him out in the backyard
+for a bit, and then I shut him in my room and
+go over to consult Aunt Kate.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg068" id="Pg068" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She sets me up with the usual iced tea and
+dish of cottage cheese.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I had breakfast already. What do I need with
+cottage cheese?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Eat it. It’s good for you.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I eat it, and then I start telling her about
+Cat. “He came home all chewed up night before
+last. I’m afraid some night he’s not going
+to make it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Right,” says Kate. She’s not very talky, but
+I’m sort of surprised. I expected she’d tell me
+to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself.
+She starts pulling Susan’s latest kittens out from
+under the sofa and sorting them out as if they
+were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow,
+one calico.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So what you going to do?” she shoots at me,
+shoveling the kittens back to Susan.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I—uh—I dunno. I thought maybe I ought to
+try to keep him in nights.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh. Don’t know much, do you?” she says.
+“Well, so I’ll tell you. Your Cat has probably
+fathered a few dozen kittens by now, and once
+a cat’s been out and mated, you can’t keep him
+in. You got to get him altered. Then he won’t
+want to go out so much.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg069" id="Pg069" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Altered?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Fixed. Castrated is the technical word. It’s
+a two-minute operation. Cost you three dollars.
+Take him to Speyer Hospital—big new building
+up on First Avenue.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You mean get him fixed so he’s not a real
+tomcat any more? The heck with that! I don’t
+want him turned into a fat old cushion cat!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He won’t be,” she says. “But if it makes you
+happier, let him get killed in a cat fight. He’s
+tough. He’ll last a year or two. Suit yourself.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Ah, you’re screwy! You and your cottage
+cheese!” Even as I say it I feel a little guilty.
+But I feel mad and mixed up, and I fling out
+the door. It’s the first time I ever left Kate’s mad.
+Usually I leave <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">our</span></span>  house mad and go to Kate.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Now I got nowhere to go. I walk along, cussing
+and fuming and kicking pebbles. I come to
+an air-conditioned movie and go up to the
+window.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The phony blonde in the booth looks at me
+and sneers, “You’re not sixteen. We don’t have
+a children’s section in this theater.” She doesn’t
+even ask. She just says it. It’s a great world. I go
+home. There’s no one there but Cat, so I turn
+the record player up full blast.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg070" id="Pg070" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop comes home in one of his unexpected
+fits of generosity that night and takes us to the
+movies. Cat behaves himself and stays around
+home and our cellar for a while, so I stop worrying.
+But it doesn’t last long.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As soon as his claw heals, he starts sashaying
+off again. One night I hear cats yowling out back
+and I go out with a bucket of water and douse
+them and bring Cat in. There’s a pretty little
+tiger cat, hardly more than a kitten, sitting on
+the fence licking herself, dry and unconcerned.
+Cat doesn’t speak to me for a couple of days.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One morning Butch, the janitor, comes up
+and knocks on our door. “You better come down
+and look at your cat. He got himself mighty
+chewed up. Most near dead.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I hurry down, and there is Cat sprawled in a
+corner on the cool cement floor. His mouth is
+half open, and his breath comes in wheezes, like
+he has asthma. I don’t know whether to pick him
+up or not.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Butch says, “Best let him lie.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I sit down beside him. After a bit his breath
+comes easier and he puts his head down. Then
+I see he’s got a long, deep claw gouge going from
+his shoulder down one leg. It’s half an inch
+<a name="Pg071" id="Pg071" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+open, and anyone can see it won’t heal by itself.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Butch shakes his head. “You gotta take him
+to the veteran, sure. That’s the cat doctor.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah,” I say, not correcting him. It’s not just
+the gash that’s worrying me. I remember what
+Aunt Kate said, and it gives me a cold feeling in
+the stomach: In the back-alley jungle he’d last
+a year, maybe two.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Looking at Cat, right now, I know she’s right.
+But Cat’s such a—well, such a <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">cat</span></span>. How can I
+take him to be whittled down?</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I tell Butch I’ll be back down in a few
+minutes, and I go upstairs. Mom’s humming and
+cleaning in the kitchen. I wander around and
+stare out the window awhile. Finally I go in the
+kitchen and stare into the icebox, and then I tell
+Mom about the gash in Cat’s leg.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She asks if I know a vet to take him to.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah, there’s Speyer. It’s a big, new hospital—good
+enough for people, even—with a view of
+the East River. The thing is, Mom, Cat keeps
+going off and fighting and getting hurt, and
+people tell me I ought to get him altered.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom wets the sponge and squeezes it out and
+polishes at the sink, and I wonder if she knows
+what I’m talking about because I don’t really
+<a name="Pg072" id="Pg072" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+know how to explain it any better.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She wrings the sponge out, finally, and sits
+down at the kitchen table.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She says, “Cat’s not a free wild animal now,
+and he wouldn’t be even if you turned him
+loose. He belongs to <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">you</span></span>, so you have to do whatever
+is best for <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">him</span></span>, whether it’s what you’d like
+or not. Ask the doctor and do what he says.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom puts it on the line, all right. It doesn’t
+make me feel any better about Cat. She takes
+five dollars out of her pocketbook and gives it
+to me.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I get out the wicker hamper and go down to
+the cellar and load Cat in. He meows, a low
+resentful rumble, but he doesn’t try to get away.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat in the hamper is no powder puff, and
+I get pretty hot walking to the bus, and then
+from the bus stop to the animal hospital. I get
+there and wait, and dogs sniff at me, and I fill
+in forms. The lady asks me if I can afford to
+pay, and with Mom’s five bucks and four of my
+own, I say Yes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The doctor is a youngish guy, but bald, in a
+white shirt like a dentist’s. I put Cat on the table
+in front of him. He says, “So why don’t you stay
+out of fights, like your mommy told you?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg073" id="Pg073" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I relax a bit and smile, and he says, “That’s
+better. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of tomcat.
+I suppose he got this gash in a fight?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He been altered?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How old is he?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I don’t know. He was a stray. I’ve had him
+almost a year.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">All the time he’s talking, the doctor is soothing
+Cat and looking him over. He goes on
+stroking him and looks up at me. “Well, son,
+one of these days he’s going to get in one fight
+too many. Shall we alter him the same time we
+sew up his leg?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So there it is. I can’t seem to answer right
+away. If the doctor had argued with me, I might
+have said No. But he just goes on humming and
+stroking. Finally he says, “It’s tough, I know.
+Maybe he’s got a right to be a tiger. But you
+can’t keep a tiger for a pet.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I say, “O.K.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">An attendant takes Cat away, and I go sit in
+the waiting room, feeling sweaty and cold all
+over. They tell me it’ll be a couple of hours, so
+I go out and wander around a lot of blocks I
+<a name="Pg074" id="Pg074" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+never saw before and drink some cokes and
+sit and look up at the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge
+to Queens.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">When I go back for him, Cat looks the same
+as ever, except for a bandage all up his right
+front leg. The doctor tells me to come back
+Friday and he’ll take out the stitches.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom sees me come in the door, and I guess
+I look pretty grim, because she says, “Cat will
+be all right, won’t he, dear?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yes.” I go past her and down into my room
+and let Cat out of the basket and then bury my
+head under the pillow. I’m not exactly ashamed
+of crying, but I don’t want Mom to hear.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">After a while I pull my head out. Cat is lying
+there beside me, his eyes half open, the tip end
+of his tail twitching very slowly. I rub my eyes
+on the back of his neck and whisper to him,
+“I’m sorry. Be tough, Cat, anyway, will you?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat stretches and hops off the bed on his three
+good legs.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg075" id="Pg075" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc15" id="toc15"></a>
+  <a name="pdf16" id="pdf16"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">8</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image08.png" width="524" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave and Mary buying tickets to West Side Story." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The regular park man got sunstroke or something,
+so I earned fourteen dollars raking and
+mowing in Gramercy Park in the middle of August.
+Gramercy Park is a private park. You have
+to own a key to get in, so the city doesn’t take
+care of it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Real paper money, at this time of year especially,
+is very cheering. I head up to Sam Goody’s
+to see what records he’s got on sale and what
+<a name="Pg076" id="Pg076" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+characters are buying them. Maybe I’ll buy
+something, maybe not, but as long as I’ve got
+money in my pocket, I don’t feel like the guy
+is glaring at me for taking up floor space.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Along the way I walk through the library,
+the big one at Forty-second Street. You go in by
+the lions on Fifth Avenue, and there’s all kinds
+of pictures and books on exhibit in the halls,
+and you walk through to the back, where you
+can take out books. It’s nice and cool, and nobody
+glares at you unless you either make a lot
+of noise or go to sleep. I can take books out of
+here and return them at the Twenty-third Street
+branch, which is handy.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Sam Goody’s is air-conditioned, so it’s cool too.
+There are always several things playing on different
+machines you can listen to. Almost the
+most fun is watching the people: little, fat, bald
+guys buying long-haired classical music, and
+thin, shaggy beatniks listening to the jazz.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go to check if there are any bargains in the
+Kingston or Belafonte division. There’s a girl
+standing there reading the backs of records, but
+I don’t really catch a look at more than her shoes—little
+red flats they are. After a bit she reaches
+for a record over my head and says, “Excuse me.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg077" id="Pg077" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Sure.” Then we catch each other’s eye and
+both say, “Oh. Gee, hello.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Well, we’re both pretty surprised, because this
+is the girl I met out at Coney Island that day with
+Nick when I had Cat with me, and now we’re
+both a long way from Coney Island. This girl
+isn’t one of the two giggly ones. It’s the third,
+the one that liked Cat.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We’ve both forgotten each other’s names, so
+we begin over with that. I ask her what she’s been
+doing, and she’s been at Girl Scout camp a few
+weeks, and then she earned some money baby-sitting.
+So she came to think about records, like
+me. I tell her I’ve been at Coney once this summer,
+and I looked around for her, which is true,
+because I did.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s a big place,” she says, smiling.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Say, you live out there, don’t you? How come
+you get all the way in here by yourself? Doesn’t
+your mom get in a flap? Mine would, if she knew
+I was going to Coney alone.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary says, “I came in with Mom. Some friend
+of hers has a small art exhibition opening. She
+said I could go home alone. After all, she knows
+I’m not going to get lost.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I say, “Gee, it’d be great to have a mother
+<a name="Pg078" id="Pg078" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+that didn’t worry about you all the time.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh, Mom worries.” Mary giggles. “You
+should have heard her when I said I liked <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Gone
+With the Wind</span></span>  and I didn’t like <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Anna Karenina</span></span>.
+I pretty nearly got disowned.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What does she think about science fiction?”
+I ask, and Mary makes a face, and we both laugh.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go on. “Well, my mom doesn’t care what I
+read. She worries about what I eat and whether
+my feet are wet, and she always seems to think
+I’m about to kill myself. It’s a nuisance, really.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary looks solemn all of a sudden. She says
+slowly, “I think maybe it’d be nice. I mean to
+have someone worrying about whether you’re
+comfortable and all. Instead of just picking your
+brains all the time.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This seems to exhaust the subject of our respective
+mothers, and Mary picks up the record
+of <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">West Side Story</span></span> and says, “Gee, I’d like to
+see that. Did you?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I say No, and to tell the truth I hadn’t hardly
+heard of it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I read a book about him. It was wonderful,”
+she says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Who?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Bernstein. The man who wrote it.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg079" id="Pg079" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What’s <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">West Side Story</span></span> about, him?” I ask
+cautiously.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No, no—he wrote the music. It’s about some
+kids in two gangs, and there’s a lot of dancing,
+and then there’s a fight and this kid gets—well,
+it isn’t a thing you can tell the story of very well.
+You have to see it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This gives me a very simple idea.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Why don’t we?” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Go see it. Why not? We got money.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So we do,” she says slowly. “You think they’ll
+let us in, I mean being under sixteen?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">You know, this is the first girl I really ever
+talked to that talks like a person, not trying to
+be cute or something.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We walk around to the theater, and being it’s
+Wednesday, there’s a matinee about to start. The
+man doesn’t seem to be one bit worried about
+taking our money. No wonder. It’s two dollars
+and ninety cents each. So we’re inside with our
+tickets before we’ve hardly stopped to think.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Suddenly Mary says, “Oops! I better call
+Mom! Let’s find out what time the show is over.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We do, and Mary phones. She says to me, “I
+just told her I was walking past <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">West Side Story</span></span>
+<a name="Pg080" id="Pg080" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+and found I could get a ticket. I didn’t say anything
+about you.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Why, would she mind?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary squints and looks puzzled. “I don’t
+know. I just really don’t know. It never happened
+before.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go in to the show, and she is right, it’s
+terrific. I hardly ever went to a live show before,
+except a couple of children’s things and something
+by Shakespeare Pop took me to that was
+very confusing. But this <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">West Side Story</span></span> is clear
+as a bell.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We have an orangeade during intermission,
+and I make the big gesture and pay for both of
+them. Mary says, “Isn’t it wonderful! I just
+happened to meet you at the beach, and then I
+meet you at Goody’s, and we get to see this show
+that I’ve wanted to go to for ages. None of my
+friends at school want to spend this much money
+on a show.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s wonderful,” I say. “After it’s over, I’m
+going back to buy the record.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So after the show we buy it, and then we walk
+along together to the subway. I’ll have to get
+off at the first stop, Fourteenth Street, and she’ll
+go on to Coney, the end of the line.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg081" id="Pg081" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s hard to talk on the subway. There’s so
+much noise you have to shout, which is hard
+if you don’t know what to say. Anyway, you
+can’t ask a girl for her phone number shouting
+on the subway. At least I can’t.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’m not so sure about the phone-number
+business either. I sort of can’t imagine calling
+up and saying, “Oh, uh, Mary, this is Dave. You
+want to go to a movie or something, huh?” It
+sounds stupid, and I’d be embarrassed. What
+she said, it’s true—it’s sort of wonderful the way
+we just ran into each other twice and had so
+much fun.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I’m wondering how I can happen to run
+into her again. Maybe the beach, in the fall.
+Let’s see, a school holiday—Columbus Day.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The train is pulling into Fourteenth Street.
+I shout, “Hey, how about we go to the beach
+again this fall? Maybe Columbus Day?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K.!” she shouts. “Columbus Day in the
+morning.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Columbus Day in the morning” sounds loud
+and clear because by then the subway has
+stopped. People snicker, and Mary blushes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So long,” I say, and we both wave, and the
+train goes.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg082" id="Pg082" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc17" id="toc17"></a>
+  <a name="pdf18" id="pdf18"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">9</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image09.png" width="483" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave and Tom sitting on front steps with Cat." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">That operation didn’t make as much difference
+to Cat as you might think. I took him back to
+the clinic to get the stitches out of his leg and
+the bandages off. A few nights later I heard
+yowls coming up from the backyard. I went
+down and pulled him out of a fight. He wasn’t
+hurt yet, but he sure was right back in there
+pitching. He seems to have a standing feud
+with the cat next door.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg083" id="Pg083" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">However, he’s been coming home nights regularly,
+and sometimes in the cool part of the
+morning he’ll sit out on the front stoop with
+me. He sits on a pillar about six feet above the
+sidewalk, and I sit on the steps and play my
+transistor and read.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Every time a dog gets walked down the street
+under Cat’s perch, he gathers himself up in a
+ball, as if he were going to spring. Of course,
+the poor dog never knows it was about to be
+pounced on and wags on down the street. Cat
+lets his tail go to sleep then and sneers.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Between weathercasts I hear him purring,
+loud rumbly purrs, and I look up and see Tom
+there, stroking Cat’s fur up backward toward
+his ears. Tom is looking out into the street and
+sort of whistling without making any sound.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Gee, hi!” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hi, too,” he says. He strokes Cat back down
+the right way, gives him a pat, and sits down.
+“I just been down to see your dad. He’s quite
+a guy.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh-h-h? You got sunstroke or something?
+Didn’t he read you about ten lectures on
+Healthy Living, Honest Effort, Baseball, and
+Long Walks with a Dog?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg084" id="Pg084" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No-o-o.” Tom grins, but then he sits and
+stares out at the street again, so I wait.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You know,” he says, “you give me an idea.
+<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">You</span></span> talk like <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">your</span></span> dad is a real pain, and that’s
+the way <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I</span></span> always have felt about <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">mine</span></span>. But your
+dad looks like a great guy to me, so—well, maybe
+mine could be too, if I gave him a chance. Your
+dad was saying I should.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Should what? You should go home?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No. Your dad said I ought to write him a
+long letter and face up to all the things I’ve
+goofed on. Quitting NYU, the cellar trouble,
+all that. Then tell him I’m going to get a job
+and go to night school. Your dad figures probably
+he’d help me. He said he’d write him, too.
+No reason he should. I’m nothing in his life.
+It’s pretty nice of him.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I try to digest all this, and it sure is puzzling.
+The time I ran down that crumb of a doorman
+on my bike, accidental on purpose, I didn’t get
+any long understanding talks. I just got kept in
+for a month.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom slaps me in the middle of the back and
+stands up. “Hilda’s gone back to work at the
+coffee shop. I guess I’ll go down and see her
+<a name="Pg085" id="Pg085" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+before the lunch rush, and then go home and
+write my letter.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Say ‘Hi’ for me.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K. So long.”</p>
+
+<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The weather cools off some, and Pop starts to
+talk about vacation. He’s taking two weeks, last
+of August and first of September, so I start shopping
+around for various bits of fishing tackle and
+picnic gear we might need. We’re going to this
+lake up in Connecticut, where we get a sort of
+motel cottage. It has a little hot plate for making
+coffee in the morning, but most of the rest of the
+time we eat out, which is neat.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We’re sitting around the living room one
+evening, sorting stuff out, when the doorbell
+rings. I go answer it, and Tom walks in. He nods
+at me like he hardly sees me and comes into the
+living room. He shakes hands like a wooden
+Indian. His face looks shut up again, the way
+it did that day I left him in the filling station.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a letter.
+I can see a post-office stamp in red ink with
+a pointing hand by the address. He throws it
+down on Dad’s table.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg086" id="Pg086" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I got my answer all right.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop looks at the letter and I see his foot start
+to twitch the way it does when he’s about to
+blow. But he looks at Tom, and instead of blowing
+he just says, “Your father left town? No forwarding
+address?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I guess so. He just left. Him and that woman
+he married.” Tom’s voice trails off and he walks
+over to the window. We all sit quiet a minute.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Finally Pop says gently, “Well, don’t waste
+too much breath on her. She’s nothing to do
+with you.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom turns around angrily. “She’s no good.
+She loafs around and drinks all the time. She
+talked him into going.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“And he went.” There’s another short silence,
+and Pop goes on. “Where was this you lived?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“House. It was a pretty nice little house, too.
+Dark red with white trim, and enough of a yard
+to play a little ball, and I grew a few lettuces
+every spring. I even got one ear of corn once.
+We moved there when I was in second grade
+because my mom said it was near a good local
+school. I lived there till I went to college. I suppose
+he sold it, or got a loan, and they lit off to
+<a name="Pg087" id="Pg087" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+drink it up. Soon’s they’d got <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">me</span></span> off their
+hands.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom bites off the last word. Suddenly I can
+see the picture pretty clear: the nice house, the
+father Tom always talked down and hoped
+would measure up. Now it’s like somebody has
+taken his whole childhood and crumpled it up
+like a wad of tissue paper and thrown it away.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom gets up and goes into the kitchen. Pop’s
+foot keeps on twitching. Finally he says, “Well,
+I steered you wrong. I’m sorry. But maybe it’s
+just as well to have it settled.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s settled, all right,” Tom says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom brings out a tray of ginger-ale glasses.
+It seems sort of inadequate at a moment like
+this, but when Tom takes a glass from her he
+looks like he’s going to bust out crying.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He drinks some and blows his nose, and Dad
+says, “When are you supposed to check in with
+the Youth Board again?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Tuesday. My day off. And I wind up the
+filling-station job the next week, right after Labor
+Day.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Labor Day. Hm-m. We’ve got to get moving.
+If you like, I’ll come down to the Youth Board
+<a name="Pg088" id="Pg088" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+with you, and we’ll see what we can all cook up.
+Don’t worry too much. I have a feeling you’re
+just beginning to fight—really fight, not just
+throw a few stones.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I don’t know why you bother.” Tom starts
+to stand up. But while we’ve been talking, Cat
+has been creeping up under the side table, playing
+the ambush game, and he launches himself
+at Tom just as he starts to stand. It throws him
+off balance and he sits back in the chair, holding
+Cat.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Pop
+says. “Cat’s on your side.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg089" id="Pg089" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc19" id="toc19"></a>
+  <a name="pdf20" id="pdf20"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">10</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image10.png" width="631" height="450" alt="Illustration: Cat jumping out of car on parkway." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat may be on Tom’s side, but whether Pop is
+on Cat’s side is something else again. I worry
+about this all the time we’re planning the vacation.
+Suppose the motel won’t take cats? Or suppose
+he runs away in the country? If he messes
+up the vacation in any way, I know Pop’ll say
+to get rid of him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I practice putting Cat back in the wicker
+hamper to see if I can keep him in that sometimes,
+<a name="Pg090" id="Pg090" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+but he meows like crazy. That’d drive
+Pop nuts in the car, and it certainly wouldn’t
+hide him from any motel-keeper. So I just sit
+back and hope for the best, but I got a nasty
+feeling in the bottom of my stomach that something’s
+going to go haywire.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop’s pretty snappish anyway. He’s working
+late nearly every night, getting stuff cleared up
+before vacation. He doesn’t want any extra problems,
+especially not Cat problems. Mom’s been
+having asthma a good deal lately, and we’re all
+pretty jumpy. It’s always like this at the end of
+the summer.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tuesday night when he gets home, I ask Pop
+what’s happened about Tom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“We’ll work something out,” he says, which
+isn’t what you’d call a big explanation.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You think he can get back into college?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I don’t know. The Youth Board is going to
+work on it. They’re arranging for him to make
+up the midyear exams he missed, so he can get
+credit for that semester. Then he can probably
+start making up the second semester at night
+school if he has a job.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Apparently the Youth Board knew his father
+had skipped—they’ve been trying to trace him.
+I don’t think it’ll do any good if they find him.
+<a name="Pg091" id="Pg091" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+Tom had better just cross him off and figure his
+own life for himself.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">You know, I see “bad guys” in television and
+stuff, but with the people I really know I always
+lump the parents on one team and the kids on
+the other. Now here’s my pop calmly figuring
+a kid better chalk off his father as a bad lot and
+go it alone. If your father died, I suppose you
+could face up to it eventually, but having him
+just fade out on you, not care what you did—that’d
+be worse.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">While I’m doing all this hard thinking, Pop
+has gone back to reading the paper. I notice the
+column of want ads on the back, and all of a
+sudden my mind clicks on Tom and jobs.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, Pop! You know the florist on the corner,
+Palumbo, where you always get Mom the
+plant on Mother’s Day? I went in there a couple
+of weeks ago, because he had a sign up, ‘Helper
+Wanted.’ I thought maybe it was deliveries and
+stuff that I could do after school. But he said
+he needed a full-time man. I’m pretty sure the
+sign’s still up.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Palumbo, huhn?” Pop takes off his glasses
+and scratches his head with them. He looks at
+his watch and sighs. “They still open?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">They are, and Pop goes right down to see the
+<a name="Pg092" id="Pg092" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+guy. He knows him fairly well anyway—there’s
+Mother’s Day, and Easter, and also the shop is
+the polling place for our district, so Pop’s in
+there every Election Day. He always buys some
+little bunch of flowers Election Day because he
+figures the guy ought to get some business having
+his shop all messed up for the day.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Dad comes back and goes over to the desk and
+scratches off a fast note. He says, “Here. Address
+it to Tom and go mail it right away. Palumbo
+says he’ll try him out at least. Tom can come
+over Thursday night and I’ll take him in.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom comes home with Pop Thursday about
+nine o’clock. They both look pretty good. Mom
+has cold supper waiting, finishing off the icebox
+before we go away, so we all sit down to eat.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Tom’s all set, at least for a start,” Dad says.
+“He’s going to start Tuesday, right after Labor
+Day. Palumbo can use him on odd jobs and deliveries,
+especially over the Jewish holidays, and
+then if he can learn the business, he’ll keep
+him on.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Never thought I’d go in for flower-arranging.”
+Tom grins. “But it might be fun. I’m
+pretty fair at any kind of handiwork.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Remembering how quick he unlocked the
+<a name="Pg093" id="Pg093" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+padlock to get Cat out in the cellar, I agree.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He starts for his room after supper, and we
+all say “good luck,” “have a good time,” and
+stuff. Things are really looking up.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I get up early the next morning and help
+Mom button up around the house and get the
+car loaded before Pop gets home in the afternoon.
+He hoped to get off early, and I’ve been
+pacing around snapping my fingers for a couple
+of hours when he finally arrives about six o’clock.
+It’s a hot day again.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t say anything about Cat. I just dive in
+the back seat and put him behind a suitcase and
+hope he’ll behave. Pop doesn’t seem to notice
+him. Anyway he doesn’t say anything.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s mighty hot, and traffic is thick, with everyone
+pouring out of the city. But at least we’re
+moving along, until we get out on the Hutchinson
+River Parkway, where some dope has to run
+out of gas.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">All three lanes of traffic are stopped. We sit
+in the sun. Pop looks around, hunting for something
+to get sore about, and sees the back windows
+are closed. He roars, “Crying out loud,
+can’t we get some air, at least? Open those windows!”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg094" id="Pg094" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I open them and try to keep my hand over
+Cat, but if you try to hold him really, it makes
+him restless. For the moment he’s sitting quiet,
+looking disgusted.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We sit for about ten minutes, and Pop turns
+off the motor. You can practically hear us sweating
+in the silence. Engines turn on ahead of us,
+and there seems to be some sign of hope. I stick
+my head out the window to see if things are
+moving. Something furry tickles my ear, and it
+takes me a second to register.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Then I grab, but too late. There is Cat, out
+on the parkway between the lanes of cars, trying
+to figure which way to run.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Pop!” I yell. “Hold it! Cat’s got out!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">You know what my pop does? He laughs.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hold it, my eyeball!” he says. “I’ve been
+holding it for half an hour. I’d get murdered
+if I tried to stop now. Besides, I don’t want to
+chase that cat every day of my vacation.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t even stop to think. I just open the
+car door and jump. The car’s only barely moving.
+I can see Cat on the grass at the edge of the
+parkway. The cars in the next lane blast their
+horns, but I slip through and grab Cat.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I hear Mom scream, “Davey!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Our car is twenty feet ahead, now, in the center
+<a name="Pg095" id="Pg095" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+lane, and there’s no way Pop can turn off.
+The cars are picking up speed. I holler to Mom
+as loud as I can, “I’ll go back and stay with Kate!
+Don’t worry!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I hear Pop shout about something, but I can’t
+hear what. Pretty soon the car is out of sight. I
+look down at Cat and say, “There goes our
+vacation.” I wonder if I’ll be able to catch a
+bus out to Connecticut later. Meanwhile, there’s
+the little problem of getting back into the city.
+I’m standing alongside the parkway, with railroad
+tracks and the Pelham golf course on the
+other side of me, and a good long walk to the
+subway.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A cat isn’t handy to walk with. He keeps trying
+to get down. If you squeeze him to hang on,
+he just tries harder. You have to keep juggling
+him, like, gently. I sweat along back, with the
+sun in my eyes, and people in cars on the parkway
+pointing me out to their children as a local
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">One place the bulrushes and marsh grass beside
+the road grow up higher than your head.
+What a place for a kids’ hideout, I think. Almost
+the next step, I hear kids’ voices, whispering and
+shushing each other.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Their voices follow along beside me, but
+<a name="Pg096" id="Pg096" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+inside the curtain of rushes, where I can’t see
+them. I hear one say, “Lookit the sissy with the
+pussy!” Another answers, “Let’s dump ’em in
+the river!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I try to walk faster, but I figure if I run they’ll
+chase me for sure. I walk along, juggling Cat,
+trying to pretend I don’t notice them. I see a
+drawbridge up ahead, and I sure hope there’s
+a cop or watchman on it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The kids break out of the rushes behind
+me, and there’s no use pretending anymore. I
+flash a look over my shoulder. They all yell,
+“Ya-n-h-h-h!” like a bunch of wild Indians, but
+they’re about fifty feet back.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I grab Cat hard about the only place you can
+grab a cat, around one upper forearm, and I
+really run. The kids let out another war whoop.
+It’s uphill to the bridge. Cat gets his free forepaw
+into action, raking my chest and arm, with
+his claws out. Then he hisses and bites, and I
+nearly drop him. I’m panting so hard I can’t
+hardly breathe anyway.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A cop saunters out on my approach to the
+bridge, his billy dangling from his wrist. Whew—am
+I glad! I flop on the grass and ease up on
+Cat and start soothing him down. The kids fade
+<a name="Pg097" id="Pg097" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+off into the tall grass as soon as they see the cop.
+A stone arches up toward me, but it falls short.
+That’s the last I see of them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As I cross the bridge, the cop squints at me.
+“What you doing, kid? Not supposed to be
+walking here.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I’ll be right off. I’m going home,” I tell
+him, and he saunters away, twirling his stick.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s dark by the time I get to the subway, and
+most of another hour before I’m back in Manhattan
+and reach Kate’s. I can hear the television
+going, which is unusual, and I walk in.
+No one is watching television. Mom and Pop are
+sitting at the table with Kate.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom lets loose the tears she has apparently
+been holding onto for two hours, and Pop starts
+bellowing: “You fool! You might have got killed
+jumping out on that parkway!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat drops to the floor with a thud. I kiss Mom
+and go to the sink for a long glass of water and
+drink it all and wipe my mouth. Over my
+shoulder, I answer Pop: “Yeah, but if Cat gets
+killed on the parkway, that’s just a big joke,
+isn’t it? You laugh your head off!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head
+with them, like he always does when he’s thinking.
+<a name="Pg098" id="Pg098" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+He looks me in the eye and says, “I’m sorry.
+I shouldn’t have laughed.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Then, of all things, he picks up Cat himself.
+“Come on. You’re one of the family. Let’s get
+on this vacation.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At last we’re off.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg099" id="Pg099" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc21" id="toc21"></a>
+  <a name="pdf22" id="pdf22"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">11</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image11.png" width="596" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave picking out fish while Ben and garbage-sweeper watch." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We came back to the city Labor Day Monday—us
+and a couple million others—traffic crawling,
+a hot day, the windows practically closed up tight
+to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs
+stuck to me and got up my nose. Considering
+everything, Pop acted quite mild.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut
+who had skin-diving equipment. He let me use
+it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing.
+<a name="Pg100" id="Pg100" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+Boy, this has fishing beat hollow! I found
+out there’s a skin-diving course at the Y, and
+I’m going to begin saving up for the fins and
+mask and stuff. Pop won’t mind forking out
+for the Y membership, because he’ll figure it’s
+character-building.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Meanwhile, I’m wondering if I can get back
+up to Connecticut again one weekend while
+the weather’s still warm, and I see that Rosh
+Hashanah falls on a Monday and Tuesday this
+year, the week after school opens. Great. So I
+ask this kid—Kenny Wright—if I can maybe
+come visit him that weekend so I can do some
+more skin diving.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Rosh Hashanah? What’s that?” he says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the
+Jewish New Year. About half the kids in my
+school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and
+I always do too. Last year the school board gave
+up and made it an official school holiday for
+everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom
+Kippur, the week after.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kenny whistles. “You sure are lucky. I don’t
+think we got any holidays coming till Thanksgiving.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I always thought the kids in the country were
+<a name="Pg101" id="Pg101" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+lucky having outdoor yards for sports and recess,
+but I guess we have it over them on holidays—’specially
+in the fall: three Jewish holidays in
+September, Columbus Day in October, Election
+Day and Veterans’ Day in November, and then
+Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t figure it’d be worth train fare to Connecticut
+for just two days, so I say good-bye to
+Kenny and see you next year and stuff.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Back home I’m pretty busy right away, on
+account of starting in a new school, Charles
+Evans Hughes High. It’s different from the
+junior high, where I knew half the kids, and
+also my whole homeroom there went from one
+classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone
+has to get his own schedule and find the right
+classroom in this immense building, which is
+about the size of Penn Station. There are about
+a million kids in it—actually about two thousand—most
+of whom I never saw before. Hardly any
+of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village
+kids come here because it isn’t their district.
+However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one
+day, I see one kid I know from Peter Cooper.
+His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him how come
+he is at Hughes.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg102" id="Pg102" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant
+High School—you know, the genius factory,
+city-wide competitive exam to get in. Of
+course I didn’t make it. Biggest Failure of the
+Year, that’s me.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Heck, I never even tried for that. But how
+come you’re here?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“There’s a special science course you can
+qualify for by taking a math test. Then you don’t
+have to live in the district. My dad figures as
+long as I’m in something special, there’s hope.
+I’m not really very interested in science, but that
+doesn’t bother him.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So after that Ben and I walk back and forth
+to school together, and it turns out we have three
+classes together, too—biology and algebra and
+English. We’re both relieved to have at least one
+familiar face to look for in the crowd. My old
+friend Nick, aside from not really being my
+best friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic
+high school somewhere uptown.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">On the way home from school one Friday in
+September, I ask Ben what he’s doing Monday
+and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah
+suit and go to synagogue and over to Brooklyn
+<a name="Pg103" id="Pg103" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+to my grandmother’s. Monday I don’t have to
+do anything special. Come on over with your
+roller skates and we’ll get in the hockey game.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I skate on my tail,” I say, because it’s true,
+and it would be doubly true in a hockey game.
+I try quick to think up something else. We’re
+walking down the block to my house, and there’s
+Cat sitting out front, so I say, “Let’s cruise
+around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and
+pick up some fish heads for my cat.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You’re a real nut, aren’t you?” Ben says. He
+doesn’t say it as if he minds—just mentioning
+the fact. He’s an easygoing kind of guy, and I
+think most of the time he likes to let someone
+else make the plans. So he shrugs and says,
+“O.K.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the
+eye, and Cat looks away and licks his back. Ben
+says, “So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh
+Hashanah, huh?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front
+against Ben’s right leg and from front to back
+against his left leg and goes to lie down in the
+middle of the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“See? He likes you,” I say. “He won’t have
+anything to do with most guys, except Tom.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg104" id="Pg104" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Who’s Tom?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar
+and his father disappearing on him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Gee,” says Ben, “I thought I had trouble,
+with my father practically telling me how to
+breathe better every minute, but at least he
+doesn’t disappear. What does Tom do now?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Works at the flower shop, right down there
+at the corner.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben feels around in his pockets a minute.
+“Hey, I got two bucks I was supposed to spend
+on a textbook. Come on and I’ll buy Mom a
+plant for the holidays, and you can introduce
+me to Tom.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go down to the flower shop, and at first
+Tom frowns because he thinks we’ve just come
+to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant,
+so then he makes a big thing out of showing
+him all the plants, from the ten-dollar ones on
+down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he’s doing a good
+job. Ben finally settles on a funny-looking cactus
+that Tom says is going to bloom pretty soon.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick
+him up on Monday. I wait around outside until
+I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how
+he likes the job. He says he doesn’t really know
+<a name="Pg105" id="Pg105" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+yet, but at least the guy is decent to work for,
+not like the filling-station man.</p>
+
+<div class="tei tei-tb">* * * * * </div>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter
+Cooper about eleven. A lot of kids are out in
+the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing
+footballs with them and shouting “Happy
+New Year” to each other. It sounds odd to hear
+people saying that on a warm day in September.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben and I wander out of the project and he
+says, “How do we get to this Fulton Street?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I see a bus that says “Avenue C” on it stopping
+on Twenty-third Street. Avenue C is way
+east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it’ll
+probably work out. We get on. The bus rockets
+along under the East Side Drive for a few blocks
+and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow
+and crowded. It’s a Spanish and Puerto Rican
+neighborhood to begin with, then farther downtown
+it’s mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out
+on the street shaking hands and clapping each
+other on the back, and the stores are all closed.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to
+some of the people on the sidewalk, and he seems
+to know a good many of the passengers who get
+on. He asks them about their jobs, or their
+<a name="Pg106" id="Pg106" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+babies, or their aunt who’s sick in Bellevue. This
+is pretty unusual in New York, where bus
+drivers usually act like they hate people in general
+and their passengers in particular. Suddenly
+the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben looks out the window and says, “Hey,
+this is Houston Street. I been down here to a
+big delicatessen. But we’re not heading downtown
+anymore.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Probably it’ll turn again,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It doesn’t, though, not till clear over at Sixth
+Avenue. By then everyone else has got off and
+the bus driver turns around and says, “Where
+you two headed for?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s funny, a bus driver asking you that, so
+I ask him, “Where does this bus go?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson
+Street, down by the Holland Tunnel.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Holy crow!” says Ben. “We’re liable to wind
+up in New Jersey.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Relax. I don’t go that far. I just go back up
+to Bellevue,” says the driver.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You think we’d be far from Fulton Fish
+Market?” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The driver gestures vaguely. “Just across the
+island.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg107" id="Pg107" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So Ben and I decide we’ll get off at the end of
+the line and walk from there. The bus driver
+says, “Have a nice hike.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I think there’s something fishy about this,”
+says Ben.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That’s what we’re going to get, fish,” I say,
+and we walk. We walk quite a ways.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a
+couple of steps, and we stop to look at the menu
+in the window. The special for the day is
+lasagna, and Ben says, “Boy, that’s for me!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my
+pocket and do some fast mental arithmetic.
+Lasagna is a dollar, so that’s out, but I see
+spaghetti and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so
+that will still leave me bus fare home.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin
+over his arm like a banner, and takes our order.
+He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white
+linen tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian
+bread and rolls. On a third trip he brings enough
+chilled butter for a family and asks if we want
+coffee with lunch or later. Later, we say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Man, this is living!” says Ben as he moves
+in on the bread.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He treats us just like people.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg108" id="Pg108" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna
+and spaghetti, and he swirls around the table as
+if he were dancing. “Anything else now? Mind
+the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now.
+I bring the coffee later.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He swirls away, the napkin over his arm
+making a little breeze, and circles another table.
+It’s a small room, and there are only four tables
+eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was
+serving royalty at the Waldorf. When we’re just
+finished eating, he comes back with a pot of
+steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’m dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when
+a thought hits me: We got to leave a tip for this
+waiter.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I whisper to Ben, “Hey, how much money you
+got?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He reaches in his pocket and fishes out a buck,
+a dime, and a quarter. We study them. Figure
+coffees for a dime each, and the total check ought
+to be $1.95. We’ve got $2.35 between us. We
+can still squeak through with bus fare if we only
+leave the waiter a dime, which is pretty cheap.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At that moment he comes back and refills
+our coffee cups and asks what we will have for
+dessert.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg109" id="Pg109" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Uh, nothing, nothing at all,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Couldn’t eat another thing,” says Ben.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So the waiter brings the check and along with
+it a plate of homemade cookies. He says, “My
+wife make. On the house.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We both thank him, and I look at Ben and he
+looks at me. I put down my dollar and he puts
+down a dollar and a quarter.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Come
+again,” says the waiter.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We walk into the street, and Ben spins the
+lone remaining dime in the sun. I say, “Heads
+or tails?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh? Heads.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It comes up heads, so Ben keeps his own
+dime. He says, “We could have hung onto
+enough for <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">one</span></span> bus fare, but that’s no use.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No use at all. ’Specially if it was yours.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Are we still heading for Fulton Street?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Sure. We got to get fish for Cat.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It better be for free.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We walk, threading across Manhattan and
+downtown. I guess it’s thirty or forty blocks,
+but after a good lunch it doesn’t seem too far.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">You can smell the fish market when you’re
+still quite a ways off. It runs for a half a dozen
+<a name="Pg110" id="Pg110" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+blocks alongside the East River, with long rows
+of sheds divided into stores for the different
+wholesalers. Around on the side streets there are
+bars and fish restaurants. It’s too bad we don’t
+have Cat with us because he’d love sniffing at all
+the fish heads and guts and stuff on the street.
+Fish market business is done mostly in the morning,
+I guess, and now men are hosing down the
+streets and sweeping fish garbage up into piles.
+I get a guy to give me a bag and select a couple
+of the choicer—and cleaner—looking bits. I get a
+nice red snapper head and a small whole fish,
+looks like a mackerel. Ben acts as if fish guts
+make him sick, and as soon as I’ve got a couple
+he starts saying “Come on, come on, let’s go.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I realize when we’re leaving that I don’t even
+notice the fish smell anymore. You just get used
+to it. We walk uptown, quite a hike, along
+East Broadway and across Grand and Delancey.
+There’s all kinds of intriguing smells wafting
+around here: hot breads and pickles and fish
+cooking. This is a real Jewish neighborhood, and
+you can sure tell it’s a holiday from the smell of
+all the dinners cooking. And lots of people are
+out in their best clothes gabbing together. Some
+of the men wear black skullcaps, and some of
+<a name="Pg111" id="Pg111" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+them have big black felt hats and long white
+beards. We go past a crowd gathering outside a
+movie house.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“They’re not going to the movies,” Ben says.
+“On holidays sometimes they rent a movie
+theater for services. It must be getting near time.
+Come on, I got to hurry.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We trot along the next twenty blocks or so,
+up First Avenue and to Peter Cooper.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So long,” Ben says. “I’ll come by Wednesday
+on the way to school.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He goes off spinning his dime, and too late I
+think to myself that we could have had a candy
+bar.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg112" id="Pg112" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc23" id="toc23"></a>
+  <a name="pdf24" id="pdf24"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">12</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image12.png" width="517" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave holding up lizard for Ben by pond in woods." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben and I both take biology, and the first
+weekend assignment we get, right after Rosh
+Hashanah, is to find and identify an animal
+native to New York City and look up its family
+and species and life cycle.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What’s a species?” says Ben.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I don’t know. What’s a life cycle?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We both scratch our heads, and he says,
+“What animals do we know?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg113" id="Pg113" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I say, “Cat. And dogs and pigeons and
+squirrels.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That’s dull. I want to get some animal no
+one else knows about.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, how about a praying mantis? I saw one
+once in Gramercy Park.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben doesn’t even know what it is, so I tell
+him about this one I saw. For an insect, it looks
+almost like a dragon, about four or five inches
+long and pale green. When it flies, it looks like
+a baby helicopter in the sky. We go into Gramercy
+Park to see if we can find another, but
+we can’t.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben says, “Let’s go up to the Bronx Zoo
+Saturday and see what we can find.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Stupid, they don’t mean you to do lions and
+tigers. They’re not native.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Stupid, yourself. They got other animals that
+are. Besides, there’s lots of woods and ponds. I
+might find something.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Well, it’s as good an idea for Saturday as any,
+so I say O.K. On account of both being pretty
+broke, we take lunch along in my old school
+lunchbox. Also six subway tokens—two extras
+for emergencies. Even I would be against walking
+home from the Bronx.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg114" id="Pg114" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Of course there are plenty of native New
+York City animals in the zoo—raccoons and woodchucks
+and moles and lots of birds—and I figure
+we better start home not too late to get out the
+encyclopedias for species and life cycles. Ben still
+wants to catch something wild and wonderful.
+Like lots of city kids who haven’t been in the
+country much, he’s crazy about nature.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We head back to the subway, walking through
+the woods so he can hunt. We go down alongside
+the pond and kick up rocks and dead trees
+to see if anything is under them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It pays off. All of a sudden we see a tiny red
+tail disappearing under a rotten log. I push the
+log again and Ben grabs. It’s a tiny lizard, not
+more than two or three inches long and brick
+red all over. Ben cups it in both hands, and its
+throat pulses in and out, but it doesn’t really
+try to get away.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, I love this one!” Ben cries. “I’m going
+to take him home and keep him for a pet, as well
+as do a report on him. You can’t keep cats and
+dogs in Peter Cooper, but there’s nothing in the
+rules about lizards.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How are you going to get him home?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Dump the lunch. I mean—we’ll eat it, but I
+<a name="Pg115" id="Pg115" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+can stab a hole in the top of the box and keep
+Redskin in it. Come on, hurry! He’s getting
+tired in my hand I think!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben is one of those guys who is very placid
+most of the time, but he gets excitable all of a
+sudden when he runs into something brand-new
+to him, and I guess he never caught an animal
+to keep before. Some people’s parents are very
+stuffy about it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I dump the lunch out, and he puts the lizard
+in and selects some particular leaves and bits of
+dead log to put in with him to make him feel
+at home. Without even asking me, he takes out
+his knife and makes holes in the top of my lunchbox.
+I sit down and open up a sandwich, but
+Ben is still dancing around.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What do you suppose he is? He might be
+something very rare! How’m I going to find out?
+You think we ought to go back and ask one of
+the zoo men?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Umm, nah,” I say, chewing. “Probably find
+him in the encyclopedia.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben squats on a log, and the log rolls. As he
+falls over backward I see two more lizards
+scuttle away. I grab one. “Hey, look! I got another.
+This one’s bigger and browner.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg116" id="Pg116" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben is up and dancing again. “Oh, boy, oh,
+boy! Now I got two! Now they’ll be happy!
+Maybe they’ll have babies, huh?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He overlooks the fact that <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I</span></span> caught this one.
+Oh, well, I don’t want a lizard, anyway. Cat’d
+probably eat it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben takes it from me and slips it in the lunchbox.
+“I’m going to call this one Big Brownie.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Finally he calms down enough to eat lunch,
+taking peeks at his catch between mouthfuls. As
+soon as he’s finished eating, he starts hustling to
+get home so he can make a house for them. He
+really acts like a kid.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We get on the subway. It’s aboveground—elevated—up
+here in the Bronx. After a while I
+see Yankee Stadium off to one side, which is
+funny because I don’t remember seeing it when
+we were coming up. Pretty soon the train goes
+underground. I remember then. Coming up, we
+changed trains once. Ben has his eye glued to the
+edge of the lunchbox and he’s talking to Redskin,
+so I figure there’s no use consulting him.
+I’ll just wait and see where this train seems to
+come out. It’s got to go downtown. We go past
+something called Lenox Avenue, which I think
+is in Harlem, then Ninety-sixth Street, and then
+we’re at Columbus Circle.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg117" id="Pg117" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, Ben, we’re on the West Side subway,”
+I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah?” He takes a bored look out the
+window.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“We can just walk across town from Fourteenth
+Street.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“With you I always end up walking. Hey,
+what about those extra tokens?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Aw, it’s only a few blocks. Let’s walk.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben grunts, and he goes along with me. As
+we get near Union Square, there seem to be an
+awful lot of people around. In fact they’re
+jamming the sidewalk and we can hardly move.
+Ben frowns at them and says, “Hey, what goes?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I ask a man, and he says, “Where you been,
+sonny? Don’tcha know there’s a parade for General
+Sparks?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I remember reading about it now, so I poke
+Ben. “Hey, push along! We can see Sparks
+go by!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Quit pushing and don’t try to be funny.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Stupid, he’s a general. Test pilot, war hero,
+and stuff. Come on, push.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">quit pushing!</span></span> I got to watch out for these
+lizards!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I go first and edge us through the crowd
+to the middle of the block, where there aren’t
+<a name="Pg118" id="Pg118" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+so many people and we can get up next to the
+police barrier. Cops on horseback are going
+back and forth, keeping the street clear. No sign
+of any parade coming yet, but people are throwing
+rolls of paper tape and handfuls of confetti
+out of upper-story windows. The wind catches
+the paper tape and carries it up and around in
+all kinds of fantastic snakes. Little kids keep
+scuttling under the barrier to grab handfuls of
+ticker tape that blow to the ground. Ben keeps
+one eye on the street and one on Redskin and
+Brownie.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How soon you think they’re coming?” he
+asks fretfully.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">People have packed in behind us, and we
+couldn’t leave now if we wanted to. Pretty soon
+we can see a helicopter flying low just a little
+ways downtown, and people all start yelling,
+“That’s where they are! They’re coming!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom
+past, and then a cop backing up a police car
+at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very
+surprising-looking thing. Before I’ve hardly got
+my eyes off that, the open cars come by. This
+guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car,
+waving with both hands. By the time I see him,
+<a name="Pg119" id="Pg119" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+he’s almost past. Nice-looking, though. Everyone
+yells like crazy and throws any kind of paper
+they’ve got. Two little nuts beside us have a box
+of Wheaties, so they’re busy throwing Breakfast
+of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is past,
+people push through the barriers and run in the
+street.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben hunches over to protect his precious
+animals and yells, “Come on! Let’s get out of
+this!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go into my house first because I’m pretty
+sure we’ve got a wooden box. We find it and
+take it down to my room, and Ben gets extra
+leaves and grass and turns the lizards into it.
+He’s sure they need lots of fresh air and exercise.
+Redskin scoots out of sight into a corner
+right away. Big Brownie sits by a leaf and looks
+around.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Let’s go look up what they are,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The smallest lizard they show in the encyclopedia
+is about six inches long, and it says lizards
+are reptiles and have scales and claws and
+should not be confused with salamanders, which
+are amphibians and have thin moist skin and no
+claws. So we look up salamanders.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This is it, all right. The first picture on the
+<a name="Pg120" id="Pg120" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+page looks just like Redskin, and it says he’s a
+Red Eft. The Latin name for his species is
+<span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Triturus viridescens</span></span>, or in English just a common
+newt.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, talk about life cycles, listen to this,”
+says Ben, reading. “‘It hatches from an egg in
+the water and stays there during its first summer
+as a dull-green larva. Then its skin becomes a
+bright orange, it absorbs its gills, develops lungs
+and legs, and crawls out to live for about three
+years in the woods. When fully mature, its back
+turns dull again, and it returns to the water
+to breed.’”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben drops the book. “Brownie must be getting
+ready to breed! What’d I tell you? We got
+to put him near water!” He rushes down to my
+room.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We come to the door and stop short. There’s
+Cat, poised on the edge of the box.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I grab, but no kid is as fast as a cat. Hearing
+me coming, he makes his grab for the salamander.
+Then he’s out of the box and away, with
+Big Brownie’s tail hanging out of his mouth.
+He goes under the bed.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Ben screams, “Get him! Kill him! He’s got
+my Brownie!” He’s in a frenzy, and I don’t
+blame him. It does make you mad to see your
+<a name="Pg121" id="Pg121" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+pet get hurt. I run for a broom to try to poke
+Cat out, but it isn’t any use. Meanwhile, Ben
+finds Redskin safe in the box, and he scoops
+him back into the lunchbox.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Finally, we move the bed, and there is Cat
+poking daintily with his paw at Brownie. The
+salamander is dead. Ben grabs the broom and
+bashes Cat. Cat hisses and skids down the hall.
+“That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him!
+What’d you ever have him for?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I tell Ben I’m sorry, and I get him a little
+box so he can bury Brownie. You can’t really
+blame Cat too much—that’s just the way a cat is
+made, to chase anything that wiggles and runs.
+Ben calms down after a while, and we go back
+to the encyclopedia to finish looking up about
+the Red Eft.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I don’t think Brownie was really ready to lay
+eggs, or he would have been in the pond already,”
+I say. “Tell you what. We could go back
+some day with a jar and try to catch one in the
+water.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">That cheers Ben up some. He finishes taking
+notes for his report and tracing a picture, and
+then he goes home with Redskin in the lunchbox.
+I pull out the volume for C.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat. Family, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Felidae</span></span>, including lions and
+<a name="Pg122" id="Pg122" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+tigers. Species, <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Felis domesticus</span></span>. I start taking
+notes: “‘The first civilized people to keep cats
+were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before
+Christ.... Fifty million years earlier the ancestor
+of the cat family roamed the earth, and
+he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores.
+The Oligocene cats, thirty million years ago,
+were already highly specialized, and the habits
+and physical characteristics of cats have been
+fixed since then. This may explain why house
+cats remain the most independent of pets, with
+many of the instincts of their wild ancestors.’”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I call Ben up to read him this, and he says,
+“You and your lousy carnivore! <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">My</span></span> salamander
+is an amphibian, and amphibians are the ancestors
+of <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">all</span></span>  the animals on earth, even you and
+your Cat, you sons of toads!”</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg123" id="Pg123" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc25" id="toc25"></a>
+  <a name="pdf26" id="pdf26"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">13</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image13.png" width="474" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave and Mary in wind on boardwalk at beach." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Columbus Day comes up as cold as Christmas.
+I listen to the weather forecast the night before,
+to see how it’ll be for the beach. “High winds,
+unseasonably low temperatures,” the guy says.
+He would.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I get up at eight-thirty the next morning,
+though, figuring he’d be wrong and it would be
+a nice sunny day. I slip on my pants and shirt
+and go downstairs with Cat to have a look out.
+<a name="Pg124" id="Pg124" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+Cat slides out and is halfway down the stoop
+when a blast of cold wind hits him. His tail goes
+up and he spooks back in between my legs. I
+push the door shut against the icy wind.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom is sitting in the kitchen drinking her
+tea and she says, “My goodness, why are you up
+so early on a holiday? Do you feel sick?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Nah, I’m all right.” I pour out a cup of coffee
+to warm my hands on and dump in three or four
+spoons of sugar.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Davey, have you got a chill? You don’t look
+to me as if you felt quite right.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Mom, for Pete’s sake, it’s <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">cold</span></span> out! I feel
+fine.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, you don’t have to go out. Why don’t
+you just go back to bed and snooze and read a
+bit, and I’ll bring you some breakfast.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I see it’s got to be faced, so while I’m getting
+down the cereal and a bowl, I say, “Well, as a
+matter of fact, I’m going over to Coney Island
+today.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Coney <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-variant: small-caps">island</span></span>!” Mom sounds like it was
+Siberia. “What in the world are you going to do
+there in the middle of winter?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Mom, it’s only Columbus Day. We figured
+we’d go to the aquarium and then—uh—well,
+<a name="Pg125" id="Pg125" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+fool around. Some of the pitches are still open,
+and we’ll get hot dogs and stuff.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Who’s going? Nick?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Nick wasn’t sure—I’ll stop by his house and
+see.” I’d just as soon steer clear of this “who’s
+going” business, so I start into a long spiel about
+how we’re studying marine life in biology, and
+we have to take some notes at the aquarium.
+Mom is swallowing this pretty well, but Pop
+comes into the kitchen just then and gives me
+the fishy eye.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“First time I ever heard of you spending a
+holiday on homework. I bet they got a new twist
+palace going out there.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I slam down my coffee cup. “Holy cats! Can’t
+I walk out of here on a holiday without going
+through the third degree? What am I, some kind
+of a nut or a convict?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Just a growing boy,” says Pop. “And don’t
+talk so sassy to your mother.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I’m talking to you!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop draws in a breath to start bellowing, but
+Mom beats him to it by starting to wheeze,
+which she can do without drawing breath.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop pats her on the shoulder and gives me a
+dirty look. “Now, Agnes, that’s all right. I’m not
+<a name="Pg126" id="Pg126" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+sore. I was just trying to kid him a little bit, and
+he flies off the handle.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em"><span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">I</span></span> fly off the handle! How do you like that?</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I give Mom a kiss. “Cheer up, Mom. I won’t
+ride on the roller coaster. It’s not even running.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I grab a sweater and gloves and money and
+get out before they can start anymore questions.
+On the subway I start wondering if Mary will
+show up. It’s almost two months since we made
+this sort of crazy date, and the weather sure isn’t
+helping any.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Coney Island is made to be crowded and
+noisy. All the billboards scream at you, as if they
+had to get your attention. So when the place is
+empty, it looks like the whole thing was a freak
+or an accident.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s sure empty today. There’s practically no
+one on the street in the five or six blocks from
+the subway station to the aquarium. But it’s
+not quiet. There are a few places open—merry-go-rounds
+and hot-dog shops—and tinny little
+trickles of music come out of them, but the big
+noise is the wind. All the signs are swinging and
+screeching. Rubbish cans blow over and their
+tops clang and bang rolling down the street. The
+wind makes a whistling noise all by itself.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg127" id="Pg127" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I lean into the wind and walk up the empty
+street. My sweater is about as warm as a sieve.
+I wonder if I’m crazy to have come. No girl
+would get out on a boardwalk on a day like this.
+It must be practically a hurricane.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She’s there, though. As soon as I turn the
+corner to the beach, I can see one figure, with
+its back to the ocean, scarf and hair blowing
+inland toward me. I can’t see her face, but it’s
+Mary, all right. There isn’t another soul in sight.
+I wave and she hunches her shoulders up and
+down to semaphore, not wishing to take her
+hands out of her pockets.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I come up beside her on the boardwalk and
+turn my back to the ocean, too. I’d like to go
+on looking at it—it’s all black and white and
+thundery—but the wind blows your breath right
+back down into your stomach. I freeze.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I was afraid you wouldn’t come on a day like
+this,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Me too. I mean I was afraid <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">you</span></span> wouldn’t.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Mom and Pop thought I was crazy. I spent
+about an hour arguing with them. What’d your
+mother say?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Nothing. She thinks I’m walking alone with
+the wind in my hair, thinking poetic thoughts.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg128" id="Pg128" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh? What for?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary shrugs. “Mom’s like that. You’ll see.
+Come on, let’s go home and make cocoa or something
+to warm up, and then we’ll think up something
+to do. We can’t just stand here.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She’s right about that, so I don’t argue. Her
+house is a few blocks away, a two-family type
+with a sloped driveway going down into a cellar
+garage. Neat. My pop is always going nuts hunting
+for a place to park.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary goes in and shouts, “Hi, Nina! I
+brought a friend home. We’re going to make
+some cocoa. We’re freezing.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I wonder who Nina is. I don’t hear her mother
+come into the kitchen. Then I turn around and
+there she is. Holy crow! We got some pretty
+beat-looking types at school, but this is the first
+time I’ve ever seen a beatnik mother.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She’s got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and
+old sneakers, and her hair is in a long braid,
+with uneven bangs in front.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary waves a saucepan vaguely at us both and
+says, “Nina—Davey—this is my mother.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So Nina is her mother. I stick out my hand.
+“Uh—how do you do?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hel-looo.” Her voice is low and musical. “I
+think there is coffee on the stove.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg129" id="Pg129" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I thought I’d make cocoa for a change,”
+says Mary.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“All right.” Nina puts a cigarette in her
+mouth and offers one to me.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I say, “No, thank you.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Tell me....” She talks in this low, intense
+kind of voice. “Are you in school with Mary?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I tell her I live in Manhattan, and how I
+ran into Mary when I had Cat on the beach,
+because that makes it sound sort of respectable,
+not like a pickup. But she doesn’t seem to be
+interested in Cat and the beach.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What do you <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">read</span></span>? In your school?” she asks,
+launching each question like a torpedo.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I remember Mary saying something about her
+mother and poetry, so I say, “Well, uh—last week
+we read ‘The Highwayman’ and ‘The Wreck of
+the Hesperus.’ They’re about—I mean, we were
+studying metaphors and similes. Looking at the
+ocean today, I sure can see what Longfellow
+meant about the icy....”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I thought I was doing pretty well, but she cut
+me off again.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Don’t you read any <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">real</span></span> poetry? Donne?
+Auden? Baudelaire?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Three more torpedoes. “We didn’t get to
+them yet.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg130" id="Pg130" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Nina blows out a great angry cloud of smoke
+and explodes, “Schools!” Then she sails out of
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I guess I look a little shook up. Mary laughs
+and shoves a mug of cocoa and a plate of cinnamon
+toast in front of me. “Don’t mind Mother.
+She just can’t get used to New York schools. Or
+Coney Island. Or hardly anything around here.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“She grew up on the Left Bank in Paris. Her
+father was an artist and her mother was a writer,
+and they taught her to read at home, starting
+with Chaucer, probably. She never read a kids’
+book in her life.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Anything I ever tell her about school pretty
+much sounds either childish or stupid to her.
+What I really love is science—experiments and
+stuff—and she can’t see that for beans.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Our science teacher is a dope,” I say, because
+she is, “so I really never got very interested in
+science. But I told Mom and Dad I was coming
+to the aquarium to take notes today, so they
+wouldn’t kick up such a fuss.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary shakes her head. “We ought to get our
+mothers together. Mine thinks I’m wasting time
+if I even <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">go</span></span> to the aquarium. I do, though, all
+the time. I love the walrus.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg131" id="Pg131" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What does your pop do?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Father? He teaches philosophy at Brooklyn
+College. So I get it from both sides. Just think,
+think, think. Father and Nina aren’t hardly even
+interested in <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">food</span></span>. Once in a while Nina spends
+all day cooking some great fish soup or a chicken
+in wine, but the rest of the time I’m the only
+one who takes time off from thinking to cook a
+hamburger. They live on rolls and coffee and
+sardines.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary puts our cups in the sink and then
+opens a low cupboard. Instead of pots and pans
+it has stacks of records in it. She pulls out <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">West
+Side Story</span></span> and then I see there’s a record player
+on a side table. What d’you know? A record
+player in the kitchen! This Left Bank style of
+living has its advantages.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I sit down here and eat and play records
+while I do my homework,” says Mary, which
+sounds pretty nice.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I ask her if she has any Belafonte, and she
+says, “Yes, a couple,” but she puts on something
+else. It’s slow, but sort of powerful, and it makes
+you feel kind of powerful yourself, as if you
+could do anything.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What’s that?” I ask.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg132" id="Pg132" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s called ‘The Moldau’—that’s a river in
+Europe. It’s by a Czech named Smetana.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I wander around the kitchen and look out the
+window. The wind’s still howling, but not so
+hard. I remember the ocean, all gray and powerful,
+spotted with whitecaps. I’d like to be out
+on it.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You know what’d be fun?” I say out loud.
+“To be out in a boat on the harbor today. If you
+didn’t sink.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“We could take the Staten Island ferry,” Mary
+says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh?” I hadn’t even thought there was really
+any boat we could get on. “Really? Where do
+you get it?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Down at Sixty-ninth Street and Fourth
+Avenue. It’s quite a ways. I’ve always gone there
+in a car. But maybe we could do it on bikes, if
+we don’t freeze.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“We won’t freeze. But what about bikes?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“You can use my brother’s. He’s away at college.
+Maybe I can find a windbreaker of his,
+too.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She finds the things and we get ready and go
+into the living room, where Nina is sitting reading
+and sipping a glass of wine.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg133" id="Pg133" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“We’re going on our bikes to the ferry and
+over to Staten Island,” Mary says. She doesn’t
+even ask.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh-h-h.” It’s a long, low note, faintly
+questioning.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“We thought with the wind blowing and all,
+it’d be exciting,” Mary explains, and I think,
+Uh-o, that’s going to cook it. <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">My</span></span> mother would
+have kittens if I said I was going out on a ferry
+in a storm.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">But Nina just says, “I see,” and goes back to
+reading her book. I say good-bye and she looks
+up again and smiles, and that’s all.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s another funny thing—Nina doesn’t seem
+to pay any attention to who Mary brings home,
+like most mothers are always snooping if their
+daughter brings home a guy. Without stopping
+to think, I say, “Do you bring home a lot of
+guys?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary laughs. “Not a lot. Sometimes one of the
+boys at school comes home when we’re studying
+for a science test.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I laugh, too, but what I’m thinking of is how
+Pop would look if I brought a girl home and
+said we were studying for a test!</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg134" id="Pg134" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc27" id="toc27"></a>
+  <a name="pdf28" id="pdf28"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">14</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image14.png" width="552" height="450" alt="Illustration: Dave and Mary on ferry with other people." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As we ride through Brooklyn the wind belts us
+around from both sides and right in the teeth.
+But the sun’s beginning to break through, and
+it’s easy riding, no hills.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This part of Brooklyn is mostly rows of houses
+joined together, or low apartment buildings,
+with little patches of lawn in front of them.
+There’s lots of trees along the streets. It doesn’t
+look anything like Manhattan, but not anything
+like the country, either. It’s just Brooklyn.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg135" id="Pg135" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">All of a sudden we’re circling a golf course.
+What d’you know? Right in New York City!</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Ever play golf?” The wind snatches the
+words out of my mouth and carries them back
+to Mary. I see her mouth shaping like a “No,”
+but no sound comes my way. I drop back beside
+her and say, “I’ll show you sometime. My pop’s
+got a set of clubs I used a couple of times.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Probably I better carry the clubs and you
+play. I can play tennis, though.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We pass the golf course and head down into
+a sort of main street. Anyway there’s lots of
+banks and dime stores and traffic. Mary leads
+the way. We make a couple of turns and zigzags
+and then go under the parkway, and there’s the
+ferry. It’s taken us most of an hour to get from
+Mary’s house.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’m hoping the ferry isn’t too expensive, so
+I’ll have plenty of money left for a good lunch.
+But while I’m mooning, Mary has wheeled her
+bike right up and paid her own fare. Well, I
+guess that’s one of the things I like about her.
+She’s independent. Still, I’m going to buy lunch.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The ferry is terrific. I’m going to come ride
+ferries every day it’s windy. The boat doesn’t
+roll any, but we stand right up in front and the
+wind blows clouds of spray in our faces. You can
+<a name="Pg136" id="Pg136" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+pretend you’re on a full-rigged schooner running
+before a hurricane. But you look down at
+that choppy gray water, and you know you’d be
+done if you got blown overboard, even if it is
+just an old ferryboat in New York harbor.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The ferry ride is fast, only about fifteen minutes.
+We ride off in Staten Island and start thinking
+where to go. I know what’s first with me.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I ask Mary, “What do you like, hamburgers
+or sandwiches?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Both. I mean either,” she says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The first place we see is a delicatessen, which
+is about my favorite kind of place to eat anyway.
+I order a hot pastrami, and Mary says she never
+had one, but she’ll try the same.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Where could we go on Staten Island?” I say.
+“I never was here before.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“About the only place I’ve been is the zoo.
+I’ve been there lots of times. The vet let me
+watch her operate on a snake once.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">This is a pretty surprising thing for a girl to
+tell you in the middle of a mouthful of hot
+pastrami. The pastrami is great, and they put it
+on a roll with a lot of olives and onions and
+relish. Mary likes it too.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Is the vet a woman? Aren’t you scared of
+snakes?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg137" id="Pg137" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Uh-un, I never was really. But when you’re
+watching an operation, you get so interested you
+don’t think about it being icky or scary. The vet
+is a woman. She’s been there quite a while.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I digest this along with the rest of my sandwich.
+Then we both have a piece of apple pie.
+You can tell from the way the crust looks—browned
+and a little uneven—that they make it
+right here.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So shall we go to the zoo?” Mary asks.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K.” I get up to get her coat and mine.
+When I turn around, there she is up by the
+cashier, getting ready to pay her check.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, I’m buying lunch,” I say, steaming up
+with the other check.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh, that’s all right.” She smiles. “I’ve got it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I don’t care if she’s <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">got</span></span> it. I want to <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">pay</span></span> it. I
+suppose it’s a silly thing to get sore about, but
+it sort of annoys me. Anyway, how do you maneuver
+around to do something for a girl when
+she doesn’t even know you want to?</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The man in the deli gives us directions to
+get to the zoo, which isn’t far. It’s a low brick
+building in a nice park. In the lobby there are
+some fish tanks, then there’s a wing for birds
+on one side, animals on the other, and snakes
+straight ahead.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg138" id="Pg138" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go for snakes. Mary really seems to like
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She says, “The vet here likes them, and I guess
+she got me interested. You know, they don’t
+really understand how a snake moves? Mechanically,
+I mean. She’s trying to find out.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We look at them all, little ones and big ones,
+and then we go watch the birds. The keeper is
+just feeding them. The parrot shouts at him,
+and the pelican and the eagles gobble up their
+fish and raw meat, but the vulture just sits on
+his perch looking bored. Probably needs a desert
+and a dying Legionnaire to whet his appetite.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">In the animal wing a strange-looking dame
+is down at the end, talking to a sleepy tiger.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Come on, darling, just a little roar. Couldn’t
+you give me just a soft one today?” she’s cooing
+at him. The tiger blinks and looks away.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The lady notices us standing there and says,
+“He’s my baby. I’ve been coming to see him for
+fourteen years. Some days he roars for me beautifully.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She has a short conversation with the lion,
+then moves along with us toward the small cats,
+a puma and a jaguar. She looks in the next cage,
+which is empty, and shakes her head mournfully.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg139" id="Pg139" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I had the sweetest little leopard. He died last
+week. Would you believe it? The zoo never let
+me know he was sick. I could have come and
+helped take care of him. I might have saved his
+life.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She goes on talking, sometimes to herself,
+sometimes to the puma, and we cross over to look
+at two otters chasing each other up an underwater
+tunnel.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What is she, some kind of nut?” Mary says.
+“Does she think this is her private zoo?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I shrug. “I suppose she’s a little off. But so’s
+my Aunt Kate, the one who gave me Cat. They
+just happen to like cats better than people. Kate
+thinks all the stray cats in the world are her children,
+and I guess this one feels the same way
+about the big cats here.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We mosey around a little bit more and then
+head back to the ferry. I make good and sure I’m
+ahead, and I get to the ticket office and buy two
+tickets.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Would you care for a ride across the harbor
+in my yacht?” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Why, of course. I’d be delighted,” says Mary.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">A small thing, but it makes me feel good.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Over in Brooklyn I see a clock on a bank, and
+<a name="Pg140" id="Pg140" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+it says five o’clock. I do some fast calculating and
+say, “Uh-oh, I better phone. I’ll never make it
+home by dinnertime.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I phone and get Pop. He’s home early from
+work. Just my luck.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I got to get this bike back to this kid in
+Coney,” I tell him. “Then I’ll be right home.
+About seven.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What do you mean <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">this</span></span> bike and <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">this</span></span> kid?
+Who? Anyway, I thought you were already at
+Coney Island.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking
+questions. I start explaining. “Well, it was
+awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we’d
+go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to
+the zoo. So now we just got back to Brooklyn,
+and I’m downtown and I got to take the bike
+back.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So who’s ‘we’? You got a rat in your pocket?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I can distract Mom but not Pop. “Well, actually,
+it’s a girl named Mary. It’s her brother’s
+bike. He’s away in college.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of
+the line, laughing his head off.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So what’s so funny about that?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing. Only now I can
+<a name="Pg141" id="Pg141" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+see what all the shouting was about at breakfast.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">well</span></span> as
+the bicycle of the brother who goes to college,
+home safe. Hear? I’ll tell your mother you narrowly
+escaped drowning, and she’ll probably
+save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K. Bye.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though,
+him worrying about me getting Mary home safe,
+when her own mother doesn’t worry any.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We start along toward her house slowly, as
+there’s a good deal of traffic now. I’m wondering
+how to see Mary again without having to ask for
+her number and phoning and making a date.
+Something about telephoning I don’t like. Besides,
+I’d probably go out to a pay phone so the
+family wouldn’t listen, and that’d make me feel
+stupid to begin with.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Just then we start rounding the golf course,
+and I whack the handle bar of my bike and say,
+“Hey, that’s it!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What’s it?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Golf. Let’s play golf. Not now, I don’t mean.
+Next holiday. We’ve got Election Day coming
+up. I’ll borrow Pop’s clubs and take the subway
+<a name="Pg142" id="Pg142" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+and meet you here. How about ten o’clock?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hunh?” Mary looks startled. “Well, I suppose
+I could try, or anyway I could walk around.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s easy. I’ll show you.” The two times I
+played, I only hit the ball decently about four or
+five times. But the times I <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">did</span></span> hit it, it seemed
+easy.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We get to Mary’s house and I put the bikes
+away and give her back her brother’s jacket. “I
+guess I’ll go right along. It’s getting late. See you
+Election Day.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K., bye. Say—thanks for the ferry ride!”</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg143" id="Pg143" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc29" id="toc29"></a>
+  <a name="pdf30" id="pdf30"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">15</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image15.png" width="507" height="450" alt="Illustration: Cat eating turkey neck from bowl on floor." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I go
+down to the delicatessen to buy some coke, so I
+can really enjoy myself watching TV. Tom is
+just finishing work at the flower shop, and I ask
+him if he wants to come along home.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Nah. Thanks. I got to be at work early tomorrow.”
+He doesn’t sound too cheery.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How’s the job going?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K., I guess.” We walk along a little ways.
+<a name="Pg144" id="Pg144" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+“The job’s not bad, but I don’t want to be a
+florist all my life, and I can’t see this job will
+train me for anything else.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">That seems pretty true. It must be tough not
+getting regular holidays off, too. “You have to
+work all day tomorrow?” I ask.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I open the store up at seven and start working
+on orders we’ve already got. I’ll get through
+around three or four.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, you want to come for dinner? We’re
+not eating till evening.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom grins. “You cooking the dinner? Maybe
+you better ask your mother.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’ll be all right with Mom. Look, I’ll ask
+her and come let you know in the store tomorrow,
+O.K.?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hmm. Well, sure. Thanks. I’ve got a date
+with Hilda later in the evening, but she’s got to
+eat with her folks first.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K. See you tomorrow.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Right.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom says it’s all right about Tom coming, so
+I go down and tell him in the morning. Turns
+out Mom has asked Kate to have dinner with
+us, too, which is quite a step. For Kate, I mean.
+I think she would have turned the invitation
+<a name="Pg145" id="Pg145" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+down, except no one can bear to hurt Mom’s
+feelings. Kate’s been in our house before, of
+course, but then she just came in to chat or have
+tea or something. It wasn’t like an invitation.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She comes, and she looks like someone from
+another world. I’ve never seen her in anything
+but her old skirts and sneakers, so the “good
+clothes” she’s wearing now must have been hanging
+in a closet twenty years. The dress and shoes
+are way out of style, and she’s carrying a real old
+black patent-leather pocketbook. Usually she
+just lugs her old cloth shopping bag, mostly full
+of cat goodies. Come to think of it, that’s it: Kate
+lives in a world that is just her own and the cats’.
+I never saw her trying to fit into the ordinary
+world before.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Cat knows her right away, though. Clothes
+don’t fool him. He rubs her leg and curls up on
+the sofa beside her, still keeping a half-open eye
+on the oven door in the kitchen, where the
+turkey is roasting.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom comes in, also in city clothes—a white
+shirt and tie and jacket—the first time I ever saw
+him in them. He sits down on the other side of
+Cat, who stretches one paw out toward him
+negligently.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg146" id="Pg146" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Looking at Kate and Tom sitting there on the
+sofa, both looking a little ill at ease, I get a funny
+idea. My family is starting to collect people the
+way Kate collects homeless cats. Of course, Kate
+and Tom aren’t homeless. They’re people-less—not
+part of any family. I think Mom always
+wanted more people to take care of, so she’s glad
+to have them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kidding, I ask Kate, “How many cats at your
+home for Thanksgiving dinner?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She stops stroking Cat a minute and thinks.
+“Hmm, Susan’s got four new kittens, just got
+their eyes open. A beautiful little orange one
+and three tigers. Then there’s two big kittens,
+strays, and one old stray tom. Makes eight, that’s
+all. Sometimes I’ve had lots more than that.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Doesn’t the landlord ever object?” Pop asks.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate snorts. “Him! Huh! I pay my rent. And
+I have my own padlock on the door, so he can’t
+come snooping around.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We all sit down to dinner. Pop gives Cat the
+turkey neck to crunch up in the kitchen. He
+finishes that and crouches and stares at us eating.
+Kate gives him tidbits, which I’m not supposed
+to do. I don’t think she really wants to eat the
+turkey herself. She’s pretty strictly a fruit and
+yogurt type.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg147" id="Pg147" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">After dinner Tom leaves to meet Hilda, and I
+walk home with Kate, carrying a bag of scraps
+and giblets for her cats. While she’s fiddling with
+the two sets of keys to open her door, the man
+next door sticks his head out. “Messenger was
+here a little while ago with a telegram for you.
+Wouldn’t give it to me.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“A telegram?” Kate gapes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah. He’ll be back.” The man looks pleased,
+like he’s been able to deliver some bad news,
+and pulls his head in and shuts his door.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We go into Kate’s apartment, and cats come
+meowing and rubbing against her legs, and they
+jump up on the sink and rub and nudge the bag
+of scraps when she puts it down. Kate is muttering
+rapidly to herself and fidgeting with her coat
+and bag and not really paying much attention to
+the cats, which is odd.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Lots of people send telegrams on holidays.
+It’s probably just greetings,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Not to me, they don’t!” Kate snaps, also
+sounding as if they better hadn’t.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go over to play with the little kittens. The
+marmalade-colored one is the strongest of the
+litter, and he’s learned to climb out of the box.
+He chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the
+big cats, and she strides over and scoops him back
+<a name="Pg148" id="Pg148" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+into the box. “You stay in there. You’ll get
+stepped on.” She drops Susan back in with her
+babies to take care of them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the
+door, practically bowling over an ancient little
+messenger leaning sleepily against the side of
+the door.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign
+here,” he says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams
+the door. The orange kitten has got out again,
+and Kate does come close to stepping on him as
+she walks across the room tearing open the telegram.
+He doesn’t know enough to dodge feet
+yet. I scoop him back in this time.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She
+looks quite calm now. She says, “Well, he died.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh? Who?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“My brother. He’s the only person in the
+world I know who would send me a telegram.
+So he’s dead now.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She repeats it, and I can’t figure whether to
+say I’m sorry or what. I always thought when
+someone heard of a death in the family, there’d
+be a lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks
+perfectly calm, but strange somehow.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg149" id="Pg149" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Has he been sick?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate shakes her head. “I don’t know. I haven’t
+seen him in twenty years.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes
+on, talking half to herself and half to me. “Mean
+old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about
+his money. That’s all he cared about. Once he
+tried to get me to give him money to invest.
+That’s the last time I saw him. He has an old
+house way up in the Bronx. But we never did
+get along, even when we were kids.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent
+the telegram?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“He’s had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him.
+She’d buy him day-old bread and dented cans
+of soup because they were cheaper. She suited
+him fine—saved him money and never talked to
+him. Well, she’ll get his money now, if he left
+any. That’s what she’s been waiting for. She sent
+me the wire.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Twenty years, I think. That’s a long time not
+to be speaking to your own brother, and him living
+just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder.
+She couldn’t just not give a hoot about him. They
+must have been real mad at each other. And mad
+at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what
+<a name="Pg150" id="Pg150" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+kind of parents <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">they</span></span>  had, with one of them growing
+up loving only cats and the other only money.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate is staring out the window and stroking
+the old stray tomcat between the ears, and it hits
+me: there isn’t a person in the world she loves or
+even hates. I like cats fine, too, but if I didn’t
+have people that mattered, it wouldn’t be so
+good. I say “So long” quietly and go out.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg151" id="Pg151" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc31" id="toc31"></a>
+  <a name="pdf32" id="pdf32"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">16</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image16.png" width="453" height="450" alt="Illustration: Reporters and photographers crowding in on Kate." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I always wondered if the poor soul had any
+relatives.” That’s what Mom says when I tell her
+about Kate’s telegram. “And now she’s lost her
+only brother. That’s sad.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I think it’s sad she never talked to him for
+twenty years. All these years I’ve wished I had a
+brother,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“If it’s her only brother, she’s going to have to
+do something about his estate,” says Pop. That
+<a name="Pg152" id="Pg152" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+legal mind, it never rests. I guess he’s got a point
+about this, though. How is Kate going to deal
+with lawyers, or undertakers, or anyone? She
+can’t hardly stand to <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">talk</span></span>  to people like that.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“What’ll she have to do?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Maybe I better go see her tomorrow,” says
+Pop. “There can be lots of things—see if he left
+a will, if he owes any taxes, if he has property that
+has to be taken care of or sold. You can’t tell.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Kate said he was a miser. Maybe he left her a
+million. Say, that’d be great!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Don’t be a dope!” Pop snaps, and he really
+sounds angry, so I pipe down.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The next morning Pop tells me to go over and
+see how Kate is. “The way she feels about people,
+I don’t like to just barge in. I’ll come by in ten
+minutes, like I was picking you up to go to a
+movie or something.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I saunter round the corner onto Third Avenue
+and stop short. There are two newspaper
+cars pulled up in front of Kate’s building, one
+red and one black, and a sizable knot of people
+gathered on the sidewalk. I move in among them.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That crazy cat lady ... he musta been a
+nut too ... left her about a million ... a
+lotta rich cats, how d’ya like that....”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg153" id="Pg153" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">So I guess he did leave her money, and all of
+a sudden I see it isn’t “great.” It’s going to be
+trouble. I push through the people and go upstairs
+without anyone stopping me. When I open
+Kate’s door, old stray tomcat shoots out. He’s
+leaving, and I can see why.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate’s room is tiny, and it looks like it’s filled
+with a mob. Maybe it’s only half a dozen guys,
+but the photographers are pushing around trying
+to get shots and the reporters are jabbering.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Orange kitten sticks his head out of the box.
+Then out he comes, into the sea of feet. I drop
+him back in and try to get across to Kate. She’s
+pretty well backed into a corner and looking
+ready to jump out the window. She has her arms
+folded in front of her, each hand clenching the
+other elbow, as if to hold herself together. A
+reporter with a bunch of scratch paper in his
+hand is crowding her.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Miss Carmichael”—funny, I never even knew
+her last name before—“I just want to ask one or
+two questions. Could you tell us when you last
+saw your brother?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No, I couldn’t,” she snaps, drawing her head
+down between her shoulders and trying to melt
+into the wall.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg154" id="Pg154" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Watcha going to do with the money?” a photographer
+asks. He picks up a cat, one of the big
+stray kittens, and dumps it on Kate. The cat
+clings to her and the photographer says, “Hold
+it now. Just let me snap a picture.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He takes two steps back.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At the first step the room is silent. At the
+second step a shattering caterwaul goes up. He
+has stepped on the adventurous orange kitten.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The scream freezes us all, except Kate. She
+shoots out of her corner, knowing instantly what
+has happened. The kitten is jerking slightly now,
+and bright, bright blood is coming out of its
+mouth. With one violent, merciful stroke Kate
+finishes it. She picks the limp body up and wraps
+it neatly in a paper towel and places it in the
+wastebasket.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The room is still silent for one congealed instant.
+Kate seems almost to have forgotten the
+crowd of men. Then two of them make hastily
+for the door. The photographer shuffles his feet
+and says, “Gee, m’am, I didn’t mean ... I
+wouldn’t for the world....”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate whirls and screams at him: “Get out!
+Get out, all of you! Leave me and my cats alone!
+I never asked you in here!”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg155" id="Pg155" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At that moment my pop comes in the door.
+Of course he doesn’t know anything about the
+kitten, but he takes in the general situation and
+herds the two remaining newspapermen to the
+door. He gives them his card and home address
+and tells them to look him up a little later.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">My knees suddenly feel weak and I slump
+onto the sofa, and my eyes swivel round to the
+little package in the wastebasket. It would be
+the strongest one. I really never saw anything
+get killed right in front of me before. It hits you.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop is trying to calm Kate down. She’s facing
+him, grabbing each sleeve of his coat. “What am
+I going to do? What can I do? I don’t want his
+money. I don’t want anything from anyone. I
+just want to be let alone!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Take it easy, Kate, take it easy. You don’t
+have to let anyone into your apartment. About
+the inheritance, well, I’ll have to look into that.”
+Over his shoulder Pop signals to me to go home
+and get Mom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go home and explain the situation to Mom,
+and she comes back with me. One photographer
+and a couple of reporters are still hanging
+around, and the guy snaps a picture of me and
+Mom at the door. Mom scoots on up. Bad as I
+<a name="Pg156" id="Pg156" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+feel, I still get a charge out of getting my picture
+taken for a paper.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hey, kid,” one of the reporters shoves in
+front of me, “about this Miss Carmichael. Does
+she act pretty strange, like talking to herself on
+the street and stuff?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I see the story he’s trying to build up. While
+it’s true in a way, if you really know Kate it’s
+not. Anyway, I’m against it. I say, “Nah. She’s
+all right. She’s just sort of scared of people, and
+she likes cats.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“How many cats she got?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">There have been up to a dozen on a busy day,
+but again I play it down. “She’s got a mother
+cat with kittens. Sometimes a stray or two. Don’t
+get sucked in by all that jazz these dumb kids
+around here’ll give you.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“She gets all that money, you think she’ll buy
+a big house, set up a home for stray cats?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I shrug. “I don’t know. She doesn’t want the
+money anyway. She just wants to be let alone.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Doesn’t want the money!” the photographer
+chips in. “Boy, she must be <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">really</span></span> nuts! I’m
+going back to the office.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The reporter says he’s going to wait and talk
+<a name="Pg157" id="Pg157" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+to my pop, and I go on upstairs to see what’s
+doing.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate is sitting on the sofa, sniffing and wiping
+her eyes and muttering, but looking calmer.
+Mom is making tea. Pop is looking out the window,
+scratching his head.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate gulps and draws a big breath. “Tell them
+I don’t want his old money. Tell them to give
+it to someone else. Tell them to leave me alone.
+I just want my own place and my cats. They can’t
+make me move, can they? I’ve lived here thirty
+years. I couldn’t go anyplace else.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She gulps and sniffs some more, and Mom
+brings her a cup of tea. The stray kittens jump
+up to see if it’s anything good and nuzzle into
+her lap. Kate takes a sip of tea and asks Pop
+again, “They can’t make me move, can they?”
+This seems to be what worries her most.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No-o,” says Pop, “it’s only....”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He’s interrupted by a knock on the door, and
+I go open it a crack. A guy says he’s the landlord.
+As soon as Kate hears his voice, she yelps at him,
+“I paid my rent, first of the month like always.
+Don’t you come bothering me!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s about the cats,” he says. “People outside
+<a name="Pg158" id="Pg158" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+saying you got a dozen cats in here. There’s a
+law, you know.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He’s a seedy-looking, whining kind of a man,
+and he looks real pleased with himself when he
+says there’s a law about cats.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate jumps right at him. “I’m not breaking
+any laws. I know you. You just want to get me
+out of here and rent the place for more money.
+You leave me alone!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The man whines, “There’s a law, that’s all.
+I don’t want no violation slapped on my building.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop comes over and tells the man there’s just
+a mother cat with kittens. “There’s a couple of
+strays here, too, right now, but I’ll take them
+home with me.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“There’s a law, that’s all. Also, I got a right
+to inspect the premises.” Pop shows no signs of
+letting him in, and he shuffles and grumbles and
+goes away.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Lock the door,” Kate snaps. “I keep it locked
+all the time.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop says he’s going home to make some phone
+calls and try to figure out what’s going on. He
+takes down the name and address of Kate’s
+brother and asks her if she’s sure there are no
+<a name="Pg159" id="Pg159" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+other relatives. She says she never heard of any.
+Pop goes, and Kate insists that I lock the door
+after him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She gets up and starts stirring around getting
+food out for the cats. She buys fish and chicken
+livers for them, even though she hardly eats any
+meat herself. She listens at the back door a
+moment to make sure no one’s out there, then
+opens the door and puts out the garbage and
+wastebasket. There goes the adventurous kitten.
+You got to hand it to Kate. She has no sniffling
+sentimentality about her cats. Kitten’s dead, it’s
+dead, that’s all. She doesn’t mope over the limp
+mite of fur. In fact, anything to do with cats
+she’s got sense and guts. They’re her family. I
+don’t know that I could have put that kitten out
+of its misery.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Just as long as the world doesn’t throw any
+stray fortunes at her, Kate does fine. But when
+people get in her way, she needs someone like
+Pop.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom says she’ll stick around a while and tells
+me to take the two stray kittens home, just in
+case the landlord comes back trying to make
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K., great—Cat’ll have some company!”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg160" id="Pg160" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Kate sniffs. “He’ll hate it. Cats don’t like
+other cats pushing into their house.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She’s right, of course. I put the kittens down
+at home, and Cat hisses at them and then runs
+them under the radiator in the kitchen. Then
+he sits down in the doorway and glowers at them,
+on guard.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Things simmer down gradually. Mom and I
+and sometimes Tom, who’s right at the flower
+shop on the corner, take turns checking on Kate
+and doing shopping for her, or going with her
+so she doesn’t get badgered by people. But pretty
+soon everyone in the neighborhood forgets all
+about her and her inheritance. They see her
+buying just the same old cat food and cottage
+cheese and fruit, and they probably figure the
+whole thing was a phony.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It wasn’t though. Pop finds out her brother
+did leave a will. He lined up his funeral, left
+something to his housekeeper, something to a
+little restaurant owner way downtown—apparently
+that was his one big luxury, a decent meal
+twice a year when he went down to buy more
+stocks—and the rest to Kate.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop says it may take months or years to clear
+up the estate, but he says Kate can get her share
+<a name="Pg161" id="Pg161" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+all put in trust for her with some bank, and
+they’ll take care of all the legalities and taxes and
+just pay her as much or little as she wants out
+of the income. And she can leave the whole kit
+and caboodle to a cat home in her will if she
+wants to, which will probably make her tightwad
+brother spin in his grave. I asked her once,
+and she said maybe she’d leave some to the
+Children’s Aid, because there are a lot of stray
+children in New York City that need looking
+after, as well as cats. She’s getting to think about
+people some.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg162" id="Pg162" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc33" id="toc33"></a>
+  <a name="pdf34" id="pdf34"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">17</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image17.png" width="534" height="450" alt="Illustration: Mary calling from phone booth at Macy’s." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">There are some disadvantages to not getting a
+girl’s phone number. This sort of date I had
+with Mary for golf on Election Day fell through.
+In the first place, I was sick in bed with the flu,
+and Mom wouldn’t have let me out for anything,
+and secondly, it was pouring rain. Without
+the phone number, there wasn’t any way I
+could let her know, and I didn’t even know a
+street address to write to later.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg163" id="Pg163" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">By the time I got finished with the flu, we
+were into Thanksgiving and then all the trouble
+with Kate. Time passed and I felt rottener about
+standing her up without a word, and I couldn’t
+get up my nerve to go out to Coney and just
+appear on her doorstep. I could have found the
+house all right, once I was out there.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The first week of Christmas vacation the
+phone rings late one afternoon and Pop answers
+it. He says, “Just one minute, please,” and I
+know right away from his voice it isn’t someone
+he knows.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Young lady on the phone for you, Dave,” he
+says, and he enjoys watching me gulp.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hullo?” a rather tight, flat little voice asks.
+“Is this Dave—uh, Mitchell—uh, I mean, with
+Cat?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I recognize it’s Mary, all right, even if she does
+sound strange and scared.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh, hi!” I say. “Sure, it’s me! I’m awfully
+sorry about that day we were going to play golf.
+I was in bed with the flu, and then I didn’t know
+your phone number or....”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Oh, that’s all right,” she says. “I wondered
+what happened.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">There’s a slight pause, and I see Pop grinning
+<a name="Pg164" id="Pg164" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+and pretending to read his paper. I turn around
+so I won’t see him.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Where are you now, out in Coney?” I ask
+Mary.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No, as a matter of fact, I’m in Macy’s.” Her
+voice trails off a little, but then she starts in
+again. “As a matter of fact, that’s why I called.
+You see, I was supposed to meet Mom here at
+five, and she hasn’t come, and I bought all these
+Christmas presents, and I forgot about the tax
+or something, and this is my last dime.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She stops. I see now why she sounds scared,
+and I get a curdled feeling in my stomach, too,
+because what if the dime runs out in the phone
+and she’s cut off? I’ll never find her in Macy’s.
+It’s too big.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Pop!” I yelp. “There’s this girl I know is in
+a phone booth in Macy’s and her dime is going
+to run out and she hasn’t anymore money.
+What’ll I do?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Get the phone number of the booth and call
+her back. Here—” He gives me a pencil.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">What a relief. Funny I never thought of that.
+You just somehow don’t think of a phone booth
+having a number.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg165" id="Pg165" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary sounds pretty relieved, too. I get the
+number and call her back, and with Pop making
+suggestions here and there we settle that I’ll
+go over to Macy’s and meet her on the ground
+floor near Thirty-fourth Street and Broadway at
+the counter where they’re selling umbrellas for
+$2.89, which Mary says she can see from the
+phone booth.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K.” I say, and then I sort of don’t want to
+hang up. It’s fun talking. So I go on. “Look, just
+in case we miss each other at Macy’s, what’s
+your phone number at home, so I could call you
+sometime?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“COney 7-1218.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K. Well, good-bye. I’ll be right over. To
+Macy’s, I mean.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I grab my coat and check to see if I’ve got
+money. Pop asks if I’m going to bring her home
+for dinner.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Gee, I don’t know.” I hadn’t given a thought
+to what we’d do. “I guess so, maybe, if her
+mother hasn’t come by then. I’ll call you if we
+do anything else.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“O.K.,” Pop says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go out and hustle through the evening rush-hour
+<a name="Pg166" id="Pg166" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+crowds to the subway. The stores are all
+open evenings now, for Christmas, so the crowds
+are going both ways.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I get to the right corner of Macy’s, and I see
+Mary right away. Everyone else is rushing about
+and muttering to themselves, and she’s standing
+there looking lost. In fact she looks so much like
+a waif that the first thing I say is, “Hi! Shall we
+go get something to eat?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yes, I’m starved. I was just going to get a
+doughnut when I found I’d run out of money.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Let’s go home and you can have dinner with
+us then. But what about your mother? Won’t
+she be looking for you?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mary shifts her feet and looks tired. “I don’t
+know. Probably if she came and I wasn’t here,
+she’d figure I’d gone home.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I try to think a minute, which is hard to do
+with all these people shoving around you. Mary
+starts to pick up her two enormous shopping
+bags, and I take them from her, still trying to
+think. At the subway entrance I see the phone
+booth.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“That’s the thing,” I say. “Why don’t you call
+your house and see if your mother left a message
+or something?”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg167" id="Pg167" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well....” Mary stands by the phone looking
+confused and in fact about ready to cry. I
+suddenly decide the best thing we can do is get
+home and sit down where it’s quiet. Waiting
+fifteen minutes or so to phone can’t make much
+difference.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We get home pretty fast and I introduce Mary
+to Mom and Pop. She sinks into the nearest chair
+and takes off her shoes.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Excuse me,” she says. “I just bought these
+heels, and it’s awful wearing them!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She wiggles her toes and begins to look better.
+Mom offers her a pair of slippers and Pop passes
+some potato chips.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom says, “Poor child, did you try to do all
+your Christmas shopping at once?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, actually, I was having fun just looking
+for a long while. I have two little cousins
+that I don’t really have to get much for, but I
+love looking at all the toys. I spent quite a while
+there. Then I did the rest of my shopping in a
+rush, and everything is so crowded, and I got
+mixed up on my money or the sales tax and
+only had a dime left, and I missed my mother
+or she forgot.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">She stretches out her toes to touch Cat, who
+<a name="Pg168" id="Pg168" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+is sitting in front of her. “I couldn’t think what
+to do. It’s so hard to think when your feet hurt.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It certainly is,” agrees Mom. She goes out
+to the kitchen to finish fixing dinner, and Pop
+suggests Mary better phone her home. She gets
+her father, and her mother has left a message
+that she was delayed and figured Mary would
+go home alone. Mary gives her father our address
+and tells him she’ll be home by nine.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We must have hit a lucky day because we
+have a real good dinner: slices of good whole
+meat, not mushed up stuff, and potatoes cooked
+with cheese in them, and salad, and a lemon
+meringue pie from the bakery, even.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">After dinner we sit around a little while, and
+Pop says I better take Mary home, and he gives
+me money for a cab at the end of the subway.
+When Mary gives the driver her home address,
+I say it over to myself a few times so I’ll remember.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Suddenly I wonder about something. “Say,
+how’d you know <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">my</span></span> phone number?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I looked it up,” she says simply. “There’s
+about twenty-eleven Mitchells in the Manhattan
+phone book, but only one in the East Twenties,
+so I figured that must be you.”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg169" id="Pg169" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Gee, that’s true. You must have had an
+awful time, though, standing in the phone booth
+with your feet hurting, going through all those
+Mitchells.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Says Mary, “Oh, no. I did it one rainy afternoon
+at home, weeks ago.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Well, what do you know.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+<a name="Pg170" id="Pg170" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+  <a name="toc35" id="toc35"></a>
+  <a name="pdf36" id="pdf36"></a>
+  <h1 class="tei tei-head" style="text-align: right; margin-bottom: 3.46em; margin-top: 3.46em"><span style="font-size: 173%">18</span></h1>
+<div class="tei tei-figure" style="width: 100%; text-align: center"><img src="images/image18.png" width="529" height="450" alt="Illustration: Raised champagne glasses toasting Cat." /></div>
+
+
+  
+
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The two stray kittens gradually make themselves
+at home. Somehow or other Cat has taught
+them that he’s in charge here, and he just chases
+them for fun now and again, when he’s not busy
+sleeping.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">As for keeping cats in my room, that’s pretty
+well forgotten. For one thing, Mom really likes
+them. She sneaks the kittens saucers of cream
+and bits of real hamburger when no one’s looking,
+<a name="Pg171" id="Pg171" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+and she likes talking to them in the kitchen.
+She doesn’t pick them up, but just having them
+in the room sure doesn’t give her asthma.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">The only time we have any trouble from the
+cats is one evening when Pop comes home and
+the two kittens skid down the hall between his
+legs, with Cat after them. He scales his hat at
+the lot of them and roars down the hall to me,
+“Hey, Davey! When are you getting rid of these
+cats? I’m not fixing to start an annex to Kate’s
+cat home!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I’m sure Davey will find homes for them,”
+Mom says soothingly, but getting a little short
+of breath, the way she does any time she’s afraid
+one of us is losing his temper.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">In fact, one thing this cat business seems to
+have established is that me and Pop fighting is
+the main cause of Mom’s asthma. So we both try
+to do a little better, and a lot of things we used
+to argue and fight about, like my jazz records,
+we just kid each other about now. But now and
+then we still work up to a real hassle.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I’ve been taking a history course the first
+semester at school. It’s a real lemon—just a lot
+of preaching about government and citizenship.
+The second semester I switch to a music course.
+<a name="Pg172" id="Pg172" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+This is O.K. with the school—but not with Pop.
+Right away when I bring home my new program,
+he says, “How come you’re taking one less
+course this half?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I explain that I’m taking music, and also
+biology, algebra, English, and French.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Music!” he snorts. “That’s recreation, not a
+course. Do it on your own time!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Pop, it’s a course. You think the school signs
+me up for an hour of home record playing?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“They might,” he grunts. “You’re not going
+to loaf your way through school if I have anything
+to say about it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Loaf!” I yelp. “Four major academic subjects
+is more than lots of the guys take.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom comes and suggests that Pop better go
+over to school with me and talk it over at the
+school office. He does, and for once I win a
+round—I keep music for this semester. But he
+makes sure that next year I’m signed up all
+year for five majors: English, French, math,
+chemistry, and European history. I’ll be lucky
+if I have time to breathe.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go down to the flower shop to grouse to
+Tom. It’s after Valentine’s Day, and business is
+slack and the boss is out.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Why does Pop have to come butting into my
+<a name="Pg173" id="Pg173" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+business at school? Doesn’t he even think the
+school knows what it’s doing?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Aw, heck,” says Tom, “your father’s the one
+has to see you get into college or get a job. Sometimes
+schools do let kids take a lot of soft courses,
+and then they’re out on a limb later.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh. He just likes to boss everything I do.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“So—he cares.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Huh.” I’m not very ready to buy this, but
+then I remember Tom’s father, who <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">doesn’t</span></span>
+care. It makes me think.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Besides,” says Tom, “half the reason you
+and your father are always bickering is that
+you’re so much alike.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Me? Like <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">him</span></span>?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Sure. You’re both impatient and curious, got
+to poke into everything. As long as there’s a
+bone on the floor, the two of you worry it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mr. Palumbo comes back to the shop then,
+and Tom gets busy with the plants. I go home,
+wondering if I really am at all like Pop. I never
+thought of it before.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">It’s funny about fights. Pop and I can go along
+real smooth and easy for a while, and I think:
+Well, he really isn’t a bad guy, and I’m growing
+up, we can see eye to eye—all that stuff. Then,
+whoosh! I hardly know what starts it, but a fight
+<a name="Pg174" id="Pg174" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+boils up, and we’re both breathing fire like
+dragons on the loose.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We get a holiday Washington’s Birthday,
+which is good because there’s a TV program on
+Tuesday, the night before the holiday, that I
+hardly ever get to watch. It’s called <span class="tei tei-hi"><span style="font-style: italic">Out Beyond</span></span>,
+and the people in it are very real, not just good
+guys and bad guys. There’s always one character
+moving around, keeping you on the edge of your
+chair, and by the time it all winds up in a surprise
+ending, you find this character is not a real
+person, he’s supernatural. The program goes on
+till eleven o’clock, and Mom won’t let me watch
+it on school nights.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I get the pillows comfortably arranged on the
+floor, with a big bottle of soda and a bag of popcorn
+within easy reach. The story starts off with
+some nature shots of a farm and mountains in
+the background and this little kid playing with
+his grandfather. There’s a lot of people in it, but
+gradually you get more and more suspicious of
+dear old grandpa. He’s taking the kid for a walk
+when a thunderstorm blows up.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Right then, of course, we have to have the
+alternate sponsor. He signs off, finally, and up
+comes Pop.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg175" id="Pg175" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Here, Davey old boy, we can do better than
+that tonight. The Governor and the Mayor are
+on a TV debate about New York City school
+reorganization.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">At first I figure he’s kidding, so I just growl,
+“Who cares?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">He switches the channel.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I jump up, tipping over the bottle of soda on
+the way. “Pop, that’s not fair! I’m right in the
+middle of a program, and I been waiting weeks
+to watch it because Mom won’t let me on school
+nights!”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop goes right on tuning his channel. “Do
+you good to listen to a real program for a
+change. There’ll be another western on tomorrow
+night.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">That’s the last straw. I shout, “See? You don’t
+even know what you’re talking about! It’s not
+a western.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop looks at me prissily. “You’re getting altogether
+too upset about these programs. Stop it
+and behave yourself. Go get a sponge to mop
+up the soda.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“It’s your fault! Mop it up yourself!” I’m too
+mad now to care what I say. I charge down the
+hall to my room and slam the door.
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg176" id="Pg176" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I hear the TV going for a few minutes, then
+Pop turns it off and goes in the kitchen to talk
+to Mom. In a little while he comes down and
+knocks on my door. Knocks—that’s something.
+Usually he just barges in.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Look here now, Dave, we’ve got to straighten
+a few things out quietly. Your mother says she
+told you you could watch that program, whatever
+it was. So O.K., go ahead, you can finish it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Yeah, it’s about over by now.” I’m still sore,
+and besides Pop’s still standing in my door, so I
+figure there’s a hitch in this somewhere.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“But anyway, you shouldn’t get so sore about
+an old television program that you shout ‘Mop
+it up yourself’ at me.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hmm.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hmm, nothing.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, I don’t think you should turn a guy’s
+TV program off in the middle without even
+finding out about it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop says “Hmm” this time, and we both stand
+and simmer down.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I look at my watch. It’s a quarter to eleven.
+I say, “Well, O.K. I might as well see the end.
+Sorry I got sore.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop moves out of the doorway. He says,
+<a name="Pg177" id="Pg177" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+“Hereafter I will only turn off your TV programs
+before they start, not in the middle.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Just as I get the TV on and settle down, the
+doorbell rings.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Goodness, who could that be so late?” says
+Mom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop goes to the door. It’s Tom, and Hilda is
+with him. I turn off the television set—I’ve lost
+track of what’s happening, and it doesn’t seem
+to be the grandfather who’s the spook after all.
+It’s the first time Hilda has been to our house,
+and Tom introduces her around. Then there’s
+one of those moments of complete silence, with
+everyone looking embarrassed, before we all
+start to speak at once.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Hilda came to the beach with us,” I say.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I told Tom we shouldn’t come so late,” says
+Hilda.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop says, “Not late at all. Come in and sit
+down.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Hilda sits on the sofa, where Cat is curled
+up. He looks at her, puts his head back and goes
+on sleeping.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Mom brings coffee and cookies in from the
+kitchen, and I pour the rest of the popcorn into
+a bowl and pass it around. Tom stirs his coffee
+<a name="Pg178" id="Pg178" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+vigorously and takes one sip and puts the cup
+down.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Reason we came so late,” he says, “Hilda
+and I have been talking all evening. We want
+to get married.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop doesn’t look as surprised as I do. “Congratulations!”
+he says.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Tom says, “Thanks” and looks at Hilda, and
+she blushes. Really. Tom drinks a little more
+coffee and then he goes on: “The trouble is,
+I can’t get married on this flower-shop job.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Doesn’t pay enough?” Pop asks.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Well, it’s not just the pay. The job isn’t
+getting me anywhere I want to go. So that’s what
+we’ve been talking about all evening. Finally we
+went up to Times Square and talked to the guys
+in the Army and Navy and Air Force recruiting
+office. You know, I’d get drafted in a year or
+two, anyway. I’ve decided to enlist in the Army.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“Goodness, you may get sent way out West for
+years and years!” says Mom.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“No, not if I enlist in the Army. That’s for
+three years. But I can choose what specialist
+school I want to go into, and there’s this Air
+Defense Command—it’s something to do with
+missiles. In that I can also choose what metropolitan
+<a name="Pg179" id="Pg179" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+area I want to be stationed in. I can
+choose New York, and we could get married,
+and I might even be able to go on taking college
+course at night school, with the Army paying
+for most of it.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop says, “You sound like the recruiting officer
+himself. You sure of all this?”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I’ll have to check some more,” says Tom.
+“The recruiting officer, as a matter of fact, tried
+to persuade me to shoot for officers’ training and
+go into the Army as a career. But then I would
+be sent all over, and anyway, I don’t think Army
+life would be any good for Hilda.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">“I can see you have put in a busy evening,”
+says Pop. “Well, shove back the coffee cups, and
+I’ll break out that bottle of champagne that’s
+been sitting in the icebox since Christmas.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">I go and retrieve my spilled bottle of soda.
+There’s still enough left for one big glass. Pop
+brings out the champagne, and the cork blows
+and hits the ceiling. Cat jumps off the sofa and
+stands, half crouched and tail twitching, ready
+to take cover.</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">Pop fills little glasses for them and raises his
+to Tom and Hilda. “Here’s to you—a long,
+happy life!”
+</p>
+
+<a name="Pg180" id="Pg180" class="tei tei-anchor"></a>
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">We drink, and then I raise my glass of soda.
+“Here’s to Cat! Tom wouldn’t even be standing
+here if it wasn’t for Cat.”</p>
+
+<p class="tei tei-p" style="margin-bottom: 1.00em">That’s true, and we all drink to Cat. He sits
+down and licks his right front paw.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="page" /><div class="tei tei-div" style="margin-bottom: 5.00em; margin-top: 5.00em">
+
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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
+<!DOCTYPE TEI.2 SYSTEM "http://www.gutenberg.org/tei/marcello/0.4/dtd/pgtei.dtd">
+<TEI.2 lang="en">
+    <teiHeader>
+        <fileDesc>
+            <titleStmt>
+                <title>It's like this, cat</title>
+                <author>Emily Neville</author>
+              <respStmt>
+                <resp>Illustrated by</resp>
+                <name>Emil Weiss</name>
+              </respStmt>
+            </titleStmt>
+            <publicationStmt>
+                <publisher>Project Gutenberg</publisher>
+                <date>March 27, 2008</date>
+                <idno type='etext-no'>24921</idno>
+                <availability>
+                  <p>This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere
+                  at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever.
+                  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under
+                  the terms of the Project Gutenberg License online at
+                  www.gutenberg.org/license</p>
+                </availability>
+            </publicationStmt>
+            <sourceDesc>
+               <bibl>
+                 <title>It's like this, cat</title>
+                 <author>Emily Neville</author>
+                 <imprint>
+                   <publisher>Harper &amp; Row, Publishers, Inc.</publisher>
+                   <pubPlace>New York, New York</pubPlace>
+                   <date>1963</date>
+                 </imprint>
+               </bibl>
+            </sourceDesc>
+        </fileDesc>
+        <encodingDesc>
+          <classDecl>
+            <taxonomy id="lc">
+              <bibl>
+                <title>Library of Congress Classification</title>
+              </bibl>
+            </taxonomy>
+          </classDecl>
+        </encodingDesc>
+        <profileDesc>
+          <langUsage>
+            <language id="en" />
+          </langUsage>
+        </profileDesc>
+        <revisionDesc>
+          <change>
+            <date value="200X-XX">March 27, 2008</date>
+            <respStmt>
+                <resp>Produced by <name>Adam Buchbinder</name>, <name>Ren&eacute; Anderson Benitz</name>,
+                and the <name>Online Distributed Proofreading Team</name> at
+                &lt;http://www.pgdp.net/c&gt;.
+                Page-images available at
+                &lt;http://www.pgdp.net/projects/projectID467059110c292/&gt;</resp>
+            </respStmt>
+            <item>Project Gutenberg TEI edition 1</item>
+          </change>
+        </revisionDesc>
+    </teiHeader>
+
+    <pgExtensions>
+      <pgStyleSheet>
+        figure       { text-align: center }
+        .large       { font-size: large }
+        .bold        { font-weight: bold }
+        .italic      { font-style: italic }
+        .antiqua     { font-weight: bold }
+        .smallcaps   { font-variant: small-caps }
+        .small       { font-size: small }
+        .title       { font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold }
+        .right       { text-align: right }
+      </pgStyleSheet>
+    </pgExtensions>
+
+<text lang="en">
+  <front>
+    <div>
+      <divGen type="pgheader" />
+    </div>
+    <div>
+      <divGen type="encodingDesc" />
+    </div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend="text-align: center">It's like this, cat<lb/><lb/>
+       by Emily Neville<lb/>ILLUSTRATED BY EMIL WEISS</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/cover.jpg">
+  <figDesc>Cover: Dave standing on top step looking across street;<lb/>
+           Cat curled up below. Tall apartment building in background.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend="text-align: center">IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT<lb/><lb/>
+       BY EMILY NEVILLE<lb/>PICTURES BY EMIL WEISS</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/title.png">
+  <figDesc>Title Page: City scene of park entrance and busy street:<lb/>
+           tall apartment building on left; car driving by;<lb/>
+           bike-riding boy behind running boy and dog;<lb/>
+           mailman handing mail to woman on sidewalk.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always; small">
+<l rend='smallcaps'>it&rsquo;s like this, cat</l>
+<l>Copyright &copy; 1963 by Emily Neville</l>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="small">
+<p>Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of
+this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
+written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
+critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper &amp; Row,
+Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<l rend="font-size: large">TO</l>
+<l rend="font-size: large">MIDNIGHT,</l>
+<l rend="font-size: large">&ldquo;MAYOR&rdquo; OF GRAMERCY PARK</l>
+<l rend="font-size: large">1954-1962</l>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<head>CONTENTS</head>
+<divGen type="toc" />
+
+<!--
+<pb n="viii"/><anchor id="Pgviii"/>
+-->
+
+</div>
+</front>
+
+<body>
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<p rend="title; text-align: center">IT&rsquo;S LIKE THIS, CAT</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="001"/>--><anchor id="Pg001"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;1. Cat and Kate" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>1</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image01.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave holding Cat while Dad looks up<lb/>
+ from reading his newspaper.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>CAT AND KATE</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>My father is always talking about how a dog can
+be very educational for a boy. This is one reason
+I got a cat.</p>
+
+<p>My father talks a lot anyway. Maybe being a
+lawyer he gets in the habit. Also, he&rsquo;s a small
+guy with very little gray curly hair, so maybe he
+thinks he&rsquo;s got to roar a lot to make up for not
+being a big hairy tough guy. Mom is thin and
+quiet, and when anything upsets her, she gets
+<!--<pb n="002"/>--><anchor id="Pg002"/>
+asthma. In the apartment&mdash;we live right in the
+middle of New York City&mdash;we don&rsquo;t have any
+heavy drapes or rugs, and Mom never fries any
+food because the doctors figure dust and smoke
+make her asthma worse. I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;s dust;
+I think it&rsquo;s Pop&rsquo;s roaring.</p>
+
+<p>The big hassle that led to me getting Cat came
+when I earned some extra money baby-sitting for
+a little boy around the corner on Gramercy Park.
+I spent the money on a Belafonte record. This
+record has one piece about a father telling his
+son about the birds and the bees. I think it&rsquo;s
+funny. Pop blows his stack.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going to play that stuff in this
+house!&rdquo; he roars. &ldquo;Why aren&rsquo;t you outdoors, anyway?
+Baby-sitting! Baby-talk records! When I
+was your age, I made money on a newspaper-delivery
+route, and my dog Jeff and I used to go
+ten miles chasing rabbits on a good Saturday.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pop,&rdquo; I say patiently, &ldquo;there are no rabbits
+out on Third Avenue. Honest, there aren&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get fresh!&rdquo; Pop jerks the plug out of
+the record player so hard the needle skips, which
+probably wrecks my record. So I get mad and
+start yelling too. Between rounds we both hear
+Mom in the kitchen starting to wheeze.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="003"/>--><anchor id="Pg003"/>
+<p>Pop hisses, &ldquo;Now, see&mdash;you&rsquo;ve gone and upset
+your mother!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I slam the record player shut, grab a stick and
+ball, and run down the three flights of stairs to
+the street.</p>
+
+<p>This isn&rsquo;t the first time Pop and I have played
+this scene, and there gets to be a pattern: When
+I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to
+my Aunt Kate&rsquo;s. She&rsquo;s not really my aunt. The
+kids around here call her Crazy Kate the Cat
+Woman because she walks along the street in
+funny old clothes and sneakers talking to herself,
+and she sometimes has half a dozen or more stray
+cats living with her. I guess she does sound a
+little looney, but it&rsquo;s just because she does things
+her own way, and she doesn&rsquo;t give a hoot what
+people think. She&rsquo;s sane, all right. In fact she
+makes a lot better sense than my pop.</p>
+
+<p>It was three or four years ago, when I was a
+little kid, and I came tearing down our stairs
+crying mad after some fight with Pop, that I first
+met Kate. I plunged out of our door and into
+the street without looking. At the same moment
+I heard brakes scream and felt someone yank me
+back by the scruff of my neck. I got dropped in
+a heap on the sidewalk.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="004"/>--><anchor id="Pg004"/>
+<p>I looked up, and there was a shiny black car
+with M.D. plates and Kate waving her umbrella
+at the driver and shouting: &ldquo;Listen, Dr. Big
+Shot, whose life are you saving? Can&rsquo;t you even
+watch out for a sniveling little kid crossing the
+street?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The doctor looked pretty sheepish, and so did
+I. A few people on the sidewalk stopped to watch
+and snicker at us. Our janitor Butch was there,
+shaking his finger at me. Kate nodded to him and
+told him she was taking me home to mop me up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yas&rsquo;m,&rdquo; said Butch. He says &ldquo;Yas&rsquo;m&rdquo; to all
+ladies.</p>
+
+<p>Kate dragged me along by the hand to her
+apartment. She didn&rsquo;t say anything when we got
+there, just dumped me in a chair with a couple
+of kittens. Then she got me a cup of tea and a
+bowl of cottage cheese.</p>
+
+<p>That stopped me snuffling to ask, &ldquo;What do
+I put the cottage cheese on?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t put it on anything. Just eat it. Eat a
+bowl of it every day. Here, have an orange, too.
+But no cookies or candy, none of that sweet,
+starchy stuff. And no string beans. They&rsquo;re not
+good for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>My eyes must have popped, but I guess I knew
+<!--<pb n="005"/>--><anchor id="Pg005"/>
+right that first day that you don&rsquo;t argue with
+Kate. I ate the cottage cheese&mdash;it doesn&rsquo;t really
+have any taste anyway&mdash;and I sure have always
+agreed with her about the string beans.</p>
+
+<p>Off and on since then I&rsquo;ve seen quite a lot of
+Kate. I&rsquo;d pass her on the street, chirruping to
+some mangy old stray cat hiding under a car, and
+he&rsquo;d always come out to be stroked. Sometimes
+there&rsquo;d be a bunch of little kids dancing around
+jeering at her and calling her a witch. It made
+me feel real good and important to run them off.</p>
+
+<p>Quite often I went with her to the A &amp; P and
+helped her carry home the cat food and cottage
+cheese and fruit. She talks to herself all the time
+in the store, and if she thinks the peaches or
+melons don&rsquo;t look good that day, she shouts clear
+across the store to the manager. He comes across
+and picks her out an extra good one, just to keep
+the peace.</p>
+
+<p>I introduced Kate to Mom, and they got along
+real well. Kate&rsquo;s leery of most people, afraid
+they&rsquo;ll make fun of her, I guess; my mom&rsquo;s not
+leery of people, but she&rsquo;s shy, and what with
+asthma and worrying about keeping me and Pop
+calmed down, she doesn&rsquo;t go out much or make
+dates with people. She and Kate would chat together
+<!--<pb n="006"/>--><anchor id="Pg006"/>
+in the stores or sitting on the stoop on a
+sunny day. Kate shook her head over Mom&rsquo;s
+asthma and said she&rsquo;d get over it if she ate cottage
+cheese every day. Mom ate it for a while, but she
+put mayonnaise on it, which Kate says is just like
+poison.</p>
+
+<p>The day of the fight with Pop about the Belafonte
+record it&rsquo;s cold and windy out and there
+are no kids in sight. I slam my ball back and forth
+against the wall where it says &ldquo;No Ball Playing,&rdquo;
+just to limber up and let off a little spite, and
+then I go over to see Kate.</p>
+
+<p>Kate has a permanent cat named Susan and
+however many kittens Susan happens to have
+just had. It varies. Usually there are a few other
+temporary stray kittens in the apartment, but I
+never saw any father cat there before. Today
+Susan and her kittens are under the stove, and
+Susan keeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat
+crouching under the sofa. He turns his head
+away from her and looks like he never intended
+to get mixed up with family life. For a stray cat
+he&rsquo;s sleek and healthy-looking. Every time he
+moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly.
+She believes in no visiting rights for fathers.</p>
+
+<p>Kate pours me some tea and asks what&rsquo;s doing.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="007"/>--><anchor id="Pg007"/>
+<p>&ldquo;My pop is full of hot air, as usual,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Takes one to know one,&rdquo; Kate says, catching
+me off base. I change the subject.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How come the kittens&rsquo; pop is around the
+house? I never saw a full-grown tom here
+before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He saw me buying some cans of cat food, so
+he followed me home. Susan isn&rsquo;t admitting she
+ever knew him or ever wants to. I&rsquo;ll give him
+another feed and send him on his way, I guess.
+He&rsquo;s a handsome young fellow.&rdquo; Kate strokes
+him between the ears, and he rotates his head.
+Susan hisses.</p>
+
+<p>He starts to pull back farther under the sofa.
+Without stopping to think myself, or giving him
+time to, I pick him up. Susan arches up and
+spits. I can feel the muscles in his body tense up
+as he gets ready to spring out of my lap. Then
+he changes his mind and decides to take advantage
+of the lap. He narrows his eyes and gives
+Susan a bored look and turns his head to take
+me in. After he&rsquo;s sized me up, he pretends he
+only turned around to lick his back.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cat,&rdquo; I say to him, &ldquo;how about coming home
+with me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hah!&rdquo; Kate laughs. &ldquo;Your pop will throw
+<!--<pb n="008"/>--><anchor id="Pg008"/>
+him out faster than you can say &lsquo;good old Jeff.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah-h?&rdquo; I say it slowly and do some thinking.
+Taking Cat home had been just a passing
+thought, but right now I decide I&rsquo;ll really go to
+the mat with Pop about this. He can have his
+memories of good old Jeff and rabbit hunts, but
+I&rsquo;m going to have me a tiger.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Kate gives me a can of cat food and a
+box of litter, so Cat can stay in my room, because
+I remember Mom probably gets asthma from
+animals, too. Cat and I go home.</p>
+
+<p>Pop does a lot of shouting and sputtering
+when we get home, but I just put Cat down in
+my room, and I try not to argue with him, so I
+won&rsquo;t lose my temper. I promise I&rsquo;ll keep him
+in my room and sweep up the cat hairs so Mom
+won&rsquo;t have to.</p>
+
+<p>As a final blast Pop says, &ldquo;I suppose you&rsquo;ll
+get your exercise mouse hunting now. What are
+you going to name the noble animal?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look, Pop,&rdquo; I explain, &ldquo;I know he&rsquo;s a cat,
+he knows he&rsquo;s a cat, and his name is Cat. And
+even if you call him Honorable John Fitzgerald
+Kennedy, he won&rsquo;t come when you call, and he
+won&rsquo;t lick your hand, see?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;d better not! And it&rsquo;s not my hand that&rsquo;s
+<!--<pb n="009"/>--><anchor id="Pg009"/>
+going to get licked around here in a minute,&rdquo;
+Pop snaps.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right, all right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Actually, my pop sometimes jaws so long it&rsquo;d
+be a relief if he did haul off and hit me, but he
+never does.</p>
+
+<p>We call it a draw for that day, and I have Cat.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="010"/>--><anchor id="Pg010"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;2. Cat and the Underworld" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>2</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image02.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave looking at Cat locked in cage.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>CAT AND THE UNDERWORLD</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>Cat makes himself at home in my room pretty
+easily. Mostly he likes to be up on top of something,
+so I put an old sweater on the bureau
+beside my bed, and he sleeps up there. When
+he wants me to wake up in the morning, he
+jumps and lands in the middle of my stomach.
+Believe me, cats don&rsquo;t always land lightly&mdash;only
+when they want to. Anything a cat does,
+he does only when he wants to. I like that.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="011"/>--><anchor id="Pg011"/>
+<p>When I&rsquo;m combing my hair in the morning,
+sometimes he sits up there and looks down
+his nose at my reflection in the mirror. He
+appears to be taking inventory: &ldquo;Hmm, buckteeth;
+sandy hair, smooth in front, cowlick in
+back; brown eyes, can&rsquo;t see in the dark worth a
+nickel; hickeys on the chin. Too bad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I look back at him in the mirror and say,
+&ldquo;O.K., black face, yellow eyes, and one white
+whisker. Where&rsquo;d you get that one white
+whisker?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He catches sight of himself in the mirror, and
+his tail twitches momentarily. He seems to know
+it&rsquo;s not really another cat, but his claws come out
+and he taps the mirror softly, just to make sure.</p>
+
+<p>When I&rsquo;m lying on the bed reading, sometimes
+he will curl up between my knees and the
+book. But after a few days I can see he&rsquo;s getting
+more and more restless. It gets so I can&rsquo;t listen
+to a record, for the noise of him scratching on
+the rug. I can&rsquo;t let him loose in the apartment,
+at least until we make sure Mom doesn&rsquo;t get
+asthma, so I figure I better reintroduce him to
+the great outdoors in the city. One nice Sunday
+morning in April we go down and sit on the
+stoop.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="012"/>--><anchor id="Pg012"/>
+<p>Cat sits down, very tall and neat and pear-shaped,
+and closes his eyes about halfway. He
+glances at the street like it isn&rsquo;t good enough for
+him. After a while, condescending, he eases
+down the steps and lies on a sunny, dusty spot in
+the middle of the sidewalk. People walking have
+to step around him, and he squints at them.</p>
+
+<p>Then he gets up, quick, looks over his
+shoulder at nothing, and shoots down the stairs
+to the cellar. I take a look to see where he&rsquo;s going,
+and he is pacing slowly toward the backyard,
+head down, a tiger on the prowl. I figure I&rsquo;ll sit
+in the sun and finish my science-fiction magazine
+before I go after him.</p>
+
+<p>When I do, he&rsquo;s not in sight, and the janitor
+tells me he jumped up on the wall and probably
+down into one of the other yards. I look around
+a while and call, but he&rsquo;s not in sight, and I go
+up to lunch. Along toward evening Cat scratches
+at the door and comes in, as if he&rsquo;d done it all
+his life.</p>
+
+<p>This gets to be a routine. Sometimes he
+doesn&rsquo;t even come home at night, and he&rsquo;s sitting
+on the doormat when I get the milk in the morning,
+looking offended.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it my fault you stayed out all night?&rdquo; I
+ask him.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="013"/>--><anchor id="Pg013"/>
+<p>He sticks his tail straight up and marches down
+the hall to the kitchen, where he waits for me
+to open the milk and dish out the cat food. Then
+he goes to bed.</p>
+
+<p>One morning he&rsquo;s not there when I open the
+door, and he still hasn&rsquo;t showed up when I get
+back from school. I get worried and go down
+to talk to Butch.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wa-a-l,&rdquo; says Butch, &ldquo;sometimes that cat sit
+and talk to me a little, but most times he go on
+over to Twenty-first Street, where he sit and talk
+to his lady friend. Turned cold last night, lot of
+buildings put on heat and closed up their basements.
+Maybe he got locked in somewheres.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which building&rsquo;s his friend live in?&rdquo; I ask.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Forty-six, the big one. His friend&rsquo;s a little
+black-and-white cat, sort of belongs to the night
+man over there. He feeds her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I go around to Twenty-first Street and case
+Forty-six, which is a pretty fair-looking building
+with a striped awning and a doorman who
+saunters out front and looks around every few
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p>While I&rsquo;m watching, a grocery boy comes
+along pushing his cart and goes down some
+stairs into the basement with his carton of
+groceries. This gives me an idea. I&rsquo;ll give the
+<!--<pb n="014"/>--><anchor id="Pg014"/>
+boy time to get started up in the elevator, and
+then I&rsquo;ll go down in the basement and hunt for
+Cat. If someone comes along and gets sore, I
+can always play dumb.</p>
+
+<p>I go down, and the coast is clear. The elevator&rsquo;s
+gone up, and I walk softly past and
+through a big room where the tenants leave
+their baby carriages and bicycles. After this the
+cellar stretches off into several corridors, lit by
+twenty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling.
+You can hardly see anything. The corridors go
+between wire storage cages, where the tenants
+keep stuff like trunks and old cribs and parakeet
+cages. They&rsquo;re all locked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Me-ow, meow, me-ow!&rdquo; Unmistakably Cat,
+and angry.</p>
+
+<p>The sound comes from the end of one corridor,
+and I fumble along, peering into each
+cage to try to see a tiger cat in a shadowy hole.
+Fortunately his eyes glow and he opens his
+mouth for another meow, and I see him locked
+inside one of the cages before I come to the end
+of the corridor. I don&rsquo;t know how he got in or
+how I&rsquo;m going to get him out.</p>
+
+<p>While I&rsquo;m thinking, Cat&rsquo;s eyes flick away from
+me to the right, then back to me. Cat&rsquo;s not making
+<!--<pb n="015"/>--><anchor id="Pg015"/>
+any noise, and neither am I, but something
+is. It&rsquo;s just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have
+a creepy feeling someone is standing near us.
+Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow
+moves a little, and I can see it has a white splotch&mdash;a
+face. It&rsquo;s a man, and he comes toward me.</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t know why any of the building men
+would be way back there, but that&rsquo;s who I figure
+it is, so I start explaining.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was just hunting for my cat ... I mean,
+he&rsquo;s got locked in one of these cages. I just want
+to get him out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The guy lets his breath out, slow, as if he&rsquo;s
+been holding it quite a while. I realize he doesn&rsquo;t
+belong in that cellar either, and he&rsquo;s been scared
+of me.</p>
+
+<p>He moves forward, saying &ldquo;Sh-h-h&rdquo; very
+quietly. He&rsquo;s taller than I am, and I can&rsquo;t see
+what he really looks like, but I&rsquo;m sure he&rsquo;s sort
+of a kid, maybe eighteen or so.</p>
+
+<p>He looks at the padlock on the cage and says,
+&ldquo;Huh, cheap!&rdquo; He takes a paper clip out of his
+pocket and opens it out, and I think maybe he
+has a penknife, too, and next thing I know the
+padlock is open.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gee, how&rsquo;d you do that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="016"/>--><anchor id="Pg016"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Sh-h-h. A guy showed me how. You better
+get your cat and scram.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Golly, I wonder, maybe the guy is a burglar,
+and that gives me another creepy feeling. But
+would a burglar be taking time out to get a
+kid&rsquo;s cat free?</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, thanks for the cat. See you around,&rdquo;
+I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sh-h-h. I don&rsquo;t live around here. Hurry up,
+before we both get caught.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maybe he&rsquo;s a real burglar with a gun, even, I
+think, and by the time I dodge past the elevators
+and get out in the cold April wind, the sweat
+down my back is freezing. I give Cat a long
+lecture on staying out of basements. After all, I
+can&rsquo;t count on having a burglar handy to get
+him out every time.</p>
+
+<p>Back home we put some nice jailhouse blues
+on the record player, and we both stretch out on
+the bed to think. The guy didn&rsquo;t really <hi rend='italic'>look</hi> like
+a burglar. And he didn&rsquo;t talk &ldquo;dese and dose.&rdquo;
+Maybe real burglars don&rsquo;t all talk that way&mdash;only
+the ones on TV. Still, he sure picked that lock
+fast, and he was sure down in that cellar for
+some reason of his own.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe I ought to let someone know. I figure
+<!--<pb n="017"/>--><anchor id="Pg017"/>
+I&rsquo;ll test Pop out, just casual like. &ldquo;Some queer-looking
+types hanging around this neighborhood,&rdquo;
+I say at dinner. &ldquo;I saw a tough-looking
+guy hanging around Number Forty-six this
+afternoon. Might have been a burglar, even.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I figure Pop&rsquo;ll at least ask me what he was
+doing, and maybe I&rsquo;ll tell him the whole thing&mdash;about
+Cat and the cage. But Pop says, &ldquo;In case
+you didn&rsquo;t know it, burglars do not all look like
+Humphrey Bogart, and they don&rsquo;t wear signs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks for the news,&rdquo; I say and go on eating
+my dinner. Even if Pop does make me sore,
+I&rsquo;m not going to pass up steak and onions, which
+we don&rsquo;t have very often.</p>
+
+<p>However, the next day I&rsquo;m walking along
+Twenty-first Street and I see the super of Forty-six
+standing by the back entrance, so I figure I&rsquo;ll
+try again. I say to him, &ldquo;Us kids were playing ball
+here yesterday, and we saw a strange-looking guy
+sneak into your cellar. It wasn&rsquo;t a delivery boy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah? You sure it wasn&rsquo;t you or one of your
+juvenile pals trying to swipe a bike? How come
+you have to play ball right here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t swipe bikes. I got one of my own.
+New. A Raleigh. Better than any junk you got
+in there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="018"/>--><anchor id="Pg018"/>
+<p>&ldquo;What d&rsquo;you know about what I got in there,
+wise guy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aw, forget it.&rdquo; I realize he&rsquo;s just getting
+suspicious of me. That&rsquo;s what comes of trying
+to be a big public-spirited citizen. I decide my
+burglar, whoever he is, is a lot nicer than the
+super, and I hope he got a fat haul.</p>
+
+<p>Next day it looks like maybe he did just that.
+The local paper, <hi rend='italic'>Town and Village</hi>, has a headline:
+&ldquo;Gramercy Park Cellar Robbed.&rdquo; I read
+down the article:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The superintendent, Fred Snood, checked
+the cellar storage cages, after a passing youth
+hinted to him that there had been a robbery.
+He found one cage open and a suitcase missing.
+Police theorize that the youth may have been
+the burglar, or an accomplice with a guilty
+conscience or a grudge, and they are hunting
+him for questioning. Mr. Snood described him
+as about sixteen years of age, medium height,
+with a long &lsquo;ducktail&rsquo; haircut, and wearing a
+heavy black sweater. They are also checking
+second-hand stores for the stolen suitcase.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The burglar stole a suitcase with valuable
+papers and some silver and jewelry in it. But
+the guy they were hunting for&mdash;I read the paragraph
+over and feel green. That&rsquo;s me. I get up
+<!--<pb n="019"/>--><anchor id="Pg019"/>
+and look in the mirror. In other circumstances
+I&rsquo;d like being taken for sixteen instead of fourteen,
+which I am. I smooth my hair and squint
+at the back of it. The ducktail is fine.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly I peel off my black sweater, which I
+wear practically all the time, and stuff it in my
+bottom drawer, under my bathing suit. But if I
+want to walk around the street without worrying
+about every cop, I&rsquo;ll have to do more than
+that. I put on a shirt and necktie and suit jacket
+and stick a cap on my head. I head uptown on
+the subway. At Sixty-eighth Street I get off and
+find a barbershop.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Butch cut,&rdquo; I tell the guy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s right. I&rsquo;ll trim you nice and neat. Get
+rid of all this stuff.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And while he chatters on like an idiot, I have
+to watch three months&rsquo; work go snip, snip on
+the floor. Then I have to pay for it. At home I
+get the same routine. Pop looks at my Ivy-League
+disguise and says, &ldquo;Why, you may look
+positively human some day!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Two days later I find out I could&rsquo;ve kept my
+hair. <hi rend='italic'>Town and Village</hi> has a new story: &ldquo;Nab
+Cellar Thief Returning Loot. &lsquo;Just A Bet,&rsquo;
+He Says.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The story is pretty interesting. The guy I met
+<!--<pb n="020"/>--><anchor id="Pg020"/>
+in the cellar is named Tom Ransom, and he is
+nineteen and just sort of floating around in the
+city. He doesn&rsquo;t seem to have any family. The
+police kept a detective watching Number Forty-six,
+and pretty soon they see Tom walking along
+with the stolen suitcase. He drops it inside the
+delivery entrance and walks on, but the cop
+collars him. I suppose if it hadn&rsquo;t been for me
+shooting my big mouth off to the super, the
+police wouldn&rsquo;t have been watching the neighborhood.
+I feel sort of responsible.</p>
+
+<p>The story in the paper goes on to say this guy
+was broke and hunting for a job, and some other
+guy dares him to snatch something out of a cellar
+and finally bets him ten dollars, so he does it.
+He gets out and finds the suitcase has a lot of
+stocks and legal papers and table silver in it,
+and he&rsquo;s scared stiff. So he figures to drop it back
+where it came from. The paper says he&rsquo;s held
+over to appear before some magistrate in
+Adolescent Court.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder, would they send a guy to jail for
+that? Or if they turn him loose, what does he do?
+It must be lousy to be in this city without any
+family or friends.</p>
+
+<p>At that point I get the idea I&rsquo;ll write him a
+letter. After all, Cat and I sort of got him into
+<!--<pb n="021"/>--><anchor id="Pg021"/>
+the soup. So I look up the name of the magistrate
+and spend about half an hour poring through
+the phone book, under &ldquo;New York, City of,&rdquo; to
+get an address. I wonder whether to address him
+as &ldquo;Tom&rdquo; or &ldquo;Mr. Ransom.&rdquo; Finally I write:</p>
+
+<p><lb/><hi rend='italic'>Dear Tom Ransom:</hi></p>
+
+<p><hi rend='italic'>I am the kid you met in the cellar at Number
+Forty-six Gramercy, and I certainly thank you
+for unlocking that cage and getting my cat out.
+Cat is fine. I am sorry you got in trouble with
+the police. It sounds to me like you were only trying
+to return the stuff and do right. My father is
+a lawyer, if you would like one. I guess he&rsquo;s
+pretty good. Or if you would like to write me
+anyway, here is my address: 150 East 22 St. I read
+in the paper that your family don&rsquo;t live in New
+York, which is why I thought you might like
+someone to write to.</hi></p>
+
+<p rend='right'><hi rend='italic'>Yours sincerely,</hi><lb/>
+<hi rend='italic'>Dave Mitchell</hi><lb/>
+<lb/></p>
+
+<p>Now that I&rsquo;m a free citizen again, I dig out my
+black sweater, look disgustedly at the butch haircut,
+and go out to mail my letter.</p>
+
+<p>Later on I get into a stickball game again on
+<!--<pb n="022"/>--><anchor id="Pg022"/>
+Twenty-first Street. Cat comes along and sits up
+high on a stoop across the street, where he can
+watch the ball game and the tame dogs being led
+by on their leashes. That big brain, the super of
+Forty-six, is standing by the delivery entrance,
+looking sour as usual.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Got any burglars in your basement these
+days?&rdquo; I yell to him while I&rsquo;m jogging around the
+bases on a long hit.</p>
+
+<p>He looks at me and my short haircut and
+scratches his own bald egg. &ldquo;Where&rsquo;d I see you?&rdquo;
+he asks suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh&mdash;Cat and I, we get around,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="023"/>--><anchor id="Pg023"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;3. Cat and Coney" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>3</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image03.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave, Cat, and Nick running on the beach.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>CAT AND CONEY</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>Nick and I have been friends pretty much since I
+can remember. Our mothers used to trade turns
+fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives
+around the corner on Third Avenue, upstairs
+over the grocery store his old man runs. If anyone
+asked me <hi rend='italic'>how come</hi> we&rsquo;re friends, I couldn&rsquo;t
+exactly say. We&rsquo;re just together most of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Neither of us is a real whiz at sports, but we
+used to roller-skate and play a little king and
+<!--<pb n="024"/>--><anchor id="Pg024"/>
+stickball and ride our bikes around exploring.
+One time when we were about ten, we rode way
+over to Twelfth Avenue at the Hudson River,
+where the <hi rend='italic'>Queen Mary</hi> docks. This is about the
+only time I remember my mom getting really
+angry. She said Pop ought to take my bike away
+from me, and he did, but only for about a week.
+Nick and I still ride bikes a lot. Otherwise we
+sit and do our homework or play chess and listen
+to records.</p>
+
+<p>Another reason we&rsquo;re friends is because of this
+creepy little kid who lived down toward the
+corner, between me and Nick. He always tagged
+along, wanting to play with us, and of course in
+the end he always fouled up the game or fell
+down and started to cry. Then his big brother
+came rushing out, usually with another big guy
+along, and they figured they were entitled to
+beat us up for hurting little Joey.</p>
+
+<p>After a while it looked to me as if Joey just
+worked as a lookout, and the minute me or Nick
+showed up on the block, one of the big guys came
+to run us off. They did little things like throwing
+sticks into our bike spokes and pretending it was
+just a joke. Nick and I used to plot all kinds of
+ways to get even with them, but in the end we
+<!--<pb n="025"/>--><anchor id="Pg025"/>
+mostly decided it was easier to walk around the
+block the long way to get to each other&rsquo;s houses.
+I&rsquo;m not much on fighting, and neither is Nick&mdash;&rsquo;specially
+not with guys bigger than us.</p>
+
+<p>Summers, up in the country, the kids seem to
+be all the time wrestling and punching, half for
+fun and half not. If I walk past some strange kid
+my age up there, he almost always tries to get me
+into a fight. I don&rsquo;t get it. Maybe it&rsquo;s because
+sidewalks are uncomfortable for fighting, but we
+just don&rsquo;t do much scrapping for fun. The only
+couple of fights I ever had, I was real mad.</p>
+
+<p>Come spring, Nick and I got restless hanging
+around the street, with nothing to do but stickball
+and baiting the super at Forty-six. It was
+so easy to get him sore, it wasn&rsquo;t even fun. Cat
+stayed out of that basement, but I wanted to get
+him really out in the open, where he could chase
+squirrels or something.</p>
+
+<p>One day we rode our bikes up to Central Park.
+I put Cat in a wicker hamper and tied it on the
+back of my bike. He meowed a lot, and people
+on the street would look at me and then do a
+double take when they heard him.</p>
+
+<p>We got up to Central Park and into a place
+they call The Horseshoe, because the parking
+<!--<pb n="026"/>--><anchor id="Pg026"/>
+area is that shape. I opened the lid a crack to look
+at Cat. He hissed at me, the first time he ever
+did. I looked around and thought, Gee, if I let
+him loose, he could go anywhere, even over into
+the woods, and I might never catch him. There
+were a lot of hoody looking kids around, and I
+could see if I ever left my bike a second to chase
+Cat, they&rsquo;d snatch the bike. So I didn&rsquo;t let Cat
+out, and I wolfed my sandwich and we went
+home. Nick was pretty disgusted.</p>
+
+<p>Then we hit a hot Saturday, the first one in
+May, and I get an idea. I find Nick and say,
+&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s put Cat and some sandwiches in the basket
+and hop the subway out to Coney.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nick says, &ldquo;Why bring Cat? He wrecked the
+last expedition.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I like to take him places, and this won&rsquo;t be
+like Central Park. No one&rsquo;s at Coney this time of
+year. He can chase around on the beach and hunt
+sand crabs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why do I have to have a nut for a friend?&rdquo;
+Nick moans. &ldquo;Well, anyway, I&rsquo;m keeping my
+sandwich in my pocket, not in any old cat
+basket.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who cares where you keep your crumby
+sandwich?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="027"/>--><anchor id="Pg027"/>
+<p>So we went. Lots of people might think Coney
+Island is ugly, with all the junky-looking booths
+and billboards. But when you turn your back on
+them and look out at the ocean, it&rsquo;s the same
+ocean as on a deserted beach. I kick off my shoes
+and stand with my feet in the ice water and the
+sun hot on my chest. Looking out at the horizon
+with its few ships and some sea gulls and planes
+overhead, I think: It&rsquo;s mine, all mine. I could go
+anywhere in the world, I could. Maybe I will.</p>
+
+<p>Nick throws water down my neck. He only
+understands infinity on math papers. I let Cat
+out of the basket and strip off my splashed shirt
+and chase Nick along the edge of the water. No
+need to worry about Cat. He chases right along
+with us, and every time a wave catches his feet
+he hisses and hightails it up the beach. Then he
+rolls himself in the hot, dry sand and gets up
+and shakes. There are a few other groups of
+people dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog
+comes and sniffs Cat and gets a right and a left
+scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home.
+Cat discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around
+in the sand and wrestle, and after a while we get
+hungry, so we go back where we left the basket.
+Cat is content to let me carry him.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="028"/>--><anchor id="Pg028"/>
+<p>Three girls are having a picnic right near our
+basket. One yells to the others, &ldquo;Hey, look! The
+guy went swimming with his cat!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Cat jumps down, turns his back on them, and
+humps himself around on my sweater until he is
+settled for a nap. I turn my back on the girls,
+too, and look out at the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Still, it&rsquo;s not the same as it would have been
+a year ago. Then Nick and I would either have
+moved away from the girls or thrown sand at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>We just sit and eat our sandwiches. Nick looks
+over at them pretty often and whispers to me
+how old do I think they are. I can&rsquo;t tell about
+girls. Some of the ones in our class at school
+look about twenty-five, but then you see mothers
+pushing baby carriages on the street who look
+about fifteen.</p>
+
+<p>One of the girls catches Nick&rsquo;s eye and giggles.
+&ldquo;Hi, there, whatcha watching?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a bird watcher,&rdquo; says Nick. &ldquo;Seen any
+birds?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girls drift over our way. The one that
+spoke first is a redhead. The one who seems to be
+the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt
+and hair piled up high in a bird&rsquo;s nest. Maybe
+<!--<pb n="029"/>--><anchor id="Pg029"/>
+that&rsquo;s what started Nick bird-watching. The
+third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with brown
+hair, I guess.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You want a couple of cupcakes? You can have
+mine. I&rsquo;m going on a diet,&rdquo; says the blonde.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks,&rdquo; says Nick. &ldquo;I was thinking of going
+after some cokes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why waste time thinking? You might hurt
+your head,&rdquo; says the redhead.</p>
+
+<p>The third girl bends down and strokes Cat
+between the ears very gently. She says, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s
+his name?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I explain to her about why Cat is Cat. She sits
+down and picks up a piece of seaweed to dangle
+over his nose. Cat makes a couple of sleepy
+swipes at it and then stretches luxuriously while
+she strokes him. The other kids get to talking,
+and we tell each other our names and where we
+go to school and all that stuff.</p>
+
+<p>Then Nick gets back on the subject of going
+for cokes. I don&rsquo;t really want to stay there alone
+with the girls, so I say I&rsquo;ll go. I tell Nick to watch
+Cat, and the girl who is petting him says, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t
+worry, I won&rsquo;t let him run away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s a good thing she&rsquo;s there, because by the
+time I get back with the cokes, which no one
+<!--<pb n="030"/>--><anchor id="Pg030"/>
+offers to pay me back for, Nick and the other
+two girls are halfway down the beach. Mary&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+her name&mdash;says, &ldquo;I never saw a cat at the
+beach before, but he seems to like it. Where&rsquo;d
+you get him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s a stray. I got him from an old lady who&rsquo;s
+sort of a nut about cats. Come on, I&rsquo;ll see if I can
+get him to chase waves for you. He was doing it
+earlier.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We are running along in the waves when the
+other kids come back. The big blonde kicks up
+water at me and yells, &ldquo;Race you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So I chase, and just as I&rsquo;m going to catch up,
+she stops short so I crash into her and we both
+fall down. This seems to be what she had in
+mind, but I bet the other kids are watching and
+I feel silly. I roll away and get up and go back to
+Cat.</p>
+
+<p>While we drink cokes the blonde and the
+redhead say they want to go to the movies.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s on?&rdquo; Nick asks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a Sinatra thing at the neighborhood,&rdquo;
+the blonde tells him, and he looks interested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; I say. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got Cat. Besides, it&rsquo;s too
+late. Mom&rsquo;d think I&rsquo;d fallen into the subway.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="031"/>--><anchor id="Pg031"/>
+<p>&ldquo;I told you that cat was a mistake,&rdquo; says Nick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Put him in the basket and call your mother
+and tell her your watch stopped,&rdquo; says the redhead.
+She comes over and trickles sand down my
+neck. &ldquo;Come on, it&rsquo;d be fun. We don&rsquo;t have to
+sit in the kids&rsquo; section. We all look sixteen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nah, I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo; I get up and shake the sand
+out.</p>
+
+<p>Nick looks disgusted, but he doesn&rsquo;t want to
+stay alone. He says to the blonde, &ldquo;Write me
+down your phone number, and we&rsquo;ll do it another
+day when this nut hasn&rsquo;t got his cat along.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She writes down the phone number, and the
+redhead pouts because I&rsquo;m not asking for hers.
+The girls get ready to leave, and Mary pats Cat
+good-bye and waves to me. She says, &ldquo;Bring him
+again. He&rsquo;s nice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We get on the subway and Cat meows crossly
+at being shut in his basket. Nick pokes the basket
+with his toes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shut up, nuisance,&rdquo; he says.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="032"/>--><anchor id="Pg032"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;4. Fight" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>4</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image04.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave and Nick fighting on the ground.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>FIGHT</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>I actually get a letter back from Tom Ransom.
+It says: &ldquo;Thanks for your letter. The Youth
+Board got me a room in the Y on Twenty-third
+Street. Maybe I&rsquo;ll come say Hello some day.
+They&rsquo;re going to help me get a job this summer,
+so I don&rsquo;t need a lawyer. Thanks anyway. Meow
+to Cat. Best, Tom.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I go over to Nick&rsquo;s house to show him the
+letter. I&rsquo;d told him about Tom getting Cat out
+<!--<pb n="033"/>--><anchor id="Pg033"/>
+of the cellar and getting arrested, but Nick always
+acted like he didn&rsquo;t really believe it. So
+when he sees the letter, he has to admit Cat and
+I really got into something. Not everyone gets
+letters from guys who have been arrested.</p>
+
+<p>One thing about Nick sort of gripes me. He
+has to think up all the plans. Anything I&rsquo;ve done
+that he doesn&rsquo;t know about, he downgrades.
+Also, I always have to go to <hi rend='italic'>his</hi> house. He never
+comes to mine, except once in a coon&rsquo;s age when
+I have a new record I won&rsquo;t bring to his house
+because his machine stinks and he never buys a
+new needle.</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s not that I don&rsquo;t like his house. His mom is
+pretty nice, and boy, can she cook! Just an
+ordinary Saturday for lunch she makes pizza or
+real good spaghetti, and she has homemade
+cookies and nut cake sitting around after school.
+She also talks and waves her arms and shouts
+orders at us kids, but all good-natured-like, so we
+just kid her along and go on with what we&rsquo;re
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>She&rsquo;s about the opposite of my mom. Pop does
+the shouting in our house, and except for the one
+hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue,
+Mom doesn&rsquo;t even tell me what to do much.
+<!--<pb n="034"/>--><anchor id="Pg034"/>
+She&rsquo;s quiet, and pretty often she doesn&rsquo;t feel
+good, so maybe I think more than most kids that
+I ought to do things her way without being told.</p>
+
+<p>Also, my mom is always home and always
+ready to listen if you got something griping you,
+like when a teacher blames you for something
+you didn&rsquo;t do. Some kids I know, they have to
+phone a string of places to find their mother, and
+then she scolds them for interrupting her.</p>
+
+<p>Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good
+meals for holidays, but she doesn&rsquo;t go at it all
+the time, the way Nick&rsquo;s mother does. So maybe
+Nick doesn&rsquo;t come to my house because we
+haven&rsquo;t got all that good stuff sitting around. I
+don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s it, really, though. He just likes
+to be boss.</p>
+
+<p>One day, a couple of weeks after we went to
+Coney, he does come along with me. We pick up
+a couple of cokes and pears at his pop&rsquo;s store.</p>
+
+<p>Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps
+down and rubs between my legs and goes up the
+stairs ahead of us.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;See? He knows when school gets out then it&rsquo;s
+time to eat. That&rsquo;s why I like to come home,&rdquo; I
+tell Nick.</p>
+
+<p>We say &ldquo;Hi&rdquo; to Mom, and I get out the cat
+<!--<pb n="035"/>--><anchor id="Pg035"/>
+food while Nick opens his coke. &ldquo;You know
+those girls we ran into over on Coney Island?&rdquo;
+he says.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I got the blonde&rsquo;s phone number, so
+Sunday when I was hacking around with nothing
+to do, I called her up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah? What for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You stupid or something? To talk. So she
+yacked away a good while, and finally I asked
+her why didn&rsquo;t she come over next Saturday, we
+could go to a movie or something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah.&rdquo; I was working on my pear, a very
+juicy one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That all you can say? So she says, well, she
+might, if she can get her girl friend to come too,
+but she doesn&rsquo;t want to come alone, and her
+mother wouldn&rsquo;t let her anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which one?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which one what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which girl friend?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh. You remember, the other one we were
+kidding around with at the beach, the redhead.
+So I said, O.K., I&rsquo;d see if I could get you to come
+too. I said I&rsquo;d call her back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hmp. I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="036"/>--><anchor id="Pg036"/>
+<p>&ldquo;What d&rsquo;you mean, you don&rsquo;t know?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How do I know if I like that girl? I hardly
+even <hi rend='italic'>talked</hi> to her. Anyway, it sounds like a date.
+I don&rsquo;t want a date. If they just happen to come
+over, I guess it&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So shall I tell them it&rsquo;s O.K. for Saturday?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hmm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s nice you learned a new word.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do I have to pay for the girl at the movies?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Cheapskate. Maybe if you just stand around
+saying &lsquo;Hmm,&rsquo; she&rsquo;ll buy her own. O.K.?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K. But this whole thing is your idea, and
+if it stinks it&rsquo;s going to be your fault.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Boy, what an enthusiast! Come on, let&rsquo;s play
+a record and do the math.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nick is better at math than I am, so I agree.</p>
+
+<p>Saturday morning at ten o&rsquo;clock Nick turns
+up at my house in a white shirt and slicked-down
+hair. Pop whistles. &ldquo;On Saturday, yet! You got
+a girl or something?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yessir!&rdquo; says Nick, and he gives my T-shirt a
+dirty look. I go put a sweater over it and run
+a comb through my hair, but I&rsquo;m hanged if I&rsquo;ll
+go out looking like this is a big deal.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to a movie down at the Academy,&rdquo;
+I tell my family.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s there?&rdquo; Pop asks.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="037"/>--><anchor id="Pg037"/>
+<p>&ldquo;A new horror show,&rdquo; says Nick. &ldquo;And an old
+Disney.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it really a new horror show?&rdquo; I ask Nick,
+because I think I&rsquo;ve seen every one that&rsquo;s been
+in town.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yup. Just opened. <hi rend='italic'>The Gold Bug.</hi> Some guy
+wrote it&mdash;I mean in a book once&mdash;but it&rsquo;s supposed
+to be great. Make the girls squeal anyway.
+I love that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hmm.&rdquo; I just like horror shows anyway,
+whether girls squeal or not.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be the life of the party with that
+&lsquo;Hmm&rsquo; routine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s <hi rend='italic'>your</hi> party.&rdquo; I shrug.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you could at least <hi rend='italic'>try</hi>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We hang around the subway kiosk on Fourteenth
+Street, where Nick said he&rsquo;d meet them.
+After half an hour they finally show up.</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s nice and sunny, and we see a crowd
+bunched up over in Union Square, so we wander
+over. A shaggy-haired, bearded character is making
+a speech all about &ldquo;They,&rdquo; the bad guys. A
+lot of sleepy bums are sitting around letting the
+speech roll off their ears.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is he, a nut or something?&rdquo; the blonde
+asks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A Commie, maybe,&rdquo; I say. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re always
+<!--<pb n="038"/>--><anchor id="Pg038"/>
+giving speeches down here. Willie Sutton, the
+bank robber, used to sit down here and listen,
+too. That&rsquo;s where somebody put the finger on
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The girls look at each other and laugh like
+crazy, as if I&rsquo;d said something real funny. I catch
+Nick&rsquo;s eye and glare. O.K., I <hi rend='italic'>tried</hi>. After this I&rsquo;ll
+stick to &ldquo;Hmm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>A beard who is listening to the speech turns
+and glares at us and says, &ldquo;Shush!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aw, go shave yourself!&rdquo; says Nick, and the
+girls go off in more hoots. Nick starts herding
+them toward Fourteenth Street, and I follow
+along.</p>
+
+<p>At the Academy Nick goes up to the ticket
+window, and the girls immediately fade out to
+go read the posters and snicker together. I can
+see they&rsquo;re not figuring to pay for any tickets, so
+I cough up for two.</p>
+
+<p>Nick and I try to saunter up to the balcony the
+way we always do, but the girls are giggling and
+dropping their popcorn, so the matron spots us
+and motions. &ldquo;Down here!&rdquo; She flashes her light
+in our eyes, and I feel like a convict while we get
+packed in with all the kids in the under-sixteen
+section.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="039"/>--><anchor id="Pg039"/>
+<p>Nick goes in first, then the blonde, then the
+redhead and me. The minute things start getting
+scary, she tries to grab me, but I stick my hands
+in my pockets and say, &ldquo;Aw, it&rsquo;s just a picture.&rdquo;
+She looks disgusted.</p>
+
+<p>The next scary bit, she tries to hang onto her
+girl friend, but the blonde is already glued onto
+Nick. Redhead lets out a loud sigh, and I wish I
+hadn&rsquo;t ever got into this deal. I can&rsquo;t even enjoy
+the picture.</p>
+
+<p>We suffer through the two pictures. The little
+kids make such a racket you can hardly hear,
+and the matron keeps shining the light in your
+eyes so you can&rsquo;t see. She shines it on the blonde,
+who is practically sitting in Nick&rsquo;s lap, and hisses
+at her to get back. I&rsquo;m not going to do this again,
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>We go out and Nick says, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s have a coke.&rdquo;
+He&rsquo;s walking along with the blonde, and instead
+of walking beside me the redhead tries to catch
+hold of his other arm. This sort of burns me up.
+I mean, I don&rsquo;t really <hi rend='italic'>like</hi> her, but I paid for her
+and everything.</p>
+
+<p>Nick shakes her off and calls over his shoulder
+to me, &ldquo;Come on, chicken, pull your own
+weight!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="040"/>--><anchor id="Pg040"/>
+<p>The girls laugh, on cue as usual, and I begin
+getting really sore. Nick got me into this. The
+least he can do is shut up.</p>
+
+<p>We walk into a soda bar, and I slap down
+thirty cents and say, &ldquo;Two cokes, please.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, hey! The last of the big spenders!&rdquo; says
+Nick. More laughter. I&rsquo;d just as soon sock him
+right now, but I pick up my money and say,
+&ldquo;O.K., wise guy, treat&rsquo;s on you.&rdquo; Nick shrugs and
+tosses down a buck as if he had hundreds of
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The two girls drink their cokes and talk across
+Nick. I finish mine in two or three gulps, and
+finally we can walk them to the subway. Nick is
+gabbing away about how he&rsquo;ll come out to
+Coney one weekend, and I&rsquo;m standing there
+with my hands in my pockets.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Goo&rsquo;bye, Bashful!&rdquo; coos the redhead to me,
+and the two of them disappear, cackling, down
+the steps. I start across Fourteenth Street as soon
+as the light changes, without bothering to look
+if Nick is coming. He can go rot.</p>
+
+<p>Along Union Square he&rsquo;s beside me, acting
+as if everything is peachy fine dandy. &ldquo;That was
+a great show. Pretty good fun, huh?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="041"/>--><anchor id="Pg041"/>
+<p>I just keep walking.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You sore or something?&rdquo; he asks, as if he
+didn&rsquo;t know.</p>
+
+<p>I keep on walking.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K., be sore!&rdquo; he snaps. Then he breaks
+into a falsetto: &ldquo;Goo&rsquo;bye, Bashful!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I let him have it before he&rsquo;s hardly got his
+mouth closed. He hits me back in the stomach
+and hooks one of his ankles around mine so we
+both fall down. It goes from bad to worse. He
+gets me by the hair and bangs my head on the
+sidewalk, so I twist and bite his hand. We&rsquo;re
+gouging and scratching and biting and kicking,
+because we&rsquo;re both so mad we can hardly see,
+and anyway no one ever taught us those Queensberry
+rules. There&rsquo;s no point in going into all
+the gory details. Finally two guys haul us apart.
+I have hold of Nick&rsquo;s shirt and it rips. Good.
+He&rsquo;s half crying, and he twists away from the
+guy that grabbed him and screams some things
+at me before darting across the avenue.</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;m standing panting and sobbing, and the
+guy holding me says, &ldquo;You oughta be ashamed.
+Now go on home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aw, you and your big mouth,&rdquo; I say, still mad
+<!--<pb n="042"/>--><anchor id="Pg042"/>
+enough to feel reckless. He throws a fake punch,
+but he&rsquo;s not really interested. He goes his way,
+and I go mine.</p>
+
+<p>I must look pretty bad because a lot of people
+on the street shake their heads at me. I walk in
+the door at home, expecting the worst, but fortunately
+Mom is out. Pop just whistles through
+his teeth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That must have been quite a horror picture!&rdquo;
+he says.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="043"/>--><anchor id="Pg043"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;5. Around Manhattan" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>5</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image05.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave and Tom lunching in meadow above river.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>AROUND MANHATTAN</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>By the next weekend I no longer look like a
+fugitive from a riot. All week in school Nick and
+I get asked whether we got hit by a swinging
+door; then the fellows notice the two of us aren&rsquo;t
+speaking to each other, and they sort of sheer
+off the subject. Come Saturday, I sit on the stoop
+and wonder, what now? There are plenty of
+other kids in school I like, but they mostly live
+over in the project&mdash;Stuyvesant Town, that is.
+<!--<pb n="044"/>--><anchor id="Pg044"/>
+I&rsquo;ve never bothered to hunt them up weekends
+because Nick&rsquo;s so much nearer.</p>
+
+<p>Summer is coming on, though, and I&rsquo;ve got to
+have someone to hang around with. This is the
+last Saturday before Memorial Day. Getting
+time for beaches and stuff. I suppose Nick and
+I might get together again, but not if he&rsquo;s going
+to be nuts about girls all the time.</p>
+
+<p>A guy stops in front of the stoop, and Cat half
+opens his eyes in the sun and squints at him.
+The guy says, &ldquo;You Dave Mitchell?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh? Yeah.&rdquo; I look up, surprised. I don&rsquo;t
+exactly recognize the guy, never having seen him
+in a clear light before. But from the voice I know
+it&rsquo;s Tom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, hi!&rdquo; I say. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s Cat. He&rsquo;s pretty handsome
+in daylight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah, he looks all right, but what happened
+to you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Me and a friend of mine got in a fight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;With some other guys or what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nah. We had a fight with each other.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Um, that&rsquo;s bad.&rdquo; Tom sits down and has
+sense enough to see there isn&rsquo;t anymore to say
+on that subject. &ldquo;I start work Memorial Day,
+when the beaches open. Working in a filling
+<!--<pb n="045"/>--><anchor id="Pg045"/>
+station on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gee, that&rsquo;s a long way off. You going to live
+over there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah, they&rsquo;re going to get me a room in a Y
+in Brooklyn.&rdquo; Tom stretches restlessly and goes
+on: &ldquo;I suppose you get sick of school and all,
+but it&rsquo;s rotten having nothing to do. I&rsquo;d be ready
+to go nuts if I didn&rsquo;t get a job. I can&rsquo;t wait to
+start.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I think of asking him doesn&rsquo;t he have a home
+or something to go back to, but somehow I don&rsquo;t
+like to.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Like today,&rdquo; Tom says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d like to go somewhere.
+Do something. Got any ideas?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Um. I was sort of trying to think up something
+myself. Movies?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom shakes himself. &ldquo;No. I want to walk, or
+run, or throw something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a big park&mdash;sort of a woods&mdash;up near
+the Bronx. A kid told me about it. He said he
+found an Indian arrowhead there, but I bet he
+didn&rsquo;t. Inwood Park, it&rsquo;s called.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How do you get there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Subway, I guess.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go!&rdquo; Tom stands up and wriggles his
+shoulders like he&rsquo;s Superman ready to take off.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="046"/>--><anchor id="Pg046"/>
+<p>&ldquo;O.K. Wait a minute. I&rsquo;ll go tell Mom. Should
+I get some sandwiches?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom looks surprised. &ldquo;Sure, fine, if she doesn&rsquo;t
+mind.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;m not worried about getting Mom to make
+sandwiches because she always likes to fix a little
+food for me. The thing is, ever since my fight
+with Nick, she&rsquo;s been clucking around me like
+the mother hen. Maybe she figures I got in some
+gang fight, so she keeps asking me where I&rsquo;m
+going and who with. Also, I guess she noticed I
+don&rsquo;t go to Nick&rsquo;s after school anymore. I come
+right home. So she asks me do I feel all right.
+You can&rsquo;t win. Right now, I can see she&rsquo;s going
+to begin asking who is Tom and where did I
+meet him. It occurs to me there&rsquo;s an easy way
+to take care of this.</p>
+
+<p>I turn around to Tom again. &ldquo;Say, how
+about you come up and I&rsquo;ll introduce you to
+Mom? Then she won&rsquo;t start asking me a lot of
+questions.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean I <hi rend='italic'>look</hi> respectable, at least?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We go up to the apartment, and Mom asks if
+we&rsquo;d like some cold drinks or something. I tell
+her I ran into Tom when he helped me hunt for
+<!--<pb n="047"/>--><anchor id="Pg047"/>
+Cat around Gramercy Park, which is almost true,
+and that he sometimes plays stickball with us,
+which isn&rsquo;t really true but it could be. Mom gets
+us some orangeade. She usually keeps something
+like that in the icebox in summer, because she
+thinks cokes are bad for you.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you live around here?&rdquo; she asks Tom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; says Tom firmly. &ldquo;I live at
+the Y. I&rsquo;ve got a summer job in a filling station
+over in Brooklyn, starting right after Memorial
+Day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s fine,&rdquo; Mom says. &ldquo;I wish Davey could
+get a job. He gets so restless with nothing to do
+in the summer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aw, Mom, forget it! You got to fill in about
+six-hundred working papers if you&rsquo;re under
+sixteen.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Listen, Mom, what I came up for&mdash;we
+thought we&rsquo;d make some sandwiches and go up
+to Inwood Park.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Inwood? Where&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; So I explain to her
+about the Indian arrowheads, and we get out
+the classified phone book and look at the subway
+map, which shows there&rsquo;s an IND train that goes
+right to it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I get sort of restless myself, with nothing to
+<!--<pb n="048"/>--><anchor id="Pg048"/>
+do,&rdquo; says Tom. &ldquo;We just figured we&rsquo;d do a little
+exploring around in the woods and get some
+exercise.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, yes, that seems like a good idea.&rdquo; Mom
+looks at him and nods. She seems to have decided
+he&rsquo;s reliable, as well as respectable.</p>
+
+<p>I see there&rsquo;s some leftover cold spaghetti in
+the icebox, and I ask Mom to put it in sandwiches.
+She thinks I&rsquo;m cracked, but I did this
+once before, and it&rsquo;s good, &rsquo;specially if there&rsquo;s
+plenty of meat and sauce on the spaghetti. We
+take along a bag of cherries, too.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks, Mom. Bye. I&rsquo;ll be back before
+supper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take care,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;No fights.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry. We&rsquo;ll stay out of fights,&rdquo; says
+Tom quite seriously.</p>
+
+<p>We go down the stairs, and Tom says, &ldquo;Your
+mother is really nice.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;m sort of surprised&mdash;kids don&rsquo;t usually say
+much about each other&rsquo;s parents. &ldquo;Yeah, Mom&rsquo;s
+O.K. I guess she worries about me and Pop a
+lot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It must be pretty nice to have your mother
+at home,&rdquo; he says.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="049"/>--><anchor id="Pg049"/>
+<p>That kind of jolts me, too. I wonder where
+his mother and father are, whether they&rsquo;re dead
+or something; but again, I don&rsquo;t quite want to
+ask. Tom isn&rsquo;t an easy guy to ask questions. He&rsquo;s
+sort of like an island, by himself in the ocean.</p>
+
+<p>We walk down to Fourteenth Street and over
+to Eighth Avenue, about twelve blocks; after all,
+exercise is what we want. The IND trains are
+fast, and it only takes about half an hour to get
+up to Inwood, at 206th Street. The park is right
+close, and it is real woods, although there are
+paved walks around through it. We push uphill
+and get in a grassy meadow, where you can see
+out over the Hudson River to the Palisades in
+Jersey. It&rsquo;s good and hot, and we flop in the sun.
+There aren&rsquo;t many other people around, which
+is rare in New York.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s eat lunch,&rdquo; says Tom. &ldquo;Then we can
+go hunting arrowheads and not have to carry it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He agrees the spaghetti sandwich is a great
+invention.</p>
+
+<p>I wish the weather would stay like this more
+of the year&mdash;good and sweaty hot in the middle
+of the day, so you feel like going swimming, but
+cool enough to sleep at night. We lie in the sun
+<!--<pb n="050"/>--><anchor id="Pg050"/>
+awhile after lunch and agree that it&rsquo;s too bad
+there isn&rsquo;t an ocean within jumping-in distance.
+But there isn&rsquo;t, and flies are biting the backs of
+our necks, so we get up and start exploring.</p>
+
+<p>We find a few places that you might conceivably
+call caves, but they&rsquo;ve been well picked
+over for arrowheads, if there ever were any.
+That&rsquo;s the trouble in the city: anytime you have
+an idea, you find out a million other people had
+the same idea first. Along in mid-afternoon, we
+drift down toward the subway and get cokes
+and ice cream before we start back.</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t really feel like going home yet, so I
+think a minute and study the subway map inside
+the car. &ldquo;Hey, as long as we&rsquo;re on the subway
+anyway, we could go on down to Cortlandt
+Street to the Army-Navy surplus store. I got to
+get a knapsack before summer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K.&rdquo; Tom shrugs. He&rsquo;s staring out the
+window and doesn&rsquo;t seem to care where he goes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I got a great first-aid survival kit there. Disinfectant
+and burn ointment and bug dope and
+bandages, in a khaki metal box that&rsquo;s waterproof,
+and it was only sixty-five cents.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hmm. Just what I need for survival on the
+<!--<pb n="051"/>--><anchor id="Pg051"/>
+sidewalks of New York,&rdquo; says Tom. I guess he&rsquo;s
+kidding, in a sour sort of way. If you haven&rsquo;t
+got a family around, though, survival must take
+more than a sixty-five-cent kit.</p>
+
+<p>The store is a little way from the nearest subway
+stop, and we walk along not saying much.
+Tom looks alive when he gets into the store,
+though, because it really is a great place. They&rsquo;ve
+got arctic explorers&rsquo; suits and old hand grenades
+and shells and all kinds of rifles, as well as some
+really cheap, useful clothing. They don&rsquo;t mind
+how long you mosey around. In the end I buy
+a belt pack and canteen, and Tom picks up some
+skivvy shirts and socks that are only ten cents
+each. They&rsquo;re secondhand, I guess, but they look
+all right.</p>
+
+<p>We walk over to the East Side subway, which
+is only a few blocks away down here because the
+island gets so narrow. Tom says he&rsquo;s never seen
+Wall Street, where all the tycoons grind their
+money machines. The place is practically deserted
+now, being late Saturday afternoon, and
+it&rsquo;s like walking through an empty cathedral.
+You can make echoes.</p>
+
+<p>We take the subway, and Tom walks along
+<!--<pb n="052"/>--><anchor id="Pg052"/>
+home with me. It seems too bad the day&rsquo;s over.
+It was a pretty good day, after all.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So long, kid,&rdquo; Tom says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll send you a card
+from Beautiful Brooklyn!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So long.&rdquo; I wave, and he starts off. I wish he
+didn&rsquo;t have to go live in Brooklyn.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="053"/>--><anchor id="Pg053"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;6. And Brooklyn" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>6</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image06.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave wheeling his bike across Belt Parkway.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>AND BROOKLYN</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>You can&rsquo;t really stay sore at a guy you&rsquo;ve known
+all your life, especially if he lives right around
+the corner and goes to the same school. Anyhow,
+one hot Saturday morning Nick turns up
+at my house as if nothing had ever happened
+and says do I want to go swimming, because the
+Twenty-third Street pool&rsquo;s open weekends now.</p>
+
+<p>After that we go back to playing ball on the
+street in the evenings and swimming sometimes
+<!--<pb n="054"/>--><anchor id="Pg054"/>
+on weekends. One Saturday his mother tells me
+he went to Coney Island. He didn&rsquo;t ask me to go
+along, which is just as well, because I wouldn&rsquo;t
+have. I don&rsquo;t hang around his house after school
+much anymore, either. School lets out, and
+there&rsquo;s the Fourth of July weekend, when we
+go up to Connecticut, and pretty soon after that
+Nick goes off to a camp his church runs. Pop
+asks me if I want to go to a camp a few weeks,
+but I don&rsquo;t. Life is pretty slow at home, but I
+don&rsquo;t feel like all that organization.</p>
+
+<p>I think Tom must have forgotten about me
+and found a gang his own age when I get a
+postcard from him: &ldquo;Dear Dave, The guy I work
+for is a creep, and all the guys who buy gas
+from him are creeps, so it&rsquo;s great to be alive in
+Beautiful Brooklyn! Wish you were here, but
+you&rsquo;re lucky you&rsquo;re not. Best, Tom.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s hard to figure what he means when he
+says a thing. However, I got nothing to do, so
+I might as well go see. He said he was going to
+work in a filling station on the Belt Parkway,
+and there can&rsquo;t be a million of them.</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t say anything too exact to Mom about
+where I&rsquo;m going, because she gets worried about
+me going too far, and besides I don&rsquo;t really know
+where I&rsquo;m going.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="055"/>--><anchor id="Pg055"/>
+<p>Brooklyn, what a layout. It&rsquo;s not like Manhattan,
+which runs pretty regularly north and
+south, with decent square blocks. You could lose
+a million friends in Brooklyn, with the streets
+all running in circles and angles, and the people
+all giving you cockeyed directions. What with
+no bikes allowed on parkways, and skirting
+around crumby looking neighborhoods, it takes
+me at least a week of expeditions to find the
+right part of the Belt Parkway to start checking
+the filling stations.</p>
+
+<p>I wheel my bike across the parkway, but even
+so some cop yells at me. You&rsquo;d think a cop could
+find a crime to get busy with.</p>
+
+<p>On a real sticky day in July I wheel across
+to a station at Thirty-fourth Street, and nobody
+yells at me, and I go over to the air pump and
+fiddle with my tires. A car pulls out after it gets
+gas, and there&rsquo;s Tom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hi!&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>Tom half frowns and quick looks over his
+shoulder to see if his boss is around, I guess,
+and then comes over to the air pump.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;d you get way out here?&rdquo; he says.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;On the bike. I got your postcard, and I
+figured I could find the filling station.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He relaxes and grins. I feel better. He says,
+<!--<pb n="056"/>--><anchor id="Pg056"/>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a crazy kid. How&rsquo;s Cat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But just then the boss has to come steaming
+up. &ldquo;What d&rsquo;ya want, kid? No bikes allowed on
+the parkway.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I start to say I&rsquo;m just getting air, but Tom
+speaks up. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all right. I know him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah? I told you, keep kids out of here!&rdquo; The
+guy manages to suggest that kids Tom knows
+are probably worse than any other kind. He
+motions me off like a stray dog. I don&rsquo;t want to
+get Tom in any trouble, so I get going. At the
+edge of the parkway I wave. &ldquo;So long. Write me
+another postcard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom raises a hand briefly, but his face looks
+closed, like nothing was going to get in or out.</p>
+
+<p>I pedal slowly and hotly back through the
+tangle of Brooklyn and figure, well, that&rsquo;s a
+week&rsquo;s research wasted. I still don&rsquo;t know where
+Tom lives, so I don&rsquo;t know how I can get a hold
+of him again. Anyway, how do I know he wants
+to be bothered with me? He looked pretty fed
+up with everything.</p>
+
+<p>So long as I got nothing else to do, the next
+week I figure I&rsquo;ll get public-spirited at home: I
+paint the kitchen for Mom, which isn&rsquo;t so bad,
+but moving all those silly dishes and pots and
+<!--<pb n="057"/>--><anchor id="Pg057"/>
+scrumy little spice cans can drive you wild. I
+only break one good vase and a bottle of salad
+oil. Salad oil and broken glass are great. In the
+afternoons I go to the swimming pool and learn
+to do a jackknife and a backflip, so Pop will think
+I am growing up to be a Real American Boy.
+Also, you practically have to learn to dive so you
+can use the diving pool, because the swimming
+pool is so jam-packed with screaming sardines
+you can&rsquo;t move in it.</p>
+
+<p>Evenings Cat and I play records, or we go to
+see Aunt Kate and drink iced tea. One weekend
+my real aunt comes to visit and sleeps in my
+room, so I go to stay with Aunt Kate, and I pretty
+near turn into cottage cheese.</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;ve about settled into this dull routine when
+Mom surprises me by handing me a postcard
+one morning. It&rsquo;s from Tom: &ldquo;Day off next
+Tuesday. If you feel like it, meet me near the
+aquarium at Coney Island about nine in the
+morning, before it&rsquo;s crowded.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So that week drags by till Tuesday, and there
+I am at Coney Island bright and early. Tom is
+easy enough to find, pacing up and down the
+boardwalk like a tiger. We say &ldquo;Hi&rdquo; and so forth,
+and I&rsquo;m all ready to take a run for the water,
+<!--<pb n="058"/>--><anchor id="Pg058"/>
+but he keeps snapping his fingers and looking
+up and down the boardwalk.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he says, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a girl I used to know
+pretty well. I didn&rsquo;t see her for a while till last
+week, and we got in an argument, and I guess
+she&rsquo;s mad. I wrote and asked her to come swimming
+today, but maybe she&rsquo;s not coming.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I figure it out that I&rsquo;m there as insurance
+against the girl not showing up, but I don&rsquo;t
+mind. Anyhow, she does show up. It can&rsquo;t have
+been too much of an argument they had, because
+she acts pretty friendly.</p>
+
+<p>Tom introduces us. Her name is Hilda and a
+last name that&rsquo;d be hard to spell&mdash;Swedish maybe&mdash;and
+she&rsquo;s got a wide, laughing kind of mouth
+and a big coil of yellow hair in a bun on top of
+her head, and a mighty good figure. She asks me
+where I ran into Tom, and we tell her all about
+Cat and the cellar at Number Forty-six, and I
+tell them both about my Ivy-League haircut,
+which I had never explained to anyone before.
+They get a laugh out of that, and then she asks
+him about the filling-station job, and he says it
+stinks.</p>
+
+<p>I figure they could get along without me for
+a while, so I go for a swim and wander down
+<!--<pb n="059"/>--><anchor id="Pg059"/>
+the beach a ways and eat a hot dog and swim
+some more. When I come back, I see Tom and
+Hilda just coming out of the water, so I join
+them. Hilda says, &ldquo;Come have a coke. Tom says
+he&rsquo;s got to try swimming to France just once
+more.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t know just what she means, but we go
+get cokes and come back and stretch out in the
+sun. She asks me do I want a smoke, and I say
+No. It&rsquo;s nice to be asked, though. We watch
+Tom, who is swimming out past all the other
+people. I wish I&rsquo;d gone with him. I say, &ldquo;Lifeguard&rsquo;s
+going to whistle him in pretty soon. He&rsquo;s
+out past all the others.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hilda lets out a breath and snorts, &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll always
+go till they blow the whistle. Always got
+to go farther than anyone else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t know what to say to that, so I don&rsquo;t say
+anything.</p>
+
+<p>Hilda goes on: &ldquo;I used to wait tables in a
+restaurant down near Washington Square. Tom
+and a lot of the boys from NYU came in there.
+Sometimes the day before an exam he&rsquo;d be
+sitting around for hours, buying people cokes
+and acting as if he hadn&rsquo;t a care in the world.
+Some other times, for no reason anyone could
+<!--<pb n="060"/>--><anchor id="Pg060"/>
+tell, he&rsquo;d sit in a corner and stir his coffee like
+he was going to make a hole in the cup.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tom was at NYU?&rdquo; I ask. I don&rsquo;t know
+where I thought he&rsquo;d been before he turned up
+in the cellar. I guess I never thought.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure,&rdquo; Hilda says. &ldquo;He was in the Washington
+Square College for about a year and a half.
+He lived in a dormitory uptown, but I used to
+see him in the restaurant, and then fairly often
+we had dates after I got off work. He has people
+out in the Midwest somewhere&mdash;a father and
+a stepmother. He was always sour and close-mouthed
+about them, even before he got thrown
+out of NYU. Now he won&rsquo;t even write them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This is a lot of information to take in all at
+once and leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
+The first one that comes into my head is this:
+&ldquo;How come he got thrown out of NYU?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it makes Tom so sore, he&rsquo;s never
+really told me a plain, straight story. It&rsquo;s all
+mixed up with his father. I think his father wrote
+him not to come home at Christmas vacation,
+for some reason. Tom and a couple of other boys
+who were left in the dormitory over the holidays
+got horsing around and had a water fight. The
+college got huffy and wrote the parents, telling
+<!--<pb n="061"/>--><anchor id="Pg061"/>
+them to pay up for damages. The other parents
+were pretty angry, but they stuck behind their
+kids and paid up. Tom just never heard from
+his father. Not a line.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That was when Tom began coming into the
+restaurant looking like thunder. The college began
+needling him for the water-fight damages, as
+well as second-semester tuition. He took his first
+exam, physics, and got an A on it. He&rsquo;s pretty
+smart.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He still didn&rsquo;t hear anything from home.
+He took the second exam, French, and thought
+he flunked it. That same afternoon he went into
+the office and told the dean he was quitting,
+and he packed his stuff and left. I didn&rsquo;t see him
+again till a week ago. I didn&rsquo;t know if he&rsquo;d got
+sick of me, or left town, or what.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He says he wrote his father that he had a
+good job, and they could forget about him.
+Then he broke into that cellar on a dare or for
+kicks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So here we are. What do we do next?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hilda looks at me&mdash;me, age fourteen&mdash;as if I
+might actually know, and it&rsquo;s kind of unnerving.
+Everyone I know, their life goes along in set
+periods: grade school, junior high, high school,
+<!--<pb n="062"/>--><anchor id="Pg062"/>
+college, and maybe getting married. They don&rsquo;t
+really have to think what comes next.</p>
+
+<p>I say cautiously, &ldquo;My pop says a kid&rsquo;s got to go
+to college now to get anywhere. Maybe he ought
+to go back to school.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re so right, Grandpa,&rdquo; she says, and I
+would have felt silly, but she has a nice friendly
+laugh. &ldquo;I wish I could persuade him to go back.
+But it&rsquo;s not so easy. I guess he&rsquo;s got to get a job
+and go to night school, if they&rsquo;ll accept him. He
+won&rsquo;t ask his father for money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You two got my life figured out?&rdquo; Tom has
+come up behind us while we were lying in the
+sand on our stomachs. &ldquo;I just hope that sour
+grape at the filling station gives me a good recommendation
+so I can get another job. The way he
+watches his cash register, you&rsquo;d think I was Al
+Capone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We talk a bit, and then Hilda gets up and says
+she&rsquo;s going to the ladies&rsquo; room. She doesn&rsquo;t act
+coy about it, the way most girls do when they&rsquo;re
+sitting with guys. She just leaves.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How do you like Hilda?&rdquo; Tom asks, and
+again I&rsquo;m sort of surprised, because he acts like
+he really wants my opinion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s nice,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah.&rdquo; Tom suddenly glowers, as if I&rsquo;d said
+<!--<pb n="063"/>--><anchor id="Pg063"/>
+I <hi rend='italic'>didn&rsquo;t</hi> like her. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why she wastes
+her time on me. I&rsquo;ll never be any use to her.
+When her family hears about me, I&rsquo;ll get the
+boot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I could ask my pop. You know, I told you
+he&rsquo;s a lawyer. Maybe he&rsquo;d know how you go
+about getting back into college or getting a job
+or something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom laughs, an unamused bark. &ldquo;Maybe he&rsquo;ll
+tell you to quit hanging around with jerks that
+get in trouble with the cops.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This is a point, all right. Come to think, I
+don&rsquo;t know why I said I&rsquo;d ask Pop anyway. I
+usually make a point of not letting his nose into
+my personal affairs, because I figure he&rsquo;ll just
+start bossing me around. However, I certainly
+can&rsquo;t do anything for Tom on my own.</p>
+
+<p>I say, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll chance it. The worst he ever does
+is talk. One time he made a federal case out of
+me buying a Belafonte record he didn&rsquo;t like.
+Another time playing ball I cracked a window in
+a guy&rsquo;s Cadillac, and Pop acted like he was going
+to sue the guy for owning a Cadillac. You just
+never know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom says, &ldquo;With my dad, you <hi rend='italic'>know</hi>: I&rsquo;m
+wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hilda comes back just then. She snaps, &ldquo;If he&rsquo;s
+<!--<pb n="064"/>--><anchor id="Pg064"/>
+such a drug on the market, why don&rsquo;t you shut
+up and forget about him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K., O.K.,&rdquo; says Tom.</p>
+
+<p>The beach is getting filled up by now, so we
+pull on our clothes and head for the subway.
+Tom and Hilda get off in Brooklyn, and I go
+on to Union Square.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner that night Mom is washing the
+dishes and Pop is reading the paper, and I figure
+I might as well dive in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pop,&rdquo; I say, &ldquo;there&rsquo;s this guy I met at the
+beach. Well, really I mean I met him this spring
+when I was hunting for Cat, and this guy was
+in the cellar at Forty-six Gramercy, and he got
+caught and....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wha-a-a-t?&rdquo; Pop puts down his paper and
+takes off his glasses. &ldquo;Begin again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So I give it to him again, slow, and with
+explanations. I go through the whole business
+about the filling station and Hilda and NYU,
+and I&rsquo;ll say one thing for Pop, when he finally
+settles down to listen, he listens. I get through,
+and he puts on his reading glasses and goes to
+look out the window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you have this young man&rsquo;s name and
+address, or is he just Tom from The Cellar?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="065"/>--><anchor id="Pg065"/>
+<p>I&rsquo;d just got it from Tom when we were at the
+beach. He&rsquo;s at a Y in Brooklyn, so I tell Pop this.</p>
+
+<p>Pop says, &ldquo;Tell him to call my office and come
+in to see me on his next day off. Meanwhile,
+I&rsquo;ll bone up on City educational policies in regard
+to juvenile delinquents.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He says this perfectly straight, as if there&rsquo;d be
+a book on the subject. Then he goes back to
+his newspaper, so I guess that closes the subject
+for now.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thanks, Pop,&rdquo; I say and start to go out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Entirely welcome,&rdquo; says Pop. As I get to the
+door, he adds, &ldquo;If that cat of yours makes a
+practice of introducing you to the underworld
+in other people&rsquo;s cellars, we can do without him.
+We probably can anyway.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="066"/>--><anchor id="Pg066"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;7. Survival" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>7</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image07.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave talking with veterinarian while holding Cat.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>SURVIVAL</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>Cat hadn&rsquo;t got me into anymore cellars, but I
+can&rsquo;t honestly say he&rsquo;d been sitting home tending
+his knitting&mdash;not him.</p>
+
+<p>One hot morning I went to pick up the milk
+outside our door, and Cat was sleeping there on
+the mat. He didn&rsquo;t even look up at me. After I
+scratched his ears and talked to him some, he
+got up and hobbled into the house.</p>
+
+<p>I put him up on my bed, under the light, for
+<!--<pb n="067"/>--><anchor id="Pg067"/>
+inspection. One front claw was torn off, which
+is why he was limping, his left ear was ripped,
+and there was quite a bit of fur missing here and
+there. He curled up on my bed and didn&rsquo;t move
+all day.</p>
+
+<p>I came and looked at him every few hours and
+wondered if I ought to take him to a vet. But
+he seemed to be breathing all right, so I went
+away and thought about it some more. Come
+night, I pushed him gently to one side, wondering
+what I better do in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>Well, in the morning Cat wakes up, stretches,
+yawns, and drops easily down off the bed and
+walks away. He still limps a little, but otherwise
+he acts like nothing had happened. He just
+wants to know what&rsquo;s for breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You better watch out. One day you&rsquo;ll run
+into a cat that&rsquo;s bigger and meaner than you,&rdquo;
+I tell him.</p>
+
+<p>Cat continues to wait for breakfast. He is not
+impressed.</p>
+
+<p>But I&rsquo;m worried. Suppose some big old cat
+chews him up and he&rsquo;s hurt too bad to get home?
+After breakfast I take him out in the backyard
+for a bit, and then I shut him in my room and
+go over to consult Aunt Kate.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="068"/>--><anchor id="Pg068"/>
+<p>She sets me up with the usual iced tea and
+dish of cottage cheese.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I had breakfast already. What do I need with
+cottage cheese?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eat it. It&rsquo;s good for you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So I eat it, and then I start telling her about
+Cat. &ldquo;He came home all chewed up night before
+last. I&rsquo;m afraid some night he&rsquo;s not going
+to make it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Right,&rdquo; says Kate. She&rsquo;s not very talky, but
+I&rsquo;m sort of surprised. I expected she&rsquo;d tell me
+to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself.
+She starts pulling Susan&rsquo;s latest kittens out from
+under the sofa and sorting them out as if they
+were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow,
+one calico.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So what you going to do?&rdquo; she shoots at me,
+shoveling the kittens back to Susan.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;uh&mdash;I dunno. I thought maybe I ought to
+try to keep him in nights.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh. Don&rsquo;t know much, do you?&rdquo; she says.
+&ldquo;Well, so I&rsquo;ll tell you. Your Cat has probably
+fathered a few dozen kittens by now, and once
+a cat&rsquo;s been out and mated, you can&rsquo;t keep him
+in. You got to get him altered. Then he won&rsquo;t
+want to go out so much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="069"/>--><anchor id="Pg069"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Altered?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fixed. Castrated is the technical word. It&rsquo;s
+a two-minute operation. Cost you three dollars.
+Take him to Speyer Hospital&mdash;big new building
+up on First Avenue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You mean get him fixed so he&rsquo;s not a real
+tomcat any more? The heck with that! I don&rsquo;t
+want him turned into a fat old cushion cat!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He won&rsquo;t be,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;But if it makes you
+happier, let him get killed in a cat fight. He&rsquo;s
+tough. He&rsquo;ll last a year or two. Suit yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, you&rsquo;re screwy! You and your cottage
+cheese!&rdquo; Even as I say it I feel a little guilty.
+But I feel mad and mixed up, and I fling out
+the door. It&rsquo;s the first time I ever left Kate&rsquo;s mad.
+Usually I leave <hi rend='italic'>our</hi>&nbsp; house mad and go to Kate.</p>
+
+<p>Now I got nowhere to go. I walk along, cussing
+and fuming and kicking pebbles. I come to
+an air-conditioned movie and go up to the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>The phony blonde in the booth looks at me
+and sneers, &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not sixteen. We don&rsquo;t have
+a children&rsquo;s section in this theater.&rdquo; She doesn&rsquo;t
+even ask. She just says it. It&rsquo;s a great world. I go
+home. There&rsquo;s no one there but Cat, so I turn
+the record player up full blast.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="070"/>--><anchor id="Pg070"/>
+<p>Pop comes home in one of his unexpected
+fits of generosity that night and takes us to the
+movies. Cat behaves himself and stays around
+home and our cellar for a while, so I stop worrying.
+But it doesn&rsquo;t last long.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as his claw heals, he starts sashaying
+off again. One night I hear cats yowling out back
+and I go out with a bucket of water and douse
+them and bring Cat in. There&rsquo;s a pretty little
+tiger cat, hardly more than a kitten, sitting on
+the fence licking herself, dry and unconcerned.
+Cat doesn&rsquo;t speak to me for a couple of days.</p>
+
+<p>One morning Butch, the janitor, comes up
+and knocks on our door. &ldquo;You better come down
+and look at your cat. He got himself mighty
+chewed up. Most near dead.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I hurry down, and there is Cat sprawled in a
+corner on the cool cement floor. His mouth is
+half open, and his breath comes in wheezes, like
+he has asthma. I don&rsquo;t know whether to pick him
+up or not.</p>
+
+<p>Butch says, &ldquo;Best let him lie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I sit down beside him. After a bit his breath
+comes easier and he puts his head down. Then
+I see he&rsquo;s got a long, deep claw gouge going from
+his shoulder down one leg. It&rsquo;s half an inch
+<!--<pb n="071"/>--><anchor id="Pg071"/>
+open, and anyone can see it won&rsquo;t heal by itself.</p>
+
+<p>Butch shakes his head. &ldquo;You gotta take him
+to the veteran, sure. That&rsquo;s the cat doctor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah,&rdquo; I say, not correcting him. It&rsquo;s not just
+the gash that&rsquo;s worrying me. I remember what
+Aunt Kate said, and it gives me a cold feeling in
+the stomach: In the back-alley jungle he&rsquo;d last
+a year, maybe two.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at Cat, right now, I know she&rsquo;s right.
+But Cat&rsquo;s such a&mdash;well, such a <hi rend='italic'>cat</hi>. How can I
+take him to be whittled down?</p>
+
+<p>I tell Butch I&rsquo;ll be back down in a few
+minutes, and I go upstairs. Mom&rsquo;s humming and
+cleaning in the kitchen. I wander around and
+stare out the window awhile. Finally I go in the
+kitchen and stare into the icebox, and then I tell
+Mom about the gash in Cat&rsquo;s leg.</p>
+
+<p>She asks if I know a vet to take him to.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah, there&rsquo;s Speyer. It&rsquo;s a big, new hospital&mdash;good
+enough for people, even&mdash;with a view of
+the East River. The thing is, Mom, Cat keeps
+going off and fighting and getting hurt, and
+people tell me I ought to get him altered.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mom wets the sponge and squeezes it out and
+polishes at the sink, and I wonder if she knows
+what I&rsquo;m talking about because I don&rsquo;t really
+<!--<pb n="072"/>--><anchor id="Pg072"/>
+know how to explain it any better.</p>
+
+<p>She wrings the sponge out, finally, and sits
+down at the kitchen table.</p>
+
+<p>She says, &ldquo;Cat&rsquo;s not a free wild animal now,
+and he wouldn&rsquo;t be even if you turned him
+loose. He belongs to <hi rend='italic'>you</hi>, so you have to do whatever
+is best for <hi rend='italic'>him</hi>, whether it&rsquo;s what you&rsquo;d like
+or not. Ask the doctor and do what he says.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mom puts it on the line, all right. It doesn&rsquo;t
+make me feel any better about Cat. She takes
+five dollars out of her pocketbook and gives it
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>I get out the wicker hamper and go down to
+the cellar and load Cat in. He meows, a low
+resentful rumble, but he doesn&rsquo;t try to get away.</p>
+
+<p>Cat in the hamper is no powder puff, and
+I get pretty hot walking to the bus, and then
+from the bus stop to the animal hospital. I get
+there and wait, and dogs sniff at me, and I fill
+in forms. The lady asks me if I can afford to
+pay, and with Mom&rsquo;s five bucks and four of my
+own, I say Yes.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor is a youngish guy, but bald, in a
+white shirt like a dentist&rsquo;s. I put Cat on the table
+in front of him. He says, &ldquo;So why don&rsquo;t you stay
+out of fights, like your mommy told you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="073"/>--><anchor id="Pg073"/>
+<p>I relax a bit and smile, and he says, &ldquo;That&rsquo;s
+better. Don&rsquo;t worry. We&rsquo;ll take care of tomcat.
+I suppose he got this gash in a fight?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He been altered?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How old is he?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. He was a stray. I&rsquo;ve had him
+almost a year.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All the time he&rsquo;s talking, the doctor is soothing
+Cat and looking him over. He goes on
+stroking him and looks up at me. &ldquo;Well, son,
+one of these days he&rsquo;s going to get in one fight
+too many. Shall we alter him the same time we
+sew up his leg?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So there it is. I can&rsquo;t seem to answer right
+away. If the doctor had argued with me, I might
+have said No. But he just goes on humming and
+stroking. Finally he says, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s tough, I know.
+Maybe he&rsquo;s got a right to be a tiger. But you
+can&rsquo;t keep a tiger for a pet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I say, &ldquo;O.K.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>An attendant takes Cat away, and I go sit in
+the waiting room, feeling sweaty and cold all
+over. They tell me it&rsquo;ll be a couple of hours, so
+I go out and wander around a lot of blocks I
+<!--<pb n="074"/>--><anchor id="Pg074"/>
+never saw before and drink some cokes and
+sit and look up at the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge
+to Queens.</p>
+
+<p>When I go back for him, Cat looks the same
+as ever, except for a bandage all up his right
+front leg. The doctor tells me to come back
+Friday and he&rsquo;ll take out the stitches.</p>
+
+<p>Mom sees me come in the door, and I guess
+I look pretty grim, because she says, &ldquo;Cat will
+be all right, won&rsquo;t he, dear?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo; I go past her and down into my room
+and let Cat out of the basket and then bury my
+head under the pillow. I&rsquo;m not exactly ashamed
+of crying, but I don&rsquo;t want Mom to hear.</p>
+
+<p>After a while I pull my head out. Cat is lying
+there beside me, his eyes half open, the tip end
+of his tail twitching very slowly. I rub my eyes
+on the back of his neck and whisper to him,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry. Be tough, Cat, anyway, will you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Cat stretches and hops off the bed on his three
+good legs.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="075"/>--><anchor id="Pg075"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;8. West Side Story" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>8</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image08.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave and Mary buying tickets to West Side Story.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>WEST SIDE STORY</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>The regular park man got sunstroke or something,
+so I earned fourteen dollars raking and
+mowing in Gramercy Park in the middle of August.
+Gramercy Park is a private park. You have
+to own a key to get in, so the city doesn&rsquo;t take
+care of it.</p>
+
+<p>Real paper money, at this time of year especially,
+is very cheering. I head up to Sam Goody&rsquo;s
+to see what records he&rsquo;s got on sale and what
+<!--<pb n="076"/>--><anchor id="Pg076"/>
+characters are buying them. Maybe I&rsquo;ll buy
+something, maybe not, but as long as I&rsquo;ve got
+money in my pocket, I don&rsquo;t feel like the guy
+is glaring at me for taking up floor space.</p>
+
+<p>Along the way I walk through the library,
+the big one at Forty-second Street. You go in by
+the lions on Fifth Avenue, and there&rsquo;s all kinds
+of pictures and books on exhibit in the halls,
+and you walk through to the back, where you
+can take out books. It&rsquo;s nice and cool, and nobody
+glares at you unless you either make a lot
+of noise or go to sleep. I can take books out of
+here and return them at the Twenty-third Street
+branch, which is handy.</p>
+
+<p>Sam Goody&rsquo;s is air-conditioned, so it&rsquo;s cool too.
+There are always several things playing on different
+machines you can listen to. Almost the
+most fun is watching the people: little, fat, bald
+guys buying long-haired classical music, and
+thin, shaggy beatniks listening to the jazz.</p>
+
+<p>I go to check if there are any bargains in the
+Kingston or Belafonte division. There&rsquo;s a girl
+standing there reading the backs of records, but
+I don&rsquo;t really catch a look at more than her shoes&mdash;little
+red flats they are. After a bit she reaches
+for a record over my head and says, &ldquo;Excuse me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="077"/>--><anchor id="Pg077"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Sure.&rdquo; Then we catch each other&rsquo;s eye and
+both say, &ldquo;Oh. Gee, hello.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Well, we&rsquo;re both pretty surprised, because this
+is the girl I met out at Coney Island that day with
+Nick when I had Cat with me, and now we&rsquo;re
+both a long way from Coney Island. This girl
+isn&rsquo;t one of the two giggly ones. It&rsquo;s the third,
+the one that liked Cat.</p>
+
+<p>We&rsquo;ve both forgotten each other&rsquo;s names, so
+we begin over with that. I ask her what she&rsquo;s been
+doing, and she&rsquo;s been at Girl Scout camp a few
+weeks, and then she earned some money baby-sitting.
+So she came to think about records, like
+me. I tell her I&rsquo;ve been at Coney once this summer,
+and I looked around for her, which is true,
+because I did.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a big place,&rdquo; she says, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, you live out there, don&rsquo;t you? How come
+you get all the way in here by yourself? Doesn&rsquo;t
+your mom get in a flap? Mine would, if she knew
+I was going to Coney alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary says, &ldquo;I came in with Mom. Some friend
+of hers has a small art exhibition opening. She
+said I could go home alone. After all, she knows
+I&rsquo;m not going to get lost.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I say, &ldquo;Gee, it&rsquo;d be great to have a mother
+<!--<pb n="078"/>--><anchor id="Pg078"/>
+that didn&rsquo;t worry about you all the time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Mom worries.&rdquo; Mary giggles. &ldquo;You
+should have heard her when I said I liked <hi rend='italic'>Gone
+With the Wind</hi>&nbsp; and I didn&rsquo;t like <hi rend='italic'>Anna Karenina</hi>.
+I pretty nearly got disowned.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What does she think about science fiction?&rdquo;
+I ask, and Mary makes a face, and we both laugh.</p>
+
+<p>I go on. &ldquo;Well, my mom doesn&rsquo;t care what I
+read. She worries about what I eat and whether
+my feet are wet, and she always seems to think
+I&rsquo;m about to kill myself. It&rsquo;s a nuisance, really.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary looks solemn all of a sudden. She says
+slowly, &ldquo;I think maybe it&rsquo;d be nice. I mean to
+have someone worrying about whether you&rsquo;re
+comfortable and all. Instead of just picking your
+brains all the time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This seems to exhaust the subject of our respective
+mothers, and Mary picks up the record
+of <hi rend='italic'>West Side Story</hi> and says, &ldquo;Gee, I&rsquo;d like to
+see that. Did you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I say No, and to tell the truth I hadn&rsquo;t hardly
+heard of it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I read a book about him. It was wonderful,&rdquo;
+she says.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bernstein. The man who wrote it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="079"/>--><anchor id="Pg079"/>
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s <hi rend='italic'>West Side Story</hi> about, him?&rdquo; I ask
+cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no&mdash;he wrote the music. It&rsquo;s about some
+kids in two gangs, and there&rsquo;s a lot of dancing,
+and then there&rsquo;s a fight and this kid gets&mdash;well,
+it isn&rsquo;t a thing you can tell the story of very well.
+You have to see it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This gives me a very simple idea.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t we?&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go see it. Why not? We got money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So we do,&rdquo; she says slowly. &ldquo;You think they&rsquo;ll
+let us in, I mean being under sixteen?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>You know, this is the first girl I really ever
+talked to that talks like a person, not trying to
+be cute or something.</p>
+
+<p>We walk around to the theater, and being it&rsquo;s
+Wednesday, there&rsquo;s a matinee about to start. The
+man doesn&rsquo;t seem to be one bit worried about
+taking our money. No wonder. It&rsquo;s two dollars
+and ninety cents each. So we&rsquo;re inside with our
+tickets before we&rsquo;ve hardly stopped to think.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Mary says, &ldquo;Oops! I better call
+Mom! Let&rsquo;s find out what time the show is over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We do, and Mary phones. She says to me, &ldquo;I
+just told her I was walking past <hi rend='italic'>West Side Story</hi>
+<!--<pb n="080"/>--><anchor id="Pg080"/>
+and found I could get a ticket. I didn&rsquo;t say anything
+about you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, would she mind?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary squints and looks puzzled. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+know. I just really don&rsquo;t know. It never happened
+before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We go in to the show, and she is right, it&rsquo;s
+terrific. I hardly ever went to a live show before,
+except a couple of children&rsquo;s things and something
+by Shakespeare Pop took me to that was
+very confusing. But this <hi rend='italic'>West Side Story</hi> is clear
+as a bell.</p>
+
+<p>We have an orangeade during intermission,
+and I make the big gesture and pay for both of
+them. Mary says, &ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t it wonderful! I just
+happened to meet you at the beach, and then I
+meet you at Goody&rsquo;s, and we get to see this show
+that I&rsquo;ve wanted to go to for ages. None of my
+friends at school want to spend this much money
+on a show.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s wonderful,&rdquo; I say. &ldquo;After it&rsquo;s over, I&rsquo;m
+going back to buy the record.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So after the show we buy it, and then we walk
+along together to the subway. I&rsquo;ll have to get
+off at the first stop, Fourteenth Street, and she&rsquo;ll
+go on to Coney, the end of the line.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="081"/>--><anchor id="Pg081"/>
+<p>It&rsquo;s hard to talk on the subway. There&rsquo;s so
+much noise you have to shout, which is hard
+if you don&rsquo;t know what to say. Anyway, you
+can&rsquo;t ask a girl for her phone number shouting
+on the subway. At least I can&rsquo;t.</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;m not so sure about the phone-number
+business either. I sort of can&rsquo;t imagine calling
+up and saying, &ldquo;Oh, uh, Mary, this is Dave. You
+want to go to a movie or something, huh?&rdquo; It
+sounds stupid, and I&rsquo;d be embarrassed. What
+she said, it&rsquo;s true&mdash;it&rsquo;s sort of wonderful the way
+we just ran into each other twice and had so
+much fun.</p>
+
+<p>So I&rsquo;m wondering how I can happen to run
+into her again. Maybe the beach, in the fall.
+Let&rsquo;s see, a school holiday&mdash;Columbus Day.</p>
+
+<p>The train is pulling into Fourteenth Street.
+I shout, &ldquo;Hey, how about we go to the beach
+again this fall? Maybe Columbus Day?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K.!&rdquo; she shouts. &ldquo;Columbus Day in the
+morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Columbus Day in the morning&rdquo; sounds loud
+and clear because by then the subway has
+stopped. People snicker, and Mary blushes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So long,&rdquo; I say, and we both wave, and the
+train goes.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="082"/>--><anchor id="Pg082"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="&nbsp;9. Fathers" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>9</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image09.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave and Tom sitting on front steps with Cat.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>FATHERS</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>That operation didn&rsquo;t make as much difference
+to Cat as you might think. I took him back to
+the clinic to get the stitches out of his leg and
+the bandages off. A few nights later I heard
+yowls coming up from the backyard. I went
+down and pulled him out of a fight. He wasn&rsquo;t
+hurt yet, but he sure was right back in there
+pitching. He seems to have a standing feud
+with the cat next door.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="083"/>--><anchor id="Pg083"/>
+<p>However, he&rsquo;s been coming home nights regularly,
+and sometimes in the cool part of the
+morning he&rsquo;ll sit out on the front stoop with
+me. He sits on a pillar about six feet above the
+sidewalk, and I sit on the steps and play my
+transistor and read.</p>
+
+<p>Every time a dog gets walked down the street
+under Cat&rsquo;s perch, he gathers himself up in a
+ball, as if he were going to spring. Of course,
+the poor dog never knows it was about to be
+pounced on and wags on down the street. Cat
+lets his tail go to sleep then and sneers.</p>
+
+<p>Between weathercasts I hear him purring,
+loud rumbly purrs, and I look up and see Tom
+there, stroking Cat&rsquo;s fur up backward toward
+his ears. Tom is looking out into the street and
+sort of whistling without making any sound.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gee, hi!&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hi, too,&rdquo; he says. He strokes Cat back down
+the right way, gives him a pat, and sits down.
+&ldquo;I just been down to see your dad. He&rsquo;s quite
+a guy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh-h-h? You got sunstroke or something?
+Didn&rsquo;t he read you about ten lectures on
+Healthy Living, Honest Effort, Baseball, and
+Long Walks with a Dog?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="084"/>--><anchor id="Pg084"/>
+<p>&ldquo;No-o-o.&rdquo; Tom grins, but then he sits and
+stares out at the street again, so I wait.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;you give me an idea.
+<hi rend='italic'>You</hi> talk like <hi rend='italic'>your</hi> dad is a real pain, and that&rsquo;s
+the way <hi rend='italic'>I</hi> always have felt about <hi rend='italic'>mine</hi>. But your
+dad looks like a great guy to me, so&mdash;well, maybe
+mine could be too, if I gave him a chance. Your
+dad was saying I should.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Should what? You should go home?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No. Your dad said I ought to write him a
+long letter and face up to all the things I&rsquo;ve
+goofed on. Quitting NYU, the cellar trouble,
+all that. Then tell him I&rsquo;m going to get a job
+and go to night school. Your dad figures probably
+he&rsquo;d help me. He said he&rsquo;d write him, too.
+No reason he should. I&rsquo;m nothing in his life.
+It&rsquo;s pretty nice of him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I try to digest all this, and it sure is puzzling.
+The time I ran down that crumb of a doorman
+on my bike, accidental on purpose, I didn&rsquo;t get
+any long understanding talks. I just got kept in
+for a month.</p>
+
+<p>Tom slaps me in the middle of the back and
+stands up. &ldquo;Hilda&rsquo;s gone back to work at the
+coffee shop. I guess I&rsquo;ll go down and see her
+<!--<pb n="085"/>--><anchor id="Pg085"/>
+before the lunch rush, and then go home and
+write my letter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say &lsquo;Hi&rsquo; for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K. So long.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<milestone unit="tb" rend="stars: 5" />
+
+<p>The weather cools off some, and Pop starts to
+talk about vacation. He&rsquo;s taking two weeks, last
+of August and first of September, so I start shopping
+around for various bits of fishing tackle and
+picnic gear we might need. We&rsquo;re going to this
+lake up in Connecticut, where we get a sort of
+motel cottage. It has a little hot plate for making
+coffee in the morning, but most of the rest of the
+time we eat out, which is neat.</p>
+
+<p>We&rsquo;re sitting around the living room one
+evening, sorting stuff out, when the doorbell
+rings. I go answer it, and Tom walks in. He nods
+at me like he hardly sees me and comes into the
+living room. He shakes hands like a wooden
+Indian. His face looks shut up again, the way
+it did that day I left him in the filling station.</p>
+
+<p>He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a letter.
+I can see a post-office stamp in red ink with
+a pointing hand by the address. He throws it
+down on Dad&rsquo;s table.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="086"/>--><anchor id="Pg086"/>
+<p>&ldquo;I got my answer all right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop looks at the letter and I see his foot start
+to twitch the way it does when he&rsquo;s about to
+blow. But he looks at Tom, and instead of blowing
+he just says, &ldquo;Your father left town? No forwarding
+address?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I guess so. He just left. Him and that woman
+he married.&rdquo; Tom&rsquo;s voice trails off and he walks
+over to the window. We all sit quiet a minute.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Pop says gently, &ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t waste
+too much breath on her. She&rsquo;s nothing to do
+with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom turns around angrily. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s no good.
+She loafs around and drinks all the time. She
+talked him into going.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he went.&rdquo; There&rsquo;s another short silence,
+and Pop goes on. &ldquo;Where was this you lived?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;House. It was a pretty nice little house, too.
+Dark red with white trim, and enough of a yard
+to play a little ball, and I grew a few lettuces
+every spring. I even got one ear of corn once.
+We moved there when I was in second grade
+because my mom said it was near a good local
+school. I lived there till I went to college. I suppose
+he sold it, or got a loan, and they lit off to
+<!--<pb n="087"/>--><anchor id="Pg087"/>
+drink it up. Soon&rsquo;s they&rsquo;d got <hi rend='italic'>me</hi> off their
+hands.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom bites off the last word. Suddenly I can
+see the picture pretty clear: the nice house, the
+father Tom always talked down and hoped
+would measure up. Now it&rsquo;s like somebody has
+taken his whole childhood and crumpled it up
+like a wad of tissue paper and thrown it away.</p>
+
+<p>Mom gets up and goes into the kitchen. Pop&rsquo;s
+foot keeps on twitching. Finally he says, &ldquo;Well,
+I steered you wrong. I&rsquo;m sorry. But maybe it&rsquo;s
+just as well to have it settled.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s settled, all right,&rdquo; Tom says.</p>
+
+<p>Mom brings out a tray of ginger-ale glasses.
+It seems sort of inadequate at a moment like
+this, but when Tom takes a glass from her he
+looks like he&rsquo;s going to bust out crying.</p>
+
+<p>He drinks some and blows his nose, and Dad
+says, &ldquo;When are you supposed to check in with
+the Youth Board again?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tuesday. My day off. And I wind up the
+filling-station job the next week, right after Labor
+Day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Labor Day. Hm-m. We&rsquo;ve got to get moving.
+If you like, I&rsquo;ll come down to the Youth Board
+<!--<pb n="088"/>--><anchor id="Pg088"/>
+with you, and we&rsquo;ll see what we can all cook up.
+Don&rsquo;t worry too much. I have a feeling you&rsquo;re
+just beginning to fight&mdash;really fight, not just
+throw a few stones.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know why you bother.&rdquo; Tom starts
+to stand up. But while we&rsquo;ve been talking, Cat
+has been creeping up under the side table, playing
+the ambush game, and he launches himself
+at Tom just as he starts to stand. It throws him
+off balance and he sits back in the chair, holding
+Cat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got nothing to worry about,&rdquo; Pop
+says. &ldquo;Cat&rsquo;s on your side.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="089"/>--><anchor id="Pg089"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="10. Cat and the Parkway"/>
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>10</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image10.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Cat jumping out of car on parkway.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>CAT AND THE PARKWAY</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>Cat may be on Tom&rsquo;s side, but whether Pop is
+on Cat&rsquo;s side is something else again. I worry
+about this all the time we&rsquo;re planning the vacation.
+Suppose the motel won&rsquo;t take cats? Or suppose
+he runs away in the country? If he messes
+up the vacation in any way, I know Pop&rsquo;ll say
+to get rid of him.</p>
+
+<p>I practice putting Cat back in the wicker
+hamper to see if I can keep him in that sometimes,
+<!--<pb n="090"/>--><anchor id="Pg090"/>
+but he meows like crazy. That&rsquo;d drive
+Pop nuts in the car, and it certainly wouldn&rsquo;t
+hide him from any motel-keeper. So I just sit
+back and hope for the best, but I got a nasty
+feeling in the bottom of my stomach that something&rsquo;s
+going to go haywire.</p>
+
+<p>Pop&rsquo;s pretty snappish anyway. He&rsquo;s working
+late nearly every night, getting stuff cleared up
+before vacation. He doesn&rsquo;t want any extra problems,
+especially not Cat problems. Mom&rsquo;s been
+having asthma a good deal lately, and we&rsquo;re all
+pretty jumpy. It&rsquo;s always like this at the end of
+the summer.</p>
+
+<p>Tuesday night when he gets home, I ask Pop
+what&rsquo;s happened about Tom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll work something out,&rdquo; he says, which
+isn&rsquo;t what you&rsquo;d call a big explanation.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think he can get back into college?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. The Youth Board is going to
+work on it. They&rsquo;re arranging for him to make
+up the midyear exams he missed, so he can get
+credit for that semester. Then he can probably
+start making up the second semester at night
+school if he has a job.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Apparently the Youth Board knew his father
+had skipped&mdash;they&rsquo;ve been trying to trace him.
+I don&rsquo;t think it&rsquo;ll do any good if they find him.
+<!--<pb n="091"/>--><anchor id="Pg091"/>
+Tom had better just cross him off and figure his
+own life for himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>You know, I see &ldquo;bad guys&rdquo; in television and
+stuff, but with the people I really know I always
+lump the parents on one team and the kids on
+the other. Now here&rsquo;s my pop calmly figuring
+a kid better chalk off his father as a bad lot and
+go it alone. If your father died, I suppose you
+could face up to it eventually, but having him
+just fade out on you, not care what you did&mdash;that&rsquo;d
+be worse.</p>
+
+<p>While I&rsquo;m doing all this hard thinking, Pop
+has gone back to reading the paper. I notice the
+column of want ads on the back, and all of a
+sudden my mind clicks on Tom and jobs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, Pop! You know the florist on the corner,
+Palumbo, where you always get Mom the
+plant on Mother&rsquo;s Day? I went in there a couple
+of weeks ago, because he had a sign up, &lsquo;Helper
+Wanted.&rsquo; I thought maybe it was deliveries and
+stuff that I could do after school. But he said
+he needed a full-time man. I&rsquo;m pretty sure the
+sign&rsquo;s still up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Palumbo, huhn?&rdquo; Pop takes off his glasses
+and scratches his head with them. He looks at
+his watch and sighs. &ldquo;They still open?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They are, and Pop goes right down to see the
+<!--<pb n="092"/>--><anchor id="Pg092"/>
+guy. He knows him fairly well anyway&mdash;there&rsquo;s
+Mother&rsquo;s Day, and Easter, and also the shop is
+the polling place for our district, so Pop&rsquo;s in
+there every Election Day. He always buys some
+little bunch of flowers Election Day because he
+figures the guy ought to get some business having
+his shop all messed up for the day.</p>
+
+<p>Dad comes back and goes over to the desk and
+scratches off a fast note. He says, &ldquo;Here. Address
+it to Tom and go mail it right away. Palumbo
+says he&rsquo;ll try him out at least. Tom can come
+over Thursday night and I&rsquo;ll take him in.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom comes home with Pop Thursday about
+nine o&rsquo;clock. They both look pretty good. Mom
+has cold supper waiting, finishing off the icebox
+before we go away, so we all sit down to eat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tom&rsquo;s all set, at least for a start,&rdquo; Dad says.
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s going to start Tuesday, right after Labor
+Day. Palumbo can use him on odd jobs and deliveries,
+especially over the Jewish holidays, and
+then if he can learn the business, he&rsquo;ll keep
+him on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never thought I&rsquo;d go in for flower-arranging.&rdquo;
+Tom grins. &ldquo;But it might be fun. I&rsquo;m
+pretty fair at any kind of handiwork.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Remembering how quick he unlocked the
+<!--<pb n="093"/>--><anchor id="Pg093"/>
+padlock to get Cat out in the cellar, I agree.</p>
+
+<p>He starts for his room after supper, and we
+all say &ldquo;good luck,&rdquo; &ldquo;have a good time,&rdquo; and
+stuff. Things are really looking up.</p>
+
+<p>I get up early the next morning and help
+Mom button up around the house and get the
+car loaded before Pop gets home in the afternoon.
+He hoped to get off early, and I&rsquo;ve been
+pacing around snapping my fingers for a couple
+of hours when he finally arrives about six o&rsquo;clock.
+It&rsquo;s a hot day again.</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t say anything about Cat. I just dive in
+the back seat and put him behind a suitcase and
+hope he&rsquo;ll behave. Pop doesn&rsquo;t seem to notice
+him. Anyway he doesn&rsquo;t say anything.</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s mighty hot, and traffic is thick, with everyone
+pouring out of the city. But at least we&rsquo;re
+moving along, until we get out on the Hutchinson
+River Parkway, where some dope has to run
+out of gas.</p>
+
+<p>All three lanes of traffic are stopped. We sit
+in the sun. Pop looks around, hunting for something
+to get sore about, and sees the back windows
+are closed. He roars, &ldquo;Crying out loud,
+can&rsquo;t we get some air, at least? Open those windows!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="094"/>--><anchor id="Pg094"/>
+<p>I open them and try to keep my hand over
+Cat, but if you try to hold him really, it makes
+him restless. For the moment he&rsquo;s sitting quiet,
+looking disgusted.</p>
+
+<p>We sit for about ten minutes, and Pop turns
+off the motor. You can practically hear us sweating
+in the silence. Engines turn on ahead of us,
+and there seems to be some sign of hope. I stick
+my head out the window to see if things are
+moving. Something furry tickles my ear, and it
+takes me a second to register.</p>
+
+<p>Then I grab, but too late. There is Cat, out
+on the parkway between the lanes of cars, trying
+to figure which way to run.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pop!&rdquo; I yell. &ldquo;Hold it! Cat&rsquo;s got out!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>You know what my pop does? He laughs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hold it, my eyeball!&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been
+holding it for half an hour. I&rsquo;d get murdered
+if I tried to stop now. Besides, I don&rsquo;t want to
+chase that cat every day of my vacation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t even stop to think. I just open the
+car door and jump. The car&rsquo;s only barely moving.
+I can see Cat on the grass at the edge of the
+parkway. The cars in the next lane blast their
+horns, but I slip through and grab Cat.</p>
+
+<p>I hear Mom scream, &ldquo;Davey!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Our car is twenty feet ahead, now, in the center
+<!--<pb n="095"/>--><anchor id="Pg095"/>
+lane, and there&rsquo;s no way Pop can turn off.
+The cars are picking up speed. I holler to Mom
+as loud as I can, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go back and stay with Kate!
+Don&rsquo;t worry!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I hear Pop shout about something, but I can&rsquo;t
+hear what. Pretty soon the car is out of sight. I
+look down at Cat and say, &ldquo;There goes our
+vacation.&rdquo; I wonder if I&rsquo;ll be able to catch a
+bus out to Connecticut later. Meanwhile, there&rsquo;s
+the little problem of getting back into the city.
+I&rsquo;m standing alongside the parkway, with railroad
+tracks and the Pelham golf course on the
+other side of me, and a good long walk to the
+subway.</p>
+
+<p>A cat isn&rsquo;t handy to walk with. He keeps trying
+to get down. If you squeeze him to hang on,
+he just tries harder. You have to keep juggling
+him, like, gently. I sweat along back, with the
+sun in my eyes, and people in cars on the parkway
+pointing me out to their children as a local
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>One place the bulrushes and marsh grass beside
+the road grow up higher than your head.
+What a place for a kids&rsquo; hideout, I think. Almost
+the next step, I hear kids&rsquo; voices, whispering and
+shushing each other.</p>
+
+<p>Their voices follow along beside me, but
+<!--<pb n="096"/>--><anchor id="Pg096"/>
+inside the curtain of rushes, where I can&rsquo;t see
+them. I hear one say, &ldquo;Lookit the sissy with the
+pussy!&rdquo; Another answers, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s dump &rsquo;em in
+the river!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I try to walk faster, but I figure if I run they&rsquo;ll
+chase me for sure. I walk along, juggling Cat,
+trying to pretend I don&rsquo;t notice them. I see a
+drawbridge up ahead, and I sure hope there&rsquo;s
+a cop or watchman on it.</p>
+
+<p>The kids break out of the rushes behind
+me, and there&rsquo;s no use pretending anymore. I
+flash a look over my shoulder. They all yell,
+&ldquo;Ya-n-h-h-h!&rdquo; like a bunch of wild Indians, but
+they&rsquo;re about fifty feet back.</p>
+
+<p>I grab Cat hard about the only place you can
+grab a cat, around one upper forearm, and I
+really run. The kids let out another war whoop.
+It&rsquo;s uphill to the bridge. Cat gets his free forepaw
+into action, raking my chest and arm, with
+his claws out. Then he hisses and bites, and I
+nearly drop him. I&rsquo;m panting so hard I can&rsquo;t
+hardly breathe anyway.</p>
+
+<p>A cop saunters out on my approach to the
+bridge, his billy dangling from his wrist. Whew&mdash;am
+I glad! I flop on the grass and ease up on
+Cat and start soothing him down. The kids fade
+<!--<pb n="097"/>--><anchor id="Pg097"/>
+off into the tall grass as soon as they see the cop.
+A stone arches up toward me, but it falls short.
+That&rsquo;s the last I see of them.</p>
+
+<p>As I cross the bridge, the cop squints at me.
+&ldquo;What you doing, kid? Not supposed to be
+walking here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be right off. I&rsquo;m going home,&rdquo; I tell
+him, and he saunters away, twirling his stick.</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s dark by the time I get to the subway, and
+most of another hour before I&rsquo;m back in Manhattan
+and reach Kate&rsquo;s. I can hear the television
+going, which is unusual, and I walk in.
+No one is watching television. Mom and Pop are
+sitting at the table with Kate.</p>
+
+<p>Mom lets loose the tears she has apparently
+been holding onto for two hours, and Pop starts
+bellowing: &ldquo;You fool! You might have got killed
+jumping out on that parkway!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Cat drops to the floor with a thud. I kiss Mom
+and go to the sink for a long glass of water and
+drink it all and wipe my mouth. Over my
+shoulder, I answer Pop: &ldquo;Yeah, but if Cat gets
+killed on the parkway, that&rsquo;s just a big joke,
+isn&rsquo;t it? You laugh your head off!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head
+with them, like he always does when he&rsquo;s thinking.
+<!--<pb n="098"/>--><anchor id="Pg098"/>
+He looks me in the eye and says, &ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry.
+I shouldn&rsquo;t have laughed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then, of all things, he picks up Cat himself.
+&ldquo;Come on. You&rsquo;re one of the family. Let&rsquo;s get
+on this vacation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At last we&rsquo;re off.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="099"/>--><anchor id="Pg099"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="11. Rosh Hashanah at the Fulton Fish Market" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>11</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image11.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave picking out fish while Ben and garbage-sweeper watch.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>ROSH HASHANAH AT THE FULTON FISH MARKET</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>We came back to the city Labor Day Monday&mdash;us
+and a couple million others&mdash;traffic crawling,
+a hot day, the windows practically closed up tight
+to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs
+stuck to me and got up my nose. Considering
+everything, Pop acted quite mild.</p>
+
+<p>I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut
+who had skin-diving equipment. He let me use
+it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing.
+<!--<pb n="100"/>--><anchor id="Pg100"/>
+Boy, this has fishing beat hollow! I found
+out there&rsquo;s a skin-diving course at the Y, and
+I&rsquo;m going to begin saving up for the fins and
+mask and stuff. Pop won&rsquo;t mind forking out
+for the Y membership, because he&rsquo;ll figure it&rsquo;s
+character-building.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I&rsquo;m wondering if I can get back
+up to Connecticut again one weekend while
+the weather&rsquo;s still warm, and I see that Rosh
+Hashanah falls on a Monday and Tuesday this
+year, the week after school opens. Great. So I
+ask this kid&mdash;Kenny Wright&mdash;if I can maybe
+come visit him that weekend so I can do some
+more skin diving.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rosh Hashanah? What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; he says.</p>
+
+<p>So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the
+Jewish New Year. About half the kids in my
+school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and
+I always do too. Last year the school board gave
+up and made it an official school holiday for
+everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom
+Kippur, the week after.</p>
+
+<p>Kenny whistles. &ldquo;You sure are lucky. I don&rsquo;t
+think we got any holidays coming till Thanksgiving.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I always thought the kids in the country were
+<!--<pb n="101"/>--><anchor id="Pg101"/>
+lucky having outdoor yards for sports and recess,
+but I guess we have it over them on holidays&mdash;&rsquo;specially
+in the fall: three Jewish holidays in
+September, Columbus Day in October, Election
+Day and Veterans&rsquo; Day in November, and then
+Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t figure it&rsquo;d be worth train fare to Connecticut
+for just two days, so I say good-bye to
+Kenny and see you next year and stuff.</p>
+
+<p>Back home I&rsquo;m pretty busy right away, on
+account of starting in a new school, Charles
+Evans Hughes High. It&rsquo;s different from the
+junior high, where I knew half the kids, and
+also my whole homeroom there went from one
+classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone
+has to get his own schedule and find the right
+classroom in this immense building, which is
+about the size of Penn Station. There are about
+a million kids in it&mdash;actually about two thousand&mdash;most
+of whom I never saw before. Hardly any
+of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village
+kids come here because it isn&rsquo;t their district.
+However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one
+day, I see one kid I know from Peter Cooper.
+His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him how come
+he is at Hughes.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="102"/>--><anchor id="Pg102"/>
+<p>&ldquo;My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant
+High School&mdash;you know, the genius factory,
+city-wide competitive exam to get in. Of
+course I didn&rsquo;t make it. Biggest Failure of the
+Year, that&rsquo;s me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heck, I never even tried for that. But how
+come you&rsquo;re here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a special science course you can
+qualify for by taking a math test. Then you don&rsquo;t
+have to live in the district. My dad figures as
+long as I&rsquo;m in something special, there&rsquo;s hope.
+I&rsquo;m not really very interested in science, but that
+doesn&rsquo;t bother him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So after that Ben and I walk back and forth
+to school together, and it turns out we have three
+classes together, too&mdash;biology and algebra and
+English. We&rsquo;re both relieved to have at least one
+familiar face to look for in the crowd. My old
+friend Nick, aside from not really being my
+best friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic
+high school somewhere uptown.</p>
+
+<p>On the way home from school one Friday in
+September, I ask Ben what he&rsquo;s doing Monday
+and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah
+suit and go to synagogue and over to Brooklyn
+<!--<pb n="103"/>--><anchor id="Pg103"/>
+to my grandmother&rsquo;s. Monday I don&rsquo;t have to
+do anything special. Come on over with your
+roller skates and we&rsquo;ll get in the hockey game.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I skate on my tail,&rdquo; I say, because it&rsquo;s true,
+and it would be doubly true in a hockey game.
+I try quick to think up something else. We&rsquo;re
+walking down the block to my house, and there&rsquo;s
+Cat sitting out front, so I say, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s cruise
+around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and
+pick up some fish heads for my cat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;re a real nut, aren&rsquo;t you?&rdquo; Ben says. He
+doesn&rsquo;t say it as if he minds&mdash;just mentioning
+the fact. He&rsquo;s an easygoing kind of guy, and I
+think most of the time he likes to let someone
+else make the plans. So he shrugs and says,
+&ldquo;O.K.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the
+eye, and Cat looks away and licks his back. Ben
+says, &ldquo;So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh
+Hashanah, huh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front
+against Ben&rsquo;s right leg and from front to back
+against his left leg and goes to lie down in the
+middle of the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;See? He likes you,&rdquo; I say. &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t have
+anything to do with most guys, except Tom.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="104"/>--><anchor id="Pg104"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s Tom?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar
+and his father disappearing on him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gee,&rdquo; says Ben, &ldquo;I thought I had trouble,
+with my father practically telling me how to
+breathe better every minute, but at least he
+doesn&rsquo;t disappear. What does Tom do now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Works at the flower shop, right down there
+at the corner.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ben feels around in his pockets a minute.
+&ldquo;Hey, I got two bucks I was supposed to spend
+on a textbook. Come on and I&rsquo;ll buy Mom a
+plant for the holidays, and you can introduce
+me to Tom.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We go down to the flower shop, and at first
+Tom frowns because he thinks we&rsquo;ve just come
+to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant,
+so then he makes a big thing out of showing
+him all the plants, from the ten-dollar ones on
+down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he&rsquo;s doing a good
+job. Ben finally settles on a funny-looking cactus
+that Tom says is going to bloom pretty soon.</p>
+
+<p>Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick
+him up on Monday. I wait around outside until
+I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how
+he likes the job. He says he doesn&rsquo;t really know
+<!--<pb n="105"/>--><anchor id="Pg105"/>
+yet, but at least the guy is decent to work for,
+not like the filling-station man.</p>
+
+<milestone unit="tb" rend="stars: 5" />
+
+<p>I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter
+Cooper about eleven. A lot of kids are out in
+the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing
+footballs with them and shouting &ldquo;Happy
+New Year&rdquo; to each other. It sounds odd to hear
+people saying that on a warm day in September.</p>
+
+<p>Ben and I wander out of the project and he
+says, &ldquo;How do we get to this Fulton Street?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I see a bus that says &ldquo;Avenue C&rdquo; on it stopping
+on Twenty-third Street. Avenue C is way
+east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it&rsquo;ll
+probably work out. We get on. The bus rockets
+along under the East Side Drive for a few blocks
+and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow
+and crowded. It&rsquo;s a Spanish and Puerto Rican
+neighborhood to begin with, then farther downtown
+it&rsquo;s mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out
+on the street shaking hands and clapping each
+other on the back, and the stores are all closed.</p>
+
+<p>Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to
+some of the people on the sidewalk, and he seems
+to know a good many of the passengers who get
+on. He asks them about their jobs, or their
+<!--<pb n="106"/>--><anchor id="Pg106"/>
+babies, or their aunt who&rsquo;s sick in Bellevue. This
+is pretty unusual in New York, where bus
+drivers usually act like they hate people in general
+and their passengers in particular. Suddenly
+the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.</p>
+
+<p>Ben looks out the window and says, &ldquo;Hey,
+this is Houston Street. I been down here to a
+big delicatessen. But we&rsquo;re not heading downtown
+anymore.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Probably it&rsquo;ll turn again,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>It doesn&rsquo;t, though, not till clear over at Sixth
+Avenue. By then everyone else has got off and
+the bus driver turns around and says, &ldquo;Where
+you two headed for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s funny, a bus driver asking you that, so
+I ask him, &ldquo;Where does this bus go?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson
+Street, down by the Holland Tunnel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Holy crow!&rdquo; says Ben. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re liable to wind
+up in New Jersey.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Relax. I don&rsquo;t go that far. I just go back up
+to Bellevue,&rdquo; says the driver.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You think we&rsquo;d be far from Fulton Fish
+Market?&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>The driver gestures vaguely. &ldquo;Just across the
+island.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="107"/>--><anchor id="Pg107"/>
+<p>So Ben and I decide we&rsquo;ll get off at the end of
+the line and walk from there. The bus driver
+says, &ldquo;Have a nice hike.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think there&rsquo;s something fishy about this,&rdquo;
+says Ben.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re going to get, fish,&rdquo; I say,
+and we walk. We walk quite a ways.</p>
+
+<p>Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a
+couple of steps, and we stop to look at the menu
+in the window. The special for the day is
+lasagna, and Ben says, &ldquo;Boy, that&rsquo;s for me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my
+pocket and do some fast mental arithmetic.
+Lasagna is a dollar, so that&rsquo;s out, but I see
+spaghetti and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so
+that will still leave me bus fare home.</p>
+
+<p>A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin
+over his arm like a banner, and takes our order.
+He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white
+linen tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian
+bread and rolls. On a third trip he brings enough
+chilled butter for a family and asks if we want
+coffee with lunch or later. Later, we say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Man, this is living!&rdquo; says Ben as he moves
+in on the bread.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He treats us just like people.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="108"/>--><anchor id="Pg108"/>
+<p>Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna
+and spaghetti, and he swirls around the table as
+if he were dancing. &ldquo;Anything else now? Mind
+the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now.
+I bring the coffee later.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He swirls away, the napkin over his arm
+making a little breeze, and circles another table.
+It&rsquo;s a small room, and there are only four tables
+eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was
+serving royalty at the Waldorf. When we&rsquo;re just
+finished eating, he comes back with a pot of
+steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;m dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when
+a thought hits me: We got to leave a tip for this
+waiter.</p>
+
+<p>I whisper to Ben, &ldquo;Hey, how much money you
+got?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He reaches in his pocket and fishes out a buck,
+a dime, and a quarter. We study them. Figure
+coffees for a dime each, and the total check ought
+to be $1.95. We&rsquo;ve got $2.35 between us. We
+can still squeak through with bus fare if we only
+leave the waiter a dime, which is pretty cheap.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment he comes back and refills
+our coffee cups and asks what we will have for
+dessert.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="109"/>--><anchor id="Pg109"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Uh, nothing, nothing at all,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Couldn&rsquo;t eat another thing,&rdquo; says Ben.</p>
+
+<p>So the waiter brings the check and along with
+it a plate of homemade cookies. He says, &ldquo;My
+wife make. On the house.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We both thank him, and I look at Ben and he
+looks at me. I put down my dollar and he puts
+down a dollar and a quarter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Come
+again,&rdquo; says the waiter.</p>
+
+<p>We walk into the street, and Ben spins the
+lone remaining dime in the sun. I say, &ldquo;Heads
+or tails?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh? Heads.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It comes up heads, so Ben keeps his own
+dime. He says, &ldquo;We could have hung onto
+enough for <hi rend='italic'>one</hi> bus fare, but that&rsquo;s no use.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No use at all. &rsquo;Specially if it was yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are we still heading for Fulton Street?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure. We got to get fish for Cat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It better be for free.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We walk, threading across Manhattan and
+downtown. I guess it&rsquo;s thirty or forty blocks,
+but after a good lunch it doesn&rsquo;t seem too far.</p>
+
+<p>You can smell the fish market when you&rsquo;re
+still quite a ways off. It runs for a half a dozen
+<!--<pb n="110"/>--><anchor id="Pg110"/>
+blocks alongside the East River, with long rows
+of sheds divided into stores for the different
+wholesalers. Around on the side streets there are
+bars and fish restaurants. It&rsquo;s too bad we don&rsquo;t
+have Cat with us because he&rsquo;d love sniffing at all
+the fish heads and guts and stuff on the street.
+Fish market business is done mostly in the morning,
+I guess, and now men are hosing down the
+streets and sweeping fish garbage up into piles.
+I get a guy to give me a bag and select a couple
+of the choicer&mdash;and cleaner&mdash;looking bits. I get a
+nice red snapper head and a small whole fish,
+looks like a mackerel. Ben acts as if fish guts
+make him sick, and as soon as I&rsquo;ve got a couple
+he starts saying &ldquo;Come on, come on, let&rsquo;s go.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I realize when we&rsquo;re leaving that I don&rsquo;t even
+notice the fish smell anymore. You just get used
+to it. We walk uptown, quite a hike, along
+East Broadway and across Grand and Delancey.
+There&rsquo;s all kinds of intriguing smells wafting
+around here: hot breads and pickles and fish
+cooking. This is a real Jewish neighborhood, and
+you can sure tell it&rsquo;s a holiday from the smell of
+all the dinners cooking. And lots of people are
+out in their best clothes gabbing together. Some
+of the men wear black skullcaps, and some of
+<!--<pb n="111"/>--><anchor id="Pg111"/>
+them have big black felt hats and long white
+beards. We go past a crowd gathering outside a
+movie house.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;re not going to the movies,&rdquo; Ben says.
+&ldquo;On holidays sometimes they rent a movie
+theater for services. It must be getting near time.
+Come on, I got to hurry.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We trot along the next twenty blocks or so,
+up First Avenue and to Peter Cooper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So long,&rdquo; Ben says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come by Wednesday
+on the way to school.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He goes off spinning his dime, and too late I
+think to myself that we could have had a candy
+bar.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="112"/>--><anchor id="Pg112"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="12. The Red Eft" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>12</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image12.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave holding up lizard for Ben by pond in woods.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>THE RED EFT</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>Ben and I both take biology, and the first
+weekend assignment we get, right after Rosh
+Hashanah, is to find and identify an animal
+native to New York City and look up its family
+and species and life cycle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s a species?&rdquo; says Ben.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. What&rsquo;s a life cycle?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We both scratch our heads, and he says,
+&ldquo;What animals do we know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="113"/>--><anchor id="Pg113"/>
+<p>I say, &ldquo;Cat. And dogs and pigeons and
+squirrels.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s dull. I want to get some animal no
+one else knows about.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, how about a praying mantis? I saw one
+once in Gramercy Park.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ben doesn&rsquo;t even know what it is, so I tell
+him about this one I saw. For an insect, it looks
+almost like a dragon, about four or five inches
+long and pale green. When it flies, it looks like
+a baby helicopter in the sky. We go into Gramercy
+Park to see if we can find another, but
+we can&rsquo;t.</p>
+
+<p>Ben says, &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go up to the Bronx Zoo
+Saturday and see what we can find.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stupid, they don&rsquo;t mean you to do lions and
+tigers. They&rsquo;re not native.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stupid, yourself. They got other animals that
+are. Besides, there&rsquo;s lots of woods and ponds. I
+might find something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Well, it&rsquo;s as good an idea for Saturday as any,
+so I say O.K. On account of both being pretty
+broke, we take lunch along in my old school
+lunchbox. Also six subway tokens&mdash;two extras
+for emergencies. Even I would be against walking
+home from the Bronx.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="114"/>--><anchor id="Pg114"/>
+<p>Of course there are plenty of native New
+York City animals in the zoo&mdash;raccoons and woodchucks
+and moles and lots of birds&mdash;and I figure
+we better start home not too late to get out the
+encyclopedias for species and life cycles. Ben still
+wants to catch something wild and wonderful.
+Like lots of city kids who haven&rsquo;t been in the
+country much, he&rsquo;s crazy about nature.</p>
+
+<p>We head back to the subway, walking through
+the woods so he can hunt. We go down alongside
+the pond and kick up rocks and dead trees
+to see if anything is under them.</p>
+
+<p>It pays off. All of a sudden we see a tiny red
+tail disappearing under a rotten log. I push the
+log again and Ben grabs. It&rsquo;s a tiny lizard, not
+more than two or three inches long and brick
+red all over. Ben cups it in both hands, and its
+throat pulses in and out, but it doesn&rsquo;t really
+try to get away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, I love this one!&rdquo; Ben cries. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going
+to take him home and keep him for a pet, as well
+as do a report on him. You can&rsquo;t keep cats and
+dogs in Peter Cooper, but there&rsquo;s nothing in the
+rules about lizards.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How are you going to get him home?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dump the lunch. I mean&mdash;we&rsquo;ll eat it, but I
+<!--<pb n="115"/>--><anchor id="Pg115"/>
+can stab a hole in the top of the box and keep
+Redskin in it. Come on, hurry! He&rsquo;s getting
+tired in my hand I think!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ben is one of those guys who is very placid
+most of the time, but he gets excitable all of a
+sudden when he runs into something brand-new
+to him, and I guess he never caught an animal
+to keep before. Some people&rsquo;s parents are very
+stuffy about it.</p>
+
+<p>I dump the lunch out, and he puts the lizard
+in and selects some particular leaves and bits of
+dead log to put in with him to make him feel
+at home. Without even asking me, he takes out
+his knife and makes holes in the top of my lunchbox.
+I sit down and open up a sandwich, but
+Ben is still dancing around.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you suppose he is? He might be
+something very rare! How&rsquo;m I going to find out?
+You think we ought to go back and ask one of
+the zoo men?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Umm, nah,&rdquo; I say, chewing. &ldquo;Probably find
+him in the encyclopedia.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ben squats on a log, and the log rolls. As he
+falls over backward I see two more lizards
+scuttle away. I grab one. &ldquo;Hey, look! I got another.
+This one&rsquo;s bigger and browner.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="116"/>--><anchor id="Pg116"/>
+<p>Ben is up and dancing again. &ldquo;Oh, boy, oh,
+boy! Now I got two! Now they&rsquo;ll be happy!
+Maybe they&rsquo;ll have babies, huh?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He overlooks the fact that <hi rend='italic'>I</hi> caught this one.
+Oh, well, I don&rsquo;t want a lizard, anyway. Cat&rsquo;d
+probably eat it.</p>
+
+<p>Ben takes it from me and slips it in the lunchbox.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m going to call this one Big Brownie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Finally he calms down enough to eat lunch,
+taking peeks at his catch between mouthfuls. As
+soon as he&rsquo;s finished eating, he starts hustling to
+get home so he can make a house for them. He
+really acts like a kid.</p>
+
+<p>We get on the subway. It&rsquo;s aboveground&mdash;elevated&mdash;up
+here in the Bronx. After a while I
+see Yankee Stadium off to one side, which is
+funny because I don&rsquo;t remember seeing it when
+we were coming up. Pretty soon the train goes
+underground. I remember then. Coming up, we
+changed trains once. Ben has his eye glued to the
+edge of the lunchbox and he&rsquo;s talking to Redskin,
+so I figure there&rsquo;s no use consulting him.
+I&rsquo;ll just wait and see where this train seems to
+come out. It&rsquo;s got to go downtown. We go past
+something called Lenox Avenue, which I think
+is in Harlem, then Ninety-sixth Street, and then
+we&rsquo;re at Columbus Circle.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="117"/>--><anchor id="Pg117"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, Ben, we&rsquo;re on the West Side subway,&rdquo;
+I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah?&rdquo; He takes a bored look out the
+window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We can just walk across town from Fourteenth
+Street.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;With you I always end up walking. Hey,
+what about those extra tokens?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aw, it&rsquo;s only a few blocks. Let&rsquo;s walk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ben grunts, and he goes along with me. As
+we get near Union Square, there seem to be an
+awful lot of people around. In fact they&rsquo;re
+jamming the sidewalk and we can hardly move.
+Ben frowns at them and says, &ldquo;Hey, what goes?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I ask a man, and he says, &ldquo;Where you been,
+sonny? Don&rsquo;tcha know there&rsquo;s a parade for General
+Sparks?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I remember reading about it now, so I poke
+Ben. &ldquo;Hey, push along! We can see Sparks
+go by!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quit pushing and don&rsquo;t try to be funny.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Stupid, he&rsquo;s a general. Test pilot, war hero,
+and stuff. Come on, push.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<hi rend='smallcaps'>quit pushing!</hi> I got to watch out for these
+lizards!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So I go first and edge us through the crowd
+to the middle of the block, where there aren&rsquo;t
+<!--<pb n="118"/>--><anchor id="Pg118"/>
+so many people and we can get up next to the
+police barrier. Cops on horseback are going
+back and forth, keeping the street clear. No sign
+of any parade coming yet, but people are throwing
+rolls of paper tape and handfuls of confetti
+out of upper-story windows. The wind catches
+the paper tape and carries it up and around in
+all kinds of fantastic snakes. Little kids keep
+scuttling under the barrier to grab handfuls of
+ticker tape that blow to the ground. Ben keeps
+one eye on the street and one on Redskin and
+Brownie.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How soon you think they&rsquo;re coming?&rdquo; he
+asks fretfully.</p>
+
+<p>People have packed in behind us, and we
+couldn&rsquo;t leave now if we wanted to. Pretty soon
+we can see a helicopter flying low just a little
+ways downtown, and people all start yelling,
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s where they are! They&rsquo;re coming!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom
+past, and then a cop backing up a police car
+at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very
+surprising-looking thing. Before I&rsquo;ve hardly got
+my eyes off that, the open cars come by. This
+guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car,
+waving with both hands. By the time I see him,
+<!--<pb n="119"/>--><anchor id="Pg119"/>
+he&rsquo;s almost past. Nice-looking, though. Everyone
+yells like crazy and throws any kind of paper
+they&rsquo;ve got. Two little nuts beside us have a box
+of Wheaties, so they&rsquo;re busy throwing Breakfast
+of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is past,
+people push through the barriers and run in the
+street.</p>
+
+<p>Ben hunches over to protect his precious
+animals and yells, &ldquo;Come on! Let&rsquo;s get out of
+this!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We go into my house first because I&rsquo;m pretty
+sure we&rsquo;ve got a wooden box. We find it and
+take it down to my room, and Ben gets extra
+leaves and grass and turns the lizards into it.
+He&rsquo;s sure they need lots of fresh air and exercise.
+Redskin scoots out of sight into a corner
+right away. Big Brownie sits by a leaf and looks
+around.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go look up what they are,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>The smallest lizard they show in the encyclopedia
+is about six inches long, and it says lizards
+are reptiles and have scales and claws and
+should not be confused with salamanders, which
+are amphibians and have thin moist skin and no
+claws. So we look up salamanders.</p>
+
+<p>This is it, all right. The first picture on the
+<!--<pb n="120"/>--><anchor id="Pg120"/>
+page looks just like Redskin, and it says he&rsquo;s a
+Red Eft. The Latin name for his species is
+<hi rend='italic'>Triturus viridescens</hi>, or in English just a common
+newt.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, talk about life cycles, listen to this,&rdquo;
+says Ben, reading. &ldquo;&lsquo;It hatches from an egg in
+the water and stays there during its first summer
+as a dull-green larva. Then its skin becomes a
+bright orange, it absorbs its gills, develops lungs
+and legs, and crawls out to live for about three
+years in the woods. When fully mature, its back
+turns dull again, and it returns to the water
+to breed.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ben drops the book. &ldquo;Brownie must be getting
+ready to breed! What&rsquo;d I tell you? We got
+to put him near water!&rdquo; He rushes down to my
+room.</p>
+
+<p>We come to the door and stop short. There&rsquo;s
+Cat, poised on the edge of the box.</p>
+
+<p>I grab, but no kid is as fast as a cat. Hearing
+me coming, he makes his grab for the salamander.
+Then he&rsquo;s out of the box and away, with
+Big Brownie&rsquo;s tail hanging out of his mouth.
+He goes under the bed.</p>
+
+<p>Ben screams, &ldquo;Get him! Kill him! He&rsquo;s got
+my Brownie!&rdquo; He&rsquo;s in a frenzy, and I don&rsquo;t
+blame him. It does make you mad to see your
+<!--<pb n="121"/>--><anchor id="Pg121"/>
+pet get hurt. I run for a broom to try to poke
+Cat out, but it isn&rsquo;t any use. Meanwhile, Ben
+finds Redskin safe in the box, and he scoops
+him back into the lunchbox.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, we move the bed, and there is Cat
+poking daintily with his paw at Brownie. The
+salamander is dead. Ben grabs the broom and
+bashes Cat. Cat hisses and skids down the hall.
+&ldquo;That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him!
+What&rsquo;d you ever have him for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I tell Ben I&rsquo;m sorry, and I get him a little
+box so he can bury Brownie. You can&rsquo;t really
+blame Cat too much&mdash;that&rsquo;s just the way a cat is
+made, to chase anything that wiggles and runs.
+Ben calms down after a while, and we go back
+to the encyclopedia to finish looking up about
+the Red Eft.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think Brownie was really ready to lay
+eggs, or he would have been in the pond already,&rdquo;
+I say. &ldquo;Tell you what. We could go back
+some day with a jar and try to catch one in the
+water.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That cheers Ben up some. He finishes taking
+notes for his report and tracing a picture, and
+then he goes home with Redskin in the lunchbox.
+I pull out the volume for C.</p>
+
+<p>Cat. Family, <hi rend='italic'>Felidae</hi>, including lions and
+<!--<pb n="122"/>--><anchor id="Pg122"/>
+tigers. Species, <hi rend='italic'>Felis domesticus</hi>. I start taking
+notes: &ldquo;&lsquo;The first civilized people to keep cats
+were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before
+Christ.... Fifty million years earlier the ancestor
+of the cat family roamed the earth, and
+he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores.
+The Oligocene cats, thirty million years ago,
+were already highly specialized, and the habits
+and physical characteristics of cats have been
+fixed since then. This may explain why house
+cats remain the most independent of pets, with
+many of the instincts of their wild ancestors.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I call Ben up to read him this, and he says,
+&ldquo;You and your lousy carnivore! <hi rend='italic'>My</hi> salamander
+is an amphibian, and amphibians are the ancestors
+of <hi rend='italic'>all</hi>&nbsp; the animals on earth, even you and
+your Cat, you sons of toads!&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="123"/>--><anchor id="Pg123"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="13. The Left Bank of Coney Island" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>13</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image13.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave and Mary in wind on boardwalk at beach.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>THE LEFT BANK OF CONEY ISLAND</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>Columbus Day comes up as cold as Christmas.
+I listen to the weather forecast the night before,
+to see how it&rsquo;ll be for the beach. &ldquo;High winds,
+unseasonably low temperatures,&rdquo; the guy says.
+He would.</p>
+
+<p>I get up at eight-thirty the next morning,
+though, figuring he&rsquo;d be wrong and it would be
+a nice sunny day. I slip on my pants and shirt
+and go downstairs with Cat to have a look out.
+<!--<pb n="124"/>--><anchor id="Pg124"/>
+Cat slides out and is halfway down the stoop
+when a blast of cold wind hits him. His tail goes
+up and he spooks back in between my legs. I
+push the door shut against the icy wind.</p>
+
+<p>Mom is sitting in the kitchen drinking her
+tea and she says, &ldquo;My goodness, why are you up
+so early on a holiday? Do you feel sick?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nah, I&rsquo;m all right.&rdquo; I pour out a cup of coffee
+to warm my hands on and dump in three or four
+spoons of sugar.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Davey, have you got a chill? You don&rsquo;t look
+to me as if you felt quite right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mom, for Pete&rsquo;s sake, it&rsquo;s <hi rend='smallcaps'>cold</hi> out! I feel
+fine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, you don&rsquo;t have to go out. Why don&rsquo;t
+you just go back to bed and snooze and read a
+bit, and I&rsquo;ll bring you some breakfast.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I see it&rsquo;s got to be faced, so while I&rsquo;m getting
+down the cereal and a bowl, I say, &ldquo;Well, as a
+matter of fact, I&rsquo;m going over to Coney Island
+today.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Coney <hi rend='smallcaps'>island</hi>!&rdquo; Mom sounds like it was
+Siberia. &ldquo;What in the world are you going to do
+there in the middle of winter?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mom, it&rsquo;s only Columbus Day. We figured
+we&rsquo;d go to the aquarium and then&mdash;uh&mdash;well,
+<!--<pb n="125"/>--><anchor id="Pg125"/>
+fool around. Some of the pitches are still open,
+and we&rsquo;ll get hot dogs and stuff.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s going? Nick?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nick wasn&rsquo;t sure&mdash;I&rsquo;ll stop by his house and
+see.&rdquo; I&rsquo;d just as soon steer clear of this &ldquo;who&rsquo;s
+going&rdquo; business, so I start into a long spiel about
+how we&rsquo;re studying marine life in biology, and
+we have to take some notes at the aquarium.
+Mom is swallowing this pretty well, but Pop
+comes into the kitchen just then and gives me
+the fishy eye.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;First time I ever heard of you spending a
+holiday on homework. I bet they got a new twist
+palace going out there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I slam down my coffee cup. &ldquo;Holy cats! Can&rsquo;t
+I walk out of here on a holiday without going
+through the third degree? What am I, some kind
+of a nut or a convict?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just a growing boy,&rdquo; says Pop. &ldquo;And don&rsquo;t
+talk so sassy to your mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m talking to you!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop draws in a breath to start bellowing, but
+Mom beats him to it by starting to wheeze,
+which she can do without drawing breath.</p>
+
+<p>Pop pats her on the shoulder and gives me a
+dirty look. &ldquo;Now, Agnes, that&rsquo;s all right. I&rsquo;m not
+<!--<pb n="126"/>--><anchor id="Pg126"/>
+sore. I was just trying to kid him a little bit, and
+he flies off the handle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><hi rend='italic'>I</hi> fly off the handle! How do you like that?</p>
+
+<p>I give Mom a kiss. &ldquo;Cheer up, Mom. I won&rsquo;t
+ride on the roller coaster. It&rsquo;s not even running.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I grab a sweater and gloves and money and
+get out before they can start anymore questions.
+On the subway I start wondering if Mary will
+show up. It&rsquo;s almost two months since we made
+this sort of crazy date, and the weather sure isn&rsquo;t
+helping any.</p>
+
+<p>Coney Island is made to be crowded and
+noisy. All the billboards scream at you, as if they
+had to get your attention. So when the place is
+empty, it looks like the whole thing was a freak
+or an accident.</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s sure empty today. There&rsquo;s practically no
+one on the street in the five or six blocks from
+the subway station to the aquarium. But it&rsquo;s
+not quiet. There are a few places open&mdash;merry-go-rounds
+and hot-dog shops&mdash;and tinny little
+trickles of music come out of them, but the big
+noise is the wind. All the signs are swinging and
+screeching. Rubbish cans blow over and their
+tops clang and bang rolling down the street. The
+wind makes a whistling noise all by itself.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="127"/>--><anchor id="Pg127"/>
+<p>I lean into the wind and walk up the empty
+street. My sweater is about as warm as a sieve.
+I wonder if I&rsquo;m crazy to have come. No girl
+would get out on a boardwalk on a day like this.
+It must be practically a hurricane.</p>
+
+<p>She&rsquo;s there, though. As soon as I turn the
+corner to the beach, I can see one figure, with
+its back to the ocean, scarf and hair blowing
+inland toward me. I can&rsquo;t see her face, but it&rsquo;s
+Mary, all right. There isn&rsquo;t another soul in sight.
+I wave and she hunches her shoulders up and
+down to semaphore, not wishing to take her
+hands out of her pockets.</p>
+
+<p>I come up beside her on the boardwalk and
+turn my back to the ocean, too. I&rsquo;d like to go
+on looking at it&mdash;it&rsquo;s all black and white and
+thundery&mdash;but the wind blows your breath right
+back down into your stomach. I freeze.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was afraid you wouldn&rsquo;t come on a day like
+this,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Me too. I mean I was afraid <hi rend='italic'>you</hi> wouldn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mom and Pop thought I was crazy. I spent
+about an hour arguing with them. What&rsquo;d your
+mother say?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing. She thinks I&rsquo;m walking alone with
+the wind in my hair, thinking poetic thoughts.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="128"/>--><anchor id="Pg128"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Huh? What for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary shrugs. &ldquo;Mom&rsquo;s like that. You&rsquo;ll see.
+Come on, let&rsquo;s go home and make cocoa or something
+to warm up, and then we&rsquo;ll think up something
+to do. We can&rsquo;t just stand here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She&rsquo;s right about that, so I don&rsquo;t argue. Her
+house is a few blocks away, a two-family type
+with a sloped driveway going down into a cellar
+garage. Neat. My pop is always going nuts hunting
+for a place to park.</p>
+
+<p>Mary goes in and shouts, &ldquo;Hi, Nina! I
+brought a friend home. We&rsquo;re going to make
+some cocoa. We&rsquo;re freezing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I wonder who Nina is. I don&rsquo;t hear her mother
+come into the kitchen. Then I turn around and
+there she is. Holy crow! We got some pretty
+beat-looking types at school, but this is the first
+time I&rsquo;ve ever seen a beatnik mother.</p>
+
+<p>She&rsquo;s got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and
+old sneakers, and her hair is in a long braid,
+with uneven bangs in front.</p>
+
+<p>Mary waves a saucepan vaguely at us both and
+says, &ldquo;Nina&mdash;Davey&mdash;this is my mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So Nina is her mother. I stick out my hand.
+&ldquo;Uh&mdash;how do you do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hel-looo.&rdquo; Her voice is low and musical. &ldquo;I
+think there is coffee on the stove.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="129"/>--><anchor id="Pg129"/>
+<p>&ldquo;I thought I&rsquo;d make cocoa for a change,&rdquo;
+says Mary.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right.&rdquo; Nina puts a cigarette in her
+mouth and offers one to me.</p>
+
+<p>I say, &ldquo;No, thank you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me....&rdquo; She talks in this low, intense
+kind of voice. &ldquo;Are you in school with Mary?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So I tell her I live in Manhattan, and how I
+ran into Mary when I had Cat on the beach,
+because that makes it sound sort of respectable,
+not like a pickup. But she doesn&rsquo;t seem to be
+interested in Cat and the beach.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you <hi rend='italic'>read</hi>? In your school?&rdquo; she asks,
+launching each question like a torpedo.</p>
+
+<p>I remember Mary saying something about her
+mother and poetry, so I say, &ldquo;Well, uh&mdash;last week
+we read &lsquo;The Highwayman&rsquo; and &lsquo;The Wreck of
+the Hesperus.&rsquo; They&rsquo;re about&mdash;I mean, we were
+studying metaphors and similes. Looking at the
+ocean today, I sure can see what Longfellow
+meant about the icy....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I thought I was doing pretty well, but she cut
+me off again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you read any <hi rend='italic'>real</hi> poetry? Donne?
+Auden? Baudelaire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Three more torpedoes. &ldquo;We didn&rsquo;t get to
+them yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="130"/>--><anchor id="Pg130"/>
+<p>Nina blows out a great angry cloud of smoke
+and explodes, &ldquo;Schools!&rdquo; Then she sails out of
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>I guess I look a little shook up. Mary laughs
+and shoves a mug of cocoa and a plate of cinnamon
+toast in front of me. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t mind Mother.
+She just can&rsquo;t get used to New York schools. Or
+Coney Island. Or hardly anything around here.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She grew up on the Left Bank in Paris. Her
+father was an artist and her mother was a writer,
+and they taught her to read at home, starting
+with Chaucer, probably. She never read a kids&rsquo;
+book in her life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anything I ever tell her about school pretty
+much sounds either childish or stupid to her.
+What I really love is science&mdash;experiments and
+stuff&mdash;and she can&rsquo;t see that for beans.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Our science teacher is a dope,&rdquo; I say, because
+she is, &ldquo;so I really never got very interested in
+science. But I told Mom and Dad I was coming
+to the aquarium to take notes today, so they
+wouldn&rsquo;t kick up such a fuss.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary shakes her head. &ldquo;We ought to get our
+mothers together. Mine thinks I&rsquo;m wasting time
+if I even <hi rend='italic'>go</hi> to the aquarium. I do, though, all
+the time. I love the walrus.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="131"/>--><anchor id="Pg131"/>
+<p>&ldquo;What does your pop do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Father? He teaches philosophy at Brooklyn
+College. So I get it from both sides. Just think,
+think, think. Father and Nina aren&rsquo;t hardly even
+interested in <hi rend='italic'>food</hi>. Once in a while Nina spends
+all day cooking some great fish soup or a chicken
+in wine, but the rest of the time I&rsquo;m the only
+one who takes time off from thinking to cook a
+hamburger. They live on rolls and coffee and
+sardines.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary puts our cups in the sink and then
+opens a low cupboard. Instead of pots and pans
+it has stacks of records in it. She pulls out <hi rend='italic'>West
+Side Story</hi> and then I see there&rsquo;s a record player
+on a side table. What d&rsquo;you know? A record
+player in the kitchen! This Left Bank style of
+living has its advantages.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I sit down here and eat and play records
+while I do my homework,&rdquo; says Mary, which
+sounds pretty nice.</p>
+
+<p>I ask her if she has any Belafonte, and she
+says, &ldquo;Yes, a couple,&rdquo; but she puts on something
+else. It&rsquo;s slow, but sort of powerful, and it makes
+you feel kind of powerful yourself, as if you
+could do anything.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; I ask.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="132"/>--><anchor id="Pg132"/>
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s called &lsquo;The Moldau&rsquo;&mdash;that&rsquo;s a river in
+Europe. It&rsquo;s by a Czech named Smetana.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I wander around the kitchen and look out the
+window. The wind&rsquo;s still howling, but not so
+hard. I remember the ocean, all gray and powerful,
+spotted with whitecaps. I&rsquo;d like to be out
+on it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know what&rsquo;d be fun?&rdquo; I say out loud.
+&ldquo;To be out in a boat on the harbor today. If you
+didn&rsquo;t sink.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We could take the Staten Island ferry,&rdquo; Mary
+says.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh?&rdquo; I hadn&rsquo;t even thought there was really
+any boat we could get on. &ldquo;Really? Where do
+you get it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Down at Sixty-ninth Street and Fourth
+Avenue. It&rsquo;s quite a ways. I&rsquo;ve always gone there
+in a car. But maybe we could do it on bikes, if
+we don&rsquo;t freeze.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t freeze. But what about bikes?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You can use my brother&rsquo;s. He&rsquo;s away at college.
+Maybe I can find a windbreaker of his,
+too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She finds the things and we get ready and go
+into the living room, where Nina is sitting reading
+and sipping a glass of wine.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="133"/>--><anchor id="Pg133"/>
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going on our bikes to the ferry and
+over to Staten Island,&rdquo; Mary says. She doesn&rsquo;t
+even ask.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh-h-h.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s a long, low note, faintly
+questioning.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We thought with the wind blowing and all,
+it&rsquo;d be exciting,&rdquo; Mary explains, and I think,
+Uh-o, that&rsquo;s going to cook it. <hi rend='italic'>My</hi> mother would
+have kittens if I said I was going out on a ferry
+in a storm.</p>
+
+<p>But Nina just says, &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; and goes back to
+reading her book. I say good-bye and she looks
+up again and smiles, and that&rsquo;s all.</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s another funny thing&mdash;Nina doesn&rsquo;t seem
+to pay any attention to who Mary brings home,
+like most mothers are always snooping if their
+daughter brings home a guy. Without stopping
+to think, I say, &ldquo;Do you bring home a lot of
+guys?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary laughs. &ldquo;Not a lot. Sometimes one of the
+boys at school comes home when we&rsquo;re studying
+for a science test.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I laugh, too, but what I&rsquo;m thinking of is how
+Pop would look if I brought a girl home and
+said we were studying for a test!</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="134"/>--><anchor id="Pg134"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="14. Expedition by Ferry" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>14</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image14.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Dave and Mary on ferry with other people.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>EXPEDITION BY FERRY</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>As we ride through Brooklyn the wind belts us
+around from both sides and right in the teeth.
+But the sun&rsquo;s beginning to break through, and
+it&rsquo;s easy riding, no hills.</p>
+
+<p>This part of Brooklyn is mostly rows of houses
+joined together, or low apartment buildings,
+with little patches of lawn in front of them.
+There&rsquo;s lots of trees along the streets. It doesn&rsquo;t
+look anything like Manhattan, but not anything
+like the country, either. It&rsquo;s just Brooklyn.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="135"/>--><anchor id="Pg135"/>
+<p>All of a sudden we&rsquo;re circling a golf course.
+What d&rsquo;you know? Right in New York City!</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ever play golf?&rdquo; The wind snatches the
+words out of my mouth and carries them back
+to Mary. I see her mouth shaping like a &ldquo;No,&rdquo;
+but no sound comes my way. I drop back beside
+her and say, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll show you sometime. My pop&rsquo;s
+got a set of clubs I used a couple of times.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Probably I better carry the clubs and you
+play. I can play tennis, though.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We pass the golf course and head down into
+a sort of main street. Anyway there&rsquo;s lots of
+banks and dime stores and traffic. Mary leads
+the way. We make a couple of turns and zigzags
+and then go under the parkway, and there&rsquo;s the
+ferry. It&rsquo;s taken us most of an hour to get from
+Mary&rsquo;s house.</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;m hoping the ferry isn&rsquo;t too expensive, so
+I&rsquo;ll have plenty of money left for a good lunch.
+But while I&rsquo;m mooning, Mary has wheeled her
+bike right up and paid her own fare. Well, I
+guess that&rsquo;s one of the things I like about her.
+She&rsquo;s independent. Still, I&rsquo;m going to buy lunch.</p>
+
+<p>The ferry is terrific. I&rsquo;m going to come ride
+ferries every day it&rsquo;s windy. The boat doesn&rsquo;t
+roll any, but we stand right up in front and the
+wind blows clouds of spray in our faces. You can
+<!--<pb n="136"/>--><anchor id="Pg136"/>
+pretend you&rsquo;re on a full-rigged schooner running
+before a hurricane. But you look down at
+that choppy gray water, and you know you&rsquo;d be
+done if you got blown overboard, even if it is
+just an old ferryboat in New York harbor.</p>
+
+<p>The ferry ride is fast, only about fifteen minutes.
+We ride off in Staten Island and start thinking
+where to go. I know what&rsquo;s first with me.</p>
+
+<p>I ask Mary, &ldquo;What do you like, hamburgers
+or sandwiches?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Both. I mean either,&rdquo; she says.</p>
+
+<p>The first place we see is a delicatessen, which
+is about my favorite kind of place to eat anyway.
+I order a hot pastrami, and Mary says she never
+had one, but she&rsquo;ll try the same.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where could we go on Staten Island?&rdquo; I say.
+&ldquo;I never was here before.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;About the only place I&rsquo;ve been is the zoo.
+I&rsquo;ve been there lots of times. The vet let me
+watch her operate on a snake once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This is a pretty surprising thing for a girl to
+tell you in the middle of a mouthful of hot
+pastrami. The pastrami is great, and they put it
+on a roll with a lot of olives and onions and
+relish. Mary likes it too.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is the vet a woman? Aren&rsquo;t you scared of
+snakes?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="137"/>--><anchor id="Pg137"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Uh-un, I never was really. But when you&rsquo;re
+watching an operation, you get so interested you
+don&rsquo;t think about it being icky or scary. The vet
+is a woman. She&rsquo;s been there quite a while.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I digest this along with the rest of my sandwich.
+Then we both have a piece of apple pie.
+You can tell from the way the crust looks&mdash;browned
+and a little uneven&mdash;that they make it
+right here.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So shall we go to the zoo?&rdquo; Mary asks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K.&rdquo; I get up to get her coat and mine.
+When I turn around, there she is up by the
+cashier, getting ready to pay her check.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, I&rsquo;m buying lunch,&rdquo; I say, steaming up
+with the other check.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right.&rdquo; She smiles. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I don&rsquo;t care if she&rsquo;s <hi rend='italic'>got</hi> it. I want to <hi rend='italic'>pay</hi> it. I
+suppose it&rsquo;s a silly thing to get sore about, but
+it sort of annoys me. Anyway, how do you maneuver
+around to do something for a girl when
+she doesn&rsquo;t even know you want to?</p>
+
+<p>The man in the deli gives us directions to
+get to the zoo, which isn&rsquo;t far. It&rsquo;s a low brick
+building in a nice park. In the lobby there are
+some fish tanks, then there&rsquo;s a wing for birds
+on one side, animals on the other, and snakes
+straight ahead.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="138"/>--><anchor id="Pg138"/>
+<p>We go for snakes. Mary really seems to like
+them.</p>
+
+<p>She says, &ldquo;The vet here likes them, and I guess
+she got me interested. You know, they don&rsquo;t
+really understand how a snake moves? Mechanically,
+I mean. She&rsquo;s trying to find out.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We look at them all, little ones and big ones,
+and then we go watch the birds. The keeper is
+just feeding them. The parrot shouts at him,
+and the pelican and the eagles gobble up their
+fish and raw meat, but the vulture just sits on
+his perch looking bored. Probably needs a desert
+and a dying Legionnaire to whet his appetite.</p>
+
+<p>In the animal wing a strange-looking dame
+is down at the end, talking to a sleepy tiger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on, darling, just a little roar. Couldn&rsquo;t
+you give me just a soft one today?&rdquo; she&rsquo;s cooing
+at him. The tiger blinks and looks away.</p>
+
+<p>The lady notices us standing there and says,
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s my baby. I&rsquo;ve been coming to see him for
+fourteen years. Some days he roars for me beautifully.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She has a short conversation with the lion,
+then moves along with us toward the small cats,
+a puma and a jaguar. She looks in the next cage,
+which is empty, and shakes her head mournfully.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="139"/>--><anchor id="Pg139"/>
+<p>&ldquo;I had the sweetest little leopard. He died last
+week. Would you believe it? The zoo never let
+me know he was sick. I could have come and
+helped take care of him. I might have saved his
+life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She goes on talking, sometimes to herself,
+sometimes to the puma, and we cross over to look
+at two otters chasing each other up an underwater
+tunnel.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is she, some kind of nut?&rdquo; Mary says.
+&ldquo;Does she think this is her private zoo?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I shrug. &ldquo;I suppose she&rsquo;s a little off. But so&rsquo;s
+my Aunt Kate, the one who gave me Cat. They
+just happen to like cats better than people. Kate
+thinks all the stray cats in the world are her children,
+and I guess this one feels the same way
+about the big cats here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We mosey around a little bit more and then
+head back to the ferry. I make good and sure I&rsquo;m
+ahead, and I get to the ticket office and buy two
+tickets.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Would you care for a ride across the harbor
+in my yacht?&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, of course. I&rsquo;d be delighted,&rdquo; says Mary.</p>
+
+<p>A small thing, but it makes me feel good.</p>
+
+<p>Over in Brooklyn I see a clock on a bank, and
+<!--<pb n="140"/>--><anchor id="Pg140"/>
+it says five o&rsquo;clock. I do some fast calculating and
+say, &ldquo;Uh-oh, I better phone. I&rsquo;ll never make it
+home by dinnertime.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I phone and get Pop. He&rsquo;s home early from
+work. Just my luck.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I got to get this bike back to this kid in
+Coney,&rdquo; I tell him. &ldquo;Then I&rsquo;ll be right home.
+About seven.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean <hi rend='italic'>this</hi> bike and <hi rend='italic'>this</hi> kid?
+Who? Anyway, I thought you were already at
+Coney Island.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking
+questions. I start explaining. &ldquo;Well, it was
+awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we&rsquo;d
+go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to
+the zoo. So now we just got back to Brooklyn,
+and I&rsquo;m downtown and I got to take the bike
+back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So who&rsquo;s &lsquo;we&rsquo;? You got a rat in your pocket?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I can distract Mom but not Pop. &ldquo;Well, actually,
+it&rsquo;s a girl named Mary. It&rsquo;s her brother&rsquo;s
+bike. He&rsquo;s away in college.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of
+the line, laughing his head off.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So what&rsquo;s so funny about that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Nothing. Only now I can
+<!--<pb n="141"/>--><anchor id="Pg141"/>
+see what all the shouting was about at breakfast.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as <hi rend='italic'>well</hi> as
+the bicycle of the brother who goes to college,
+home safe. Hear? I&rsquo;ll tell your mother you narrowly
+escaped drowning, and she&rsquo;ll probably
+save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K. Bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though,
+him worrying about me getting Mary home safe,
+when her own mother doesn&rsquo;t worry any.</p>
+
+<p>We start along toward her house slowly, as
+there&rsquo;s a good deal of traffic now. I&rsquo;m wondering
+how to see Mary again without having to ask for
+her number and phoning and making a date.
+Something about telephoning I don&rsquo;t like. Besides,
+I&rsquo;d probably go out to a pay phone so the
+family wouldn&rsquo;t listen, and that&rsquo;d make me feel
+stupid to begin with.</p>
+
+<p>Just then we start rounding the golf course,
+and I whack the handle bar of my bike and say,
+&ldquo;Hey, that&rsquo;s it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Golf. Let&rsquo;s play golf. Not now, I don&rsquo;t mean.
+Next holiday. We&rsquo;ve got Election Day coming
+up. I&rsquo;ll borrow Pop&rsquo;s clubs and take the subway
+<!--<pb n="142"/>--><anchor id="Pg142"/>
+and meet you here. How about ten o&rsquo;clock?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hunh?&rdquo; Mary looks startled. &ldquo;Well, I suppose
+I could try, or anyway I could walk around.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s easy. I&rsquo;ll show you.&rdquo; The two times I
+played, I only hit the ball decently about four or
+five times. But the times I <hi rend='italic'>did</hi> hit it, it seemed
+easy.</p>
+
+<p>We get to Mary&rsquo;s house and I put the bikes
+away and give her back her brother&rsquo;s jacket. &ldquo;I
+guess I&rsquo;ll go right along. It&rsquo;s getting late. See you
+Election Day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K., bye. Say&mdash;thanks for the ferry ride!&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="143"/>--><anchor id="Pg143"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="15. Dollars and Cats" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>15</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image15.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Cat eating turkey neck from bowl on floor.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>DOLLARS AND CATS</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I go
+down to the delicatessen to buy some coke, so I
+can really enjoy myself watching TV. Tom is
+just finishing work at the flower shop, and I ask
+him if he wants to come along home.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nah. Thanks. I got to be at work early tomorrow.&rdquo;
+He doesn&rsquo;t sound too cheery.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How&rsquo;s the job going?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K., I guess.&rdquo; We walk along a little ways.
+<!--<pb n="144"/>--><anchor id="Pg144"/>
+&ldquo;The job&rsquo;s not bad, but I don&rsquo;t want to be a
+florist all my life, and I can&rsquo;t see this job will
+train me for anything else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That seems pretty true. It must be tough not
+getting regular holidays off, too. &ldquo;You have to
+work all day tomorrow?&rdquo; I ask.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I open the store up at seven and start working
+on orders we&rsquo;ve already got. I&rsquo;ll get through
+around three or four.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, you want to come for dinner? We&rsquo;re
+not eating till evening.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Tom grins. &ldquo;You cooking the dinner? Maybe
+you better ask your mother.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;ll be all right with Mom. Look, I&rsquo;ll ask
+her and come let you know in the store tomorrow,
+O.K.?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hmm. Well, sure. Thanks. I&rsquo;ve got a date
+with Hilda later in the evening, but she&rsquo;s got to
+eat with her folks first.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K. See you tomorrow.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mom says it&rsquo;s all right about Tom coming, so
+I go down and tell him in the morning. Turns
+out Mom has asked Kate to have dinner with
+us, too, which is quite a step. For Kate, I mean.
+I think she would have turned the invitation
+<!--<pb n="145"/>--><anchor id="Pg145"/>
+down, except no one can bear to hurt Mom&rsquo;s
+feelings. Kate&rsquo;s been in our house before, of
+course, but then she just came in to chat or have
+tea or something. It wasn&rsquo;t like an invitation.</p>
+
+<p>She comes, and she looks like someone from
+another world. I&rsquo;ve never seen her in anything
+but her old skirts and sneakers, so the &ldquo;good
+clothes&rdquo; she&rsquo;s wearing now must have been hanging
+in a closet twenty years. The dress and shoes
+are way out of style, and she&rsquo;s carrying a real old
+black patent-leather pocketbook. Usually she
+just lugs her old cloth shopping bag, mostly full
+of cat goodies. Come to think of it, that&rsquo;s it: Kate
+lives in a world that is just her own and the cats&rsquo;.
+I never saw her trying to fit into the ordinary
+world before.</p>
+
+<p>Cat knows her right away, though. Clothes
+don&rsquo;t fool him. He rubs her leg and curls up on
+the sofa beside her, still keeping a half-open eye
+on the oven door in the kitchen, where the
+turkey is roasting.</p>
+
+<p>Tom comes in, also in city clothes&mdash;a white
+shirt and tie and jacket&mdash;the first time I ever saw
+him in them. He sits down on the other side of
+Cat, who stretches one paw out toward him
+negligently.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="146"/>--><anchor id="Pg146"/>
+<p>Looking at Kate and Tom sitting there on the
+sofa, both looking a little ill at ease, I get a funny
+idea. My family is starting to collect people the
+way Kate collects homeless cats. Of course, Kate
+and Tom aren&rsquo;t homeless. They&rsquo;re people-less&mdash;not
+part of any family. I think Mom always
+wanted more people to take care of, so she&rsquo;s glad
+to have them.</p>
+
+<p>Kidding, I ask Kate, &ldquo;How many cats at your
+home for Thanksgiving dinner?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She stops stroking Cat a minute and thinks.
+&ldquo;Hmm, Susan&rsquo;s got four new kittens, just got
+their eyes open. A beautiful little orange one
+and three tigers. Then there&rsquo;s two big kittens,
+strays, and one old stray tom. Makes eight, that&rsquo;s
+all. Sometimes I&rsquo;ve had lots more than that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t the landlord ever object?&rdquo; Pop asks.</p>
+
+<p>Kate snorts. &ldquo;Him! Huh! I pay my rent. And
+I have my own padlock on the door, so he can&rsquo;t
+come snooping around.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We all sit down to dinner. Pop gives Cat the
+turkey neck to crunch up in the kitchen. He
+finishes that and crouches and stares at us eating.
+Kate gives him tidbits, which I&rsquo;m not supposed
+to do. I don&rsquo;t think she really wants to eat the
+turkey herself. She&rsquo;s pretty strictly a fruit and
+yogurt type.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="147"/>--><anchor id="Pg147"/>
+<p>After dinner Tom leaves to meet Hilda, and I
+walk home with Kate, carrying a bag of scraps
+and giblets for her cats. While she&rsquo;s fiddling with
+the two sets of keys to open her door, the man
+next door sticks his head out. &ldquo;Messenger was
+here a little while ago with a telegram for you.
+Wouldn&rsquo;t give it to me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A telegram?&rdquo; Kate gapes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah. He&rsquo;ll be back.&rdquo; The man looks pleased,
+like he&rsquo;s been able to deliver some bad news,
+and pulls his head in and shuts his door.</p>
+
+<p>We go into Kate&rsquo;s apartment, and cats come
+meowing and rubbing against her legs, and they
+jump up on the sink and rub and nudge the bag
+of scraps when she puts it down. Kate is muttering
+rapidly to herself and fidgeting with her coat
+and bag and not really paying much attention to
+the cats, which is odd.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lots of people send telegrams on holidays.
+It&rsquo;s probably just greetings,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not to me, they don&rsquo;t!&rdquo; Kate snaps, also
+sounding as if they better hadn&rsquo;t.</p>
+
+<p>I go over to play with the little kittens. The
+marmalade-colored one is the strongest of the
+litter, and he&rsquo;s learned to climb out of the box.
+He chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the
+big cats, and she strides over and scoops him back
+<!--<pb n="148"/>--><anchor id="Pg148"/>
+into the box. &ldquo;You stay in there. You&rsquo;ll get
+stepped on.&rdquo; She drops Susan back in with her
+babies to take care of them.</p>
+
+<p>The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the
+door, practically bowling over an ancient little
+messenger leaning sleepily against the side of
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign
+here,&rdquo; he says.</p>
+
+<p>She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams
+the door. The orange kitten has got out again,
+and Kate does come close to stepping on him as
+she walks across the room tearing open the telegram.
+He doesn&rsquo;t know enough to dodge feet
+yet. I scoop him back in this time.</p>
+
+<p>Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She
+looks quite calm now. She says, &ldquo;Well, he died.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh? Who?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My brother. He&rsquo;s the only person in the
+world I know who would send me a telegram.
+So he&rsquo;s dead now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She repeats it, and I can&rsquo;t figure whether to
+say I&rsquo;m sorry or what. I always thought when
+someone heard of a death in the family, there&rsquo;d
+be a lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks
+perfectly calm, but strange somehow.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="149"/>--><anchor id="Pg149"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Has he been sick?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Kate shakes her head. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. I haven&rsquo;t
+seen him in twenty years.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes
+on, talking half to herself and half to me. &ldquo;Mean
+old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about
+his money. That&rsquo;s all he cared about. Once he
+tried to get me to give him money to invest.
+That&rsquo;s the last time I saw him. He has an old
+house way up in the Bronx. But we never did
+get along, even when we were kids.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent
+the telegram?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him.
+She&rsquo;d buy him day-old bread and dented cans
+of soup because they were cheaper. She suited
+him fine&mdash;saved him money and never talked to
+him. Well, she&rsquo;ll get his money now, if he left
+any. That&rsquo;s what she&rsquo;s been waiting for. She sent
+me the wire.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Twenty years, I think. That&rsquo;s a long time not
+to be speaking to your own brother, and him living
+just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder.
+She couldn&rsquo;t just not give a hoot about him. They
+must have been real mad at each other. And mad
+at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what
+<!--<pb n="150"/>--><anchor id="Pg150"/>
+kind of parents <hi rend='italic'>they</hi>&nbsp; had, with one of them growing
+up loving only cats and the other only money.</p>
+
+<p>Kate is staring out the window and stroking
+the old stray tomcat between the ears, and it hits
+me: there isn&rsquo;t a person in the world she loves or
+even hates. I like cats fine, too, but if I didn&rsquo;t
+have people that mattered, it wouldn&rsquo;t be so
+good. I say &ldquo;So long&rdquo; quietly and go out.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="151"/>--><anchor id="Pg151"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="16. Fortune" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>16</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image16.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Reporters and photographers crowding in on Kate.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>FORTUNE</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I always wondered if the poor soul had any
+relatives.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s what Mom says when I tell her
+about Kate&rsquo;s telegram. &ldquo;And now she&rsquo;s lost her
+only brother. That&rsquo;s sad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it&rsquo;s sad she never talked to him for
+twenty years. All these years I&rsquo;ve wished I had a
+brother,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If it&rsquo;s her only brother, she&rsquo;s going to have to
+do something about his estate,&rdquo; says Pop. That
+<!--<pb n="152"/>--><anchor id="Pg152"/>
+legal mind, it never rests. I guess he&rsquo;s got a point
+about this, though. How is Kate going to deal
+with lawyers, or undertakers, or anyone? She
+can&rsquo;t hardly stand to <hi rend='italic'>talk</hi>&nbsp; to people like that.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;ll she have to do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe I better go see her tomorrow,&rdquo; says
+Pop. &ldquo;There can be lots of things&mdash;see if he left
+a will, if he owes any taxes, if he has property that
+has to be taken care of or sold. You can&rsquo;t tell.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Kate said he was a miser. Maybe he left her a
+million. Say, that&rsquo;d be great!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be a dope!&rdquo; Pop snaps, and he really
+sounds angry, so I pipe down.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning Pop tells me to go over and
+see how Kate is. &ldquo;The way she feels about people,
+I don&rsquo;t like to just barge in. I&rsquo;ll come by in ten
+minutes, like I was picking you up to go to a
+movie or something.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I saunter round the corner onto Third Avenue
+and stop short. There are two newspaper
+cars pulled up in front of Kate&rsquo;s building, one
+red and one black, and a sizable knot of people
+gathered on the sidewalk. I move in among them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That crazy cat lady ... he musta been a
+nut too ... left her about a million ... a
+lotta rich cats, how d&rsquo;ya like that....&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="153"/>--><anchor id="Pg153"/>
+<p>So I guess he did leave her money, and all of
+a sudden I see it isn&rsquo;t &ldquo;great.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s going to be
+trouble. I push through the people and go upstairs
+without anyone stopping me. When I open
+Kate&rsquo;s door, old stray tomcat shoots out. He&rsquo;s
+leaving, and I can see why.</p>
+
+<p>Kate&rsquo;s room is tiny, and it looks like it&rsquo;s filled
+with a mob. Maybe it&rsquo;s only half a dozen guys,
+but the photographers are pushing around trying
+to get shots and the reporters are jabbering.</p>
+
+<p>Orange kitten sticks his head out of the box.
+Then out he comes, into the sea of feet. I drop
+him back in and try to get across to Kate. She&rsquo;s
+pretty well backed into a corner and looking
+ready to jump out the window. She has her arms
+folded in front of her, each hand clenching the
+other elbow, as if to hold herself together. A
+reporter with a bunch of scratch paper in his
+hand is crowding her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Carmichael&rdquo;&mdash;funny, I never even knew
+her last name before&mdash;&ldquo;I just want to ask one or
+two questions. Could you tell us when you last
+saw your brother?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I couldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she snaps, drawing her head
+down between her shoulders and trying to melt
+into the wall.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="154"/>--><anchor id="Pg154"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Watcha going to do with the money?&rdquo; a photographer
+asks. He picks up a cat, one of the big
+stray kittens, and dumps it on Kate. The cat
+clings to her and the photographer says, &ldquo;Hold
+it now. Just let me snap a picture.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He takes two steps back.</p>
+
+<p>At the first step the room is silent. At the
+second step a shattering caterwaul goes up. He
+has stepped on the adventurous orange kitten.</p>
+
+<p>The scream freezes us all, except Kate. She
+shoots out of her corner, knowing instantly what
+has happened. The kitten is jerking slightly now,
+and bright, bright blood is coming out of its
+mouth. With one violent, merciful stroke Kate
+finishes it. She picks the limp body up and wraps
+it neatly in a paper towel and places it in the
+wastebasket.</p>
+
+<p>The room is still silent for one congealed instant.
+Kate seems almost to have forgotten the
+crowd of men. Then two of them make hastily
+for the door. The photographer shuffles his feet
+and says, &ldquo;Gee, m&rsquo;am, I didn&rsquo;t mean ... I
+wouldn&rsquo;t for the world....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Kate whirls and screams at him: &ldquo;Get out!
+Get out, all of you! Leave me and my cats alone!
+I never asked you in here!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="155"/>--><anchor id="Pg155"/>
+<p>At that moment my pop comes in the door.
+Of course he doesn&rsquo;t know anything about the
+kitten, but he takes in the general situation and
+herds the two remaining newspapermen to the
+door. He gives them his card and home address
+and tells them to look him up a little later.</p>
+
+<p>My knees suddenly feel weak and I slump
+onto the sofa, and my eyes swivel round to the
+little package in the wastebasket. It would be
+the strongest one. I really never saw anything
+get killed right in front of me before. It hits you.</p>
+
+<p>Pop is trying to calm Kate down. She&rsquo;s facing
+him, grabbing each sleeve of his coat. &ldquo;What am
+I going to do? What can I do? I don&rsquo;t want his
+money. I don&rsquo;t want anything from anyone. I
+just want to be let alone!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take it easy, Kate, take it easy. You don&rsquo;t
+have to let anyone into your apartment. About
+the inheritance, well, I&rsquo;ll have to look into that.&rdquo;
+Over his shoulder Pop signals to me to go home
+and get Mom.</p>
+
+<p>I go home and explain the situation to Mom,
+and she comes back with me. One photographer
+and a couple of reporters are still hanging
+around, and the guy snaps a picture of me and
+Mom at the door. Mom scoots on up. Bad as I
+<!--<pb n="156"/>--><anchor id="Pg156"/>
+feel, I still get a charge out of getting my picture
+taken for a paper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey, kid,&rdquo; one of the reporters shoves in
+front of me, &ldquo;about this Miss Carmichael. Does
+she act pretty strange, like talking to herself on
+the street and stuff?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I see the story he&rsquo;s trying to build up. While
+it&rsquo;s true in a way, if you really know Kate it&rsquo;s
+not. Anyway, I&rsquo;m against it. I say, &ldquo;Nah. She&rsquo;s
+all right. She&rsquo;s just sort of scared of people, and
+she likes cats.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How many cats she got?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There have been up to a dozen on a busy day,
+but again I play it down. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s got a mother
+cat with kittens. Sometimes a stray or two. Don&rsquo;t
+get sucked in by all that jazz these dumb kids
+around here&rsquo;ll give you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She gets all that money, you think she&rsquo;ll buy
+a big house, set up a home for stray cats?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I shrug. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. She doesn&rsquo;t want the
+money anyway. She just wants to be let alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t want the money!&rdquo; the photographer
+chips in. &ldquo;Boy, she must be <hi rend='italic'>really</hi> nuts! I&rsquo;m
+going back to the office.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The reporter says he&rsquo;s going to wait and talk
+<!--<pb n="157"/>--><anchor id="Pg157"/>
+to my pop, and I go on upstairs to see what&rsquo;s
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>Kate is sitting on the sofa, sniffing and wiping
+her eyes and muttering, but looking calmer.
+Mom is making tea. Pop is looking out the window,
+scratching his head.</p>
+
+<p>Kate gulps and draws a big breath. &ldquo;Tell them
+I don&rsquo;t want his old money. Tell them to give
+it to someone else. Tell them to leave me alone.
+I just want my own place and my cats. They can&rsquo;t
+make me move, can they? I&rsquo;ve lived here thirty
+years. I couldn&rsquo;t go anyplace else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She gulps and sniffs some more, and Mom
+brings her a cup of tea. The stray kittens jump
+up to see if it&rsquo;s anything good and nuzzle into
+her lap. Kate takes a sip of tea and asks Pop
+again, &ldquo;They can&rsquo;t make me move, can they?&rdquo;
+This seems to be what worries her most.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No-o,&rdquo; says Pop, &ldquo;it&rsquo;s only....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He&rsquo;s interrupted by a knock on the door, and
+I go open it a crack. A guy says he&rsquo;s the landlord.
+As soon as Kate hears his voice, she yelps at him,
+&ldquo;I paid my rent, first of the month like always.
+Don&rsquo;t you come bothering me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s about the cats,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;People outside
+<!--<pb n="158"/>--><anchor id="Pg158"/>
+saying you got a dozen cats in here. There&rsquo;s a
+law, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He&rsquo;s a seedy-looking, whining kind of a man,
+and he looks real pleased with himself when he
+says there&rsquo;s a law about cats.</p>
+
+<p>Kate jumps right at him. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m not breaking
+any laws. I know you. You just want to get me
+out of here and rent the place for more money.
+You leave me alone!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man whines, &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a law, that&rsquo;s all.
+I don&rsquo;t want no violation slapped on my building.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop comes over and tells the man there&rsquo;s just
+a mother cat with kittens. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a couple of
+strays here, too, right now, but I&rsquo;ll take them
+home with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a law, that&rsquo;s all. Also, I got a right
+to inspect the premises.&rdquo; Pop shows no signs of
+letting him in, and he shuffles and grumbles and
+goes away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lock the door,&rdquo; Kate snaps. &ldquo;I keep it locked
+all the time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop says he&rsquo;s going home to make some phone
+calls and try to figure out what&rsquo;s going on. He
+takes down the name and address of Kate&rsquo;s
+brother and asks her if she&rsquo;s sure there are no
+<!--<pb n="159"/>--><anchor id="Pg159"/>
+other relatives. She says she never heard of any.
+Pop goes, and Kate insists that I lock the door
+after him.</p>
+
+<p>She gets up and starts stirring around getting
+food out for the cats. She buys fish and chicken
+livers for them, even though she hardly eats any
+meat herself. She listens at the back door a
+moment to make sure no one&rsquo;s out there, then
+opens the door and puts out the garbage and
+wastebasket. There goes the adventurous kitten.
+You got to hand it to Kate. She has no sniffling
+sentimentality about her cats. Kitten&rsquo;s dead, it&rsquo;s
+dead, that&rsquo;s all. She doesn&rsquo;t mope over the limp
+mite of fur. In fact, anything to do with cats
+she&rsquo;s got sense and guts. They&rsquo;re her family. I
+don&rsquo;t know that I could have put that kitten out
+of its misery.</p>
+
+<p>Just as long as the world doesn&rsquo;t throw any
+stray fortunes at her, Kate does fine. But when
+people get in her way, she needs someone like
+Pop.</p>
+
+<p>Mom says she&rsquo;ll stick around a while and tells
+me to take the two stray kittens home, just in
+case the landlord comes back trying to make
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K., great&mdash;Cat&rsquo;ll have some company!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="160"/>--><anchor id="Pg160"/>
+<p>Kate sniffs. &ldquo;He&rsquo;ll hate it. Cats don&rsquo;t like
+other cats pushing into their house.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She&rsquo;s right, of course. I put the kittens down
+at home, and Cat hisses at them and then runs
+them under the radiator in the kitchen. Then
+he sits down in the doorway and glowers at them,
+on guard.</p>
+
+<p>Things simmer down gradually. Mom and I
+and sometimes Tom, who&rsquo;s right at the flower
+shop on the corner, take turns checking on Kate
+and doing shopping for her, or going with her
+so she doesn&rsquo;t get badgered by people. But pretty
+soon everyone in the neighborhood forgets all
+about her and her inheritance. They see her
+buying just the same old cat food and cottage
+cheese and fruit, and they probably figure the
+whole thing was a phony.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn&rsquo;t though. Pop finds out her brother
+did leave a will. He lined up his funeral, left
+something to his housekeeper, something to a
+little restaurant owner way downtown&mdash;apparently
+that was his one big luxury, a decent meal
+twice a year when he went down to buy more
+stocks&mdash;and the rest to Kate.</p>
+
+<p>Pop says it may take months or years to clear
+up the estate, but he says Kate can get her share
+<!--<pb n="161"/>--><anchor id="Pg161"/>
+all put in trust for her with some bank, and
+they&rsquo;ll take care of all the legalities and taxes and
+just pay her as much or little as she wants out
+of the income. And she can leave the whole kit
+and caboodle to a cat home in her will if she
+wants to, which will probably make her tightwad
+brother spin in his grave. I asked her once,
+and she said maybe she&rsquo;d leave some to the
+Children&rsquo;s Aid, because there are a lot of stray
+children in New York City that need looking
+after, as well as cats. She&rsquo;s getting to think about
+people some.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="162"/>--><anchor id="Pg162"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="17. Telephone Numbers" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>17</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image17.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Mary calling from phone booth at Macy&rsquo;s.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>TELEPHONE NUMBERS</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>There are some disadvantages to not getting a
+girl&rsquo;s phone number. This sort of date I had
+with Mary for golf on Election Day fell through.
+In the first place, I was sick in bed with the flu,
+and Mom wouldn&rsquo;t have let me out for anything,
+and secondly, it was pouring rain. Without
+the phone number, there wasn&rsquo;t any way I
+could let her know, and I didn&rsquo;t even know a
+street address to write to later.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="163"/>--><anchor id="Pg163"/>
+<p>By the time I got finished with the flu, we
+were into Thanksgiving and then all the trouble
+with Kate. Time passed and I felt rottener about
+standing her up without a word, and I couldn&rsquo;t
+get up my nerve to go out to Coney and just
+appear on her doorstep. I could have found the
+house all right, once I was out there.</p>
+
+<p>The first week of Christmas vacation the
+phone rings late one afternoon and Pop answers
+it. He says, &ldquo;Just one minute, please,&rdquo; and I
+know right away from his voice it isn&rsquo;t someone
+he knows.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Young lady on the phone for you, Dave,&rdquo; he
+says, and he enjoys watching me gulp.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hullo?&rdquo; a rather tight, flat little voice asks.
+&ldquo;Is this Dave&mdash;uh, Mitchell&mdash;uh, I mean, with
+Cat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I recognize it&rsquo;s Mary, all right, even if she does
+sound strange and scared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, hi!&rdquo; I say. &ldquo;Sure, it&rsquo;s me! I&rsquo;m awfully
+sorry about that day we were going to play golf.
+I was in bed with the flu, and then I didn&rsquo;t know
+your phone number or....&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I wondered
+what happened.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There&rsquo;s a slight pause, and I see Pop grinning
+<!--<pb n="164"/>--><anchor id="Pg164"/>
+and pretending to read his paper. I turn around
+so I won&rsquo;t see him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where are you now, out in Coney?&rdquo; I ask
+Mary.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, as a matter of fact, I&rsquo;m in Macy&rsquo;s.&rdquo; Her
+voice trails off a little, but then she starts in
+again. &ldquo;As a matter of fact, that&rsquo;s why I called.
+You see, I was supposed to meet Mom here at
+five, and she hasn&rsquo;t come, and I bought all these
+Christmas presents, and I forgot about the tax
+or something, and this is my last dime.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She stops. I see now why she sounds scared,
+and I get a curdled feeling in my stomach, too,
+because what if the dime runs out in the phone
+and she&rsquo;s cut off? I&rsquo;ll never find her in Macy&rsquo;s.
+It&rsquo;s too big.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pop!&rdquo; I yelp. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s this girl I know is in
+a phone booth in Macy&rsquo;s and her dime is going
+to run out and she hasn&rsquo;t anymore money.
+What&rsquo;ll I do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Get the phone number of the booth and call
+her back. Here&mdash;&rdquo; He gives me a pencil.</p>
+
+<p>What a relief. Funny I never thought of that.
+You just somehow don&rsquo;t think of a phone booth
+having a number.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="165"/>--><anchor id="Pg165"/>
+<p>Mary sounds pretty relieved, too. I get the
+number and call her back, and with Pop making
+suggestions here and there we settle that I&rsquo;ll
+go over to Macy&rsquo;s and meet her on the ground
+floor near Thirty-fourth Street and Broadway at
+the counter where they&rsquo;re selling umbrellas for
+$2.89, which Mary says she can see from the
+phone booth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K.&rdquo; I say, and then I sort of don&rsquo;t want to
+hang up. It&rsquo;s fun talking. So I go on. &ldquo;Look, just
+in case we miss each other at Macy&rsquo;s, what&rsquo;s
+your phone number at home, so I could call you
+sometime?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;COney 7-1218.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K. Well, good-bye. I&rsquo;ll be right over. To
+Macy&rsquo;s, I mean.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I grab my coat and check to see if I&rsquo;ve got
+money. Pop asks if I&rsquo;m going to bring her home
+for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gee, I don&rsquo;t know.&rdquo; I hadn&rsquo;t given a thought
+to what we&rsquo;d do. &ldquo;I guess so, maybe, if her
+mother hasn&rsquo;t come by then. I&rsquo;ll call you if we
+do anything else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;O.K.,&rdquo; Pop says.</p>
+
+<p>I go out and hustle through the evening rush-hour
+<!--<pb n="166"/>--><anchor id="Pg166"/>
+crowds to the subway. The stores are all
+open evenings now, for Christmas, so the crowds
+are going both ways.</p>
+
+<p>I get to the right corner of Macy&rsquo;s, and I see
+Mary right away. Everyone else is rushing about
+and muttering to themselves, and she&rsquo;s standing
+there looking lost. In fact she looks so much like
+a waif that the first thing I say is, &ldquo;Hi! Shall we
+go get something to eat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I&rsquo;m starved. I was just going to get a
+doughnut when I found I&rsquo;d run out of money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s go home and you can have dinner with
+us then. But what about your mother? Won&rsquo;t
+she be looking for you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mary shifts her feet and looks tired. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+know. Probably if she came and I wasn&rsquo;t here,
+she&rsquo;d figure I&rsquo;d gone home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I try to think a minute, which is hard to do
+with all these people shoving around you. Mary
+starts to pick up her two enormous shopping
+bags, and I take them from her, still trying to
+think. At the subway entrance I see the phone
+booth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the thing,&rdquo; I say. &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you call
+your house and see if your mother left a message
+or something?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="167"/>--><anchor id="Pg167"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Well....&rdquo; Mary stands by the phone looking
+confused and in fact about ready to cry. I
+suddenly decide the best thing we can do is get
+home and sit down where it&rsquo;s quiet. Waiting
+fifteen minutes or so to phone can&rsquo;t make much
+difference.</p>
+
+<p>We get home pretty fast and I introduce Mary
+to Mom and Pop. She sinks into the nearest chair
+and takes off her shoes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Excuse me,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;I just bought these
+heels, and it&rsquo;s awful wearing them!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She wiggles her toes and begins to look better.
+Mom offers her a pair of slippers and Pop passes
+some potato chips.</p>
+
+<p>Mom says, &ldquo;Poor child, did you try to do all
+your Christmas shopping at once?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, actually, I was having fun just looking
+for a long while. I have two little cousins
+that I don&rsquo;t really have to get much for, but I
+love looking at all the toys. I spent quite a while
+there. Then I did the rest of my shopping in a
+rush, and everything is so crowded, and I got
+mixed up on my money or the sales tax and
+only had a dime left, and I missed my mother
+or she forgot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She stretches out her toes to touch Cat, who
+<!--<pb n="168"/>--><anchor id="Pg168"/>
+is sitting in front of her. &ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t think what
+to do. It&rsquo;s so hard to think when your feet hurt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It certainly is,&rdquo; agrees Mom. She goes out
+to the kitchen to finish fixing dinner, and Pop
+suggests Mary better phone her home. She gets
+her father, and her mother has left a message
+that she was delayed and figured Mary would
+go home alone. Mary gives her father our address
+and tells him she&rsquo;ll be home by nine.</p>
+
+<p>We must have hit a lucky day because we
+have a real good dinner: slices of good whole
+meat, not mushed up stuff, and potatoes cooked
+with cheese in them, and salad, and a lemon
+meringue pie from the bakery, even.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner we sit around a little while, and
+Pop says I better take Mary home, and he gives
+me money for a cab at the end of the subway.
+When Mary gives the driver her home address,
+I say it over to myself a few times so I&rsquo;ll remember.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly I wonder about something. &ldquo;Say,
+how&rsquo;d you know <hi rend='italic'>my</hi> phone number?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I looked it up,&rdquo; she says simply. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s
+about twenty-eleven Mitchells in the Manhattan
+phone book, but only one in the East Twenties,
+so I figured that must be you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="169"/>--><anchor id="Pg169"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Gee, that&rsquo;s true. You must have had an
+awful time, though, standing in the phone booth
+with your feet hurting, going through all those
+Mitchells.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Says Mary, &ldquo;Oh, no. I did it one rainy afternoon
+at home, weeks ago.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Well, what do you know.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+<!--<pb n="170"/>--><anchor id="Pg170"/>
+  <index index="toc" level1="18. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s to Cat!&rdquo;" />
+  <index index="pdf"/>
+  <head rend='right'>18</head>
+<figure rend="width: 100%" url="images/image18.png">
+  <figDesc>Illustration: Raised champagne glasses toasting Cat.</figDesc>
+</figure>
+
+<pgIf output="txt">
+  <then>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+    <p rend='right'>&ldquo;HERE&rsquo;S TO CAT!&rdquo;</p>
+    <p><lb/></p>
+  </then>
+</pgIf>
+
+<p>The two stray kittens gradually make themselves
+at home. Somehow or other Cat has taught
+them that he&rsquo;s in charge here, and he just chases
+them for fun now and again, when he&rsquo;s not busy
+sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>As for keeping cats in my room, that&rsquo;s pretty
+well forgotten. For one thing, Mom really likes
+them. She sneaks the kittens saucers of cream
+and bits of real hamburger when no one&rsquo;s looking,
+<!--<pb n="171"/>--><anchor id="Pg171"/>
+and she likes talking to them in the kitchen.
+She doesn&rsquo;t pick them up, but just having them
+in the room sure doesn&rsquo;t give her asthma.</p>
+
+<p>The only time we have any trouble from the
+cats is one evening when Pop comes home and
+the two kittens skid down the hall between his
+legs, with Cat after them. He scales his hat at
+the lot of them and roars down the hall to me,
+&ldquo;Hey, Davey! When are you getting rid of these
+cats? I&rsquo;m not fixing to start an annex to Kate&rsquo;s
+cat home!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure Davey will find homes for them,&rdquo;
+Mom says soothingly, but getting a little short
+of breath, the way she does any time she&rsquo;s afraid
+one of us is losing his temper.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, one thing this cat business seems to
+have established is that me and Pop fighting is
+the main cause of Mom&rsquo;s asthma. So we both try
+to do a little better, and a lot of things we used
+to argue and fight about, like my jazz records,
+we just kid each other about now. But now and
+then we still work up to a real hassle.</p>
+
+<p>I&rsquo;ve been taking a history course the first
+semester at school. It&rsquo;s a real lemon&mdash;just a lot
+of preaching about government and citizenship.
+The second semester I switch to a music course.
+<!--<pb n="172"/>--><anchor id="Pg172"/>
+This is O.K. with the school&mdash;but not with Pop.
+Right away when I bring home my new program,
+he says, &ldquo;How come you&rsquo;re taking one less
+course this half?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I explain that I&rsquo;m taking music, and also
+biology, algebra, English, and French.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Music!&rdquo; he snorts. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s recreation, not a
+course. Do it on your own time!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pop, it&rsquo;s a course. You think the school signs
+me up for an hour of home record playing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They might,&rdquo; he grunts. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re not going
+to loaf your way through school if I have anything
+to say about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Loaf!&rdquo; I yelp. &ldquo;Four major academic subjects
+is more than lots of the guys take.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mom comes and suggests that Pop better go
+over to school with me and talk it over at the
+school office. He does, and for once I win a
+round&mdash;I keep music for this semester. But he
+makes sure that next year I&rsquo;m signed up all
+year for five majors: English, French, math,
+chemistry, and European history. I&rsquo;ll be lucky
+if I have time to breathe.</p>
+
+<p>I go down to the flower shop to grouse to
+Tom. It&rsquo;s after Valentine&rsquo;s Day, and business is
+slack and the boss is out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why does Pop have to come butting into my
+<!--<pb n="173"/>--><anchor id="Pg173"/>
+business at school? Doesn&rsquo;t he even think the
+school knows what it&rsquo;s doing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aw, heck,&rdquo; says Tom, &ldquo;your father&rsquo;s the one
+has to see you get into college or get a job. Sometimes
+schools do let kids take a lot of soft courses,
+and then they&rsquo;re out on a limb later.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh. He just likes to boss everything I do.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So&mdash;he cares.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Huh.&rdquo; I&rsquo;m not very ready to buy this, but
+then I remember Tom&rsquo;s father, who <hi rend='italic'>doesn&rsquo;t</hi>
+care. It makes me think.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; says Tom, &ldquo;half the reason you
+and your father are always bickering is that
+you&rsquo;re so much alike.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Me? Like <hi rend='italic'>him</hi>?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure. You&rsquo;re both impatient and curious, got
+to poke into everything. As long as there&rsquo;s a
+bone on the floor, the two of you worry it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Palumbo comes back to the shop then,
+and Tom gets busy with the plants. I go home,
+wondering if I really am at all like Pop. I never
+thought of it before.</p>
+
+<p>It&rsquo;s funny about fights. Pop and I can go along
+real smooth and easy for a while, and I think:
+Well, he really isn&rsquo;t a bad guy, and I&rsquo;m growing
+up, we can see eye to eye&mdash;all that stuff. Then,
+whoosh! I hardly know what starts it, but a fight
+<!--<pb n="174"/>--><anchor id="Pg174"/>
+boils up, and we&rsquo;re both breathing fire like
+dragons on the loose.</p>
+
+<p>We get a holiday Washington&rsquo;s Birthday,
+which is good because there&rsquo;s a TV program on
+Tuesday, the night before the holiday, that I
+hardly ever get to watch. It&rsquo;s called <hi rend='italic'>Out Beyond</hi>,
+and the people in it are very real, not just good
+guys and bad guys. There&rsquo;s always one character
+moving around, keeping you on the edge of your
+chair, and by the time it all winds up in a surprise
+ending, you find this character is not a real
+person, he&rsquo;s supernatural. The program goes on
+till eleven o&rsquo;clock, and Mom won&rsquo;t let me watch
+it on school nights.</p>
+
+<p>I get the pillows comfortably arranged on the
+floor, with a big bottle of soda and a bag of popcorn
+within easy reach. The story starts off with
+some nature shots of a farm and mountains in
+the background and this little kid playing with
+his grandfather. There&rsquo;s a lot of people in it, but
+gradually you get more and more suspicious of
+dear old grandpa. He&rsquo;s taking the kid for a walk
+when a thunderstorm blows up.</p>
+
+<p>Right then, of course, we have to have the
+alternate sponsor. He signs off, finally, and up
+comes Pop.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="175"/>--><anchor id="Pg175"/>
+<p>&ldquo;Here, Davey old boy, we can do better than
+that tonight. The Governor and the Mayor are
+on a TV debate about New York City school
+reorganization.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At first I figure he&rsquo;s kidding, so I just growl,
+&ldquo;Who cares?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He switches the channel.</p>
+
+<p>I jump up, tipping over the bottle of soda on
+the way. &ldquo;Pop, that&rsquo;s not fair! I&rsquo;m right in the
+middle of a program, and I been waiting weeks
+to watch it because Mom won&rsquo;t let me on school
+nights!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop goes right on tuning his channel. &ldquo;Do
+you good to listen to a real program for a
+change. There&rsquo;ll be another western on tomorrow
+night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That&rsquo;s the last straw. I shout, &ldquo;See? You don&rsquo;t
+even know what you&rsquo;re talking about! It&rsquo;s not
+a western.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop looks at me prissily. &ldquo;You&rsquo;re getting altogether
+too upset about these programs. Stop it
+and behave yourself. Go get a sponge to mop
+up the soda.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s your fault! Mop it up yourself!&rdquo; I&rsquo;m too
+mad now to care what I say. I charge down the
+hall to my room and slam the door.
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="176"/>--><anchor id="Pg176"/>
+<p>I hear the TV going for a few minutes, then
+Pop turns it off and goes in the kitchen to talk
+to Mom. In a little while he comes down and
+knocks on my door. Knocks&mdash;that&rsquo;s something.
+Usually he just barges in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look here now, Dave, we&rsquo;ve got to straighten
+a few things out quietly. Your mother says she
+told you you could watch that program, whatever
+it was. So O.K., go ahead, you can finish it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yeah, it&rsquo;s about over by now.&rdquo; I&rsquo;m still sore,
+and besides Pop&rsquo;s still standing in my door, so I
+figure there&rsquo;s a hitch in this somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But anyway, you shouldn&rsquo;t get so sore about
+an old television program that you shout &lsquo;Mop
+it up yourself&rsquo; at me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hmm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hmm, nothing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t think you should turn a guy&rsquo;s
+TV program off in the middle without even
+finding out about it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop says &ldquo;Hmm&rdquo; this time, and we both stand
+and simmer down.</p>
+
+<p>I look at my watch. It&rsquo;s a quarter to eleven.
+I say, &ldquo;Well, O.K. I might as well see the end.
+Sorry I got sore.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop moves out of the doorway. He says,
+<!--<pb n="177"/>--><anchor id="Pg177"/>
+&ldquo;Hereafter I will only turn off your TV programs
+before they start, not in the middle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Just as I get the TV on and settle down, the
+doorbell rings.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Goodness, who could that be so late?&rdquo; says
+Mom.</p>
+
+<p>Pop goes to the door. It&rsquo;s Tom, and Hilda is
+with him. I turn off the television set&mdash;I&rsquo;ve lost
+track of what&rsquo;s happening, and it doesn&rsquo;t seem
+to be the grandfather who&rsquo;s the spook after all.
+It&rsquo;s the first time Hilda has been to our house,
+and Tom introduces her around. Then there&rsquo;s
+one of those moments of complete silence, with
+everyone looking embarrassed, before we all
+start to speak at once.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hilda came to the beach with us,&rdquo; I say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told Tom we shouldn&rsquo;t come so late,&rdquo; says
+Hilda.</p>
+
+<p>Pop says, &ldquo;Not late at all. Come in and sit
+down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Hilda sits on the sofa, where Cat is curled
+up. He looks at her, puts his head back and goes
+on sleeping.</p>
+
+<p>Mom brings coffee and cookies in from the
+kitchen, and I pour the rest of the popcorn into
+a bowl and pass it around. Tom stirs his coffee
+<!--<pb n="178"/>--><anchor id="Pg178"/>
+vigorously and takes one sip and puts the cup
+down.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Reason we came so late,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;Hilda
+and I have been talking all evening. We want
+to get married.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop doesn&rsquo;t look as surprised as I do. &ldquo;Congratulations!&rdquo;
+he says.</p>
+
+<p>Tom says, &ldquo;Thanks&rdquo; and looks at Hilda, and
+she blushes. Really. Tom drinks a little more
+coffee and then he goes on: &ldquo;The trouble is,
+I can&rsquo;t get married on this flower-shop job.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Doesn&rsquo;t pay enough?&rdquo; Pop asks.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s not just the pay. The job isn&rsquo;t
+getting me anywhere I want to go. So that&rsquo;s what
+we&rsquo;ve been talking about all evening. Finally we
+went up to Times Square and talked to the guys
+in the Army and Navy and Air Force recruiting
+office. You know, I&rsquo;d get drafted in a year or
+two, anyway. I&rsquo;ve decided to enlist in the Army.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Goodness, you may get sent way out West for
+years and years!&rdquo; says Mom.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, not if I enlist in the Army. That&rsquo;s for
+three years. But I can choose what specialist
+school I want to go into, and there&rsquo;s this Air
+Defense Command&mdash;it&rsquo;s something to do with
+missiles. In that I can also choose what metropolitan
+<!--<pb n="179"/>--><anchor id="Pg179"/>
+area I want to be stationed in. I can
+choose New York, and we could get married,
+and I might even be able to go on taking college
+course at night school, with the Army paying
+for most of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Pop says, &ldquo;You sound like the recruiting officer
+himself. You sure of all this?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll have to check some more,&rdquo; says Tom.
+&ldquo;The recruiting officer, as a matter of fact, tried
+to persuade me to shoot for officers&rsquo; training and
+go into the Army as a career. But then I would
+be sent all over, and anyway, I don&rsquo;t think Army
+life would be any good for Hilda.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can see you have put in a busy evening,&rdquo;
+says Pop. &ldquo;Well, shove back the coffee cups, and
+I&rsquo;ll break out that bottle of champagne that&rsquo;s
+been sitting in the icebox since Christmas.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I go and retrieve my spilled bottle of soda.
+There&rsquo;s still enough left for one big glass. Pop
+brings out the champagne, and the cork blows
+and hits the ceiling. Cat jumps off the sofa and
+stands, half crouched and tail twitching, ready
+to take cover.</p>
+
+<p>Pop fills little glasses for them and raises his
+to Tom and Hilda. &ldquo;Here&rsquo;s to you&mdash;a long,
+happy life!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<!--<pb n="180"/>--><anchor id="Pg180"/>
+<p>We drink, and then I raise my glass of soda.
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s to Cat! Tom wouldn&rsquo;t even be standing
+here if it wasn&rsquo;t for Cat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That&rsquo;s true, and we all drink to Cat. He sits
+down and licks his right front paw.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div rend="page-break-before: always">
+
+<l><hi rend='italic'>Format by Jean Krulis</hi></l>
+<l><hi rend='italic'>Set in Linotype Baskerville</hi></l>
+<l><hi rend='italic'>Composed and bound by American Book-Stratford Press</hi></l>
+<l><hi rend='italic'>Printed by The Murray Printing Co.</hi></l>
+<l><hi rend='smallcaps; bold'>Harper &amp; Row, Publishers, Incorporated</hi></l>
+</div>
+
+</body>
+  <back>
+<div rend="page-break-before: right">
+<divGen type="pgfooter" />
+</div>
+  </back>
+
+</text>
+
+</TEI.2>
+
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/24921.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4745 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of It's like this, cat by Emily Neville
+
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
+restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under
+the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or
+online at http://www.gutenberg.org/license
+
+
+
+Title: It's like this, cat
+
+Author: Emily Neville
+
+Release Date: March 27, 2008 [Ebook #24921]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           It's like this, cat
+
+                            by Emily Neville
+                        ILLUSTRATED BY EMIL WEISS
+
+
+
+        [Cover: Dave standing on top step looking across street;
+       Cat curled up below. Tall apartment building in background.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                           IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT
+
+                            BY EMILY NEVILLE
+                          PICTURES BY EMIL WEISS
+
+
+
+        [Title Page: City scene of park entrance and busy street:
+            tall apartment building on left; car driving by;
+               bike-riding boy behind running boy and dog;
+               mailman handing mail to woman on sidewalk.]
+
+
+
+
+
+IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT
+Copyright (C) 1963 by Emily Neville
+
+
+
+
+
+Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of
+this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
+written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
+critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row,
+Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+MIDNIGHT,
+"MAYOR" OF GRAMERCY PARK
+1954-1962
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ 1. Cat and Kate
+ 2. Cat and the Underworld
+ 3. Cat and Coney
+ 4. Fight
+ 5. Around Manhattan
+ 6. And Brooklyn
+ 7. Survival
+ 8. West Side Story
+ 9. Fathers
+10. Cat and the Parkway
+11. Rosh Hashanah at the Fulton Fish Market
+12. The Red Eft
+13. The Left Bank of Coney Island
+14. Expedition by Ferry
+15. Dollars and Cats
+16. Fortune
+17. Telephone Numbers
+18. "Here's to Cat!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          *IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT*
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         1
+
+
+           [Illustration: Dave holding Cat while Dad looks up
+                       from reading his newspaper.]
+
+
+
+                                                              CAT AND KATE
+
+
+
+My father is always talking about how a dog can be very educational for a
+boy. This is one reason I got a cat.
+
+My father talks a lot anyway. Maybe being a lawyer he gets in the habit.
+Also, he's a small guy with very little gray curly hair, so maybe he
+thinks he's got to roar a lot to make up for not being a big hairy tough
+guy. Mom is thin and quiet, and when anything upsets her, she gets asthma.
+In the apartment--we live right in the middle of New York City--we don't
+have any heavy drapes or rugs, and Mom never fries any food because the
+doctors figure dust and smoke make her asthma worse. I don't think it's
+dust; I think it's Pop's roaring.
+
+The big hassle that led to me getting Cat came when I earned some extra
+money baby-sitting for a little boy around the corner on Gramercy Park. I
+spent the money on a Belafonte record. This record has one piece about a
+father telling his son about the birds and the bees. I think it's funny.
+Pop blows his stack.
+
+"You're not going to play that stuff in this house!" he roars. "Why aren't
+you outdoors, anyway? Baby-sitting! Baby-talk records! When I was your
+age, I made money on a newspaper-delivery route, and my dog Jeff and I
+used to go ten miles chasing rabbits on a good Saturday."
+
+"Pop," I say patiently, "there are no rabbits out on Third Avenue. Honest,
+there aren't."
+
+"Don't get fresh!" Pop jerks the plug out of the record player so hard the
+needle skips, which probably wrecks my record. So I get mad and start
+yelling too. Between rounds we both hear Mom in the kitchen starting to
+wheeze.
+
+Pop hisses, "Now, see--you've gone and upset your mother!"
+
+I slam the record player shut, grab a stick and ball, and run down the
+three flights of stairs to the street.
+
+This isn't the first time Pop and I have played this scene, and there gets
+to be a pattern: When I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to my
+Aunt Kate's. She's not really my aunt. The kids around here call her Crazy
+Kate the Cat Woman because she walks along the street in funny old clothes
+and sneakers talking to herself, and she sometimes has half a dozen or
+more stray cats living with her. I guess she does sound a little looney,
+but it's just because she does things her own way, and she doesn't give a
+hoot what people think. She's sane, all right. In fact she makes a lot
+better sense than my pop.
+
+It was three or four years ago, when I was a little kid, and I came
+tearing down our stairs crying mad after some fight with Pop, that I first
+met Kate. I plunged out of our door and into the street without looking.
+At the same moment I heard brakes scream and felt someone yank me back by
+the scruff of my neck. I got dropped in a heap on the sidewalk.
+
+I looked up, and there was a shiny black car with M.D. plates and Kate
+waving her umbrella at the driver and shouting: "Listen, Dr. Big Shot,
+whose life are you saving? Can't you even watch out for a sniveling little
+kid crossing the street?"
+
+The doctor looked pretty sheepish, and so did I. A few people on the
+sidewalk stopped to watch and snicker at us. Our janitor Butch was there,
+shaking his finger at me. Kate nodded to him and told him she was taking
+me home to mop me up.
+
+"Yas'm," said Butch. He says "Yas'm" to all ladies.
+
+Kate dragged me along by the hand to her apartment. She didn't say
+anything when we got there, just dumped me in a chair with a couple of
+kittens. Then she got me a cup of tea and a bowl of cottage cheese.
+
+That stopped me snuffling to ask, "What do I put the cottage cheese on?"
+
+"Don't put it on anything. Just eat it. Eat a bowl of it every day. Here,
+have an orange, too. But no cookies or candy, none of that sweet, starchy
+stuff. And no string beans. They're not good for you."
+
+My eyes must have popped, but I guess I knew right that first day that you
+don't argue with Kate. I ate the cottage cheese--it doesn't really have any
+taste anyway--and I sure have always agreed with her about the string
+beans.
+
+Off and on since then I've seen quite a lot of Kate. I'd pass her on the
+street, chirruping to some mangy old stray cat hiding under a car, and
+he'd always come out to be stroked. Sometimes there'd be a bunch of little
+kids dancing around jeering at her and calling her a witch. It made me
+feel real good and important to run them off.
+
+Quite often I went with her to the A & P and helped her carry home the cat
+food and cottage cheese and fruit. She talks to herself all the time in
+the store, and if she thinks the peaches or melons don't look good that
+day, she shouts clear across the store to the manager. He comes across and
+picks her out an extra good one, just to keep the peace.
+
+I introduced Kate to Mom, and they got along real well. Kate's leery of
+most people, afraid they'll make fun of her, I guess; my mom's not leery
+of people, but she's shy, and what with asthma and worrying about keeping
+me and Pop calmed down, she doesn't go out much or make dates with people.
+She and Kate would chat together in the stores or sitting on the stoop on
+a sunny day. Kate shook her head over Mom's asthma and said she'd get over
+it if she ate cottage cheese every day. Mom ate it for a while, but she
+put mayonnaise on it, which Kate says is just like poison.
+
+The day of the fight with Pop about the Belafonte record it's cold and
+windy out and there are no kids in sight. I slam my ball back and forth
+against the wall where it says "No Ball Playing," just to limber up and
+let off a little spite, and then I go over to see Kate.
+
+Kate has a permanent cat named Susan and however many kittens Susan
+happens to have just had. It varies. Usually there are a few other
+temporary stray kittens in the apartment, but I never saw any father cat
+there before. Today Susan and her kittens are under the stove, and Susan
+keeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat crouching under the sofa. He
+turns his head away from her and looks like he never intended to get mixed
+up with family life. For a stray cat he's sleek and healthy-looking. Every
+time he moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly. She believes in no
+visiting rights for fathers.
+
+Kate pours me some tea and asks what's doing.
+
+"My pop is full of hot air, as usual," I say.
+
+"Takes one to know one," Kate says, catching me off base. I change the
+subject.
+
+"How come the kittens' pop is around the house? I never saw a full-grown
+tom here before."
+
+"He saw me buying some cans of cat food, so he followed me home. Susan
+isn't admitting she ever knew him or ever wants to. I'll give him another
+feed and send him on his way, I guess. He's a handsome young fellow." Kate
+strokes him between the ears, and he rotates his head. Susan hisses.
+
+He starts to pull back farther under the sofa. Without stopping to think
+myself, or giving him time to, I pick him up. Susan arches up and spits. I
+can feel the muscles in his body tense up as he gets ready to spring out
+of my lap. Then he changes his mind and decides to take advantage of the
+lap. He narrows his eyes and gives Susan a bored look and turns his head
+to take me in. After he's sized me up, he pretends he only turned around
+to lick his back.
+
+"Cat," I say to him, "how about coming home with me?"
+
+"Hah!" Kate laughs. "Your pop will throw him out faster than you can say
+'good old Jeff.'"
+
+"Yeah-h?" I say it slowly and do some thinking. Taking Cat home had been
+just a passing thought, but right now I decide I'll really go to the mat
+with Pop about this. He can have his memories of good old Jeff and rabbit
+hunts, but I'm going to have me a tiger.
+
+Aunt Kate gives me a can of cat food and a box of litter, so Cat can stay
+in my room, because I remember Mom probably gets asthma from animals, too.
+Cat and I go home.
+
+Pop does a lot of shouting and sputtering when we get home, but I just put
+Cat down in my room, and I try not to argue with him, so I won't lose my
+temper. I promise I'll keep him in my room and sweep up the cat hairs so
+Mom won't have to.
+
+As a final blast Pop says, "I suppose you'll get your exercise mouse
+hunting now. What are you going to name the noble animal?"
+
+"Look, Pop," I explain, "I know he's a cat, he knows he's a cat, and his
+name is Cat. And even if you call him Honorable John Fitzgerald Kennedy,
+he won't come when you call, and he won't lick your hand, see?"
+
+"He'd better not! And it's not my hand that's going to get licked around
+here in a minute," Pop snaps.
+
+"All right, all right."
+
+Actually, my pop sometimes jaws so long it'd be a relief if he did haul
+off and hit me, but he never does.
+
+We call it a draw for that day, and I have Cat.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         2
+
+
+           [Illustration: Dave looking at Cat locked in cage.]
+
+
+
+                                                    CAT AND THE UNDERWORLD
+
+
+
+Cat makes himself at home in my room pretty easily. Mostly he likes to be
+up on top of something, so I put an old sweater on the bureau beside my
+bed, and he sleeps up there. When he wants me to wake up in the morning,
+he jumps and lands in the middle of my stomach. Believe me, cats don't
+always land lightly--only when they want to. Anything a cat does, he does
+only when he wants to. I like that.
+
+When I'm combing my hair in the morning, sometimes he sits up there and
+looks down his nose at my reflection in the mirror. He appears to be
+taking inventory: "Hmm, buckteeth; sandy hair, smooth in front, cowlick in
+back; brown eyes, can't see in the dark worth a nickel; hickeys on the
+chin. Too bad."
+
+I look back at him in the mirror and say, "O.K., black face, yellow eyes,
+and one white whisker. Where'd you get that one white whisker?"
+
+He catches sight of himself in the mirror, and his tail twitches
+momentarily. He seems to know it's not really another cat, but his claws
+come out and he taps the mirror softly, just to make sure.
+
+When I'm lying on the bed reading, sometimes he will curl up between my
+knees and the book. But after a few days I can see he's getting more and
+more restless. It gets so I can't listen to a record, for the noise of him
+scratching on the rug. I can't let him loose in the apartment, at least
+until we make sure Mom doesn't get asthma, so I figure I better
+reintroduce him to the great outdoors in the city. One nice Sunday morning
+in April we go down and sit on the stoop.
+
+Cat sits down, very tall and neat and pear-shaped, and closes his eyes
+about halfway. He glances at the street like it isn't good enough for him.
+After a while, condescending, he eases down the steps and lies on a sunny,
+dusty spot in the middle of the sidewalk. People walking have to step
+around him, and he squints at them.
+
+Then he gets up, quick, looks over his shoulder at nothing, and shoots
+down the stairs to the cellar. I take a look to see where he's going, and
+he is pacing slowly toward the backyard, head down, a tiger on the prowl.
+I figure I'll sit in the sun and finish my science-fiction magazine before
+I go after him.
+
+When I do, he's not in sight, and the janitor tells me he jumped up on the
+wall and probably down into one of the other yards. I look around a while
+and call, but he's not in sight, and I go up to lunch. Along toward
+evening Cat scratches at the door and comes in, as if he'd done it all his
+life.
+
+This gets to be a routine. Sometimes he doesn't even come home at night,
+and he's sitting on the doormat when I get the milk in the morning,
+looking offended.
+
+"Is it my fault you stayed out all night?" I ask him.
+
+He sticks his tail straight up and marches down the hall to the kitchen,
+where he waits for me to open the milk and dish out the cat food. Then he
+goes to bed.
+
+One morning he's not there when I open the door, and he still hasn't
+showed up when I get back from school. I get worried and go down to talk
+to Butch.
+
+"Wa-a-l," says Butch, "sometimes that cat sit and talk to me a little, but
+most times he go on over to Twenty-first Street, where he sit and talk to
+his lady friend. Turned cold last night, lot of buildings put on heat and
+closed up their basements. Maybe he got locked in somewheres."
+
+"Which building's his friend live in?" I ask.
+
+"Forty-six, the big one. His friend's a little black-and-white cat, sort
+of belongs to the night man over there. He feeds her."
+
+I go around to Twenty-first Street and case Forty-six, which is a pretty
+fair-looking building with a striped awning and a doorman who saunters out
+front and looks around every few minutes.
+
+While I'm watching, a grocery boy comes along pushing his cart and goes
+down some stairs into the basement with his carton of groceries. This
+gives me an idea. I'll give the boy time to get started up in the
+elevator, and then I'll go down in the basement and hunt for Cat. If
+someone comes along and gets sore, I can always play dumb.
+
+I go down, and the coast is clear. The elevator's gone up, and I walk
+softly past and through a big room where the tenants leave their baby
+carriages and bicycles. After this the cellar stretches off into several
+corridors, lit by twenty-watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling. You can
+hardly see anything. The corridors go between wire storage cages, where
+the tenants keep stuff like trunks and old cribs and parakeet cages.
+They're all locked.
+
+"Me-ow, meow, me-ow!" Unmistakably Cat, and angry.
+
+The sound comes from the end of one corridor, and I fumble along, peering
+into each cage to try to see a tiger cat in a shadowy hole. Fortunately
+his eyes glow and he opens his mouth for another meow, and I see him
+locked inside one of the cages before I come to the end of the corridor. I
+don't know how he got in or how I'm going to get him out.
+
+While I'm thinking, Cat's eyes flick away from me to the right, then back
+to me. Cat's not making any noise, and neither am I, but something is.
+It's just a tiny rustle, or a breath, but I have a creepy feeling someone
+is standing near us. Way down at the end of the cellar a shadow moves a
+little, and I can see it has a white splotch--a face. It's a man, and he
+comes toward me.
+
+I don't know why any of the building men would be way back there, but
+that's who I figure it is, so I start explaining.
+
+"I was just hunting for my cat ... I mean, he's got locked in one of these
+cages. I just want to get him out."
+
+The guy lets his breath out, slow, as if he's been holding it quite a
+while. I realize he doesn't belong in that cellar either, and he's been
+scared of me.
+
+He moves forward, saying "Sh-h-h" very quietly. He's taller than I am, and
+I can't see what he really looks like, but I'm sure he's sort of a kid,
+maybe eighteen or so.
+
+He looks at the padlock on the cage and says, "Huh, cheap!" He takes a
+paper clip out of his pocket and opens it out, and I think maybe he has a
+penknife, too, and next thing I know the padlock is open.
+
+"Gee, how'd you do that?"
+
+"Sh-h-h. A guy showed me how. You better get your cat and scram."
+
+Golly, I wonder, maybe the guy is a burglar, and that gives me another
+creepy feeling. But would a burglar be taking time out to get a kid's cat
+free?
+
+"Well, thanks for the cat. See you around," I say.
+
+"Sh-h-h. I don't live around here. Hurry up, before we both get caught."
+
+Maybe he's a real burglar with a gun, even, I think, and by the time I
+dodge past the elevators and get out in the cold April wind, the sweat
+down my back is freezing. I give Cat a long lecture on staying out of
+basements. After all, I can't count on having a burglar handy to get him
+out every time.
+
+Back home we put some nice jailhouse blues on the record player, and we
+both stretch out on the bed to think. The guy didn't really _look_ like a
+burglar. And he didn't talk "dese and dose." Maybe real burglars don't all
+talk that way--only the ones on TV. Still, he sure picked that lock fast,
+and he was sure down in that cellar for some reason of his own.
+
+Maybe I ought to let someone know. I figure I'll test Pop out, just casual
+like. "Some queer-looking types hanging around this neighborhood," I say
+at dinner. "I saw a tough-looking guy hanging around Number Forty-six this
+afternoon. Might have been a burglar, even."
+
+I figure Pop'll at least ask me what he was doing, and maybe I'll tell him
+the whole thing--about Cat and the cage. But Pop says, "In case you didn't
+know it, burglars do not all look like Humphrey Bogart, and they don't
+wear signs."
+
+"Thanks for the news," I say and go on eating my dinner. Even if Pop does
+make me sore, I'm not going to pass up steak and onions, which we don't
+have very often.
+
+However, the next day I'm walking along Twenty-first Street and I see the
+super of Forty-six standing by the back entrance, so I figure I'll try
+again. I say to him, "Us kids were playing ball here yesterday, and we saw
+a strange-looking guy sneak into your cellar. It wasn't a delivery boy."
+
+"Yeah? You sure it wasn't you or one of your juvenile pals trying to swipe
+a bike? How come you have to play ball right here?"
+
+"I don't swipe bikes. I got one of my own. New. A Raleigh. Better than any
+junk you got in there."
+
+"What d'you know about what I got in there, wise guy?"
+
+"Aw, forget it." I realize he's just getting suspicious of me. That's what
+comes of trying to be a big public-spirited citizen. I decide my burglar,
+whoever he is, is a lot nicer than the super, and I hope he got a fat
+haul.
+
+Next day it looks like maybe he did just that. The local paper, _Town and
+Village_, has a headline: "Gramercy Park Cellar Robbed." I read down the
+article:
+
+"The superintendent, Fred Snood, checked the cellar storage cages, after a
+passing youth hinted to him that there had been a robbery. He found one
+cage open and a suitcase missing. Police theorize that the youth may have
+been the burglar, or an accomplice with a guilty conscience or a grudge,
+and they are hunting him for questioning. Mr. Snood described him as about
+sixteen years of age, medium height, with a long 'ducktail' haircut, and
+wearing a heavy black sweater. They are also checking second-hand stores
+for the stolen suitcase."
+
+The burglar stole a suitcase with valuable papers and some silver and
+jewelry in it. But the guy they were hunting for--I read the paragraph over
+and feel green. That's me. I get up and look in the mirror. In other
+circumstances I'd like being taken for sixteen instead of fourteen, which
+I am. I smooth my hair and squint at the back of it. The ducktail is fine.
+
+Slowly I peel off my black sweater, which I wear practically all the time,
+and stuff it in my bottom drawer, under my bathing suit. But if I want to
+walk around the street without worrying about every cop, I'll have to do
+more than that. I put on a shirt and necktie and suit jacket and stick a
+cap on my head. I head uptown on the subway. At Sixty-eighth Street I get
+off and find a barbershop.
+
+"Butch cut," I tell the guy.
+
+"That's right. I'll trim you nice and neat. Get rid of all this stuff."
+
+And while he chatters on like an idiot, I have to watch three months' work
+go snip, snip on the floor. Then I have to pay for it. At home I get the
+same routine. Pop looks at my Ivy-League disguise and says, "Why, you may
+look positively human some day!"
+
+Two days later I find out I could've kept my hair. _Town and Village_ has
+a new story: "Nab Cellar Thief Returning Loot. 'Just A Bet,' He Says."
+
+The story is pretty interesting. The guy I met in the cellar is named Tom
+Ransom, and he is nineteen and just sort of floating around in the city.
+He doesn't seem to have any family. The police kept a detective watching
+Number Forty-six, and pretty soon they see Tom walking along with the
+stolen suitcase. He drops it inside the delivery entrance and walks on,
+but the cop collars him. I suppose if it hadn't been for me shooting my
+big mouth off to the super, the police wouldn't have been watching the
+neighborhood. I feel sort of responsible.
+
+The story in the paper goes on to say this guy was broke and hunting for a
+job, and some other guy dares him to snatch something out of a cellar and
+finally bets him ten dollars, so he does it. He gets out and finds the
+suitcase has a lot of stocks and legal papers and table silver in it, and
+he's scared stiff. So he figures to drop it back where it came from. The
+paper says he's held over to appear before some magistrate in Adolescent
+Court.
+
+I wonder, would they send a guy to jail for that? Or if they turn him
+loose, what does he do? It must be lousy to be in this city without any
+family or friends.
+
+At that point I get the idea I'll write him a letter. After all, Cat and I
+sort of got him into the soup. So I look up the name of the magistrate and
+spend about half an hour poring through the phone book, under "New York,
+City of," to get an address. I wonder whether to address him as "Tom" or
+"Mr. Ransom." Finally I write:
+
+
+_Dear Tom Ransom:_
+
+_I am the kid you met in the cellar at Number Forty-six Gramercy, and I
+certainly thank you for unlocking that cage and getting my cat out. Cat is
+fine. I am sorry you got in trouble with the police. It sounds to me like
+you were only trying to return the stuff and do right. My father is a
+lawyer, if you would like one. I guess he's pretty good. Or if you would
+like to write me anyway, here is my address: 150 East 22 St. I read in the
+paper that your family don't live in New York, which is why I thought you
+might like someone to write to._
+
+                                                       _Yours sincerely,_
+                                                          _Dave Mitchell_
+
+
+Now that I'm a free citizen again, I dig out my black sweater, look
+disgustedly at the butch haircut, and go out to mail my letter.
+
+Later on I get into a stickball game again on Twenty-first Street. Cat
+comes along and sits up high on a stoop across the street, where he can
+watch the ball game and the tame dogs being led by on their leashes. That
+big brain, the super of Forty-six, is standing by the delivery entrance,
+looking sour as usual.
+
+"Got any burglars in your basement these days?" I yell to him while I'm
+jogging around the bases on a long hit.
+
+He looks at me and my short haircut and scratches his own bald egg.
+"Where'd I see you?" he asks suspiciously.
+
+"Oh--Cat and I, we get around," I say.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         3
+
+
+        [Illustration: Dave, Cat, and Nick running on the beach.]
+
+
+
+                                                             CAT AND CONEY
+
+
+
+Nick and I have been friends pretty much since I can remember. Our mothers
+used to trade turns fetching us from kindergarten. Nick lives around the
+corner on Third Avenue, upstairs over the grocery store his old man runs.
+If anyone asked me _how come_ we're friends, I couldn't exactly say. We're
+just together most of the time.
+
+Neither of us is a real whiz at sports, but we used to roller-skate and
+play a little king and stickball and ride our bikes around exploring. One
+time when we were about ten, we rode way over to Twelfth Avenue at the
+Hudson River, where the _Queen Mary_ docks. This is about the only time I
+remember my mom getting really angry. She said Pop ought to take my bike
+away from me, and he did, but only for about a week. Nick and I still ride
+bikes a lot. Otherwise we sit and do our homework or play chess and listen
+to records.
+
+Another reason we're friends is because of this creepy little kid who
+lived down toward the corner, between me and Nick. He always tagged along,
+wanting to play with us, and of course in the end he always fouled up the
+game or fell down and started to cry. Then his big brother came rushing
+out, usually with another big guy along, and they figured they were
+entitled to beat us up for hurting little Joey.
+
+After a while it looked to me as if Joey just worked as a lookout, and the
+minute me or Nick showed up on the block, one of the big guys came to run
+us off. They did little things like throwing sticks into our bike spokes
+and pretending it was just a joke. Nick and I used to plot all kinds of
+ways to get even with them, but in the end we mostly decided it was easier
+to walk around the block the long way to get to each other's houses. I'm
+not much on fighting, and neither is Nick--'specially not with guys bigger
+than us.
+
+Summers, up in the country, the kids seem to be all the time wrestling and
+punching, half for fun and half not. If I walk past some strange kid my
+age up there, he almost always tries to get me into a fight. I don't get
+it. Maybe it's because sidewalks are uncomfortable for fighting, but we
+just don't do much scrapping for fun. The only couple of fights I ever
+had, I was real mad.
+
+Come spring, Nick and I got restless hanging around the street, with
+nothing to do but stickball and baiting the super at Forty-six. It was so
+easy to get him sore, it wasn't even fun. Cat stayed out of that basement,
+but I wanted to get him really out in the open, where he could chase
+squirrels or something.
+
+One day we rode our bikes up to Central Park. I put Cat in a wicker hamper
+and tied it on the back of my bike. He meowed a lot, and people on the
+street would look at me and then do a double take when they heard him.
+
+We got up to Central Park and into a place they call The Horseshoe,
+because the parking area is that shape. I opened the lid a crack to look
+at Cat. He hissed at me, the first time he ever did. I looked around and
+thought, Gee, if I let him loose, he could go anywhere, even over into the
+woods, and I might never catch him. There were a lot of hoody looking kids
+around, and I could see if I ever left my bike a second to chase Cat,
+they'd snatch the bike. So I didn't let Cat out, and I wolfed my sandwich
+and we went home. Nick was pretty disgusted.
+
+Then we hit a hot Saturday, the first one in May, and I get an idea. I
+find Nick and say, "Let's put Cat and some sandwiches in the basket and
+hop the subway out to Coney."
+
+Nick says, "Why bring Cat? He wrecked the last expedition."
+
+"I like to take him places, and this won't be like Central Park. No one's
+at Coney this time of year. He can chase around on the beach and hunt sand
+crabs."
+
+"Why do I have to have a nut for a friend?" Nick moans. "Well, anyway, I'm
+keeping my sandwich in my pocket, not in any old cat basket."
+
+"Who cares where you keep your crumby sandwich?"
+
+So we went. Lots of people might think Coney Island is ugly, with all the
+junky-looking booths and billboards. But when you turn your back on them
+and look out at the ocean, it's the same ocean as on a deserted beach. I
+kick off my shoes and stand with my feet in the ice water and the sun hot
+on my chest. Looking out at the horizon with its few ships and some sea
+gulls and planes overhead, I think: It's mine, all mine. I could go
+anywhere in the world, I could. Maybe I will.
+
+Nick throws water down my neck. He only understands infinity on math
+papers. I let Cat out of the basket and strip off my splashed shirt and
+chase Nick along the edge of the water. No need to worry about Cat. He
+chases right along with us, and every time a wave catches his feet he
+hisses and hightails it up the beach. Then he rolls himself in the hot,
+dry sand and gets up and shakes. There are a few other groups of people
+dotted along the beach. A big mutt dog comes and sniffs Cat and gets a
+right and a left scratch to the nose. He yelps and runs for home. Cat
+discovers sand crabs. Nick and I roll around in the sand and wrestle, and
+after a while we get hungry, so we go back where we left the basket. Cat
+is content to let me carry him.
+
+Three girls are having a picnic right near our basket. One yells to the
+others, "Hey, look! The guy went swimming with his cat!"
+
+Cat jumps down, turns his back on them, and humps himself around on my
+sweater until he is settled for a nap. I turn my back on the girls, too,
+and look out at the ocean.
+
+Still, it's not the same as it would have been a year ago. Then Nick and I
+would either have moved away from the girls or thrown sand at them.
+
+We just sit and eat our sandwiches. Nick looks over at them pretty often
+and whispers to me how old do I think they are. I can't tell about girls.
+Some of the ones in our class at school look about twenty-five, but then
+you see mothers pushing baby carriages on the street who look about
+fifteen.
+
+One of the girls catches Nick's eye and giggles. "Hi, there, whatcha
+watching?"
+
+"I'm a bird watcher," says Nick. "Seen any birds?"
+
+The girls drift over our way. The one that spoke first is a redhead. The
+one who seems to be the leader is a big blonde in a real short skirt and
+hair piled up high in a bird's nest. Maybe that's what started Nick
+bird-watching. The third girl is sort of quiet-looking, with brown hair, I
+guess.
+
+"You want a couple of cupcakes? You can have mine. I'm going on a diet,"
+says the blonde.
+
+"Thanks," says Nick. "I was thinking of going after some cokes."
+
+"Why waste time thinking? You might hurt your head," says the redhead.
+
+The third girl bends down and strokes Cat between the ears very gently.
+She says, "What's his name?"
+
+I explain to her about why Cat is Cat. She sits down and picks up a piece
+of seaweed to dangle over his nose. Cat makes a couple of sleepy swipes at
+it and then stretches luxuriously while she strokes him. The other kids
+get to talking, and we tell each other our names and where we go to school
+and all that stuff.
+
+Then Nick gets back on the subject of going for cokes. I don't really want
+to stay there alone with the girls, so I say I'll go. I tell Nick to watch
+Cat, and the girl who is petting him says, "Don't worry, I won't let him
+run away."
+
+It's a good thing she's there, because by the time I get back with the
+cokes, which no one offers to pay me back for, Nick and the other two
+girls are halfway down the beach. Mary--that's her name--says, "I never saw
+a cat at the beach before, but he seems to like it. Where'd you get him?"
+
+"He's a stray. I got him from an old lady who's sort of a nut about cats.
+Come on, I'll see if I can get him to chase waves for you. He was doing it
+earlier."
+
+We are running along in the waves when the other kids come back. The big
+blonde kicks up water at me and yells, "Race you!"
+
+So I chase, and just as I'm going to catch up, she stops short so I crash
+into her and we both fall down. This seems to be what she had in mind, but
+I bet the other kids are watching and I feel silly. I roll away and get up
+and go back to Cat.
+
+While we drink cokes the blonde and the redhead say they want to go to the
+movies.
+
+"What's on?" Nick asks.
+
+"There's a Sinatra thing at the neighborhood," the blonde tells him, and
+he looks interested.
+
+"I can't," I say. "I've got Cat. Besides, it's too late. Mom'd think I'd
+fallen into the subway."
+
+"I told you that cat was a mistake," says Nick.
+
+"Put him in the basket and call your mother and tell her your watch
+stopped," says the redhead. She comes over and trickles sand down my neck.
+"Come on, it'd be fun. We don't have to sit in the kids' section. We all
+look sixteen."
+
+"Nah, I can't." I get up and shake the sand out.
+
+Nick looks disgusted, but he doesn't want to stay alone. He says to the
+blonde, "Write me down your phone number, and we'll do it another day when
+this nut hasn't got his cat along."
+
+She writes down the phone number, and the redhead pouts because I'm not
+asking for hers. The girls get ready to leave, and Mary pats Cat good-bye
+and waves to me. She says, "Bring him again. He's nice."
+
+We get on the subway and Cat meows crossly at being shut in his basket.
+Nick pokes the basket with his toes.
+
+"Shut up, nuisance," he says.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         4
+
+
+          [Illustration: Dave and Nick fighting on the ground.]
+
+
+
+                                                                     FIGHT
+
+
+
+I actually get a letter back from Tom Ransom. It says: "Thanks for your
+letter. The Youth Board got me a room in the Y on Twenty-third Street.
+Maybe I'll come say Hello some day. They're going to help me get a job
+this summer, so I don't need a lawyer. Thanks anyway. Meow to Cat. Best,
+Tom."
+
+I go over to Nick's house to show him the letter. I'd told him about Tom
+getting Cat out of the cellar and getting arrested, but Nick always acted
+like he didn't really believe it. So when he sees the letter, he has to
+admit Cat and I really got into something. Not everyone gets letters from
+guys who have been arrested.
+
+One thing about Nick sort of gripes me. He has to think up all the plans.
+Anything I've done that he doesn't know about, he downgrades. Also, I
+always have to go to _his_ house. He never comes to mine, except once in a
+coon's age when I have a new record I won't bring to his house because his
+machine stinks and he never buys a new needle.
+
+It's not that I don't like his house. His mom is pretty nice, and boy, can
+she cook! Just an ordinary Saturday for lunch she makes pizza or real good
+spaghetti, and she has homemade cookies and nut cake sitting around after
+school. She also talks and waves her arms and shouts orders at us kids,
+but all good-natured-like, so we just kid her along and go on with what
+we're doing.
+
+She's about the opposite of my mom. Pop does the shouting in our house,
+and except for the one hassle about bike-riding on Twelfth Avenue, Mom
+doesn't even tell me what to do much. She's quiet, and pretty often she
+doesn't feel good, so maybe I think more than most kids that I ought to do
+things her way without being told.
+
+Also, my mom is always home and always ready to listen if you got
+something griping you, like when a teacher blames you for something you
+didn't do. Some kids I know, they have to phone a string of places to find
+their mother, and then she scolds them for interrupting her.
+
+Mom likes to cook, and she gets up some good meals for holidays, but she
+doesn't go at it all the time, the way Nick's mother does. So maybe Nick
+doesn't come to my house because we haven't got all that good stuff
+sitting around. I don't think that's it, really, though. He just likes to
+be boss.
+
+One day, a couple of weeks after we went to Coney, he does come along with
+me. We pick up a couple of cokes and pears at his pop's store.
+
+Cat is sitting on my front stoop, and he jumps down and rubs between my
+legs and goes up the stairs ahead of us.
+
+"See? He knows when school gets out then it's time to eat. That's why I
+like to come home," I tell Nick.
+
+We say "Hi" to Mom, and I get out the cat food while Nick opens his coke.
+"You know those girls we ran into over on Coney Island?" he says.
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Well, I got the blonde's phone number, so Sunday when I was hacking
+around with nothing to do, I called her up."
+
+"Yeah? What for?"
+
+"You stupid or something? To talk. So she yacked away a good while, and
+finally I asked her why didn't she come over next Saturday, we could go to
+a movie or something."
+
+"Yeah." I was working on my pear, a very juicy one.
+
+"That all you can say? So she says, well, she might, if she can get her
+girl friend to come too, but she doesn't want to come alone, and her
+mother wouldn't let her anyway."
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Which one what?"
+
+"Which girl friend?"
+
+"Oh. You remember, the other one we were kidding around with at the beach,
+the redhead. So I said, O.K., I'd see if I could get you to come too. I
+said I'd call her back."
+
+"Hmp. I don't know."
+
+"What d'you mean, you don't know?"
+
+"How do I know if I like that girl? I hardly even _talked_ to her. Anyway,
+it sounds like a date. I don't want a date. If they just happen to come
+over, I guess it's all right."
+
+"So shall I tell them it's O.K. for Saturday?"
+
+"Hmm."
+
+"It's nice you learned a new word."
+
+"Do I have to pay for the girl at the movies?"
+
+"Cheapskate. Maybe if you just stand around saying 'Hmm,' she'll buy her
+own. O.K.?"
+
+"O.K. But this whole thing is your idea, and if it stinks it's going to be
+your fault."
+
+"Boy, what an enthusiast! Come on, let's play a record and do the math."
+
+Nick is better at math than I am, so I agree.
+
+Saturday morning at ten o'clock Nick turns up at my house in a white shirt
+and slicked-down hair. Pop whistles. "On Saturday, yet! You got a girl or
+something?"
+
+"Yessir!" says Nick, and he gives my T-shirt a dirty look. I go put a
+sweater over it and run a comb through my hair, but I'm hanged if I'll go
+out looking like this is a big deal.
+
+"We're going to a movie down at the Academy," I tell my family.
+
+"What's there?" Pop asks.
+
+"A new horror show," says Nick. "And an old Disney."
+
+"Is it really a new horror show?" I ask Nick, because I think I've seen
+every one that's been in town.
+
+"Yup. Just opened. _The Gold Bug._ Some guy wrote it--I mean in a book
+once--but it's supposed to be great. Make the girls squeal anyway. I love
+that."
+
+"Hmm." I just like horror shows anyway, whether girls squeal or not.
+
+"You'll be the life of the party with that 'Hmm' routine."
+
+"It's _your_ party." I shrug.
+
+"Well, you could at least _try_."
+
+We hang around the subway kiosk on Fourteenth Street, where Nick said he'd
+meet them. After half an hour they finally show up.
+
+It's nice and sunny, and we see a crowd bunched up over in Union Square,
+so we wander over. A shaggy-haired, bearded character is making a speech
+all about "They," the bad guys. A lot of sleepy bums are sitting around
+letting the speech roll off their ears.
+
+"What is he, a nut or something?" the blonde asks.
+
+"A Commie, maybe," I say. "They're always giving speeches down here.
+Willie Sutton, the bank robber, used to sit down here and listen, too.
+That's where somebody put the finger on him."
+
+The girls look at each other and laugh like crazy, as if I'd said
+something real funny. I catch Nick's eye and glare. O.K., I _tried_. After
+this I'll stick to "Hmm."
+
+A beard who is listening to the speech turns and glares at us and says,
+"Shush!"
+
+"Aw, go shave yourself!" says Nick, and the girls go off in more hoots.
+Nick starts herding them toward Fourteenth Street, and I follow along.
+
+At the Academy Nick goes up to the ticket window, and the girls
+immediately fade out to go read the posters and snicker together. I can
+see they're not figuring to pay for any tickets, so I cough up for two.
+
+Nick and I try to saunter up to the balcony the way we always do, but the
+girls are giggling and dropping their popcorn, so the matron spots us and
+motions. "Down here!" She flashes her light in our eyes, and I feel like a
+convict while we get packed in with all the kids in the under-sixteen
+section.
+
+Nick goes in first, then the blonde, then the redhead and me. The minute
+things start getting scary, she tries to grab me, but I stick my hands in
+my pockets and say, "Aw, it's just a picture." She looks disgusted.
+
+The next scary bit, she tries to hang onto her girl friend, but the blonde
+is already glued onto Nick. Redhead lets out a loud sigh, and I wish I
+hadn't ever got into this deal. I can't even enjoy the picture.
+
+We suffer through the two pictures. The little kids make such a racket you
+can hardly hear, and the matron keeps shining the light in your eyes so
+you can't see. She shines it on the blonde, who is practically sitting in
+Nick's lap, and hisses at her to get back. I'm not going to do this again,
+ever.
+
+We go out and Nick says, "Let's have a coke." He's walking along with the
+blonde, and instead of walking beside me the redhead tries to catch hold
+of his other arm. This sort of burns me up. I mean, I don't really _like_
+her, but I paid for her and everything.
+
+Nick shakes her off and calls over his shoulder to me, "Come on, chicken,
+pull your own weight!"
+
+The girls laugh, on cue as usual, and I begin getting really sore. Nick
+got me into this. The least he can do is shut up.
+
+We walk into a soda bar, and I slap down thirty cents and say, "Two cokes,
+please."
+
+"Hey, hey! The last of the big spenders!" says Nick. More laughter. I'd
+just as soon sock him right now, but I pick up my money and say, "O.K.,
+wise guy, treat's on you." Nick shrugs and tosses down a buck as if he had
+hundreds of them.
+
+The two girls drink their cokes and talk across Nick. I finish mine in two
+or three gulps, and finally we can walk them to the subway. Nick is
+gabbing away about how he'll come out to Coney one weekend, and I'm
+standing there with my hands in my pockets.
+
+"Goo'bye, Bashful!" coos the redhead to me, and the two of them disappear,
+cackling, down the steps. I start across Fourteenth Street as soon as the
+light changes, without bothering to look if Nick is coming. He can go rot.
+
+Along Union Square he's beside me, acting as if everything is peachy fine
+dandy. "That was a great show. Pretty good fun, huh?"
+
+I just keep walking.
+
+"You sore or something?" he asks, as if he didn't know.
+
+I keep on walking.
+
+"O.K., be sore!" he snaps. Then he breaks into a falsetto: "Goo'bye,
+Bashful!"
+
+I let him have it before he's hardly got his mouth closed. He hits me back
+in the stomach and hooks one of his ankles around mine so we both fall
+down. It goes from bad to worse. He gets me by the hair and bangs my head
+on the sidewalk, so I twist and bite his hand. We're gouging and
+scratching and biting and kicking, because we're both so mad we can hardly
+see, and anyway no one ever taught us those Queensberry rules. There's no
+point in going into all the gory details. Finally two guys haul us apart.
+I have hold of Nick's shirt and it rips. Good. He's half crying, and he
+twists away from the guy that grabbed him and screams some things at me
+before darting across the avenue.
+
+I'm standing panting and sobbing, and the guy holding me says, "You oughta
+be ashamed. Now go on home."
+
+"Aw, you and your big mouth," I say, still mad enough to feel reckless. He
+throws a fake punch, but he's not really interested. He goes his way, and
+I go mine.
+
+I must look pretty bad because a lot of people on the street shake their
+heads at me. I walk in the door at home, expecting the worst, but
+fortunately Mom is out. Pop just whistles through his teeth.
+
+"That must have been quite a horror picture!" he says.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         5
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave and Tom lunching in meadow above river.]
+
+
+
+                                                          AROUND MANHATTAN
+
+
+
+By the next weekend I no longer look like a fugitive from a riot. All week
+in school Nick and I get asked whether we got hit by a swinging door; then
+the fellows notice the two of us aren't speaking to each other, and they
+sort of sheer off the subject. Come Saturday, I sit on the stoop and
+wonder, what now? There are plenty of other kids in school I like, but
+they mostly live over in the project--Stuyvesant Town, that is. I've never
+bothered to hunt them up weekends because Nick's so much nearer.
+
+Summer is coming on, though, and I've got to have someone to hang around
+with. This is the last Saturday before Memorial Day. Getting time for
+beaches and stuff. I suppose Nick and I might get together again, but not
+if he's going to be nuts about girls all the time.
+
+A guy stops in front of the stoop, and Cat half opens his eyes in the sun
+and squints at him. The guy says, "You Dave Mitchell?"
+
+"Huh? Yeah." I look up, surprised. I don't exactly recognize the guy,
+never having seen him in a clear light before. But from the voice I know
+it's Tom.
+
+"Oh, hi!" I say. "Here's Cat. He's pretty handsome in daylight."
+
+"Yeah, he looks all right, but what happened to you?"
+
+"Me and a friend of mine got in a fight."
+
+"With some other guys or what?"
+
+"Nah. We had a fight with each other."
+
+"Um, that's bad." Tom sits down and has sense enough to see there isn't
+anymore to say on that subject. "I start work Memorial Day, when the
+beaches open. Working in a filling station on the Belt Parkway in
+Brooklyn."
+
+"Gee, that's a long way off. You going to live over there?"
+
+"Yeah, they're going to get me a room in a Y in Brooklyn." Tom stretches
+restlessly and goes on: "I suppose you get sick of school and all, but
+it's rotten having nothing to do. I'd be ready to go nuts if I didn't get
+a job. I can't wait to start."
+
+I think of asking him doesn't he have a home or something to go back to,
+but somehow I don't like to.
+
+"Like today," Tom says. "I'd like to go somewhere. Do something. Got any
+ideas?"
+
+"Um. I was sort of trying to think up something myself. Movies?"
+
+Tom shakes himself. "No. I want to walk, or run, or throw something."
+
+"There's a big park--sort of a woods--up near the Bronx. A kid told me about
+it. He said he found an Indian arrowhead there, but I bet he didn't.
+Inwood Park, it's called."
+
+"How do you get there?"
+
+"Subway, I guess."
+
+"Let's go!" Tom stands up and wriggles his shoulders like he's Superman
+ready to take off.
+
+"O.K. Wait a minute. I'll go tell Mom. Should I get some sandwiches?"
+
+Tom looks surprised. "Sure, fine, if she doesn't mind."
+
+I'm not worried about getting Mom to make sandwiches because she always
+likes to fix a little food for me. The thing is, ever since my fight with
+Nick, she's been clucking around me like the mother hen. Maybe she figures
+I got in some gang fight, so she keeps asking me where I'm going and who
+with. Also, I guess she noticed I don't go to Nick's after school anymore.
+I come right home. So she asks me do I feel all right. You can't win.
+Right now, I can see she's going to begin asking who is Tom and where did
+I meet him. It occurs to me there's an easy way to take care of this.
+
+I turn around to Tom again. "Say, how about you come up and I'll introduce
+you to Mom? Then she won't start asking me a lot of questions."
+
+"You mean I _look_ respectable, at least?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+We go up to the apartment, and Mom asks if we'd like some cold drinks or
+something. I tell her I ran into Tom when he helped me hunt for Cat around
+Gramercy Park, which is almost true, and that he sometimes plays stickball
+with us, which isn't really true but it could be. Mom gets us some
+orangeade. She usually keeps something like that in the icebox in summer,
+because she thinks cokes are bad for you.
+
+"Do you live around here?" she asks Tom.
+
+"No, ma'am," says Tom firmly. "I live at the Y. I've got a summer job in a
+filling station over in Brooklyn, starting right after Memorial Day."
+
+"That's fine," Mom says. "I wish Davey could get a job. He gets so
+restless with nothing to do in the summer."
+
+"Aw, Mom, forget it! You got to fill in about six-hundred working papers
+if you're under sixteen.
+
+"Listen, Mom, what I came up for--we thought we'd make some sandwiches and
+go up to Inwood Park."
+
+"Inwood? Where's that?" So I explain to her about the Indian arrowheads,
+and we get out the classified phone book and look at the subway map, which
+shows there's an IND train that goes right to it.
+
+"I get sort of restless myself, with nothing to do," says Tom. "We just
+figured we'd do a little exploring around in the woods and get some
+exercise."
+
+"Why, yes, that seems like a good idea." Mom looks at him and nods. She
+seems to have decided he's reliable, as well as respectable.
+
+I see there's some leftover cold spaghetti in the icebox, and I ask Mom to
+put it in sandwiches. She thinks I'm cracked, but I did this once before,
+and it's good, 'specially if there's plenty of meat and sauce on the
+spaghetti. We take along a bag of cherries, too.
+
+"Thanks, Mom. Bye. I'll be back before supper."
+
+"Take care," she says. "No fights."
+
+"Don't worry. We'll stay out of fights," says Tom quite seriously.
+
+We go down the stairs, and Tom says, "Your mother is really nice."
+
+I'm sort of surprised--kids don't usually say much about each other's
+parents. "Yeah, Mom's O.K. I guess she worries about me and Pop a lot."
+
+"It must be pretty nice to have your mother at home," he says.
+
+That kind of jolts me, too. I wonder where his mother and father are,
+whether they're dead or something; but again, I don't quite want to ask.
+Tom isn't an easy guy to ask questions. He's sort of like an island, by
+himself in the ocean.
+
+We walk down to Fourteenth Street and over to Eighth Avenue, about twelve
+blocks; after all, exercise is what we want. The IND trains are fast, and
+it only takes about half an hour to get up to Inwood, at 206th Street. The
+park is right close, and it is real woods, although there are paved walks
+around through it. We push uphill and get in a grassy meadow, where you
+can see out over the Hudson River to the Palisades in Jersey. It's good
+and hot, and we flop in the sun. There aren't many other people around,
+which is rare in New York.
+
+"Let's eat lunch," says Tom. "Then we can go hunting arrowheads and not
+have to carry it."
+
+He agrees the spaghetti sandwich is a great invention.
+
+I wish the weather would stay like this more of the year--good and sweaty
+hot in the middle of the day, so you feel like going swimming, but cool
+enough to sleep at night. We lie in the sun awhile after lunch and agree
+that it's too bad there isn't an ocean within jumping-in distance. But
+there isn't, and flies are biting the backs of our necks, so we get up and
+start exploring.
+
+We find a few places that you might conceivably call caves, but they've
+been well picked over for arrowheads, if there ever were any. That's the
+trouble in the city: anytime you have an idea, you find out a million
+other people had the same idea first. Along in mid-afternoon, we drift
+down toward the subway and get cokes and ice cream before we start back.
+
+I don't really feel like going home yet, so I think a minute and study the
+subway map inside the car. "Hey, as long as we're on the subway anyway, we
+could go on down to Cortlandt Street to the Army-Navy surplus store. I got
+to get a knapsack before summer."
+
+"O.K." Tom shrugs. He's staring out the window and doesn't seem to care
+where he goes.
+
+"I got a great first-aid survival kit there. Disinfectant and burn
+ointment and bug dope and bandages, in a khaki metal box that's
+waterproof, and it was only sixty-five cents."
+
+"Hmm. Just what I need for survival on the sidewalks of New York," says
+Tom. I guess he's kidding, in a sour sort of way. If you haven't got a
+family around, though, survival must take more than a sixty-five-cent kit.
+
+The store is a little way from the nearest subway stop, and we walk along
+not saying much. Tom looks alive when he gets into the store, though,
+because it really is a great place. They've got arctic explorers' suits
+and old hand grenades and shells and all kinds of rifles, as well as some
+really cheap, useful clothing. They don't mind how long you mosey around.
+In the end I buy a belt pack and canteen, and Tom picks up some skivvy
+shirts and socks that are only ten cents each. They're secondhand, I
+guess, but they look all right.
+
+We walk over to the East Side subway, which is only a few blocks away down
+here because the island gets so narrow. Tom says he's never seen Wall
+Street, where all the tycoons grind their money machines. The place is
+practically deserted now, being late Saturday afternoon, and it's like
+walking through an empty cathedral. You can make echoes.
+
+We take the subway, and Tom walks along home with me. It seems too bad the
+day's over. It was a pretty good day, after all.
+
+"So long, kid," Tom says. "I'll send you a card from Beautiful Brooklyn!"
+
+"So long." I wave, and he starts off. I wish he didn't have to go live in
+Brooklyn.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         6
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave wheeling his bike across Belt Parkway.]
+
+
+
+                                                              AND BROOKLYN
+
+
+
+You can't really stay sore at a guy you've known all your life, especially
+if he lives right around the corner and goes to the same school. Anyhow,
+one hot Saturday morning Nick turns up at my house as if nothing had ever
+happened and says do I want to go swimming, because the Twenty-third
+Street pool's open weekends now.
+
+After that we go back to playing ball on the street in the evenings and
+swimming sometimes on weekends. One Saturday his mother tells me he went
+to Coney Island. He didn't ask me to go along, which is just as well,
+because I wouldn't have. I don't hang around his house after school much
+anymore, either. School lets out, and there's the Fourth of July weekend,
+when we go up to Connecticut, and pretty soon after that Nick goes off to
+a camp his church runs. Pop asks me if I want to go to a camp a few weeks,
+but I don't. Life is pretty slow at home, but I don't feel like all that
+organization.
+
+I think Tom must have forgotten about me and found a gang his own age when
+I get a postcard from him: "Dear Dave, The guy I work for is a creep, and
+all the guys who buy gas from him are creeps, so it's great to be alive in
+Beautiful Brooklyn! Wish you were here, but you're lucky you're not. Best,
+Tom."
+
+It's hard to figure what he means when he says a thing. However, I got
+nothing to do, so I might as well go see. He said he was going to work in
+a filling station on the Belt Parkway, and there can't be a million of
+them.
+
+I don't say anything too exact to Mom about where I'm going, because she
+gets worried about me going too far, and besides I don't really know where
+I'm going.
+
+Brooklyn, what a layout. It's not like Manhattan, which runs pretty
+regularly north and south, with decent square blocks. You could lose a
+million friends in Brooklyn, with the streets all running in circles and
+angles, and the people all giving you cockeyed directions. What with no
+bikes allowed on parkways, and skirting around crumby looking
+neighborhoods, it takes me at least a week of expeditions to find the
+right part of the Belt Parkway to start checking the filling stations.
+
+I wheel my bike across the parkway, but even so some cop yells at me.
+You'd think a cop could find a crime to get busy with.
+
+On a real sticky day in July I wheel across to a station at Thirty-fourth
+Street, and nobody yells at me, and I go over to the air pump and fiddle
+with my tires. A car pulls out after it gets gas, and there's Tom.
+
+"Hi!" I say.
+
+Tom half frowns and quick looks over his shoulder to see if his boss is
+around, I guess, and then comes over to the air pump.
+
+"How'd you get way out here?" he says.
+
+"On the bike. I got your postcard, and I figured I could find the filling
+station."
+
+He relaxes and grins. I feel better. He says, "You're a crazy kid. How's
+Cat?"
+
+But just then the boss has to come steaming up. "What d'ya want, kid? No
+bikes allowed on the parkway."
+
+I start to say I'm just getting air, but Tom speaks up. "It's all right. I
+know him."
+
+"Yeah? I told you, keep kids out of here!" The guy manages to suggest that
+kids Tom knows are probably worse than any other kind. He motions me off
+like a stray dog. I don't want to get Tom in any trouble, so I get going.
+At the edge of the parkway I wave. "So long. Write me another postcard."
+
+Tom raises a hand briefly, but his face looks closed, like nothing was
+going to get in or out.
+
+I pedal slowly and hotly back through the tangle of Brooklyn and figure,
+well, that's a week's research wasted. I still don't know where Tom lives,
+so I don't know how I can get a hold of him again. Anyway, how do I know
+he wants to be bothered with me? He looked pretty fed up with everything.
+
+So long as I got nothing else to do, the next week I figure I'll get
+public-spirited at home: I paint the kitchen for Mom, which isn't so bad,
+but moving all those silly dishes and pots and scrumy little spice cans
+can drive you wild. I only break one good vase and a bottle of salad oil.
+Salad oil and broken glass are great. In the afternoons I go to the
+swimming pool and learn to do a jackknife and a backflip, so Pop will
+think I am growing up to be a Real American Boy. Also, you practically
+have to learn to dive so you can use the diving pool, because the swimming
+pool is so jam-packed with screaming sardines you can't move in it.
+
+Evenings Cat and I play records, or we go to see Aunt Kate and drink iced
+tea. One weekend my real aunt comes to visit and sleeps in my room, so I
+go to stay with Aunt Kate, and I pretty near turn into cottage cheese.
+
+I've about settled into this dull routine when Mom surprises me by handing
+me a postcard one morning. It's from Tom: "Day off next Tuesday. If you
+feel like it, meet me near the aquarium at Coney Island about nine in the
+morning, before it's crowded."
+
+So that week drags by till Tuesday, and there I am at Coney Island bright
+and early. Tom is easy enough to find, pacing up and down the boardwalk
+like a tiger. We say "Hi" and so forth, and I'm all ready to take a run
+for the water, but he keeps snapping his fingers and looking up and down
+the boardwalk.
+
+Finally he says, "There's a girl I used to know pretty well. I didn't see
+her for a while till last week, and we got in an argument, and I guess
+she's mad. I wrote and asked her to come swimming today, but maybe she's
+not coming."
+
+I figure it out that I'm there as insurance against the girl not showing
+up, but I don't mind. Anyhow, she does show up. It can't have been too
+much of an argument they had, because she acts pretty friendly.
+
+Tom introduces us. Her name is Hilda and a last name that'd be hard to
+spell--Swedish maybe--and she's got a wide, laughing kind of mouth and a big
+coil of yellow hair in a bun on top of her head, and a mighty good figure.
+She asks me where I ran into Tom, and we tell her all about Cat and the
+cellar at Number Forty-six, and I tell them both about my Ivy-League
+haircut, which I had never explained to anyone before. They get a laugh
+out of that, and then she asks him about the filling-station job, and he
+says it stinks.
+
+I figure they could get along without me for a while, so I go for a swim
+and wander down the beach a ways and eat a hot dog and swim some more.
+When I come back, I see Tom and Hilda just coming out of the water, so I
+join them. Hilda says, "Come have a coke. Tom says he's got to try
+swimming to France just once more."
+
+I don't know just what she means, but we go get cokes and come back and
+stretch out in the sun. She asks me do I want a smoke, and I say No. It's
+nice to be asked, though. We watch Tom, who is swimming out past all the
+other people. I wish I'd gone with him. I say, "Lifeguard's going to
+whistle him in pretty soon. He's out past all the others."
+
+Hilda lets out a breath and snorts, "He'll always go till they blow the
+whistle. Always got to go farther than anyone else."
+
+I don't know what to say to that, so I don't say anything.
+
+Hilda goes on: "I used to wait tables in a restaurant down near Washington
+Square. Tom and a lot of the boys from NYU came in there. Sometimes the
+day before an exam he'd be sitting around for hours, buying people cokes
+and acting as if he hadn't a care in the world. Some other times, for no
+reason anyone could tell, he'd sit in a corner and stir his coffee like he
+was going to make a hole in the cup."
+
+"Tom was at NYU?" I ask. I don't know where I thought he'd been before he
+turned up in the cellar. I guess I never thought.
+
+"Sure," Hilda says. "He was in the Washington Square College for about a
+year and a half. He lived in a dormitory uptown, but I used to see him in
+the restaurant, and then fairly often we had dates after I got off work.
+He has people out in the Midwest somewhere--a father and a stepmother. He
+was always sour and close-mouthed about them, even before he got thrown
+out of NYU. Now he won't even write them."
+
+This is a lot of information to take in all at once and leaves a lot of
+questions unanswered. The first one that comes into my head is this: "How
+come he got thrown out of NYU?"
+
+"Well, it makes Tom so sore, he's never really told me a plain, straight
+story. It's all mixed up with his father. I think his father wrote him not
+to come home at Christmas vacation, for some reason. Tom and a couple of
+other boys who were left in the dormitory over the holidays got horsing
+around and had a water fight. The college got huffy and wrote the parents,
+telling them to pay up for damages. The other parents were pretty angry,
+but they stuck behind their kids and paid up. Tom just never heard from
+his father. Not a line.
+
+"That was when Tom began coming into the restaurant looking like thunder.
+The college began needling him for the water-fight damages, as well as
+second-semester tuition. He took his first exam, physics, and got an A on
+it. He's pretty smart.
+
+"He still didn't hear anything from home. He took the second exam, French,
+and thought he flunked it. That same afternoon he went into the office and
+told the dean he was quitting, and he packed his stuff and left. I didn't
+see him again till a week ago. I didn't know if he'd got sick of me, or
+left town, or what.
+
+"He says he wrote his father that he had a good job, and they could forget
+about him. Then he broke into that cellar on a dare or for kicks.
+
+"So here we are. What do we do next?"
+
+Hilda looks at me--me, age fourteen--as if I might actually know, and it's
+kind of unnerving. Everyone I know, their life goes along in set periods:
+grade school, junior high, high school, college, and maybe getting
+married. They don't really have to think what comes next.
+
+I say cautiously, "My pop says a kid's got to go to college now to get
+anywhere. Maybe he ought to go back to school."
+
+"You're so right, Grandpa," she says, and I would have felt silly, but she
+has a nice friendly laugh. "I wish I could persuade him to go back. But
+it's not so easy. I guess he's got to get a job and go to night school, if
+they'll accept him. He won't ask his father for money."
+
+"You two got my life figured out?" Tom has come up behind us while we were
+lying in the sand on our stomachs. "I just hope that sour grape at the
+filling station gives me a good recommendation so I can get another job.
+The way he watches his cash register, you'd think I was Al Capone."
+
+We talk a bit, and then Hilda gets up and says she's going to the ladies'
+room. She doesn't act coy about it, the way most girls do when they're
+sitting with guys. She just leaves.
+
+"How do you like Hilda?" Tom asks, and again I'm sort of surprised,
+because he acts like he really wants my opinion.
+
+"She's nice," I say.
+
+"Yeah." Tom suddenly glowers, as if I'd said I _didn't_ like her. "I don't
+know why she wastes her time on me. I'll never be any use to her. When her
+family hears about me, I'll get the boot."
+
+"I could ask my pop. You know, I told you he's a lawyer. Maybe he'd know
+how you go about getting back into college or getting a job or something."
+
+Tom laughs, an unamused bark. "Maybe he'll tell you to quit hanging around
+with jerks that get in trouble with the cops."
+
+This is a point, all right. Come to think, I don't know why I said I'd ask
+Pop anyway. I usually make a point of not letting his nose into my
+personal affairs, because I figure he'll just start bossing me around.
+However, I certainly can't do anything for Tom on my own.
+
+I say, "I'll chance it. The worst he ever does is talk. One time he made a
+federal case out of me buying a Belafonte record he didn't like. Another
+time playing ball I cracked a window in a guy's Cadillac, and Pop acted
+like he was going to sue the guy for owning a Cadillac. You just never
+know."
+
+Tom says, "With my dad, you _know_: I'm wrong."
+
+Hilda comes back just then. She snaps, "If he's such a drug on the market,
+why don't you shut up and forget about him?"
+
+"O.K., O.K.," says Tom.
+
+The beach is getting filled up by now, so we pull on our clothes and head
+for the subway. Tom and Hilda get off in Brooklyn, and I go on to Union
+Square.
+
+After dinner that night Mom is washing the dishes and Pop is reading the
+paper, and I figure I might as well dive in.
+
+"Pop," I say, "there's this guy I met at the beach. Well, really I mean I
+met him this spring when I was hunting for Cat, and this guy was in the
+cellar at Forty-six Gramercy, and he got caught and...."
+
+"Wha-a-a-t?" Pop puts down his paper and takes off his glasses. "Begin
+again."
+
+So I give it to him again, slow, and with explanations. I go through the
+whole business about the filling station and Hilda and NYU, and I'll say
+one thing for Pop, when he finally settles down to listen, he listens. I
+get through, and he puts on his reading glasses and goes to look out the
+window.
+
+"Do you have this young man's name and address, or is he just Tom from The
+Cellar?"
+
+I'd just got it from Tom when we were at the beach. He's at a Y in
+Brooklyn, so I tell Pop this.
+
+Pop says, "Tell him to call my office and come in to see me on his next
+day off. Meanwhile, I'll bone up on City educational policies in regard to
+juvenile delinquents."
+
+He says this perfectly straight, as if there'd be a book on the subject.
+Then he goes back to his newspaper, so I guess that closes the subject for
+now.
+
+"Thanks, Pop," I say and start to go out.
+
+"Entirely welcome," says Pop. As I get to the door, he adds, "If that cat
+of yours makes a practice of introducing you to the underworld in other
+people's cellars, we can do without him. We probably can anyway."
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         7
+
+
+    [Illustration: Dave talking with veterinarian while holding Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                                  SURVIVAL
+
+
+
+Cat hadn't got me into anymore cellars, but I can't honestly say he'd been
+sitting home tending his knitting--not him.
+
+One hot morning I went to pick up the milk outside our door, and Cat was
+sleeping there on the mat. He didn't even look up at me. After I scratched
+his ears and talked to him some, he got up and hobbled into the house.
+
+I put him up on my bed, under the light, for inspection. One front claw
+was torn off, which is why he was limping, his left ear was ripped, and
+there was quite a bit of fur missing here and there. He curled up on my
+bed and didn't move all day.
+
+I came and looked at him every few hours and wondered if I ought to take
+him to a vet. But he seemed to be breathing all right, so I went away and
+thought about it some more. Come night, I pushed him gently to one side,
+wondering what I better do in the morning.
+
+Well, in the morning Cat wakes up, stretches, yawns, and drops easily down
+off the bed and walks away. He still limps a little, but otherwise he acts
+like nothing had happened. He just wants to know what's for breakfast.
+
+"You better watch out. One day you'll run into a cat that's bigger and
+meaner than you," I tell him.
+
+Cat continues to wait for breakfast. He is not impressed.
+
+But I'm worried. Suppose some big old cat chews him up and he's hurt too
+bad to get home? After breakfast I take him out in the backyard for a bit,
+and then I shut him in my room and go over to consult Aunt Kate.
+
+She sets me up with the usual iced tea and dish of cottage cheese.
+
+"I had breakfast already. What do I need with cottage cheese?"
+
+"Eat it. It's good for you."
+
+So I eat it, and then I start telling her about Cat. "He came home all
+chewed up night before last. I'm afraid some night he's not going to make
+it."
+
+"Right," says Kate. She's not very talky, but I'm sort of surprised. I
+expected she'd tell me to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself. She
+starts pulling Susan's latest kittens out from under the sofa and sorting
+them out as if they were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow, one
+calico.
+
+"So what you going to do?" she shoots at me, shoveling the kittens back to
+Susan.
+
+"I--uh--I dunno. I thought maybe I ought to try to keep him in nights."
+
+"Huh. Don't know much, do you?" she says. "Well, so I'll tell you. Your
+Cat has probably fathered a few dozen kittens by now, and once a cat's
+been out and mated, you can't keep him in. You got to get him altered.
+Then he won't want to go out so much."
+
+"Altered?"
+
+"Fixed. Castrated is the technical word. It's a two-minute operation. Cost
+you three dollars. Take him to Speyer Hospital--big new building up on
+First Avenue."
+
+"You mean get him fixed so he's not a real tomcat any more? The heck with
+that! I don't want him turned into a fat old cushion cat!"
+
+"He won't be," she says. "But if it makes you happier, let him get killed
+in a cat fight. He's tough. He'll last a year or two. Suit yourself."
+
+"Ah, you're screwy! You and your cottage cheese!" Even as I say it I feel
+a little guilty. But I feel mad and mixed up, and I fling out the door.
+It's the first time I ever left Kate's mad. Usually I leave _our_  house
+mad and go to Kate.
+
+Now I got nowhere to go. I walk along, cussing and fuming and kicking
+pebbles. I come to an air-conditioned movie and go up to the window.
+
+The phony blonde in the booth looks at me and sneers, "You're not sixteen.
+We don't have a children's section in this theater." She doesn't even ask.
+She just says it. It's a great world. I go home. There's no one there but
+Cat, so I turn the record player up full blast.
+
+Pop comes home in one of his unexpected fits of generosity that night and
+takes us to the movies. Cat behaves himself and stays around home and our
+cellar for a while, so I stop worrying. But it doesn't last long.
+
+As soon as his claw heals, he starts sashaying off again. One night I hear
+cats yowling out back and I go out with a bucket of water and douse them
+and bring Cat in. There's a pretty little tiger cat, hardly more than a
+kitten, sitting on the fence licking herself, dry and unconcerned. Cat
+doesn't speak to me for a couple of days.
+
+One morning Butch, the janitor, comes up and knocks on our door. "You
+better come down and look at your cat. He got himself mighty chewed up.
+Most near dead."
+
+I hurry down, and there is Cat sprawled in a corner on the cool cement
+floor. His mouth is half open, and his breath comes in wheezes, like he
+has asthma. I don't know whether to pick him up or not.
+
+Butch says, "Best let him lie."
+
+I sit down beside him. After a bit his breath comes easier and he puts his
+head down. Then I see he's got a long, deep claw gouge going from his
+shoulder down one leg. It's half an inch open, and anyone can see it won't
+heal by itself.
+
+Butch shakes his head. "You gotta take him to the veteran, sure. That's
+the cat doctor."
+
+"Yeah," I say, not correcting him. It's not just the gash that's worrying
+me. I remember what Aunt Kate said, and it gives me a cold feeling in the
+stomach: In the back-alley jungle he'd last a year, maybe two.
+
+Looking at Cat, right now, I know she's right. But Cat's such a--well, such
+a _cat_. How can I take him to be whittled down?
+
+I tell Butch I'll be back down in a few minutes, and I go upstairs. Mom's
+humming and cleaning in the kitchen. I wander around and stare out the
+window awhile. Finally I go in the kitchen and stare into the icebox, and
+then I tell Mom about the gash in Cat's leg.
+
+She asks if I know a vet to take him to.
+
+"Yeah, there's Speyer. It's a big, new hospital--good enough for people,
+even--with a view of the East River. The thing is, Mom, Cat keeps going off
+and fighting and getting hurt, and people tell me I ought to get him
+altered."
+
+Mom wets the sponge and squeezes it out and polishes at the sink, and I
+wonder if she knows what I'm talking about because I don't really know how
+to explain it any better.
+
+She wrings the sponge out, finally, and sits down at the kitchen table.
+
+She says, "Cat's not a free wild animal now, and he wouldn't be even if
+you turned him loose. He belongs to _you_, so you have to do whatever is
+best for _him_, whether it's what you'd like or not. Ask the doctor and do
+what he says."
+
+Mom puts it on the line, all right. It doesn't make me feel any better
+about Cat. She takes five dollars out of her pocketbook and gives it to
+me.
+
+I get out the wicker hamper and go down to the cellar and load Cat in. He
+meows, a low resentful rumble, but he doesn't try to get away.
+
+Cat in the hamper is no powder puff, and I get pretty hot walking to the
+bus, and then from the bus stop to the animal hospital. I get there and
+wait, and dogs sniff at me, and I fill in forms. The lady asks me if I can
+afford to pay, and with Mom's five bucks and four of my own, I say Yes.
+
+The doctor is a youngish guy, but bald, in a white shirt like a dentist's.
+I put Cat on the table in front of him. He says, "So why don't you stay
+out of fights, like your mommy told you?"
+
+I relax a bit and smile, and he says, "That's better. Don't worry. We'll
+take care of tomcat. I suppose he got this gash in a fight?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"He been altered?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"I don't know. He was a stray. I've had him almost a year."
+
+All the time he's talking, the doctor is soothing Cat and looking him
+over. He goes on stroking him and looks up at me. "Well, son, one of these
+days he's going to get in one fight too many. Shall we alter him the same
+time we sew up his leg?"
+
+So there it is. I can't seem to answer right away. If the doctor had
+argued with me, I might have said No. But he just goes on humming and
+stroking. Finally he says, "It's tough, I know. Maybe he's got a right to
+be a tiger. But you can't keep a tiger for a pet."
+
+I say, "O.K."
+
+An attendant takes Cat away, and I go sit in the waiting room, feeling
+sweaty and cold all over. They tell me it'll be a couple of hours, so I go
+out and wander around a lot of blocks I never saw before and drink some
+cokes and sit and look up at the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Queens.
+
+When I go back for him, Cat looks the same as ever, except for a bandage
+all up his right front leg. The doctor tells me to come back Friday and
+he'll take out the stitches.
+
+Mom sees me come in the door, and I guess I look pretty grim, because she
+says, "Cat will be all right, won't he, dear?"
+
+"Yes." I go past her and down into my room and let Cat out of the basket
+and then bury my head under the pillow. I'm not exactly ashamed of crying,
+but I don't want Mom to hear.
+
+After a while I pull my head out. Cat is lying there beside me, his eyes
+half open, the tip end of his tail twitching very slowly. I rub my eyes on
+the back of his neck and whisper to him, "I'm sorry. Be tough, Cat,
+anyway, will you?"
+
+Cat stretches and hops off the bed on his three good legs.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         8
+
+
+     [Illustration: Dave and Mary buying tickets to West Side Story.]
+
+
+
+                                                           WEST SIDE STORY
+
+
+
+The regular park man got sunstroke or something, so I earned fourteen
+dollars raking and mowing in Gramercy Park in the middle of August.
+Gramercy Park is a private park. You have to own a key to get in, so the
+city doesn't take care of it.
+
+Real paper money, at this time of year especially, is very cheering. I
+head up to Sam Goody's to see what records he's got on sale and what
+characters are buying them. Maybe I'll buy something, maybe not, but as
+long as I've got money in my pocket, I don't feel like the guy is glaring
+at me for taking up floor space.
+
+Along the way I walk through the library, the big one at Forty-second
+Street. You go in by the lions on Fifth Avenue, and there's all kinds of
+pictures and books on exhibit in the halls, and you walk through to the
+back, where you can take out books. It's nice and cool, and nobody glares
+at you unless you either make a lot of noise or go to sleep. I can take
+books out of here and return them at the Twenty-third Street branch, which
+is handy.
+
+Sam Goody's is air-conditioned, so it's cool too. There are always several
+things playing on different machines you can listen to. Almost the most
+fun is watching the people: little, fat, bald guys buying long-haired
+classical music, and thin, shaggy beatniks listening to the jazz.
+
+I go to check if there are any bargains in the Kingston or Belafonte
+division. There's a girl standing there reading the backs of records, but
+I don't really catch a look at more than her shoes--little red flats they
+are. After a bit she reaches for a record over my head and says, "Excuse
+me."
+
+"Sure." Then we catch each other's eye and both say, "Oh. Gee, hello."
+
+Well, we're both pretty surprised, because this is the girl I met out at
+Coney Island that day with Nick when I had Cat with me, and now we're both
+a long way from Coney Island. This girl isn't one of the two giggly ones.
+It's the third, the one that liked Cat.
+
+We've both forgotten each other's names, so we begin over with that. I ask
+her what she's been doing, and she's been at Girl Scout camp a few weeks,
+and then she earned some money baby-sitting. So she came to think about
+records, like me. I tell her I've been at Coney once this summer, and I
+looked around for her, which is true, because I did.
+
+"It's a big place," she says, smiling.
+
+"Say, you live out there, don't you? How come you get all the way in here
+by yourself? Doesn't your mom get in a flap? Mine would, if she knew I was
+going to Coney alone."
+
+Mary says, "I came in with Mom. Some friend of hers has a small art
+exhibition opening. She said I could go home alone. After all, she knows
+I'm not going to get lost."
+
+I say, "Gee, it'd be great to have a mother that didn't worry about you
+all the time."
+
+"Oh, Mom worries." Mary giggles. "You should have heard her when I said I
+liked _Gone With the Wind_  and I didn't like _Anna Karenina_. I pretty
+nearly got disowned."
+
+"What does she think about science fiction?" I ask, and Mary makes a face,
+and we both laugh.
+
+I go on. "Well, my mom doesn't care what I read. She worries about what I
+eat and whether my feet are wet, and she always seems to think I'm about
+to kill myself. It's a nuisance, really."
+
+Mary looks solemn all of a sudden. She says slowly, "I think maybe it'd be
+nice. I mean to have someone worrying about whether you're comfortable and
+all. Instead of just picking your brains all the time."
+
+This seems to exhaust the subject of our respective mothers, and Mary
+picks up the record of _West Side Story_ and says, "Gee, I'd like to see
+that. Did you?"
+
+I say No, and to tell the truth I hadn't hardly heard of it.
+
+"I read a book about him. It was wonderful," she says.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Bernstein. The man who wrote it."
+
+"What's _West Side Story_ about, him?" I ask cautiously.
+
+"No, no--he wrote the music. It's about some kids in two gangs, and there's
+a lot of dancing, and then there's a fight and this kid gets--well, it
+isn't a thing you can tell the story of very well. You have to see it."
+
+This gives me a very simple idea.
+
+"Why don't we?" I say.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Go see it. Why not? We got money."
+
+"So we do," she says slowly. "You think they'll let us in, I mean being
+under sixteen?"
+
+You know, this is the first girl I really ever talked to that talks like a
+person, not trying to be cute or something.
+
+We walk around to the theater, and being it's Wednesday, there's a matinee
+about to start. The man doesn't seem to be one bit worried about taking
+our money. No wonder. It's two dollars and ninety cents each. So we're
+inside with our tickets before we've hardly stopped to think.
+
+Suddenly Mary says, "Oops! I better call Mom! Let's find out what time the
+show is over."
+
+We do, and Mary phones. She says to me, "I just told her I was walking
+past _West Side Story_ and found I could get a ticket. I didn't say
+anything about you."
+
+"Why, would she mind?"
+
+Mary squints and looks puzzled. "I don't know. I just really don't know.
+It never happened before."
+
+We go in to the show, and she is right, it's terrific. I hardly ever went
+to a live show before, except a couple of children's things and something
+by Shakespeare Pop took me to that was very confusing. But this _West Side
+Story_ is clear as a bell.
+
+We have an orangeade during intermission, and I make the big gesture and
+pay for both of them. Mary says, "Isn't it wonderful! I just happened to
+meet you at the beach, and then I meet you at Goody's, and we get to see
+this show that I've wanted to go to for ages. None of my friends at school
+want to spend this much money on a show."
+
+"It's wonderful," I say. "After it's over, I'm going back to buy the
+record."
+
+So after the show we buy it, and then we walk along together to the
+subway. I'll have to get off at the first stop, Fourteenth Street, and
+she'll go on to Coney, the end of the line.
+
+It's hard to talk on the subway. There's so much noise you have to shout,
+which is hard if you don't know what to say. Anyway, you can't ask a girl
+for her phone number shouting on the subway. At least I can't.
+
+I'm not so sure about the phone-number business either. I sort of can't
+imagine calling up and saying, "Oh, uh, Mary, this is Dave. You want to go
+to a movie or something, huh?" It sounds stupid, and I'd be embarrassed.
+What she said, it's true--it's sort of wonderful the way we just ran into
+each other twice and had so much fun.
+
+So I'm wondering how I can happen to run into her again. Maybe the beach,
+in the fall. Let's see, a school holiday--Columbus Day.
+
+The train is pulling into Fourteenth Street. I shout, "Hey, how about we
+go to the beach again this fall? Maybe Columbus Day?"
+
+"O.K.!" she shouts. "Columbus Day in the morning."
+
+"Columbus Day in the morning" sounds loud and clear because by then the
+subway has stopped. People snicker, and Mary blushes.
+
+"So long," I say, and we both wave, and the train goes.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                         9
+
+
+      [Illustration: Dave and Tom sitting on front steps with Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                                   FATHERS
+
+
+
+That operation didn't make as much difference to Cat as you might think. I
+took him back to the clinic to get the stitches out of his leg and the
+bandages off. A few nights later I heard yowls coming up from the
+backyard. I went down and pulled him out of a fight. He wasn't hurt yet,
+but he sure was right back in there pitching. He seems to have a standing
+feud with the cat next door.
+
+However, he's been coming home nights regularly, and sometimes in the cool
+part of the morning he'll sit out on the front stoop with me. He sits on a
+pillar about six feet above the sidewalk, and I sit on the steps and play
+my transistor and read.
+
+Every time a dog gets walked down the street under Cat's perch, he gathers
+himself up in a ball, as if he were going to spring. Of course, the poor
+dog never knows it was about to be pounced on and wags on down the street.
+Cat lets his tail go to sleep then and sneers.
+
+Between weathercasts I hear him purring, loud rumbly purrs, and I look up
+and see Tom there, stroking Cat's fur up backward toward his ears. Tom is
+looking out into the street and sort of whistling without making any
+sound.
+
+"Gee, hi!" I say.
+
+"Hi, too," he says. He strokes Cat back down the right way, gives him a
+pat, and sits down. "I just been down to see your dad. He's quite a guy."
+
+"Huh-h-h? You got sunstroke or something? Didn't he read you about ten
+lectures on Healthy Living, Honest Effort, Baseball, and Long Walks with a
+Dog?"
+
+"No-o-o." Tom grins, but then he sits and stares out at the street again,
+so I wait.
+
+"You know," he says, "you give me an idea. _You_ talk like _your_ dad is a
+real pain, and that's the way _I_ always have felt about _mine_. But your
+dad looks like a great guy to me, so--well, maybe mine could be too, if I
+gave him a chance. Your dad was saying I should."
+
+"Should what? You should go home?"
+
+"No. Your dad said I ought to write him a long letter and face up to all
+the things I've goofed on. Quitting NYU, the cellar trouble, all that.
+Then tell him I'm going to get a job and go to night school. Your dad
+figures probably he'd help me. He said he'd write him, too. No reason he
+should. I'm nothing in his life. It's pretty nice of him."
+
+I try to digest all this, and it sure is puzzling. The time I ran down
+that crumb of a doorman on my bike, accidental on purpose, I didn't get
+any long understanding talks. I just got kept in for a month.
+
+Tom slaps me in the middle of the back and stands up. "Hilda's gone back
+to work at the coffee shop. I guess I'll go down and see her before the
+lunch rush, and then go home and write my letter."
+
+"Say 'Hi' for me."
+
+"O.K. So long."
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The weather cools off some, and Pop starts to talk about vacation. He's
+taking two weeks, last of August and first of September, so I start
+shopping around for various bits of fishing tackle and picnic gear we
+might need. We're going to this lake up in Connecticut, where we get a
+sort of motel cottage. It has a little hot plate for making coffee in the
+morning, but most of the rest of the time we eat out, which is neat.
+
+We're sitting around the living room one evening, sorting stuff out, when
+the doorbell rings. I go answer it, and Tom walks in. He nods at me like
+he hardly sees me and comes into the living room. He shakes hands like a
+wooden Indian. His face looks shut up again, the way it did that day I
+left him in the filling station.
+
+He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a letter. I can see a post-office
+stamp in red ink with a pointing hand by the address. He throws it down on
+Dad's table.
+
+"I got my answer all right."
+
+Pop looks at the letter and I see his foot start to twitch the way it does
+when he's about to blow. But he looks at Tom, and instead of blowing he
+just says, "Your father left town? No forwarding address?"
+
+"I guess so. He just left. Him and that woman he married." Tom's voice
+trails off and he walks over to the window. We all sit quiet a minute.
+
+Finally Pop says gently, "Well, don't waste too much breath on her. She's
+nothing to do with you."
+
+Tom turns around angrily. "She's no good. She loafs around and drinks all
+the time. She talked him into going."
+
+"And he went." There's another short silence, and Pop goes on. "Where was
+this you lived?"
+
+"House. It was a pretty nice little house, too. Dark red with white trim,
+and enough of a yard to play a little ball, and I grew a few lettuces
+every spring. I even got one ear of corn once. We moved there when I was
+in second grade because my mom said it was near a good local school. I
+lived there till I went to college. I suppose he sold it, or got a loan,
+and they lit off to drink it up. Soon's they'd got _me_ off their hands."
+
+Tom bites off the last word. Suddenly I can see the picture pretty clear:
+the nice house, the father Tom always talked down and hoped would measure
+up. Now it's like somebody has taken his whole childhood and crumpled it
+up like a wad of tissue paper and thrown it away.
+
+Mom gets up and goes into the kitchen. Pop's foot keeps on twitching.
+Finally he says, "Well, I steered you wrong. I'm sorry. But maybe it's
+just as well to have it settled."
+
+"It's settled, all right," Tom says.
+
+Mom brings out a tray of ginger-ale glasses. It seems sort of inadequate
+at a moment like this, but when Tom takes a glass from her he looks like
+he's going to bust out crying.
+
+He drinks some and blows his nose, and Dad says, "When are you supposed to
+check in with the Youth Board again?"
+
+"Tuesday. My day off. And I wind up the filling-station job the next week,
+right after Labor Day."
+
+"Labor Day. Hm-m. We've got to get moving. If you like, I'll come down to
+the Youth Board with you, and we'll see what we can all cook up. Don't
+worry too much. I have a feeling you're just beginning to fight--really
+fight, not just throw a few stones."
+
+"I don't know why you bother." Tom starts to stand up. But while we've
+been talking, Cat has been creeping up under the side table, playing the
+ambush game, and he launches himself at Tom just as he starts to stand. It
+throws him off balance and he sits back in the chair, holding Cat.
+
+"You've got nothing to worry about," Pop says. "Cat's on your side."
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        10
+
+
+            [Illustration: Cat jumping out of car on parkway.]
+
+
+
+                                                       CAT AND THE PARKWAY
+
+
+
+Cat may be on Tom's side, but whether Pop is on Cat's side is something
+else again. I worry about this all the time we're planning the vacation.
+Suppose the motel won't take cats? Or suppose he runs away in the country?
+If he messes up the vacation in any way, I know Pop'll say to get rid of
+him.
+
+I practice putting Cat back in the wicker hamper to see if I can keep him
+in that sometimes, but he meows like crazy. That'd drive Pop nuts in the
+car, and it certainly wouldn't hide him from any motel-keeper. So I just
+sit back and hope for the best, but I got a nasty feeling in the bottom of
+my stomach that something's going to go haywire.
+
+Pop's pretty snappish anyway. He's working late nearly every night,
+getting stuff cleared up before vacation. He doesn't want any extra
+problems, especially not Cat problems. Mom's been having asthma a good
+deal lately, and we're all pretty jumpy. It's always like this at the end
+of the summer.
+
+Tuesday night when he gets home, I ask Pop what's happened about Tom.
+
+"We'll work something out," he says, which isn't what you'd call a big
+explanation.
+
+"You think he can get back into college?"
+
+"I don't know. The Youth Board is going to work on it. They're arranging
+for him to make up the midyear exams he missed, so he can get credit for
+that semester. Then he can probably start making up the second semester at
+night school if he has a job.
+
+"Apparently the Youth Board knew his father had skipped--they've been
+trying to trace him. I don't think it'll do any good if they find him. Tom
+had better just cross him off and figure his own life for himself."
+
+You know, I see "bad guys" in television and stuff, but with the people I
+really know I always lump the parents on one team and the kids on the
+other. Now here's my pop calmly figuring a kid better chalk off his father
+as a bad lot and go it alone. If your father died, I suppose you could
+face up to it eventually, but having him just fade out on you, not care
+what you did--that'd be worse.
+
+While I'm doing all this hard thinking, Pop has gone back to reading the
+paper. I notice the column of want ads on the back, and all of a sudden my
+mind clicks on Tom and jobs.
+
+"Hey, Pop! You know the florist on the corner, Palumbo, where you always
+get Mom the plant on Mother's Day? I went in there a couple of weeks ago,
+because he had a sign up, 'Helper Wanted.' I thought maybe it was
+deliveries and stuff that I could do after school. But he said he needed a
+full-time man. I'm pretty sure the sign's still up."
+
+"Palumbo, huhn?" Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with
+them. He looks at his watch and sighs. "They still open?"
+
+They are, and Pop goes right down to see the guy. He knows him fairly well
+anyway--there's Mother's Day, and Easter, and also the shop is the polling
+place for our district, so Pop's in there every Election Day. He always
+buys some little bunch of flowers Election Day because he figures the guy
+ought to get some business having his shop all messed up for the day.
+
+Dad comes back and goes over to the desk and scratches off a fast note. He
+says, "Here. Address it to Tom and go mail it right away. Palumbo says
+he'll try him out at least. Tom can come over Thursday night and I'll take
+him in."
+
+Tom comes home with Pop Thursday about nine o'clock. They both look pretty
+good. Mom has cold supper waiting, finishing off the icebox before we go
+away, so we all sit down to eat.
+
+"Tom's all set, at least for a start," Dad says. "He's going to start
+Tuesday, right after Labor Day. Palumbo can use him on odd jobs and
+deliveries, especially over the Jewish holidays, and then if he can learn
+the business, he'll keep him on."
+
+"Never thought I'd go in for flower-arranging." Tom grins. "But it might
+be fun. I'm pretty fair at any kind of handiwork."
+
+Remembering how quick he unlocked the padlock to get Cat out in the
+cellar, I agree.
+
+He starts for his room after supper, and we all say "good luck," "have a
+good time," and stuff. Things are really looking up.
+
+I get up early the next morning and help Mom button up around the house
+and get the car loaded before Pop gets home in the afternoon. He hoped to
+get off early, and I've been pacing around snapping my fingers for a
+couple of hours when he finally arrives about six o'clock. It's a hot day
+again.
+
+I don't say anything about Cat. I just dive in the back seat and put him
+behind a suitcase and hope he'll behave. Pop doesn't seem to notice him.
+Anyway he doesn't say anything.
+
+It's mighty hot, and traffic is thick, with everyone pouring out of the
+city. But at least we're moving along, until we get out on the Hutchinson
+River Parkway, where some dope has to run out of gas.
+
+All three lanes of traffic are stopped. We sit in the sun. Pop looks
+around, hunting for something to get sore about, and sees the back windows
+are closed. He roars, "Crying out loud, can't we get some air, at least?
+Open those windows!"
+
+I open them and try to keep my hand over Cat, but if you try to hold him
+really, it makes him restless. For the moment he's sitting quiet, looking
+disgusted.
+
+We sit for about ten minutes, and Pop turns off the motor. You can
+practically hear us sweating in the silence. Engines turn on ahead of us,
+and there seems to be some sign of hope. I stick my head out the window to
+see if things are moving. Something furry tickles my ear, and it takes me
+a second to register.
+
+Then I grab, but too late. There is Cat, out on the parkway between the
+lanes of cars, trying to figure which way to run.
+
+"Pop!" I yell. "Hold it! Cat's got out!"
+
+You know what my pop does? He laughs.
+
+"Hold it, my eyeball!" he says. "I've been holding it for half an hour.
+I'd get murdered if I tried to stop now. Besides, I don't want to chase
+that cat every day of my vacation."
+
+I don't even stop to think. I just open the car door and jump. The car's
+only barely moving. I can see Cat on the grass at the edge of the parkway.
+The cars in the next lane blast their horns, but I slip through and grab
+Cat.
+
+I hear Mom scream, "Davey!"
+
+Our car is twenty feet ahead, now, in the center lane, and there's no way
+Pop can turn off. The cars are picking up speed. I holler to Mom as loud
+as I can, "I'll go back and stay with Kate! Don't worry!"
+
+I hear Pop shout about something, but I can't hear what. Pretty soon the
+car is out of sight. I look down at Cat and say, "There goes our
+vacation." I wonder if I'll be able to catch a bus out to Connecticut
+later. Meanwhile, there's the little problem of getting back into the
+city. I'm standing alongside the parkway, with railroad tracks and the
+Pelham golf course on the other side of me, and a good long walk to the
+subway.
+
+A cat isn't handy to walk with. He keeps trying to get down. If you
+squeeze him to hang on, he just tries harder. You have to keep juggling
+him, like, gently. I sweat along back, with the sun in my eyes, and people
+in cars on the parkway pointing me out to their children as a local
+curiosity.
+
+One place the bulrushes and marsh grass beside the road grow up higher
+than your head. What a place for a kids' hideout, I think. Almost the next
+step, I hear kids' voices, whispering and shushing each other.
+
+Their voices follow along beside me, but inside the curtain of rushes,
+where I can't see them. I hear one say, "Lookit the sissy with the pussy!"
+Another answers, "Let's dump 'em in the river!"
+
+I try to walk faster, but I figure if I run they'll chase me for sure. I
+walk along, juggling Cat, trying to pretend I don't notice them. I see a
+drawbridge up ahead, and I sure hope there's a cop or watchman on it.
+
+The kids break out of the rushes behind me, and there's no use pretending
+anymore. I flash a look over my shoulder. They all yell, "Ya-n-h-h-h!"
+like a bunch of wild Indians, but they're about fifty feet back.
+
+I grab Cat hard about the only place you can grab a cat, around one upper
+forearm, and I really run. The kids let out another war whoop. It's uphill
+to the bridge. Cat gets his free forepaw into action, raking my chest and
+arm, with his claws out. Then he hisses and bites, and I nearly drop him.
+I'm panting so hard I can't hardly breathe anyway.
+
+A cop saunters out on my approach to the bridge, his billy dangling from
+his wrist. Whew--am I glad! I flop on the grass and ease up on Cat and
+start soothing him down. The kids fade off into the tall grass as soon as
+they see the cop. A stone arches up toward me, but it falls short. That's
+the last I see of them.
+
+As I cross the bridge, the cop squints at me. "What you doing, kid? Not
+supposed to be walking here."
+
+"I'll be right off. I'm going home," I tell him, and he saunters away,
+twirling his stick.
+
+It's dark by the time I get to the subway, and most of another hour before
+I'm back in Manhattan and reach Kate's. I can hear the television going,
+which is unusual, and I walk in. No one is watching television. Mom and
+Pop are sitting at the table with Kate.
+
+Mom lets loose the tears she has apparently been holding onto for two
+hours, and Pop starts bellowing: "You fool! You might have got killed
+jumping out on that parkway!"
+
+Cat drops to the floor with a thud. I kiss Mom and go to the sink for a
+long glass of water and drink it all and wipe my mouth. Over my shoulder,
+I answer Pop: "Yeah, but if Cat gets killed on the parkway, that's just a
+big joke, isn't it? You laugh your head off!"
+
+Pop takes off his glasses and scratches his head with them, like he always
+does when he's thinking. He looks me in the eye and says, "I'm sorry. I
+shouldn't have laughed."
+
+Then, of all things, he picks up Cat himself. "Come on. You're one of the
+family. Let's get on this vacation."
+
+At last we're off.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        11
+
+
+[Illustration: Dave picking out fish while Ben and garbage-sweeper watch.]
+
+
+
+                                   ROSH HASHANAH AT THE FULTON FISH MARKET
+
+
+
+We came back to the city Labor Day Monday--us and a couple million
+others--traffic crawling, a hot day, the windows practically closed up
+tight to keep Cat in. I sweated, and then cat hairs stuck to me and got up
+my nose. Considering everything, Pop acted quite mild.
+
+I met a kid up at the lake in Connecticut who had skin-diving equipment.
+He let me use it one day when Mom and Pop were off sight-seeing. Boy, this
+has fishing beat hollow! I found out there's a skin-diving course at the
+Y, and I'm going to begin saving up for the fins and mask and stuff. Pop
+won't mind forking out for the Y membership, because he'll figure it's
+character-building.
+
+Meanwhile, I'm wondering if I can get back up to Connecticut again one
+weekend while the weather's still warm, and I see that Rosh Hashanah falls
+on a Monday and Tuesday this year, the week after school opens. Great. So
+I ask this kid--Kenny Wright--if I can maybe come visit him that weekend so
+I can do some more skin diving.
+
+"Rosh Hashanah? What's that?" he says.
+
+So I explain to him. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. About half the
+kids in my school are Jewish, so they all stay out for it, and I always do
+too. Last year the school board gave up and made it an official school
+holiday for everyone, Jewish or not. Same with Yom Kippur, the week after.
+
+Kenny whistles. "You sure are lucky. I don't think we got any holidays
+coming till Thanksgiving."
+
+I always thought the kids in the country were lucky having outdoor yards
+for sports and recess, but I guess we have it over them on
+holidays--'specially in the fall: three Jewish holidays in September,
+Columbus Day in October, Election Day and Veterans' Day in November, and
+then Thanksgiving. It drives the mothers wild.
+
+I don't figure it'd be worth train fare to Connecticut for just two days,
+so I say good-bye to Kenny and see you next year and stuff.
+
+Back home I'm pretty busy right away, on account of starting in a new
+school, Charles Evans Hughes High. It's different from the junior high,
+where I knew half the kids, and also my whole homeroom there went from one
+classroom to another together. At Hughes everyone has to get his own
+schedule and find the right classroom in this immense building, which is
+about the size of Penn Station. There are about a million kids in
+it--actually about two thousand--most of whom I never saw before. Hardly any
+of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village kids come here because it
+isn't their district. However, walking back across Fifth Avenue one day, I
+see one kid I know from Peter Cooper. His name is Ben Alstein. I ask him
+how come he is at Hughes.
+
+"My dad wanted me to get into Peter Stuyvesant High School--you know, the
+genius factory, city-wide competitive exam to get in. Of course I didn't
+make it. Biggest Failure of the Year, that's me."
+
+"Heck, I never even tried for that. But how come you're here?"
+
+"There's a special science course you can qualify for by taking a math
+test. Then you don't have to live in the district. My dad figures as long
+as I'm in something special, there's hope. I'm not really very interested
+in science, but that doesn't bother him."
+
+So after that Ben and I walk back and forth to school together, and it
+turns out we have three classes together, too--biology and algebra and
+English. We're both relieved to have at least one familiar face to look
+for in the crowd. My old friend Nick, aside from not really being my best
+friend anymore, has gone to a Catholic high school somewhere uptown.
+
+On the way home from school one Friday in September, I ask Ben what he's
+doing Monday and Tuesday, the Jewish holidays.
+
+"Tuesday I got to get into my bar mitzvah suit and go to synagogue and
+over to Brooklyn to my grandmother's. Monday I don't have to do anything
+special. Come on over with your roller skates and we'll get in the hockey
+game."
+
+"I skate on my tail," I say, because it's true, and it would be doubly
+true in a hockey game. I try quick to think up something else. We're
+walking down the block to my house, and there's Cat sitting out front, so
+I say, "Let's cruise around and get down to Fulton Fish Market and pick up
+some fish heads for my cat."
+
+"You're a real nut, aren't you?" Ben says. He doesn't say it as if he
+minds--just mentioning the fact. He's an easygoing kind of guy, and I think
+most of the time he likes to let someone else make the plans. So he shrugs
+and says, "O.K."
+
+I introduce him to Cat. Ben looks him in the eye, and Cat looks away and
+licks his back. Ben says, "So I got to get you fresh fish for Rosh
+Hashanah, huh?"
+
+Cat jumps down and rubs from back to front against Ben's right leg and
+from front to back against his left leg and goes to lie down in the middle
+of the sidewalk.
+
+"See? He likes you," I say. "He won't have anything to do with most guys,
+except Tom."
+
+"Who's Tom?"
+
+So I tell Ben all about Tom and the cellar and his father disappearing on
+him.
+
+"Gee," says Ben, "I thought I had trouble, with my father practically
+telling me how to breathe better every minute, but at least he doesn't
+disappear. What does Tom do now?"
+
+"Works at the flower shop, right down there at the corner."
+
+Ben feels around in his pockets a minute. "Hey, I got two bucks I was
+supposed to spend on a textbook. Come on and I'll buy Mom a plant for the
+holidays, and you can introduce me to Tom."
+
+We go down to the flower shop, and at first Tom frowns because he thinks
+we've just come to kid around. Ben tells him he wants a plant, so then he
+makes a big thing out of showing him all the plants, from the ten-dollar
+ones on down, so Mr. Palumbo will see he's doing a good job. Ben finally
+settles on a funny-looking cactus that Tom says is going to bloom pretty
+soon.
+
+Ben goes along home and I arrange to pick him up on Monday. I wait around
+outside until I see Tom go out on a delivery and ask him how he likes the
+job. He says he doesn't really know yet, but at least the guy is decent to
+work for, not like the filling-station man.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I sleep late Monday and go over to Peter Cooper about eleven. A lot of
+kids are out in the playgrounds, and some fathers are there tossing
+footballs with them and shouting "Happy New Year" to each other. It sounds
+odd to hear people saying that on a warm day in September.
+
+Ben and I wander out of the project and he says, "How do we get to this
+Fulton Street?"
+
+I see a bus that says "Avenue C" on it stopping on Twenty-third Street.
+Avenue C is way east, and so is Fulton Street, so I figure it'll probably
+work out. We get on. The bus rockets along under the East Side Drive for a
+few blocks and then heads down Avenue C, which is narrow and crowded. It's
+a Spanish and Puerto Rican neighborhood to begin with, then farther
+downtown it's mostly Jewish. Lots of people are out on the street shaking
+hands and clapping each other on the back, and the stores are all closed.
+
+Every time the bus stops, the driver shouts to some of the people on the
+sidewalk, and he seems to know a good many of the passengers who get on.
+He asks them about their jobs, or their babies, or their aunt who's sick
+in Bellevue. This is pretty unusual in New York, where bus drivers usually
+act like they hate people in general and their passengers in particular.
+Suddenly the bus turns off Avenue C and heads west.
+
+Ben looks out the window and says, "Hey, this is Houston Street. I been
+down here to a big delicatessen. But we're not heading downtown anymore."
+
+"Probably it'll turn again," I say.
+
+It doesn't, though, not till clear over at Sixth Avenue. By then everyone
+else has got off and the bus driver turns around and says, "Where you two
+headed for?"
+
+It's funny, a bus driver asking you that, so I ask him, "Where does this
+bus go?"
+
+"It goes from Bellevue Hospital down to Hudson Street, down by the Holland
+Tunnel."
+
+"Holy crow!" says Ben. "We're liable to wind up in New Jersey."
+
+"Relax. I don't go that far. I just go back up to Bellevue," says the
+driver.
+
+"You think we'd be far from Fulton Fish Market?" I say.
+
+The driver gestures vaguely. "Just across the island."
+
+So Ben and I decide we'll get off at the end of the line and walk from
+there. The bus driver says, "Have a nice hike."
+
+"I think there's something fishy about this," says Ben.
+
+"That's what we're going to get, fish," I say, and we walk. We walk quite
+a ways.
+
+Ben sees a little Italian restaurant down a couple of steps, and we stop
+to look at the menu in the window. The special for the day is lasagna, and
+Ben says, "Boy, that's for me!"
+
+We go inside, while I finger the dollar in my pocket and do some fast
+mental arithmetic. Lasagna is a dollar, so that's out, but I see spaghetti
+and meat balls is seventy-five cents, so that will still leave me bus fare
+home.
+
+A waiter rushes up, wearing a white napkin over his arm like a banner, and
+takes our order. He returns in a moment with a shiny clean white linen
+tablecloth and a basket of fresh Italian bread and rolls. On a third trip
+he brings enough chilled butter for a family and asks if we want coffee
+with lunch or later. Later, we say.
+
+"Man, this is living!" says Ben as he moves in on the bread.
+
+"He treats us just like people."
+
+Pretty soon the waiter is back with our lasagna and spaghetti, and he
+swirls around the table as if he were dancing. "Anything else now? Mind
+the hot plates, very hot! Have a good lunch now. I bring the coffee
+later."
+
+He swirls away, the napkin over his arm making a little breeze, and
+circles another table. It's a small room, and there are only four tables
+eating, but he seems to enjoy acting like he was serving royalty at the
+Waldorf. When we're just finished eating, he comes back with a pot of
+steaming coffee and a pitcher of real cream.
+
+I'm dolloping the cream in, and it floats, when a thought hits me: We got
+to leave a tip for this waiter.
+
+I whisper to Ben, "Hey, how much money you got?"
+
+He reaches in his pocket and fishes out a buck, a dime, and a quarter. We
+study them. Figure coffees for a dime each, and the total check ought to
+be $1.95. We've got $2.35 between us. We can still squeak through with bus
+fare if we only leave the waiter a dime, which is pretty cheap.
+
+At that moment he comes back and refills our coffee cups and asks what we
+will have for dessert.
+
+"Uh, nothing, nothing at all," I say.
+
+"Couldn't eat another thing," says Ben.
+
+So the waiter brings the check and along with it a plate of homemade
+cookies. He says, "My wife make. On the house."
+
+We both thank him, and I look at Ben and he looks at me. I put down my
+dollar and he puts down a dollar and a quarter.
+
+"Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Come again," says the waiter.
+
+We walk into the street, and Ben spins the lone remaining dime in the sun.
+I say, "Heads or tails?"
+
+"Huh? Heads."
+
+It comes up heads, so Ben keeps his own dime. He says, "We could have hung
+onto enough for _one_ bus fare, but that's no use."
+
+"No use at all. 'Specially if it was yours."
+
+"Are we still heading for Fulton Street?"
+
+"Sure. We got to get fish for Cat."
+
+"It better be for free."
+
+We walk, threading across Manhattan and downtown. I guess it's thirty or
+forty blocks, but after a good lunch it doesn't seem too far.
+
+You can smell the fish market when you're still quite a ways off. It runs
+for a half a dozen blocks alongside the East River, with long rows of
+sheds divided into stores for the different wholesalers. Around on the
+side streets there are bars and fish restaurants. It's too bad we don't
+have Cat with us because he'd love sniffing at all the fish heads and guts
+and stuff on the street. Fish market business is done mostly in the
+morning, I guess, and now men are hosing down the streets and sweeping
+fish garbage up into piles. I get a guy to give me a bag and select a
+couple of the choicer--and cleaner--looking bits. I get a nice red snapper
+head and a small whole fish, looks like a mackerel. Ben acts as if fish
+guts make him sick, and as soon as I've got a couple he starts saying
+"Come on, come on, let's go."
+
+I realize when we're leaving that I don't even notice the fish smell
+anymore. You just get used to it. We walk uptown, quite a hike, along East
+Broadway and across Grand and Delancey. There's all kinds of intriguing
+smells wafting around here: hot breads and pickles and fish cooking. This
+is a real Jewish neighborhood, and you can sure tell it's a holiday from
+the smell of all the dinners cooking. And lots of people are out in their
+best clothes gabbing together. Some of the men wear black skullcaps, and
+some of them have big black felt hats and long white beards. We go past a
+crowd gathering outside a movie house.
+
+"They're not going to the movies," Ben says. "On holidays sometimes they
+rent a movie theater for services. It must be getting near time. Come on,
+I got to hurry."
+
+We trot along the next twenty blocks or so, up First Avenue and to Peter
+Cooper.
+
+"So long," Ben says. "I'll come by Wednesday on the way to school."
+
+He goes off spinning his dime, and too late I think to myself that we
+could have had a candy bar.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        12
+
+
+     [Illustration: Dave holding up lizard for Ben by pond in woods.]
+
+
+
+                                                               THE RED EFT
+
+
+
+Ben and I both take biology, and the first weekend assignment we get,
+right after Rosh Hashanah, is to find and identify an animal native to New
+York City and look up its family and species and life cycle.
+
+"What's a species?" says Ben.
+
+"I don't know. What's a life cycle?"
+
+We both scratch our heads, and he says, "What animals do we know?"
+
+I say, "Cat. And dogs and pigeons and squirrels."
+
+"That's dull. I want to get some animal no one else knows about."
+
+"Hey, how about a praying mantis? I saw one once in Gramercy Park."
+
+Ben doesn't even know what it is, so I tell him about this one I saw. For
+an insect, it looks almost like a dragon, about four or five inches long
+and pale green. When it flies, it looks like a baby helicopter in the sky.
+We go into Gramercy Park to see if we can find another, but we can't.
+
+Ben says, "Let's go up to the Bronx Zoo Saturday and see what we can
+find."
+
+"Stupid, they don't mean you to do lions and tigers. They're not native."
+
+"Stupid, yourself. They got other animals that are. Besides, there's lots
+of woods and ponds. I might find something."
+
+Well, it's as good an idea for Saturday as any, so I say O.K. On account
+of both being pretty broke, we take lunch along in my old school lunchbox.
+Also six subway tokens--two extras for emergencies. Even I would be against
+walking home from the Bronx.
+
+Of course there are plenty of native New York City animals in the
+zoo--raccoons and woodchucks and moles and lots of birds--and I figure we
+better start home not too late to get out the encyclopedias for species
+and life cycles. Ben still wants to catch something wild and wonderful.
+Like lots of city kids who haven't been in the country much, he's crazy
+about nature.
+
+We head back to the subway, walking through the woods so he can hunt. We
+go down alongside the pond and kick up rocks and dead trees to see if
+anything is under them.
+
+It pays off. All of a sudden we see a tiny red tail disappearing under a
+rotten log. I push the log again and Ben grabs. It's a tiny lizard, not
+more than two or three inches long and brick red all over. Ben cups it in
+both hands, and its throat pulses in and out, but it doesn't really try to
+get away.
+
+"Hey, I love this one!" Ben cries. "I'm going to take him home and keep
+him for a pet, as well as do a report on him. You can't keep cats and dogs
+in Peter Cooper, but there's nothing in the rules about lizards."
+
+"How are you going to get him home?"
+
+"Dump the lunch. I mean--we'll eat it, but I can stab a hole in the top of
+the box and keep Redskin in it. Come on, hurry! He's getting tired in my
+hand I think!"
+
+Ben is one of those guys who is very placid most of the time, but he gets
+excitable all of a sudden when he runs into something brand-new to him,
+and I guess he never caught an animal to keep before. Some people's
+parents are very stuffy about it.
+
+I dump the lunch out, and he puts the lizard in and selects some
+particular leaves and bits of dead log to put in with him to make him feel
+at home. Without even asking me, he takes out his knife and makes holes in
+the top of my lunchbox. I sit down and open up a sandwich, but Ben is
+still dancing around.
+
+"What do you suppose he is? He might be something very rare! How'm I going
+to find out? You think we ought to go back and ask one of the zoo men?"
+
+"Umm, nah," I say, chewing. "Probably find him in the encyclopedia."
+
+Ben squats on a log, and the log rolls. As he falls over backward I see
+two more lizards scuttle away. I grab one. "Hey, look! I got another. This
+one's bigger and browner."
+
+Ben is up and dancing again. "Oh, boy, oh, boy! Now I got two! Now they'll
+be happy! Maybe they'll have babies, huh?"
+
+He overlooks the fact that _I_ caught this one. Oh, well, I don't want a
+lizard, anyway. Cat'd probably eat it.
+
+Ben takes it from me and slips it in the lunchbox. "I'm going to call this
+one Big Brownie."
+
+Finally he calms down enough to eat lunch, taking peeks at his catch
+between mouthfuls. As soon as he's finished eating, he starts hustling to
+get home so he can make a house for them. He really acts like a kid.
+
+We get on the subway. It's aboveground--elevated--up here in the Bronx.
+After a while I see Yankee Stadium off to one side, which is funny because
+I don't remember seeing it when we were coming up. Pretty soon the train
+goes underground. I remember then. Coming up, we changed trains once. Ben
+has his eye glued to the edge of the lunchbox and he's talking to Redskin,
+so I figure there's no use consulting him. I'll just wait and see where
+this train seems to come out. It's got to go downtown. We go past
+something called Lenox Avenue, which I think is in Harlem, then
+Ninety-sixth Street, and then we're at Columbus Circle.
+
+"Hey, Ben, we're on the West Side subway," I say.
+
+"Yeah?" He takes a bored look out the window.
+
+"We can just walk across town from Fourteenth Street."
+
+"With you I always end up walking. Hey, what about those extra tokens?"
+
+"Aw, it's only a few blocks. Let's walk."
+
+Ben grunts, and he goes along with me. As we get near Union Square, there
+seem to be an awful lot of people around. In fact they're jamming the
+sidewalk and we can hardly move. Ben frowns at them and says, "Hey, what
+goes?"
+
+I ask a man, and he says, "Where you been, sonny? Don'tcha know there's a
+parade for General Sparks?"
+
+I remember reading about it now, so I poke Ben. "Hey, push along! We can
+see Sparks go by!"
+
+"Quit pushing and don't try to be funny."
+
+"Stupid, he's a general. Test pilot, war hero, and stuff. Come on, push."
+
+"QUIT PUSHING! I got to watch out for these lizards!"
+
+So I go first and edge us through the crowd to the middle of the block,
+where there aren't so many people and we can get up next to the police
+barrier. Cops on horseback are going back and forth, keeping the street
+clear. No sign of any parade coming yet, but people are throwing rolls of
+paper tape and handfuls of confetti out of upper-story windows. The wind
+catches the paper tape and carries it up and around in all kinds of
+fantastic snakes. Little kids keep scuttling under the barrier to grab
+handfuls of ticker tape that blow to the ground. Ben keeps one eye on the
+street and one on Redskin and Brownie.
+
+"How soon you think they're coming?" he asks fretfully.
+
+People have packed in behind us, and we couldn't leave now if we wanted
+to. Pretty soon we can see a helicopter flying low just a little ways
+downtown, and people all start yelling, "That's where they are! They're
+coming!"
+
+Suddenly a bunch of motorcycle cops zoom past, and then a cop backing up a
+police car at about thirty miles an hour, which is a very
+surprising-looking thing. Before I've hardly got my eyes off that, the
+open cars come by. This guy Sparks is sitting up on the back of the car,
+waving with both hands. By the time I see him, he's almost past.
+Nice-looking, though. Everyone yells like crazy and throws any kind of
+paper they've got. Two little nuts beside us have a box of Wheaties, so
+they're busy throwing Breakfast of Champions. As soon as the motorcade is
+past, people push through the barriers and run in the street.
+
+Ben hunches over to protect his precious animals and yells, "Come on!
+Let's get out of this!"
+
+We go into my house first because I'm pretty sure we've got a wooden box.
+We find it and take it down to my room, and Ben gets extra leaves and
+grass and turns the lizards into it. He's sure they need lots of fresh air
+and exercise. Redskin scoots out of sight into a corner right away. Big
+Brownie sits by a leaf and looks around.
+
+"Let's go look up what they are," I say.
+
+The smallest lizard they show in the encyclopedia is about six inches
+long, and it says lizards are reptiles and have scales and claws and
+should not be confused with salamanders, which are amphibians and have
+thin moist skin and no claws. So we look up salamanders.
+
+This is it, all right. The first picture on the page looks just like
+Redskin, and it says he's a Red Eft. The Latin name for his species is
+_Triturus viridescens_, or in English just a common newt.
+
+"Hey, talk about life cycles, listen to this," says Ben, reading. "'It
+hatches from an egg in the water and stays there during its first summer
+as a dull-green larva. Then its skin becomes a bright orange, it absorbs
+its gills, develops lungs and legs, and crawls out to live for about three
+years in the woods. When fully mature, its back turns dull again, and it
+returns to the water to breed.'"
+
+Ben drops the book. "Brownie must be getting ready to breed! What'd I tell
+you? We got to put him near water!" He rushes down to my room.
+
+We come to the door and stop short. There's Cat, poised on the edge of the
+box.
+
+I grab, but no kid is as fast as a cat. Hearing me coming, he makes his
+grab for the salamander. Then he's out of the box and away, with Big
+Brownie's tail hanging out of his mouth. He goes under the bed.
+
+Ben screams, "Get him! Kill him! He's got my Brownie!" He's in a frenzy,
+and I don't blame him. It does make you mad to see your pet get hurt. I
+run for a broom to try to poke Cat out, but it isn't any use. Meanwhile,
+Ben finds Redskin safe in the box, and he scoops him back into the
+lunchbox.
+
+Finally, we move the bed, and there is Cat poking daintily with his paw at
+Brownie. The salamander is dead. Ben grabs the broom and bashes Cat. Cat
+hisses and skids down the hall. "That rotten cat! I wish I could kill him!
+What'd you ever have him for?"
+
+I tell Ben I'm sorry, and I get him a little box so he can bury Brownie.
+You can't really blame Cat too much--that's just the way a cat is made, to
+chase anything that wiggles and runs. Ben calms down after a while, and we
+go back to the encyclopedia to finish looking up about the Red Eft.
+
+"I don't think Brownie was really ready to lay eggs, or he would have been
+in the pond already," I say. "Tell you what. We could go back some day
+with a jar and try to catch one in the water."
+
+That cheers Ben up some. He finishes taking notes for his report and
+tracing a picture, and then he goes home with Redskin in the lunchbox. I
+pull out the volume for C.
+
+Cat. Family, _Felidae_, including lions and tigers. Species, _Felis
+domesticus_. I start taking notes: "'The first civilized people to keep
+cats were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before Christ.... Fifty
+million years earlier the ancestor of the cat family roamed the earth, and
+he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores. The Oligocene cats,
+thirty million years ago, were already highly specialized, and the habits
+and physical characteristics of cats have been fixed since then. This may
+explain why house cats remain the most independent of pets, with many of
+the instincts of their wild ancestors.'"
+
+I call Ben up to read him this, and he says, "You and your lousy
+carnivore! _My_ salamander is an amphibian, and amphibians are the
+ancestors of _all_  the animals on earth, even you and your Cat, you sons
+of toads!"
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        13
+
+
+       [Illustration: Dave and Mary in wind on boardwalk at beach.]
+
+
+
+                                             THE LEFT BANK OF CONEY ISLAND
+
+
+
+Columbus Day comes up as cold as Christmas. I listen to the weather
+forecast the night before, to see how it'll be for the beach. "High winds,
+unseasonably low temperatures," the guy says. He would.
+
+I get up at eight-thirty the next morning, though, figuring he'd be wrong
+and it would be a nice sunny day. I slip on my pants and shirt and go
+downstairs with Cat to have a look out. Cat slides out and is halfway down
+the stoop when a blast of cold wind hits him. His tail goes up and he
+spooks back in between my legs. I push the door shut against the icy wind.
+
+Mom is sitting in the kitchen drinking her tea and she says, "My goodness,
+why are you up so early on a holiday? Do you feel sick?"
+
+"Nah, I'm all right." I pour out a cup of coffee to warm my hands on and
+dump in three or four spoons of sugar.
+
+"Davey, have you got a chill? You don't look to me as if you felt quite
+right."
+
+"Mom, for Pete's sake, it's COLD out! I feel fine."
+
+"Well, you don't have to go out. Why don't you just go back to bed and
+snooze and read a bit, and I'll bring you some breakfast."
+
+I see it's got to be faced, so while I'm getting down the cereal and a
+bowl, I say, "Well, as a matter of fact, I'm going over to Coney Island
+today."
+
+"Coney ISLAND!" Mom sounds like it was Siberia. "What in the world are you
+going to do there in the middle of winter?"
+
+"Mom, it's only Columbus Day. We figured we'd go to the aquarium and
+then--uh--well, fool around. Some of the pitches are still open, and we'll
+get hot dogs and stuff."
+
+"Who's going? Nick?"
+
+"Nick wasn't sure--I'll stop by his house and see." I'd just as soon steer
+clear of this "who's going" business, so I start into a long spiel about
+how we're studying marine life in biology, and we have to take some notes
+at the aquarium. Mom is swallowing this pretty well, but Pop comes into
+the kitchen just then and gives me the fishy eye.
+
+"First time I ever heard of you spending a holiday on homework. I bet they
+got a new twist palace going out there."
+
+I slam down my coffee cup. "Holy cats! Can't I walk out of here on a
+holiday without going through the third degree? What am I, some kind of a
+nut or a convict?"
+
+"Just a growing boy," says Pop. "And don't talk so sassy to your mother."
+
+"I'm talking to you!"
+
+Pop draws in a breath to start bellowing, but Mom beats him to it by
+starting to wheeze, which she can do without drawing breath.
+
+Pop pats her on the shoulder and gives me a dirty look. "Now, Agnes,
+that's all right. I'm not sore. I was just trying to kid him a little bit,
+and he flies off the handle."
+
+_I_ fly off the handle! How do you like that?
+
+I give Mom a kiss. "Cheer up, Mom. I won't ride on the roller coaster.
+It's not even running."
+
+I grab a sweater and gloves and money and get out before they can start
+anymore questions. On the subway I start wondering if Mary will show up.
+It's almost two months since we made this sort of crazy date, and the
+weather sure isn't helping any.
+
+Coney Island is made to be crowded and noisy. All the billboards scream at
+you, as if they had to get your attention. So when the place is empty, it
+looks like the whole thing was a freak or an accident.
+
+It's sure empty today. There's practically no one on the street in the
+five or six blocks from the subway station to the aquarium. But it's not
+quiet. There are a few places open--merry-go-rounds and hot-dog shops--and
+tinny little trickles of music come out of them, but the big noise is the
+wind. All the signs are swinging and screeching. Rubbish cans blow over
+and their tops clang and bang rolling down the street. The wind makes a
+whistling noise all by itself.
+
+I lean into the wind and walk up the empty street. My sweater is about as
+warm as a sieve. I wonder if I'm crazy to have come. No girl would get out
+on a boardwalk on a day like this. It must be practically a hurricane.
+
+She's there, though. As soon as I turn the corner to the beach, I can see
+one figure, with its back to the ocean, scarf and hair blowing inland
+toward me. I can't see her face, but it's Mary, all right. There isn't
+another soul in sight. I wave and she hunches her shoulders up and down to
+semaphore, not wishing to take her hands out of her pockets.
+
+I come up beside her on the boardwalk and turn my back to the ocean, too.
+I'd like to go on looking at it--it's all black and white and thundery--but
+the wind blows your breath right back down into your stomach. I freeze.
+
+"I was afraid you wouldn't come on a day like this," I say.
+
+"Me too. I mean I was afraid _you_ wouldn't."
+
+"Mom and Pop thought I was crazy. I spent about an hour arguing with them.
+What'd your mother say?"
+
+"Nothing. She thinks I'm walking alone with the wind in my hair, thinking
+poetic thoughts."
+
+"Huh? What for?"
+
+Mary shrugs. "Mom's like that. You'll see. Come on, let's go home and make
+cocoa or something to warm up, and then we'll think up something to do. We
+can't just stand here."
+
+She's right about that, so I don't argue. Her house is a few blocks away,
+a two-family type with a sloped driveway going down into a cellar garage.
+Neat. My pop is always going nuts hunting for a place to park.
+
+Mary goes in and shouts, "Hi, Nina! I brought a friend home. We're going
+to make some cocoa. We're freezing."
+
+I wonder who Nina is. I don't hear her mother come into the kitchen. Then
+I turn around and there she is. Holy crow! We got some pretty beat-looking
+types at school, but this is the first time I've ever seen a beatnik
+mother.
+
+She's got on a black T-shirt and blue jeans and old sneakers, and her hair
+is in a long braid, with uneven bangs in front.
+
+Mary waves a saucepan vaguely at us both and says, "Nina--Davey--this is my
+mother."
+
+So Nina is her mother. I stick out my hand. "Uh--how do you do?"
+
+"Hel-looo." Her voice is low and musical. "I think there is coffee on the
+stove."
+
+"I thought I'd make cocoa for a change," says Mary.
+
+"All right." Nina puts a cigarette in her mouth and offers one to me.
+
+I say, "No, thank you."
+
+"Tell me...." She talks in this low, intense kind of voice. "Are you in
+school with Mary?"
+
+So I tell her I live in Manhattan, and how I ran into Mary when I had Cat
+on the beach, because that makes it sound sort of respectable, not like a
+pickup. But she doesn't seem to be interested in Cat and the beach.
+
+"What do you _read_? In your school?" she asks, launching each question
+like a torpedo.
+
+I remember Mary saying something about her mother and poetry, so I say,
+"Well, uh--last week we read 'The Highwayman' and 'The Wreck of the
+Hesperus.' They're about--I mean, we were studying metaphors and similes.
+Looking at the ocean today, I sure can see what Longfellow meant about the
+icy...."
+
+I thought I was doing pretty well, but she cut me off again.
+
+"Don't you read any _real_ poetry? Donne? Auden? Baudelaire?"
+
+Three more torpedoes. "We didn't get to them yet."
+
+Nina blows out a great angry cloud of smoke and explodes, "Schools!" Then
+she sails out of the kitchen.
+
+I guess I look a little shook up. Mary laughs and shoves a mug of cocoa
+and a plate of cinnamon toast in front of me. "Don't mind Mother. She just
+can't get used to New York schools. Or Coney Island. Or hardly anything
+around here.
+
+"She grew up on the Left Bank in Paris. Her father was an artist and her
+mother was a writer, and they taught her to read at home, starting with
+Chaucer, probably. She never read a kids' book in her life.
+
+"Anything I ever tell her about school pretty much sounds either childish
+or stupid to her. What I really love is science--experiments and stuff--and
+she can't see that for beans."
+
+"Our science teacher is a dope," I say, because she is, "so I really never
+got very interested in science. But I told Mom and Dad I was coming to the
+aquarium to take notes today, so they wouldn't kick up such a fuss."
+
+Mary shakes her head. "We ought to get our mothers together. Mine thinks
+I'm wasting time if I even _go_ to the aquarium. I do, though, all the
+time. I love the walrus."
+
+"What does your pop do?"
+
+"Father? He teaches philosophy at Brooklyn College. So I get it from both
+sides. Just think, think, think. Father and Nina aren't hardly even
+interested in _food_. Once in a while Nina spends all day cooking some
+great fish soup or a chicken in wine, but the rest of the time I'm the
+only one who takes time off from thinking to cook a hamburger. They live
+on rolls and coffee and sardines."
+
+Mary puts our cups in the sink and then opens a low cupboard. Instead of
+pots and pans it has stacks of records in it. She pulls out _West Side
+Story_ and then I see there's a record player on a side table. What d'you
+know? A record player in the kitchen! This Left Bank style of living has
+its advantages.
+
+"I sit down here and eat and play records while I do my homework," says
+Mary, which sounds pretty nice.
+
+I ask her if she has any Belafonte, and she says, "Yes, a couple," but she
+puts on something else. It's slow, but sort of powerful, and it makes you
+feel kind of powerful yourself, as if you could do anything.
+
+"What's that?" I ask.
+
+"It's called 'The Moldau'--that's a river in Europe. It's by a Czech named
+Smetana."
+
+I wander around the kitchen and look out the window. The wind's still
+howling, but not so hard. I remember the ocean, all gray and powerful,
+spotted with whitecaps. I'd like to be out on it.
+
+"You know what'd be fun?" I say out loud. "To be out in a boat on the
+harbor today. If you didn't sink."
+
+"We could take the Staten Island ferry," Mary says.
+
+"Huh?" I hadn't even thought there was really any boat we could get on.
+"Really? Where do you get it?"
+
+"Down at Sixty-ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. It's quite a ways. I've
+always gone there in a car. But maybe we could do it on bikes, if we don't
+freeze."
+
+"We won't freeze. But what about bikes?"
+
+"You can use my brother's. He's away at college. Maybe I can find a
+windbreaker of his, too."
+
+She finds the things and we get ready and go into the living room, where
+Nina is sitting reading and sipping a glass of wine.
+
+"We're going on our bikes to the ferry and over to Staten Island," Mary
+says. She doesn't even ask.
+
+"Oh-h-h." It's a long, low note, faintly questioning.
+
+"We thought with the wind blowing and all, it'd be exciting," Mary
+explains, and I think, Uh-o, that's going to cook it. _My_ mother would
+have kittens if I said I was going out on a ferry in a storm.
+
+But Nina just says, "I see," and goes back to reading her book. I say
+good-bye and she looks up again and smiles, and that's all.
+
+It's another funny thing--Nina doesn't seem to pay any attention to who
+Mary brings home, like most mothers are always snooping if their daughter
+brings home a guy. Without stopping to think, I say, "Do you bring home a
+lot of guys?"
+
+Mary laughs. "Not a lot. Sometimes one of the boys at school comes home
+when we're studying for a science test."
+
+I laugh, too, but what I'm thinking of is how Pop would look if I brought
+a girl home and said we were studying for a test!
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        14
+
+
+        [Illustration: Dave and Mary on ferry with other people.]
+
+
+
+                                                       EXPEDITION BY FERRY
+
+
+
+As we ride through Brooklyn the wind belts us around from both sides and
+right in the teeth. But the sun's beginning to break through, and it's
+easy riding, no hills.
+
+This part of Brooklyn is mostly rows of houses joined together, or low
+apartment buildings, with little patches of lawn in front of them. There's
+lots of trees along the streets. It doesn't look anything like Manhattan,
+but not anything like the country, either. It's just Brooklyn.
+
+All of a sudden we're circling a golf course. What d'you know? Right in
+New York City!
+
+"Ever play golf?" The wind snatches the words out of my mouth and carries
+them back to Mary. I see her mouth shaping like a "No," but no sound comes
+my way. I drop back beside her and say, "I'll show you sometime. My pop's
+got a set of clubs I used a couple of times."
+
+"Probably I better carry the clubs and you play. I can play tennis,
+though."
+
+We pass the golf course and head down into a sort of main street. Anyway
+there's lots of banks and dime stores and traffic. Mary leads the way. We
+make a couple of turns and zigzags and then go under the parkway, and
+there's the ferry. It's taken us most of an hour to get from Mary's house.
+
+I'm hoping the ferry isn't too expensive, so I'll have plenty of money
+left for a good lunch. But while I'm mooning, Mary has wheeled her bike
+right up and paid her own fare. Well, I guess that's one of the things I
+like about her. She's independent. Still, I'm going to buy lunch.
+
+The ferry is terrific. I'm going to come ride ferries every day it's
+windy. The boat doesn't roll any, but we stand right up in front and the
+wind blows clouds of spray in our faces. You can pretend you're on a
+full-rigged schooner running before a hurricane. But you look down at that
+choppy gray water, and you know you'd be done if you got blown overboard,
+even if it is just an old ferryboat in New York harbor.
+
+The ferry ride is fast, only about fifteen minutes. We ride off in Staten
+Island and start thinking where to go. I know what's first with me.
+
+I ask Mary, "What do you like, hamburgers or sandwiches?"
+
+"Both. I mean either," she says.
+
+The first place we see is a delicatessen, which is about my favorite kind
+of place to eat anyway. I order a hot pastrami, and Mary says she never
+had one, but she'll try the same.
+
+"Where could we go on Staten Island?" I say. "I never was here before."
+
+"About the only place I've been is the zoo. I've been there lots of times.
+The vet let me watch her operate on a snake once."
+
+This is a pretty surprising thing for a girl to tell you in the middle of
+a mouthful of hot pastrami. The pastrami is great, and they put it on a
+roll with a lot of olives and onions and relish. Mary likes it too.
+
+"Is the vet a woman? Aren't you scared of snakes?"
+
+"Uh-un, I never was really. But when you're watching an operation, you get
+so interested you don't think about it being icky or scary. The vet is a
+woman. She's been there quite a while."
+
+I digest this along with the rest of my sandwich. Then we both have a
+piece of apple pie. You can tell from the way the crust looks--browned and
+a little uneven--that they make it right here.
+
+"So shall we go to the zoo?" Mary asks.
+
+"O.K." I get up to get her coat and mine. When I turn around, there she is
+up by the cashier, getting ready to pay her check.
+
+"Hey, I'm buying lunch," I say, steaming up with the other check.
+
+"Oh, that's all right." She smiles. "I've got it."
+
+I don't care if she's _got_ it. I want to _pay_ it. I suppose it's a silly
+thing to get sore about, but it sort of annoys me. Anyway, how do you
+maneuver around to do something for a girl when she doesn't even know you
+want to?
+
+The man in the deli gives us directions to get to the zoo, which isn't
+far. It's a low brick building in a nice park. In the lobby there are some
+fish tanks, then there's a wing for birds on one side, animals on the
+other, and snakes straight ahead.
+
+We go for snakes. Mary really seems to like them.
+
+She says, "The vet here likes them, and I guess she got me interested. You
+know, they don't really understand how a snake moves? Mechanically, I
+mean. She's trying to find out."
+
+We look at them all, little ones and big ones, and then we go watch the
+birds. The keeper is just feeding them. The parrot shouts at him, and the
+pelican and the eagles gobble up their fish and raw meat, but the vulture
+just sits on his perch looking bored. Probably needs a desert and a dying
+Legionnaire to whet his appetite.
+
+In the animal wing a strange-looking dame is down at the end, talking to a
+sleepy tiger.
+
+"Come on, darling, just a little roar. Couldn't you give me just a soft
+one today?" she's cooing at him. The tiger blinks and looks away.
+
+The lady notices us standing there and says, "He's my baby. I've been
+coming to see him for fourteen years. Some days he roars for me
+beautifully."
+
+She has a short conversation with the lion, then moves along with us
+toward the small cats, a puma and a jaguar. She looks in the next cage,
+which is empty, and shakes her head mournfully.
+
+"I had the sweetest little leopard. He died last week. Would you believe
+it? The zoo never let me know he was sick. I could have come and helped
+take care of him. I might have saved his life."
+
+She goes on talking, sometimes to herself, sometimes to the puma, and we
+cross over to look at two otters chasing each other up an underwater
+tunnel.
+
+"What is she, some kind of nut?" Mary says. "Does she think this is her
+private zoo?"
+
+I shrug. "I suppose she's a little off. But so's my Aunt Kate, the one who
+gave me Cat. They just happen to like cats better than people. Kate thinks
+all the stray cats in the world are her children, and I guess this one
+feels the same way about the big cats here."
+
+We mosey around a little bit more and then head back to the ferry. I make
+good and sure I'm ahead, and I get to the ticket office and buy two
+tickets.
+
+"Would you care for a ride across the harbor in my yacht?" I say.
+
+"Why, of course. I'd be delighted," says Mary.
+
+A small thing, but it makes me feel good.
+
+Over in Brooklyn I see a clock on a bank, and it says five o'clock. I do
+some fast calculating and say, "Uh-oh, I better phone. I'll never make it
+home by dinnertime."
+
+I phone and get Pop. He's home early from work. Just my luck.
+
+"I got to get this bike back to this kid in Coney," I tell him. "Then I'll
+be right home. About seven."
+
+"What do you mean _this_ bike and _this_ kid? Who? Anyway, I thought you
+were already at Coney Island."
+
+I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking questions. I start
+explaining. "Well, it was awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we'd
+go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to the zoo. So now we just
+got back to Brooklyn, and I'm downtown and I got to take the bike back."
+
+"So who's 'we'? You got a rat in your pocket?"
+
+I can distract Mom but not Pop. "Well, actually, it's a girl named Mary.
+It's her brother's bike. He's away in college."
+
+All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of the line, laughing his head
+off.
+
+"So what's so funny about that?"
+
+"Nothing," he says. "Nothing. Only now I can see what all the shouting was
+about at breakfast."
+
+"Oh."
+
+"O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as _well_ as the bicycle of the brother
+who goes to college, home safe. Hear? I'll tell your mother you narrowly
+escaped drowning, and she'll probably save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?"
+
+"O.K. Bye."
+
+Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though, him worrying about me
+getting Mary home safe, when her own mother doesn't worry any.
+
+We start along toward her house slowly, as there's a good deal of traffic
+now. I'm wondering how to see Mary again without having to ask for her
+number and phoning and making a date. Something about telephoning I don't
+like. Besides, I'd probably go out to a pay phone so the family wouldn't
+listen, and that'd make me feel stupid to begin with.
+
+Just then we start rounding the golf course, and I whack the handle bar of
+my bike and say, "Hey, that's it!"
+
+"What's it?"
+
+"Golf. Let's play golf. Not now, I don't mean. Next holiday. We've got
+Election Day coming up. I'll borrow Pop's clubs and take the subway and
+meet you here. How about ten o'clock?"
+
+"Hunh?" Mary looks startled. "Well, I suppose I could try, or anyway I
+could walk around."
+
+"It's easy. I'll show you." The two times I played, I only hit the ball
+decently about four or five times. But the times I _did_ hit it, it seemed
+easy.
+
+We get to Mary's house and I put the bikes away and give her back her
+brother's jacket. "I guess I'll go right along. It's getting late. See you
+Election Day."
+
+"O.K., bye. Say--thanks for the ferry ride!"
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        15
+
+
+        [Illustration: Cat eating turkey neck from bowl on floor.]
+
+
+
+                                                          DOLLARS AND CATS
+
+
+
+Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I go down to the delicatessen to buy
+some coke, so I can really enjoy myself watching TV. Tom is just finishing
+work at the flower shop, and I ask him if he wants to come along home.
+
+"Nah. Thanks. I got to be at work early tomorrow." He doesn't sound too
+cheery.
+
+"How's the job going?"
+
+"O.K., I guess." We walk along a little ways. "The job's not bad, but I
+don't want to be a florist all my life, and I can't see this job will
+train me for anything else."
+
+That seems pretty true. It must be tough not getting regular holidays off,
+too. "You have to work all day tomorrow?" I ask.
+
+"I open the store up at seven and start working on orders we've already
+got. I'll get through around three or four."
+
+"Hey, you want to come for dinner? We're not eating till evening."
+
+Tom grins. "You cooking the dinner? Maybe you better ask your mother."
+
+"It'll be all right with Mom. Look, I'll ask her and come let you know in
+the store tomorrow, O.K.?"
+
+"Hmm. Well, sure. Thanks. I've got a date with Hilda later in the evening,
+but she's got to eat with her folks first."
+
+"O.K. See you tomorrow."
+
+"Right."
+
+Mom says it's all right about Tom coming, so I go down and tell him in the
+morning. Turns out Mom has asked Kate to have dinner with us, too, which
+is quite a step. For Kate, I mean. I think she would have turned the
+invitation down, except no one can bear to hurt Mom's feelings. Kate's
+been in our house before, of course, but then she just came in to chat or
+have tea or something. It wasn't like an invitation.
+
+She comes, and she looks like someone from another world. I've never seen
+her in anything but her old skirts and sneakers, so the "good clothes"
+she's wearing now must have been hanging in a closet twenty years. The
+dress and shoes are way out of style, and she's carrying a real old black
+patent-leather pocketbook. Usually she just lugs her old cloth shopping
+bag, mostly full of cat goodies. Come to think of it, that's it: Kate
+lives in a world that is just her own and the cats'. I never saw her
+trying to fit into the ordinary world before.
+
+Cat knows her right away, though. Clothes don't fool him. He rubs her leg
+and curls up on the sofa beside her, still keeping a half-open eye on the
+oven door in the kitchen, where the turkey is roasting.
+
+Tom comes in, also in city clothes--a white shirt and tie and jacket--the
+first time I ever saw him in them. He sits down on the other side of Cat,
+who stretches one paw out toward him negligently.
+
+Looking at Kate and Tom sitting there on the sofa, both looking a little
+ill at ease, I get a funny idea. My family is starting to collect people
+the way Kate collects homeless cats. Of course, Kate and Tom aren't
+homeless. They're people-less--not part of any family. I think Mom always
+wanted more people to take care of, so she's glad to have them.
+
+Kidding, I ask Kate, "How many cats at your home for Thanksgiving dinner?"
+
+She stops stroking Cat a minute and thinks. "Hmm, Susan's got four new
+kittens, just got their eyes open. A beautiful little orange one and three
+tigers. Then there's two big kittens, strays, and one old stray tom. Makes
+eight, that's all. Sometimes I've had lots more than that."
+
+"Doesn't the landlord ever object?" Pop asks.
+
+Kate snorts. "Him! Huh! I pay my rent. And I have my own padlock on the
+door, so he can't come snooping around."
+
+We all sit down to dinner. Pop gives Cat the turkey neck to crunch up in
+the kitchen. He finishes that and crouches and stares at us eating. Kate
+gives him tidbits, which I'm not supposed to do. I don't think she really
+wants to eat the turkey herself. She's pretty strictly a fruit and yogurt
+type.
+
+After dinner Tom leaves to meet Hilda, and I walk home with Kate, carrying
+a bag of scraps and giblets for her cats. While she's fiddling with the
+two sets of keys to open her door, the man next door sticks his head out.
+"Messenger was here a little while ago with a telegram for you. Wouldn't
+give it to me."
+
+"A telegram?" Kate gapes.
+
+"Yeah. He'll be back." The man looks pleased, like he's been able to
+deliver some bad news, and pulls his head in and shuts his door.
+
+We go into Kate's apartment, and cats come meowing and rubbing against her
+legs, and they jump up on the sink and rub and nudge the bag of scraps
+when she puts it down. Kate is muttering rapidly to herself and fidgeting
+with her coat and bag and not really paying much attention to the cats,
+which is odd.
+
+"Lots of people send telegrams on holidays. It's probably just greetings,"
+I say.
+
+"Not to me, they don't!" Kate snaps, also sounding as if they better
+hadn't.
+
+I go over to play with the little kittens. The marmalade-colored one is
+the strongest of the litter, and he's learned to climb out of the box. He
+chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the big cats, and she strides
+over and scoops him back into the box. "You stay in there. You'll get
+stepped on." She drops Susan back in with her babies to take care of them.
+
+The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the door, practically bowling over
+an ancient little messenger leaning sleepily against the side of the door.
+
+"Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign here," he says.
+
+She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams the door. The orange kitten has
+got out again, and Kate does come close to stepping on him as she walks
+across the room tearing open the telegram. He doesn't know enough to dodge
+feet yet. I scoop him back in this time.
+
+Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She looks quite calm now. She says,
+"Well, he died."
+
+"Huh? Who?"
+
+"My brother. He's the only person in the world I know who would send me a
+telegram. So he's dead now."
+
+She repeats it, and I can't figure whether to say I'm sorry or what. I
+always thought when someone heard of a death in the family, there'd be a
+lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks perfectly calm, but strange
+somehow.
+
+"Has he been sick?"
+
+Kate shakes her head. "I don't know. I haven't seen him in twenty years."
+
+There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes on, talking half to herself
+and half to me. "Mean old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about
+his money. That's all he cared about. Once he tried to get me to give him
+money to invest. That's the last time I saw him. He has an old house way
+up in the Bronx. But we never did get along, even when we were kids."
+
+"Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent the telegram?"
+
+"He's had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him. She'd buy him day-old bread
+and dented cans of soup because they were cheaper. She suited him
+fine--saved him money and never talked to him. Well, she'll get his money
+now, if he left any. That's what she's been waiting for. She sent me the
+wire."
+
+Twenty years, I think. That's a long time not to be speaking to your own
+brother, and him living just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder. She
+couldn't just not give a hoot about him. They must have been real mad at
+each other. And mad at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what kind of
+parents _they_  had, with one of them growing up loving only cats and the
+other only money.
+
+Kate is staring out the window and stroking the old stray tomcat between
+the ears, and it hits me: there isn't a person in the world she loves or
+even hates. I like cats fine, too, but if I didn't have people that
+mattered, it wouldn't be so good. I say "So long" quietly and go out.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        16
+
+
+     [Illustration: Reporters and photographers crowding in on Kate.]
+
+
+
+                                                                   FORTUNE
+
+
+
+"I always wondered if the poor soul had any relatives." That's what Mom
+says when I tell her about Kate's telegram. "And now she's lost her only
+brother. That's sad."
+
+"I think it's sad she never talked to him for twenty years. All these
+years I've wished I had a brother," I say.
+
+"If it's her only brother, she's going to have to do something about his
+estate," says Pop. That legal mind, it never rests. I guess he's got a
+point about this, though. How is Kate going to deal with lawyers, or
+undertakers, or anyone? She can't hardly stand to _talk_  to people like
+that.
+
+"What'll she have to do?"
+
+"Maybe I better go see her tomorrow," says Pop. "There can be lots of
+things--see if he left a will, if he owes any taxes, if he has property
+that has to be taken care of or sold. You can't tell."
+
+"Kate said he was a miser. Maybe he left her a million. Say, that'd be
+great!"
+
+"Don't be a dope!" Pop snaps, and he really sounds angry, so I pipe down.
+
+The next morning Pop tells me to go over and see how Kate is. "The way she
+feels about people, I don't like to just barge in. I'll come by in ten
+minutes, like I was picking you up to go to a movie or something."
+
+I saunter round the corner onto Third Avenue and stop short. There are two
+newspaper cars pulled up in front of Kate's building, one red and one
+black, and a sizable knot of people gathered on the sidewalk. I move in
+among them.
+
+"That crazy cat lady ... he musta been a nut too ... left her about a
+million ... a lotta rich cats, how d'ya like that...."
+
+So I guess he did leave her money, and all of a sudden I see it isn't
+"great." It's going to be trouble. I push through the people and go
+upstairs without anyone stopping me. When I open Kate's door, old stray
+tomcat shoots out. He's leaving, and I can see why.
+
+Kate's room is tiny, and it looks like it's filled with a mob. Maybe it's
+only half a dozen guys, but the photographers are pushing around trying to
+get shots and the reporters are jabbering.
+
+Orange kitten sticks his head out of the box. Then out he comes, into the
+sea of feet. I drop him back in and try to get across to Kate. She's
+pretty well backed into a corner and looking ready to jump out the window.
+She has her arms folded in front of her, each hand clenching the other
+elbow, as if to hold herself together. A reporter with a bunch of scratch
+paper in his hand is crowding her.
+
+"Miss Carmichael"--funny, I never even knew her last name before--"I just
+want to ask one or two questions. Could you tell us when you last saw your
+brother?"
+
+"No, I couldn't," she snaps, drawing her head down between her shoulders
+and trying to melt into the wall.
+
+"Watcha going to do with the money?" a photographer asks. He picks up a
+cat, one of the big stray kittens, and dumps it on Kate. The cat clings to
+her and the photographer says, "Hold it now. Just let me snap a picture."
+
+He takes two steps back.
+
+At the first step the room is silent. At the second step a shattering
+caterwaul goes up. He has stepped on the adventurous orange kitten.
+
+The scream freezes us all, except Kate. She shoots out of her corner,
+knowing instantly what has happened. The kitten is jerking slightly now,
+and bright, bright blood is coming out of its mouth. With one violent,
+merciful stroke Kate finishes it. She picks the limp body up and wraps it
+neatly in a paper towel and places it in the wastebasket.
+
+The room is still silent for one congealed instant. Kate seems almost to
+have forgotten the crowd of men. Then two of them make hastily for the
+door. The photographer shuffles his feet and says, "Gee, m'am, I didn't
+mean ... I wouldn't for the world...."
+
+Kate whirls and screams at him: "Get out! Get out, all of you! Leave me
+and my cats alone! I never asked you in here!"
+
+At that moment my pop comes in the door. Of course he doesn't know
+anything about the kitten, but he takes in the general situation and herds
+the two remaining newspapermen to the door. He gives them his card and
+home address and tells them to look him up a little later.
+
+My knees suddenly feel weak and I slump onto the sofa, and my eyes swivel
+round to the little package in the wastebasket. It would be the strongest
+one. I really never saw anything get killed right in front of me before.
+It hits you.
+
+Pop is trying to calm Kate down. She's facing him, grabbing each sleeve of
+his coat. "What am I going to do? What can I do? I don't want his money. I
+don't want anything from anyone. I just want to be let alone!"
+
+"Take it easy, Kate, take it easy. You don't have to let anyone into your
+apartment. About the inheritance, well, I'll have to look into that." Over
+his shoulder Pop signals to me to go home and get Mom.
+
+I go home and explain the situation to Mom, and she comes back with me.
+One photographer and a couple of reporters are still hanging around, and
+the guy snaps a picture of me and Mom at the door. Mom scoots on up. Bad
+as I feel, I still get a charge out of getting my picture taken for a
+paper.
+
+"Hey, kid," one of the reporters shoves in front of me, "about this Miss
+Carmichael. Does she act pretty strange, like talking to herself on the
+street and stuff?"
+
+I see the story he's trying to build up. While it's true in a way, if you
+really know Kate it's not. Anyway, I'm against it. I say, "Nah. She's all
+right. She's just sort of scared of people, and she likes cats."
+
+"How many cats she got?"
+
+There have been up to a dozen on a busy day, but again I play it down.
+"She's got a mother cat with kittens. Sometimes a stray or two. Don't get
+sucked in by all that jazz these dumb kids around here'll give you."
+
+"She gets all that money, you think she'll buy a big house, set up a home
+for stray cats?"
+
+I shrug. "I don't know. She doesn't want the money anyway. She just wants
+to be let alone."
+
+"Doesn't want the money!" the photographer chips in. "Boy, she must be
+_really_ nuts! I'm going back to the office."
+
+The reporter says he's going to wait and talk to my pop, and I go on
+upstairs to see what's doing.
+
+Kate is sitting on the sofa, sniffing and wiping her eyes and muttering,
+but looking calmer. Mom is making tea. Pop is looking out the window,
+scratching his head.
+
+Kate gulps and draws a big breath. "Tell them I don't want his old money.
+Tell them to give it to someone else. Tell them to leave me alone. I just
+want my own place and my cats. They can't make me move, can they? I've
+lived here thirty years. I couldn't go anyplace else."
+
+She gulps and sniffs some more, and Mom brings her a cup of tea. The stray
+kittens jump up to see if it's anything good and nuzzle into her lap. Kate
+takes a sip of tea and asks Pop again, "They can't make me move, can
+they?" This seems to be what worries her most.
+
+"No-o," says Pop, "it's only...."
+
+He's interrupted by a knock on the door, and I go open it a crack. A guy
+says he's the landlord. As soon as Kate hears his voice, she yelps at him,
+"I paid my rent, first of the month like always. Don't you come bothering
+me!"
+
+"It's about the cats," he says. "People outside saying you got a dozen
+cats in here. There's a law, you know."
+
+He's a seedy-looking, whining kind of a man, and he looks real pleased
+with himself when he says there's a law about cats.
+
+Kate jumps right at him. "I'm not breaking any laws. I know you. You just
+want to get me out of here and rent the place for more money. You leave me
+alone!"
+
+The man whines, "There's a law, that's all. I don't want no violation
+slapped on my building."
+
+Pop comes over and tells the man there's just a mother cat with kittens.
+"There's a couple of strays here, too, right now, but I'll take them home
+with me."
+
+"There's a law, that's all. Also, I got a right to inspect the premises."
+Pop shows no signs of letting him in, and he shuffles and grumbles and
+goes away.
+
+"Lock the door," Kate snaps. "I keep it locked all the time."
+
+Pop says he's going home to make some phone calls and try to figure out
+what's going on. He takes down the name and address of Kate's brother and
+asks her if she's sure there are no other relatives. She says she never
+heard of any. Pop goes, and Kate insists that I lock the door after him.
+
+She gets up and starts stirring around getting food out for the cats. She
+buys fish and chicken livers for them, even though she hardly eats any
+meat herself. She listens at the back door a moment to make sure no one's
+out there, then opens the door and puts out the garbage and wastebasket.
+There goes the adventurous kitten. You got to hand it to Kate. She has no
+sniffling sentimentality about her cats. Kitten's dead, it's dead, that's
+all. She doesn't mope over the limp mite of fur. In fact, anything to do
+with cats she's got sense and guts. They're her family. I don't know that
+I could have put that kitten out of its misery.
+
+Just as long as the world doesn't throw any stray fortunes at her, Kate
+does fine. But when people get in her way, she needs someone like Pop.
+
+Mom says she'll stick around a while and tells me to take the two stray
+kittens home, just in case the landlord comes back trying to make trouble.
+
+"O.K., great--Cat'll have some company!"
+
+Kate sniffs. "He'll hate it. Cats don't like other cats pushing into their
+house."
+
+She's right, of course. I put the kittens down at home, and Cat hisses at
+them and then runs them under the radiator in the kitchen. Then he sits
+down in the doorway and glowers at them, on guard.
+
+Things simmer down gradually. Mom and I and sometimes Tom, who's right at
+the flower shop on the corner, take turns checking on Kate and doing
+shopping for her, or going with her so she doesn't get badgered by people.
+But pretty soon everyone in the neighborhood forgets all about her and her
+inheritance. They see her buying just the same old cat food and cottage
+cheese and fruit, and they probably figure the whole thing was a phony.
+
+It wasn't though. Pop finds out her brother did leave a will. He lined up
+his funeral, left something to his housekeeper, something to a little
+restaurant owner way downtown--apparently that was his one big luxury, a
+decent meal twice a year when he went down to buy more stocks--and the rest
+to Kate.
+
+Pop says it may take months or years to clear up the estate, but he says
+Kate can get her share all put in trust for her with some bank, and
+they'll take care of all the legalities and taxes and just pay her as much
+or little as she wants out of the income. And she can leave the whole kit
+and caboodle to a cat home in her will if she wants to, which will
+probably make her tightwad brother spin in his grave. I asked her once,
+and she said maybe she'd leave some to the Children's Aid, because there
+are a lot of stray children in New York City that need looking after, as
+well as cats. She's getting to think about people some.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        17
+
+
+         [Illustration: Mary calling from phone booth at Macy's.]
+
+
+
+                                                         TELEPHONE NUMBERS
+
+
+
+There are some disadvantages to not getting a girl's phone number. This
+sort of date I had with Mary for golf on Election Day fell through. In the
+first place, I was sick in bed with the flu, and Mom wouldn't have let me
+out for anything, and secondly, it was pouring rain. Without the phone
+number, there wasn't any way I could let her know, and I didn't even know
+a street address to write to later.
+
+By the time I got finished with the flu, we were into Thanksgiving and
+then all the trouble with Kate. Time passed and I felt rottener about
+standing her up without a word, and I couldn't get up my nerve to go out
+to Coney and just appear on her doorstep. I could have found the house all
+right, once I was out there.
+
+The first week of Christmas vacation the phone rings late one afternoon
+and Pop answers it. He says, "Just one minute, please," and I know right
+away from his voice it isn't someone he knows.
+
+"Young lady on the phone for you, Dave," he says, and he enjoys watching
+me gulp.
+
+"Hullo?" a rather tight, flat little voice asks. "Is this Dave--uh,
+Mitchell--uh, I mean, with Cat?"
+
+I recognize it's Mary, all right, even if she does sound strange and
+scared.
+
+"Oh, hi!" I say. "Sure, it's me! I'm awfully sorry about that day we were
+going to play golf. I was in bed with the flu, and then I didn't know your
+phone number or...."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," she says. "I wondered what happened."
+
+There's a slight pause, and I see Pop grinning and pretending to read his
+paper. I turn around so I won't see him.
+
+"Where are you now, out in Coney?" I ask Mary.
+
+"No, as a matter of fact, I'm in Macy's." Her voice trails off a little,
+but then she starts in again. "As a matter of fact, that's why I called.
+You see, I was supposed to meet Mom here at five, and she hasn't come, and
+I bought all these Christmas presents, and I forgot about the tax or
+something, and this is my last dime."
+
+She stops. I see now why she sounds scared, and I get a curdled feeling in
+my stomach, too, because what if the dime runs out in the phone and she's
+cut off? I'll never find her in Macy's. It's too big.
+
+"Pop!" I yelp. "There's this girl I know is in a phone booth in Macy's and
+her dime is going to run out and she hasn't anymore money. What'll I do?"
+
+"Get the phone number of the booth and call her back. Here--" He gives me a
+pencil.
+
+What a relief. Funny I never thought of that. You just somehow don't think
+of a phone booth having a number.
+
+Mary sounds pretty relieved, too. I get the number and call her back, and
+with Pop making suggestions here and there we settle that I'll go over to
+Macy's and meet her on the ground floor near Thirty-fourth Street and
+Broadway at the counter where they're selling umbrellas for $2.89, which
+Mary says she can see from the phone booth.
+
+"O.K." I say, and then I sort of don't want to hang up. It's fun talking.
+So I go on. "Look, just in case we miss each other at Macy's, what's your
+phone number at home, so I could call you sometime?"
+
+"COney 7-1218."
+
+"O.K. Well, good-bye. I'll be right over. To Macy's, I mean."
+
+I grab my coat and check to see if I've got money. Pop asks if I'm going
+to bring her home for dinner.
+
+"Gee, I don't know." I hadn't given a thought to what we'd do. "I guess
+so, maybe, if her mother hasn't come by then. I'll call you if we do
+anything else."
+
+"O.K.," Pop says.
+
+I go out and hustle through the evening rush-hour crowds to the subway.
+The stores are all open evenings now, for Christmas, so the crowds are
+going both ways.
+
+I get to the right corner of Macy's, and I see Mary right away. Everyone
+else is rushing about and muttering to themselves, and she's standing
+there looking lost. In fact she looks so much like a waif that the first
+thing I say is, "Hi! Shall we go get something to eat?"
+
+"Yes, I'm starved. I was just going to get a doughnut when I found I'd run
+out of money."
+
+"Let's go home and you can have dinner with us then. But what about your
+mother? Won't she be looking for you?"
+
+Mary shifts her feet and looks tired. "I don't know. Probably if she came
+and I wasn't here, she'd figure I'd gone home."
+
+I try to think a minute, which is hard to do with all these people shoving
+around you. Mary starts to pick up her two enormous shopping bags, and I
+take them from her, still trying to think. At the subway entrance I see
+the phone booth.
+
+"That's the thing," I say. "Why don't you call your house and see if your
+mother left a message or something?"
+
+"Well...." Mary stands by the phone looking confused and in fact about
+ready to cry. I suddenly decide the best thing we can do is get home and
+sit down where it's quiet. Waiting fifteen minutes or so to phone can't
+make much difference.
+
+We get home pretty fast and I introduce Mary to Mom and Pop. She sinks
+into the nearest chair and takes off her shoes.
+
+"Excuse me," she says. "I just bought these heels, and it's awful wearing
+them!"
+
+She wiggles her toes and begins to look better. Mom offers her a pair of
+slippers and Pop passes some potato chips.
+
+Mom says, "Poor child, did you try to do all your Christmas shopping at
+once?"
+
+"Well, actually, I was having fun just looking for a long while. I have
+two little cousins that I don't really have to get much for, but I love
+looking at all the toys. I spent quite a while there. Then I did the rest
+of my shopping in a rush, and everything is so crowded, and I got mixed up
+on my money or the sales tax and only had a dime left, and I missed my
+mother or she forgot."
+
+She stretches out her toes to touch Cat, who is sitting in front of her.
+"I couldn't think what to do. It's so hard to think when your feet hurt."
+
+"It certainly is," agrees Mom. She goes out to the kitchen to finish
+fixing dinner, and Pop suggests Mary better phone her home. She gets her
+father, and her mother has left a message that she was delayed and figured
+Mary would go home alone. Mary gives her father our address and tells him
+she'll be home by nine.
+
+We must have hit a lucky day because we have a real good dinner: slices of
+good whole meat, not mushed up stuff, and potatoes cooked with cheese in
+them, and salad, and a lemon meringue pie from the bakery, even.
+
+After dinner we sit around a little while, and Pop says I better take Mary
+home, and he gives me money for a cab at the end of the subway. When Mary
+gives the driver her home address, I say it over to myself a few times so
+I'll remember.
+
+Suddenly I wonder about something. "Say, how'd you know _my_ phone
+number?"
+
+"I looked it up," she says simply. "There's about twenty-eleven Mitchells
+in the Manhattan phone book, but only one in the East Twenties, so I
+figured that must be you."
+
+"Gee, that's true. You must have had an awful time, though, standing in
+the phone booth with your feet hurting, going through all those
+Mitchells."
+
+Says Mary, "Oh, no. I did it one rainy afternoon at home, weeks ago."
+
+Well, what do you know.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                                                        18
+
+
+          [Illustration: Raised champagne glasses toasting Cat.]
+
+
+
+                                                          "HERE'S TO CAT!"
+
+
+
+The two stray kittens gradually make themselves at home. Somehow or other
+Cat has taught them that he's in charge here, and he just chases them for
+fun now and again, when he's not busy sleeping.
+
+As for keeping cats in my room, that's pretty well forgotten. For one
+thing, Mom really likes them. She sneaks the kittens saucers of cream and
+bits of real hamburger when no one's looking, and she likes talking to
+them in the kitchen. She doesn't pick them up, but just having them in the
+room sure doesn't give her asthma.
+
+The only time we have any trouble from the cats is one evening when Pop
+comes home and the two kittens skid down the hall between his legs, with
+Cat after them. He scales his hat at the lot of them and roars down the
+hall to me, "Hey, Davey! When are you getting rid of these cats? I'm not
+fixing to start an annex to Kate's cat home!"
+
+"I'm sure Davey will find homes for them," Mom says soothingly, but
+getting a little short of breath, the way she does any time she's afraid
+one of us is losing his temper.
+
+In fact, one thing this cat business seems to have established is that me
+and Pop fighting is the main cause of Mom's asthma. So we both try to do a
+little better, and a lot of things we used to argue and fight about, like
+my jazz records, we just kid each other about now. But now and then we
+still work up to a real hassle.
+
+I've been taking a history course the first semester at school. It's a
+real lemon--just a lot of preaching about government and citizenship. The
+second semester I switch to a music course. This is O.K. with the
+school--but not with Pop. Right away when I bring home my new program, he
+says, "How come you're taking one less course this half?"
+
+I explain that I'm taking music, and also biology, algebra, English, and
+French.
+
+"Music!" he snorts. "That's recreation, not a course. Do it on your own
+time!"
+
+"Pop, it's a course. You think the school signs me up for an hour of home
+record playing?"
+
+"They might," he grunts. "You're not going to loaf your way through school
+if I have anything to say about it."
+
+"Loaf!" I yelp. "Four major academic subjects is more than lots of the
+guys take."
+
+Mom comes and suggests that Pop better go over to school with me and talk
+it over at the school office. He does, and for once I win a round--I keep
+music for this semester. But he makes sure that next year I'm signed up
+all year for five majors: English, French, math, chemistry, and European
+history. I'll be lucky if I have time to breathe.
+
+I go down to the flower shop to grouse to Tom. It's after Valentine's Day,
+and business is slack and the boss is out.
+
+"Why does Pop have to come butting into my business at school? Doesn't he
+even think the school knows what it's doing?"
+
+"Aw, heck," says Tom, "your father's the one has to see you get into
+college or get a job. Sometimes schools do let kids take a lot of soft
+courses, and then they're out on a limb later."
+
+"Huh. He just likes to boss everything I do."
+
+"So--he cares."
+
+"Huh." I'm not very ready to buy this, but then I remember Tom's father,
+who _doesn't_ care. It makes me think.
+
+"Besides," says Tom, "half the reason you and your father are always
+bickering is that you're so much alike."
+
+"Me? Like _him_?"
+
+"Sure. You're both impatient and curious, got to poke into everything. As
+long as there's a bone on the floor, the two of you worry it."
+
+Mr. Palumbo comes back to the shop then, and Tom gets busy with the
+plants. I go home, wondering if I really am at all like Pop. I never
+thought of it before.
+
+It's funny about fights. Pop and I can go along real smooth and easy for a
+while, and I think: Well, he really isn't a bad guy, and I'm growing up,
+we can see eye to eye--all that stuff. Then, whoosh! I hardly know what
+starts it, but a fight boils up, and we're both breathing fire like
+dragons on the loose.
+
+We get a holiday Washington's Birthday, which is good because there's a TV
+program on Tuesday, the night before the holiday, that I hardly ever get
+to watch. It's called _Out Beyond_, and the people in it are very real,
+not just good guys and bad guys. There's always one character moving
+around, keeping you on the edge of your chair, and by the time it all
+winds up in a surprise ending, you find this character is not a real
+person, he's supernatural. The program goes on till eleven o'clock, and
+Mom won't let me watch it on school nights.
+
+I get the pillows comfortably arranged on the floor, with a big bottle of
+soda and a bag of popcorn within easy reach. The story starts off with
+some nature shots of a farm and mountains in the background and this
+little kid playing with his grandfather. There's a lot of people in it,
+but gradually you get more and more suspicious of dear old grandpa. He's
+taking the kid for a walk when a thunderstorm blows up.
+
+Right then, of course, we have to have the alternate sponsor. He signs
+off, finally, and up comes Pop.
+
+"Here, Davey old boy, we can do better than that tonight. The Governor and
+the Mayor are on a TV debate about New York City school reorganization."
+
+At first I figure he's kidding, so I just growl, "Who cares?"
+
+He switches the channel.
+
+I jump up, tipping over the bottle of soda on the way. "Pop, that's not
+fair! I'm right in the middle of a program, and I been waiting weeks to
+watch it because Mom won't let me on school nights!"
+
+Pop goes right on tuning his channel. "Do you good to listen to a real
+program for a change. There'll be another western on tomorrow night."
+
+That's the last straw. I shout, "See? You don't even know what you're
+talking about! It's not a western."
+
+Pop looks at me prissily. "You're getting altogether too upset about these
+programs. Stop it and behave yourself. Go get a sponge to mop up the
+soda."
+
+"It's your fault! Mop it up yourself!" I'm too mad now to care what I say.
+I charge down the hall to my room and slam the door.
+
+I hear the TV going for a few minutes, then Pop turns it off and goes in
+the kitchen to talk to Mom. In a little while he comes down and knocks on
+my door. Knocks--that's something. Usually he just barges in.
+
+"Look here now, Dave, we've got to straighten a few things out quietly.
+Your mother says she told you you could watch that program, whatever it
+was. So O.K., go ahead, you can finish it."
+
+"Yeah, it's about over by now." I'm still sore, and besides Pop's still
+standing in my door, so I figure there's a hitch in this somewhere.
+
+"But anyway, you shouldn't get so sore about an old television program
+that you shout 'Mop it up yourself' at me."
+
+"Hmm."
+
+"Hmm, nothing."
+
+"Well, I don't think you should turn a guy's TV program off in the middle
+without even finding out about it."
+
+Pop says "Hmm" this time, and we both stand and simmer down.
+
+I look at my watch. It's a quarter to eleven. I say, "Well, O.K. I might
+as well see the end. Sorry I got sore."
+
+Pop moves out of the doorway. He says, "Hereafter I will only turn off
+your TV programs before they start, not in the middle."
+
+Just as I get the TV on and settle down, the doorbell rings.
+
+"Goodness, who could that be so late?" says Mom.
+
+Pop goes to the door. It's Tom, and Hilda is with him. I turn off the
+television set--I've lost track of what's happening, and it doesn't seem to
+be the grandfather who's the spook after all. It's the first time Hilda
+has been to our house, and Tom introduces her around. Then there's one of
+those moments of complete silence, with everyone looking embarrassed,
+before we all start to speak at once.
+
+"Hilda came to the beach with us," I say.
+
+"I told Tom we shouldn't come so late," says Hilda.
+
+Pop says, "Not late at all. Come in and sit down."
+
+Hilda sits on the sofa, where Cat is curled up. He looks at her, puts his
+head back and goes on sleeping.
+
+Mom brings coffee and cookies in from the kitchen, and I pour the rest of
+the popcorn into a bowl and pass it around. Tom stirs his coffee
+vigorously and takes one sip and puts the cup down.
+
+"Reason we came so late," he says, "Hilda and I have been talking all
+evening. We want to get married."
+
+Pop doesn't look as surprised as I do. "Congratulations!" he says.
+
+Tom says, "Thanks" and looks at Hilda, and she blushes. Really. Tom drinks
+a little more coffee and then he goes on: "The trouble is, I can't get
+married on this flower-shop job."
+
+"Doesn't pay enough?" Pop asks.
+
+"Well, it's not just the pay. The job isn't getting me anywhere I want to
+go. So that's what we've been talking about all evening. Finally we went
+up to Times Square and talked to the guys in the Army and Navy and Air
+Force recruiting office. You know, I'd get drafted in a year or two,
+anyway. I've decided to enlist in the Army."
+
+"Goodness, you may get sent way out West for years and years!" says Mom.
+
+"No, not if I enlist in the Army. That's for three years. But I can choose
+what specialist school I want to go into, and there's this Air Defense
+Command--it's something to do with missiles. In that I can also choose what
+metropolitan area I want to be stationed in. I can choose New York, and we
+could get married, and I might even be able to go on taking college course
+at night school, with the Army paying for most of it."
+
+Pop says, "You sound like the recruiting officer himself. You sure of all
+this?"
+
+"I'll have to check some more," says Tom. "The recruiting officer, as a
+matter of fact, tried to persuade me to shoot for officers' training and
+go into the Army as a career. But then I would be sent all over, and
+anyway, I don't think Army life would be any good for Hilda."
+
+"I can see you have put in a busy evening," says Pop. "Well, shove back
+the coffee cups, and I'll break out that bottle of champagne that's been
+sitting in the icebox since Christmas."
+
+I go and retrieve my spilled bottle of soda. There's still enough left for
+one big glass. Pop brings out the champagne, and the cork blows and hits
+the ceiling. Cat jumps off the sofa and stands, half crouched and tail
+twitching, ready to take cover.
+
+Pop fills little glasses for them and raises his to Tom and Hilda. "Here's
+to you--a long, happy life!"
+
+We drink, and then I raise my glass of soda. "Here's to Cat! Tom wouldn't
+even be standing here if it wasn't for Cat."
+
+That's true, and we all drink to Cat. He sits down and licks his right
+front paw.
+
+
+
+
+
+_Format by Jean Krulis_
+_Set in Linotype Baskerville_
+_Composed and bound by American Book-Stratford Press_
+_Printed by The Murray Printing Co._
+*HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS, INCORPORATED*
+
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT***
+
+
+
+CREDITS
+
+
+March 27, 2008
+
+            Project Gutenberg TEI edition 1
+            Produced by Adam Buchbinder, Rene Anderson Benitz, and the
+            Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+            <http://www.pgdp.net/c>. Page-images available at
+            <http://www.pgdp.net/projects/projectID467059110c292/>
+
+
+
+A WORD FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG
+
+
+This file should be named 24921.txt or 24921.zip.
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+
+
+    http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/9/2/24921/
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one -- the old editions will be
+renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one
+owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and
+you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission
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