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
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 got 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.”
“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
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.”
It's Like This, Cat Page 2