by Peg Kehret
I took it as a good omen, and I watched carefully, hoping the camera would zoom in on the crowd. Maybe I would see Dad at the game! Wouldn’t that be something?
That’s where I’m going, I told myself. In another week, I’ll be there, sitting in the stands with Dad, watching the Giants in person. We’ll take along a big bag of peanuts in the shell, and later Dad will buy me a frozen malt or a soft drink.
“Are you a baseball fan?”
I jumped at the voice. An older man had joined me on the sidewalk. He held a bag of popcorn.
“Yes,” I said. “Especially the Giants.”
“Me, too. Used to play some ball myself, years ago. Never made it to the majors, but I had a great time anyway.” He ate a handful of popcorn.
He wore a plaid shirt, and suspenders held his pants up. His face looked like Santa Claus without a beard.
“Have some popcorn?” he asked, extending the bag toward me.
I heard Mama’s voice in my mind: Never talk to strangers. Never accept food or money from someone you don’t know.
I could smell the popcorn.
I stuck my hand in the bag. “Thanks,” I said.
We watched the rest of the inning in silence. When the commercials came on, the man said, “Haven’t seen you around before. You new in town, are you?”
“Just visiting,” I said.
He offered the popcorn again, and this time I accepted immediately.
“You think the Giants have a chance at the World Series?” he asked.
“They’re a cinch,” I said.
He laughed. “I hope you’re right.”
We watched another half inning and then the man said, “I’ve had enough popcorn. Do you want the rest, or should I toss it?”
“I’ll take it,” I said. “Thanks.”
He handed me the half-full bag, and I gobbled up all but the last inch, which I saved for Foxey. Right at that moment, popcorn tasted even better than Mama’s macaroni and cheese.
The man watched me eat, but said nothing.
Pittsburgh went down one-two-three in the top of the ninth, which ended the game.
“Why did you save some of the popcorn?” the man asked, pointing at the sack, which I had carefully folded so the popcorn wouldn’t spill.
“It’s for my cat.”
“Is your cat hungry?”
“Not right now. I have some cat food, but it might not last as long as it needs to, so I feed him other things when I can.”
“My cat died not long ago,” the man said, “and I still have a couple of boxes of cat food at home. If you want to come home with me, you can have them.”
I hesitated. What if the old man was some sort of crazed child molester? What if he locks kids in his closets and lets them starve to death? I had been too gullible when I believed that Jay was going to buy me a plate of spaghetti. I couldn’t afford another bad choice.
“You wouldn’t have to come inside, if you don’t want to,” the man said. “I know your folks have probably told you never to go anywhere with a stranger.”
I nodded.
“It’s just a few blocks,” he said, and started off down the sidewalk.
What if he’s an ax murderer? I thought. What if I’m making another stupid mistake?
But free cat food doesn’t come along every day of the week.
I followed the man home.
CHAPTER
TEN
He lived in a small, old house with a front porch. Three-story apartment buildings crowded close on both sides.
“You can wait on the porch, if you like,” the man said. “I’ll bring it out.”
I sat on the steps while the man went inside. Soon he returned with a bag containing three boxes of cat food. One was half full; the other two had never been opened. In his other hand, he carried a small tray that held a huge slice of cheese pizza and a glass of apple juice.
“I thought maybe the cat wasn’t the only hungry one,” he said, as he set the tray on the step beside me.
“Thanks.”
“My name is Hank Woodworth.”
I took a bite of the pizza.
“When I was sixteen years old,” Hank said, “I ran away from home. Thought I’d see the world, be independent.”
I stopped chewing and looked at him.
“It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Ran out of money after only three days.”
“What did you do?”
“I went back home. My parents were so glad to see me that they didn’t even wallop me, but you know something?”
“What?”
“I regretted going back so soon. I always wondered what would have happened if I’d tried a little harder to make it on my own before I gave up. ’Course, I was older than you. It’s easier to find work when you’re sixteen.”
I opened Foxey’s box and poured some of the cat food into it.
“Wouldn’t he eat better if you took him out of that box?”
“He gets nervous in a strange place.”
“You could take him inside, in the kitchen. It would be quiet and he could prowl around a bit.”
I hesitated. I knew Foxey would love to be off the leash for a little while but I’d learned the hard way not to be too trusting.
“Look,” Hank said. “I admire your caution. Shows you aren’t a fool who believes everything he’s told. But there’s a time to have faith, too, and this is one of those times.”
I remembered an old movie I’d seen, where the sheriff said, “Look ’em in the eye. You can tell if a man’s shifty or honest if you look ’em straight in the eye.”
I looked into Hank Woodworth’s eyes. They were a deep gray-blue and there were lots of crinkly lines at the edges, as if he smiled a lot. He was not my idea of an ax murderer.
“Foxey would like to eat in the kitchen,” I said, and followed Hank Woodworth into the house.
Later, after Foxey had polished off a good bit of cat food and I had finished a second piece of pizza, I told Hank Woodworth the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Who I am, where I was going, and why.
Hank listened quietly, nodding occasionally. Not once did he tell me I should not have lied to my mother. Not once did he warn me about the dangers of traveling alone. Not once did he suggest that I was a stupid, headstrong kid who didn’t know what was good for him. There aren’t many adults like Hank, I can tell you. All he said was, “Why don’t you rest here overnight? I have some chores that need doing, so you’ll be expected to earn your keep.”
I mowed the lawn, weeded the front flower bed, and swept the sidewalk. Foxey jumped on and off the kitchen chairs, chased his tail, and rolled in a patch of sunlight on the linoleum. It felt good to both of us to move around without looking over our shoulders all the time.
While I worked and Foxey played, Hank cooked. When I went inside to tell him I’d finished all the chores, the house smelled like Mama’s spaghetti. I sniffed appreciatively.
“You like polenta?” Hank asked.
“I’ve never had it,” I said and then quickly added, “but it smells good.”
“It’s like spaghetti and meat balls, except there’s cornmeal instead of meat.”
“Sounds great. I don’t eat meat, anyway.”
“Neither do I,” he said. We grinned at each other.
“Is there anything else you want me to do?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I waited.
“After we eat, I want you to call your mother.”
I shook my head.
“She must be worried about you. It isn’t right not to let her know you’re okay.”
“I sent her a letter.”
“That isn’t the same as hearing your voice. You could have been forced to write a letter.”
“If I call, she’ll come after me. She’ll make me go home.”
“You don’t need to tell her where you are. Just tell her you’re all right.”
“What if she has the call traced?”
I shook my head again. “Mama could still find out the town.”
“I’ll pay for the call, so there won’t be an operator involved.”
I hesitated. Even if Mama traced the call to Grafton, it would take awhile for her to get here, and she wouldn’t know where to find me once she arrived. And I was leaving in the morning.
“It’s homemade spaghetti sauce,” Hank said.
The polenta was delicious. Foxey thought so, too.
After we ate and did the dishes, I walked beside Hank to the pay phone downtown.
While he dropped quarters in the slot, he said, “You only get three minutes, so talk fast.”
Aunt May answered the phone. When I said, “Hello, Aunt May,” she screamed. I’ll probably be deaf in my right ear for the rest of my life, the way she shrieked into the receiver. Then, without so much as a hello or how are you, she yelled, “Leona! It’s him!”
I held the receiver away from my head in case Aunt May decided to shriek something else but instead she said, “Where are you?”
“Hollywood,” I lied.
“No, you aren’t,” Aunt May said. “There’s no way you could get all the way to Hollywood so soon unless you sprouted angel wings and I highly doubt a sneaky boy who steals money from his aunt, and disappears for days on end, and scares his poor mama out of her wits, is about to sprout any angel wings.”
Mama came on the phone then. “Spencer? Spencer, is it really you?”
“It’s me, Mama,” I said. “I called to tell you everything is fine.”
“Everything is NOT fine,” Mama said. “How can everything be fine when I don’t know if my only child is alive or not? For all I know, you’re lying dead in a gutter somewhere.”
“I’m not in a gutter,” I said. “If I was dead, I would not be able to dial a telephone.”
“Where are you?”
“Hollywood.”
“Already? How did you get there so soon?”
“I hitchhiked.”
“Hitchhiked!” Mama’s voice was nearly as shrill as Aunt May’s had been. I winced and held the phone farther from my ear. “You know better than to hitchhike. You take your life in your hands when you hitch a ride. Anyone could pick you up. Anyone! You don’t know who’s behind the wheel of a car these days. It could be an ax murderer. The minute you get in that car, he could pull out his ax and split your skull in two. The last thing you’ll see on this Earth is your own brains spilling out across some stranger’s steering wheel.”
“Nobody split my skull, Mama. I’m okay and Foxey’s okay, too.”
“You still have that fool cat with you?”
That question surprised me. Of course I still had Foxey. Why did she think I left?
“I thought he would run off before you got six blocks from home,” Mama said.
“Well, he didn’t.”
Hank tapped his wristwatch and I knew the three minutes were nearly over.
“I have to go now, Mama,” I said.
“Go?” she cried. “Go where?”
“Back to my friend’s house.”
“What friend? Who are you staying with?”
“Good-bye, Mama.”
“Wait!” Mama said. “I’ll pay for the call. I have to write down your number so I can . . .”
An operator interrupted. “If you wish to continue your call, please deposit another two dol-”
I hung up. I didn’t want Mama to hear how much the call had cost because if she did, she might call the phone company and they could figure out how far away I was and I wasn’t nearly far enough away to want her to know the distance.
I stood with my hand on the telephone receiver and a quivery feeling in the pit of my stomach. It had seemed strange to hear Mama’s voice. I had pretty much convinced myself that if I never saw Mama again, it would be just fine with me, after the way she treated Foxey. But somehow, standing there by the drugstore, with the cars driving by and a faint breeze blowing, I was sorry the call didn’t last longer. It was good to hear Mama’s voice again, even though she was mad at me for running away.
“Want to call back?” Hank’s voice snapped me out of my homesickness.
“No.”
“Nothing wrong with changing your mind,” he said. “Maybe running off was the right thing to do last week. Maybe going back is the right thing to do this week.”
“I can’t take Foxey back to Aunt May’s.”
“I could probably find a good home for Foxey.”
“Foxey has a good home. With me.”
Hank started to say something, changed his mind, and instead went in the drugstore and ordered two chocolate ice-cream cones for us to eat on the way home.
“How come you’re being so nice to me?” I asked.
“I’m lonely. I miss having someone around to talk to. And you remind me of myself, when I was your age. You’re a thinker, like I was.”
When we got back to Hank’s house, he cut a small hole in the bottom end of a brown paper bag and put the bag on the floor. Foxey instantly went inside the bag to investigate. Then Hank tapped the outside of the bag with a pencil, right next to the small hole. Foxey’s paw shot out through the hole, feeling for the pencil. Hank tapped the other end of the bag, and Foxey did a quick U-turn.
Hank handed the pencil to me. “No sense spending money on expensive cat toys,” he said. “All cats love a paper bag with a hole in the bottom.”
Hank sat at his table, whittling a piece of wood. I sat on the floor, playing with Foxey. When Foxey tired of the bag-and-pencil game, Hank gave me a piece of string. I trailed it across the floor, and Foxey chased it.
“I worked all my life as a cabinetmaker,” Hank told me. “Always did like to make things out of wood. Had to retire a few years back because of a heart attack, but I still whittle a couple of hours every day.”
“Did you make those?” I asked, pointing to the carved wooden cats in various poses that lined Hank’s windowsill.
“Yes.”
“Did you copy your own cat?” I asked.
“Yep. He was a good cat. My wife named him Butter, because of his color.” Hank sighed. “Those were good days,” he said, “when Lois and Butter were still with me. But I can’t go back to the past.”
I knew exactly what he meant. There were good days in my past, too; days of story heroes named Spencer, and Saturday afternoon baseball games. But I couldn’t go back anymore than Hank could.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
I took a hot shower and went to bed early. It felt wonderful to sleep on a mattress, with a pillow under my head. I didn’t hear a thing until eight o’clock the next morning.
I found Hank in the kitchen frying hash-brown potatoes while Foxey rolled around biting his piece of string.
“You want to stick around a couple of days?” Hank asked. “Learn how to whittle?”
I was tempted. I could picture Foxey and me settling in with Hank, but I knew if I wanted to get to Candlestick Park before the baseball season ended, I couldn’t dawdle about.
After breakfast, Hank fixed some sandwiches for my backpack. I laid them carefully on top of the boxes of cat food. Foxey was not at all happy about getting in his box but I told him there are some things in life you have to do whether you like it or not.
Hank watched as Foxey growled and struggled to get out of the box. “Last night, you said Foxey has a good home. I’m not so sure Foxey would agree.”
I looked at Hank. Foxey took advantage of my inattention and leaped out of the box. He ran behind Hank’s sofa.
“Cats aren’t meant for traveling around, meeting new situations day after day,” Hank said. “I’d bet anything that Foxey is scared half out of his fur every time he hears a dog bark, or a truck rattle past.”
I bit my lip and looked away, knowing Hank spoke the truth.
“Sometimes,” Hank said, “if you really love someone, you have to do what’s best for them, even if it is
n’t what you want.”
“If I take Foxey back to Aunt May’s, I won’t be able to keep him,” I said. “I’d rather have him be scared while we travel than to go home and turn him in to the pound. He’d be terrified there, and if he didn’t get adopted in a few days, he’d be killed.”
“I’m not suggesting that you give him up. You can leave him here with me while you go on to Candlestick Park and find your dad. When you’re all settled and have a good place for Foxey, you can let me know and we’ll arrange to get him to you.”
I knew Hank was right. Foxey would be much happier here, rolling on Hank’s kitchen floor and sleeping where it’s warm and dry, than he would be shut in a box all day, sleeping where it’s cold and damp, and getting chased by strange dogs.
But it was scary to think of going on without Foxey. Even though he couldn’t possibly protect me from any danger, it was comforting to have him with me.
“The whole reason I left home was so Foxey and I could stay together,” I said. “I know you’d be good to him, but . . .”
My voice trailed away, and I swallowed hard. I couldn’t leave Foxey behind. Without Foxey, I would be all alone.
I felt Hank’s hand on my shoulder. “He’ll probably get used to being on the road,” Hank said, “especially if you keep feeding him Big Macs.”
I fished Foxey out from under the sofa and this time he accepted his fate. He went limp as I put him in the box.
Hank wrote his address and phone number on a slip of paper. “If you need help,” he said, “call me collect, any time-day or night. Or come back here, if you need a place to bunk.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”
“Promise me you’ll call if you need help.”
“I promise.”
“Safe journey,” he said.
Hank held out his hand and I shook it. When I took my hand away, there were two twenty dollar bills in my palm.
“The Greyhound Bus office is in a health food store, just down the street from the appliance store where we watched the ball game,” he said. “The bus stops right in front, and it leaves for San Francisco at noon.”