My Crooked Family

by James Lincoln Collier

The Chinaman didn’t pay any attention to that. “No money, no food.”

  “Honest,” I said. “We’ll pay tomorrow.” But I knew it wasn’t going to work.

  “No,” he said. He reached for the bucket. I snatched at the handle and jerked the bucket off the counter. “Run, Lulu,” I shouted. Then I tore for the door, not waiting for Lulu.

  “Hey,” a couple of people shouted. I ducked around them, dashed through the door and into the street. I took a quick look over my shoulder. Lulu was flying along behind me, trying to keep up. “Wait up, Roger,” she shouted. “Wait up.”

  But I didn’t wait. Nobody was going to bother with Lulu, for I was the one who had stolen the food. I charged along the street, ducking and dodging through the crowd. Behind me I could hear running feet, and shouts. All I could think of was the way the Chinaman had gone after that robber with a cleaver.

  I came to the end of the block. A couple of wagons were going through a side street. I jumped into the gutter. A trolley was coming along. I charged into the street, hoping to duck in front of the trolley to cut the Chinaman off. And then I felt myself being jerked backwards by the collar of my shirt.

  “Help,” I shouted. The bucket flew up and the rice and fried pork went all over the place. The next thing I knew I was lying on my back in the gutter. It was still wet there from the rain, and it soaked through my shirt. The big cop with the polished buttons and shiny badge was looming over me. My Adam’s apple was sore from my collar being jerked against it. I coughed. There was some rice on my face. I licked at it to get it in my mouth.

  2

  “ALL RIGHT, YOU,” THE COP said. “On your feet.” He didn’t wait for me to get up, but pulled me up himself, mighty rough. Then he began to march me down the street by my collar. People stood around watching. I wished I was invisible. Suppose one of my friends from school came along?

  Then suddenly Lulu was dancing backwards in front of me, her hands flat on her cheeks. “Lulu, don’t say anything to Ma,” I shouted.

  Lulu took her hands off her face and began to wave them around, still dancing backwards. “Hey, he didn’t mean it, mister,” she shouted at the cop. “He’s my brother. We didn’t have anything to eat.” She kept on dancing backwards so as to be out of the cop’s reach. “You can’t prove it,” she shouted.

  “That’s what you think, kid. He could get ten years for this.”

  Lulu clapped her hands on her face again. “Oh no,” she said.

  “You better go home and tell your ma, kid.”

  “Don’t tell Ma, Lulu,” I said. “Don’t tell her.” How was I going to get out of it?

  Lulu turned and ran down the street lickety-split. I tipped my head down again, for more people were watching: it was pretty interesting for them to see Lulu dancing backwards shouting at the cop. I thought of all the times I’d been in a crowd watching some poor fella in trouble—lying on the ground with a heart attack, leaning up against the wall after being stabbed and trying to hold himself together, or being handcuffed by a cop. At least the cop hadn’t handcuffed me. Why hadn’t that Chinaman been willing to trust us for a day? Blame Lulu for opening her mouth. If only Pa had given me some money, if only Ma hadn’t got drunk on Grandma’s five dollars. If only everything.

  How come some people were poor and some people were rich? How come it was us who were poor, instead of somebody else? Why couldn’t my pa get a regular job for a change, like Charley O’Neill’s old man? Charley’s old man was a bricklayer and he didn’t drink whiskey but only beer. Whiskey was poison, he told Charley. It always led to an early grave. The O’Neills had a four-room apartment and plenty of furniture. When you went to their house you didn’t have to sit on a chair with the bottom falling out. The O’Neills had a clock on the living room table and a Parcheesi board and curtains in the windows. Why wasn’t my pa more like that?

  The truth was, I didn’t know exactly what Pa did for money. Sometimes he was pretty flush and sometimes he was broke, but even when he was flush he wasn’t free with money. Ma always had to beg him for it when me and Lulu needed a winter coat or new shoes. Either that or catch him when he came home drunk and go through his pockets after he fell asleep. The idea was that if he came home drunk enough he wouldn’t remember in the morning how much money he had left when he came home. Ma would always leave him a little to keep him from being suspicious.

  Where did the money come from? I didn’t even know if Ma knew. A couple of times, when I was littler, I asked her. All she ever said was, “That’s your father’s business. He’ll tell you if he wants you to know.”

  When a fella had a regular job you knew when he was going to get paid, and how much, and you could hit him for some money right outside the paymaster’s office, if you had to. You couldn’t do that with Pa. Pa usually slept until around noon. Then he’d drink his coffee and smoke a cigarette and go off. He never said where he was going, or when he’d be back. He’d just go. He never told us anything.

  We got to the station house. I’d walked past it a hundred times before. Brick building with bars across the windows, stone steps going up, and big green gas lamps on each side of the door. Sometimes when I went by I saw cops bringing people in—fellas handcuffed, with their heads down, being hauled along by a cop on each side. And I’d wonder what they were feeling. Were they sad, or scared, or what? Now I knew: scared, mostly, but sore, too, for why was it me instead of somebody else? I just hoped I could talk my way out of it before Ma found out.

  We went inside. Pretty dirty in there—cigarette butts all over the floor, candy papers, empty tobacco pouches. A cop sat behind the desk looking over some papers, and a couple more lounged against the desk. Along both walls were benches, mostly filled with people they’d brought in. The cop sat me down on one bench. On one side of me was an old fella who hadn’t shaved for a while, sound asleep and snoring with his mouth open. He hadn’t washed much, either, from the smell of him. On the other side was a young fella, maybe twenty, tall and skinny, with red hair. He was wearing yellow trousers with a crease in them like a knife, red suspenders, a pink striped shirt, and a blue polka-dot handkerchief tied around his neck. I wondered why he’d come out without any coat. Maybe he’d lost it in a fight.

  After a minute he noticed I was looking at him. He took a little leather case out of his shirt pocket, slid a silver toothpick out of it, stuck the toothpick into the corner of his mouth, and let it sit there. He gave me a long look. “You’re starting out about the age I did,” he said. “What did they grab you for?”

  I didn’t know if I should trust him. I’d heard about informers who pretended they were in jail for something, but were really there to pump the other prisoners. But I had to answer something. “I took some rice and pork out of the Chinaman’s. I thought he said it was okay.”

  He nodded. “Oh, I’m sure he did say it was okay. Them Chinese are known for handing around the food free of charge. Always looking for a chance to give away a bucket of rice and pork. Why he probably handed you a shovel and told you to dig in, take as much as you wanted.”

  I blushed. I could see that I was going to have to fix up a better story than that. “Where’s your coat?”

  “Oh that,” he said. “I left in kind of a rush. You could put it that my exit was hurried. Yes, you could put it that way. A mite hurried. Just a trifle. Took out the whole window, sash and all.”

  “Weren’t you hurt?”

  “Oh, it’s safe as churches, if you know the trick. You’ve got to cross your arms over your face and go out head first so’s your hair’ll protect you. Of course you wouldn’t want to try it if you was bald. Nor from a fifth story window, neither.”

  “Why did you have to jump?”

  He stared at me and moved the toothpick across his mouth with his tongue. Finally he said, “I can see you’re a real humanitarian—put your own self to the side and let the other fella do all the talking. Most fellas, they want to do all the talking theirselves, especially if they’ve got a chance to boas
t about what they did all day, and ate for breakfast, and spent their money on. But not you, nothing like that at all. You’ll sit quiet and let the other fella carry on as much as he likes.”

  “You asked me first what I did and I told you.”

  He squinted at me, and moved the toothpick back to the other side. “The way I recall it, you told me you was in some Chinaman’s, and out of the Christian spirit that lay in his heart he handed you a shovel and told you to dig in. That’s the way I recollect it.”

  I didn’t want to admit that I’d stolen the pork and rice, in case he was an informer. “I didn’t exactly say that.”

  “Well, if I was to shade in my story with the same kind of crosshatching, you could put it that I was engaged in a friendly competition with a couple of gentlemen as to the number of dots that might appear on the upper side of a pair of dice when they was bounced against a wall. And we was a-carrying on in a sporting fashion when suddenly a third die appeared out of nowhere, which was by mere coincidence identical to the other two in all respects except that some of the corners was just a trifle worn off—not so’s you’d notice unless you happened to look at them real careful. But one of the gentlemen did trouble himself to give that die a careful look. And after that there was some foolishness with a pistol and I took my exit.”

  He didn’t seem scared or worried about it. When you got down to it, he seemed proud— proud of shooting crap and getting caught with shaved dice and having to dive out of a window. Of course, maybe he was just putting on a show.

  I wondered what he’d actually got taken in for—breaking the window, or cheating, or what? I knew I’d better not ask any more questions about him, though. “Listen, what do you think they’re going to do to me? Just give me a talking to, or what?”

  He took the silver toothpick out of his mouth, wiped it carefully on the sleeve of his shirt, slid it back into the leather case, and put it into his shirt pocket. “I shouldn’t think you’d get more than twenty years,” he said. “It all depends. Some judges are mighty hard on boys who clip rice out of a Chinaman’s. Especially if the judge is fond of rice himself. He might not like to see his share carried off by a naughty boy.”

  Well, I didn’t believe any of that. I was scared that any minute Ma or Pa would come rushing through the door. Oh, how I wished Lulu had kept her trap shut. “What do you really think will happen?”

  “Well, if you got a ma or a pa who’ll come and get you and cry and carry on about how you’re a good boy and wasn’t never in trouble before and practically did nothing all day long but study your lessons, except when you was praying, which you done ten or twelve times a day, why I don’t doubt but what they might go easy. You got a pa?”

  “Yes, but he might not come for me. He might think it served me right to get put in jail.”

  “What about your ma?”

  I hated to tell him she was drunk. I hated for anyone to know about Ma. The only one who really knew was Ma’s friend Mrs. O’Brien, because she was always trying to get Ma to stop. “The last I heard she was sick. My little sister said she went out to get medicine.”

  He sat there nodding his head and looking at me. Then he said, “How come you was in such a place that you had to steal a bowl of rice from a Chinaman’s?”

  He was always one jump ahead of me. “It was because of Ma being sick. She had to use our money for medicine and Pa didn’t know because he was at work.”

  “At seven o’clock at night?”

  “He’s a night watchman. He stands guard over construction sites.” I knew about that from Charley O’Neill.

  He nodded. “Yes, that figures. Half the people in the District are night watchmen. Some of them are watching out for shaved dice, some of them are watching to see that their girls ain’t holding out on them, and the girls are watching out to see their cadets ain’t chasing around elsewhere. Why we’ve got a whole school of night watchmen around here.”

  You couldn’t slide anything by him. “Well, at least it’s true about Ma being sick. That’s true.”

  “Have you really got a pa?”

  “Sure I do. I saw him just a little—” Then I realized what I was saying.

  “And he couldn’t give you no money for supper, for he’d spent all his on medicine, too.”

  I blushed. I was getting tired of him catching me everywhere I turned. “What did they bring you in for? Breaking that window?”

  He looked at me pretty steady, the way he did, for a minute. “Well, like I say, there was bullets flying around and just as I was taking my leave one of the fellas caught one. Naturally, these fellas was honest and didn’t want to hog all the credit for it to theirselves, so when the cops come they done the decent thing and let me in on it. In fact, they said they didn’t want none of the credit for theirselves, I could have it all. Oh, they was real straight about it.”

  I noticed the story was changed around a little from before. “Is the fella dead?”

  “Not yet, the last I heard. He was mighty sick, though. Leastwise, that’s what they say, but you can’t go by me, for I was mighty busy when it happened and didn’t get a clear view of it.”

  Then Ma came bursting through the door. She’d got all dressed up, at least as much as she could. She was wearing a blue skirt and a pink blouse and had a black shawl over her shoulders. She came over to me and gave me a big hug. “My poor baby,” she said. “What have they done to you?”

  She’d loaded up on the perfume to cover the smell of booze. But she wasn’t drunk anymore. It confused me to have her hug me like that. I liked it, but it seemed strange, for Ma wasn’t much of a one for hugging. If something like that came up—say Lulu wanted to sit on her lap or something—she’d say, “You don’t want to be seen yipping and bouncing around like a puppy, do you?”

  “Ma, we weren’t trying to st—”

  “Shush, shush.” She let go of me and stepped back. “I know it’s all some terrible mistake.”

  “Ma, we didn’t mean to—”

  “I know, I know, my poor baby.” She squeezed my shoulder. “I’m just going to speak to the sergeant.” She let go of me and went over to the desk. I was beginning to feel mighty silly and ashamed of myself. How could I have done such a dumb thing? I gave the skinny, red-headed fella with the toothpick a quick look to see if he noticed I was blushing.

  He had got the toothpick back in one corner of his mouth and was staring at me, his head tilted over to one side. When he saw me glance at him he moved the toothpick to the other side. “So your folks are swells?”

  That surprised me. “What makes you think that?”

  “Pretty obvious, it seems to me.” He leaned back, his hands crossed behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. “Now here’s what I’d like to know. What I’d like to know is how come a kid what comes from a home like that is out copping two-bits’ worth of rice from a Chinaman’s? Yes, that’s what I’d like to know. I’d like to know that all right.”

  I didn’t want him thinking we were swells, for suppose someday he found out. “We’re not swells.”

  He took his hands out from behind his head and looked at me some more. Then he stuck out his hand. “What’s your name, kid? Mine’s Penrose. Alvin Penrose. But nobody better call me Alvin. They call me Circus. Know why?”

  “No.”

  “It’s because you never know what I’ll do next. I always take you by surprise.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Now what’s your name?”

  “Roger Hardy.”

  He gave me a sudden squint, and then he smoothed his face down again. “Hardy, eh? Pretty common name. You got a lot of relatives around here? Cousins, uncles?”

  I didn’t think Hardy was any more common than any other name. “No. My pa’s people live upstate.”

  He didn’t say anything. Then he said, “You saw your pa tonight, you said. Around seven, was it?”

  “No. More like six or something.”

  “Yep. Well. Yep. Now where did you say you l
ived?”

  I hadn’t said, and I wasn’t sure I ought to. But just then Ma called my name, and I got up and went over to the sergeant’s desk. He looked at me real solemn. “There’s something I don’t understand, son. Kids from your kind of family don’t need to steal a bucket of rice. According to your ma, the cook had your dinner waiting for you and your sis. Now tell me what it’s all about.”

  Why did Ma have to start throwing around stories like that? But I couldn’t tell the cop she was a liar. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Was it a lark? A bet of some kind?”

  Ma put her arm around my shoulders. “You can tell the officer the truth, Roger. Did you do it on a dare?”

  “We’re not swells,” I said. “We don’t have a cook.” I was thinking about telling him that Ma had been drunk all afternoon, but I didn’t.

  “Now, son,” the sergeant said, “I don’t know who you’re shielding, but you can’t tell me you come from a home where you have to steal. I’ve seen a lot of people in my time and I don’t get fooled that easy. Now you run along. And don’t let me catch you at any foolishness like this again. Next time it’ll go harder on you.”

  “You pay attention to what the sergeant says, Roger.” Then we marched out of there. I felt ashamed of Ma and ashamed of myself, ashamed of my whole family.

  I took a quick look at Circus Penrose. He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, moving that silver toothpick back and forth across his mouth.

  We got outside, went down the steps, and started off for home. “Roger, I didn’t need this today.”

  “We didn’t have anything to eat, Ma.”

  “Don’t you think I would have gotten you something?” she said.

  “You weren’t even there.”

  “Roger, I don’t want to discuss it. I’ve something more important on my mind. Your father’s been shot. They’re not sure he’ll live.”

  And the surprising thing was, I smiled.

  3

  THE SACRED HEART INFIRMARY WAS out behind the District a few blocks. I’d been over there once before, when Lulu fell down the fire escape stairs at the place where we were living then and cracked her head. She had to spend the night so they could be sure she wasn’t leaking blood out of her ears—something like that, anyway.