by Trevanian
Wait a minute. Being liked by everybody then getting sick didn't seem to me to be the stuff of heroism. But I didn't say anything.
And for a while Mrs McGivney didn't say anything either. She stood there brushing her husband's hair, a fond smile in her eyes as she seemed to reread the letter from his captain in her mind. Then she blinked and focused on me. "You know what I'd bet? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts you'd like another cookie. Am I right?" She looked at me out of the sides of her eyes in that coy Shirley Temple way.
"No, thanks, I—"
But she shook her finger at me. "Now don't you tell me you can't eat another cookie. A boy can always make space for another cookie."
As she went for the cookie jar on the counter I asked, "What was Mr McGivney sick with?"
"Brain fever," she said from the kitchen. "He ran this terribly high fever for days and days, lying in his bunk, sweating and shivering, sweating and shivering. The doctor at the veteran's hospital over in Troy—Dr French?—he told us that most men would have died." She brought back one of her little decorated plates with a cookie on it and set it before me. She still had the hairbrush in her hand. The long white hairs entangled in its bristles made me shudder. "Dr French said that Lawrence had fought a long, heroic battle against the fever, and survived!"
Oh. So that was the kind of hero he was.
"But..." She sighed. "It was the fever that left him... well, like he is."
"And you've taken care of him ever since?"
She smiled. "I wash him and feed him and... everything. He likes it when I brush his hair. He doesn't say anything, but I can tell by the way he sometimes smiles."
So she had lived alone with him up here for more than forty years, cleaning him and feeding him and brushing his hair. Forty years. So long that the existence of Mr McGivney had dropped out of the collective memory of the block, which now thought of Mrs McGivney, when it thought of her at all, as just a shy old crazylady. But she thought of herself as the bride who had made a cozy nest for her soldier bridegroom.
I started to ask if she didn't get lonely, up here all day without anyone to talk—but a child's instinct for social danger stopped me short. Of course she got lonely! That's why I was sitting there, eating cookies. That's why she gave me a whole nickel for buying a pickle that only cost a nickel. I could feel the jaws of the trap closing. I should never have asked her about her husband. Now that I knew how lonely she was, I'd feel obliged to come whenever she tapped at her window with that nickel and sit with her and listen to her talk about how her husband liked it when she turned the gaslight on. Another responsibility in my life. And sometimes when I dared to glance over, he'd be grinning his silent scream of a smile. Right then and there I decided I'd have to be careful about going into the back alley too often. I'd stay out of the alley altogether for at least a week to get her used to not seeing me and depending on me.
It was during that week of emotional weaning that my life toppled out of balance because of an incident that might seem trivial: a tube burnt out in our radio. There wasn't enough money in the Dream Bank to buy a new one, so I had to do without the daily hour-long dose of reality-masking adventure programs essential to my well-being, just when all the stories were at their most exciting and dangerous moments—or so it seemed to me, and all because we didn't have the dollar and a quarter for a new tube.
Mother was furious because we'd only had the radio for three years. I reminded her that the radio was secondhand when we bought it, but she said we'd been robbed and she'd be goddamned if she was going to let them get away with it! She was sick and tired of everybody doing her in! Sick of it! Sick of it! Her famous French-'n'-Indian temper carried her out of her sickbed and down to the pawn shop on South Pearl where we had bought the radio. I went with her, trying to calm her down all the way, but she stormed into the shop and slammed the radio down on the counter. I winced at the possibility of additional damage. The old Jewish man who owned the pawnshop came out from the back room and I smiled a feeble greeting, embarrassed by the scene I knew would follow. He had been good enough to let us have the radio for nothing down and only a quarter a week because we looked like 'good people'. Mother said the tube had burned out and what was he going to do about it? He shrugged. "Tubes burn out, Missus. It happens." Well, she wanted him to put in a new one and right now, because her boy was missing his programs! The pawnbroker said he'd end up in the poorhouse if he gave everybody tubes every time they burnt out, but here's what he could do. He could give us a new tube for a quarter down and a quarter a week until it was paid for. How was that? Mother snatched up the radio and said, "To hell with you, mister! This is the last time we do business with your sort!" And she stormed out. I smiled weakly at the man. He thrust out his lower lip and shrugged, and I had to run to catch up with my mother, who was steaming up the street towards home, muttering in a rage that she'd be damned if her boy would go without his radio programs because of a lousy buck and a quarter. She'd get a job in some goddamned hash house to pay for the goddamned thing! I reminded her that she was still weak from her last lung attack, but she said she knew how much that radio meant to me, and that her kids had just as much right to listen to the radio as the kids of those snooty hoi polloi bastards! She'd get that tube, and she didn't care if it killed her! Then I got angry. So it would be my fault if she got sick and died and Anne-Marie and I ended up in the orphanage! I told her to forget the radio. I didn't want the radio! I was sick of the radio! I didn't care if I never heard a radio again! And we continued home, walking fast in the hot silence of a double rage.
When we slammed into our apartment, Anne-Marie knew things had gone badly. She shot me a scared look and begged Mother to get back into bed and rest so she wouldn't get sick again. Mother started on the "I'll be goddamned if my kids..." routine, but I interrupted her, saying that she didn't have to worry about the damned tube anymore. I had a plan for getting the money. She wondered what I had in mind, but I told her it was a secret. With one of her sudden mood lurches, she took Anne-Marie onto her lap and started rebraiding her hair. I went into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub, the only place in our little apartment that I could be alone to think. Now that I had succeeded in shutting Mother up, all I had to do was figure out some way to get the money.
When I came back into our kitchen I had a plan... well, sort of. Pretty soon Mother and I were playing pinochle while on the floor beside the bed Anne-Marie, dressmaker-to-the-stars, murmured soothing assurances to a flustered movie star who needed something really spectacular to wear that night. Mother's rages were brief, and I think she knew how stomach-wrenching they were for us because afterward she always tried to be light-hearted and fun. That night she told us about the wild stunts she'd got up to when she was a kid, and Anne-Marie and I laughed harder than the stories deserved, because we were so relieved.
A red-and-gold sign above the new store read: The Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which called up images from books I had read about the South Seas and planters and dangerous natives and tall-masted sailing ships. The new A & P was what they called a 'neighborhood store', not much bigger than an ordinary corner store, but its prices were a little lower and you were allowed to walk around and pick out your own cans and fruit and everything, which was novel and interesting at that time. Also, there were intriguing new foods, like maple syrup that came in a can shaped like a log cabin. You poured it out of the chimney and when it was empty you could use the cabin as a toy or a bank. And there were three kinds of coffee that they let you grind for yourself in machines where you could choose between drip grind and 'regular' and that coffee gave off so delicious an aroma that you closed your eyes and just breathed it in. The most expensive coffee was called Bokar, a name redolent of Africa so it was right that the bag should be black; the middle-priced one, Red Dot, came in a yellow bag with a red dot; we always bought the cheapest coffee, Eight O'Clock, which came in a red bag. I used to wonder if the Bokar tasted as good as it smelled. But then, no coffee tast
es as good as it smells, an apt metaphor for the gap between anticipation and realization. The cheaper prices and wider selection attracted everyone for blocks around, but you couldn't charge things there so, in the end, Mr Kane's slate won out over the A & P's novelty and economy, and it closed within the year.
The morning after our Emerson blew its tube, I was standing outside the A & P with my sister's battered old cart and a cardboard sign with red crayon letters that informed shoppers of my willingness to bring their groceries home for a nickel. That first day and the next, half a dozen old ladies used my services. I walked home beside them, pulling their bags of groceries in Anne-Marie's cart, chatting in the polite, cheerful way I thought might inspire them to tip me a couple of cents in addition to my nickel, but none of them did. And every one of those women lived blocks and blocks away from the A & P, and I had to lug their bags up to apartments on the upper floors, leaving the cart in the first-floor hallway so nobody would steal it. I pondered the rotten luck of every single one of my customers being an old woman who lived far away and on the top floor. And each of them too cheap to give a friendly, smiling guy a tip. What were the odds? It took me awhile to work out that this wasn't a matter of singularly bad luck. Only women who were so poor they couldn't afford to give a tip would go blocks from their homes to save a few pennies at one of the new supermarkets; and only those who lived on the upper floors would be willing to part with a nickel to have their stuff carted home and carried up to their door. Still, after two days I had earned thirty cents towards the tube, even if my sister did complain bitterly that I'd worn her red crayon down to a nub making my sign, so she couldn't make any red clothes for her paper dolls, just when red was all the rage, and her movie star customers were complaining that...
Oh, shut up, why don't you?
You shut up!
You shut up?
Copy cat, eat my hat!
Oh, shut up!
No, you shut up!
(From the bedroom) Both of you shut up!
The next morning I arrived at the A & P to find another boy standing there with a wagon and sign—a bigger boy with a bigger wagon and a bigger sign. And he wasn't even from our block! Well... we had words. He said he had as much right as I did to be there because I didn't own the sidewalk, so who the hell did I think I was to...
I hit him while he was still blabbing and got two more shots in while he was wondering if this was a fight or not, and then we really went to Fistcity, rolling around on the pavement, him mostly on top because he was bigger, but me getting some pretty good face shots in from below, but the manager of the A & P came out and snatched us around by our collars for a while, then he told us that if we didn't behave ourselves he'd send for the cops. When I tried to explain that I had been there first, he told me that he'd seen me start the fight. Of course I started the fight! A smaller kid has to get his shots in first or he doesn't stand a chance. Jeez! But I promised not to fight anymore, so this copy-cat interloper and I ended up standing on opposite sides of the store's door, glowering at one another until some old lady came out carrying groceries, then we'd try to out-smile and out-nice one another. I was at a disadvantage because my smile was sort of one-sided because I had a split lip. It was a scorcher of a day, and time passed slowly standing there in the sun, especially since I got only one customer that day, and that only because this other kid was away on a delivery. I could see what was going on in the women's heads. They didn't like having to pick one kid and leave the other behind, so most of them carried their own bags home, and the others chose this bigger kid because they didn't want to make a skinny little kid lug those bags all that way. Yeah, sure! Give money to the big healthy kid, and let the skinny little one go without! That makes lots of sense, you stupid old...
That night as I walked home, hot and sticky, dragging the wagon behind me, I was too tired and disheartened to remember to avoid the shortcut through the back alley. I knew I should go straight home, but I wanted desperately to play some kind of story game for a little while because without my nightly dose of radio, there was nothing to carry me away me from my life and refresh my soul. Then too, I wasn't all that eager to arrive at home with a split lip and only a nickel to show for a day's work. I was always a lot better at playing the modest hero than the brave failure.
There was only one old-fashioned streetlight in the back alley that hadn't been slingshot out. Its dim, dirty light fell at a sharp angle over the façades of the abandoned stables, texturing them and leaving pockets of deep shadow in the entranceways... a perfect setting for scary games. I slipped into a space between a shed and a stable, one side of my face lit and the other in shadow, knowing how scary I must look as I whispered to my followers that there just had to be a rational explanation for the Murders in the Back Alley. "I shouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that Professor Moriarty had a hand in this, Watson." (A blend of clipped speech and Peter Lorre nasality did for my English accent.) I told them that the only way to discover the insane killer was to expose ourselves to the same dangers that those poor, bloody, axe-chopped, heads-ripped-off, faces-bashed-in women...
...I just about pissed myself when that sharp tap-tap-tap on the window made my voice squeak and sent my followers vanishing into the darkness, leaving me to face the danger alone. I looked up to see Mrs McGivney beckoning to me, and her husband silhouetted in the other window by the soft gaslight of their parlor. I knew I should have gone straight home! Drawing a peeved sigh, I inserted a mental bookmark into my game so I could remember where I was next time, and I trudged to the end of the alley, around past my own stoop, where I stashed Anne-Marie's wagon in the basement, then down to 232, and up the stairs, the air getting thicker and hotter with every floor I climbed. It was really hot in the McGivney top-floor apartment directly under the lead roof, and their gaslighting made it hotter yet. That was the only time in my life I experienced the effect of gaslight, which was softer and more golden than electric light and didn't seem to descend from the ornate gas fixtures on the wall, but rather to come from within the things and people lit, making them sort of glow with an inward radiance... like I imagined life must be for people in the movies, or rich people.
With an edge of grievance in her voice, Mrs McGivney asked me where I'd been the last few days, and I explained that our radio had blown a tube and I had been trying to earn money to replace it. She made a tight little nasal sound, like that was no excuse, so I curtly asked what she wanted. It was late and Mr Kane's was closed. But it turned out that she just wanted to give me a glass of milk and some of those cookies that 'little boys love so much'. I didn't tell her that this particular boy would rather be allowed to pursue his game than be dragged up there to spend time with a boring old lady and a scarecrow. Instead, I sat across from her and nibbled grumpily. But she just smiled at me, then looked over at her husband and sighed with satisfaction, as though everything was all right, now that we were all back together again.
I noticed that when she drank her milk she looked into the glass, like little kids do. And that's when it struck me that, like her husband, she was strangely young. She had white hair, sure, but her skin was smooth and her eyes bright. It was as if, living as they did, without hopes or fears or work or play, time had flowed lightly over them, without eroding their features, and they had remained eternally young and oddly—ghostlike.
As I left, she pressed a nickel into my hand. I protested that I hadn't done anything to earn it, but she just squeezed my hand around it, so I left thinking how nice people can be worse than mean ones, because you can't fight back against nice people.
I found my mother and sister sitting on our front stoop to get a breath of cooler air, and I joined them. I told them about the McGivneys, and Mother was surprised to learn that there was a Mr McGivney. Anne-Marie rubbed the goose bumps that had risen on her arms at the thought of sitting in the same room with a crazy man who just stared out the window all the time. I told her he wasn't crazy, just sort of... well, damaged, but she said dama
ged men were just as scary as crazy ones, and she didn't care how many nickels they gave me. Mother said I shouldn't accept money unless I did some chore to earn it. Otherwise it was like accepting charity, and LaPointes didn't do that; they worked for everything they got. But she was glad I'd made some new friends, and she was sure I'd be a big help to them... poor lonely old people. I almost told her that I resented being made to feel responsible for them, but I didn't because I was afraid she'd realize how often I felt the same resentment about having to get us off Pearl Street some day.
The next morning, there was a third boy outside the A & P, and he had a brand-new cart and a sign with professional-looking lettering that offered to carry groceries for 4¢. You could tell from his clothes that he wasn't poor, just a regular kid lucky enough to have a new cart and somebody—probably a father—to help him paint his sign and to advise him about undercutting the competition. I could see right off that offering to carry the groceries for four cents was a smart scam, because most of the women would give him a nickel, and they wouldn't ask for their penny change back because that would make them seem too petty; so he'd get the job by underbidding us, then he'd end up getting as much as we did. I'll bet his father was a salesman with a slick line. Well, I drew this new kid aside and had a little talk with him, explaining that there wasn't enough business for three kids, and this had been my idea in the first place. Then I put on a concerned look and told him that I was worried about how sad his mother would feel if he came home with no front teeth and his fancy wagon all kicked in and— Out of the corner of my eye I could see the manager watching me from inside the store, so I just pointed at the middle of the rich kid's chest and skewered him with squinted-up eyes, which on my block meant 'You're standing real close to the edge, kid!' then I swaggered back to my battered old cart.