The Teddy Bear Habit

by James Lincoln Collier

  Our part in the program was to sing two or three songs somebody had written for us, and to tell a few jokes with the master of ceremonies. The master of ceremonies was going to be Jerry Wastebasket, a famous old comedian everybody had forgotten about who could be hired cheaply. Or at least that’s what Damon Damon, the Button King, said.

  The jokes they had for us were terrible. For example, Jerry Wastebasket was supposed to ask us if Elvis Presley was our favorite singer, and we’d say, “That old man?” That was supposed to be uproarious. For another example, Jerry Wastebasket was supposed to ask, “Who was that lady I seen you out with last night?” and we would answer, “That was no lady; that was my mother.” They were terrible jokes all right, but Damon Damon, the Button King, said that it didn’t matter, they’d change everything at the last minute anyway.

  I figured he was probably right. They were always changing something. First they dressed us up with Beatle wigs and fancy suits. Then they switched us over to crew cuts like the Beach Boys and gave us a surfing song to sing. Then they cut out the surfing song and went back to long hair, more like Freddy and the Dreamers.

  It went on and on this way. We’d just get something memorized and they’d change it. Their day wasn’t complete unless they changed something. They just couldn’t rest comfortably until they’d switched a couple of things around. Damon Damon, the Button King, told us that television was always like that. They’d go on changing things right up to performance time.

  If the changes had improved anything nobody would have minded, but they didn’t. If they cut out a joke, they put in another one just as bad. At first, when Damon Damon would come in and say, “We're going to make a little change here,” we’d all groan. Then we got to wising around, and started cheering when he brought in a change. Finally we got so used to the idea of changes that we didn’t say anything, but just set about learning the new stuff.

  We went along this way for a week or so, skipping a few days here and there. I was doing pretty well. Between getting used to everything, and being able to look down and see the teddy hidden away in the guitar, I was able to stay pretty calm and cool. I figured I had a real chance to get on the show. The redheaded kid—whose name was Hennings and was naturally known as Little Red Hen—was certain to be the star. A couple of the others had had some experience and were fairly sure to go on. Of the rest of us, one was pretty much out of it. He kept fouling up—missing his cues to come in and so forth. That left it pretty much between me and one other guy, and I figured I could beat him. His voice was a little better, but I read music better and what with the changes they kept throwing at us, that was an advantage; I was usually able to get the new material down the second time through, where it might take some of the others twice as long.

  The best part of it all, though, was after the rehearsal, when we’d all go down to the drugstore in the bottom of the building for a Coke. We’d lounge around in a booth, acting like big shots and talking like old experienced television performers. We’d make snotty wisecracks about celebrities, and we’d throw in all the show-business slang we could think of. Man, it felt great being an insider and knowing what it was all about, and I would have sat around the drugstore for hours if I could have. But of course at five o’clock we had to put off being stars and go home and become kids again.

  One day I walked into rehearsal, and as usual, Damon Damon, the Button King, had a change to announce. “Sweeties, they want you all to use the same kind of guitar. We’ve got some new ones for you.”

  He pointed across the studio to the wall where six brand-new guitars were sitting on the table. I looked at them. They were beautiful all right—the new, modern electric guitars, the kind that have long necks and thin, flat, solid bodies.

  A cold chill went up my neck and froze the top of my head, and I felt my stomach sink with despair. For of course the solid-body guitars have no hole in the middle, and no hollow space inside. You couldn’t hide a nickel in one of those things, or even something as small as an ant. And there was certainly no place to hide a teddy bear.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SO THERE IT was. After everything I had been through, after all my planning and lying and cheating and worrying, it had come to nothing. I started carrying the teddy up to the rehearsal in my gym bag, and flinging it over in a corner where nobody would notice. There wasn’t any problem about that. Most of the kids came up right from school, and they would be carrying gym bags or briefcases and such. There were always piles of sweaters and books and boxes and bags lying around on the grand pianos and the folding chairs. Nobody paid any attention to my gym bag.

  But it wasn’t the same. The magic didn’t work when I couldn’t see the teddy. I don’t mean that I went completely to pieces. I just lost my confidence. As long as I had had him where I could see him I knew I wouldn’t make any mistakes, except the normal ones. I had confidence. I just knew I never fouled up too badly when the teddy was there.

  But now I didn’t have him, and I just knew I was going to foul up. Of course when you know you’re going to make a mistake you always do. So I began making little mistakes here and there. Seeing the magic slip away and the mistakes come on like that made me nervous and worried, and of course being nervous and worried made me make more mistakes. I told myself over and over again that there wasn’t anything to be nervous about, that I’d done the songs perfectly a thousand times. I told myself that the teddy wasn’t magic, that he was just a lousy bag full of cotton wadding. I’d be telling myself this and playing along and suddenly I’d realize that I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing. I’d break out in a hot sweat and of course about two measures later I’d hit a wrong chord, or play when I was supposed to be resting. Damon Damon would stop us and say, “What’s the matter, Georgie? You never made that mistake before.”

  As I say, I didn’t collapse, I just began fouling up here and there, and three days later, when they picked the four stars, I was an understudy. I ought to have guessed from the start: I’m a loser.

  Of course there was an advantage to that: since I wasn’t going to be shown on television, there wasn’t any chance I’d get in trouble with Pop. I’d go up there, watch the show from the side, go home, and it would all be over. I’d learned a lot and gotten some good experience; that was to the good.

  Still and all, when I went home the night they picked the losers, I felt lousy. I’d rather have gotten in trouble with Pop. I’d rather have been a winner, even if it meant being drowned four or five times, and boiled in oil on the weekends. As I walked up the stairs I tried to think of some way I could blame it all on Pop, so I would have somebody to be mad at.

  Pop wasn’t home. I took the teddy out of the gym bag, threw him up in the air, and slammed him with my fist, like a handball.

  He sailed across the living room and bounced off Pop’s taboret, scattering brushes and tubes of paint all over the place. That made me feel a little better. I started across the room to pick the stuff up. Suddenly I realized that my knuckles, where I’d slugged the teddy, were bruised and sore. At first I thought I’d maybe hit his last glass eye and knocked it off, which would have served him right, but then I realized that his eyes weren’t big enough to hurt.

  Leaving the paint tubes on the floor where I could step on one and squish it if I had any luck, I picked up the teddy and felt him all over. Sure enough, when I gave him a good squeeze I could feel something hard way down inside. It felt sort of round, about the size of a golf ball or a little bigger.

  I was mystified. I couldn’t believe that the teddy had had some kind of hard center all along. I was sure I’d have felt it before. Still, how could anything that big get down inside? If it had been something sharp, like a needle or even a fishing hook, you could understand. A thing like that might have worked itself in by accident. But it wasn’t anything sharp; it was something solid and round.

  I took the teddy over to Pop’s drawing table and looked him over closely under his fluorescent light. The bear’s clo
th skin was made in two pieces, each one half of its body. There was a seam running completely around him: up his back, over the top of his head, down his front, and around underneath to his back again. I turned the teddy around, looking over the seam carefully.

  Sure enough, part of the thread in the seam was different from the rest. From the top of the head down the front and partway up the back it was the same brown color as the bear, and pretty dirty from all the junk that had got spilled on him over the years. But from about a quarter of the way up the back to the head, the thread was different. It was brown all right, but it wasn’t quite the same color as the other thread, and it wasn’t dirty.

  Somebody had cut the teddy open and hidden something inside. Man, it bothered me. Who could have done such a thing? Could Pop have done it? Could somebody have found it in my gym bag at rehearsal and sewed something in it for a joke? Of course, it might have been done weeks, or even months before. I didn’t think it went back more than a few months, for the new thread was too clean; but still, that was a long time.

  I got one of Pop’s old razor blades out of the bathroom and took it and the teddy into my bedroom. I didn’t want Pop bursting in on me before I found out what the thing was. Carefully I cut down the seam with the razor blade. Slicing the bear made me wince: it was a little too much like operating on somebody.

  When I had a hole big enough, I pulled out some of the cotton wadding. Then I looked in. There was something in there all right. I worked my fingers in around the thing, being careful not to mess up everything inside and ruin the teddy. When I had a good grip on it I slowly pulled it out.

  It was a soft little chamois-skin bag with a drawstring. I opened the bag and dumped the contents out onto my hand. One look and I knew exactly what they were.

  They were smaller than I would have thought. The newspapers had said three-hundred carats or whatever, which sounds pretty big. Actually, the Hermes Sapphire wasn’t much larger than a good-sized pea, and the other stones were smaller. There were six of them. From what I remembered from the newspaper stories, two were rubies, two emeralds, and two were sapphires. The Hermes Sapphire was the valuable one, though. The rest were just sort of throw-ins.

  Of course there was only one person who could have put them in the bear. Wiggsy. Or some pal of his. I didn’t know whether Wiggsy had been in on the actual robbery, or was just taking care of the jewels until they could be sold. It didn’t much matter as far as I was concerned, nor probably as far as the police were concerned, either. If Wiggsy was caught with the jewels he’d go to jail for a good long time. It wasn’t the kind of thing that Wiggsy would like.

  I sat there holding a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of jewels in the palm of my hand, getting scareder and scareder by the minute. I didn’t know what to do. I went on staring at the jewels, and then I closed my hand so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

  It wasn’t too hard to figure out how it had happened. That first time after the audition, when I brought the guitar back, Wiggsy probably gave it a couple of strokes as he was putting it away. Of course he’d have known right away something was wrong. It wouldn’t have taken him long to find the teddy. He’d probably been worried about having the jewels around the shop. If it had been me, I’d have worried. If one of his partners squealed or the cops got onto him some other way, the first thing they’d do would be to search that shop. If they found the jewels, Wiggsy would go to jail for sure. Then there was the chance that somebody might find them accidentally. There were always a lot of screwballs hanging around the place. Wiggsy let them use the guitars and mess around with the music. There couldn’t have been very many safe places to hide jewels in that shop.

  So he sewed them in the teddy. Or his girlfriend or one of his partners did. But it explained why he was so willing to let me keep the guitar. He didn’t want me walking in and out of that shop every day with that teddy bear full of jewels.

  How was he planning to get the jewels back? I didn’t know, but it wouldn’t have been hard to do. He could easily think up some excuse to ask me to bring the teddy around to the shop. Or he could break into the apartment and get it. Anyone who could break into the museum and steal a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of jewels wouldn’t have much trouble breaking into our little apartment and stealing an old, beat-up teddy bear.

  There was only one way the plan could go wrong. That was if some dumb kid slugged the bear with his fist, and found the jewels. Man, I wished I’d never done it. I wished I’d heaved that teddy down the airshaft ten years earlier.

  I opened my hand and stared at the jewels again. Pop was likely to be coming home any time. I had to decide what I was going to do. It was plain that anything I did was wrong. I could tell Pop; but I was scared to death of what Wiggsy would do if he found out I squealed. Besides, if I told, I’d have to tell Pop everything: about the guitar lessons, and the television show, and tricking him into signing the slip, and a whole lot more. Or I could tell the cops: but they’d tell Pop, and I’d be back in the same place. I could hide the jewels someplace, and wait until they caught Wiggsy before I turned them over to the cops. But what if Wiggsy wanted them in the meantime? I hated to think about that. He would murder me. I didn’t have any doubt of it. He was tough and cool, and if he was gutsy enough to steal a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of jewelry, he was gutsy enough to kill a stupid kid who hadn’t enough brains not to slug teddy bears. I wouldn’t be much trouble for Wiggsy to murder. Big and strong as he was, he could squeeze me to death with his bare hands.

  I decided right then and there that I was going to give up the guitar lessons as soon as I got out of this mess. Wiggsy could keep the money, which was up to nineteen dollars now, if I could only get out of trouble. I couldn’t quit until he took the jewels out of the teddy, though. He’d have to come after me. He’d come prowling around at night or grab me off the street or—I don’t know what.

  There was only one thing to do and I did it. I put the jewels back inside the teddy, and sewed him up as best I could, with the stuff from Pop’s little sewing kit. I kicked myself for cutting Wiggsy’s thread up. If I’d have known, I could have carefully pulled it out, and used it to sew up the teddy again. It was too late for that. I found some thread that was about the same brownish color as the stuff Wiggsy had used. It wasn’t exactly right, but if Wiggsy didn’t look closely, he wouldn’t notice.

  That night after supper I took him up to Stanky’s. I’d left the guitar there as usual when I’d come home from rehearsal. We holed up in Stanky’s room with another bag of those theater nuts, and I spilled the whole story—about having a teddy bear habit, the jewels, and everything. I had to tell someone. I had to talk to someone I could trust.

  He said he could understand about the teddy, which was nice of him to say, but probably a lie.

  “Let me see the jewels,” he said.

  I didn’t want to cut the teddy open and take them out again, because of the problem of the thread, but Stanky had helped me out on so many things it was only right. So we got a razor and cut the bear open again.

  “These are the ones all right,” Stanky said. “I remember from the papers. Do you think Wiggsy actually stole them?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just keeping them for somebody. Let’s put them back, I’m getting nervous.”

  Stanky found some thread about the right color, and he sewed the teddy up, because he could do a neater job than I could.

  “What are you going to do, George?”

  “I’m going to put him back in the guitar and take the guitar back to Wiggsy. I’ll pretend I left the teddy in there by mistake again. What I’m hoping is that he’ll decide that I’m sloppy and careless about leaving the teddy lying around. It might make him think that the teddy isn’t a safe place for the jewels. Then when the jewels are gone I’ll just forget the whole thing.”

  “You ought to tell the police.”

  “Oh no, not on your tintype. If Wiggsy found out I squealed on him, he’
d kill me. In fact, he probably would kill me if he even found out that I knew about the jewels.” Stanky nodded. “I guess he would.”

  “Besides, if I told the police Pop would find out everything and I’d be in trouble with him.”

  We got the guitar down from Stanky’s closet shelf, and put the teddy inside.

  “You want to come with me, Stanky? I’m sort of scared to go alone.”

  “Sure,” he said. He put on his jacket, and we started out; but just then his mother came in from someplace, wearing a fur coat and smelling like heck from perfume, and she told Stanky he couldn’t go.

  “You’ve had a cold all week, Everett,” she said. “Besides, your father and I are going to the theater shortly and we want you here when we leave.”

  I couldn’t say that I liked her very much. “See you, Stank,” I said, and took off, carrying a guitar containing a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of jewels.

  There was no moon, and in the spaces between the streetlights it was dark. I cut down across Washington Square Park. About halfway across I wished I hadn’t. The beatniks and the bums and the weirdos were out in full force, gathered in little circles around the benches or walking along the paths. They’re all night people. You don’t see them around the streets much during the day. About five o’clock they come out of their holes, or wherever they hide during the day, and begin to gather in the park or in the bars and coffeehouses along MacDougal Street. They stand around jiving each other and looking bad.

  By nine o’clock they’re out in a mob. They always give me the feeling that they’re looking for something: a fight, or dope, or whiskey, or I don’t know what.