The Teddy Bear Habit

by James Lincoln Collier

  “Yes,” said the lady, taking off her coat. “Now what was it?”

  “My kid brother’s teddy bear. When they came to collect yesterday my father gave it away by accident. The baby won’t stop crying for it. Pop figured maybe we could get it back.”

  She nodded. “Surely, of course. If you can find it. We get dozens of teddy bears. You see when these things come in the girls sort them into boxes by kind, before they go out to be cleaned and repaired.”

  “I see,” I said. “Well, would it be all right if I looked?” With all those boxes it was going to take me a year.

  “Surely. Now, a teddy bear? You’ll find some boxes marked 'Stuffed toys for cleaning.’ You might try them.”

  She sat down at one of the long tables and began working on some papers, Humming “Happy Days Are Here Again” all the while. I went to work on the boxes. She was a good, loud hummer, and I wished she’d stop, or at least try humming something sad and gloomy. “Happy Days Are Here Again" was driving me crazy.

  The cardboard cartons were these huge kind, about five feet tall, big enough for a man to get inside. What I had to do was find the ones marked “Stuffed toys,” drag them out one at a time to the clear space in the middle of the room, dump them over, and then toss the stuff back in until I came upon the teddy.

  Man, was there dust over that place. I hardly got through the first box before I was covered with it—my clothes, my face, my hands. By the time I’d gotten through the second box I was not only dusty, but sick and tired of looking at stuffed dogs, stuffed cats, stuffed Mickey Mouses, and stuffed spacemen, and stuffed Ringo Starrs, and I don’t know how many stuffed bears. But no teddy.

  I went through seven boxes. It was eleven o’clock before I got finished. I went over to the lady, trying to dust myself off a little.

  “I didn’t find it,” I said.

  “Oh dear, that’s too bad. Very likely it’s already gone out for cleaning.” She looked at her watch. “Aren’t you going to be late for school?”

  It was very polite of her to put it that way. I was already two hours late.

  “We have teacher’s conferences at my school today,” I said. “That’s why I had a chance to come out and look for my brother’s teddy,” I said.

  “I see,” she said. “Perhaps you know what time it was picked up?”

  I thought about that. Pop hadn’t said. “I don’t know,” which was about the first truthful thing I’d said since I’d gotten up that morning.

  “If it was picked up before noon there’s a good chance it’s gone out for cleaning. I don’t know what I can do about that.”

  I was tired and hungry and a little sick from being scared so much of the time. “Maybe I could go over to the cleaning place?”

  “I don’t think they will let you in.”

  “Maybe I could ask them.”

  “You can try, surely. It’s the Apex Rug Cleaners, on West Eighty-eighth Street. Here.” She scribbled down the address on a piece of scratch paper and gave it to me.

  West Eighty-eighth Street was about forty blocks away. I was too tired to walk all the way up there, and besides, time was getting on. I walked over to Eighth Avenue and took the subway up. That left me twenty cents—just enough to get home on. I was starving. In every station the subway stopped at I could see chocolate bars and gumdrops in the candy machine, but if I spent as much as a penny I’d have to walk all the way back down to the Village, about eighty blocks away.

  The Apex Rug Cleaners was on the bottom floor of an old beat-up building off Amsterdam Avenue. There was a counter right there when you came in the door, and behind that a lot of machinery giving off steam and people working around vats of stuff, and the sharp smells of chemicals.

  The woman behind the counter was fat and ugly. Her hair hung down in straggles and there were a couple of good big warts on her face. I told her the whole lie about my kid brother and so forth as politely as I could.

  “That stuff ain’t here, kid,” she said crossly. “Even if it was I couldn’t let you have nothing.”

  I got sick all over again. “Could you tell me where it went, please?”

  “I’m busy, kid. Don’t bother me,” she said.

  “Please, it’s important.”

  She shrugged. “It’s in the drying rooms. Around the block. But they won’t let you have nothing, either. Now scram.”

  I scrammed. It was past twelve-thirty. I burst out of the Apex Rug Cleaners and ran back to Amsterdam. What she meant by around the block wasn’t exactly clear. I ran up Amsterdam, looking for signs. There were mainly shops and cafeterias and so forth along the avenue; it didn’t seem like the right kind of place for a drying room. When I reached Eighty-ninth Street I ran around the corner and stopped. There were no signs out. Most of the buildings looked like private apartment houses, but mixed in here and there were a few that looked as though they might have factories in them. I walked up one side of the block opening all the likely looking doors, trying to find clues or signs. I went up to the end of the block, and then I crossed over and started down the other side. I was pretty nearly down to the end of the street before I found it.

  It was nothing more than a little entranceway with stairs leading up. There were no signs, but I could smell that chemical cleaning smell. I went on up.

  At the top there was a big iron fire door. I pushed it open, and walked into a huge, dark loft room with a great high ceiling from which hundreds of rugs dangled almost to the floor. It was an eerie place. The rugs cut out the light, and they muffled all sounds from the street. Here and there were little aisles through the rugs, like paths through a forest. Back in the dark distance I could see workmen moving around. The rugs muffled the sounds of their footfalls, and they moved through the gloom as silently as shadows.

  Next to the door an old man with silvery hair and a grandfather look sat at a beat-up wooden desk. The top was sprawled with papers. There was a thermos bottle standing on the papers, and as I came in the old grandfather was unwrapping a sandwich from some waxed paper.

  “What do you want, sonny?” he asked.

  I told him the lie about my kid brother’s teddy bear. “The woman over at the other place said I could come over and get him.”

  “She did, did she?” he said. “I guess I’ll decide about that. Which woman?”

  “Some woman behind the counter. She’s sort of—sort of big.”

  “Well you can trot right back around there and tell her she’s got nothing to say about what goes on over here.”

  “I didn’t know you were the boss, or I’d have come here first, sir,” I said.

  “I’m glad somebody realizes,” he grumbled.

  “Now what was it you were looking for, sonny?”

  I told him all over again. While I was talking he opened the thermos bottle, poured some coffee into the cap, and took a big bite of the sandwich. He chewed away at the bite of sandwich. It was cheese and bologna. I could smell the mustard. I got finished telling my lie and waited. He chewed away at the bite of sandwich slowly and carefully, as if he were inspecting it with his teeth. When he’d got it mostly chewed he took a big swallow of coffee and chewed that too, for a while. Finally he put the sandwich down on the sheet of waxed paper and stood up. “Brown, you said it was?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “Brown.”

  He walked off into the jungle of rugs and disappeared. I waited. There was an old-fashioned alarm clock on his desk. It ticked loudly in that quiet place. I waited as the time went from five after one to one-ten and then to one-twenty. Time was adding to my problems. Pop had said he’d be home at three-thirty to get me ready to spend the night at Stanky’s, which probably meant he’d be home by four. I had to be home first.

  Finally the old grandfather came back through the dark, gloomy aisles of the forest with silent footsteps. He was carrying something in his hands. I held my breath. He came out of the woods, went around behind the desk, and dropped the teddy down next to the sandwich.

 
; “That what you looking for?” he said.

  “Oh yes, sir,” I shouted. “Oh thank you.” I reached out.

  He put his hand on the bear. “Not so fast, sonny,” he said. “Not so fast there.”

  He sat down in the chair, picked up the sandwich, and took another bite of it. I waited, jiggling around from one foot to the other, while he chewed the bite over carefully and washed it down with a swallow of coffee from the thermos top.

  When he finished he said, “Everything comes in here on an invoice; everything goes out of here on an invoice. You get me an invoice from Mrs. Saddler, I’ll give you the bear.”

  “Please,” I begged. He had taken his hand off the teddy in order to drink his coffee. If I grabbed it quickly and ran, I could probably be out the door before the old man could even get around the desk. I licked my lips.

  He picked the bear up, kicked open the bottom drawer of the desk, and dropped the bear in. “Sorry sonny, can’t do it. I’m the boss here. We do things my way.”

  I felt like crying. “Please?”

  “Nope, I can’t.”

  He’d made up his mind and there was no point in arguing. “Who is Mrs. Saddler? Is she the lady at the Needy Child’s Center?”

  He picked up the sandwich, and I thought I was going to have to go through all of that chewing again, but I guess he decided he’d given me a hard enough time already, for he spoke before he bit. “I never laid eyes on the woman, sonny. I recognize her signature pretty good, though.” He gave me a stare to tell me not to try forging an invoice.

  “I’ll get the invoice,” I said. “Will you keep the teddy here until I get back?”

  “I’ll do that much for you,” he said. He bit into the sandwich, and I peeled.

  I was still in a mess, but it was a better mess than I had started the day with. If the old grandfather kept his promise, I could get out of it. I ran to the subway, and then going downtown I carefully thought everything out.

  Mrs. Saddler was probably the nice lady at the Needy Child’s Center, but even if she wasn’t, she’d know who Mrs. Saddler was. The trouble was that I’d spent my last twenty cents for the subway trip down to the Village. What I had to do was beat it home and grab some money and something to eat. There was still time before Pop got home. Then I’d call up the Needy Child’s Center to find out who Mrs. Saddler was, and where she was, and would she sign the invoice, and all the rest of it. Then I’d go hide someplace until three o’clock. I’d come home just as if I’d been in school all day, pack my stuff, and go get Stanky. Then we’d pick up the invoice, get the bear, and have plenty of time to make it to the theater by six o’clock. We were supposed to get there early to get into our costumes, and have time to make changes, just in case.

  So I had a chance. I got out of the subway at Christopher Street and tore down West Fourth to home. It was just about two o’clock as I hit the living room. I didn’t have much time, but I had enough. The first thing I did was to make two huge peanut butter sandwiches and stuff them into my mouth as fast as I could, washing them down with nearly a quart of milk. Then I went into my room to get some money out of my savings bank.

  Wiggsy was sitting on my bed, smoking a cigarette and flicking the ashes on the floor. He was holding a gun in one hand, hanging down between his knees. He was holding it as carelessly as if it weren’t anything more than a bottle of soda pop. It was the casual way he had with that gun that got me.

  “Home a little early from school, ain’t you, babe?” he said in that soft voice.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “HOW COME YOU home so early from school, babe?” he said softly.

  I was so scared my throat closed and I had to whisper. “I played hooky,” I said.

  “Bad habit, babe.” He dropped the cigarette butt onto the floor and slowly crushed it out with his heel. He was wearing a red silk shirt with big patches of blue worked into it, but he had no funny hat on and no cigarettes in his beard. I figured he wanted to be as inconspicous as possible.

  “Okay, now listen, babe,” he said. “You just sit down there on the floor with your back against the door; and you fold your arms across your chest; and you don’t move a muscle. You got it, babe?”

  I nodded and sat down the way he told me.

  “Now listen, babe. If anyone comes in you keep cool and quiet. If they knock on this door or try to come in, you don’t say nothing—until I give you a signal with my hand, like this. You got that so far, babe?”

  I nodded.

  “Then you tell 'em you’re having a rest; you’ll be up in a while.”

  “Now.” He raised the gun up so the black hole in the middle was pointing dead center between my eyes. I stared past the hole down the gun barrel to the black hairs on the knuckles of Wiggsy’s big hand.

  “Now babe, were going to have a little game of truth or consequences,” he said in his soft voice. “I’m going to ask some questions, and every time you give me a wrong answer I’m going to take my big hand and pound the right one into you.” His voice got softer and lower.

  “And while I’m pounding you, you’re going to sit there quiet as a mouse. Because if you start shouting and screaming I’m going to take this gun and blow the top of your head clean off.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You hear me, babe?”

  I couldn’t speak, so I nodded my head.

  “Okay, question number one: what time does your old man get home?”

  I couldn’t speak, and had to clear my throat. After all our whispering, the noise seemed loud and scary. “About three, but he isn’t regular.”

  “Not before three?”

  “I don’t think so, but I can’t tell for sure.”

  “Okay, question number two: who sewed up the bear?” Wiggsy knew everything. “I did, Wiggsy,” I whispered.

  “Not your old man.”

  “No. He doesn’t know anything about it.”

  There was a long silence. He let the pistol drop a little and stared at me. After a while he said slowly, “You know, I don’t believe that, babe.”

  “So help me, Wiggsy, it’s the truth.”

  He raised his hand and started to swing. I jerked back; but he stopped swinging and held his hand in the air about a foot from my face. “Please Wiggsy, it’s true. He doesn’t know anything about you at all. All I wanted was for you to take the jewels back and forget the whole thing. That’s why I left the teddy in the guitar that time. I was hoping you’d take the jewels out.” I stared at him, and the sweat streamed down my face. His breath was coming hard and the red and blue shirt rose and fell over his huge belly like a tent in the wind.

  “I’m warning you, babe,” he said. “I’ll clobber the whey out of you. I mean it.”

  “Please, it’s true.”

  He took out a cigarette, lit it, and threw the match on the floor. For a while he sat there holding the pistol, thinking about it. I couldn’t take my eye off that gun, it scared me so.

  “You put the bear in there so I’d take the stuff out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well you want to know something, babe? I been here since ten o’clock this morning turning the place upside down. I didn’t find that bear. You want to know what I think? I think it’s down at the police headquarters on Centre Street being torn apart by a dozen technical specialists. What do you think about them onions, babe?”

  “It’s not there, Wiggsy,” I said. “I know where it is.”

  “Yeah? Do tell.”

  So I told him the whole story; about getting up at six that morning; and the Needy Child’s Center; and the Apex Rug Cleaning Company; and the old grandfather and all the rest of it. He just sat there staring at me, the gun dangling between his knees, watching my face to see if I was lying. When I finished he went on watching me for a while longer, smoking and squinting his eyes and thinking. Finally he said, “I don’t think you could have made that story up, babe.” He stood up. “Okay, let’s go get it.”

  He started to shove the gun under his shirt, and I le
aned forward to get up; and just at that moment we heard Pop turn the key in the lock to the apartment door. I stopped stock still, frozen. Slowly and silently Wiggsy pulled the gun out of his shirt and swung it around to point straight down at the top of my head.

  We heard Pop come into the apartment, shut the door, fling some stuff down someplace, and tramp out to the kitchen. After a minute he began rattling some dishes around. He was fixing tea. I was pretty sure of that. He liked to have a cup of tea and maybe a doughnut or something for a snack when he came home from work.

  Wiggsy didn’t move. He stood over me, his great stomach above me like a rock about to fall. I stayed still, half standing, half sitting, not daring to move. My legs began to fall asleep, and my back was sore and cramped.

  Pop went on messing around with the tea. There was no telling whether he would come into my room or not. I was supposed to make the bed every day and sweep it out once a week and keep my clothes picked up and so forth. Every once in a while he’d stick his head in to see if I was keeping it clean. Then of course he would come in to put the clean laundry in my drawer, or get the dirty stuff. But then sometimes he might just walk in for no reason.

  What was most likely was that after a while Stanky would get to wondering where I was and call up. That would get Pop and Stanky to asking a lot of questions of each other, and who knew what that would lead to.

  I had just finished thinking this when the phone rang. Pop picked it up and said hello. Small as the apartment was, and quiet as we were being, we could hear every word.

  “No, he’s not here,” he said.

  There was a long silence. Finally he said, “Hold it, hold it, what television show? I don’t understand. Are you sure you have the right number?”