Sol’s air of masculine superiority fell away and he almost gaped. “Cigars?” was all he could say.
“Yes, Mike had a box of them, but there were just these two left. I don’t know if they are any good or not.”
Sol groped for memory of the cigar ritual that had once controlled a judgment of this kind. He sniffed suspiciously at the end of one. “Smells like tobacco at least.” When he held it to his ear and pinched the smaller end there was a decided crackling sound. “Aha! Too dry. I might have known. You got to take care of cigars, keep them in the right climate. These are all dried out. They should be in a humidor. They can’t be smoked this way.”
“Do you mean they’re no good? We’ll have to throw them away?” It was a terrible thought.
“Nothing like that, relax. I’ll just take a box, put a wet sponge in it along with these stogies and wait three, four days. One thing about cigars, if they dry out you can bring them back to life just like Lazarus, or better maybe, he couldn’t have been smelling too good after being buried four days. I’ll show you how to take care of these.”
Shirl sipped her kofee and smiled. It was going to be all right. Sol just hadn’t liked the idea of someone coming to stay with Andy, it must have upset him. But he was a nice guy and had some funny stories and a funny, sort of old-fashioned way of talking, and she knew that they were going to get along.
“This stuff doesn’t taste too bad,” Sol said, “if you can forget what real coffee tastes like. Or Virginia ham, or roast beef, or turkey. Boy, could I tell you about turkey. It was during the war and I was stationed at the ass-end of Texas and all the food was sent out of St. Louis and we were right on the end of the supply line. What reached us was so bad I saw mess sergeants shudder when they opened the Gl cans the stuff was shipped in. But once, just once it worked the other way around. These Texans raise billions of turkeys down there on ranches, then ship them north for Christmas and Thanksgiving, you know.” She nodded, but she didn’t know. “Well, the war was on and there was no way to ship all these turkeys out, so the Air Corps bought them for next to nothing and that’s what we had to eat for about a month. I tell you! We had roast turkey, fried turkey, turkey soup, turkey burgers, turkey hash, turkey croquettes….”
There was the sound of running footsteps in the hall and someone rattled the knob so loudly that the door shook. Sol quietly slipped open the table drawer and took out a large meat cleaver.
“Sol, are you there?” Andy called from the hall, shaking the handle again. “Open up.”
Sol threw the cleaver onto the table and hurried over to unlock the door. Andy pushed in, sweating and breathing hard, closing the door behind him and talking in a low voice despite his urgency.
“Listen, fill the water tanks and all the jerry cans. And fill whatever else we have that will hold water. Maybe you can plug the sink, then you can put water in that too. Fill as many jerry cans as you can at our water point, but if they begin to notice you coming back too often, go to the other one on Twenty-eighth Street. But get going. Sol—Shirl will help you.”
“What’s it all about?”
“Christ, don’t ask questions, just do it! I shouldn’t be telling you this much—and don’t let on I did or we’ll all be in trouble. I have to get back before they find me missing.” He went out as fast as he came in, the slammed door an echo to his receding footsteps.
“What was all that about?” Shirl asked.
“We’ll find out later,” Sol said, kicking into his sandals. “Right now we get moving. This is the first time Andy has ever pulled anything like this and I’m an old man—I scare easy. There’s another jerry can in your room.”
They were the only ones who appeared concerned in any way and Shirl wondered what Andy could have possibly meant. There were only two women waiting in line at the corner water point, and one of them only wanted to fill a quart bottle. Sol helped to carry the filled jerry cans, but Shirl insisted on taking them up the stairs. “Work some of the fat off my hips,” she said. “I’ll bring down the empties and you can get back in line while I pour out the others.”
The line was a little longer now, but there was nothing unusual about it, this was the time when most people started to show up to make sure they had their water before the point closed at noon.
“You must be thirsty, Pop,” the patrolman on duty said when they reached the head of the line again. “Ain’t you been around before?”
“So what’s your trouble?” Sol snapped, pointing his beard at the cop. “All of a sudden you’re being paid to count the house? Maybe I like to take a bath once in a while so I don’t stink like some people I could mention, but I won’t….”
“Take it easy, grandpa.”
“… I’m not your grandpa, shmok, since I haven’t committed suicide yet, which I would if I was. All of a sudden cops got to count how much water people need?”
The policeman retreated a yard and half turned his back. Sol filled the containers, still grumbling, and Shirl helped carry them to one side to screw the lids back on. They had just finished when a police sergeant pulled up on a sputtering motorbike.
“Lock this point up,” he said. “It’s closed for the day.”
The women who were waiting to fill their containers screamed at him and pushed forward around the spigot, getting in each other’s way and trying to get some water before it was closed down. The patrolman fought his way through the shouting crowd to turn the valve handle. Even before he touched it the water hiccoughed, died to a thin trickle, then stopped. He glanced at the sergeant.
“Yeah, that’s the trouble,” the sergeant said. “There’s a … broken pipe, they had to shut down. It’ll be all right tomorrow. Now break this up.”
Sol looked wordlessly at Shirl as they picked up the jerry cans, then turned away. Neither of them had missed the hesitancy in the sergeant’s voice. This was something more than broken pipe. They carried the containers slowly up the stairs, careful not to spill a drop.
14
Even though the cops knew who he was and were after him, luck was on his side, that’s what Billy Chung kept telling himself. Sometimes he would forget it for a while and the shakes would come back and he would have to start thinking all about the luck again. Hadn’t the cops come when he was out of the apartment—wasn’t that luck? And he had gotten away without being seen, that was luck too. What if he had to leave everything behind? He had put his shorts on, and just the day before he had sewed all his money into them because he was afraid of losing it out of his shoe. So he had the loot, and loot was all you really needed. He had run, but he had run smart, going to the flea market in Madison Square first and waking up one of the guys who slept under his stall and buying sandals. Then he headed downtown, out of the district, keeping moving. When the water points opened he had washed up, then bought an old shirt from another stall, and some weedcrackers, and ate them while he walked. It was still early when he got to Chinatown, but the streets were already filling up, and all he had to do was find a clear spot against the wall, curl up and go to sleep.
When he woke up he knew that he couldn’t stay here, this would be the first place that the cops would try, he had to move on. Some of the locals who lived in the street were already beginning to give him funny looks and he knew if his description was out they’d finger him in a minute for a couple of D’s. He had heard once that there were some Chinese over on the East Side and he headed that way. If he stayed anywhere too long he would be noticed, and as long as it was this hot it didn’t matter where he slept. It hadn’t been a conscious plan in the beginning but in a few days he discovered that if he moved around while the streets were crowded no one paid any attention to him, and he could even sleep during the day, and some at night too if he could find a quiet spot. No one ever noticed him as long as he stopped some place where there were other Chinese in the area. He kept moving and it kept him busy, this way he didn’t worry too much about what was going to happen to him. It would be all right as long as his
money lasted. And then … He didn’t like to think about what would happen then, so he didn’t.
It was the rainstorm that made him decide that he had to find a place to hole up. He had been caught in it and got soaked and at first it wasn’t bad at all, but just at first. Along with thousands more of the homeless he had sought shelter under the high, soaring roadways of the Williamsburg Bridge, and even here it wasn’t very dry with every change in the wind blowing in sheets of rain. He was wet and cold the whole night, he didn’t sleep at all, and in the morning he climbed the stairway to the bridge to get into the sun. Ahead of him the walkway stretched out over the river and he walked along it to keep warm, into the face of the rising sun. He had never been this high before and it was completely new, looking down on the river and the city like this. A gray nuclear freighter was moving slowly upstream and all the rush of sail and rowboat traffic scurried, away before it. When he looked down he had to hold tight to the railing.
Halfway across he realized that he was out of Manhattan—for the first time in his life—and all he had to do was keep going and the police would never find him. Brooklyn lay ahead of him, a jagged wall of strange outlines against the sky, a wholly new and frightening place. He didn’t know anything about it—but he could find out. The police would never think of looking for him this far away, never in a hundred years.
Once he was off the bridge the fear ebbed slowly away—this was just like Manhattan only with different people, different streets. His clothes were dry now and he felt all right, except that he was tired and very sleepy. The streets went on and on, crowded and noisy with people, and he followed them at random until he came to a high wall that stretched all along one side of the road and seemed to be endless. He followed it, wondering what was on the other side, until he reached a sealed, iron gate with rusty barbed wire strung over the top of it so you couldn’t climb over. BROOKLYN NAVY YARD—KEEP OUT a weathered sign read. Through the bars of the gate Billy could see a wasteland of sealed buildings, empty sheds, rusting mountains of scrap, pieces of ships, broken hills of concrete and rubble. A potbellied guard in a gray uniform walked by inside, he carried a heavy night stick, almost a club, and he looked suspiciously at Billy, who let go of the gate and walked on.
Now that was something. Looked like a hundred miles of land in there and no people at all, closed up and forgotten. If he could get in there without the cop seeing him he could hide forever in a place like that. If there was a way to get in. He kept walking along the wall, until the solid stone and concrete gave way to a chain-link fence, rusty and drooping. More barbed wire topped it, but it was clumped rustily together and torn away in spots. This was a piece of street where there weren’t too many people, either, just blank walls of old warehouses. It wouldn’t be hard getting over the fence here.
That he wasn’t the first person with this kind of idea was proven a minute later, while he was studying the fence. There was a stirring of motion on the other side and a man, not much older than he was, ran into sight. He stopped a minute, looking up and down the street outside to be sure no one was too close, then bent to the bottom of the wire fence and pushed a jagged boulder of broken concrete under it. Then, in a practiced, wriggling motion, he crawled under the fence, pushed away the supporting chunk of concrete so that the fence dropped down again, rose to his feet and walked off down the street.
Billy waited until he was out of sight, then went over to the spot. A shallow impression had been scratched into the ground at this point, not deep enough to draw attention, but deep enough to crawl through when the bottom of the fence was propped up. He pulled the concrete into place as the other had done, looked around—no one in sight was paying any attention to him—and then slipped under. There was nothing to it. He kicked the concrete away so that the fence fell, than ran quickly to the shelter of the nearest building.
There was something frightening about these acres of empty silence; he had never been this alone before, without others somewhere close by. He walked slowly now, pressed against the sun-warmed bricks of the building, pausing and peering out cautiously when he came to the corner. Ahead was a wide, wreckage-strewn avenue of emptiness. Just as he started across there was a movement far down the street and he fell back to the wall as a gray-uniformed guard passed slowly across. When he was gone, Billy hurried in the opposite direction, taking shelter in the shadows of the rusted steel beams of a floating dry dock.
From wreckage to ruin he went on, looking for some shelter he could crawl into, to hide and sleep. There were other guards about but they were easy to spot; they stayed on the wider avenues and never came near the buildings. If he could find a way inside one of the locked structures he would be safe enough from discovery. One of them looked promising, a long, low building with a collapsed roof and glassless windows. It was sided with slabs of asbestos sheeting and many of the panels were cracked and one of them had been almost completely torn away. He came close and looked in and could see only darkness. The fallen roof was only a few feet above the floor, making a dark and silent cavern. This was just what he needed. He yawned and crawled through the opening. The big chunk of iron caught him in the side and he screamed in agony.
The darkness filled with red tongues of pain as he scrambled backward out of the opening, hurling himself to one side. Something heavy rushed through the air next to his head and crashed into the wall, cracking and splintering it. Billy stumbled to his feet, away from the entrance, but no one tried to follow him. There was only silence within the dark opening as he hobbled away as fast as he could, favoring his side, glancing back fearfully at the building. When he turned a corner and it was out of sight he stopped and pulled up his shirt, looking at the scratched rawness just below his ribs that was already starting to turn black-and-blue. It didn’t seem to be more than a bad bruise, but how it hurt.
Something to fight with, that’s what he needed. Not that he was going back to that building—never!—he was just going to need a weapon of some kind in this place. There were shattered chunks of concrete around and he picked up one that fitted into his hand, and even had a broken stub of rusty reinforcing rod sticking out of it. Lots of other people must have had the idea to hide in here, he sould have known that when he saw the guy who came out under the fence. They stayed out of sight of the guards, that seemed easy enough to do. Then they found a place and took it over, keeping anyone else out, that’s how it would be. There might be a way into every one of these buildings, and there might be someone hiding in each one. He shivered as he thought of this and pressed his hand to his sore side and moved away from the shelter of the building. Maybe he should get out of here while he was still in one piece? But this was too good a spot to leave. If he did find a place to hole up it would be perfect, just what he needed. He should look around some more before he got out. And find something better than this lump of concrete to fight with. He searched as he walked and realized that, in spite of the ruined and crumbled landscape, there was nothing lying about that was small and handy enough to use for a weapon. It was as if many others had been through here before him, bent on the same mission. Clutching the concrete tighter, he limped on.
A little later, he wanted to escape this collapsing and rusted jungle, but he had lost his way and could not get out. The sun was hot on the top of his head, bouncing up from the cracked pavement around him. He walked along the brink of a vast and silent dry dock, empty and forgotten, a canyon of scrap-littered silence, feeling like an insect crawling along the edge of the world. Beyond was the oily rush of the East River cutting him off from the distant towers of Manhattan; his side hurt when he breathed and loneliness was a weight pressing down on his shoulders.
A dismantled ship rested on blocks at the edge of the water from which it had been reluctantly pulled, its skin peeled off by the wreckers and its rusting ribs standing like the skeleton of a dead sea monster. The work had never been finished; the after part of the ship was almost intact, while some of the deckhouse and the stern were still u
ntouched. There were no openings at ground level, the ship had been a tanker and the transverse bulkhead was still in place, but high above were portholes and a doorway. It wouldn’t be hard to climb the framework and Billy wondered if anyone had been there before him. They might, they might not, there was no way to tell. He had to rest and the ship made him think of home. He had to try some place. Carrying the chunk of concrete made climbing difficult, but he still took it with him.
In front of the deckhouse door there remained only a jagged-edged piece of deck, just a few feet wide. Billy pulled himself up onto this and faced the doorless opening to the cabin, holding the concrete ready.
“Is anyone there?” he called softly. The circular openings that had once contained portholes threw beams of light into the interior, bright spots on the deck that made the surrounding darkness more intense. “Hello,” Billy called again, but there was only silence.
Reluctantly he advanced through the doorway and into the blackness of the room. No one struck at him this time. Nothing moved and he blinked his eyes, dimmed by the bright sunlight outside, at a dark shape, but it was only a pile of rubbish. There was another pile in the far corner, and he had to look at it twice before he realized that it was a man, squatting against the wall with his legs pulled up before him, looking intently at Billy.
“Put that thing down, the thing in your hand,” the man said in a hushed voice, almost a whisper. He reached out a long arm and clanged a twisted length of pipe against the decking. Billy stared at it wide-eyed, and his side ached. He dropped the concrete.
“That’s very wise,” the man said, “very wise.” He stood up jerkily, unfolding like a carpenter’s rule, a tall man with spiderlike arms, thin to the point of emaciation. When he walked into the beam of sunlight Billy saw that the skin was stretched right across his cheekbones and almost hairless skull, while his lips were drawn back to reveal long yellow teeth. His eyes were round as a child’s and of such a watery blue that they seemed almost transparent. Not empty, but more like windows to look through—with nothing to be seen on the other side. And he kept staring at Billy, swinging the pipe slowly, saying nothing, his lips pulled away from his teeth in an expression that might have been a grin, but also might be something else, very different.
Make Room! Make Room! Page 14