Cave Under the City

by Mazer, Harry;

  “Do you have to know the price of everything?”

  “How much?”

  “Two times seven cents.”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Plus a nickel for the soda.”

  “Nineteen. Is that a lot of money?”

  “What do you think?”

  When we went outside, the train passed overhead and Bubber put his hands over his ears and screamed so he wouldn’t hear it. He was a funny kid, my brother. Things bothered him that I never even noticed.

  He poked along, picking up cigarette wrappers, matchbooks, and Dixie-cup covers. He found a Tom Mix. He had my old Horton-ice-cream-cover collection. It was mostly movie stars. Clark Gable, Wallace Beery and Norma Shearer and Jean Harlow. He had my baseball cards, too, that came with bubble gum. I used to trade them. When I turned twelve, I decided I was too old for them and gave them to Bubber. It was harder to give them away than I thought. I missed them. Sometimes I’d get them from Bubber and put the teams together. The cards still smelled like bubble gum. If I found a card in the street, I’d save it for him. Even if it was a double, he could trade it.

  “My feet hurt. Ohhh!” he said, sounding like my mother coming up the stairs after work. “Ohhh, my poor feet.”

  A trolley car passed and I thought of jumping on the back and taking a free ride, but Bubber would never be able to reach the back window.

  We went past our street, over toward Burke Avenue. I didn’t want to see anybody I knew. I didn’t want anybody to know my mother was sick, and that they were trying to put us in an orphan home.

  A couple of blocks from Burke Avenue, there was a block of burned-out stores. Behind the stores, it was all overgrown with weeds and prickly bushes. We poked around for a while. We found an old, soggy mattress with the stuffing coming out, and tires and a wrecked Model A with the doors gone. The seats were gone, too, but Bubber climbed in and stood behind the wheel. “Rrrrrrr.” He pushed the horn button. “Beep beep. Come on, Tolley, get in. First stop California.”

  “What’s in California?”

  “Daddy?”

  “No! That’s too far away.”

  “Alaska.”

  “Wrong.”

  “Rrrrrr. There’s Daddy.” He pushed the horn button again. “Beep beep beeeeep.”

  Later, before we went home, we stopped at Lazinski’s grocery store to buy eggs and some other stuff. “How much butter, Holtz?” Mr. Lazinski had a broad red face, a tomato face, with white eyebrows.

  “Quarter pound.”

  The butter was in a wooden tub in the cooler. Mr. Lazinski cut out a chunk and put it on a piece of waxed paper on the scale. “A little over, okay?”

  “And half a quarter of cream cheese.” The cream cheese came from the cooler in a long wooden box. I took a box of corn flakes from the shelf, and two cans of applesauce and a package of Wonder bread. Then I added three packages of Drake’s cream-filled cupcakes.

  Bubber touched everything. “How much? Does that cost a lot?”

  I put back one of the cupcakes, while Mr. Lazinski sliced a half pound of bologna and American cheese. I added a jar of mustard and a jar of Heinz pickles.

  “All this is yours, then?” Mr. Lazinski added up everything with a pencil on the outside of a paper bag. “Three dollars and fifty cents,” he said, snapping open the bag.

  “Charge it,” I said.

  He took the account book from under the counter. He had a page just for us. He looked at the numbers, then pinched his nose. “With today’s bill, tell your mother she owes me twenty-nine dollars and twenty-four cents.”

  That was more than my mother made in a week.

  “Tell her I have to have something on the bill. I’ve already let you charge too much. I have my own bills to pay.”

  I took the package. “I’ll tell her.”

  In the house, Bubber started eating bread and butter while I wrote to my father. “Dear Pop, You’ve got to come home right away. Momma’s in the hospital and Buba doesn’t feel good. We’re all right.…” I copied the address off his postcard and sealed my letter. I ran out to the candy store and bought two penny stamps to stick on the letter to my father. Then I stood by the mailbox like I was expecting my father to come popping out like Flash Gordon on his rocket ship.

  In the house there was no ice, so I put everything in a box on the fire escape. Bubber peeled the paper from a cupcake. He licked out the paper, then he nibbled all around the cake, saving the cream part for last. I sat there and watched him, leaning on my arm the way my father did. I felt like my father, all tired out.

  “What are we going to do, Tolley? Are they going to come and take us?”

  I turned on the radio and we listened to Young Widder Brown. Bubber got bored and played with the doors on the radio, opening and shutting them. The radio was as tall as he was. We both liked Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy and The Lone Ranger a lot better.

  When the radio program got too boring, we ate. Bubber wanted to know what we were going to do when we ate everything up. The bread was already gone and the bologna. I got mad at him because he kept asking me things I couldn’t answer. “Don’t bother me,” I said, but I went through the house again, looking for money. I felt under the chairs and behind the bed, and under all the plates in the cupboard where they sometimes hid money. I found a nickel and a couple of pennies.

  I fell asleep on my parents’ bed, listening to the radio. Bubber was asleep already. I had to pull his clothes off and cover him up.

  11

  In the morning the doorbell woke me. “Holtz?” a man called. “Tolman Holtz, are you in there?”

  Then I heard Mrs. Chrissman. She was standing outside our door, too. “The older one told me he was going to his grandmother. If I thought they didn’t have anybody, believe me, I would have been the first to take them in.”

  I signaled Bubber to be quiet.

  “He gave us the wrong address,” the man said, “then he ran away. I was here yesterday, too, tracking him down.”

  “Oh, that one, the big one, he’s trouble,” Mrs. Chrissman said. She banged on the door. “Tolley! Tolley! Are you in there? This is Mrs. Chrissman. Open up.”

  “I’ll look around the neighborhood and come back,” the man said. “I’m not leaving without them. If you see them, though—”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll hold them for you. They need somebody to control them. Their poor mother. Poor woman. They are a handful. Leave them alone, they’re like wild animals.”

  I heard the man’s footsteps going downstairs; then I got up and stood at the window. A tall man in a red plaid jacket and a gray hat came out on the stoop. It was drizzling. He lit a cigarette, stood there for a couple of minutes, then walked away.

  Bubber and I got dressed and climbed out on the fire escape. We went up the ladder to the roof and down another set of stairs into another part of the building.

  12

  It was wet in the park. I found a piece of cardboard and held it over our heads. We came out near the bridge by Gun Hill Road. Under the el we went into an Italian bakery. It was warm inside, and the window was steamed up. I bought a loaf of hot bread and a pineapple tart.

  Outside we walked along, ducking into doorways and under store awnings. I passed Bubber hunks of bread. The tart I saved for last. All the time I was thinking about what we would do. We couldn’t go back to the house and we couldn’t stay on the street all day. Go to Grandma’s then. Was she still sick? We’d stay there and help her. But what if the man got Grandma’s address, too, and came there and said she was too sick to take care of us and took us away?

  Bubber was hanging on to me, trying to hold my hand. I didn’t want him to. It was babyish. “We’re okay, aren’t we, Tolley?”

  “Yeah, great.” I kept thinking about the man in the plaid jacket, and there was a tightness in my belly that wouldn’t go away.

  “I don’t want to go to the orphan house,” Bubber said.

  “Okay.” Would it be so bad? At least it was d
ry there, and they’d feed us.

  “Tolley, let’s go see Momma. I’m cold. I don’t want to stay on the street. I want to go home.”

  I gave him the heel of the bread. His hair was full of raindrops and he had bread crumbs all over his mouth. I thought of McKenzie, then Mrs. Winslow. She was nice. I’d take Bubber there, room fifteen. I’d let Bubber go in alone, then I’d duck out of there fast. I could take care of myself better alone.

  Bubber was crying. He was eating and crying. “What’re you crying for?” It made me mad that he was crying. It was like he’d guessed what I was thinking and he was crying because I was going to leave him. And I suddenly saw him kicking McKenzie and trying to run after me.

  What would I tell my parents? Where’s your brother? What would I say? What would I tell my father when he came home? I don’t know. I left him. He went to the orphan home. What if my parents went for him and he wasn’t there? Maybe another family would come and he’d go home with them and nobody would know where he was.

  “Come on,” I said. I didn’t want to think anymore. We followed a woman into a butcher store and stood by the door like we belonged to her. The butcher sharpened a knife, then trimmed a piece of meat, weighed it and wrapped it. When the woman left, we left, too.

  Near Burke Avenue a green panel truck slowly turned the corner. It was like the trucks the city used to pick up stray dogs. What if they were picking up stray kids? What if it was the man in the plaid jacket looking for us? We cut behind some buildings, then ducked down into an empty lot. It was a low place, drippy and wet. We were in back of the block of burned-out stores. I looked up at the high foundation walls. We went up an outside staircase to a door. It was boarded up, but a couple of the boards had been pryed loose. We slipped inside.

  Inside, everything was burned and ripped out. It had been a restaurant, but now it was nothing—holes in the roof and metal ceiling hanging down. The rain dripped through everywhere. It was just a place to be for a while, and we fooled around exploring it.

  The floor was wobbly. “Stay on the side,” I said. “You’re going to fall through.” Bubber was finding things, savers—a cracked dish, a spoon, the handle of a coffee mug that he tried on my finger like a ring.

  In front, the checkout counter was smashed and filled with broken glass. In a drawer underneath, Bubber found a book of dry matches. He tried to read the cover. “B—Be—Be—”

  “Becker. That’s good,” I said. “What’s this word?” I skipped “restaurant” and went to the next word.

  His lips formed. “Hah—ho—hoo …”

  “Home,” I said.

  “Don’t help me.”

  “You’re taking all week. What’s the first word?”

  “B—B—”

  “Becker’s Restaurant. Home-Style Cooking. That’s what it says.”

  “Who cares?” He started lighting matches and throwing them at me. I grabbed the matchbook from him. “Give them back. They’re mine.”

  “You don’t play with matches.” I put them in my pocket.

  In the back there was a hole in the roof over a row of big black stoves. The roof had fallen in and plugged up the stairs. Nearby, there was a dumbwaiter like the one in our apartment, except this one was bigger and the door opened and shut like a mouth. It had a good rope and pulleys. I gave the rope a tug and ran the platform up and down. It was perfect.

  Bubber leaned into the shaft and dropped some stones. I got the idea of riding the platform down to the cellar and looking around. Maybe there was still good stuff down there. I climbed on the platform and held myself back with the rope.

  “Tolley, don’t—”

  “Bye, Bubber.” I released my grip.

  “Tolley—”

  I meant to let myself down easy, but I couldn’t hold the rope. It slid through my fingers and I hit with a jolt I felt in my teeth.

  “Tolley?” I saw my brother’s head in the shaft above me. “Tolley, are you all right? Are you dead?”

  “Yes, I am dead,” I said. I sat there, blowing on my hands and wondering how I was going to get back up again.

  13

  It was dark in the cellar. No lights, no windows. It smelled like dead cats. I couldn’t see anything. I felt around, moving cautiously. Then I heard a scratchy, creaking noise and I saw light. Skinny stabs of light, punching at me in the dark.

  Then it was black.

  Then the light started again. This time it went on and on. Something cold brushed against my cheeks. I backed toward the elevator shaft. The light exploded around me. It darted and danced and swung around the cellar. I saw a door swinging open.

  Then it was black again. Then light. Then black, then light again. The door swung open and shut. I saw a tiny room, a cot and a stove and a broken window.

  I looked into the room. It was empty. Whose cot was it? Who lived here? The wind came through the broken window and slammed the door shut. I yanked it open. “Bubber,” I called. I ran back to the dumbwaiter. “Bubber, I’m coming up.”

  I got on the elevator and grabbed the rope, but my hands were too sore to pull. “Bubber, you’ve got to help me.” I kept looking over my shoulder, thinking whoever lived there was somewhere in the dark watching me. “Bubber. Listen. When I pull down on the rope, you hang on and don’t let go. If you let go, I’ll kill myself.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to.” I pulled down the rope as hard as I could and lifted myself a little. “Hang on, Bubber. Hang on.” He just had to hold it long enough for me to get another grip, but he couldn’t and I fell back. My hands were burning. The cellar was light again. “Bubber, listen to me. Snag the end of the rope over something. Anything. The edge of the frame. Just don’t let go.”

  I wrapped my hands in my shirt and tried again. “Snag it,” I yelled, and got another grip. I went up. “Once more.” I got my arm over the edge and hung on. Bubber grabbed my shirt and pulled me out. I blew on my hands. I felt the blisters coming. “Good boy,” I said.

  14

  I was afraid to go back to the apartment. For a while we watched a baseball game at the high school. There was a crowd in the stands. Bubber poked around, picking up candy papers and sniffing them. I didn’t say anything till I saw him licking the papers. Then I made him stop because it looked so queer.

  We hung around the stores, looking at food in the windows. It’s the worst thing you can do when you’re hungry. All those cakes and bread and apple strudels. Bubber pestered me to buy something. “What am I going to buy it with?” I had three cents in my pocket. We went into a candy store and I bought three pretzel sticks and divided them. Then I asked the man for a glass of water.

  I drank half and passed it to Bubber. “Can I have more, please?” Bubber said.

  The man filled the glass. “That’s it. First water on the house. Next time, a penny a glass.”

  In a butcher shop, meat hung in the window. I wished I could go to Dave, the butcher on our street, and buy lamb chops. Dave the butcher was young. His hair fell in his face and he had gold teeth. “For you,” he’d say to my mother when he brought out a piece of meat. “This is just for you, beautiful. A beautiful piece of meat.” Then he’d wink at me. “Am I right?”

  I remembered the smell in the house when my mother seared the meat in the pot, then added onions and potatoes and carrots and stewed it slowly. And the good feeling of fat and meat in my belly.

  A woman in a dark coat came out of a store. “Carry your bundles, lady?”

  She pushed two heavy grocery bags into my arms and marched off. She lived three blocks from the store, on the second floor. By the time she unlocked the door, my arms felt like they were falling off. I set the bags down on the kitchen table. Something good was cooking. Everything in the apartment was clean and warm.

  She tied on an apron, looked at the bags on the table, and then gave me a dime. “Is that your little brother?” Bubber was just standing there. “You want a dime, too? Give me a smile,” she said. He smiled at her. “
What a sweet little boy.” And she gave Bubber a dime, too.

  We bought a quart of milk and a box of sugar cookies and stood in an alleyway and ate everything.

  When it got dark we went home. A woman passed, carrying a fish wrapped in newspaper. “Go home, children,” she sang. “Your mother is waiting for you.”

  We didn’t go directly into our building. What if the man in the plaid jacket was waiting for us in the hall? We went into the next building and climbed the stairs to the roof. The wind was whistling around the chimneys. Between the two buildings, there was a narrow space, a quick step across. I went first and put out my hand to Bubber.

  He shook his head.

  “I won’t let you fall. Just don’t look down.”

  So he looked down and then I looked down—six stories of brick wall to the cement alley below. I hopped back and forth a few times. “See. It’s easy.” I went back and forth again. “Come on.”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re not going to fall. I’ve done it a million times.”

  He kept shaking his head.

  “All right, wait a minute.” I found a piece of clothesline, tied one end to a pipe on my side and the other end on his side. I crossed back. “Hold the rope,” I said. “Cross.” I was so sick of waiting for him I grabbed his hand and yanked him over. He came flying across, and I went over backward with him on top of me. He started to cry. It was a dumb thing to do, but I’m just not patient enough.

  “Come on,” I said, “stop bawling. You did it.”

  Bubber sat up and looked around.

  “You want to do it again?”

  He shook his head. “N. O.”

  In the house, we took our shoes off and sat on the floor so we wouldn’t scrape the chairs. We ate a can of beans in the dark, with just the light from the stove. I was worried about the people downstairs and Mrs. Chrissman next door. I wanted to go down to check the mail, but I was afraid she’d see me. I could go out the window again and over the roof. “I’m coming, too,” Bubber said. He didn’t want to stay in the house alone.