Cave Under the City

by Mazer, Harry;

  “Gotta have some money. Gotta have some money.” Whitey was singing, tapping on the table. Then he looked up, snapped his fingers, and winked at me. “Okay, got it. You guys wait right here. I won’t be long.” He left the cafeteria.

  We sat there, waiting for him. “Where’d Whitey go?” Bubber said.

  “Probably to talk to Starkey. We’re going to go to Florida.”

  “King, too?”

  “I don’t know.” I hadn’t thought about that.

  “I can’t go without King.”

  “Do you know how far Florida is? Do you know what we’re going to do down there? We’re going to live on the beach. You’re going to swim every day, and we’re going to eat more and live better, and not have to wear all these clothes. You’re not going to need shoes down there.”

  Bubber was listening with his mouth open. “We’re going to sleep on the beach,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get a tent. Or maybe we’ll rent a room. A real room, right by the ocean, with beds, and a toilet and running water. Whitey and I are going to get jobs and you’re going to school.”

  Bubber shook his head.

  “No? You want to work, too?”

  “I don’t want to go to school in Florida.”

  “What do you think, it’s going to be a vacation forever? Well, that’s okay, it doesn’t matter that much. Maybe you don’t have to go to school. You’re going to learn a lot just being around Whitey and me.”

  We waited a long time. A girl and a boy came in with their father. They stood at the counter, waiting for their orders. The girl looked around at me a couple of times. I winked at her. I surprised myself. I think she noticed. I’d never winked at a girl before. Maybe I did it because of the way I was sitting, sprawled back like I was Whitey. I only wished I had a cigarette in my hand.

  Bubber and I went back and filled up with hot water again. I swaggered a little bit when I went by the girl. The man behind the counter was watching us. I nudged Bubber and we drank up fast and went out.

  For a while we stood in the entrance of the cafeteria. The girl came out with her father and brother. I was leaning against the building, my collar up and my hands in my pockets. I felt like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood. I looked after them till they disappeared behind the corner.

  “I have to go,” Bubber said.

  “Then go.” A car went by, and I thought I saw Whitey. He’d do something interesting and different like that, come back for us in a car. Jump in, Tolman! Come on, Bub. We’re on our way to the sunny climes.

  Bubber butted me. “Tolley.”

  “Can’t you hold it?” I didn’t want to miss Whitey.

  “I’m going to do it in my pants.”

  “Go in the cafeteria.” I finally had to go back in with him. “Hurry up,” I said. I was afraid Whitey would come while we were inside. If he was with somebody else, he wouldn’t wait.

  Outside, I looked up and down the street. Bubber was counting. “Seven … eight … ten … thirteen …”

  “What are you counting?”

  “People going in.”

  “How many?” I didn’t care. It was just something to say. But I started counting, too. A fat man went in. “How many now?” I said to Bubber.

  “Twenty.”

  “Wrong. Twenty and a half.” He didn’t get it. “The fat man,” I said. “Twenty and a half.”

  “You can’t have a half of a person, Tolley!”

  It was a dumb conversation. That was the trouble with hanging around with a six-year-old kid all the time. Not that Bubber was dumb, but if Whitey were here, I wouldn’t be playing counting games.

  “Twenty-one,” Bubber said.

  “Twenty-two,” I said.

  We got up to forty, people were going in for lunch, and still no Whitey.

  “When’s Whitey coming?” Bubber said.

  “That makes fourteen,” I said.

  “Fourteen what?”

  “Fourteen times you asked the same dumb question.”

  “When’s Whitey coming?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “When’s Whitey coming?”

  “You’ll know he’s arrived when you see him coming.”

  We waited and we waited. We waited too long. Four o’clock, we were still waiting. I checked the round clock in the window of the shoe store.

  “When’s Whitey coming?”

  I went to the corner and came back. I walked past the shoe store. I told myself not to check the time, but then I looked. He could still be coming. He could be coming right now.

  The bells on the church chimed five times. I was standing on the corner near the fire alarm box. He wasn’t coming. He’d ditched us. Suddenly I wanted to take the hammer and break the glass and sound the fire alarm. I had to walk away.

  Later, we stood outside our house and looked up at the unlit windows. Then I ran in to check the mailbox. It was empty.

  That night I dreamed that my father had come back and he was sitting on the cot next to me. He was wearing a long coat like Whitey’s and his shoes were covered with paint. I reached out for him. My hand touched cold iron. Next to me, I heard Bubber breathing.

  27

  It rained steadily for days. Upstairs, water dripped through the holes in the roof and ran down the insides of the walls. Even with the fire going we couldn’t dry out the room. It was getting colder and we were sleeping together head to foot on the cot. Some nights I’d wake up with his feet in my face. I’d lie there and listen to his sniffling and the water popping and dripping down the walls.

  Where was my father? I was thinking about him again, watching for him every day. I saw him hitchhiking, getting a ride on a truck or in a car, coming closer, coming home.

  I didn’t feel good a lot of times. My bones ached, and some days I didn’t want to get out of bed. Bubber pulled at me. “I’m hungry. You want me to go without you?” I didn’t care. Bubber and King went out alone. I had an idea they were begging. Bubber brought me back a roll, a cupcake, a candy bar.

  Other days we went out together. On rainy days, people wanted packages carried home. We worked together. Bubber carried packages as big as mine. When we had money, we went to a cafeteria and ordered soup and crackers, then sat there as long as we could. It was hard to stay awake. I’d lean on my elbow and Bubber would put his head down on the table. “I’m not sleeping,” he said. “I’m talking to the table.” If anyone said anything to us, we went someplace else. We weren’t the only ones sitting with empty cups in front of us.

  We were wet all the time. Bubber sniffled. On the train, he’d found a leather aviator’s hat with earflaps. He wore it all the time. He needed a heavy jacket, so did I. We wore sweaters, one on top of the other. The worst thing was the holes in the soles of my shoes. I put cardboard in the bottom, but when it rained my feet got wet.

  It rained and rained. The water sat in the cellar. One day it rained so hard, we couldn’t stay inside and we couldn’t stay out on the street. We stood in hallways for a while, then we went up to the el and asked the man in the coin booth if we could sit in the men’s room and wait for our mother. There was a coal stove so it was warm, and we used the toilet.

  All day we rode around on the trains. I liked being on the train. We were going someplace, even though we were only going in circles. We rode from the Bronx to Manhattan, over to Brooklyn and Coney Island, then back again. Once you got on the train, you never had to get off. You could go all over the city. If you got hungry, you could stop in a station and buy chocolate from the machine for a penny.

  One day, on the way back from Coney Island, we stopped off in Manhattan at the Battery. I wanted Bubber to see the Statue of Liberty, but when we tried to sneak on the Staten Island ferry, we were chased. We ducked back on the train and rode up to the Museum of Natural History. Outside, by the chunk of meteorite that looked like black Swiss cheese, Bubber went around asking people for a nickel so he could call his mother. Then we bought hot dogs and orange soda from a street vendor. In the museum we mainly
looked at the Indian exhibits—the Indian long boat and the hut cutaway showing an Indian family around a fire. Then we went to look at the dinosaur bones and the Great Blue Whale that filled up a room as big as the auditorium in school. Bubber fell asleep on the bench in the dinosaur room.

  It was late and still raining when we got back to the cellar. King was outside. “Why’s he out here?” Bubber said. “Go inside, boy!” When Bubber started to go in, King grabbed his leg. “He doesn’t want me to go in.”

  Whitey’s back, I thought. Then I thought the cops had discovered the cave. I went up on the street level and slipped inside. It was dark, but I could see something had happened. The roof was sagging down like a giant funnel and water was spilling through it into a hole where the floor had been. Underneath, where the cave was, the floor had fallen into the cellar and buried everything.

  28

  That night the three of us stayed under the stairs in back of the restaurant. In the morning we were out early. For a time we sat in back of a big Camel billboard to get out of the wind. The rain had stopped, but it was cold and the wind howled across the empty lots. It made the telephone poles shake and the grass whistle.

  On top of a long empty hill we passed some houses and stores. Bubber stood on a corner with his hand out. I went into a bakery and asked for day-old bread. Begging.

  The baker, flour over his face like a clown, said, “Three cents a loaf. Two loaves for a nickel.”

  I pulled out my pockets. I tried to look cute like Bubber.

  The baker wiped his hands on his white apron. “What do you kids want from me? Nothing for nothing, my mother always said.” Then he went in back. I thought he was going to call the police. I didn’t care. I was too tired to run. What were we running for anyway? I couldn’t remember anymore. The baker came back with two stale sandwich breads.

  Bubber had a nickel. We bought a bottle of milk and went in back of the bakery and sat inside a big cardboard box. The breads were hard as rock. We soaked them in milk and ate them. We stayed there, out of the wind. Sometimes we slept. King went off and came back. When the baker went home, he threw a bag in the garbage, then banged down the lid. Bubber went out to investigate and came back with a handful of broken half-moon cookies. We gnawed them like bones and slept in the box that night like three dogs.

  In the morning, we went on. We walked and we walked and we walked. I always thought you could blindfold me and turn me around ten times and I’d still be able to point straight to where I lived. But now I didn’t know where we lived. We didn’t live anywhere.

  “Which way?” Bubber said. Any way. Maybe we were going in circles. It didn’t matter. We didn’t have anyplace to go. We didn’t live anywhere anymore. When we lived in the cellar, I was ashamed. I didn’t want anyone to know. We called it a cave, but it was just a cellar. Wet, dark, and dirty. Now it seemed like this wonderful place.

  Near a movie house, King found a half-eaten hot dog in the street. I took a grab for it, but he swallowed it in one bite. I kicked him, and Bubber turned around and kicked me.

  “Then go to hell,” I yelled. “You and your dog both. Let him feed you.” Then I walked away, without looking back.

  I crossed railroad tracks. Ahead I saw the river and near it a bunch of shacks and junk houses banged together out of scraps of wood and rusted metal. People lived there. Some shacks had doors and windows, some had burlap or cardboard over the openings. One shack was half covered with a metal sign advertising Prince Albert tobacco. There were some kids playing in a woodpile. A dog barked at me.

  I crossed more tracks and climbed down to the river. I sat on a rock, looking across the Hudson River to the Palisades on the Jersey side. The water made little sucking noises as it rose and fell on the rocks. A long way off, I heard a train whistle, then the distant pumping of the locomotive. I felt it coming in the ground. Moments later a train passed, the engine spitting sparks, white smoke flying from the wheels.

  The long shriek of the train whistle reached down and twisted in me. I thought of my mother, my grandmother, and my father far away. And where was my brother? Bubber! I started back. A man stood by one of the shacks. “Did you see a little kid with curly hair?” I said.

  A woman came out with an empty pail. “What’s he want?” she said.

  “How should I know?” the man said.

  “Bubber!” I ran. I tripped over the railroad tracks. “Bubber!” I called. Why did I lose my temper? I wanted to kill myself for being so stupid. Why didn’t I think? How could I lose him? You lost your brother! How could you lose your brother?

  I ran toward the street where I’d left him. If I find him, I promised God, I’d never lose my temper again.

  Bubber was sitting on the curb in front of the movie house, his arm around King. The minute he saw me he got up and walked away. “Where are you going?” I said. “Hey, aren’t you going to talk?” I caught him. He pushed me away. “Didn’t you ever fight before? I’m talking to you.”

  “Talk to yourself, Tolley. I’m not listening.”

  “What’s that mean? You the boss now?”

  “You’re not my boss.” He put his hands in his pockets.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  He didn’t move.

  I tried to pull him. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You kicked King.”

  “So what?”

  “You hurt his feelings.”

  “So what? He’s a dog.”

  “He’s got feelings, too.”

  “What do you want me to do? Kiss him?”

  “Yes. And say you’re sorry.”

  “You say you’re sorry.”

  Bubber grabbed me, caught my hand, bit it. I slapped him away. He went flat on his back, then he came at me again with his lips drawn back like a dog’s. I backed up. He kicked at me and I stiff-armed him to keep him off. I didn’t want to fight my brother. I’d never seen him like this before. He used to do anything I said.

  “Say you’re sorry!”

  “Okay, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Are you satisfied now?”

  We walked. After a while we talked and we were friends again. I wanted to go back to the shacks, where those people were living. Maybe we could find somebody to stay with. I was tired, hungry, I needed to sleep. I thought I knew the way back, but we came out on a wide street lined with big official-looking buildings. People going in and out. On the street a crowd was gathered around a man with a monkey dressed up in a red uniform like a bellhop. The monkey was on a chain, and every time someone put a coin in his cup he raised his hat.

  Shine boys were up on the steps of the courthouse. There was one on every step. One of them was a woman. All of them were yelling, “Shine, shine. Five cents a shine.” But she yelled the loudest. “Best shine in New York.”

  I watched her with a customer, a man in a black overcoat and a big hat. He looked like a judge. He put his foot on the shoe box. Big feet, too. She sat on a stool and polished with two brushes, then finished with a long polishing cloth that she whipped over the shoes. “There you are, sir.” She tapped his shoes, and he dropped some money in her hand.

  As soon as he was gone, she said to us, “Get out of here. You’re blocking the customers.”

  We moved to another step. Bubber took off his aviator’s hat and held it out. I stood behind him with my hand sort of raised. I had my eyes closed. I made believe that I’d been blinded during the war. Mustard gas. “You want something?” Someone gave me a stinging slap on my hand. It was the woman. “Scram,” she said.

  29

  I was walking and dreaming, asleep on my feet. Bubber held my hand and I followed him. It was nighttime and I dreamed it was summer and I was walking in the sand in my bare feet. At Orchard Beach with my father. I wore my bathing suit under my pants. After we swam we’d go into the bushes and change.

  We stopped to rest by the side of a building. Sometimes a car passed. Snow fell. It melted on the ground but stuck in Bubber’s hair. It came slanting into us. M
y feet were wet and I felt the water squishing in my shoes. Around me, everything was moving, the wind, the cars, the snow. I kept walking … walking … sleeping …

  I slept over a warm grate. King licked my face.

  “Tolley!” Bubber shook me awake. He looked like a snowman. He pulled me up.

  The snow had stopped. We were on a broad avenue, lit up, bright and empty. The snow glittered and the apartment buildings were white and still. We were the only people on the street. A dead street, and we were dead, too. Everything seemed to come from far away. My head hurt. Nothing looked right. An approaching car’s lights came at me like huge cat’s eyes, the bumper full of shiny teeth. And on the roofs I saw gargoyles and gorillas jumping up and down.

  We stood under a long green awning out of the snow, then went inside the building. A uniformed doorman chased us out. We went into another building. I rested my hands on top of the radiator and pushed my feet underneath till my shoes started to burn. Then Bubber heard someone and pushed me out. I shook; my teeth were chattering. I walked with my eyes closed, holding on to Bubber’s arm.

  “Bubber, my big little brother.” He led and I followed. “You be the daddy.” I talked silly. My lips felt puffy. My voice sounded funny. “You be the big brother and I’ll be the little brother.” We were playing together in the living room. My mother was by the stove. I rolled on the round hassock. Then Bubber sat on my back. I was the horse and he was the cowboy. The bad guy was hiding behind the chair. “Behind the chair,” Bubber yelled, and kicked me in the ribs.

  Later, down behind buildings in the empty lots we saw men standing around a fire. Sparks shot up in the air. “Hey, you kids, what have you got?”

  King growled. Bubber pushed me ahead of him into the dark. We crawled into a pipe to get out of the wind, but it was too cold. We walked again.

  We found a broken couch leaning against a building. It was covered by a canvas that we pulled over us. We slept there. Once I woke, damp, sweating, water spilling out of me.

  I woke with the sun in my eyes. The snow melted and dripped off trees and wires. King barked at an orange cat on top of a rusted iron can. A man came out of the house, yelling at King. “Go on. Scat. Git!”