Dave at Night

by Gail Carson Levine

  Her jacks were scattered on the wooden floor just beyond the round rug. The little ball lay between the stilts. I picked it up and sat on the floor by the jacks, which I gathered and scattered again. I threw the ball into the air and picked up a jack. The ball bounced twice before I got it.

  I felt dumb playing a girl’s game. If Irma Lee didn’t sit up soon, I was going to stop and try something else. I threw the ball again. This time I picked up a jack and the ball before it bounced, only with two different hands. I threw again, but the ball went wide. I threw again.

  “Nuts!” The jack was jammed between two floorboards, and the ball skipped toward the window.

  I heard something and looked up. Irma Lee was leaning over the edge of the bed watching me. A tear stood on the tip of her nose, but she was giggling.

  I chased after the ball and threw it at her. She caught it and tossed it back. She was fast! So there we were, playing catch, the fastest game of catch I ever played. She was grinning, looking so happy that staring at her made me miss the ball.

  She laughed while I went after it. “I made you miss!” And when I came back she said, “More!” And we were off again. Till she let the ball whiz by her and leaned back and laughed and laughed.

  After a minute or two, she scrambled to the foot of her bed and opened the toy chest. She pulled out a long flat box. “Want to play checkers?”

  I hated checkers. It was a stupid game. “Sure.”

  “You can be black.” She turned the box over and let everything fall to the floor.

  I wanted to do something to make her sure we were friends. I was going to be her friend forever, no matter what. She was the only person who wanted me. Not my uncles and aunts, not Ida, not Gideon, not even Solly.

  Once, when my friend Ben and I were eight, we each cut our fingers and held the cuts together to make us blood brothers. I wanted to do something like that, but I didn’t want Irma Lee to have to cut herself.

  She unfolded the checkerboard and started to arrange her pieces.

  I spat into my hand. “Spit into my hand,” I said.

  She looked up, surprised, but did it, no questions asked.

  “Give me your hand.” I took her right hand and rubbed the palm against my palm. “Now we can’t stop being friends, ever.”

  She rubbed her palms together and then took my other hand and rubbed our spit into it. “Double!”

  She was exactly perfect!

  I laid out my checkers pieces and moved one forward. “I know how to get into Mr. Doom’s office. Tomorrow I’ll—”

  The door opened and Solly and Mrs. Packer came in.

  “Baby gi—”

  “We just started playing, Mama.”

  “Boychik, it’s past Bandit’s bedtime. We should—”

  “Tell for you your fortune?” the parrot squawked.

  It was four in the morning. The chauffeur was waiting outside. I told him where to drop me off: on 136th Street, by the tree with the rope. Then I sat in the back with Solly and Bandit. The back was almost as good as the front, with the heater under the seat to keep us warm, the thick carpet, and the roses, real live roses, in little vases next to the door hinges.

  On the wall near my head was a compartment, and one just like it next to Solly. I opened the one on my side.

  “Look!”

  A jar of assorted nuts, two glasses, a bottle of liquor, and chocolates wrapped in silver paper. Solly opened the one next to him. Lipstick, powder, perfume, a book of fairy tales, and a clown hand puppet.

  The car stopped at the oak tree. The chauffeur opened my door, and Solly got out with me.

  “Don’t break your neck, boychik.”

  “Would you stay and see if any lights come on after I go in? If they do, I could use some shmeering.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  I got over the fence and back into the asylum, no problem. The poker game was still going on. I took the nearest staircase, tiptoed upstairs and into our room. Where I lived with my buddies.

  I fell asleep imagining showing the carving to Irma Lee and the elevens and Solly, with Bandit squawking, “Mazel! Mazel tov!”

  Chapter 35

  MR. DOOM DIDN’T leave his door unlocked the next day, and the maid didn’t clean. But he did the day after, Wednesday. From the top of the marble stairs in the lobby, I watched him leave without locking up.

  According to Louis and Danny, the maid came right away after Mr. Doom left, and it took her about ten minutes to clean. Then he came back fifteen minutes or so after she finished. But they were just guessing, because neither of them had a watch.

  I started counting seconds as soon as he closed the door. It was easy. I just kept track of my heart pounding. Blam one. Blam two.

  Blam three hundred. Five minutes, and the maid still hadn’t come. By now I could have opened the cabinet, gotten the carving, and been out of there. Blam six hundred, and she still hadn’t come.

  Blam six hundred and forty-eight, and a maid came out of the stairwell carrying a feather duster and pulling a Hoover. She strolled toward Mr. Doom’s office, taking her own sweet time.

  She opened the door, went inside, and I started counting again. If she took a whole ten minutes I’d only have five before Mr. Doom came back, and I didn’t know if that was enough.

  She was out when I got to three hundred and eighty-five, about six minutes. I started down the stairs, still counting. A prefect opened the door from one of the stairwells. I froze. He went into the side hallway. He had stopped me for twenty-five seconds. I had eight minutes left. I could probably do it twice in eight minutes. I continued down the stairs, starting a new count. Blam one. Blam two.

  Don’t let anybody come into the HHB. Don’t let anybody come through the hall.

  Nobody did. I opened the door to the office and closed it behind me, fast. Blam eighteen. I smelled furniture polish.

  Blam twenty-one. My hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t get the key into the lock and then I dropped it. Blam twenty-five. Don’t rush. You’re making it worse. Take a deep breath. Try again. Blam twenty-nine.

  I heard footsteps. I dove for the kneehole of the desk. The footsteps got louder, passed the door, and got softer.

  I’d lost count of the seconds. The key went in. I tried to turn it. It wouldn’t turn. Was it the wrong key? I jiggled it. The lock moved. It was the right key! I pulled. The door stuck for a second, then opened. The glass rattled.

  More footsteps.

  I took out the carving. I touched Papa.

  I moved a china donkey, a bowl of seashells, and a wooden box to fill in the empty space on the shelf. Now I’d just put the key back in the desk—

  The door opened. Mr. Doom!

  “Whaa? Whoo?” he roared. He blocked the door. Black shape in the doorway. Light around him.

  He wasn’t getting the carving back! I hugged it to my chest. He wasn’t going to beat me again! I rushed at him. Jumped—leaped. Reached up. Threw his specs over my shoulder. Threw the key.

  Had to get out. He was yelling—words, sounds. “Where . . . You won’t . . . Can’t see . . . Just let me . . .”

  I dodged him. His arms were going up, down, sideways—hunting. I sprang back. He wouldn’t get out of the way.

  Between his legs. I was a bullet. A cannonball. I hurtled through. He shouted, grabbed. He had my foot. I pulled. Kept going. I was through. He had my shoe.

  People running. Mr. Meltzer. Other prefects. Boys. I shot across the lobby. A boy opened the front door for me—older—not an eleven. He had green eyes. Funny how I noticed.

  I was out—outside. It was raining. Sleeting. I ran through the gate, and kept going. My shoeless foot—cold, cold! Ran toward Broadway. Stepped on something sharp—ouch! Kept running. Three prefects—Mr. Meltzer—behind me. Half a block. Mr. Meltzer catching up. Out of breath. A quarter block—

  Broadway—people—peddler’s cart—laundry wagon—taxi—trolley at a stop. Trolley! People getting on. Mr. Meltzer at the corner. I ran
into the street. One more to get on. I stood behind the trolley. Hurry up, mister. Get on! He did. Start! Start! The trolley moved. I jumped onto the back bumper. Almost dropped the carving.

  Good-bye, Mr. Meltzer.

  I hung on to the back of the trolley window with my right hand and clutched the carving with the other. My teeth were chattering.

  I didn’t have a cent. My money was back at the HHB. The trolley was heading downtown.

  Where could I go? Nowhere.

  It was a laugh. When I wanted to run away, I had to stay. And when I wanted to stay, I had to go.

  I looked down at the carving, at Papa and Mama and Gideon and me, waiting on line to get on the ark. The family we should have been. The trolley lurched, and I held on with both hands, the carving between my elbows and my chest. Then the trolley steadied, and I looked at the bottom of my shoeless foot to see if I’d cut it. Miraculously, no blood was seeping through the sock.

  The trolley stopped. The conductor was getting out to chase me. I jumped off into a freezing puddle and ran.

  I was safe from Mr. Doom, and I had the carving, but I’d never see my buddies again.

  It took me over four hours to reach my old neighborhood. After the first trolley, I jumped on anything I could, mostly trolleys, and stayed on till the driver chased me off. If a furniture truck driver hadn’t let me ride inside with him from 60th Street to Houston Street, I might have frozen to death.

  I had decided to go to Aunt Sarah and Aunt Lily’s. As soon as the truck driver dropped me off, I knew I was home. I could have been blind and I would have known. It was the stink. Garbage and crap—horse crap and people crap. In all the times I’d thought about home, I hadn’t thought once about the smell.

  It was a quarter to six when I got to Aunt Lily and Aunt Sarah’s building on Eldridge Street. I wished they weren’t boarders. It was going to be bad enough telling them what had happened without the whole Cohen family hearing it too. The hallway seemed narrower and darker than I remembered. I climbed the stairs, hugging the carving and trying to make my teeth stop chattering.

  I had loused everything up. I should have waited for a day when the maid came right away. I should have just watched to see what happened, to see if it went the way Louis and Danny had said. I could have waited. There was no emergency.

  I knocked on the door.

  “Who could that be?” Mrs. Cohen opened the door. “Dave? Is that you? Dave Caros? You’re soaking wet. Come in.”

  I went in and stood, dripping on the cracked linoleum in their kitchen. It was warm in here. I sneezed. Mrs. Cohen had been washing one of her boys in the washtub next to the sink. There were soapsuds in his hair, and he started crying.

  Aunt Sarah rushed to me from the front room. “Dave! What happened?”

  Aunt Lily was right behind her. “You’re drenched.”

  Mr. Cohen and another son came out of the bedroom. The two little girls stood in the doorway to the front room. They all stared at me.

  Aunt Sarah hurried back into the front room. “I’ll get a towel.”

  Mrs. Cohen started rinsing the crying kid in the tub. “It’s all right,” she crooned.

  The Cohens’ apartment seemed tiny, but it was the same size as our old place. I didn’t remember our apartment being so small.

  “Where’s your shoe? Sarah, he’s missing a shoe.”

  Aunt Sarah came back. I handed Papa’s carving to her. “Aah, pyew, he’s filthy. Get me a washcloth, Lily. Take your clothes off, Dave.”

  “I’ll just be a minute.” Mrs. Cohen got her kid out of the tub, and I started washing myself at the sink. At the Home we had hot water.

  Mrs. Cohen shooed her daughters into the front room. “We’ll give you some privacy.” Mr. Cohen and his sons went back into the bedroom. I was alone in the kitchen with Aunt Sarah and Aunt Lily, but it wasn’t private. Everybody could hear everything.

  After I finished at the sink, Aunt Sarah washed my shirt. Aunt Lily brushed as much of the mud as she could off my jacket and knickers. Then she put something on the stove to heat. Aunt Sarah gave me two towels to wrap myself in and told me to sit at the table. In a few minutes Aunt Lily handed me a bowl of hot spinach-and-bean soup. Aunt Sarah draped my clothes over the stove to dry.

  “Where’s Papa’s carving?” I asked.

  “I washed it too,” Aunt Lily said, pointing. It was on the floor near the door, drying on newspapers.

  “Dave,” Aunt Sarah said, “what did you do this time?”

  I told them. They thought I shouldn’t have gone into Mr. Doom’s office. And they thought I should have stayed and apologized when I was caught. Neither of them believed me about the beating I would have gotten. They didn’t even think Mr. Doom had been stealing when he took Papa’s carving.

  “He was just keeping it safe for you,” Aunt Lily said.

  “It’s not as if you’re a paying customer,” Aunt Sarah added.

  When I finished my soup and some bread, Aunt Lily asked Aunt Sarah, “Can’t he stay here tonight? I hate to go out again.”

  From the front room Mrs. Cohen called out, “Certainly he can stay tonight. No charge.”

  But Aunt Sarah took my clothes off the stove. “They probably called the police. We have to take him right away.”

  I should have known better than to come here. I should have known they’d bring me back.

  Chapter 36

  “WHAT ARE WE going to put on his feet?” Aunt Lily asked. “He can’t go barefoot.” She started giggling.

  Aunt Sarah laughed too. “He looked like a drowned rat when he came in.”

  I wasn’t going back.

  My clothes were still damp, but they were warm. The sock I’d walked on all day was more hole than sock. They gave me Aunt Lily’s galoshes to wear instead of shoes. She said it didn’t matter if her feet got wet.

  The galoshes were too big, but Aunt Sarah tied them around my ankles with string. Mrs. Cohen lent me her oilcloth tablecloth for a raincoat. I wrapped it around myself and held the carving safe underneath.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Aunt Lily took my hand. As soon as we got outside, I yanked free and ran.

  Aunt Sarah hollered, “Dave! Get back here! Catch that boy! Get him!”

  Aunt Lily yelled, “Dave, don’t go!” And then, “Be careful.”

  The aunts were too slow to catch me and nobody else tried. The streets were less crowded than usual because of the weather, but they were still crowded. It had gotten colder, and it was starting to snow.

  When I was sure they weren’t behind me, I took the oilcloth off. If Aunt Lily and Aunt Sarah reported me, the police wouldn’t have any trouble finding a boy wearing a plaid tablecloth. Instead, I wrapped the oilcloth around the carving and carried it under my arm.

  Where could I go? Uncle Milt and Aunt Fanny lived only two blocks away, but Aunt Fanny was always sick.

  I circled around to our old building on Ludlow Street. It was about nine o’clock. Ike, the produce peddler, was still hawking his fruit. The peddler Ida used to buy soap from was there too. A light was on in our front room. I wondered who lived there now.

  Papa, I thought, what should I do?

  I remembered what Gideon had said right before he left, that I’d be all right. That I was always all right. Well, I wasn’t all right now.

  The appetizing store was open and so was the candy store. Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Goldfarb knew me, and Mr. Schwartz was nice. He might give me a pickle. But he wouldn’t invite me to live with him.

  I started walking again, not knowing where I was going.

  A woman stuck her head out of a window and hollered for her son, David. My name, not my mama. Her David hollered back, “Five more minutes. Please, Mama.”

  Papa, what should I do? Nobody wants me.

  I sneezed. If I was dry, if I wasn’t so cold, if I had somewhere to stay tonight, I could plan. I could think of something.

  Then I remembered that Solly lived on Stanton Street. He didn’t want me eit
her, but I was sure he wouldn’t take me back to Mr. Doom tonight. I turned around and started toward Stanton Street.

  Stanton was long. I didn’t know the number, and Solly might not be home. I’d never find him.

  And then I had an idea.

  I stood in the middle of the street—no cars were coming—and I waited for a quiet second—a somewhat quiet second. Then I hollered as loud as I could, “Tell for you your fortune?”

  Nothing happened. Peddlers went on yelling. People went on bargaining, calling to each other. No Solly. And no one asked me for a fortune.

  Farther down the block I tried again, and nothing happened again. I kept going. On each block I yelled once at each end. And on each block everyone ignored me. On Allen Street I waited for the train to rumble by before I hollered. Nothing. I might as well not have waited.

  I kept going.

  “Tell for you your fortune?” Stanton Street ran out in three more blocks.

  “Tell for you your fortune?” Stanton Street ran out in two more blocks.

  Stanton Street ran out. I turned back to try again. I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Or anywhere else to go.

  I was heading toward Pitt Street when I thought I heard “Boychik!” I whirled around. I didn’t see Solly anywhere. A peddler called out, “Hot chestnuts!” I must have imagined it. I started walking again. But then I heard a parrot squawk, “Tell for you your fortune?” I turned and started back.

  Then I saw Solly’s head sticking out a second-story window. “Boychik! Is that you?”

  “Yes!”

  “Come on up. No. Better, I’ll come down and get you.” His head vanished.

  I waited on the sidewalk, shivering.

  “Come in. Come in.” Solly, in a yellow bathrobe, held the building door open.

  I followed him upstairs.

  “Mazel tov. Welcome home!” Bandit squawked.

  “You’re a block of ice. Sit down.” Solly pointed to a kitchen chair. “I’ll be right back.” He went into the front room and came back with a blanket. “Get undressed and wrap yourself in this.”

  I put the oilcloth with the carving down on the table and took off my wet clothes. Then I wrapped myself in the blanket and looked around. From here I could see into the front room. Along one wall were stacks of brown cardboard boxes. Then, in front of the boxes were stacks of newspapers. Pushed against the wall across from the kitchen was a piano. Books were piled on the floor under the keyboard and on top of the bench. I didn’t see how anybody could play it. On top of the piano were framed photographs and Solly’s hat.