It's like this, cat

by Emily Neville

  By the next weekend I no longer look like a fugitive from a riot. All weekin school Nick and I get asked whether we got hit by a swinging door; thenthe fellows notice the two of us aren't speaking to each other, and theysort of sheer off the subject. Come Saturday, I sit on the stoop andwonder, what now? There are plenty of other kids in school I like, butthey mostly live over in the project--Stuyvesant Town, that is. I've neverbothered to hunt them up weekends because Nick's so much nearer.

  Summer is coming on, though, and I've got to have someone to hang aroundwith. This is the last Saturday before Memorial Day. Getting time forbeaches and stuff. I suppose Nick and I might get together again, but notif he's going to be nuts about girls all the time.

  A guy stops in front of the stoop, and Cat half opens his eyes in the sunand squints at him. The guy says, "You Dave Mitchell?"

  "Huh? Yeah." I look up, surprised. I don't exactly recognize the guy,never having seen him in a clear light before. But from the voice I knowit's Tom.

  "Oh, hi!" I say. "Here's Cat. He's pretty handsome in daylight."

  "Yeah, he looks all right, but what happened to you?"

  "Me and a friend of mine got in a fight."

  "With some other guys or what?"

  "Nah. We had a fight with each other."

  "Um, that's bad." Tom sits down and has sense enough to see there isn'tanymore to say on that subject. "I start work Memorial Day, when thebeaches open. Working in a filling station on the Belt Parkway inBrooklyn."

  "Gee, that's a long way off. You going to live over there?"

  "Yeah, they're going to get me a room in a Y in Brooklyn." Tom stretchesrestlessly and goes on: "I suppose you get sick of school and all, butit's rotten having nothing to do. I'd be ready to go nuts if I didn't geta job. I can't wait to start."

  I think of asking him doesn't he have a home or something to go back to,but somehow I don't like to.

  "Like today," Tom says. "I'd like to go somewhere. Do something. Got anyideas?"

  "Um. I was sort of trying to think up something myself. Movies?"

  Tom shakes himself. "No. I want to walk, or run, or throw something."

  "There's a big park--sort of a woods--up near the Bronx. A kid told me aboutit. He said he found an Indian arrowhead there, but I bet he didn't.Inwood Park, it's called."

  "How do you get there?"

  "Subway, I guess."

  "Let's go!" Tom stands up and wriggles his shoulders like he's Supermanready to take off.

  "O.K. Wait a minute. I'll go tell Mom. Should I get some sandwiches?"

  Tom looks surprised. "Sure, fine, if she doesn't mind."

  I'm not worried about getting Mom to make sandwiches because she alwayslikes to fix a little food for me. The thing is, ever since my fight withNick, she's been clucking around me like the mother hen. Maybe she figuresI got in some gang fight, so she keeps asking me where I'm going and whowith. Also, I guess she noticed I don't go to Nick's after school anymore.I come right home. So she asks me do I feel all right. You can't win.Right now, I can see she's going to begin asking who is Tom and where didI meet him. It occurs to me there's an easy way to take care of this.

  I turn around to Tom again. "Say, how about you come up and I'll introduceyou to Mom? Then she won't start asking me a lot of questions."

  "You mean I _look_ respectable, at least?"

  "Sure."

  We go up to the apartment, and Mom asks if we'd like some cold drinks orsomething. I tell her I ran into Tom when he helped me hunt for Cat aroundGramercy Park, which is almost true, and that he sometimes plays stickballwith us, which isn't really true but it could be. Mom gets us someorangeade. She usually keeps something like that in the icebox in summer,because she thinks cokes are bad for you.

  "Do you live around here?" she asks Tom.

  "No, ma'am," says Tom firmly. "I live at the Y. I've got a summer job in afilling station over in Brooklyn, starting right after Memorial Day."

  "That's fine," Mom says. "I wish Davey could get a job. He gets sorestless with nothing to do in the summer."

  "Aw, Mom, forget it! You got to fill in about six-hundred working papersif you're under sixteen.

  "Listen, Mom, what I came up for--we thought we'd make some sandwiches andgo up to Inwood Park."

  "Inwood? Where's that?" So I explain to her about the Indian arrowheads,and we get out the classified phone book and look at the subway map, whichshows there's an IND train that goes right to it.

  "I get sort of restless myself, with nothing to do," says Tom. "We justfigured we'd do a little exploring around in the woods and get someexercise."

  "Why, yes, that seems like a good idea." Mom looks at him and nods. Sheseems to have decided he's reliable, as well as respectable.

  I see there's some leftover cold spaghetti in the icebox, and I ask Mom toput it in sandwiches. She thinks I'm cracked, but I did this once before,and it's good, 'specially if there's plenty of meat and sauce on thespaghetti. We take along a bag of cherries, too.

  "Thanks, Mom. Bye. I'll be back before supper."

  "Take care," she says. "No fights."

  "Don't worry. We'll stay out of fights," says Tom quite seriously.

  We go down the stairs, and Tom says, "Your mother is really nice."

  I'm sort of surprised--kids don't usually say much about each other'sparents. "Yeah, Mom's O.K. I guess she worries about me and Pop a lot."

  "It must be pretty nice to have your mother at home," he says.

  That kind of jolts me, too. I wonder where his mother and father are,whether they're dead or something; but again, I don't quite want to ask.Tom isn't an easy guy to ask questions. He's sort of like an island, byhimself in the ocean.

  We walk down to Fourteenth Street and over to Eighth Avenue, about twelveblocks; after all, exercise is what we want. The IND trains are fast, andit only takes about half an hour to get up to Inwood, at 206th Street. Thepark is right close, and it is real woods, although there are paved walksaround through it. We push uphill and get in a grassy meadow, where youcan see out over the Hudson River to the Palisades in Jersey. It's goodand hot, and we flop in the sun. There aren't many other people around,which is rare in New York.

  "Let's eat lunch," says Tom. "Then we can go hunting arrowheads and nothave to carry it."

  He agrees the spaghetti sandwich is a great invention.

  I wish the weather would stay like this more of the year--good and sweatyhot in the middle of the day, so you feel like going swimming, but coolenough to sleep at night. We lie in the sun awhile after lunch and agreethat it's too bad there isn't an ocean within jumping-in distance. Butthere isn't, and flies are biting the backs of our necks, so we get up andstart exploring.

  We find a few places that you might conceivably call caves, but they'vebeen well picked over for arrowheads, if there ever were any. That's thetrouble in the city: anytime you have an idea, you find out a millionother people had the same idea first. Along in mid-afternoon, we driftdown toward the subway and get cokes and ice cream before we start back.

  I don't really feel like going home yet, so I think a minute and study thesubway map inside the car. "Hey, as long as we're on the subway anyway, wecould go on down to Cortlandt Street to the Army-Navy surplus store. I gotto get a knapsack before summer."

  "O.K." Tom shrugs. He's staring out the window and doesn't seem to carewhere he goes.

  "I got a great first-aid survival kit there. Disinfectant and burnointment and bug dope and bandages, in a khaki metal box that'swaterproof, and it was only sixty-five cents."

  "Hmm. Just what I need for survival on the sidewalks of New York," saysTom. I guess he's kidding, in a sour sort of way. If you haven't got afamily around, though, survival must take more than a sixty-five-cent kit.

  The store is a little way from the nearest subway stop, and we walk alongnot saying much. Tom looks alive when he gets into the store, though,because it really is a great place. They've got arctic explorers' suitsand old hand grenades and shells and all ki
nds of rifles, as well as somereally cheap, useful clothing. They don't mind how long you mosey around.In the end I buy a belt pack and canteen, and Tom picks up some skivvyshirts and socks that are only ten cents each. They're secondhand, Iguess, but they look all right.

  We walk over to the East Side subway, which is only a few blocks away downhere because the island gets so narrow. Tom says he's never seen WallStreet, where all the tycoons grind their money machines. The place ispractically deserted now, being late Saturday afternoon, and it's likewalking through an empty cathedral. You can make echoes.

  We take the subway, and Tom walks along home with me. It seems too bad theday's over. It was a pretty good day, after all.

  "So long, kid," Tom says. "I'll send you a card from Beautiful Brooklyn!"

  "So long." I wave, and he starts off. I wish he didn't have to go live inBrooklyn.

  6

  Dave wheeling his bike across Belt Parkway.]

  AND BROOKLYN