by Betsy Byars
“Watch what you’re doing, will you?” he said. He shifted the ball to his hip.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Yeah, you’re sorry all right.”
“Aw, come on, Mouse.”
Mouse stood there with the ball, looking at Ezzie as if he were seeing him for the first time. Dick Fellini, who was waiting beneath the basket, came walking over, shaking his hair out of his eyes. He said, “Hey, what’s with Mouse?”
Ezzie said, “Nothing. Come on, Mouse.”
Mouse hesitated. Ezzie was standing with his arms held out for the ball. He said again, “Come on, Mouse, gimme the ball. Let’s play.”
Mouse pulled the ball back and fired it at Ezzie. He threw hard, aiming at Ezzie’s stomach. He wanted to crumple Ezzie, to drop him to the pavement. “Take the ball!” he said.
Ezzie drew back instinctively. The ball missed his stomach, struck him on the hand and then bounced over to Dick Fellini. Fellini took the ball, dribbled to the basket and threw it in. He caught the rebound and made another basket.
Ezzie said, “You didn’t have to hit my sore finger,” in a flat, angry voice.
“What sore finger?” Mouse asked.
“That one.”
“Boy, that really is a sore finger, Ezzie. That’s some sore finger—a hangnail.”
Ezzie put his finger in his mouth to ease the pain. All the while he was looking at Mouse, and Mouse was waiting. Then Ezzie took his finger out of his mouth and looked at it.
Mouse thought then that Ezzie was going to say something funny about his finger, to try to make him laugh. Instead Ezzie turned and ran quickly to where Dick Fellini was lining up for a free throw. Ezzie leaped agilely into the air, trying to intercept the ball, and then he watched while Fellini made the rebound.
“Hey, Fellini, gimme the ball,” he cried, spinning around. “The ball!”
“Yeah, Fellini, give him the ball so he can miss again,” Mouse shouted. He waited to see if Ezzie was going to answer, to trade insults with him. Ezzie ignored him.
Ezzie said, “Fellini, gimme the ball.”
Mouse turned and walked toward the alley. He glanced back once, saw Ezzie dribbling in the opposite direction and then he kept going.
He walked slowly, kicking a bottle cap ahead of him. To get his mind off how bad he felt, he tried to think of another emergency he could handle. He couldn’t think of anything. He went slowly over a list of the world’s greatest dangers—tornadoes, earthquakes, tsetse flies, the piranha. Behind him he heard Ezzie cry again, “Fellini, the ball, gimme the ball.”
He kept going. Cyclones, the coral snake—Then he came to sharks and he stopped.
Emergency Sixteen—Sudden Appearance in Your Swimming Area of Sharks. Ezzie had once read the way to handle that emergency in a comic book. You simply relax your body and play dead. Sharks are bored by dead bodies.
This solution left Mouse dissatisfied. Ezzie had really read that in some comic book, but it was the most unsatisfactory advice Mouse could think of. Play dead! It was impossible.
It seemed to him suddenly that what most emergency measures amounted to was doing whatever was most unnatural. If it was natural to start screaming, survival called for keeping perfectly quiet. If it was natural to run, the best thing to do was to stand still. Whatever was the hardest, that was what you had to do sometimes to survive. The hardest thing of all, it seemed to him, was not running.
He tried to imagine him and Ezzie in the ocean playing dead while the curious sharks swam around them.
“It’ll work, it’ll work, I tell you,” Ezzie would be muttering out of the side of his mouth. “It worked for Popeye, didn’t it?”
Mouse thought of it a moment longer. He imagined the sharks moving away and he and Ezzie floating alone in the ocean. “I told you nothing would happen,” Ezzie would say, smiling a little. Somehow this didn’t make Mouse feel any better.
Emergency Seventeen—Visit of a Cobra. When this happens, Ezzie said, you stop whatever you are doing at once and you begin to make smooth rhythmic body movements which will hypnotize the cobra.
He remembered that Ezzie had once shown him exactly how these movements should be done. “Like this, Mouse, like this, see?”
“I don’t think movements like that would hypnotize a cobra.”
“Well, I happen to know a boy who hypnotized a cobra in a zoo like this,” Ezzie had said, stopping the movements abruptly. “And if you don’t believe me, his name was Albert Watts.”
Mouse sighed. He kicked the bottle cap into the gutter. Anyway, he thought, life and death struggles with cobras and sharks and lions seemed less likely every day.
He heard a noise behind him, and he looked around and saw Garbage Dog following on his short legs. “Good boy!” he cried. He had never been so glad to see anyone. “Come on. You want something to eat? Come to my house.”
At the stairs to the apartment Garbage Dog hesitated, and Mouse drew him quickly forward. “Come on, boy, food!” Slowly, with Mouse urging him along, Garbage Dog began to take the steps one at a time.
GARBAGE DOG HAD NOT been inside a house for years. He hesitated at the door, and then when Mouse pushed him, he entered. He walked around the edge of the room, avoiding the carpet, until he came to the kitchen. Then he sat uneasily by the table. There was a little hot air blowing on him from under the refrigerator, and this worried him. He moved over by the sink.
“What do you want to eat?” Mouse asked. “Bologna sandwich all right?”
Garbage Dog’s nose started to run as soon as the refrigerator door was opened. He got up, moved forward and looked into the brightly lit box. He could smell meat loaf and bologna and cheese, and then everything blended into a general food smell which was even better. He waited without moving. His eyes were riveted on the refrigerator.
Mouse gathered up bologna and cheese, shut the refrigerator door with his shoulder and got bread from the counter. “Here,” he said.
Garbage Dog was accustomed to little tidbits—crusts of bread and pieces of broken cookies and the dry ends of ice cream cones. He hardly ever got a whole sandwich. He took it in his mouth and stood for a moment, looking at Mouse. Then he went under the table and began to eat. He finished quickly and came back. He stood looking from Mouse to the refrigerator.
“How about bread with bacon grease on it?” Mouse asked. He broke bread into a small bowl and poured bacon grease over it. He was sprinkling this with grated cheese when his mother came into the apartment.
“Benjie?”
“I’m in here, Mom.” He set the bowl on the floor.
“Well, I hope you aren’t eating because—” She broke off. “What is that dog doing in here?”
“I had to let him come up,” Mouse said. “He followed me.”
“Well, I don’t want dogs in here, you should know that. As soon as he finishes, take him out.”
“If he’ll go. He follows me every—”
“Out.” She went into the living room and said, “And don’t you eat anything, because Mrs. Casino’s giving you supper.”
He followed her quickly into the living room. Behind him came Garbage Dog, sliding a little on his short legs. Garbage Dog stepped on the carpet by accident, and then quickly walked over and stood by the front door, looking worried.
“Where are you going?” Mouse asked his mother.
“I’ve got a cosmetics party,” she said. His mother went to people’s houses and showed cosmetics and people bought them. It occurred to Mouse that he had always wanted to see what went on at one of these parties.
He said quickly, “I could go with you. I could—”
“You know that’s out of the question.”
“I wouldn’t be any trouble. Nobody would even know I was there.”
“No.”
“But I want to go.”
“I’ve already told Mrs. Casino you would come. Now, I’ve got about two seconds to get dressed. Where’s my new order book, have you seen it?”
&
nbsp; She went into her room, and Mouse walked to the front door where Garbage Dog was waiting. Garbage Dog still looked uneasy.
“Come on, you’ve got to go,” Mouse said, letting his shoulders slump. Eagerly Garbage Dog went out the door and down the stairs. “You just have to go, that’s all. There’s nothing I can do.”
Mouse came slowly back up the stairs as his mother was leaving. He waited on the landing for a moment, watching her go, and then he decided he didn’t want to go back in the apartment and be by himself. Sighing, he crossed the landing and knocked at the Casinos’ door.
“Mrs. Casino, it’s me—Benjie Fawley.”
“Come in, Benjie.” She opened the door. “Come on in and don’t mind me. I’m cooking.”
“I guess I’m early.”
“Well, that’s good. You can play checkers with Papa. Come on in. He’s so lonely these days. That man—”
Mouse interrupted. “I’m really not very good at checkers. I’ve hardly played since fourth grade.”
He suddenly wanted very much to sit in the warm kitchen and watch Mrs. Casino cook. She had a comforting manner about her. If he had said, “Mrs. Casino, some boys are going to kill me,” she wouldn’t have wasted time asking, “Why?” and “What did you do?” She would have cried, “Where are those boys? Show me those boys!” She would have yanked on her man’s sweater, taken her broom in hand and gone out into the street to find them. “Show me those boys!”
He had a brief, pleasant picture of Mrs. Casino cornering Marv Hammerman in the alley and raining blows on him with her broom. “You (pow) ain’t (swat) touching (smack) my (zonk) Benjie (pow, bang, smack, swat, zap)!” There was nothing comforting about sitting with Mr. Casino. Mouse had already told him about the boys being after him and gotten no reaction at all.
Mouse could see Mr. Casino sitting in the other room. He stood in the doorway with Mrs. Casino. He hesitated.
As he was standing there he thought of something that had happened at school the past week. Mrs. Tennent had brought movies of her Christmas vacation to school and had shown them to all her classes. And when she had shown everything that had happened to her and her sister in Mexico, then she reversed the film and they got to see everything happen in reverse. They got to see Mrs. Tennent walking backward into the hotel and into the bullfight. They got to see her sister walking backward through a market place. They got to see a funny looking taxi driving backward, and people eating backward, and a man diving backward up onto a high cliff. They had all laughed because there was something about people walking backward in that bright, skillful, cheerful way that was funny.
Suddenly that was what Mouse wanted to happen now. He wanted to walk backward out of the Casinos’ apartment. He wanted to walk backward to the basketball court, and then to school, reversing everything he had done in a bright, cheerful way. He wanted to move backward through Thursday too, and he especially wanted to walk all the way back to when he had come out of history class and paused by the prehistoric man chart. He wanted to stop everything right there. He would have paused a second, and in that second he would not have lifted his hand to write Marv Hammerman’s name. Then the world could go forward again.
He felt Mrs. Casino urging him into the room. He said reluctantly, “I haven’t played checkers in years. I’m not sure I even remember how.”
“You’re good enough. Go on.” Mrs. Casino took him firmly by the shoulders and pushed him into the room where Mr. Casino was sitting by the window. “Papa’s just learning checkers over again anyway,” she said.
Mouse crossed the room, dragging his feet. He said, “Hi, Mr. Casino,” in a low, unenthusiastic voice because he wanted to be with somebody. He was lonely. I, Mouse Fawley, do hereby swear that I feel very lonely. He thought he would have to make a declaration of it to make people understand. “How are you, Mr. Casino?” he asked in the same flat voice.
“He’s fine, aren’t you, Papa?” Mrs. Casino said. She patted Mr. Casino on the shoulders as she passed behind his chair. Mouse sat down. Mr. Casino was in an armchair, and the bottom had sunk so low that Mouse in his straight chair was the taller of the two.
“Here you go.” Mrs. Casino brought out the checkers, the oldest set Mouse had ever seen, and set it on the table. The black and red board had been worn white where the checkers had been moved across it. When she put the set down, Mr. Casino, reached out slowly with one enormous hand. His fingers were trembling a little, as if the distance from the armrest of his chair to the box of checkers was long and hazardous.
“I’ll set these up,” Mouse said. “I can do it better.” Quickly, efficiently, he put the checkers in the squares, his and Mr. Casino’s. Then he leaned back in his chair. “Go ahead, Mr. Casino.” He could hear the impatience in his own voice.
He glanced up at Mrs. Casino, who was still standing by the door, drying her already dry hands on her apron. Then quickly Mouse looked back at the checkerboard because he had seen something in Mrs. Casino’s eyes. It was just a flash of something, a cloud over the sun, a sadness, and it bothered him.
She said, “He’s supposed to use his left hand as much as possible.”
“Oh,” Mouse said. He wanted to explain that the reason he was acting this way was because he had the impossible burden of being chased by Marv Hammerman. He wanted Mrs. Casino’s sympathy. “Mrs. Casino,” he wanted to say, “if you only knew what it’s like to have Marv Hammerman out to get you.”
He felt tears stinging his eyes, and he knew he was not going to tell Mrs. Casino, and that he was not going to tell anybody else either. “Your move,” he said loudly to Mr. Casino. He shifted in his chair and then abruptly he slumped.
He had suddenly thought back to that moment outside history class when he had turned and looked around and seen Hammerman. That first moment—it was what had been troubling him all along.
It wasn’t entirely clear. It was as if a fog had filled the hall that day, making everything hazy. Still Mouse could remember the way Hammerman’s eyes had looked in that first unguarded moment. There hadn’t been enough fog to blot that out. Mouse thought again about that moment in the hall. It had been flitting in and out of his mind like a moth for two days. Now he made himself think about it.
He sank lower in his chair, because he knew now what troubled him. He had felt somehow close to Hammerman in that first terrible moment. He had known how Hammerman felt. It had been the same way he had felt when everyone first started calling him Mouse. They had been united for a moment, Mouse and Neanderthal man.
He said in a low voice, “You can have first move, Mr. Casino.”
Mr. Casino sat for a moment and then made a gesture with his fingers as if he was flicking a fly off the armrest.
Mrs. Casino said, “He wants you to go first, Benjie.” She was still patting the backs of her dry hands on her apron.
“Oh, sure.” He looked at the board as if the decision was one of the most important of his life. The checkers were thin and wooden and darker in the center from the sweat of people’s fingers. They were clear for a moment and then they blurred a little. Mouse reached out and pushed one forward before they got so blurred he couldn’t find them.
He leaned back in his chair. The late afternoon sun was coming in the window, and the dust in the sunlight gave him a sad, old-timey feeling. He thought that if he closed his eyes, he would not be able to tell even what century he was in. It could be a hundred years ago and he could be sitting here in an old-timey suit with knickers and a tie. It could be a thousand years ago. It was that kind of timeless feeling.
Some things, he thought as he stared down at the checkerboard, just don’t change. He remembered how he used to enjoy looking through books that showed the old and the new—the Wright Brothers’ glider opposite a jet plane, or an old Victrola opposite a hi-fi set. Looking at pictures like that always made him feel superior, as if he had advanced in the same way as the machines. He felt different now. He thought of all the people who had ever lived as being run through b
y a single thread, like beads.
“Well, I’ll get back to my cooking, if you don’t need me,” Mrs. Casino said.
“No, we’ll be fine.”
He looked at Mr. Casino who was reaching out slowly. He was still a large man, but he had once been enormous, and everything he was wearing was too big for him. The cuffs of his shirt came down over his speckled hands. The cotton pants were gathered in at the waist with his belt. Mouse waited, watching sadly, while Mr. Casino pushed one of his checkers forward with a trembling hand.
Mouse said, “My turn?” He bent forward over the board.
In the kitchen, Mrs. Casino started to sing. Outside two men were arguing about baseball. A bus passed. Mrs. Casino started on a western song. Mouse tried not to think of anything but the checker game. He said self-consciously, “Oh, I’ve got a jump.” He took it and leaned back in his chair.
It was a long, slow game, the first game Mouse had ever played in which it didn’t seem important who the winner was, or rather a game in which both players were winners.
Mouse said, “Do you want to play again?” He waited a minute, and then he pushed all the checkers across to Mr. Casino and said gently, “You set them up this time, will you?”
SATURDAY WAS WARM AND bright, the first pretty Saturday they had had since Christmas. Mouse, lying on his bed in the hall, could tell it was sunny just from the brightness of the normally dark hall.
“Mom!” he called, not knowing what time it was and whether she had gone out to deliver cosmetics yet. “Mom!” There was no answer. There used to be a boy who lived in the apartment next door when Mouse was little, and every time Mouse would call, “Mommie!” the boy would answer, “Whatie?” in a high false voice.
Mouse got out of bed slowly, in stages. He sat on the edge of the bed, leaned forward, looked at his feet, straightened, and then continued to stand by the bed for a moment. Then abruptly he dressed, went into the kitchen and looked at the boxes of cereal on the shelf. He tore open a box of Sugar Pops. He waited, looking at the cereal, and then refolded the box and put it back. He went into the living room, and out of habit he switched on the television. Superman was on the screen, flying over the city in his suit and cape. Mouse watched for a moment and then turned off the television. Superman might be faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, Mouse thought, but even Superman couldn’t keep himself from being tuned down to a small white dot.