by Paula Fox
Clay heard a voice so low it was close to a whisper.
“Look at that, Calvin,” it said.
“I’m trying to get some shut-eye, Buddy,” someone protested.
“A kid, wearing a nice jacket. Looking scared,” Buddy said.
Clay felt his hands curl into fists.
He heard a long, drawn-out groan. By squinting hard, he could see an old man pulling scraps of blanket and a piece of canvas over his head, which poked out from what looked like the sort of wooden crate a new refrigerator came in.
“I’m going to get him,” said Buddy.
“Let him be. It’ll be on your head. He has his own fate,” said the old man.
“Yeah. Well, maybe I’m his fate.”
3 Calvin and Buddy
Were they talking about him? Clay wondered. But his tiredness was so great, it didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t seem to leave room for fear.
He thought there was enough space beneath the van for him to crawl into. He wouldn’t need the cardboard. It was almost warm there, or perhaps it was close and tight enough to be a pretend warmth.
He heard the voices going on, becoming fainter. Then, at the very edge of sleep, a man’s face appeared a foot from his own. At once, the man put a finger against his lips and held it there for a long moment. Then he took the hand away and extended it toward Clay, smiling as he did so. The man’s head brushed the guts of the van.
Clay covered his face. The man patted his arm gently.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a place with a roof.”
After a minute, Clay wriggled out, and they both stood up. “Don’t make noise,” the man whispered as he led him to the wooden crate, turning at every step to make sure Clay was with him.
“You get inside with old Calvin,” he told him. “You’re small enough to fit.” Carefully, the man pushed Calvin onto his side.
“Murder,” mumbled the old man.
Clay felt he was falling asleep on his feet. “It’s all right,” the man said. “We’ll figure it out in the morning.”
Clay hesitated a moment, then crawled into the crate. The man, wrapped in a tweed coat, stood there watching him until his feet were inside along with the rest of him.
Not more than a minute later, Buddy could hear his breathing, quick and shallow. Runaway, he said to himself. Got mad about something.
He sighed and leaned back against the crate. He and Calvin took turns sleeping inside it. The tweed coat, which he’d found in a box someone had left at the park entrance, was enormous, and he was glad of it. He could nearly wrap it twice around himself.
Buddy listened. He heard a faint sound of traffic and, closer, the night noises of sleeping human beings. There were around eight tonight, he guessed, two of them regulars. The new ones must have been drawn to the park by news of the coffee van.
He thought he heard a noise, and glanced over at the hedges. He stared at the small, dull green leaves that were the last to fall, long after the trees lost theirs.
He didn’t want to think about last leaves, about snow and sleet and ice, and the terrible wind that could come roaring up from the Hudson River and blow right through your skin to your bones. On really cold mornings, Buddy couldn’t move his fingers when he first woke up. A nurse in the clinic, where he had gone after he’d hurt his back lugging Calvin from an alley, told him he’d have serious arthritis problems, young as he was, if he didn’t get in out of the weather. He ought to go to a shelter, she’d told him—there were shelters all over the city—why didn’t he go to one? Better to get arthritis, he’d told her, than get his head bashed in and his shoes stolen. “Oh, now, now!” she’d protested. “It can’t be that bad!”
The boy muttered something, and stirred.
Buddy knew it was hard to sleep, especially for the new people, the ones who hadn’t been on the street before. They were in a panic for days. They were also the angriest if someone or something woke them up in the middle of the night.
He looked at old Mrs. Crary nearly bent double, one thin hand gripping a sack even in her sleep, a strand of white hair lying across her cheek like a deep scar. Dimp Laughlin, who begged over on the East Side, and his mongrel dog were curled up together under newspapers that rustled very faintly as though a ghost was reading them. The dog never barked—must have lost his bark from discouragement. Buddy didn’t feel easy at night walking around. People made crazy by drugs, or by their lives, or just plain crazy, would jump you for looking at them. Nearby, lying on several thicknesses of cardboard, right out in the open on the path near the van, was a young man. He was wearing a thin baseball jacket, and several earrings glinted in his right ear. He was moaning softly in his sleep.
So far, Buddy and Calvin had been lucky in the park, just a doper now and then. But they would come eventually, like rats and tides and bad weather, and then Buddy and Calvin would have to find another place to live. Calvin said there were different neighborhoods among homeless people. He said that even in hell there must be different neighborhoods.
Gerald, the coffee and doughnut man, had light blue eyes and curly brown hair. As usual, he was wearing his thick brown sweater and a pale blue wool scarf wrapped around his neck as he moved quickly, half-stooped, behind the narrow counter of the van. He placed doughnuts on paper plates and lined up Styrofoam cups for coffee. Next to several cartons of milk was a box of cheese sandwiches Gerald and his cook had prepared before daylight.
It was 6:00 A.M. Everyone Gerald could see was awake, and from benches and beside hedges, they all looked at him in silence. Each morning there were a few new faces, but some faces from the day before would be missing. Gradually, people rose and stretched. Mrs. Crary rubbed her arms and knees and stood up. They all began to make their way to the van.
Gerald smiled and said good morning to each person in his low, even voice as he handed them out their breakfasts. He knew their sleep did not banish their tiredness. Sleep was something they had to give in to wherever they were, simply because it grew dark and their bones couldn’t carry them any longer. Gerald didn’t know what it was like to be homeless—he had two houses, one in the city and one in the country. But he could imagine. At home in his desk, he had a pile of summonses from the police department, warning him to remove his van from what was city property or else it would be towed away. Yesterday, Gerald had removed all the van tires while Mrs. Crary directed him imperiously, holding a stick in the air like a baton. “And now the right rear tire shall be removed,” she had chanted.
In the wooden crate, Calvin lay awake, staring at the sleeping boy whose face he could not yet see. Gradually, he slid himself outside. Buddy had gone off to the construction site down the street where, several days ago, he had successfully pried open the door of a mobile toilet for the workers. No one had bothered to fix it yet.
Calvin reached out a finger and touched the boy’s leg lightly. He was real. Now he recalled Buddy’s saying last night, “A kid. Wearing a nice jacket …”
The boy lifted his head, his eyes wide open. He saw an old man with a thick, tangled white beard, muddy, sunken eyes, and hanks of gray hair hanging on either side of his long, shrunken cheeks. The boy drew a deep breath and coughed.
“The air in there leaves something to be desired,” said Calvin. “The trick is to crawl outside as fast as you can.”
Clay squirmed his way into the gray morning light, and the cold air that smelled of old newspapers and pavement. He sat down in front of the old man, his legs stretched out.
“Buddy has found a bathroom so as not to add to the ordure collecting around the bushes,” the old man said.
Clay had not heard that word before, but he guessed what it meant.
“You can try the drinking fountain. Sometimes there’s a trickle of water to wash your face with. While you’re doing that, I’ll go see Gerald over there in the van and see what I can get you in the way of food. What’s your name?”
“Clay,” said the boy.
The old man sighed.
“Surely you have a last name,” he said. “Only slaves and women had no last names, and that was long ago.”
“Clay Garrity.”
“I am Calvin Bosker,” said the old man. “And Buddy is Buddy Meadowsweet. After we eat, we’ll have to look into your situation.”
In front of the crate, Clay sat close to Buddy, a few feet away from Calvin.
“Good?” asked Buddy of Clay. “Why don’t you finish it?”
Except to name himself, Clay had not spoken. He cleared his throat. “I’ve never had coffee before,” he said.
“It was mostly milk,” Buddy said.
“Where shall I throw the cup?” Clay asked.
“Don’t throw it away,” replied Buddy. “Someone can use it. Like Dimp Laughlin and his dog, who beg uptown over on the east.”
“We’ll have rain,” remarked Calvin, combing his beard with his fingers.
“You can’t tell yet,” Buddy said. “All mornings start gray.”
“I can tell by my old bones,” Calvin said crossly.
Clay was finishing his doughnut with difficulty. His throat felt as though a lump of bread had lodged in it. A light breeze swept through the park like a wispy broom, rustling leaves and newspapers. He saw people scratching, stretching, blowing their noses into rags. Some trailed back to the van, where Gerald’s bright hair and bright smile shone like small beacons in the gloomy light. Clay noticed an old woman counting her bags over and over again. He could see there were six. Why did she keep counting?
Calvin appeared to have sensed his puzzlement. “Even if you don’t have a roof over your head, you count your things,” he said. “It’s a kind of housekeeping. Most people who come here have one or two things to count—the junk people throw away so they can buy more junk. Where do they think away is?”
“We’re away,” Buddy said.
Calvin looked hard at Clay. “How old are you?” he asked sternly.
Clay ducked his head.
“I might guess,” Calvin said.
“Eleven,” Clay answered.
“It’s storytelling time,” Buddy said in a kindly way, smiling at Clay. “We’ll tell you about us. But first you got to tell us about you.”
Suddenly Clay was afraid. By now, Mrs. Larkin had probably taken Jacob to the lobby in the hotel, holding on to him while she called the police. They might be looking for him. And if Mrs. Larkin hadn’t called the police, Buddy and Calvin would. He had to get back to the room, to see if Ma had returned. He felt his legs tense for running.
“Did you leave home for some stupid reason?” Calvin asked.
“He’s too little for something like that,” Buddy said. “You got to be grown-up to be really stupid.”
“Speak up, Clay. Buddy and I aren’t going to do anything but listen. And the cars will be along soon to deafen us, honking and thumping and squealing. Go on, now.”
The man with the dog was walking out of the park. Clay saw him hold out a slice of cheese. The dog took it gently in its jaws.
“Are you going to call the police about me?” Clay asked.
He saw a glance pass between Buddy and Calvin, but he couldn’t read it. Buddy said, “I don’t call the police. Calvin doesn’t call the police. You’re big enough to call them yourself … if that’s what’s right to do.”
Clay plunged in. “My father lost his job,” he began. “The magazine where he worked folded. After a while, he went away. My mother worked in an office at night. She’s going to have a baby. We went to a lot of offices like Social Services, where you wait all day and they give you papers to fill out. Then we couldn’t pay the rent. Daddy didn’t write or anything like that. We had to move to a hotel, and I had to go to a different school. Then Ma went away, six days ago. There’s a woman in the hotel who’s probably called the police by now to tell them about Ma and me. But Ma might have come back. She might be there right now.”
Calvin and Buddy looked at him silently for a moment. A black squirrel ran straight up the trunk of a nearby tree.
“That’s a big story for one so young,” remarked Calvin.
“My story is short,” Buddy said. “I left home in Columbia, South Carolina, with sixty-eight dollars and a stamp to put on a letter home when I got here. I was seventeen, but I could pass for twenty. First, I worked in a zoo, cleaning, feeding the animals … like that. But they had to cut back. What they cut back was me. I worked as a janitor, had a little room of my own. After a year, the building started selling apartments instead of renting them, and the maintenance people, me again, got fired. I could have got more jobs, but I didn’t have money for a place to live. I went all over the place, looking, and twice I stayed in shelters. First thing they took was my good shoes. So I moved to the sidewalk. I met Calvin a few months ago, and here we are.” Buddy paused a moment and shook his head. “I never did get to use that stamp. I was waiting for good news to tell them at home. What I do now is collect the cans people throw away and I get a nickel for each one. So I’ve always got a dollar or two.”
“Yes, he met me,” Calvin went on. “He saved my life … I don’t know what for. I have a son who lives in Hawaii. I doubt we’d recognize each other. It’s been a quarter of a century since we last spoke. I used to teach mathematics to tenth-grade students who didn’t want to know the time of day. I did that for years, and when I retired, I was happy. I had a little apartment above a restaurant in Brooklyn, and the best record collection I ever came across. Oh, my music … gone now. Early one winter morning, a fire started in the restaurant. My apartment burned up, and all my records and tapes. I had no savings. I lived in hotels, then a rooming house. The woman who owned it went off to California. My pension checks followed me for a while. Then I found the street. It had been there all the time—I simply hadn’t realized it. Sometimes I drink too much liquor. Buddy found me in an alley halfway under a laundry truck. Buddy has a reasonable mind—he figured that when the driver went to work that morning, he might not see me, and when he started up his truck, bang! There would have gone Calvin Bosker. My story is really over.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Buddy said. “It isn’t over. And mine isn’t nor Clay’s.”
“Clay. Are you a lost child?” Calvin asked with sudden ferocity.
Clay knew there were thousands of lost children. Some had run away from their homes; some had been taken. His mother warned him often not to talk to anyone he didn’t know. But that was then.
“I’m not really lost,” he said to Calvin. “It’s just that I’ve got to go back to the hotel—see if Ma is there.”
“Ma …” echoed Buddy.
Down the street on the other side of the park, past a huge warehouselike building that looked empty of life, came a jogger. His face was as expressionless as a white plate. He wore earphones. As he passed the park, they could hear his breathing and the thump of his running shoes on the pavement.
“He would do better to strengthen the muscles of his brain,” remarked Calvin. He turned to Clay. “Now we must do our housework. Before you go to the hotel, please gather up some newspapers. We need them for the cold. I’m going to air out our abode.”
“I’m going to work,” said Buddy.
As Clay went about collecting the yellowed sheets of newspaper, he saw the old lady eating a cheese sandwich very slowly, taking little bites and holding up her head to the sky between each one, like a bird drinking water. All the other people who had slept in the park that night had disappeared.
“I hope your mother will be there,” Calvin said to him when he returned with an armful of newspapers. “But if she isn’t, you must come back to us. Don’t wander around the streets. There are nightmares walking around looking somewhat human. But they aren’t.”
As Clay passed the van, Gerald looked up. “I have an extra doughnut,” he said. “You can share it with your mother.”
Clay didn’t tell him he was alone, that his mother wasn’t there, that he didn’t know where on earth she was, that his heart was beating with
dread and hope. He took the doughnut and said thank you and was rewarded by Gerald’s sunny smile.
4 Escaping Notice
The hotel was closer to the park than Clay had imagined. His journey last night had seemed so long, and he was surprised, after twenty-five minutes and two wrong turns, to emerge on the familiar street. As he looked down its length, he felt fear like a feather drawn lightly downward from his brow to his belly, as though he saw for the first time the place where he and his mother had come to live.
It was such a squat, ugly building, its window ledges crowded with jars and bottles and milk cartons, the dirty windows seeming to darken before his eyes as the early morning light strengthened. The lobby doors were wide open as if there was nothing inside to be kept safe and private.
Two women joggers wearing purple shorts moved like jumping jacks along the line of parked cars. They didn’t notice Clay. They didn’t appear to notice anything. The morning people hadn’t yet begun to come out of the apartment building to go to work. A few cars sped along the street as though there were no more traffic lights in the city.
A few feet from the hotel entrance, Tony, a boy Clay had spoken to now and then in the corridors or the lobby, was curled up against the brick wall, asleep. Clay peered through the doors. No one was inside. Cigarette butts covered the stained brown carpet. When you walked on it, it gave off a swampy smell like damp cigarettes. In the hard gray dirt alongside the building where hedges might once have grown, he saw five used hypodermic needles. If he looked further, he knew he would find more.
The door to the stairs would probably be locked at this hour. He’d have to take the elevator—the poison box—to the fifth floor.
“Good morning,” said a thin, soft voice. He turned from the entrance. Tony was sitting on the sidewalk, gripping his knees with his arms, looking up at Clay.
Tony spoke like a grown-up; he had a kind of formality that he kept even when other children made fun of him or cursed him. He would regard them silently, a slight smile on his face, as if they were puzzling but not very interesting aliens from another planet.