City Boy

by Herman Wouk

  He and Cliff slipped inside and closed the door as softly as against velvet cushions. They could hear Irving walking around on the brine tank, and the hissing suction of the pipe taking impure water from the cores of the ice cakes. The safe, the object of their fantastic journey, stood squat and ugly before them.

  “O.K., you keep watch,” whispered Herbie. “Here goes.”

  Cliff shuttled between the door leading to the interior of the Place and the window on the street, while Herbie carefully turned the dial. On his first try the safe failed to open.

  “Must of done it wrong,” he muttered, and ran through the numbers of his birthday again; three spins to the right, two to the left, and one to the right. The safe did not yield. Herbie was distraught.

  “Hey, Cliff, it don't work.”

  “You sure you done the combination right?”

  “Well, see, I dunno. All I know is the numbers. I tried three turns, two turns, an' one turn—hey, wait, I got it. I bet you have to start by turnin' the dial to the left. I been startin' to the right.”

  “Make it fast, whatever you do.”

  More frantic twisting. Then: “Cliff, it still don't open.”

  “Holy smoke, Herbie, I thought you knew the combination.”

  “Well, I do know the numbers, but jiminy, I dunno which goes how. I figured sure it would be three turns, two turns, an' one turn, like the locker in gym.”

  “Herbie, them guys'll be back in a coupla minutes.”

  “I'll try startin' with four turns.” Despairingly he whirled the dial, pressed the handle, and tugged at the door. It swung open so easily he fell to the floor.

  “Attaboy, Herbie. Hurry!”

  The cash box was behind the other tin box labeled “J.B.” Herbie pulled the latter off the shelf and laid it on the seat of the chair. He took out the cash box, placed it on the desk, and opened it. It was full of five, ten, and twenty dollar bills.

  “Cliff, there's hundreds!”

  “How much you gonna take?”

  “Exactly what I gotta borrow. Fifty. Not a penny more,” said Herbert primly, and selected two twenties and a ten.

  “Herbie! Herbie! Here come them two guys!” Cliff's whisper was strident. “I didn't see 'em comin' till just now. They're on top of us! We can't make it out the door!”

  “Follow me, Cliff!”

  Herbie plunged through a thick door opposite the street entrance with Cliff at his heels. The boys came into a long, high, terribly chilly room filled with gleaming blue piles of ice cakes. Huge bare electric bulbs were placed here and there in the ceiling. Beside the door, right over the boys' heads, hung the stiff frozen body of a calf head down, its tongue hanging out, its dead eyes staring at them.

  “There's another door outta this icebox,” whispered Herbie. “Irving's down by it now. In a minute we'll be able to get out.”

  “It's freezing in here.”

  “Yeah, sure is. Gimme a boost, Cliff.”

  He stepped on Cliff's clasped hands and looked warily into the office through a tiny pane of glass set high in the wall. He saw Krieger and Powers come into the office and register amazement at the sight of the open safe and cash box.

  “Irving! Irving! Irving!” shouted Krieger. An immense bald man in ragged blue overalls, his face streaked with black grease, came pounding into the office.

  “Look what happened while we gone!” Krieger exclaimed, pointing at the safe. “Didn't you see or hear anything?” (Mr. Krieger reversed the case of almost all other human beings. Under great stress he spoke more clearly than usual.)

  “No, sir, Mr. Krieger,” said the giant, his eyes popping with surprise. “I been busy suckin' the cores on number eight. You know that makes a lotta noise. I didn't hear a thing.”

  “I told you keep an eye on the office. Run quickly, call a policeman.”

  “Yes, sir.” Irving lumbered out through the street door.

  “Hey, Herbie, I'm gettin' tired holdin' you up,” said Cliff softly. His cousin's heel was digging painfully into his interlaced fingers. The damp cold of the storehouse was making his arms ache. “Can't we sneak out the other door now?”

  “They'll be listenin' for every sound now. Wait a second,” whispered Herbie.

  He heard Powers exclaim, “Look! They took Bookbinder's box!” The young man ran his hand along the empty shelf.

  “Don't understand something. Why they don't take all the money?” said Krieger, counting the cash hurriedly. “Only got fifty, and leave behind—”

  “What does that matter? Listen to me! Does Bookbinder have photostats of that blue paper?”

  “No photostats. One paper always right here in safe, better so—”

  “Then, by God,” said Powers, “the memorandum is gone, and Bookbinder is through.” He shook his head. “Tough luck for Bookbinder—I hate to see it happen this way—”

  “Mr. Powers look please.”

  Krieger pointed to the box labeled “J.B.” lying on the chair. Both men stared at it. Then they looked each other in the eye. Then both lunged for the box. Krieger got his hands on it first and hugged it.

  “What you think? Honest man. Thirty years in the ice business. Never funny business. Jake Bookbinder my partner—”

  In the ice room Cliff was staggering under his burden and shivering. His numb fingers were giving way. “Herbie, I gotta let go for a minute.”

  “One second more, Cliff!”

  “Listen to me, Krieger,” said Powers, speaking quickly and earnestly, “the best favor you can do Bookbinder—”

  Crash! Herbie thudded to the floor as Cliff's fingers refused to obey him any longer.

  “Now we're in it. Come on!” Herbie picked himself up and charged down a narrow corridor between blue walls of ice. He turned sharply to the right as they came to a break in the pile of cakes, and rushed through another foot-thick refrigerator door, followed by the other boy. The warm air of the engine space smote their faces. They were at one end of the brine tank, at the point were the crane dumped finished ice. The crane stood ten feet away over number eight row, loaded with dripping, yard-long rectangular cans.

  “Stay right by this door, Cliff. I'll be back in a second!”

  Herbie ran over the loose boards covering the tank to the crane, making a wild clatter, and yanked a chain that hung down between the two middle cans. The crane began to move ponderously toward Cliff, with clanking and groaning. Krieger could be heard shouting, “I hear them! Out by the tank!” and there was a running of feet. Herbie came back to Cliff, barely ahead of the moving crane, and gasped, “Now's our chance. Come on!” He pulled his cousin back through the refrigerator door and raced between the ice piles to the other door that opened to the office. Behind them they heard the crane crash into the end of its framework, and the excited voices of Krieger and Powers echoing through the tank room.

  “Pray to God,” whispered Herbie, and opened the door. The office was empty. The boys were out in the street and around in the darkness of the alley in an instant. From the building they could still hear faintly the shouts of the two men. Herbie peered around the corner of the building for a moment and saw Irving with a policeman a block away, running toward the Place down the middle of the street.

  “Here comes the cop,” he said, and added disdainfully, “He ain't half as big as Irving.”

  “Boy, Herbie, I thought we were cooked.”

  The boys slipped down the alley, crossed a vacant lot filled with rubbish behind the Place, and turned left into a shorter alley between two store buildings. They emerged on a street of small shops, a block away from the ice plant. There was an elevated subway station at one end of the street.

  “Herb, how about the subway?”

  “They might see us goin' up the steps, but we better try it. They'll have more cops around here in a minute.”

  Winded and leg-weary, the cousins ran up the steep staircase of the elevated at a rate that threatened to burst Herbie's heart in his chest. Luck was with them. They had scarc
ely staggered through the turnstiles when a Pelham Bay local train, all but empty, lurched into the station. They boarded it. The doors closed, and the train carried them off to safety with squeals and screams.

  The boys sat in a stupor of fatigue and relief while the train passed two stations. Then Cliff said dully, “What time is it anyhow? Five o'clock?”

  Herbie looked at his wrist watch and silently held it out toward his cousin. It read five minutes past two.

  “What? You sure it ain't stopped?”

  Herbie held the timepiece to his ear and heard a healthy, regular ticking. “That's all it is, five after two.”

  “Gosh, twenty minutes, just twenty minutes since Mr. Butcher dropped us off!”

  The boys silently marveled at the strange ways of time. Twenty crowded minutes of adventure and peril had seemed longer to them than many hours.

  “Hey, you know what?” said Cliff slowly, his mind emerging from the fog of danger. “We still got a chance to make it back to camp.”

  “Yeah, a good chance!” said Herbie, with a lift of surprise and pleasure. “I sure never thought we would. Come, we'll get off next station.”

  The boys jumped up from their straw seats and stood with noses pressed impatiently against the glass of the car door. As soon as the train stopped they were out of it and trampling headlong down the staircase with a great noise. For a while the focus of their minds had narrowed to the single urgent problem of not getting caught. Now it broadened again to include the purpose of their trip, which began to seem miraculously close to accomplishment. They had more than four hours to get back to Manitou.

  The train thundered away over their heads, and they stood on a quiet, empty, gloomy boulevard. Two blocks away a patrolman was strolling with his back toward them, swinging his night stick. So silent was the sleeping city that the boys could hear the metallic click and scrape of his heels on the sidewalk. Across the street a Negro in a gray shirt and brown cap dozed at the wheel of a dilapidated taxicab. The vehicle had been hand-painted bright blue, in an unsuccessful attempt to hide the fact that it had first seen the light around 1921.

  “That's what we want,” said Herbie, “if it runs.”

  They crossed the street and woke the driver by climbing into the back of the taxi and slamming the door.

  “Uh-huh, where to?” said the driver, sitting erect with a jerk.

  “We wanna go where the Bronx River Parkway starts,” said Herbie.

  “Huh?” The colored man looked around at his passengers, with big eyes that grew bigger as he saw two lads in kneepants. “What you boys want in my cab?”

  “I told you, mister, we wanna go to the Bronx River Parkway.”

  “Why, boy, that cost you three dollars.”

  “Show him the money, Cliff.”

  Cliff briefly waved a five-dollar bill before the driver's eyes, and returned it to his pocket.

  “Say, what you boys up to this time o' night? You runnin' away from home?”

  “Yeah. We got a stepfather beats up our mother. We're runnin' away to our uncle in Albany. His name is—is Butcher.”

  The Negro laughed. “Name's Butcher. I see. You lie pretty good, boy. You jest make it up?”

  Herbie regarded the driver uncertainly, then joined the laugh and said, “Just made it up.”

  “Boy, I don't care why you wanna go to Bronx River Parkway. I got a cab, you got d'money, an' I'm open for business. We off.”

  It turned out that the sky-blue wreck could travel fast enough, though not without horrible jolting and grinding. The Negro let them out at the foot of the Parkway in little less than half an hour. Cliff handed him the five-dollar bill, and the boys waited in some trepidation for their change. Not another car or human being was in sight near the brilliantly lit highway entrance. The driver saw their troubled expressions and chuckled.

  “You hear lotta bad talk 'bout cullud people, don't you, boys?” He held two single bills out to Cliff, who clasped them gratefully. “Jes' 'member, now, a cullud man done you a favor once an' didn't ask no questions.” He waved, and the blue relic rattled away.

  Herbie's watch read fifteen minutes before three. There remained four and a quarter hours to reveille.

  “Cliff, we're gonna come through easy,” he said. The cousins began walking confidently, almost cockily, along the highway.

  It is not advisable to tempt fate with such remarks. Five, ten, fifteen minutes wore away. Only two cars had passed, and the drivers had ignored the boys.

  “Someone better pick us up soon,” said Cliff.

  “Shucks, we got hours yet,” bravely answered his cousin.

  The boys trudged on. They spoke little about the thrilling passages of the night. In the anticlimax to the tension of their escape both began to feel shaky and scared as they moved slowly along the margin of the broad, vacant highway. The road was filling up with fog, and becoming increasingly murky between the pools of light around the widely spaced lamps. It was, in truth, a lonely place for two footsore, sleepy boys.

  Another half hour passed, with every minute a dragging torment, and still they were walking.

  “Cliff—Cliff, I gotta sit down.”

  Herbie sank to the side of the roadway and rested his damp head on his knees. His cousin remained standing beside him. “Sure. Take it easy, Herbie.”

  “We ain't gonna make it. Why did I ever get you into this? You'll get kicked out of camp an' everything on accounta me—”

  “Wait a second. Here comes another car.”

  “He won't pick us up. No one won't pick us up. We'll have to walk back all the way to Manitou. It serves me right, but you—”

  Fate, however, chose to joke with Herbie again. The car stopped, and the boys gratefully scrambled in.

  The driver was as different from their first benefactor, Mr. Butcher, as he could have been without being of another species than the human; in fact, had he been a full-grown hog the difference might arguably have been less wide. He was emaciated, his body was bowed over the wheel like a half hoop, and he had a small, round, smooth pink face like a baby's, except for a few strands of gray hair creeping down from under his hat, a long pointed nose, and steel-rimmed glasses such as seldom decorate a baby. His suit was a gray affair that hung shapelessly on him, with here and there a ridge or corner of bone showing under the cloth.

  “Where to, fellows?” He spoke in a high, weak voice.

  “We're goin' just outside Panksville, but as far as you're goin'll be swell, mister.”

  “Going right past there. Expect to be in Hudson by seven,” said the apparition, and shifted gears with a skinny hand that seemed likely to snap in the process. It did not, however; and the car, a bulky old Pierce Arrow, inhaled a deep draught of gasoline and snorted away into the fog.

  The driver spoke no more, nor did he look at his passengers after taking them into the vehicle. He drove with desperate concentration. Steering the big auto required the leverage of his whole body. He would fly up in the air when the car passed over a bump, and would clutch the wheel like a jockey hanging to the reins of a stallion. Herbie watched this strange struggle, fascinated. It was the first time he had ever realized that an automobile was a thing mightier than its driver. The wise men who build these terrors in Detroit have bridled them with gears and reined them with levers and throttled them with pinhole breathing to a point where they seem harmless to an ordinary man. Herbie's new chauffeur, however, was so far below average human weight and strength that the monster, shackled as it was, could still give him a fight—and it did fight, with the senseless bitterness of metal and grease come to life. But Herbie's fund of fear, indeed of all emotions, was almost spent. He observed the battle with waning interest when it grew clear to him that the driver, by however thin a margin, maintained the upper hand. He felt Cliff's head on his shoulder; his cousin had dropped asleep. He resolved to keep his own eyes open, not trusting the silent skeleton at the wheel. But he had been awake now for twenty hours, and had performed more violent e
xercise in that time than in twenty previous months. …

  The car stopped with a jolt that shook both boys awake. Opening their eyes, they were amazed to see a bright pink sky and clear daylight.

  “Panksville, boys,” piped the driver. The car stood at the crossroads of the dusty village, in front of Scudder's General Store.

  “Gee, thanks a lot, mister. We were sleepin',” said Herbie, stretching. “We can get off here, but we're going about a mile further down this road.”

  “Oh, yes? I'll be happy to take you there.” The car started again.

  Herbie looked at his watch and showed it to his yawning cousin. Five minutes past six.

  “We make it,” he whispered.

  “Did you boys have a good nap?” said the driver in his creaky voice.

  “Yeah, swell,” said Herbie.

  “Sorry I didn't talk to you, but driving is hard for me. I can't see well, and this car's hard to handle. You must be going to one of these camps out here.”

  Herbie felt a prickling of his skin, and said, “Uh-yeah, that's right.”

  “Penobscot?”

  The boys exchanged wary glances.

  “No,” said Herbie.

  “Must be Manitou, then. Charming gentleman, Mr. Gauss. Very pleasant to deal with, always. You boys are fortunate to be at such a splendid—”

  The car went whooping around a curve and tried to take charge and dive into a ditch. No helmsman in a hurricane ever fought harder with a wheel than this featherweight driver did, and he was panting when he brought the engine back under control.

  “You see—huff—what I mean, boys? Huff. I really should use the train, but in my work I just can't. Well! Here's your road.”

  Herbie wanted to find out what sort of work this reedy creature did, but he wanted much more strongly to vacate the vicinity of anybody who knew Mr. Gauss. The boys jumped from the car. “Thanks, mister.”

  “Quite welcome, boys,” answered the frail man, and drove away.

  Herbie imagined he had seen the last of him. He was mistaken; but neither men nor boys can see into the future much beyond the bend of the next forty-eight hours.

  Cliff ran into the woods and came out leading a very stiff-legged and balky Clever Sam. The animal was obviously outraged at having been tied up in dew and darkness all night. He grunted, neighed, pulled his head this way and that, and bucked.