Hard City

by Clark Howard

  Or anybody else, his street-trained mind added without consideration.

  On Saturday Miss Menefee took him to a two-story institutional looking building on Jackson Boulevard near Western. A sign on the front read: OFF-THE-STREET CLUB.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s a club for boys. Some very generous gentlemen support it so that boys like yourself can have a place to go in your spare time.”

  “I don’t have no spare time,” Richie said.

  “Oh, you do so,” Grace Menefee chided, mussing the head of hair she normally combed. “You have time to read; that’s spare time. Here in the club, you can do other things too. They have a room for building model planes and boats, a music room if you want to learn to play an instrument, a game room where you can play checkers and dominoes and put together jigsaw puzzles—”

  “I need all my spare time to read,’ Richie protested, lagging back. Grace Menefee tugged him onward.

  “There’s even a library,’ she revealed. “There is?” Richie’s interest swelled.

  “Yes. Small but very nice. The lady in charge of it is a friend of mine. I’ll introduce you to her.”

  “Does it have a juvenile section?” Richie asked distrustfully.

  “Not exactly juvenile, I don’t think,” Grace Menefee said. “More adolescent, I’d say.”

  “What’s ‘adolescent’?”

  “Youthful but not childish. I’m sure there’ll be something to interest you.”

  She led him along a hall past several of the rooms she had described, to a one-room library at the very rear of the first floor. There were no island stacks, just open bookshelves along all four walls, and a librarian’s desk in the center of the room.

  “Richie, this is Miss Hovey, my friend,” Grace Menefee introduced. “Paula, this is Richie, also my friend . . . I think.” She punched Richie lightly on the arm and he threw her an annoyed look. Sometimes Miss Menefee carried the palsy-walsy stuff too far; it could be embarrassing if other kids were around, like being a teacher’s favorite kid in class, which was next to death. “Paula, you’ll be pleased to know that Richie’s a bona fide, confirmed reader.”

  “Swell,” Paula Hovey said.

  To Richie, the librarian, who had burnt-blonde hair, bore a striking resemblance to the actress Dorothy McGuire, whom he had recently seen in the movie A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

  “Maybe Richie would like to take part in our book report contest,” the actress look-alike suggested. “Have you ever written a book report, Richie?”

  “No,” Richie said, shrugging and shaking his head. “I just read books; I don’t do nothing else.”

  “Do you know what a book report is?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “What grade are you in?”

  “Six-A.”

  In an aside to Grace Menefee that Richie managed to catch, Paula Hovey said, “Christ, some educational system we’ve got.” Then, back to Richie, “A book report, Richie, is where you sit down after you’ve finished reading a book, and you write out what the book was about, what you learned from it, and whether you liked it or not, and why. Do you think you might enjoy doing that?”

  “I don’t think so,” Richie demurred. He put on his most ingratiating smile for Miss Menefee, so as not to get her upset with him. “I guess I’ll keep on just reading.”

  “First prize for the best book report every month,” Paula Hovey said pointedly, “is a trip downtown to a bookstore to pick out any book you want. Under ten dollars, that is.”

  The smile vanished from Richie’s face. “Pick out to keep?”

  “To keep,” she confirmed. “The only requirement is that the book you report on has to come from our own library. If you want to pick one out, I’ll be happy to give you an O.T.S.C. library card.”

  “Okay,” Richie said, excitement generated, “I’ll do it.” A book to keep! What a swell prize! As he turned toward the shelves, Grace Menefee touched his arm.

  “Richie, let me pick a book for you,” she appealed, “please. I want you to read a book that was my very favorite when I was your age, or a little older maybe. Paula, do you have Ivanhoe?”

  “Of course.” She walked toward the shelves.

  Richie frowned. He would have preferred to select his own, but did not protest. Miss Menefee, after all, had been pretty good to him, and was also helping his mother. He decided, without being able to put it into words, to indulge the devoted caseworker.

  He just hoped the book about some guy named Ivan would be good.

  Richie got the afternoon paper route, which was the same route he delivered in the morning, except there were only about half as many papers. On the first afternoon that he worked the new route, one of his deliveries was to the Rozinskis, who got two papers a day. When he got to their back porch, Mrs. Rozinski was sitting in a wicker rocker, smoking a cigarette and thumbing through a True Story magazine.

  “Everybody pull your shades down,” she said wryly as Richie came up the stairs.

  “I told you,” he instantly defended himself, “I thought the lady said something to me through the window.”

  Mrs. Rozinski looked at him with that same amused expression that he remembered from their initial encounter. Since that incident, he had virtually crept up to her porch for the morning delivery, then hurried away, thankful at not having run into her again. Each time he left the block, however, he made a point of looking back to see if she was again watching him from her front window. Twice, to his surprise, she had been.

  “How come you look at me out your window in the mornings?” he challenged, deciding to go on the offensive. He was far enough away to be able to get down the stairs if she should come out of the chair after him. But some intuitive feeling told him she would not. “How come, huh?” he demanded, seeing a smile play at her lips.

  “Maybe I think you’re cute,” she said.

  “I ain’t ‘cute,’ ” Richie rebutted. “Girls are cute.”

  “Oh, my. In that case, what do they call a boy who’s nice looking? You’re not old enough to be called handsome. How old are you, anyway?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I am!”

  “If you’re fourteen, my name’s Cleopatra.”

  “Is it?”

  “No.” She paused a beat, as if deciding some minor point. “It’s Frances.”

  “Frances, huh?” He tried to suppress a grin but could not. “That’s better than Cleopatra.”

  They fell silent for a moment, woman and boy, she looking up from her chair, the same way, he realized, that Mrs. Raley had done while considering his proposition regarding the paper route. A little ill-at-ease under her scrutiny, Richie looked off at the adjoining porch, and suddenly remembered that it was where he had been caught peeking at the old woman, and quickly shifted his glance elsewhere. “I gotta get going now,” he finally mumbled, moving toward the stairs.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” Frances asked as he started down. Pausing, he told her. “Well, Richie,” she said in playful reproach, “don’t you think you should leave my paper?”

  Knowing his face was fiery red, Richie trudged back up to the porch and handed her the paper.

  At first irate and indignant over Grace Menefee’s choice of a book for him, Richie nevertheless quickly cleared the chasm between John Dos Passos and Sir Walter Scott, and almost at once began to enjoy Ivanhoe. Vastly different from anything he had ever read before, the colorful, exciting story of Ivanhoe’s quest for Rowena, Richard the Lion-Hearted’s struggle to regain his rightful throne, and the heroic, suspenseful rescue of Rebecca as she was about to be burned at the stake, plus the added surprise appearance of Robin Hood, whom Richie was familiar with in the form of Errol Flynn on the screen, served to introduce him to romantic historical fiction. It was not as easy to read as Dos Passos, Kingsley, and the Saturday Evening Post authors; the writing was very formal, almost artificially so in places, but the story was there, a
nd that was what always either impressed or disappointed Richie.

  The minute he finished the novel, Richie got out notebook and pencil to begin his first book report. Knowing nothing of format or style, he guided himself by Paula Hovey’s advice: tell what the book was about, what he learned from it, whether he liked it or not, and why. Deciding to approach those elements in reverse order, because it seemed more logical that way, he began: “I liked the book Ivanhoe. I liked it because it was a good story about a nice guy who helped his friends when they needed help and who proved to everybody that he was good enough to marry the girl he wanted to marry. The way the story went was like this. Ivanhoe had went off to war with King Richard because he couldn’t have Rowena for his wife. One day he came back, wearing a disguise so nobody knew it was him . . . .”

  He wrote five pages describing the highpoints of the story. At the end of that narrative, he added: “The things I learned from Ivanhoe are a lot. I learned about the way knights of old fought on horses with lances. I learned that in those days if you were a lot smarter than other people, sometimes they said you were a witch. I learned that it don’t matter if you are a king because there are good kings and bad kings. I learned that Robin Hood is not only in the movies but in a book too. I learned that people talked funny a long time ago. That is what I learned.”

  The judges of the book report contest were the Off-the-Street-Club librarian Paula Hovey, and two others: the man who served as director of the club, and a lady who taught high school English and worked at the club as a volunteer two nights a week. They were unanimous in their choice of Richie’s report on Ivanhoe as the best of some two dozen turned in that month. On the Saturday morning following their decision, Paula Hovey took Richie downtown on the Jackson Boulevard bus to a bookstore to select his prize. Grace Menefee, who said at least a dozen times that she was “tickled to death” that Richie had won, accompanied them.

  “You know, Richie,” she suggested ebulliently, “if you wanted to, you could get a copy of Ivanhoe for your prize. My favorite book and the very one that you wrote your report on. What do you think of that idea?”

  “I’d rather pick out a book I haven’t read yet,” Richie replied logically.

  “Let him make his own choice, Grace,” Paula Hovey urged. “What kind of books do you like best, Richie?”

  “Cowboy books.”

  “You mean the old West, like that? All right, let’s see what we can find.”

  In the American History-Western Frontier section, Richie scrutinized a shelf of books until he found a familiar name: Walter Noble Burns. The title of the book was Tombstone: The Town Too Tough To Die.

  “I’ll take this one,” Richie said.

  After glancing at the price, Paula Hovey said, “It’s yours.”

  “What in the world is that about?” Grace Menefee asked, with a hint of contempt.

  “ ‘Bout a town in Arizona where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday shot it out with a bunch of outlaws at the O.K. Corral. I seen a movie about it, called Frontier Marshal.”

  “A movie,” Grace Menefee said. “I might have known. I suppose John Garfield was in it?”

  Richie almost laughed. “John Garfield don’t play cowboys! Randolph Scott was in it.”

  After Paula Hovey paid for the book, she handed the bag to Richie and he walked proudly out of the store with it under his arm. It was a very special moment for him.

  His own book.

  Richie figured it out. One book per month, twelve a year. By the time he was grown, he would have about a hundred books. And all he had to do was write the best book report every month. Which not only seemed easy, but fun also. The only drawback was that the report had to be on a book from the Off-the-Street Club library, and that selection, for Richie, was extremely limited.

  “Would you like me to help you pick something, Richie?” Paula Hovey asked when she saw him scanning the shelves. “I promise,” she added at once, “it won’t be another Ivanhoe. Although you did say you liked it. But I think I know one you’ll enjoy even better.”

  “What is it?” Richie asked, a little warily.

  Paula Hovey handed him a book and Richie read the title. Life on the Mississippi. The author’s name was Mark Twain.

  “I think you’ll like this gentleman’s writing better than Sir Walter Scott,” Paula Hovey said.

  Richie did. He found Mark Twain’s collection of reminiscences about the mighty Mississippi River and its steamboat traffic one of the most vivid and interesting books he had yet read; not from the standpoint of story—it had none of the thought-provoking powers, nothing to make him stare contemplatively at a page to digest its meaning, that the works of Dos Passos and Kingsley contained—but for sheer pleasure, utter entertainment, pure fun reading, it was like nothing he had seen. When he returned it to Paula Hovey, after finishing it and writing the book report on it, he did so with a grin on his face.

  “Liked it, huh?” she said smugly.

  When his book report on Life on the Mississippi won first place the second month, Paula again took him to the Loop bookstore, this time without Grace Menefee, who was working that Saturday. Richie went directly to the same section of the store and chose a book called The Saga of Billy the Kid, by the same author, Walter Noble Burns, who wrote his previous prize book and whom he admired so much. Paula Hovey smiled understandingly at his choice. “You really like your cowboys, don’t you, Richie,” she said. On the way back to the West Side on the bus, the librarian told him, “Let me know when you’re ready for another book to read for a report; I have a very good one in mind for you. Have you ever heard of a writer named Jack London?”

  The book Paula Hovey checked out to him a week later was The Call of the Wild. As soon as Richie started reading it, he knew he was going to like Jack London better than Mark Twain. London’s story of the great sled dog, Buck, and the dog’s adventures, hardships, suffering, and triumphs in frontier Alaska of 1897 stirred in Richie for the first time a feeling of kinship to animals. The big St. Bernard—coincidentally having the same name as Richie’s dead movie hero—lived a life not markedly unlike Richie’s own existence: a loner animal passed from owner to owner, taken advantage of by some, befriended by others, but always, when it got down to fundamentals, having to do for himself or do without. It amazed Richie how closely parallel were human and animal problems at times, and he was fascinated by London’s treatment not only of the actions and physical feelings of Buck, but the dog’s thoughts as well.

  The Call of the Wild was another glorious reading experience for Richie, and following it he produced what Paula Hovey said was his best book report yet. For the third month in succession he won first prize and was taken downtown to the bookstore.

  “Can I get any kind of book I want?” he asked.

  “Sure, as long as it’s under ten dollars,” Paula Hovey said. “What kind of book do you want?”

  “One of those kinds that has maps in it,” Richie told her.

  “You mean an atlas?” She took him to the geography section and showed him one. “Like this?” As she handed it to him, she noticed that the price was twelve dollars and fifty cents.

  “Yeah,” Richie said in wonder, examining its colorful pages. “Yeah, this is what I want.”

  Paula Hovey watched him with delight, and even a little affection. “Why do you want an atlas, Richie?” she asked curiously.

  “I want to be able to find where all the places are that I read about,” he said. “Tombstone, Arizona, and Skagway, Alaska, and St. Louis, Missouri, and England, and all the other places. I can’t go to all those places, but if I read about them and then put my finger on a map where they are, it’ll be kind of like going there. Sort of.”

  “It sure will, Richie,” Paula Hovey agreed. “Sort of.” She bought the atlas for him, using two-fifty of her own money to make up the difference in price.

  “I’ll save up and pay you back,” Richie promised.

  “You don’t have to,” Paula told him.
/>   “I really will,” Richie swore. “I want to, honest.”

  Walking back to the bus stop, Paula instinctively gave him a hug.

  A week later, Richie came into the Off-the-Street Club library one evening and asked Paula Hovey, “What do you think I ought to read for my next book report?”

  “Well, let’s see,” Paula mused. “Have you ever read any books by Zane Grey?”

  “Nope,” Richie replied confidently. He knew the name of every author of every book he had ever read.

  Paula got a book for him. “This is Riders of the Purple Sage,” she said.

  “That was the name of a movie,” Richie told her, “with George O’Brien. Is this a book about the movie?”

  Paula shook her head. “It was a book before it was a movie, Richie. They made the movie from the book.”

  “Jeez, I didn’t know they did that!” he exclaimed. “I thought they only made movies from real stories, like about Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. Real people like that.”

  “No,” Paula kept shaking her head, “many, many movies are made from novels. Fiction. Made-up stories.”

  “Jeez,” Richie said again. He mulled over this new knowledge all the way home, wondering if Zane Grey’s book was going to be exactly like George O’Brien’s movie. He recalled that it had been a pretty good picture. O’Brien played a wandering cowboy named Lassiter who came into town, fell in love, exposed a crooked judge, wiped out the outlaws who were in charge, and took his girlfriend off to live happily ever after. When Richie read the story as written in the book, he found it to be faithful in almost every way—in fact, more so in places because there were many more details brought out that had not been included in the movie. This was Richie’s first experience of seeing a movie first, then reading the book; he later questioned whether it was good or not, doing it that way. For one thing, he wondered how he would have pictured the characters if he had not seen the movie. Certainly he would not have imagined George O’Brien in the role of Lassiter; probably he would have visualized him more as Zane Grey described him. Now Richie would never know; Lassiter would forever in his mind be George O’Brien.