Sport

by Louise Fitzhugh

  “I’m gonna step down the lobby,” he heard the detective say. “He ain’t to leave here. You wait’ll I come back.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” said a strangely familiar voice.

  Sport heard the heavy feet of the detective clump down the hall. The door edged open and Chi-chi walked into the room.

  “Chi—” Sport only got half the name out because Chi-chi put his finger to his lips. He wore a busboy’s uniform.

  He closed the door behind him. “Geez,” he whispered, “I knew they had a kid up here. I didn’t know it was you all this time.”

  “I gotta get out,” whispered Sport.

  “Who put you here?” said Chi-chi.

  “My blanking mother. I gotta get back. My father doesn’t know where I am, I bet.”

  Chi-chi looked thoughtful. He took off his jacket. “Try this,” he said quickly.

  Sport tried it, but couldn’t get into it because it was too small.

  “I know,” said Chi-chi. “I saw it in a movie once.” He lifted up the long white cloth on the table. He took out the big steel warmer where the hot food was kept. There was a small shelf where the warmer had sat.

  “There!” said Chi-chi.

  “Yeah!” said Sport.

  Chi-chi put the warmer in the bathroom and closed the door.

  “You crawl in,” said Chi-chi, “then I lower the sides and the cloth’ll cover you.” Chi-chi pointed to the shelf.

  Sport crawled under and made himself as small as possible. Chi-chi moved the plates around on top of the table so he could lower the two sides. The sides were lowered, making even less room for Sport.

  “Hurry,” he whispered to Chi-chi.

  “All set,” said Chi-chi and started toward the door. “Hang on,” he whispered.

  Sport heard him open the outside door. As they bumped over the sill, Sport’s heart leaped in fear at the sound of the detectives voice.

  “Where is he?” he said.

  “In the John,” said Chi-chi calmly.

  “Oh, okay,” said the detective.

  Sport held his breath as he continued to roll down the hall away from the door. He could hear the detective lock the door again, the chair hit the wall as he sat down again.

  He felt himself turn a corner. The table stopped.

  “It’s the elevator,” whispered Chi-chi. “Keep quiet.”

  Sport heard the elevator open, and felt the table roll forward. The elevator went down. The doors opened again and the table rolled out. It rolled for a long time then, past lot of banging of pots and pans and the chatter of voices. It rolled at last into a room that was quiet, and Sport heard a door shut.

  Chi-chi lifted the cloth. “Quick, now,” he said. “We gotta get you out before he gets wise.”

  The fresh air felt great to Sport after the closed-in table. He took a deep breath and looked around. They were in a small room with a lot of lockers. “Where are we?” he asked Chi-chi, who was rummaging through a pile of clothes.

  “Here. This oughta fit,” he said. “Put it on.” He held out a busboy’s uniform. Sport started to take his clothes off.

  “Quick,” said Chi-chi. “I’m not supposed to have the table in here.”

  Sport got the uniform on. Chi-chi wadded up the old clothes and put them in a locker.

  “Come on, now. Just follow me and don’t say anything to anybody.”

  Chi-chi wheeled the table put the door and along a small passageway to another room which was filled with similar dirty tables. He shoved the table over next to them.

  “Now come on,” he said to Sport.

  Sport followed him out, down the hall, past a whole line of garbage pails, up a ramp to a door that led to the street. There was a man at this door, sitting at a table.

  “He’s just going across the street,” said Chi-chi.

  ‘“What for?” said the man.

  “Mr. Hargrove sent him,” said Chi-chi. “He’s supposed to pick up something.”

  “Okay,” said the man, looking at Sport.

  Sport didn’t look at him.

  “He’s new?” said the man.

  “Yeah,” said Chi-chi. “Started yesterday.”

  “Okay,” said the man. Lumbering to his feet, the man opened the big outside door.

  “See ya, Sport,” said Chi-chi as the big door rumbled open and Sport stepped out into the air.

  “Yeah, Chi-chi,” said Sport. He was afraid to look back because of the man. He looked straight ahead into Fifty-eighth Street, which had never looked so beautiful.

  He went toward Sixth Avenue because he didn’t want to pass the front of the hotel.

  When he figured the man couldn’t see him anymore, he ran as fast as he could. It was around eight o’clock at night and there were still a lot of people on the streets. He dodged in and out of the people on the sidewalk, running as fast as he could.

  He got to the corner and hailed a cab. I don’t have a cent, he thought as he got into the cab. He told the cab driver his address, and, sitting back, he began to breathe again. He decided that he would ask the cab driver to wait while he ran up and got the money from his father. The fact that his father and Kate might not be home ran through his mind, but he couldn’t let it stay there because it was too frightening.

  The cab plunged into the park. It was dark and the weather had begun to be cold. Sport shivered. If they’re not home … he began in his mind, then pushed it down again. The cab was on the East Side now, heading toward the river. Sport found he was holding his breath again. He let it out and took a deep breath. Soon, he thought, soon.

  The cab pulled up in front of his house. There was a light on in his apartment!

  “I’ll be right back down,” said Sport hurriedly, getting out of the cab.

  “Hey, what is this?” yelled the cab driver, but he was too late. Sport was already up the steps and in the front door. He ran as fast as he could up the steps and pounded on the door, almost throwing his body against it.

  “What’s that?” he heard Kate say.

  “ME! ME!” yelled Sport as loud as he could.

  The door was flung open and his father grabbed him up in his arms.

  “Sport!” cried Kate.

  His father held him so hard against his shoulder that Sport thought he would suffocate. He didn’t care, though. He felt his eyes fill with tears. He saw Kate over his father’s shoulder, and she was crying.

  “Ruumph,” said his father, putting him down and blowing his nose in a large handkerchief.

  Kate grabbed him then, hugged him hard. He hugged her back, smelling her perfume and trying not to cry.

  “Where’d they have you?” said his father, turning around. Sport saw that his eyes were red.

  “The Plaza,” said Sport.

  His father blew his nose again and burst out laughing. “The Plaza!” he cried, laughing.

  “We’ve been out of our minds,” said Kate.

  “HEY!” came a loud shout from downstairs.

  “Oh, geez, Dad, the taxi man. I didn’t have any money,” said Sport.

  “Oh,” said his father. He went to the door. “Hold it,” he yelled as he ran down the steps,

  “Are you okay?” said Kate, looking him over, her face serious, concerned.

  “Sure,” said Sport.

  “You look like you just came out of the dryer at the Laundromat,” said Kate, touching the collar of his shirt tenderly.

  “What? Oh,” said Sport, looking down at the messy uniform.

  Sport started to laugh and couldn’t stop. He was still laughing when his father came back in the room. His father went to Kate and gave her a hug.

  “What a relief,” said Kate.

  “Yeah,” said Mr. Rocque, looking angry. “I’ll fix that dame if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “You hungry, Sport?” asked Kate.

  “No,” said Sport, weak from laughing. “I had steak every day,” he said and started laughing again even though it wasn’t funny. He laughe
d and laughed.

  “Easy now,” said Mr. Rocque.

  “He’s tired,” said Kate.

  “Come on, son,” said Mr. Rocque and grabbed Sport up in his arms as though he were a little baby. “Easy does it. Snap out of it.”

  Sport stopped laughing. His father hugged him once and put him down.

  “I think maybe a glass of hot milk,” said Kate, going into the kitchen.

  “Make it a round of hot milk,” said Mr. Rocque, running his hand through Sport’s hair. “You could use a bath,” he said gently.

  “Or hot chocolate. Like that?” asked Kate from the kitchen.

  “Yeah!” said Sport and Mr. Rocque at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed.

  CHAPTER

  Twenty

  Sport fell asleep without even finishing his hot chocolate. His father picked him up and put him into bed.

  In the morning he awoke to the smell of bacon frying. He lay in bed looking around the room. Everything seemed good. The good feel of the bed, the bacon smells, his old desk. He bounded out of bed and into the kitchen.

  “Good morning!” said Kate happily. “Room service may have more variety but …”

  “Oh, boy, bacon,” said Sport and sat down.

  “… at least we’re clean,” finished Kate, looking pointedly at Sport.

  Sport was eating bacon happily.

  “I say, old bean, did you bathe any one of those five days you were sitting in the lap of luxury?” Kate squinted her eyes and tried to look mean.

  “Oh, rats,” said Sport.

  “Rats is what you’re going to have in your ears if you don’t bathe right after breakfast.”

  “Huumph,” said Sport, with his mouth full and feeling thoroughly happy. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Your dad is down at his lawyer’s office signing some very important papers that say little boys cannot be kept in the Plaza.” Kate sat down with her cup of coffee.

  “What happened?” said Sport. “Why did she do that?”

  “She put you in one room and herself in another room and told everybody she had taken you to Paris.”

  “Yeah? What for?” Sport stopped eating.

  “Wilton tried to find you and naturally when we got back, we were frantic and wanted to call the police.”

  Sport had a vision of the cops entering the hotel room with drawn guns scaring the detective to death.

  “Then it turns out Charlotte had hired another lawyer and is suing for your custody, your complete custody, not any of this half-a-year business.”

  “What for? She hates me.”

  “Greedy. She’s greedy. She figured that with your custody she’d get all the money. She had big plans for saying your father was a bum, that I’m worse, that we give wild parties with artists all over the place doing dirty things.”

  Sport laughed.

  “She had big plans, that lady.” Kate took a swallow of coffee. “Only now she’s going to end up with, we hope, nothing.”

  “What are we gonna do?” asked Sport.

  “Your father is countersuing for your custody and he’ll get it. You can’t just kidnap a person even if he’s your own son. She was supposed to return you to your father after that week was out.”

  “You mean she was gonna take me just to get the money?”

  “It’s a lot of money, baby, and when there’s a lot of money involved, some people turn into pigs.”

  “Is she not gonna get any of it now?”

  “I imagine she’ll get the fourth, but she won’t get half, and she won’t get the whole shebang, which is what she wanted.”

  “What does Mr. Wilton say?” He remembered hearing his father call Wilton the night before and say, “He’s home.”

  “Wilton was appalled. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with her carryings-on, of course. That’s why she had to get another lawyer. The other lawyer’s a sneaky little rat who’d do anything for that much money. When he started calling up Wilton and your father’s lawyer, we knew you were safe somewhere, but we didn’t know where or how we’d ever find you until the whole thing came to court. She could have stayed in the Plaza under another name from now till Doomsday if she never went out, and never let you get out. Thank God for Chi-chi.”

  “I’m gonna have a lot of homework to do,” said Sport.

  “You’re gonna have a lot of bathing to do, and I mean right now.”

  “Drat.”

  “Drat yourself right into that shower,” said Kate, getting up and taking the dishes to the sink.

  Sport moved slowly toward the bathroom. He didn’t mind bathing. He didn’t mind anything if he could just stay there forever. He ran his finger along the dull ocher of the walls, around the corner, past his father’s room, and down the hall to the blue-tiled bathroom. He remembered the man who put the tile in, because before that there had been just plaster walls. He remembered how happy he and his father had been to have a tiled bathroom. He thought of the bathroom at the Plaza and how he hated it. Turning on the shower, he thought of the wildly fancy bathroom at Charlotte’s house. It was funny to think of, but the bathrooms he liked weren’t fancy; this one, and the one at Seymour’s, and the one at Harry’s. They weren’t fancy, but they were home. He got in the shower. The one squirt that always went haywire hit him right in the eye. He laughed up into the warm water running over his ears.

  “I got rats in my ears,” he sang loudly, imitating his father in the shower, “… rats … in … my … ears.”

  CHAPTER

  Twenty-one

  That afternoon Sport walked down York Avenue toward his school. He felt good after his shower. He had on clean jeans that Kate had taken to the Laundromat for him while he was away. He passed the stationery store and waved at the counter man. He passed O’Neil’s candy store and waved at Mrs. O’Neil through the window. Mrs. O’Neil looked startled and ran out onto the sidewalk wiping her hands on her white apron.

  “Where you been? Everybody’s looking high and low for you!” She grabbed him by the shirt collar as though he were going to run away. “Your father know where you are?”

  Sport laughed. “Yeah. They found me. It’s okay.”

  She let him go and smiled down at him. “Where were you? You run away?”

  “No. My mother had me locked up in the Plaza.”

  “The Plaza Hotel? Ooh-la-la.”

  “Yeah. Chi-chi got me out.”

  “Chi-chi Ramon? That little squirt? How’d he do that?”

  “Put me under the room service wagon. He’s a busboy.”

  “Glory be to God,” said Mrs. O’Neil. “And it’s a wonder your poor father didn’t lose his hair. He came by, you know, looking for you. Where you going now? Want a sweet roll?”

  “Sure,” said Sport and followed her in. She handed him a sweet roll from one of the glass containers. “I’m going to school to see the fellas,” said Sport, eating happily.

  “Seymour’ll be glad to see you,” said Mrs. O’Neil, looking vague because a customer had just come in. “You’re a good friend,” she said over her shoulder, going toward the man at the counter.

  “See ya,” said Sport and bounded out the door. He walked along the street finishing the roll.

  As he got near the school he could see everybody start to come out the door. School was out for lunch and everyone bounced out, swinging bookbags, chasing each other, and giving loud whoops. Sport started to run.

  “Hey, Seymour,” he yelled as he ran across Seventy-ninth Street.

  “Hey, Sport,” yelled Seymour and Harry, who were coming out the door. Chi-chi was behind them.

  “Hey, did Chi-chi tell ya?” yelled Sport, running up to them.

  “Yeah,” said Seymour.

  “Crazy,” said Harry.

  “Hi,” said Chi-chi, looking like a hero.

  “Long as you were there,” said Seymour, “I told Chichi, whyncha steal the silver at least.”

  “Lose my job, what else?” said Chi-chi.

&nb
sp; “Meet any of those crazy ladies in the halls?” asked Harry.

  “I couldn’t even get to the halls,” said Sport. “Where you guys going?”

  “The park,” said Seymour.

  “I’m starving,” said Harry.

  “I’m not, your ma just gave me a roll,” said Sport to Seymour.

  “Come on, let’s go there, she’ll feed us,” said Seymour.

  “Yeah, man,” said Harry.

  “I got no money,” said Chi-chi.

  “You don’t need none,” said Seymour.

  They started off, playing ball as they went. Sport could throw the longest so he got farther away. He was a long way up the block with Seymour at the other end and Harry and Chi-chi in the middle. Harry was so tall he jumped up and caught the high throws, and Chi-chi couldn’t throw very well so he got the ground balls. They walked this way up the sidewalk, laughing and yelling, irritating several old ladies and causing a lady with a baby carriage, who had had to duck, to scream at them.

  “Off the sidewalk!” she yelled. “You got no right!” Seymour started to yell at her and Harry and Chi-chi were watching.

  A long black car pulled up to the sidewalk right next to Sport. He didn’t even see what happened. Before he knew it, the door had opened, a long arm had grabbed him in, and he was sitting in the backseat next to Carrie with the car moving rapidly away from the curb.

  “Harry!” Sport shouted as loud as he could. He thought Harry turned around, but he wasn’t sure.

  “Sit down and shut up,” said Carrie. She grabbed him with a long, freckled hand.

  “Get away from me,” yelled Sport in a frenzy.

  The car stopped for a red light. Sport lunged for the door and got it open. Carrie was holding on to the end of his coat. He started to scream as loud as he could. “Help! Help!”

  Egbert put the brake on, got out, and ran around the car. He started to push Sport back in the car and close the door. Out of the corner of his eye Sport could see Harry running as fast as he could toward the car. Seymour and Chi-chi were behind him.