Cave Under the City

by Mazer, Harry;

  “That.” I pointed to the box.

  “You want that rotten fruit?”

  “I’ll take it away for you.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “Feed it to my dog.”

  “Your dog eats bananas? Take it.” She handed me a bag. “But leave me the box.”

  I filled the bag. There was a lot of good stuff. “I’ll sweep the store for you. Free.”

  “Be my guest.”

  I swept the store and the sidewalk. Then I carried boxes of lettuce and celery from the back of the store. “What else? You got anything else for me to do?”

  “Don’t you go to school?”

  “I stayed home today because my mother’s sick.”

  She paid me a quarter and threw some good potatoes and carrots into the bag. “For your dog,” she said.

  On the way back, I passed a butcher shop and asked for a bone for my dog and the butcher gave it to me. Then I went into a bakery and bought an old bread for a penny.

  Bubber was excited when I showed him what I had. I cut the bad part out of an orange and gave him the good part. “Tolley, did you swipe it?”

  “I don’t steal.”

  “The milk—”

  “Just shut up about that.”

  Bubber wanted to give the bone to King. “Just wait,” I said. I made a fire. Then I made soup the way I’d seen my mother do it. I put everything in the pot, the bone and the potatoes and carrots, and let it cook.

  The smell made us crazy. We ate out of the pot with our fingers, then soaked up the liquid with the dry bread. King came back, and he lay in the corner cracking the bone.

  That was one day. The next day we were hungry again. Things didn’t go the way they had the day before. The only thing that was the same was that we were hungry.

  We were hungry every day. And every day we looked for food. If I got hungry enough, I grabbed a bottle of milk.

  One day we went to the zoo and watched the animals being fed. The seals got a bucket of fish. The lions got big chunks of red meat, and the elephants were eating loaves of pumpernickel bread. Bubber said he was going to slip between the bars and get a bread. I dragged him away. In the monkey house, though, I spotted a banana next to the bars in the cage. The chimp was up on a shelf. I reached in and got the banana. The chimp watched, then pointed a finger at me and started screaming.

  We stayed in the zoo all day. In the shallows by the river we collected crayfish in a can. There were Cracker Jack boxes in every garbage can with Cracker Jacks stuck to the bottom. We found half-eaten sandwiches and ate those, too.

  When it started to get dark, we drifted over to the train station. Not the one in our neighborhood. We went up the stairs and stood by the change booth. I got my nerve up and asked a man, “You got a nickel for the subway, mister?” I did it four or five times before I got a nickel. The man in the change booth was looking at us, so we went downstairs, but I couldn’t get started again. I let Bubber do it. He never said anything, just stood there, smiling up at people with his hand out.

  One day we got on the train and went to see my grandmother. Her door was locked. I pushed the buzzer a long time. Was she asleep? Still sick? In the lobby Bubber went from chair to chair. I went back to my grandmother’s door and pushed the buzzer and listened, then knocked.

  A man came out from the apartment across the way. “She’s in the hospital. Who’re you?”

  “Her grandson.”

  “She’s in the hospital. Didn’t anybody tell you?”

  I went back and got Bubber. “Come on,” I said, “Grandma’s sleeping.” And we went back to the cave.

  24

  Candles were for emergencies. Most nights the only light we had was from the fire. It was always out when we woke up, and one morning there was a thin sheet of ice in the water bottle. Every day it got colder, and we spent a lot of time gathering wood.

  I hardly ever thought about the way we used to live. I hardly thought about my parents. If I did think about them, it was like something that had happened a long time ago. Like a story or a movie.

  We were always together, Bubber and King and me. We went everywhere, but never to our old neighborhood. Bubber got food a lot of times when I couldn’t, and King sniffed out good garbage.

  I saved everything. Tin cans, bottles, and newspapers. I found some pieces of carpet in the garbage and put them on the floor, on our beds, and nailed one piece over the window.

  One day it was so cold we couldn’t stay in the cave. We went from building to building, warming our hands over the radiators. When anyone came, we went right out. “Where are we going?” Bubber said.

  “We’re walking.”

  “Where are we walking?”

  “We’re walking where we’re walking.” But then I thought, he’s only in first grade, and I gave him a geography lesson. This way, traveling around the city, he would learn a lot. “The Bronx,” I said, “is surrounded on three sides by water. On the east there’s Long Island Sound and on the west there’s the Hudson River. And on the south it’s either the Harlem River or the East River, I don’t remember which. So you could say that whatever way we’re walking, we’re walking toward the water. Unless we’re going north. Now you tell me.”

  “The Bronx,” he said, “is surrounded on three sides by water. On the east there’s Long Island Sound and on the west there’s the Hudson River.…”

  “Very good,” I said. “A plus and a gold star.”

  Bubber liked that. He wanted more. “Read that sign,” I said, pointing to a drugstore. It said “Biologicals” and “Alka Seltzer.” Bubber got the b sound and then he got stuck.

  “Scratch that,” I said, and I gave him something he knew. “What’s two times one?”

  “Two times one is two. Two times two is four. Two times three is six.”

  He knew a lot of his times tables for a first grader.

  “Two times nine is eighteen. Two times ten is twenty.”

  “Okay. Good. Which way isn’t the water? North, east, south, or west?”

  “North.”

  “Good.” Teaching Bubber helped make the time pass.

  One night I went back to our building. Our windows were dar. I ran in and checked our mailbox, then ran out again.

  Every day was different, and every morning Bubber said the same thing. “I’m hungry.”

  Sometimes we went to the library. They had good bathrooms. I read stories to Bubber and tried to get him to read some of the words. There were a lot of men in the library, reading the newspapers or sleeping with their heads on their arms.

  One day we were walking along the edge of the tracks and saw something glinting through the bare trees. It was an abandoned 1929 Ford. The windows had been smashed and everything had been taken out, but in the bushes we found two wheels with the tires still on them. We rolled the tires to the junk man under the Third Avenue el. “We’ll probably get five dollars for them,” I told Bubber.

  “We’ll be rich,” Bubber said. “What will we buy?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “We’re going to save the money.”

  Bubber threw down the wheel. “Then you roll it. I’m not going.”

  “What do you want? I was just teasing. You want me to buy gloves?”

  He nodded.

  “How about me?”

  “Two pairs of gloves,” he said.

  “Okay, what else?”

  “Two Baby Ruths, two Mary Janes, two Milky Ways and—”

  “Hold it, hold it. How about shoes?”

  “Two pairs of shoes, two hats, two jackets, and two Mounds bars and two packs of candy cigarettes.”

  “Hold it, hold it, hold it. There’s nothing left. We spent it all.”

  “Okay,” Bubber said, “two pairs of gloves, then we go to the candy store.”

  “Okay. Start pushing.”

  The junkyard was in an old horse barn. There were auto parts piled on the floor—batteries and tires and carburetors—and hubcaps on the
walls. The junk man came out to look at the wheels. He was fat and he wore khaki pants and a Sam Browne belt with a big ring of keys. “What’d they come off of?”

  “A 1929 Ford.”

  “You got the other wheels? Bring the other wheels and I’ll give you a good price.”

  “How much for these?”

  He turned the wheels over. “I got a warehouse full of Ford wheels.”

  “It’s a good tire. They’re both good.” I thought he’d give two dollars.

  He kicked the tires. “Two bits. Two bits apiece. Quarter for each one.” He pulled a greasy leather purse from his pocket.

  “Is that all?”

  He snapped his purse shut. “Forget it. Take your wheels out of here. I don’t want them.”

  “What are we going to do with them?”

  “That’s your problem. I was only doing you a favor.”

  “Come on, Starkey, give the kid a break.”

  I looked around. The voice had come from the rag pile. A tall boy sat up and grinned at me. He wore a hat with the brim cut off and the crown cut out in diamonds and squares. He wasn’t that much older than me. “Those wheels are worth two bucks apiece, at least.”

  “Hey, Whitey, what am I running, a charity or a business?” He bit off the end of his cigar and spit it out. “Okay, kid, one buck. Take it or leave it.”

  Whitey nodded to me. “Take it.”

  I held out my hand. The junk man gave me a dollar.

  25

  When we left the junkyard, Whitey walked along with us. “Where are you kids going?” He took his cap off. He had a ring of red around his forehead, but his hair was white. “Bubber and Tolley, who gave you those funny names? And King, that’s your dog? Some king. I had a dog once, a Doberman. Dobie. That’s when we lived in the country. We always had a dog. Each of us kids had something. I had Dobie, my one sister had goats, and my other sister had a garden.” He said gah-dun.

  “Where’s your dog now?” Bubber said.

  “Same place my house is.”

  “Where’s your house?”

  “Where it’s always been.”

  Bubber looked up at him. “Far away?”

  Whitey nodded his head slowly. “Hy-annis.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In the ocean.”

  Bubber looked over to me. “Is he teasing?”

  “He lives near the ocean. Cape Cod, it’s like Orchard Beach, only it’s far away. Don’t ask so many questions.”

  “Did you run away from your house?” Bubber said.

  “Did you?”

  Bubber nudged me. “What should I say?”

  “Shut your mouth!”

  Whitey stopped at a candy store. “I need some smokes. You guys want something?”

  I shook my head, but Bubber said, “I do!”

  When Whitey went into the store, I walked Bubber away. “You ask too many questions. And we don’t take things from people.”

  “Yes, we do,” Bubber said. “You do.”

  “This is different. He’s like us.”

  I could see Bubber thinking about it. “You mean his momma’s sick, too?”

  “Something like that.” I wanted Whitey to like us. Maybe the three of us could stick together.

  “Hey, Toll, Bub, wait up.” Whitey had three cigarettes. He lit one and put the others behind his ears. He held the lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth, one eye screwed up. “Want a drag?”

  I took it, rolled the cigarette between my fingers. Bubber watched. “You’re not supposed to smoke.”

  “No kidding.” I set the cigarette in the side of my mouth the way Whitey had, puffed on it a couple of times, then handed it back.

  Whitey handed Bubber a Hershey bar. “This what you want?”

  Bubber looked at me. “Take it,” I said. “You asked for it.” Bubber shared it out, not forgetting King.

  “Where do you kids live?” Whitey said. “Around here? You got a place for me to stay tonight?”

  “You can sleep on my bed,” Bubber said.

  “That’s my pal.”

  We stopped to buy bread, cheese, and milk. “You have any scraps for my dog?” Bubber asked the man. Ever since Bubber was sick, he’d changed. He’d gotten thin and sort of long, and he talked more to people.

  When we got back to the cave, Whitey couldn’t believe we went in through the hole. Bubber went through first. “You kids are like a couple of rats,” Whitey said.

  “It’s easy.” I showed him how I slid through on my back and he followed me.

  In the cave, he looked around. “Nice. Nice. Gee, this is all right, Tolman. How’d you find this place? You are smart. The second I saw you, I knew you were going to be my friend. You and Bub.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. I lit a couple of extra candles to make the place brighter and started the fire. It would be easy to fit another cot in here. After Bubber went to sleep, Whitey and I could talk and make plans.

  We sat around the fire and ate. “I like to keep moving,” Whitey said.

  “Yeah.” I folded a piece of bread around a slice of bologna. “It would be great to travel.”

  “One of these days, you’re going to see me behind the wheel of a car. A Chevy or a Pontiac.”

  “If I had a car, I’d go see the mountains.”

  “I’m an ocean man, myself,” Whitey said. “I don’t like to get too far from the water.”

  “We’ve got the ocean here.”

  “Not much. I’m talking about the Atlantic Ocean, not Long Island Sound.” He took a bite of his sandwich. “Where’s your father and your mother?” He said it in that funny way of his—fath-uh and moth-uh. I shrugged. He took a cigarette from behind his ear and lit up. “It’s getting nice and warm in here.”

  Bubber yawned and stretched out next to me.

  “I like the heat,” Whitey said. “I’m heading south. If I was south right now, I wouldn’t need this coat, I wouldn’t need these shoes. Walk on the beach with my pants rolled up. Hungry? Simple. Drop a line in the water and catch a fish. Tired? Sleep on the beach.”

  He closed his eyes. “They’ve got oranges down there like horse balls up here. Pick oranges up off the street and eat them. They just rot otherwise. Cars roll right over them.” He yawned. “Time for a little shut-eye.”

  I offered him the cot. “I’ll sleep with Bubber.”

  “No, I’ll sleep on the floor. I’m used to it.” He wrapped his coat around himself and lay down by the door. “Are you going to keep the fire going?”

  I went out and got some more wood. In Florida, we wouldn’t need fires, not to keep warm. We could run around barefoot. It would be like going to the beach every day. We’d live on the beach. Everything would be there for the taking. All the food we wanted, on the ground and hanging from the trees.

  I fixed the stove, “You really going to Florida, Whitey? When are you going?”

  “I’m working on a ride. Starkey wants me to go down with him, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a couple of days. We’ll take down a truckload of parts, then bring back a load of grapefruit and oranges.”

  “Would there be room for us?”

  “What?” Whitey was falling asleep. “Sure, I’ll ask Starkey. We can all help with the load.”

  I pulled the blanket over me. If Starkey said no, we could hide in back of the truck. Why did we have to go with Starkey, anyway? The three of us could go alone. We could hitch rides. Just stand Bubber by the side of the road, and we’d get all the rides we wanted. Maybe we’d stop in Washington on the way and look around for my father.

  Tolley. I heard my mother. Tolley … Her voice was weak and distant. Was this another of my crackpot ideas? How could we go to Florida? What about my parents? And my grandmother?

  I tossed around, couldn’t sleep. Florida … Whitey … the three of us. Three was better than two. Three heads were better than two. Three pairs of hands. We could work. Maybe we’d get a room. Bubber could even go to school. I’d write home—that would be
the way to do it. Write and tell them we were in Florida and everything was easy.

  26

  In the morning Whitey wanted to know where the bathroom was. I slipped out through the hole. “Pick any bush you want.”

  He laughed. “You guys—” he said, and shook his head. “Come on. I’ll show you something.”

  We went into a cafeteria on White Plains Road. We each took a ticket and followed Whitey to the men’s room. He took off his coat and sweater. He had on a collarless shirt with cuff links. There was a rip in the seat of his pants. He washed his hands and his face, and combed his hair back till it lay flat and slick on his head. He brushed his teeth with his finger. Then he put his sweater and coat on again.

  When he got done, Bubber and I washed. I looked in the mirror and scrubbed at a line of dirt clean around my neck. Whitey lent us his comb. I wet my hair and flattened it the way he did. Bubber’s hair was a curly tangle that couldn’t be combed.

  At the counter, Whitey ordered coffee and a danish. “What do you guys want?”

  Bubber ordered the same as Whitey. I felt in my pocket. A nickel was all I had left from yesterday, so I just ordered coffee.

  “It’s on me,” Whitey said.

  “I’m not that hungry in the morning.” I didn’t want him to think I was a moocher. We sat down. I put lots of sugar in my coffee and nibbled the raisins that Bubber picked out of his pastry.

  Whitey ate fast, then said, “Come on,” motioning to us to bring our cups and follow him. “I’ll show you something else.”

  We went to the steam table, where you could draw free hot water, and we filled up our cups. Back at our table, we added the free sugar and milk. It tasted watery, but it was sweet and hot. Whitey switched our empty cream pitcher with another table and filled Bubber’s cup. Then he sat back and lit his last cigarette. I sat back and looked around the way he did. Around us, people were eating, reading their papers. Nobody paid attention to us. It was nice sitting there, good to have someone else sitting with us. The cafeteria was warm, and it smelled good. The hot water in my belly made me feel full.

  “What are we going to do?” I said. We. That sounded good to me.