18th Emergency (8 page)

“Come on, you’ve got to go,” Mouse said, letting his shoulders slump. Eagerly Garbage Dog went out the door and down the stairs. “You just have to go, that’s all. There’s nothing I can do.”

Mouse came slowly back up the stairs as his mother was leaving. He waited on the landing for a moment, watching her go, and then he decided he didn’t want to go back in the apartment and be by himself. Sighing, he crossed the landing and knocked at the Casinos’ door.

“Mrs. Casino, it’s me—Benjie Fawley.”

“Come in, Benjie.” She opened the door. “Come on in and don’t mind me. I’m cooking.”

“I guess I’m early.”

“Well, that’s good. You can play checkers with Papa. Come on in. He’s so lonely these days. That man—”

Mouse interrupted. “I’m really not very good at checkers. I’ve hardly played since fourth grade.”

He suddenly wanted very much to sit in the warm kitchen and watch Mrs. Casino cook. She had a comforting manner about her. If he had said, “Mrs. Casino, some boys are going to kill me,” she wouldn’t have wasted time asking, “Why?” and “What did you do?” She would have cried, “Where are those boys? Show me those boys!” She would have yanked on her man’s sweater, taken her broom in hand and gone out into the street to find them. “Show me those boys!”

He had a brief, pleasant picture of Mrs. Casino cornering Marv Hammerman in the alley and raining blows on him with her broom. “You
(pow)
ain’t
(swat)
touching
(smack)
my
(zonk)
Benjie
(pow, bang, smack, swat, zap)
!” There was nothing comforting about sitting with Mr. Casino. Mouse had already told him about the boys being after him and gotten no reaction at all.

Mouse could see Mr. Casino sitting in the other room. He stood in the doorway with Mrs. Casino. He hesitated.

As he was standing there he thought of something that had happened at school the past week. Mrs. Tennent had brought movies of her Christmas vacation to school and had shown them to all her classes. And when she had shown everything that had happened to her and her sister in Mexico, then she reversed the film and they got to see everything happen in reverse. They got to see Mrs. Tennent walking backward into the hotel and into the bullfight. They got to see her sister walking backward through a market place. They got to see a funny looking taxi driving backward, and people eating backward, and a man diving backward up onto a high cliff. They had all laughed because there was something about people walking backward in that bright, skillful, cheerful way that was funny.

Suddenly that was what Mouse wanted to happen now. He wanted to walk backward out of the Casinos’ apartment. He wanted to walk backward to the basketball court, and then to school, reversing everything he had done in a bright, cheerful way. He wanted to move backward through Thursday too, and he especially wanted to walk all the way back to when he had come out of history class and paused by the prehistoric man chart. He wanted to stop everything right there. He would have paused a second, and in that second he would not have lifted his hand to write Marv Hammerman’s name. Then the world could go forward again.

He felt Mrs. Casino urging him into the room. He said reluctantly, “I haven’t played checkers in years. I’m not sure I even remember how.”

“You’re good enough. Go on.” Mrs. Casino took him firmly by the shoulders and pushed him into the room where Mr. Casino was sitting by the window. “Papa’s just learning checkers over again anyway,” she said.

Mouse crossed the room, dragging his feet. He said, “Hi, Mr. Casino,” in a low, unenthusiastic voice because he wanted to be
with
somebody. He was lonely. I, Mouse Fawley, do hereby swear that I feel very lonely. He thought he would have to make a declaration of it to make people understand. “How are you, Mr. Casino?” he asked in the same flat voice.

“He’s fine, aren’t you, Papa?” Mrs. Casino said. She patted Mr. Casino on the shoulders as she passed behind his chair. Mouse sat down. Mr. Casino was in an armchair, and the bottom had sunk so low that Mouse in his straight chair was the taller of the two.

“Here you go.” Mrs. Casino brought out the checkers, the oldest set Mouse had ever seen, and set it on the table. The black and red board had been worn white where the checkers had been moved across it. When she put the set down, Mr. Casino, reached out slowly with one enormous hand. His fingers were trembling a little, as if the distance from the armrest of his chair to the box of checkers was long and hazardous.

“I’ll set these up,” Mouse said. “I can do it better.” Quickly, efficiently, he put the checkers in the squares, his and Mr. Casino’s. Then he leaned back in his chair. “Go ahead, Mr. Casino.” He could hear the impatience in his own voice.

He glanced up at Mrs. Casino, who was still standing by the door, drying her already dry hands on her apron. Then quickly Mouse looked back at the checkerboard because he had seen something in Mrs. Casino’s eyes. It was just a flash of something, a cloud over the sun, a sadness, and it bothered him.

She said, “He’s supposed to use his left hand as much as possible.”

“Oh,” Mouse said. He wanted to explain that the reason he was acting this way was because he had the impossible burden of being chased by Marv Hammerman. He wanted Mrs. Casino’s sympathy. “Mrs. Casino,” he wanted to say, “if you only knew what it’s like to have Marv Hammerman out to get you.”

He felt tears stinging his eyes, and he knew he was not going to tell Mrs. Casino, and that he was not going to tell anybody else either. “Your move,” he said loudly to Mr. Casino. He shifted in his chair and then abruptly he slumped.

He had suddenly thought back to that moment outside history class when he had turned and looked around and seen Hammerman. That first moment—it was what had been troubling him all along.

It wasn’t entirely clear. It was as if a fog had filled the hall that day, making everything hazy. Still Mouse could remember the way Hammerman’s eyes had looked in that first unguarded moment. There hadn’t been enough fog to blot that out. Mouse thought again about that moment in the hall. It had been flitting in and out of his mind like a moth for two days. Now he made himself think about it.

He sank lower in his chair, because he knew now what troubled him. He had felt somehow close to Hammerman in that first terrible moment. He had known how Hammerman felt. It had been the same way he had felt when everyone first started calling him Mouse. They had been united for a moment, Mouse and Neanderthal man.

He said in a low voice, “You can have first move, Mr. Casino.”

Mr. Casino sat for a moment and then made a gesture with his fingers as if he was flicking a fly off the armrest.

Mrs. Casino said, “He wants you to go first, Benjie.” She was still patting the backs of her dry hands on her apron.

“Oh, sure.” He looked at the board as if the decision was one of the most important of his life. The checkers were thin and wooden and darker in the center from the sweat of people’s fingers. They were clear for a moment and then they blurred a little. Mouse reached out and pushed one forward before they got so blurred he couldn’t find them.

He leaned back in his chair. The late afternoon sun was coming in the window, and the dust in the sunlight gave him a sad, old-timey feeling. He thought that if he closed his eyes, he would not be able to tell even what century he was in. It could be a hundred years ago and he could be sitting here in an old-timey suit with knickers and a tie. It could be a thousand years ago. It was that kind of timeless feeling.

Some things, he thought as he stared down at the checkerboard, just don’t change. He remembered how he used to enjoy looking through books that showed the old and the new—the Wright Brothers’ glider opposite a jet plane, or an old Victrola opposite a hi-fi set. Looking at pictures like that always made him feel superior, as if he had advanced in the same way as the machines. He felt different now. He thought of all the people who had ever lived as being run through by a single thread, like beads.

“Well, I’ll get back to my cooking, if you don’t need me,” Mrs. Casino said.

“No, we’ll be fine.”

He looked at Mr. Casino who was reaching out slowly. He was still a large man, but he had once been enormous, and everything he was wearing was too big for him. The cuffs of his shirt came down over his speckled hands. The cotton pants were gathered in at the waist with his belt. Mouse waited, watching sadly, while Mr. Casino pushed one of his checkers forward with a trembling hand.

Mouse said, “My turn?” He bent forward over the board.

In the kitchen, Mrs. Casino started to sing. Outside two men were arguing about baseball. A bus passed. Mrs. Casino started on a western song. Mouse tried not to think of anything but the checker game. He said self-consciously, “Oh, I’ve got a jump.” He took it and leaned back in his chair.

It was a long, slow game, the first game Mouse had ever played in which it didn’t seem important who the winner was, or rather a game in which both players were winners.

Mouse said, “Do you want to play again?” He waited a minute, and then he pushed all the checkers across to Mr. Casino and said gently, “You set them up this time, will you?”

S
ATURDAY WAS WARM AND
bright, the first pretty Saturday they had had since Christmas. Mouse, lying on his bed in the hall, could tell it was sunny just from the brightness of the normally dark hall.

“Mom!” he called, not knowing what time it was and whether she had gone out to deliver cosmetics yet. “Mom!” There was no answer. There used to be a boy who lived in the apartment next door when Mouse was little, and every time Mouse would call, “Mommie!” the boy would answer, “Whatie?” in a high false voice.

Mouse got out of bed slowly, in stages. He sat on the edge of the bed, leaned forward, looked at his feet, straightened, and then continued to stand by the bed for a moment. Then abruptly he dressed, went into the kitchen and looked at the boxes of cereal on the shelf. He tore open a box of Sugar Pops. He waited, looking at the cereal, and then refolded the box and put it back. He went into the living room, and out of habit he switched on the television. Superman was on the screen, flying over the city in his suit and cape. Mouse watched for a moment and then turned off the television. Superman might be faster than a speeding bullet and able to leap tall buildings with a single bound, Mouse thought, but even Superman couldn’t keep himself from being tuned down to a small white dot.

Mouse got his jacket from the chair by the door. Even though he knew it was going to be warm outside, he put on his jacket and zipped it up. Then he left the apartment.

The street and the sidewalks were crowded. Some girls were roller skating, and it was the first time Mouse had seen that this year. Usually he and Ezzie liked to sit on the steps and watch the girls, calling out things like, “Way to go, Rose,” when she slipped. This would have been a good time to sit and yell comments of this nature because the girls had lost their talent for skating over the winter.

“Help me,” the biggest girl was yelling. “Don’t let me fall.” While she was screaming, the two smaller girls, sisters in matching sweaters, began to lose their balance. “Help me,” the big girl cried. The two sisters were now on their knees, still holding the big girl up. “Help!” the big girl cried and then she too went down on the sidewalk.

“Way to go, Louise!” Ezzie would have cried in delight. He would have nudged Mouse as the girls struggled to their feet, anticipating more fun. “Get this, Mouse. Keep your eye on Louise. She’s the one to watch.”

Mouse passed them without comment. Louise was still sitting on the sidewalk saying, “I think I broke something. No fooling, I think I broke something.”

Mouse kept walking down the crowded sidewalk. He knew a lot of these people, but nobody seemed to be speaking to him today. It was as if everybody in the world knew what he was going to do, and everybody knew that if they gave him any sympathy at all, if they even patted his shoulder or took his hand, he would not be able to do it. He would just fold up on the sidewalk, curled forward like a shrimp.

He crossed the street, touching both feet on the old trolley tracks because this was supposed to bring luck, and he stepped up on the sidewalk in front of the laundry. He thought that he could walk down this street blindfolded and know right where he was. The odors that came out of the different doors told him what to expect, what cracks there were in the sidewalk, who would be standing in the doorways. He turned the corner, passed the old movie theater, the Rialto. He smelled the old musty smell. Then he stopped thinking of anything except the fact that he was now on Marv Hammerman’s street.

A bus passed him, stopped to pick up an old woman with a folded shopping bag under her arm and then moved on. Mouse had started to sweat. It wasn’t that warm a day, not even with his jacket zipped up, but sweat was running down his sides beneath his shirt in a way it had never done before. At the same time his throat had gone completely dry, and the two conditions seemed somehow connected.

He saw a boy who had been in his school last year and he asked, “Have you seen Marv Hammerman?” His voice had the crackling dry sound of old leaves. He turned his head away and coughed.

“Not this morning.”

“Doesn’t he live around here?”

“He lives right over there,” the boy said. “Lots of times he’s down at Stumpy’s.”

“Oh,”

“If I see him I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”

“I’m Mouse Fawley,” he said, looking at the boy, and the boy said, “I know.”

Mouse glanced at his watch. It was 9:31. Slowly he walked the half block to Stumpy’s, which was a pizza place that had pinball machines. The entrance was below street level, and Mouse stopped and looked inside for a moment. He couldn’t see anything at first because his eyes were still accustomed to the bright light outside, but he could hear the sharp mechanical sounds of the pinball machines, the bells, the clicks, the machine-gun bursts of points being scored. He went down the steps.

“Is Marv Hammerman here?” he asked, squinting up at the man behind the counter. The man was putting packs of gum in a display stand. He glanced at Mouse and kept on straightening the gum.